by Rowan Hanlon
Kael grinned at her. “You’re right. I can’t get rid of him now.”
Muffy laughed and patted Kael’s arm. “Well, as long as he’s happy, we’re happy. And he’s happy, Kael.” She paused to pinch Nick’s cheek and gave him an affectionate pat.
Kael studied her as she did that and nodded slightly. She loved the easy-going relationship Nick had with his mother and wished she’d been able to have one like that with hers.
“And where is your father, Kael?” John asked.
“Well, he couldn’t make it,” Kael said, becoming slightly uncomfortable. She came up with a hasty explanation, lacing it with as much humor as she could muster, “Work and all. You know how it is in Appalachia. Herding pigs and patching old tin roofs.” She paused, thinking that they might not have gotten the joke. “Just kidding. He’s actually just doing cop stuff, keeping everyone in line, which is more than I can say for you.”
John cracked up. “Smart mouth! What have you heard?”
“Something to do with a little golf game, perhaps? A bet gone sour, maybe? Yeah, I saw Patrick recently and he was none too happy with the likes of you.”
John shook his head and pointed his finger at her. “You tell that boss of yours to keep his mouth shut. When did you see the old bastard?”
“He stops by the office a few times a month and this week we got lucky and he came by,” Kael said, grinning at him. “He told me you owed him a one-hundred-dollar bill.”
“No, it was lunch,” he said. “And I’ll be damned. I won that game fair and square.”
“That’s not the way he’s telling it,” Kael said. “He said you cheated.”
“Well. He would say that, wouldn’t he?” John said and winked at her. “Now, I need some of those.”
He pointed to her drink and she motioned him over towards the bar.
“Come on, Dad,” Nick said. “I’ll get you one.”
They headed out, leaving Muffy and Kael to themselves.
“Dear, I love that dress,” Muffy said and stepped back to admire it.
“One of the perks of working at a magazine.”
“Oh, do tell. How’s that going? Did Celeste go for the idea of switching you over to editorial?”
Kael turned to stare at her. “You sound like you work there,” she said and grinned at her. “But, no, she didn’t go for it.”
“Why not?” Muffy asked, looking concerned.
Because she’s a cold-hearted bitch, Kael thought, but didn’t say that. You didn’t say things like “cold-hearted bitch” to someone like Muffy, but if she were to say it to you, it was perfectly acceptable. Kael thought of a good reason and hurriedly replied, “Well, it’s just not in the cards right now. There’s been some switching around the office.” She paused and wondered if that made any sort of sense at all. She didn’t think it did but it didn’t matter. Muffy wasn’t the kind of person who read between the lines. No, she was the kind of person who just wanted to know the facts and get whatever job there was to be done, done. So, it was no surprise to Kael what she said next.
“Would you like for me to make a call?” Muffy asked.
Oh, she would. She would, so badly. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t do that. If it got around the office that she’d had her future mother-in-law fighting her battles, any respect based on her ability would vanish just like that. Kael was out to prove herself. She didn’t really want any help, though had it not been for her future in-laws, she might not have ever obtained the job at the magazine at all. She chose not to think about that.
“Oh, no, no. No. I got it under control,” Kael assured her, though she wasn’t sure if she did or not.
Muffy nodded and winked at her. “Wonderful, dear. Now, show me the feast. I’m famished.”
They started over towards the buffet just as a waitress entered carrying a tray of tequila shots. Kael wriggled her eyebrows at Muffy, grabbed one for herself, then one for Muffy. Without a word, they both threw them back then laughed.
One thing about Muffy, the woman could hold her liquor. Kael, on the other hand, not so much.
* * * * *
A few hours later, the guests had dispersed, leaving Kael and Nick with a huge mess. As they looked around, they held onto each other and tried not to fall down, drunkenly surveying the remnants of their successful party. While the catering company had taken the tables and leftover food away, as well as the bar, the couple was left with a loft littered with empty beer bottles, coconuts, dirty dishes and party streamers. It was, in a word, overwhelming. A waft of sweet barbeque combined with soured beer permeated the air.
Without a word, both of them flopped down on their ultra modern sectional sofa and fell back in exhausted inebriation. They didn’t move for a while until Nick sat up, looked around for a long moment, then stared at Kael. He said with resolution, “I say we burn the place and skip town.”
“Don’t tempt me,” Kael replied and put and arm over her forehead. “What were we thinking having a party here? What are we? Gluttons for punishment?”
“We must be,” Nick said. “It’s so bad I can’t even remember what it looked like before.”
“It was really pretty,” Kael said and groaned with the pain of being too drunk to do anything and not drunk enough to pass out. “Oh, my God, I am so drunk.”
“Me, too,” Nick said. “Thank God tomorrow is Saturday. I could not go to work like this.”
“That’s why Friday was made for drinking,” Kael said.
“True,” he replied then scooted over and straddled her.
“What the hell are you doing?” she squealed and tried to push him off.
“Come on,” he said and began to nuzzle her neck. “We’ll be married soon and the sex will dry up. Or at least that’s what they say.”
“Well,” Kael said and stared him dead in the eye. “Whoever ‘they’ are better be wrong or I won’t marry you.” And she wouldn’t. They had a great sex life and the thought of marriage ruining it was enough to give her cold feet.
He grinned, loving her response. “Come on, then,” he said and kissed her face. “Let’s do it.”
She allowed him to start kissing her and the sensations were nice, at first. Then she felt a wave of nausea and pressed her hand over her mouth. Within two seconds, she was up and running towards the bathroom where she promptly threw up.
Kael was sitting beside the commode when Nick staggered in and leaned against the door frame, staring at her.
“Don’t be disgusted, but I find you oddly sexy right now, Kael.”
“Strangely enough, I’m kind of horny, too,” she said and noticed several beer cans and plates of half-eaten food that were strewn all over the vanity. Who the hell brought food and drink into the bathroom with them? Kael thought about it, almost got irritated, then let it go. Then she focused back on Nick.
They stared at each other for a while, not moving, until she groaned and flushed the toilet, got up and went to the sink where she grabbed her toothbrush and began to brush her teeth. She glanced sideways at Nick who stood watching her, as if he were thinking he should make a move but just couldn’t find the motivation to do so. She shook her head at him and focused back on brushing her teeth. Once she was done, Nick made his move and turned her around and kissed her hard, pushing her against the sink vanity. She responded and they started making out hurriedly, and drunkenly. They went at it very clumsily as they could barely even stand up. Kael pulled back.
“Isn’t there a Dead Kennedy’s song about this?” she asked.
“Yes, there is, but we are never too drunk to get it on, girrlllll…”
“I think we might be,” she told him.
“Come on, baby,” he said and started kissing her again, this time with more passion. “Come on…”
She responded and allowed it and was really getting into it when he pulled back suddenly and shook his head. She stared at him, wondering what was going to happen next. Before she could
ask, Nick gave a loud retch and threw up all over her dress.
Kael winced in disgust and groaned, “We shouldn’t have done those shots.”
The Stick
Celeste had grown to hate the stick. It always gave her bad news. It always had a negative instead of a positive. Today, yet again, it was a negative. That meant no. That meant she was still not pregnant.
She put the stick back into the box and then threw the home pregnancy kit into the trashcan beside the bathroom vanity and turned to the mirror, staring at her reflection. She wanted to scream, she really, really did, but she didn’t want to wake her husband, Clifton, who was still asleep in the adjoining master bedroom of their Upper East Side apartment. She closed her eyes in an effort to distract herself from the pain of loss—but was it really a loss if she hadn’t actually gotten pregnant? What was that called? The pain of an unfulfilled ambition, a wish, a want, a need to get pregnant, to have a baby and fulfill her destiny? Was that it? What was that called, exactly? It was unrequited, like love. She shook her head and stared at herself in the mirror again. What the fuck was she going to do now?
She took a deep breath and grabbed her toothbrush and began to brush her teeth, looking around the vast, and almost obscenely lavish, bathroom, all done up with Carrara marble slabs and dark mahogany. The white Turkish towels hung neatly on a rack beside the claw-footed tub which was next to the wide, walk-in shower with double shower heads. The bathroom had been done only a few years ago and Celeste had made sure it had been done right. Only the best for her. The best, the best, the best.
After she finished brushing her teeth, she narrowed her eyes at all the beauty products on the vanity. There were lots of them, all sorts of eye creams, moisturizers, toners, you-name-it, she had it. There was so much stuff, it almost looked like a beauty supply store—some of it she’d personally purchased, some of it had been gifted, some of it came via the magazine, all for the purpose of keeping Celeste looking young.
She shook her head as if trying to contain the burgeoning emotions that were about to start rioting inside her head and turned on the water and began her beauty regimen. She did so with military precision. She leaned over and splashed her face several times with water, stood back up, grabbed a bottle of cleanser, cleansed her face, patted dry—no rubbing as that might make the skin sag. This was not a scientific fact but something her mother had instilled in her since she was a little girl. “Celeste,” she would say in her soft yet commanding tone. “Just pat dry. The way you got at it, you skin will fall off by the time you’re thirty. Gently, gently, gently.” It must have worked for her because her mother looked good for her seventy years. She looked at least twenty years younger than she was. Of course, she’d had the facelift a few years ago and there were always the injections.
Celeste thought about the Botox treatments she had received and she knew she would need more soon. Just a little, you never want to overdo it. You should leave a little room for expression. Her doctor was the best. He knew how to inject so that the wrinkles smoothed out but her face never looked frozen.
“Today,” she said and nodded at herself. “Today I will get a little injection.”
She had to have something to take her mind off the pain. Smooth, youthful looking skin would do the trick. Not that she even really needed injections. She had always been cautious of the sun and had stayed out of it as much as possible. Sure, she smoked a little in college but that was a long time ago and she would never allow a cigarette to touch her lips now. She ate mostly green, leafy vegetables with white fish or chicken, rarely beef and only occasionally did she indulge in seafood. Nothing fried—ever. Well, sometimes she did indulge in the odd hamburger and fries, but that was only when she was super-stressed or a tad depressed. And she always got her assistant to get her the food and bring it to her home when her husband was out. It was her dirty little secret. And if Amy ever told anyone she’d be as good as fired.
Celeste paused for a moment, thinking she’d forgotten something. Oh! Toner! She applied toner to her face with a cotton ball and then she moisturized with SPF. As soon as she was done, she leaned back and inspected her face. Still beautiful and still nearly wrinkle free, thanks to all her hard work and dedication. She could not, would not look old. Looking old was not an option. She was in the business of beauty and she had to show the world that not only was she quite capable of running one of the best fashion magazines around, she could also look good while doing it. And she did. Her shoulder length naturally blonde hair was colored each month by the same stylist she’d used for years. Her stylist was on a schedule to come over to Celeste’s apartment, color her hair, gave her a trim, clean up, and then leave. She didn’t even have to go to a salon. Not one gray hair had ever poked its way through her scalp before her stylist got to it. She made sure of that. Celeste wasn’t even sure if she’d ever seen a gray hair on her head.
She shuddered at the thought.
Celeste stared at her face in the mirror. She knew she was beautiful and successful but beauty and success came with a price. All this time spent watching her face, keeping it youthful looking and then attending to her job had caused her to overlook the one thing she thought she could always do and that was to have a baby. No matter how good she was at her job or how young she looked, she was still getting older and getting older meant she really couldn’t have it all. Yes, she could consider adoption or even surrogacy but she wanted to carry the baby herself. She wanted to be a woman and feel the life inside of her. If she couldn’t do that… Well, it just meant she was too old and that meant she had failed. And that’s how she looked at all this, as a failure, something she couldn’t do no matter how hard she tried.
No, she thought to herself. No. She stared at her refection in the mirror and got herself under control. Enough of that pity partying. Enough of thinking like a failure. Enough! She refused to look in the trash and be reminded of her failings. But then she leaned in to the mirror and noticed something. That couldn’t be right, she thought. She looked again and saw that she hadn’t been mistaken. She looked more closely and was astonished to see a few lines, though very faint, around her eyes. What the hell…? Soon enough her thoughts switched and it was now more important to take care of the problem she had right then and that was those damn little wrinkles around her eyes.
Celeste looked around at the various jars and grabbed an eye cream and applied it liberally. As she did so, she knew she looked almost crazed. She knew if her husband had entered the bathroom at that moment, he might have taken her to a psychiatrist. But she had to do it. She had to stop the clock on her face. It’s wasn’t that she was petrified of growing older; she was just scared of looking older, of having people judge her. The thought of being wrinkled and shriveled up plagued her. Age was just a number but looking your age, in her mind, was basically giving up on life. It went against every survival instinct she had. And Celeste had a lot of fight in her. If she was going down, she would go down swinging.
Nothing would keep her from trying, from looking as young as she feasibly could. Nothing would get in her way. Nothing would stop her. Nothing, nothing, nothing!
She felt the panic rise up in her and threaten to come out in a loud scream. She bit her fist just in time, then, all of a sudden, it was over. The panic subsided. Celeste gained control of herself and stared at her face. Yes, she looked fine. She was going to be just fine. Yes, she was still beautiful, even if she was aging. She took a breath, grabbed a hairbrush and began to brush her hair. As she did so, a big hunk of it came out. This had happened before. She’d been losing hair for a while. She’d asked her doctor about it, thinking it might have been all the fertility drugs she was on, but he said not to worry and that it was probably just stress. So, she didn’t worry. She just grabbed the hair and threw it in the trash, right on top of the home pregnancy kit.
Once she’d pulled her hair back into a sleek ponytail, which made her look even younger than she was, she applied her makeup with prec
ision and was done in less than five minutes. She never spent more than five minutes on her makeup unless an artist was doing it for her for an event or for the shows. From experience, she had learned the more time you spent on makeup, the less real you looked. She never wore heavy makeup and never would. She liked to look as natural as she could.
Then she turned and headed towards her closet, which was tucked behind two thick paneled doors. It was a closet that only she, her maid and her assistant were allowed into. When they’d had the bath redone, the contractor had told her they could take out part of the fourth bedroom and install an oversized walk-in “just for you.” This was the best idea she’d ever heard, as she was always being gifted loads of fabulous designer clothes, bags, accessories and the like. On top of that, she was an avid collector of vintage clothes and purses and the closet had a special built-in with glass doors just for those items, just so they would be preserved. She had planned on passing all of this down to her child, which she always felt would be a girl. A thought struck her, “What if I never have a daughter? What will I do with all this stuff?” A wave of panic swept through her so swiftly her head swam. She felt her breathing escalate and the room spun a little. “Get a grip,” she told herself quietly and straightened up.
The closet wasn’t so much a closet as it was a room—or a small, upscale boutique—and the room was any woman’s dream, wide and open with an entire wall dedicated to her favorite shoe—the stiletto—which were all lined neatly up and down and over and across the shelves. There were rows and rows of the shoe in various heights, colors and materials. Some were pointy, some were not. Some had a chunky heel, most did not. The very bottom shelf housed her less important shoes—the flats and the boots and just two pairs of sneakers, which she never wore and didn’t really even know why she had them. The other walls were dedicated to her clothes, the haute couture, the ready to wear, all with high-end designer tags. Only the best clothing was allowed into her closet and onto her body.