Best Enemies

by Jane Heller

  No, I was not okay. So Amy was throwing me a bone when she asked me to be her maid of honor, huh? Doing me a big fat favor by fulfilling her obligation to me?

  And how about that nostalgia part? What was I, some sort of relic from her kiddie past? I was Tara Messer, the most popular girl in school. I wasn’t anybody’s obligation. And I certainly didn’t need to walk down the aisle in that blue crepe fashion mistake she’d picked out for me to wear.

  What an idiot I was even to think she wanted me by her side on the most important day of her life. And what a hypocrite she was to pretend we were best friends when we were nothing to each other anymore. Nothing!

  I was so filled with anger and hurt, I wanted to smack somebody. But I wasn’t a violent person. I was, however, a person who didn’t sit there passively while others behaved badly toward me. Amy had made a fool of me, and I would pay her back.

  “Tara?” Stuart jiggled my arm. “If it makes you feel any better, I think you’re terrific and I’m glad you’ll be in the wedding, even if Amy has her misgivings.”

  Her misgivings. I’d show her misgivings.

  After another half hour or so of chitchat at the restaurant, I gave Stuart a rousing farewell to his bachelorhood. We staggered out of the Four Seasons, hopped in a cab, entered my apartment, and promptly had sex. Revenge sex. That’s what it was for me anyway. Not that I didn’t find Stuart attractive, as I’ve said, and he certainly seemed taken with me. My God, you should have heard him that night. “You’re so beautiful. You’re so passionate. You’re so adventurous.” (Amy did have a prudish streak.) “You’re the kind of woman I’ve always dreamed about.” When you’re feeling unappreciated, it never hurts to have a man overwhelm you with compliments.

  Look, I’m not proud of what I did, okay? I acted like a spoiled child, not to mention a slut, but I was wounded, and I struck back at the source of my wound. And I rationalized that what I did wouldn’t have consequences. I knew that Stuart would never tell Amy what happened, and God knows I would never tell Amy what happened, so there was no point in making myself sick with guilt over it.

  But then everything changed. The morning after our torrid fling, Stuart sent me a dozen white roses. And not the kind you pick up at the supermarket, wrapped in plastic. They were luscious roses that had already been clipped and arranged in a magnificent crystal vase (we’re talking Baccarat; the guy was a spender, I’m telling you) and hand-delivered by a florist on the Upper East Side. The card that accompanied the flowers read: “Dear Tara. I remembered that you think the red ones are a cliché. Thank you for a night I’ll never forget. I hope it was as special for you as it was for me.”

  At first, I didn’t know what to make of the roses or Stuart’s grandiose language. Special? Had our night together been special? To tell you the truth, the champagne had sort of clouded my memory of it.

  A few hours later came another delivery: a chocolate layer cake from the Four Seasons. No kidding. The card read: “Dear Tara. At the restaurant last night, you mentioned that this was your favorite dessert. You were going to order it, but then we left in such a hurry that you never got to. Enjoy.”

  Well, flowers were one thing. A whole cake was another. I couldn’t not call him to say thanks, could I?

  “I need to see you,” he said right after I told him I was appreciative of his gifts but that we had to cool it, given the fact that he was engaged.

  “What do you mean?” I said, knowing exactly what he meant. I could hear the desire in his voice.

  “Look, I know it’s crazy,” he said, “but I can’t stop thinking about you. You’re everything I’ve ever wanted in a woman.”

  “No, I’m not, Stuart. It just feels that way because I’m forbidden fruit.”

  “It feels that way because it’s true.”

  “Then why are you marrying Amy?”

  “I’m not so sure I can. Not anymore.”

  “Don’t say that. It’s not only inappropriate; it’s probably just because you—”

  “Please. I want to see you. Tonight. Let’s find out if there’s something between us before it’s too late. I’ll be there at six.”

  “I really don’t—”

  Click.

  There was no use protesting, I discovered. Stuart Lasher was on a mission, a crusade, a campaign to win me over, and I was too dazzled by all the flattery, never mind flummoxed by the peculiar set of circumstances, to resist.

  At six o’clock on the dot, he arrived at my apartment bearing another gift: a garnet choker.

  “I remembered that you said your birthday is in January,” he said as he draped it around my neck and fastened the clasp. “Garnet’s your birthstone.”

  He remembered when my birthday was. He remembered that I liked chocolate cake. He remembered that I thought red roses were a cliché. The guy was on a mission, as I said.

  We never left my apartment that night. We ordered up some dinner and talked. Well, Stuart did most of the talking. He said his relationship with Amy had deteriorated over the past several weeks and that they hadn’t been getting along at all. He said that he’d been having second thoughts about the wedding even before he and I had, well, become intimate. He said he thought he loved me.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “You can’t love someone after one night.”

  “Wanna bet?” he said, and kissed me before I could express myself further on the subject.

  Yes, I let him kiss me that night, but nothing more. I told him I wasn’t about to steal Amy’s fiancé, no matter how angry I was at her about the maid of honor thing.

  The next day, Stuart dropped by in the middle of the afternoon. He said he couldn’t concentrate on work. He said he could only fantasize about touching me. Oh, and he brought me another trinket: a cashmere shell and matching cardigan.

  “I guessed about the size,” he said.

  “You guessed correctly,” I told him, delighted with his purchase. I’d admired exactly the same sweater set at Saks the very week before.

  “I love you,” he said. “So you might as well get used to it. I’m going to keep buying you clothes and jewelry and whatever else your heart desires to prove to you that I’m real. That we’re real.”

  Clothes and jewelry and whatever else my heart desired. He drove a hard bargain, you know?

  From then on, our romance took on a life of its own, as romances—especially clandestine romances—often do. Stuart courted me in a way I’d never been courted, and I fell for him. If that rendered me selfish, shallow, or morally bankrupt, so be it, but I just couldn’t resist all the attention.

  Behind Amy’s back, he and I plunged into a full-fledged affair. We exchanged declarations of love, even as we asked ourselves if we had it in us to destroy Amy’s happiness in order to pursue our own. We weighed the pros and cons of it all. We went right down to the wire, ultimately deciding two weeks before the wedding that we belonged together, however randomly and dishonestly our union began. I felt horrible about the deceit—I really did. Amy may have treated me shabbily, but she didn’t deserve what Stuart and I were about to do to her. Nobody did.

  He had planned to sit her down and deliver the news properly. He was going to tell her about us, that we’d fallen in love in spite of how much we both cared about her and that he hoped, in time, she would forgive us.

  But then she walked in on us during that particularly spirited coupling—she was supposed to be at the dentist’s, remember?—and there was nothing to be done in the way of damage control except to say we were sorry.

  And I was sorry. So very sorry. I cried that day and I’ve cried since, and not just because I betrayed my best friend. As it turned out, I had a bigger problem—a problem I honestly didn’t see coming. What I’m saying is that Amy isn’t the only one who’s had heartache. I may be a prom queen, but bad things happen to good-looking people, too.

  21

  We felt it would be in poor taste to have an elaborate wedding, given that Stuart had just pulled out of one, so
we eloped. We flew to Hawaii, trotted over to the Health and Human Services Department in Honolulu, signed a form, swearing that we weren’t related to each other, and became husband and wife. A quickie wedding, that’s what we had. I felt a little cheated, after spending my entire girlhood picturing myself in some sensational gown with a full retinue of attendants, but Stuart had splurged on the premier suite at the palatial Royal Hawaiian Hotel on Waikiki Beach, so I snapped out of it.

  We honeymooned there for a week, and most of the trip was heaven. Stuart couldn’t do enough for me or to me (he was as randy as a frat boy). We ate. We screwed. We swam. We screwed. We snorkled. We screwed. You catch my drift.

  We talked, too, of course. I was eager to get to know my new spouse, who, when you came right down to it, was practically a stranger. We shared our hopes and dreams for the future, which included buying a home in the suburbs—something extremely grand, befitting the big shot Stuart expected to become once his father retired and handed over the chairmanship of the company, and something extremely roomy, befitting the doting mother I expected to become once I gave birth to many precious, well-mannered children. Yes, I loved the idea of moving out of his apartment and into larger quarters, and I intended to begin the house hunt as soon as we returned to New York. Aside from the ugly business with Amy, the future sounded fantastic to me—Stuart’s promotion at Lasher’s, the quality of life his important position would offer us, the numerous walk-in closets I would have, the whole enchilada.

  There was just one tiny blemish on our otherwise blissful trip.

  On our last night at the hotel, there was a luau on the beach, complete with Mai Tais and Hawaiian music, followed by an all-you-can-eat buffet consisting of mahi-mahi and other dishes with two names. (I had joked to Stuart that I just wanted a hamburger hamburger.) Anyhow, after a hotel employee greeted each of us with a lei, I discovered that my new husband was cruising for a lay of his own. While I was waiting in line at the buffet, having gone back for a second helping of something called lau lau, I glanced back at our table and noticed that he was sitting there hitting on our waitress. She was a pretty young woman dressed in traditional native garb, and his hand was planted smack on her traditional native butt.

  “What the hell were you doing?” I said when I returned to the table and the waitress had scurried away.

  “Nothing,” he said, taking another sip of his Mai Tai. He was sort of drunk, but then he’d been sort of drunk throughout the honeymoon. “She was a sweet kid, that’s all.”

  “You’re not supposed to fondle ‘sweet kids’ or any other female,” I said.

  “Oh, come on, hon. You’re making too much of this. I was just being friendly, honest. Sorry if I upset you.”

  After a few more back-and-forths, I calmed down. But my antenna was up from then on. Stuart was a toucher, a groper, a “friendly” guy, I had now discovered. I wasn’t crazy about this little quirk in his personality, but then, I should have anticipated it. He’d hit on me when he was supposed to be committed to Amy, hadn’t he?

  Back in New York, his parents threw a small reception for us at their house in Westchester. It afforded me yet another glimpse of the man I’d married.

  “Welcome to the family,” said Benjamin Lasher, Stuart’s sixty-five-year-old father, as he kissed me on the cheek. He wasn’t as tall as Stuart or as upright in terms of posture, but they had the same elegant features. I liked him immediately upon meeting him, because he was supportive of me, even though I’d been thrust upon his family in such an abrupt way. It was Stuart who would never win his support, I would come to learn. Every time he looked at his oldest son, his disdain and disappointment were apparent.

  “Yes, welcome, dear,” said Jean, Stuart’s mother, a painfully dull woman who did occasional charity work but mostly played canasta. “I hope you and Stuey will be very happy, in spite of the situation.”

  “The situation,” as she never let me forget, was that I had not only stolen Stuey away from Amy, with whom she had bonded, but had robbed her of watching her boy say “I do,” thanks to our elopement.

  And then there was Jimmy, Stuart’s brother, the one who was really in charge of Lasher’s, it turned out. He was a decent guy, very conservative and prudent, just as Stuart had first described him to me. He was married to Peg, an unadorned, harried woman whose life revolved around car-pooling her two kids in her SUV and organizing the household for Jimmy. It was clear after chatting with them that they both tolerated Stuart and his delusions of grandeur but regarded him as kind of a lovable jerk. They didn’t have to take him seriously. They were secure in the knowledge that Dad would do the right thing when he was ready to retire, designating Jimmy, not Stuart, as the official chief executive. You see, they all understood what I didn’t when I rushed off to marry my new husband—that he didn’t have the brains, the talent, or the judgment to run anything.

  After spending many Sundays looking at houses with Realtors, Stuart and I found one in Mamaroneck and moved in. (You’ve already heard about our “manse” from Amy, so I won’t bother describing it.) I threw myself into the decorating of it. That took a year and provided a welcome distraction from not being able to get pregnant and wondering why.

  Once the house was furnished and staffed and shown off at numerous parties, I re-channeled my energy into my search for a career. I’d worked briefly as a production assistant at WABC when I lived in Manhattan, so I decided to find a radio job in Westchester. I was hired by a small station that broadcast out of White Plains, and I worked again in production. My break came when the woman who hosted a half-hour show called “The Cosmetics Counter” became unhinged while going through an acrimonious divorce and had to quit. Knowing a thing or two about cosmetics myself, I asked if I could replace her, and the general manager said yes. I renamed the show “Simply Beautiful,” and instead of focusing strictly on products that made women look beautiful, I expanded the discussion to include products that made women feel beautiful. The show was a hit, albeit on a local level, and was far more fun for me than spending my time in the stirrups of fertility specialists. About a year after we went on the air, there was talk from one of our sponsors about putting “Simply Beautiful” into syndication. A few months after that, I got the idea to spin the show off into a book.

  I labored over Simply Beautiful as if it were the child I couldn’t manage to coax into existence. Yes, it was about “fluffy” stuff like bubble baths and scented candles and foot massages, but I never claimed to have the intellectual gifts of, say, Amy. When we were teenagers, she was always the one with her nose in a novel, while I was more interested in Cosmo. Still, I knew what I knew, and I was sure there was a market for the kind of book I was writing.

  Unfortunately, the threat of my becoming a success in both the radio world and the literary world sent Stuart into a funk. Like Amy, he fed off my popularity but also resented it. I had a knack, it seemed, for bringing out the worst in both of them.

  His ambivalence toward me was exacerbated by his own professional failure. His father was constantly putting him down, and he was gradually and bitterly coming to the conclusion that Ben was going to turn over the reins of Lasher’s to Jimmy, not him. He compensated for his shattered expectations by availing himself of the company’s profits, ensuring the two of us a lavish lifestyle, no matter what his family thought of him. We traveled. We ate well. We treated ourselves to only the best. We were, from every vantage point except our own, a deliriously happy couple.

  Oh, and then there was that one other hitch: the fact that the groping of the waitress in Hawaii wasn’t an isolated incident, nor was it the extent of my husband’s bad behavior. Stuart, I learned, wasn’t merely a groper; he had a roving dick.

  I don’t know why I was so surprised. Weak men like him, men with a whiff of desperation coming off them, often get their jollies by fooling around. I guess I’d just hoped that grabbing a woman’s ass wouldn’t automatically lead to having actual sex with her, and I felt as if I’d been slapped
when I found out I was wrong. It took a while for me to realize that it was mostly my vanity—my image of myself as someone more accustomed to being worshiped than cheated on—that had taken the hit.

  Stuart’s infidelity came to light as I was fishing around in his dresser drawer for his cummerbund—we were throwing a black-tie bash for his thirty-fifth birthday—and unearthed a breathless love note from his secretary.

  “You’ve been sleeping with Cheryl?” I said, throwing the balled-up note in his face when he returned home that night. I was shaking with fury, even as I was aware that I’d rather he sleep with her than with me. I was no longer attracted to him physically and hadn’t been for some time. You lose your respect for a guy, you lose your libido for him, too.

  He went pale but denied the affair. “I haven’t been sleeping with her. I’ve had a drink with her now and then, that’s all.”

  “Oh, really? She seems to think you two are sleeping together. Let’s see. How did she put it in her pathetic little letter? ‘Stuart, darling. That last afternoon at the hotel when you stroked my—’”

  “I don’t have to listen to you mimic her. She’s a nice girl. She doesn’t act like I’m a loser, unlike certain people around here.”

  “I’m glad she’s a nice girl, because she’s going to need a new job starting tomorrow, and being ‘nice’ should help her find one.”

  “You expect me to fire her?”

  “Yes. Do you think you’re up to making that kind of executive move, or do we have to depend on Jimmy to take care of it for you?”

  It was a low blow, I admit, but he deserved it.

  From then on, we carried on in public as if we were madly in love, while in private we stayed out of each other’s way. Why didn’t I leave him the minute I knew the marriage was a dud? For one thing, I was the Golden Girl and had my reputation to maintain. People looked up to me, or they looked enviously at me, or they simply looked at me as someone who never failed, never had a problem, never had a pimple. I couldn’t bear the thought of them thinking, Tara Messer must have lost her magic. For another thing, I couldn’t bear the thought of Amy finding out that the man I’d stolen from her wasn’t worth stealing. For a third thing, a publisher had bought my book, and Stuart figured prominently in it. I could forget about making the best-seller list if I admitted that its entire premise was based on a lie. (Look, my priorities weren’t the greatest. If I had it all to do over again, of course I would dump him. But we all do what feels right at the time, and living a lie seemed like the best course of action then.)