by Lindsey Kelk
Cici forced all her energy into her left eyebrow and raised it by roughly three millimetres.
‘Are you finished?’ she asked.
I glanced over at Paige whose entire face was now bright red. And that did not go with her neon green dress at all.
‘Yes.’
‘Great,’ Cici said, laying her hands flat on her desk. Her manicure looked especially nice, I thought as I hid my chipped nails between my thighs. ‘Here’s what I think. Paige is right. Real life is boring, people like investing in a fantasy and, Angela, you could be this version of you if you wanted to be. With the right amount of airbrushing. Like, a lot of it.’
She paused and turned her attention to Paige.
‘But Angela is also right. I hired her to write the things she’s good at because she’s good at them and, for whatever reason, people love her stuff. If this isn’t what she wants to do, we shouldn’t be trying to force it on her. Find someone else to fill this slot if you really believe in it.’
It was the closest she’d ever come to genuinely complimenting me.
‘These are teething problems I don’t need to be part of,’ she said, flashing her eyes at Don the assistant. He immediately scooped up her coffee cup and ran out the room. ‘The promo video is a genius idea but this isn’t it. I want a final version live by Friday and the two of you need to figure it out.’
‘Yeah, I mean, absolutely,’ I confirmed, flush with something like victory. ‘Not a problem.’
‘OK.’ She looked at the two of us, seemingly confused. ‘So, you know, go away?’
‘Still working on those interpersonal skills,’ I muttered as I pushed my chair back across the wooden floor. ‘Thanks, Cici.’
‘Thanks for pulling that together so quickly,’ Paige said to Ember and Tennyson as we all barrelled back into the lift. ‘We’ll get notes on version two over to you ASAP.’
They nodded, pupils contracted from spending too much time staring at a screen, and the doors closed. We stood in silence for the entire ten-second ride but the tension coming off Paige was even louder than her frock.
‘Thanks for throwing me under the bus,’ she said, the moment the doors opened and the others ran back to their desks. ‘I can’t believe you did that.’
‘You should have shown me the video before you played it for Cici,’ I said, refusing to back down. My natural setting was apologize and make life easy but I was so certain I was right this time, caving in was not an option. ‘I don’t really know what else to say. I should have seen it, Paige.’
‘There wasn’t time,’ she sniffed, busily flicking at her iPad to avoid looking at me.
‘Well, this time we’re going to work on it together.’ If I could fix things with Alex and fix things with my mum, I was sure as shit going out of here with a win on the work front as well. ‘There was tons of stuff I loved about that version, it’s just tweaks really.’
And by tweaks, I meant delete all the voiceover, take out the retouching and that one photo of me asleep on the plane and completely rearrange all the videos, I added silently. This was the time to get her on side, not make her hate me even more.
‘You could have said that in there instead of making me look like a knob in front of my boss,’ she replied, softening by a fraction.
I threw my hands up in the air and sighed. ‘And you could have shown me the video before you showed it to Cici and, oh look, we’re right back at the beginning and I’m going completely mad.’
‘Doesn’t matter now, does it? We’ve got two days to get something worked out,’ Paige said, opening up her calendar to check her schedule, a nail tapping on the keyboard. ‘Can you get notes to me today on what you want the video to say? And I’ll have Ember and Tennyson work on it all tomorrow.’
‘I can,’ I replied. I stopped myself from agreeing madly and offering all kinds of compromises, biting my cheek to stay silent. Paige frowned at her iPad before looking up at me with a satisfied nod. Mentally I added ‘I stood up for myself at work and it didn’t go horribly wrong’ to my list of accomplishments alongside ‘Moved to New York’ and ‘Didn’t try to lick Daniel Craig that one time I stood behind him in the sandwich shop’.
‘We’re going to ace it,’ I promised. ‘Teamwork makes the dream work!’
‘Never say that to me again,’ she warned as she walked away. ‘Ever.’
‘And that’s why you can’t try to sell me as someone cool,’ I said, shooting double finger guns in her direction as I bumbled back over to the field of desks. ‘No one would ever believe it.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
‘So, in the end, it was just an unused garage and some old storage shed,’ Jenny said, licking her spoon at Max Brenner on Thursday morning. ‘Nothing valuable got destroyed, no major damage was done to the main estate, their insurance is gonna cover the whole thing.’
It was really far too warm for hot chocolate but when a craving came calling, what could a girl do? Not that my sugar addiction really counted as a craving when I wasn’t pregnant but Max Brenner’s was one of the few things that had been in New York when I first arrived that had managed to stick around and I’d learned my lesson from Manatus, use it or lose it, and I would lose a leg before I lost these hot chocolates. Possibly to diabetes, but still. It was the best in the world.
‘And do they know how the fire started?’ I asked. ‘Was it the fireworks?’
‘It was,’ she nodded. ‘But nothing went haywire. For some reason, a couple of the rockets had been pointed in the wrong direction, right at the buildings.’
‘Inside job?’ I asked, lowering my voice at the possible scandal.
‘I don’t think Bertie is the kind of guy to do that but …’
‘Kekipi is?’ I finished for her.
‘Who knows?’ She tore off a piece of her croissant and nibbled it carefully to avoid smudging her lipstick. ‘I’m just grateful Camilla Rose wasn’t hot about it and I didn’t get fired. Can you imagine how bad it could have been?’
‘I imagined we all tried to swim out to sea to get away from the blazing inferno and I was eaten by a shark,’ I replied, helping myself to her pastry. ‘So, yes. Also, you burned down two buildings. That’s still pretty bad.’
Jenny seemed unconcerned.
‘Thanks for coming with me today.’ She pushed the rest of the croissant across the table towards me. ‘I hate doing these check-up appointments on my own. It’s so freaking sad.’
‘Of course,’ I nodded with a supportive smile. ‘It must be really hard. Dr Laura’s optimistic, though, you said? Should all be pretty straightforward once they get the eggs next week?’
‘I feel like a goddamn chicken,’ she muttered, clutching her swollen stomach. ‘She says they’re only getting maybe four extra eggs out of me but it feels like there are at least forty-five thousand in there already. And it’s not me I feel sad for, this is gonna sound awful, but it’s all the people crying in the waiting room. I feel bad because I never thought this would apply to me, then I feel even worse because I’m not the one who has a problem, then I feel like I’m being disloyal to Mason, which makes me feel even worse again, and I don’t even have a baby yet, how am I going to cope?’
‘I’ve only been a mum for a bit,’ I said, trying to sound reassuring. ‘But at least forty-eight percent of it is feeling guilty about things that are completely beyond your control so I’d say you’re off to a brilliant start.’
She smiled and carried on stirring her hot chocolate. She hadn’t taken so much as a sip.
‘Have you talked to Erin yet?’ I asked.
The look on her face answered my question.
‘OK, moving on. What about the podcast? What’s the latest with “Tell Me About It with Jenny Lopez”?’
‘It’s actually going really well,’ she said, brightening up at least for a moment. ‘I have a meeting at a studio, right by our old place. It looks like I can go in, record and they’ll do everything else for me. And James agreed to be my first guest!’<
br />
I gasped in mock horror.
‘I thought I was going to be your first guest?’
‘James then you,’ she said quickly. ‘James, then Sadie, then you. And maybe Eva. But you’re definitely a shoo-in for the first season.’
‘As long as you’re happy, I’m happy,’ I assured her. ‘I’m sure James has enough stories to tell to fill an entire season. Maybe I can just be your number one cheerleader.’
Jenny smiled and pulled a napkin out of the dispenser on the table, reaching across to wipe something away from the corner of my mouth.
‘Doll,’ she said with a grin. ‘You already are.’
Grabbing the napkin out her hand, I wolfed down the rest of the croissant before wiping my mouth properly.
‘What are you doing after this?’ she asked. ‘Do you want to get something real to eat or do you have to go straight to work?’
‘I have a meeting,’ I said, not ready to share any more details until said meeting was done. I tapped her mug to hurry her up. ‘Come on, we ought to get going. You don’t want to be late.’
‘You just want to see the inside of my uterus,’ she pouted, ignoring the mug and throwing a twenty-dollar bill on the table.
‘After everything we’ve been through, I’m almost positive I’ve already seen it,’ I replied as I added a five for the tip. ‘And I’m certain it’s gorgeous.’
‘Damn right,’ she shouted. ‘And so is yours. We have beautiful uteruses.’
‘Uteruses? Uteri? Feels like it should be uteri?’ I pondered before making eye contact with a horrified-looking old gent at the next table, pushing away his breakfast. ‘Oh god, I’m sorry.’
‘Do you know?’ Jenny asked him, hooking her arm through mine. ‘I think she’s right on the money with uteri.’
‘Both are correct,’ he said, reaching into his breast pocket for a business card. ‘Uteruses is more commonly used. I’m a gynecologist.’
‘Goddamn, I love this city,’ she yelled as I took the card and smiled politely on our way out the restaurant. ‘You never know who you’re going to meet.’
Holding Jenny’s hand while Dr Laura performed what my father affectionately referred to as ‘fanny mechanics’ took longer than I’d expected and I was out of breath by the time I arrived back in Park Slope for my next appointment. Pressing the buzzer outside 585 11th Street, I squeezed the strap of my bag for good luck and waited to be summoned inside.
‘Angela, darling.’
Perry Dickson opened the door with a smile on her face so wide, I had to wonder what she’d been doing before I arrived. I also had to wonder if I’d got my dates wrong because she was wearing what appeared to be a hand-painted, silk kimono.
‘Perry,’ I said, leaning forward for three kisses on alternating cheeks. ‘Is this a bad time?’
‘Not at all,’ she insisted, leading me back through the front room I remembered so clearly, past the all-white chamber of judgement and through into what looked like a cross between a six-star hotel suite and an impossibly fancy spa.
‘When you called, I was so determined to make time to talk to you, I had to move some things around in my diary.’ She passed through the door and waved at a woman in a pale grey uniform. ‘Anika comes to see us once a month or so. She’s an angel, as I’m sure you’ll find out for yourself.’
‘We really can reschedule,’ I said, looking down to see my white knuckles clinging to the doorframe. ‘This can wait.’
‘Can it, Angela?’ Perry asked with intense eyes. ‘Can it?’
‘Yes,’ I said, quite sure.
‘Nonsense, this won’t take more than two minutes and then we’ll have a coffee while the redness goes down,’ she replied.
‘Redness?’ I asked as Anika rolled a device over to the squishy-looking treatment bed.
It’s a facial, I reassured myself. It’s definitely a facial and not electro-shock therapy and you can leave any time you like and no one is going to force you to have it done and yes this all feels a bit Handmaid’s Tale but everything is going to be OK.
‘There’s a little residual soreness but it’s entirely worth it,’ she said, untying the kimono and letting it fall to the floor.
Oh good, now I had to gouge out my eyes on the way home as well. Ten a.m. on a Thursday morning and I’d already seen three women’s vulvas that weren’t mine. At least one had been my daughter’s.
‘I wanted to say thank you so much for introducing me to Luka,’ I wasn’t sure where to look as she climbed up onto the treatment bed. ‘I couldn’t be more grateful.’
‘But of course,’ Perry said, smiling at me as she raised her knees and dropped them out to the side. What I hadn’t seen before, I’d certainly seen now. ‘Angela, we love your writing. The M.O.B. thinks you have limitless potential and we always work together to push our members to the highest of heights.’
How was it possible for her body to be completely hairless? I hadn’t shaved above the knee since I’d given birth and I’d just come back from a long weekend in Hawaii. Why was everyone else suddenly so chill with their nether regions? I felt like a maiden aunt with no idea where to look. ‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,’ I replied, eyes on the very nicely restored tin ceiling. What on earth were they doing? ‘Can I ask, what made you get in touch with me in the first place?’
‘Well,’ she settled back against the bed as Anika pulled on a pair of goggles and slipped her hands into a pair of latex gloves. ‘Our group keeps an eye on birth announcements in the neighbourhood and we’ve a couple of members who worked at Spencer Media when you were there. They spoke highly of you, your work ethic, your dedication. Then we heard you were moving to Besson and of course the Spencer family are very well respected so that was enough to get you in for a chat. Also, you’re British and we don’t have any British members at the moment.’
‘Really? That was one of the reasons?’ I switched my view from the ceiling to the floor in one quick flick of the eyes.
‘We have a sister organization on the West Coast, Mothers of Beverly Hills? And they’re forever bragging about that awful Vanderpump woman. Clearly we wouldn’t even consider admitting someone from reality television but we did discuss whether or not it might be a boon to diversify our membership somehow.’
Not the time to tell her I’d binge-watched eight seasons of Vanderpump Rules while pregnant. I didn’t have a book deal yet.
‘We approached you because we thought you would be good for us and we could be good for you,’ she said simply. ‘You’re clearly hard-working, you’re bright and you’re an upstanding Brooklyn resident. At least, we couldn’t find any legal records suggesting otherwise.’
‘It’s not just because of Alex then?’ I asked with a deep breath in.
‘This serves me right for getting overexcited when we first met, doesn’t it?’ Perry said, covering her face with her hands. Now she was going to be embarrassed? ‘We don’t look at a woman’s partner when we’re considering her for membership. He, she or they are not part of the group and, as long as they aren’t involved in any criminal activity or could potentially damage our reputation or, again, I imagine reality TV would be an issue, they don’t come into the equation. Really, Angela, the women who are part of our group are capable of more than enough in their own right without bringing their husbands into it. Most of us are here to get away from them, although you didn’t hear that from me.’
I breathed out, shaking my head at myself. I’d been so certain they were trying to stitch me up or use me to get something from Alex, the idea that The Mothers of Brooklyn might genuinely be interested in having me, a mother who lived in Brooklyn, join their gang hadn’t really hadn’t occurred to me until Al had suggested it.
‘We’re a group of like-minded women, looking for a place to come together and make sense of things,’ she went on. ‘I don’t know about you but my world was turned upside down when I had my kids and none of the mother and baby groups I went to felt like a good fit for me.’
That much I could agree with.
‘I hate to admit it but I was jealous of the mothers who took to it all so easily. So many women made it look simple but I missed my job, I missed the interaction with my colleagues and friends. And so I created The M.O.B. to find new ones. It has, admittedly, grown a little beyond its humble beginnings but when Hillary said she was heading back upstate and didn’t need this space any more and we could have it for next to nothing, it seemed churlish to look a gift horse in the mouth.’
‘Hillary?’ I repeated quietly.
‘We’d love to have you join us, Angela. I offer my most profound apologies if we were unwelcoming on your first visit. I was having a terrible day.’
‘Happens to the best of us,’ I replied as Anika fired up her machine. ‘Perry, can I ask what it is you’re doing right now?’
‘Vaginal rejuvenation,’ she answered, casual as you liked. ‘We use a CO2 fractional laser to tighten the skin of the vulva and vagina.’
I had to ask.
‘I really don’t want to sound ungrateful but I’ve got such a lot happening at the moment, would it be all right if I think about it for a few days and let you know in a week or so?’ I winced as the laser made snapping noises in a place where neither lasers nor snapping were supposed to be.
‘Not a problem,’ she replied, her voice utterly even. Her vag was being lasered and she didn’t even flinch. What a woman. ‘Whenever you’re ready. We’re not the Mafia, you know.’
‘No, of course not,’ I muttered. Was that burning I could smell? Jesus H … ‘Oh, and I put you on the guest list for tomorrow night, at Alex’s show. I did a plus one but if you need more tickets just let me know.’
‘That is so lovely of you!’ Perry curled her upper body upwards with core control I could only dream off. ‘But entirely unnecessary. It turns out one of our members actually owns the concert venue so I had her get us all tickets. We’ll see you there.’