Rich and Pretty

by Rumaan Alam

  “Does your fiancé know?”

  “He knows. Just me, him, Lauren, and you. Top secret, swear to me.”

  “Sworn,” Danielle says, in a tone that makes clear that she’s to be trusted.

  That’s not quite true, though: The doctor knows, the seamstress from Bergdorf Goodman knows, and she knows that Lauren must have told Rob. It’s clear they’ve reached the secret-sharing stage in the relationship. She doesn’t mind.

  She’d finally laid eyes on Rob a few weeks before. “You should meet Rob,” Lauren had said, calling from the office one afternoon, using that hushed and inexpressive tone she used when she telephoned from the office. “He’s coming to your wedding, after all.”

  This was something Sarah had been waiting for, had asked for, but something she’d not wanted to insist upon. She was thrilled. The four of them met for a drink on a Thursday evening after work, a restaurant in the West Village, equally inconvenient for all of them, but a place that Dan’s fond of. She wasn’t sure what she expected from Rob—had to see him to realize that she’d suspected there’d be something distasteful about him, some reason Lauren had kept him hidden away. But there was nothing.

  He’s handsome, Rob, tall, with tousled hair and those smart eyeglasses that everyone wears nowadays. His eyes crinkle shut when he laughs, his voice has a bit of a creak, an almost adolescent squeak, and he makes no attempt to disguise the extent to which he’s smitten with Lauren, always touching her, casually stroking her thigh, resting an arm on the back of the banquette and with his right hand teasing a bit of her hair. His manners are old-fashioned, the work of a vigilant mother: He’d stood to greet Sarah, stood again when Dan, late at work, finally arrived, a firm handshake and lots of eye contact. He’d kept signaling the waitress whenever their glasses were near empty, insisted on ordering appetizers even though they’d all said more than once that they were just going for drinks. Sarah, unable to drink, of course, had happily eaten everything that came to the table, and Rob had ordered more. When it was over, he paid the check, flatly refusing to discuss the matter. He didn’t have a tattoo on his neck, wasn’t dressed like a hobo, wasn’t preoccupied with some delusion like being in a band.

  Nor was he just normal; he was interesting. Their conversation was about books, about the media, about his job, about baseball, but he’d had several questions for Dan about medical ethics, and his inquiries were informed, his interest genuine. Rob might be better than Gabe, and she loved Gabe, remembers fondly what Lauren was like when Gabe was in her life. Sarah saw a suggestion of that, with Rob, noted the way Lauren leaned into him, their bodies occupied with each other even as their minds were not. Lauren speaks more loudly with Rob around, or did that night, anyway, and a smile seemed to play across her lips when her face was at rest, when the rest of them were talking and she was silent. Rob is good, Rob is great, and more important than that, the Lauren that is beside Rob is good, is great, is happy. That’s the Lauren she loves the best.

  Lauren’s read somewhere that the proper way to boil an egg is to put it in the cold water, bring the pot to boil, then cover it, removing it from the heat and letting it sit for ten minutes. So this is the method she follows. She must have dropped one of the eggs in too forcefully, though; a small fissure opens in the shell, and the albumen ribbons out, swirls and bobs on the surface of the agitated water. When she lifts it out of the pot after the allotted ten minutes, she runs it under cold water until she can bear handling it. The white has cooked into a little mass of lumps, like a flower, or a tumor.

  She’s not hungry herself, and in fact, dealing with the egg makes her less hungry. It’s sort of disgusting. She tosses the brown shell into the garbage disposal, even though Lulu composts. There are bananas in an enamel bowl on the windowsill, and she takes two of those. She makes toast, too, because it seems like the thing to do, moving slowly, because she is tired.

  She slept heavily, drunkenly, but also with satisfaction: The party was perfect. The private room was comfortable, the staff attentive. There were big stone bowls of guacamole and mountains of chips, warm from having just been fried. There were juices in glass pitchers you could have taken for alcoholic, though they weren’t; she had insisted on those at the last minute, remembering that Sarah wouldn’t be able to drink the special wine Huck was having sent over. There was corn slathered in mayonnaise and cheese and there were tacos, four kinds—fish, pork crispy and not, and chicken, all in floppy little tortillas stuffed with cilantro and radishes. The platters just kept emerging, take as many as you like, then there were toasts with both champagne and tequila, then churros, sugary and thick. Dan’s dad spoke, Huck spoke, Meredith’s brother Ben spoke, and it had occurred to Lauren, and then panicked her—as Sarah’s oldest friend, as her maid of honor, was she supposed to give a speech? She’d asked Sarah this, the night they were out, the night Sarah discovered she was pregnant.

  “God no,” Sarah had said. “God no.”

  So, no speech. She thought maybe Meredith would be unable to resist clanking fork against flute (Meredith was the kind of girl who always had to drink champagne; it’s curious how we consider it so ladylike to drink something that makes you burp) and tell some long-winded, discomfiting tale about how she and Dan were the ones meant to end up together. But no: She seemed occupied. Her date that night, and for the wedding, too, Jamie, a coworker of Dan’s, arranged by Sarah out of some sense of obligation that only Sarah seemed to live with, held her attention nicely. Lauren got a good look at Jamie. He had a very young face, was clearly younger than they were, but a bald spot he had tried to atone for by wearing the rest of his hair longish. The desired effect had not been achieved, but Meredith seemed happy.

  It had been fun. Lauren had suspected it might not be, and she had been wrong. Leaving, she’d taken Sarah by both hands, hugged her, told her just that.

  “I was wrong,” she’d said. “It was fun.”

  And Sarah had understood. Rob had fun, too, much more fun than Lauren, mostly because he’d spent much of the night getting hammered with Dan’s lesbian sister. Lauren has no idea what they might have talked about—Rob was barely coherent on the cab ride back to her place, and this morning, when she left, garment bag slung over a shoulder, tote bag with (she hopes) everything she’ll need, Rob was still asleep, snoring loudly, which didn’t bother her, because she was awake. Nor was she bothered by the proprietary way he commanded the bed, the long, white bulk of him at an angle, taking up as much space as one person possibly could, the rise of his ass, whiter still than the rest of him, the sight of her pillow, the one she slept on, tucked between his hairy legs, his clothes abandoned on the floor the moment they stepped into the apartment, his funny blue-and-red underwear atop the pile. If he’s awake now, he’s probably thrown up. She’s glad she missed that. She puts the eggs and toast onto a plate, one of the lime-green ceramic plates, from the shelf by the door. She’ll take the food upstairs, maybe duck out for a coffee run. There’s still plenty of time.

  Lauren climbs the steps, balancing the plate carefully. There’s a general air of hubbub in the house. On the stairs, she passes the cleaning lady and her minions—giving the powder room the once-over, aligning picture frames, straightening the rugs, which were beaten and then vacuumed only hours before. On the landing, where the staircase makes its turn, a place that’s no particular place, Lulu has set a rattan plant stand, topped with two battered coffee-table volumes (Berthe Morisot, Kenneth Noland), on top of those, a clay bowl, bought in India, within that, a beaded necklace, from Haiti, the beads made of old paper, wound around itself in a complicated process by the women at a crafts cooperative supported by a nonprofit she and Huck have long given money to. In this tiny space, so much life, and that doesn’t include the pictures on the wall, of Sarah, mostly, though you’ll spot Huck arm in arm with Reagan, and a picture of Lulu with Mimi Fariña and Bob Dylan. The disordered detritus of their very well ordered lives. As a girl, Lauren found all this stuff enchanting; part of her still does.
Her parents had stuff, but not nearly so much, not nearly so interesting: a couple of brass elephants you might be able to persuade someone were souvenirs from India but which were almost certainly found at T.J. Maxx, stacks of thick military thrillers, piled here and there throughout the house, family photographs, those awkward tableaux—fresh haircuts and best sweaters, the photo studio’s logo embossed tastefully in one corner.

  She wonders if it were her wedding, at her mother’s house, would her mother have paid for a cleaning lady—visions of sensible Bella Brooks, running the rented shampooer over the mauve nap of the living room, warning them all to stay out of there until it dried. It feels cruel to think of this now. Were Bella a different sort of person, she might have forged a friendship with Lulu (as Amina’s mother had, years ago, an early playdate). She might have been invited herself, today, though who knows what she would have worn, who knows what she would have made of the wedding registry.

  Lauren suddenly feels ill. She’s noticed this more lately: the delayed onset hangover. Her stomach tightens, churns: Why Mexican? What had she been thinking? She nudges the door all the way open with her shoulder, goes back into the room, sets the plate on the desk, which had been meant as a place where Sarah could do her homework, though it was almost never used as such.

  “Who’s hungry?”

  “Ugh,” Sarah says.

  “You’re welcome,” she says.

  “Trust me, eat,” Danielle says. “You will be glad you did.”

  Sarah picks up the egg and takes a tentative bite. Lauren sits back down on the bed. Still not hungry, she does, though, have a very specific craving and is glad she’s come prepared. She picks her tote bag up from its slump on the floor. “I bought these. Don’t shame me.” She reaches in the bag, produces a pack of cigarettes.

  “Camels,” Sarah says.

  “Ultra Lights,” Lauren says. “They’re practically healthy. A drag won’t kill you.”

  Danielle laughs. “I’m looking the other way, okay?”

  “Finish your breakfast,” Lauren says. “We’ll sneak away for ten minutes and then you can brush your teeth and Danielle can work her magic.”

  At some point when they were in the tenth grade, Lulu had become concerned with property values. Huck was on the short list to lead the minority party’s government in exile, a foundation situated in a handsome Washington, D.C., town house. Lulu made lists: National Cathedral School versus Madeira, where she discovered Brooke Astor herself had been a student, Bethesda versus Georgetown, selling the house versus renting the house. The agent had been dismayed to see that the occupants hadn’t fully taken advantage of one of the house’s frontiers: the roof. Lulu was sensible about these things, and the roof deck was built, completed not long after Huck had withdrawn his name from contention for the directorship of the foundation. Anyway, President Gore never came to pass, so it would have been an unexciting time to be at that foundation. In politics, in Huck’s politics, it’s better to be an enemy than a friend. They forgot all about the roof deck.

  At least, Huck and Lulu did. By tenth grade, new privileges had accrued: Huck and Lulu decamping to Connecticut Friday morning, allowing Sarah to join them by train, Saturday morning, or skip the thing altogether. Lauren remembers Lulu, looking askance even behind her dark glasses, once, poolside at the Connecticut house, where the distinguished guest couldn’t take his eyes off the dollops of Lauren’s breasts, new enough then that she marveled at it; her nipples grew firmer just from the good professor’s gaze landing on them. The country was for relaxation, and it had to have been more relaxing without Sarah and Lauren in tow.

  Lauren hasn’t been up to the roof deck in years. The last time: another party, a celebration of their graduation from college, or Sarah’s graduation, anyway. Lauren had come by, a formality. At that point, their relationship had entered some never discussed cooling-off period. Anyway, they were going to be roommates in the city; they were going to live together, which changed altogether Lauren’s relationship to the house on East Thirty-Sixth Street. Beautiful as it was, much as she loved it, that house was about Sunday dinners and little kid sleepovers and that first time sucking Ryan Harmon’s dick in the upstairs bathroom while Sarah and Amy and Tyler and Jake and Sasha and Rachel sat one floor above, under the Manhattan sky, smoking Camels and dropping the butts into empty Rolling Rock bottles where they died with a quick little hiss. That was childhood, and it was over.

  “I haven’t been up here in ages.” Lauren surveys the view, the only thing you can do from that vantage. In the context of the city, of course, the house does not seem that high, but there, on the roof, you feel like a giant, a minor god. “It’s so nice today.”

  Sarah sighs, relieved. “Cross your fingers. I should have waited until May.”

  Lauren nods at Sarah’s midriff. “You dodged a bullet there,” she says.

  There are four wooden chairs gathered around a round table, and they sit.

  “I feel like we’re at a spa or something.” Lauren digs into her bag, removes the package of cigarettes and a small blue plastic lighter. “You know? All this primping, us in our gym clothes or something.”

  “I thought you quit,” Sarah says.

  Lauren lights a cigarette, exhales. “I’m not really smoking,” she says.

  “Optical illusion.”

  “I just thought, you know, for old time’s sake.” Lauren shrugs.

  “We got our emphysema started right here on this rooftop,” Sarah says.

  “Shit beer, cigarettes, Friday nights,” Lauren says.

  “Ryan,” says Sarah. “Ryan something.”

  “Tim Alhadef,” says Lauren. A beautiful half-Arab, half-Swedish guy on the soccer team with whom Sarah had been obsessed for a full year. He had curly hair and thick eyebrows and wore shorts even when it was cold outside.

  “Tim Alhadef,” says Sarah, wistful. “God, he was fucking gorgeous.”

  “Those legs,” Lauren says.

  “Give me some of that,” says Sarah.

  Lauren hands her the lit cigarette. “Whatever happened between the two of you anyway?” She knows there was something—a kiss, more than, a makeout in a corner while the rest of them were drinking and talking, but she can’t recall the specifics, and anyway, Sarah was always coy about that kind of thing. She could talk about sex in the theoretical, but not as it related back to her.

  “Fuck,” Sarah says, exhaling the smoke. “That is good. Take this away. I’m going to kill the baby.”

  “Our grandmothers smoked during pregnancy,” Lauren says.

  “We kissed, once, Tim and me,” she says. “It was friendly, then more, and then nothing. A slip of the tongue. That’s it.”

  “He was gorgeous, wasn’t he? Whatever happened to him?”

  Sarah shrugs. “No idea.”

  Lauren looks past Sarah, over her shoulder, over the backyard, at the roofs of the houses on the block behind theirs, at the skyline beyond that, at the pale blue gray of the sky. She’d hooked up with Tim Alhadef, once, a party at his parents’ place, in what was then, to her, the wilds of Brooklyn but was probably, she realizes now, somewhere near where she lives. She can’t remember where Sarah was that night, but knows she wasn’t there as she took the subway alone, spent the night at her friend Michelle’s apartment, though she told her parents she was at Sarah’s. Tim stripped out of his sweatshirt, which was heavy with the smell of him, armpits and cologne, pulling her nearer and nearer. He was strong, he was hairy, and he was persistent, working a hand down the front of her jeans, working a finger up and inside of her, the first time a finger not her own had been there. She kissed him for a while, felt guilty, pushed him away, made some excuses.

  Lauren stubs the cigarette out, shreds of tobacco, a black streak on the table. Sarah fiddles. “Shit, is my hair going to smell like smoke?”

  “Let’s sit out here for a minute in the fresh air,” Lauren says. “No one will ever know.”

  The makeup artist, Ines, makes less of
an impression than Danielle. She’s quiet, has a vaguely Eastern European quality, reminds Sarah of a spy, or a flight attendant. Her hands are soft, her touch tentative, and her work requires her to be so close, so intimately involved with Sarah’s face. Sarah’s just giving into it, though. She feels like a piece of poultry, being trussed, dressed, prepared. Ines’s breath smells of spearmint gum and, beneath that, but discernible given the four inches that separate their heads, coffee.

  “Look up, now,” Ines says, almost whispers.

  She means for Sarah to aim her eyes to the ceiling without moving her head or neck, which will have some kind of effect on the skin under her eyes, something Ines needs to mask, or perhaps capitalize on. Her approach is complex, almost pointillist. Sarah’s own application of makeup on a daily basis is, well, cosmetic. Color on the parts of the face we’ve decided need more color, working within the palette she learned decades ago best suited her. This is a thing you learn young, via quizzes in magazines, experiments with friends, the sage advice of older sisters, the occasional visit to a persuasive woman on the ground floor of Saks.

  Sarah knows that this matters, on a daily basis, and that it matters more, on a day like today, a day photographs will be taken, the sort of photographs you’re supposed to treasure for decades. She’s interested in looking her best, but she can’t quite forget that her best looks the way it does. Her best is realistic, which is complicated by the fact that best, for her mother, is movie star.

  At some point, all those “She looks just like her father!” must have started to sound a great deal less enthusiastic to Huck and Lulu, or less like cause for celebration, anyway. Lulu’s never implied to Sarah that she’s anything less than beautiful, but most of her parents’ positive reinforcement had to do with brains, with achieving high, for which Sarah is grateful. Isn’t that more important? She’s had moments of envy, but they are genuinely fleeting. Lauren’s hair, for example, wouldn’t she love hair like that, so long but so thoughtless, so full and lovely—genuinely effortless, Sarah knows Lauren well enough to know that: inexpensive shampoo, the occasional, desultory brushing. Sarah’s own hair almost a meteorological instrument. Danielle has done her work, and it looks wonderful, and she’ll touch it up in a bit, bring it back to life, once Ines has had her turn. Sarah feels apologetic, though there’s little she can do about the fraught relationship between her hair and the day’s relative humidity.