She noticed Lana and her mother deep in conversation off in a corner and walked toward them. As she approached, she heard Lana say, “Oh, yeah. She’s from a good family. I wouldn’t bring her here if she were common.”
Weslee gritted her teeth. She didn’t even want to know what that conversation was about. “Hey, Lana, Eleanor.”
“Hi, sweetie.” Eleanor’s voice oozed honey. “Where’ve you been?”
“Just admiring the property with William.”
“Oh, that William. He’s an intense young man,” Eleanor said.
Intense how? Weslee wanted to ask. But she knew better. “Need help cleaning up?” she asked Eleanor.
“Oh, honey, no, the caterers will do that.” She looked at Weslee, horrified, as if she were from another planet.
“OK,” Weslee said brightly. She was getting used to being treated like the poor cousin visiting Oak Bluffs straight from the Ozarks.
Lana and Eleanor were ignoring her, so she decided to go mingle among the few people who were still lingering.
Then there was Duncan again. “Did you enjoy your walk with William?” That smirk again, and she began to see that it was not intentional.
“Yes.” She bared her teeth, but the smile never reached her eyes.
“Are you usually this rude to people you barely know?” he asked her. She couldn’t read his expression now, but the smirk was gone.
All of a sudden she felt guilty and a little ashamed of herself. “I’m sorry, I had no idea I was being rude to you.”
He looked right at her but said nothing. “I guess you’re going out with Lana tonight.”
“I guess,” she said.
“You two make quite an odd pair,” he said.
“Hey, who says two people have to be carbon copies of each other to become friends?”
“Oh, I’m not saying that at all. It’s just different to see Lana hanging around someone so . . . sensible.”
Weslee sighed. “Well, you really don’t know me at all, so don’t assume that I’m sensible.”
He laughed. Of course his smile was as perfect as the rest of him. She couldn’t deny that she was beginning to feel hypnotized by it.
“You’re absolutely right, and I apologize. Maybe I could . . .”
“Duncan, would you stop trying to steal my friends!” Lana appeared again.
He gave Lana that condescending look that Weslee had seen him give her the night she met him at the party—a meeting he didn’t remember.
“Are you partying with us tonight?” she asked him, faking a dance move.
“Dream on,” he said.
He looked at Weslee. Long. “I’ll call you,” he said to her and walked away.
“What was that about?” Lana asked in a teasing voice.
“I don’t know. He doesn’t have my number.”
“Oh, he’ll find it. He’s like that. But don’t take him too seriously. Come on, let’s go get a glass of wine. I have to introduce you to my cousin Sissy.”
Weslee groaned inside. How many times do I have to tell her I don’t drink anymore because I’m training for the marathon? And how do I work up the nerve to tell her that I don’t want to meet any more of these people?
But she allowed herself to be dragged along to meet Sissy.
Chapter 7
Weslee was never happier to see her tiny apartment than when she walked in that Monday afternoon. The weekend had been exhausting—from the long drive and ferry ride to the Vineyard, to the parties at Eleanor’s and then later at the nightclub. It had been all about Lana and her family and her friends and, of course, their money and their pedigrees. She had never felt so out of place. Even at the club, she had wanted to just disappear. Lana quickly sucked all the attention from the room as she climbed up on the bar, dancing in her tiny shorts and tank top. Weslee had left at that point, walking all the way back to her guest room at Eleanor’s house. It had been dark, and she had feared getting lost, but it was better than staying at the nightclub, watching Lana make a spectacle of herself.
She had hoped to see William again, but he hadn’t shown. The disappointment, plus the feeling of not belonging, had kept her up the whole night. She had fled early that morning before Eleanor’s lavish breakfast, saying that she had forgotten her migraine medicine. She hadn’t had a migraine headache since high school.
Lana didn’t seem to mind that her friend was leaving before the official end of the holiday weekend. “I’ll call you once I get back in town,” she had said sleepily from her bedroom as Weslee waved good-bye.
The ride back on the ferry had been a little choppy, and the older couple who gave her a ride to the city talked her head off the whole way about politics. At first it was refreshing to have a grown-up conversation about poverty and education. But then the conversation had taken a turn that left her counting each mile back to Boston.
It was so like certain people to assume that she would be a Democrat, a liberal Democrat at that. But they were so wrong. “Yes, it is the government’s duty to ensure that the public schools are up to par or close with the private schools,” she had tried to tell the woman, Ellen MacLean. “But it should be up to parents to choose where their children go to school. Why should they be forced to send their kids to an underperforming school just because they’re from a poor neighborhood? Yes, of course, I’m in full support of school vouchers.”
Ellen, who was driving, had said, “Well, that’s the kind of thinking that deprives our inner-city schools of the students who can help them rise to excellence.”
“At their own expense?” Weslee had almost asked aloud. But instead she had bowed out of the argument. She had wanted to laugh, though. Our inner-city schools? Weslee herself had never stepped foot in an inner-city school, and she was positive that her captors, or drivers, had not either. Liberals, she had sighed.
Now she was home and glad to be away from all of them: the good, the bad, and the pretentious.
Her message light was blinking. She hit the play button.
“Hi, Weslee, it’s Duncan. I got your phone number from Lana. Wondering what you’re doing for lunch tomorrow. Give me a call at my office.” She frowned as he recited his number.
Wow. He sure moves quickly, she thought. What makes him think that he can call today and have lunch with me tomorrow! For all he knows, we only met yesterday.
She dropped her weekend bag on the floor and walked to the shower. Thank goodness she had the night all to herself. All she wanted was a nice, slow, long run by the river and then a bath. She was almost done with the Paul Theroux book, which she had read on the ferry ride back to Woods Hole. She couldn’t wait to get back into it.
The phone rang. She picked it up. “Hello, this is Weslee.”
It was Duncan. “Didn’t you get my message?” he asked.
“I just walked in.”
“It’s too bad you rushed off so quickly this morning. I heard that you didn’t feel well. I hope that had nothing to do with me.”
The ego.
“Listen, Duncan, I’d really rather not have lunch tomorrow. I have a training run in the afternoon, and a big lunch is the last thing I need before I do it.”
“OK, we’ll have dinner, then. I’m not taking no for an answer,” he said. “Unless you already have plans.”
She thought for a moment. “OK, but I can’t stay out late.”
“Good. Me, neither.”
Weslee looked around at the restaurant. Gosh, the place was beautiful. It was a French restaurant in the middle of posh Copley Square. She’d walked by it enough times as she trailed Lana on the way to Saks and Neiman’s. She had noticed the high-brow crowd sitting at tables with white, white tablecloths, silverware glinting in the semidark dining room. Now here she was at one of the best tables, looking out on Huntington Avenue at passersby, with a man whose dinner invitation she still wasn’t sure she should have accepted.
“How’s your salad?” Duncan asked her.
He was all charm and da
sh. She could see how a woman could fall easily for him. He was one of those men who never had to work hard at that sort of thing. He was the total package. The looks, money, education, class, and manners—she tried hard to remind herself that she wasn’t buying it; there was no way a man like him would truly want to be with someone like her.
“It’s great. This place is amazing.” And it was. The wait staff was so polite and attentive; it was as if they were the only diners in the room.
Duncan was talking about Paris. Thankfully, she had been there once for a week in her junior year at Northwestern, so for the first time she felt comfortable adding something to the conversation. Funny thing was, she kept comparing his recollections with William’s excitement about Paris and Rome and the architecture there. But then Duncan lost her when he began to talk about wines and all the vineyards he had visited in France. She nodded politely, mostly feeling that she was getting a lecture but liking the way he spoke with his deep, hoarse voice, the way he leaned back slightly in his chair but held her eyes with his intense brown stare. She couldn’t look away.
“So, which of your parents gave you those athletic genes? You’re a runner, right? You know, you didn’t even have to tell me. It’s obvious. I ran track, too. I know the walk.” It jolted her out of her reverie when he turned the conversation back to her.
He didn’t know it yet, but he had begun to score some points.
“Really? What did you run?” Her interest suddenly perked up. Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all.
“You think I’m just some preppie, golf-addicted type. But I’m actually a sprinter at heart,” he said.
She listened intently as he talked about playing football and running track at Exeter and then at Harvard. He was obviously a very competitive athlete. It reminded her of Michael’s forever-burning desire to win at all times—and the way he displayed all his medals and trophies in their living room, where everyone could see.
“In my last year of high school I wanted to win every single race there was. I only missed one—I lost to William.” He grinned. “But I ended up winning us the biggest meet of our season, so that made up for it.”
She grinned back at him because she knew where he was coming from. To the average person, what Duncan was saying would have seemed like bragging, but not to Weslee. Like most athletes, she understood what went into a win: sweat, hours of training, aching knees and hamstrings, and your lungs screaming for air with the finish-line tape nowhere in sight. Duncan understood that, too.
“So, have you stopped running?” she asked.
“Just about. I ran the marathon a couple of years ago, but that was just on a dare.”
“You’re kidding! I’m training for it,” she exclaimed.
“Really? What time are you expecting to make?”
“Hopefully three-thirty.” She held up crossed fingers.
“I did it in two forty-two.”
“Wow, that’s amazing.”
“Not really. It almost killed me.”
Twenty minutes later, after dessert, they were laughing and talking about his work, sports, movies, and books. Weslee was genuinely surprised at how easygoing Duncan turned out to be. She admired his drive and competitiveness. He talked about his work as if it were a battle. He made his law firm colleagues sound like enemies and the office a battleground for clients and favors from partners. She enjoyed listening to his war stories. He made everything he did sound so exciting, so important. She would never admit it, but if she closed her eyes she could imagine she was sitting across the table from Michael.
They didn’t notice that the restaurant had almost emptied and that the wait staff stood at the edge of the kitchen, glancing between the two of them and their watches.
“We’d better get going,” he said finally, after finishing another of his stories about another semicriminal businessman he’d helped save from going to jail.
“Oh,” she said, suddenly leaping back to her senses and looking at her watch. It was eleven-thirty. “I didn’t realize it was so late.”
“Guess it was the good company.”
She felt her cheeks grow warm. He smiled. She blushed again.
Then he blew her mind. In what seemed like a second or less, he stood and leaned across the table and kissed her. It was short and sweet and totally unexpected.
Then he sat back and looked at her. “I couldn’t help it,” he said almost apologetically. “I just haven’t met anyone like you before. I’m sorry. That was forward of me.”
She didn’t say anything. She was surprised that she wasn’t angry with him and that she had wanted him to do it all night long, surprised that she told him that it was OK and that her eyes said she felt the same way he was feeling.
Later that night, her new two-hundred-dollar bed linens were not doing much in the way of lulling her into an opulent slumber. Why can’t I just stop seeing his face, feeling his lips? Aaargh! Weslee tossed and turned and squeezed her eyes shut. Her heart flipped every time she replayed the kiss. It had sent a bolt of lightning through her, and she was surprised that she’d not shot up from the table at that very moment. She sighed. She’d already dissected the dinner conversation twenty-three times. Each time she felt more and more embarrassed about her lack of worldliness. I must have sounded like a real hick to him. She balled up a fist. An inexperienced refugee from the ghetto, probably. What in the world could he possibly want with me? she wondered. She remembered the parade of pretty girls at the Vineyard party who were certainly more suitable for a guy like him. I’m just a recovering tomboy, she wailed to the dark, empty room. I can’t deal with this! She opened her eyes. But he seemed so . . . so interested. It couldn’t have been her imagination. Or was it? Maybe the whole night had not even happened. And even if it had? What happens next? Aaargh! I need to get some sleep!
Chapter 8
Weslee had to face it. Her life was hemorraging money. She couldn’t bear to take another withdrawal out of her emergency savings. Things were just not going according to her spending plan. The plan was to never, ever exceed two thousand dollars a month. But in the last week or so she had already spent fifteen hundred. She had been buying new clothes, getting her hair done, and spending on parties like crazy. When she was planning this move to Boston, she did not plan for an active social life. So something needed to be done.
The credit card bills on the coffee table were not going to go away. She was horrified when she looked at the balance on her Visa card of nearly two thousand dollars. How could she pay that all off at the end of the month? Would she have to carry a balance? That was out of the question. She had never carried a balance in her entire life. She rummaged through the rest of the bills. The new Saks Fifth Avenue card and the Nordstrom account would also need to be paid off immediately. Her savings would have to take the hit this month. Again.
Even if she cut down on the spending, the damage had already been done. She needed to replenish her savings. What if an emergency really did happen? She needed more money in that account.
She really didn’t want to have to do it, but she had to get a job. Once again, she considered working as a personal trainer. She hadn’t done it in ages, since just after college. But it was easy, and she could probably make enough money to at least handle her utilities and groceries. She picked up the yellow pages and began to call health clubs.
The holiday season was in the air. Some merchants had already put up Christmas lights in their store windows. Lights sparkled through the trees near the Christian Science Monitor building. The shopping crowds were thick and focused on Boylston and Newbury Streets. The cold air was beginning to be a menace.
Lana and Weslee walked quickly from the coffee shop where they had just met.
“So, do you think I even have a chance of getting a B?” Lana asked.
Weslee had read Lana’s paper and had done her best to suggest changes that could save the disastrous piece of work. “If you make the changes I just suggested, you’ll get an A. It’s really not
that bad.”
Lana sighed. “I cannot imagine having to take Organizational Behavior again next semester.”
Weslee set her jaw. OB was the easiest course in the curriculum so far, yet Lana was having trouble with it. “But your grades for the other classes are OK, right?” she asked.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Lana, you can’t guess. They’ll kick you out if your cumulative is below a B average.”
“They can’t kick me out. My father donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to that school,” she said defiantly. Then, in one of the abrupt changes of subject that Weslee had learned to expect from her friend: “Hey, I think Neiman’s is having a sale. Wanna go look-see?”
Weslee stopped. “I got a job, Lana.”
“A what?”
“A job. I start next week. It’s at the HealthyLife Spa. I’ll be a personal trainer there.”
“But why? Where are you going to find the time?”
“I’ll have to find the time. I need to find the time. I’ve been spending way too much. And no, I don’t want to go to Neiman’s.”
They had stopped walking.
“Wes, that’s so . . .”
“So . . . what?”
“Can’t you just ask your folks to lend you money?”
“Lana, I’m almost thirty years old. I’m not asking my parents for money!”
“But you’re in school. They’ll understand.” It seemed as if she was pleading.
“What’s the big deal? I don’t mind working.”
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