Rich and Pretty

by Rumaan Alam

  Dedication

  for David, for Simon, for Xavier

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  Sarah talks too loud. It’s a problem.

  Usually, Lauren tries to correct for the pitch of Sarah’s voice by whispering. It never works. This has been going on for years.

  “I mean, when is the last time I even saw you?” Sarah gestures around the restaurant, wineglass in hand like a scepter in a queen’s. The Gewürztraminer sloshes close to the rim of the paper-thin glass but doesn’t spill.

  “I saw you . . .” Lauren can’t remember. Two weeks, maybe three? Maybe twenty days. Possibly a month. A month doesn’t seem so long. A lot happens in a month. They’re busy, they’re adults, it is what it is. She shrugs.

  “Anyway.” Sarah puts the glass down. She leans forward across the table, like they’re about to start conspiring. “How are you?” She reaches a hand out, as though to take Lauren’s.

  Lauren pulls her hand back, a reflex. She sips her own drink, vodka, soda. The ice tinkles prettily: There’s no more inviting sound to her, it’s sophistication, like a British accent or that call-and-response of high-heeled shoes on tile. “I’m fine.”

  What sort of question is this, and is it even truly a question? She’s the same. They’re both the same.

  “How are you?” There’s no other way to answer the question than by asking it back. This is the point. It’s catechism, not conversation.

  Sarah clears her throat. There’s a smile at the corner of her mouth, but there almost always is; she’s almost always happy, she has very little reason not to be. She’s charmed, her life is charmed. “Well,” she says.

  Of course, there’s a reason they’re here, this unremarkable bistro, poor lighting, potted plants, chalkboard menus. Sarah has news, and news is something she believes should be delivered in person. She should have gone into a field where you’re often charged with having life-altering conversations: oncology, the Nobel Prize committee. As it is, she has no field in particular, and her news is rarely life altering, to anyone but herself. They are best friends.

  The thing that’s galling, or irritating, or whatever the word is, is that though it’s Sarah who always wants to make plans, Sarah is always so, so busy. She’s at the store twice a week, sometimes more often, it’s a shifting schedule. She has a standing dinner engagement with her parents, Sunday nights: the three of them, cozy in their big house, roast chicken off those handmade ceramic plates her mom bought in Sausalito forty years ago. Always a roast chicken; potatoes, soaked for hours so they bake up crispy, with rosemary; chardonnay from old jam jars. Sometimes a fourth guest, one of her dad’s acolytes, or one of Sarah’s friends. Lauren has been that fourth, many times, and now, presumably, there’s Dan, too, placid, efficient Dan. She can picture the orange and yellow plates perfectly. Other nights, it’s a movie with this friend, the theater with that friend, this person is reading at that bookstore downtown, this person is giving a lecture, there’s that dance performance at the theater space on whose board Sarah’s mother has sat for decades, or she’s with Dan, reliable Dan whose face Lauren can barely stand, but whatever, they’re in love. Yet it’s Sarah who calls, Sarah who sends text messages and e-mails, Hey, I never see you, where are you, why can’t I see you, how about a week from next Wednesday? Lauren puts it off, and puts it off. She likes the frisson of improvisation. Fun cannot be scheduled. Fun simply occurs.

  “This is fun,” Lauren says, for no reason.

  “I’m getting married,” Sarah says.

  She holds up her hand, but there’s no ring on it. Lauren would have noticed. She’s a thirty-two-year-old woman. She sees every ring, whether she wants to or not.

  Sarah waves her hand about again. “The ring is being sized. It was his grandmother’s. I don’t know why I’m holding my hand up like this.”

  “You’re getting married!” Lauren lifts her glass in salute. She’s probably supposed to scream. To feel tears stinging the corners of her eyes. Unsure what to do next, she grins like a maniac.

  “I’m getting married!” Sarah, louder even than before, but no one cares; even bystanders are excited about marriage.

  “To Dan?”

  Sarah looks at her. Her smile doesn’t fade, exactly. It doesn’t diminish, not really. But something else slips into it, or over it. It changes somehow. “Yes,” she says. “Of course.”

  “Of course!” Lauren yells.

  Chapter 2

  Huck and Lulu throw parties. It’s their thing. The second act of their American lives. Huck does other things, too: teaches those sought-after seminars colleges trumpet in their promotional materials, gives talks at the Council on Foreign Relations, takes the shuttle to D.C. to meet think-tank people to do think-tank things, writes querulous letters to the editors of policy journals, shuffles to his office on the fourth floor of the house to produce op-eds or the introductions to books his friends and students have written. Henry “Huck” Thomas (CNN’s chyron usually includes the quotation marks; the nickname’s origins are forgotten): not a maker of history, but present at its conception. Confidant to presidents (some of them, anyway), an ambassador to the world on behalf of what he’s always believed to be its greatest nation. Huck is hardworking, sure, but it’s possible to view his rise as evidence of something else—luck; right time, right place; the indomitable spirit of a certain kind of white man. Arriving at the State Department just as one presidency was collapsing, then proving himself invaluable as the subsequent officeholder tried to find his feet. That brief American presidency had birthed Huck’s long and successful career. He knew enough about the game to get his wife’s assets out of Venezuela by 1979, and, from there, into all the right places. They’ve been millionaires for at least that long. That is his specialty: being a step ahead of things.

  Huck’s office has dormer windows from which you can see the backs of all the houses on the next block over. Lauren and Sarah used to smoke cigarettes in there, fanning the smoke out of the open window, even though no one would have smelled it because at the time Huck himself went through half a pack a day, the Kents burning away to nothing in the ashtray as he typed furiously about what Johnson got wrong in Vietnam or the welfare state’s inherent evils. They were idiots as teenagers.

  Lulu is retired. Her one album—a couple of traditional corridos, a Chilean tune closely associated with Joan Baez, a few folky pop songs—remains a cult favorite, had a bit of a renaissance when one of her originals was used over the opening titles of what turned out to be a blockbuster holiday film. Royalties: one way the rich get richer. The voice is not entirely gone, though it’s changed, deepened, grown slack, as female voices do with age. She’d never seriously made a go of it, had ended up married while only twenty-four, which was how it was done at the time. She’d followed the rest of the script: decamping to New Haven and making lunches and dinners for Huck, as though he were her child, tagging along to Washington and dressing to impress for various, boring parties, giving birth, going out to dinner, decorating the Connecticut house, hosting fund-raisers for this and that. It’s time-consuming, being a part of thi
s family. Lauren never knew three busier people. It’s remarkable that none of them actually have jobs.

  They’re throwing a party tonight. Something to do with a book, maybe, she can’t remember, but Sarah has insisted that she come, has reminded her about it with weekly e-mails for two months now, as well as helpful voice-mail messages:

  Hey Lolo, it’s me, don’t forget, Thursday night, my parents’ place, you promised promised promised, wear something amazing, be your usual beautiful self, but don’t be late, I’m going to have no one to talk to because Dan can’t make it because who cares OK, I’ll see you the day after tomorrow.

  Lauren’s office is freezing. You could keep butter on the desk. You could perform surgery. Every woman in the office—they’re all women—keeps a cashmere sweater on the back of her chair. They sit, hands outstretched over computer keyboards like a bum’s over a flaming garbage can. The usual office noises: typing, telephones, people using indoor voices, the double ding of an elevator going down. For some reason, the double ding of the elevator going down is louder than the single ding of the elevator going up. There’s a metaphor in there, waiting to be untangled. They make cookbooks, these women. There’s no food, just stacks of paper and editorial assistants in glasses. She’s worked here for four years. It’s fine.

  Today is different because today there’s a guy, an actual dude, in the office with them, not a photographer or stylist popping by for a meeting, as does happen: He’s a temp, because Kristen is having a baby and her doctor put her on bed rest. Lauren isn’t totally clear on what Kristen does, but now there’s a dude doing it. He’s wearing a button-down shirt and jeans, and loafers, not sneakers, which implies a certain maturity. Lauren’s been trying to get him to notice her all day. She’s the second-prettiest woman in the office, so it isn’t hard. Hannah, the prettiest, has a vacant quality about her. She’s not stupid, exactly—in fact, she’s very competent—but she doesn’t have spark. She’s not interesting, just thin and blond, with heavy eyeglasses and a photograph of her French bulldog on her computer screen.

  Lauren has it all planned out. She’ll walk past his desk a couple of times, which isn’t suspicious because his desk isn’t far from the kitchen, and the kitchen is where the coffee is, and by the third time, he’ll follow her in there, and she’ll make a wisecrack about the coffee, and he’ll say it’s not so bad, and they’ll talk, and exchange phone numbers, e-mail addresses, whatever, and then later they’ll leave the office at the same time, ride down together in the elevator and not talk because they both understand that the social contract dictates that sane people do not talk in elevators, and then he’ll let her go through the revolving door first, even though she’s pretty sure that etiquette has it that men precede women through revolving doors, and then they’ll both be standing on Broadway, and there will be traffic and that vague smell of charred, ethnic meat from the guy with the lunch cart on the corner, and he’ll suggest they get a drink, and she’ll say sure, and they’ll go to the Irish pub on Fifty-Fifth Street, because there’s nowhere else to go, and after two drinks they’ll be starving, and he’ll suggest they get dinner, but there’s nowhere to eat in this part of town, so they’ll take the train to Union Square and realize there’s nowhere to eat there either, and they’ll walk down into the East Village and find something, maybe ramen, or that Moroccan-y place that she always forgets she likes, and they’ll eat, and they’ll start touching each other, casually but deliberately, carefully, and the check will come and she’ll say let’s split it, and he’ll say no let me, even though he’s a temp and can’t make that much money, right? Then they’ll be drunk, so taking a cab seems wise and they’ll make out in the backseat, but just a little bit, and kind of laugh about it, too: stop to check their phones, or admire the view, or so he can explain that he lives with a roommate or a dog, or so she can tell him some stupid story about work that won’t mean anything to him anyway because it’s only his first day and he doesn’t know anyone’s name, let alone their personality quirks and the complexities of the office’s political and social ecosystem.

  Then he’ll pay the driver, because they’ll go to his place—she doesn’t want to bring the temp back to her place—and it’ll be nice, or fine, or ugly, and he’ll open beers because all he has are beers, and she’ll pretend to drink hers even though she’s had enough, and he’ll excuse himself for a minute to go to the bathroom, but really it’s to brush his teeth, piss, maybe rub some wet toilet paper around his ass and under his balls. This is something Gabe had told her, years ago, that men do this, or at least, that he did. Unerotic, but somehow touching. Then the temp will come sit next to her on the couch, please let it be a couch and not a futon, and he’ll play with her hair a little before he kisses her, his mouth minty, hers beery. He’ll be out of his shirt, then, and he’s hard and hairy, but also a little soft at the belly, which she likes. She once slept with this guy Sean, whose torso, hairless and lean, freaked her out. It was like having sex with a female mannequin. The temp will push or pull her into his bedroom, just the right balance of aggression and respect, and the room will be fine, or ugly, and the bedsheets will be navy, as men’s bedsheets always are, and there will be venetian blinds, and lots of books on the nightstand because he’s temping at a publishing company so he must love to read. She’ll tug her shirt over her head, and he’ll pull at her bra, and they’ll be naked, and he’ll fumble around for a condom, and his dick will be long but not, crucially, thick, and it will be good, and then it will be over. They’ll laugh about how this whole thing is against the company’s sexual harassment policy. She’ll try to cover herself with the sheet, and he’ll do the same, suddenly embarrassed by his smaller, slightly sticky dick. When he’s out of the room, to get a beer, to piss, whatever, she’ll get dressed. He’ll call her a car service, because there are no yellow cabs wherever he lives. They’ll both spend the part of the night right before they fall asleep trying to figure out how to act around each other in the office tomorrow.

  Or maybe not that. Maybe she’ll find a way to go up to him and say, what, exactly, Hey, do you like parties? Do you want to go to a party . . . tonight? No, the jeans and tie are fine. It’s not fancy. A party. A good party. Good open bar, for sure. Probably canapés, what are canapés exactly, whatever they are, there will probably be some. Last party, there were these balls of cornbread and shrimp, like deep fried, holy shit they were great. That was last year, I think. Anyway, there might be celebrities there. There will definitely be celebrities there. I once saw Bill Clinton at one of these parties. He’s skinnier than you’d think. Anyway, think about it, it’ll be a time, and by the way, I’m Lauren, I’m an associate editor here and you are? She can picture this conversation, the words coming to her so easily, as they do in fantasy but never in reality. They call it meeting cute, in movies, but it only happens in movies.

  People start leaving the office around five thirty. It’s summer, still light and lovely outside. Some of her coworkers say good-bye and good night to everyone, stop to check in about one another’s plans for the evening. She prefers to bolt. Sunglasses on, checks her bag four times for phone, phone charger, keys—she once forgot her keys, had to come all the way back, it was fucking horrible. She does this now, throws everything into the bag, checks for the keys, opens her wallet and frowns into it—thirty-seven dollars, enough for a cab home, but not enough for a cab to. She’ll walk. Abrupt wave to Dallie (Dallie, yes, that’s her name), a nod to Hannah, a “Good-bye!” from Antonia across the office, and she’s out into the lobby, then scanning her ID card on the little white pad to get in the door on the other side, which opens to the offices of the imprint they share the floor with (serious nonfiction about wars and maritime disasters) and the ladies’ room. Ladies’ room, what an idiotic phrase. When she and Sarah lived together, that first terrible apartment in the East Village, the summer after graduation, she tried for a time referring to the bathroom as the Shit House, which Sarah did not care for.

  The lighting is not g
ood. There are no windows. Lauren washes her face, but maddeningly the faucet is the kind that you press and water comes out for about twelve seconds then shuts off so you have to keep pressing it again and again. She brushes her teeth, checks her armpits, which are fine; she hasn’t sweat since her walk from the subway to the office. She pulls her hair away from her face; it still gets a little wet but it doesn’t matter. Her hair looks great, it always does: It’s thick, falls in this subtle wave that’s natural and not studied, and that some girl in college once told her she was lucky to have and ever since then she’s been proud of it. She doesn’t wear jewelry, not even a watch. She’s got on a sort of hippie dress that she found somewhere, vaguely Mexican. It’s prettier than she normally wears to the office, and under the belted sweater she keeps stashed on the back of her chair, and with the heels she’s just slipped on, it looks like a real I’m-going-to-a-party outfit. A bit of color on the lips, something on the lashes. She hurries, she doesn’t want anyone to see her in the bathroom and think she’s primping for a date like some kind of loser.

  She takes the bus east on Fifty-Seventh Street and waits eight minutes for another going down Second Avenue, but grows impatient and decides to just walk. Even when she sweats she’s not very smelly. It should be fine. She takes her place among confused tourists, the occasional jogger, dog walker, little old lady, coworkers and friends drinking cold wine at sidewalk cafés; al fresco dining in Manhattan, she’s never understood that, the whole thing smells like exhaust and urine.

  Huck and Lulu’s house is covered in ivy. The window boxes—Lulu’s handiwork—look bountiful. The parlor windows are open, and Lauren can hear those party sounds drifting out: polite chatter, the occasional decorous laugh, ahems and footfalls on parquet, the cell phones of rude guests. Though it’s still light out, in her mind she sees the house theatrically illuminated, light spilling onto the stoop, onto the sidewalk, the windows offering a glimpse of something, another way of life, like the dioramas at a museum, the vignettes in a department store. The house was always lit up as though for a party, life with Huck and Lulu and Sarah is always a party.