With Friends Like These

by Sally Koslow

  ALSO BY SALLY KOSLOW

  Little Pink Slips

  The Late, Lamented Molly Marx

  Robert, Jed, and Rory, you are my home page, always.

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by this Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Then

  Chapter 1 - Quincy

  Chapter 2 - Jules

  Chapter 3 - Talia

  Chapter 4 - Chloe

  Chapter 5 - Quincy

  Chapter 6 - Jules

  Chapter 7 - Quincy

  Chapter 8 - Talia

  Chapter 9 - Chloe

  Chapter 10 - Talia

  Chapter 11 - Chloe

  Chapter 12 - Jules

  Chapter 13 - Talia

  Chapter 14 - Chloe

  Chapter 15 - Jules

  Chapter 16 - Quincy

  Chapter 17 - Talia

  Chapter 18 - Jules

  Chapter 19 - Chloe

  Chapter 20 - Quincy

  Chapter 21 - Talia

  Chapter 22 - Jules

  Chapter 23 - Chloe

  Chapter 24 - Quincy

  Chapter 25 - Chloe

  Chapter 26 - Talia

  Chapter 27 - Chloe

  Chapter 28 - Jules

  Chapter 29 - Quincy

  Chapter 30 - Talia

  Chapter 31 - Jules

  Chapter 32 - Quincy

  Chapter 33 - Chloe

  Chapter 34 - Talia

  Chapter 35 - Quincy

  Chapter 36 - Talia

  Chapter 37 - Jules

  Chapter 38 - Chloe

  Chapter 39 - Quincy

  Chapter 40 - Talia

  Chapter 41 - Chloe

  Chapter 42 - Jules

  Chapter 43 - Quincy

  Chapter 44 - Chloe

  Chapter 45 - Talia

  Chapter 46 - Jules

  Chapter 47 - Chloe

  Then Again

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don’t believe I deserved my friends.

  —WALT WHITMAN

  Then

  Before husbands, before babies, before life claimed other loyalties, it started with a wish. Each of them wanted a place to return to that they could call home, a nest where they could hatch and polish their dreams.

  They didn’t say it even to themselves—they might not even have realized it—but most of all they wanted friends.

  • • •

  Chloe refolded her paper napkin, propped her knife and fork at five o’clock, and reread the ad she’d circled. Across the table Talia sucked a drag from what was now a cigarette stub. Chloe couldn’t understand why anyone as clever as Talia would smoke, but the virtues she’d attributed to her—intelligence, passion, kindness—outranked this detail. Talia surfed the inhospitable sea of Manhattan as if she’d lived there all her life, while Chloe, who’d grown up an hour north of the city, found it as foreign as Marrakech, not that she’d visited Marrakech or, for that matter, Miami.

  “Four real bedrooms,” Chloe said.

  Talia leaned back in the booth and crushed her cigarette in the metal ashtray. Her eyes were too dark for Chloe to make out the pupils. “One ‘bedroom’ is going to be the foyer, which will have no window,” Talia said. “The second is the dining room—it will face an air shaft—and the third and fourth will be a living room sliced down the middle.”

  “The open house starts at two,” Chloe said. “It’s a man who’s looking for a roommate, and I don’t want to”—can’t—“walk in there alone.” She and Talia had during the course of the last six weeks vetoed fourteen possibilities, each wrong in its own dreary way. Today’s apartment was ten blocks north of the boundary Chloe considered a secure border for her first adult home. She was trying to be flexible. Talia flagged the waiter, placed two bills on the tabletop shiny with grease, and reached for her coat. She started laughing. The sound reminded Chloe of her mother, whom she was surprised that she missed, because half the point of moving had been to escape her unremitting perfection. “Thanks, but we can split it,” Chloe said. Talia was as strapped for cash as she was. While stalking jobs of the sort liberal arts grads dream of, they’d registered as temps, whose sporadic assignments—receptionist for a chiropractor, assistant to a head of circulation—had been notches below interesting.

  Talia thrust her arms into her newly acquired winter coat, red bouclé wool with a black Persian lamb collar—a Saks pedigree found at a thrift shop for ten dollars, a dollar more than lunch. “You’ll get the next one,” she said, and pulled a beret over her curls. She was proud of her hair—nearly black, though by the time she was thirty she’d be plucking gray strands, and by thirty-five coloring it sable brown. “I know where to find you.” They were living in a starchy women-only hotel, their rooms identically overheated and overpriced.

  “Okay,” Talia said. “Let’s do the open house.”

  Outside the diner, she and Chloe threaded their way up Broadway, kicking aside litter. Chloe counted the storefronts: four Irish bars, three Chinese laundries, and two check cashers happy to wire money to Puerto Rico. Outside an OTB parlor, a patron shouted, “Hola, mamí,” then whistled.

  Chloe picked up the pace. “Big mistake,” she whispered.

  “En sus sueños,” Talia yelled back. “Relax, it’s the quiet guys you worry about,” she added as they turned west on Ninety-second, a street with leafless trees and the odd bicycle held hostage to a lamppost. “And I like the look of this neighborhood. I believe Edith Wharton just stepped out of that brownstone.” Talia pictured Edith as tall and handsome, though photographs she’d check later would suggest otherwise. In the absence of a social life—Talia’s boyfriend, Tom, was studying at Oxford—she’d been exercising her English major. She’d tried to sell Chloe on The Age of Innocence, but Chloe’s loyalty remained with Mary Higgins Clark.

  The women paused at the corner of West End. Despite her headband, a gust carrying the November damp of the Hudson tangled Chloe’s fine blond hair. She pointed across the street. “That one,” she said. The building’s foundation and first five stories were limestone covered by soot, the upper portion red brick enhanced by gargoyles, whose scowl Chloe returned. The women walked toward the entrance and pushed open a heavy wooden door. Across a terrazzo floor dulled to the color of dirty rainwater, grocery store flyers sat on a table where a uniformed man was resting his well-lubricated hair. The air smelled of yesterday’s cigars and today’s salami.

  “A doorman building,” Talia said.

  Chloe stepped forward and cleared her throat. A deep snore answered her.

  “Let’s go up,” Talia mouthed, cocking her head toward the elevator. She pressed the button. Minutes passed before the door swung open. When they reached the tenth floor, Chloe rang the appropriate doorbell. She buzzed twice more, knocked loudly, then shrugged as she felt her face redden. “I should have called to confirm. It’s probably rented.” She bit her lip. “I’m sorry.”

  “We schlepped uptown,” Talia said. “Let’s call him.”

  Chloe followed Talia’s suggestion, as she often would during the years to come. They retraced their way out to the avenue.

  As they approached a pay phone on the corner, a tall woman, her sandy hair cropped, took note of The New York Times real estate section in Chloe’s hand and stopped her. “Excuse me,” she said. “Are you here for 10-B?”

  “Do you know the owner?” Chloe asked, thinking that Quincy Peterson, Columbia grad, was fortunate to have not only a large apartment but a girlfriend with no hips and cheekbones like jutting parentheses, the type of bones Chloe had always w
ished were the scaffolding of her soft, round face.

  “I’m Quincy. I don’t own the place, but I did just sign a three-year lease.” She held up an orange and white bag. “Snacks,” she said as she smiled to reveal a slight gap between her front teeth.

  “We like you already.” Talia grinned, extending her hand.

  Quincy took in the elbow-length gloves. Actress/waitress? She hoped not.

  “Talia Fisher.”

  “Chloe McKenzie.” Her cheeks were nearly as pink as her turtleneck, her voice high.

  Quincy shifted the bag to the other hand. “You two are my first customers this weekend.” They reentered the building. “Buenos tardes, Jorge.”

  “Help with your package, Missus Quincy?” The doorman stood to his full five-five.

  “I’m fine, gracias.” The elevator arrived as if it were expecting her. At the tenth floor, she opened three locks and the women were met by sunlight that blasted the vast, vacant foyer. Quincy placed the bag on the scuffed parquet floor. “Take your coats,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

  Talia and Chloe followed her past a shiny brass chandelier as big as the scratched oak table beneath it. “Dining room,” Quincy announced as she continued toward four naked casement windows that faced west. Between two buildings, a sliver of river was visible a block away. Quincy cracked one window a few inches, letting in the cold. “Sorry—it’s an oven in here.” And none too quiet—a small orchestra’s percussion section rumbled from the radiators. “Why don’t you look around?” With that, she disappeared.

  Chloe grabbed Talia’s hand and squeezed it tightly. “The place could use some work—”

  “But we haven’t seen the rest.”

  The first door off a hall opened to a bedroom, empty but for a rocking chair. On peeling wallpaper, purple irises clung to a background of green. The next door led to a bathroom. “Clawfoot tub,” Chloe announced. It was ancient, spotless, deep. She pictured herself soaking in froth and allowed a few bubbles of optimism to float to the surface of her big-city dream. She and Talia returned to the corridor. Behind the next two doors were bedrooms, each with a closet the size of a cupboard; the last opened into a larger room whose iron bed was crisply made with white linen. From a window, the Hudson shouted for attention. Chloe squinted into the sun, turned to Talia, and for the first time that afternoon noticed that she no longer felt a yoke of tension harnessing her narrow shoulder blades.

  “Hold on,” Talia said. “We’re probably numbers fifty and fifty-one on the wait list.” The sound of a trumpet drifted toward them. Wynton Marsalis? Miles Davis? Only since she’d moved to Manhattan two months ago had Talia discovered jazz; although she knew she should be saving every nickel, she bought a CD each time she deposited a check.

  She and Chloe returned to the living room, where Quincy had arranged a wedge of pale cheddar, sliced apples, water crackers, and a fourth food—small, circular, and brownish—on a wooden tray. There were tall glasses filled with ice and sparkling water. “Want to see the kitchen?” Quincy asked, and led her guests through a portholed door. “You cook?” she asked.

  “Learning, and so is Chloe,” Talia answered, addressing Quincy’s back. She would keep to herself that, inspired by a copy of The Moosewood Cookbook unearthed at the Strand, she was on the cusp of turning vegetarian and that Chloe rejected every vegetable except corn on the cob. “You?”

  Quincy smiled, barely. Talia decided that the gap in her teeth was, on second look, an asset. “My boyfriend did the cooking, but he’s history.”

  Please, God, Talia prayed, don’t let this be Heartbreak Hotel, because she liked Quincy Peterson, and she liked the apartment even more. “My condolences,” she offered.

  Quincy waved her hand as if to brush away an insignificant memory. “When he let me keep an eight-room, rent-controlled apartment I knew for sure he cheated. Guilt’s the ultimate motivator, don’t you think?”

  In years to come, both women would reconsider this question, but for now it was all about the apartment. The kitchen was roomy and plain, with an avocado green refrigerator and glass-fronted cabinets that reached the ceiling. Chloe slid into a nook fitted with pine benches. “I’ve wanted a kitchen like this since I read The Three Bears,” she said, her tone now as cheery as a daisy.

  Jeez, is this cocker spaniel of a girl for real? Quincy wondered. She shepherded the pair to the living room and gestured for them to sit on the couch. Quincy was looking for three independent roommates, not a matched set. What if Salt and Pepper did everything in tandem? On the other hand, these women seemed more approachable than any of the unfortunates she’d welcomed at last weekend’s open house—when it was over, she’d tossed every phone number, including the Iowa cellist’s. “Here’s the deal.” She chose her words with reserve, a trait despised by the man who’d moved out, who’d accused Quincy of not having displayed an act of spontaneity since they’d met. “My room is the big one at the end, with its own bathroom. To make things fair, I expect to pay more than the other three renters.”

  “Fair enough,” Talia said. The rent was forty dollars less than anything else she and Chloe had seen. In order not to grin, she popped one of the small brown nibbles into her mouth. Talia had never tasted an oyster, smoked or otherwise. She liked it.

  “I’ll be honest: when I’m here, I need quiet because”—Quincy weighed how she would be perceived—“I’m trying to write a book.” Definitely haughty, she decided. “Don’t worry. It’s not even Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. I’m an assistant at People,” she added, as if that explained everything. “Most nights I don’t get home until ten. By ten-thirty, I’m dead.” The apartment hunters stared at her, unreadable. “I’m also universally described as a neat freak.”

  Talia was stuck on considering how it would feel to have a job where you were important enough to be required to work well into the evening. She’d have liked to know that feeling, but what she said was, “Define ‘neat freak,’ please.”

  “I promise I won’t wax a floor or wash a window more than every few months, but I cannot live with food rotting in the fridge or the drain.” Quincy had narrow fingers with short, square nails, which she tapped on the table as she spoke. “I especially hate rugs that get crunchy.” Talia stared at the bare wood floors. “There used to be rugs. He took them.”

  “My parents promised me some old Orientals,” Chloe said. “My dad could drive them down from New Canaan.”

  Quincy wondered if she had misjudged the blonde, about whom there was a sweet eagerness. Quincy was twenty-five. Chloe, she thought, must be younger. “I also can’t live with drinkers.”

  “We’re definitely not that,” Chloe laughed. She’d worked up to a sociable Chardonnay; for Talia, it was a weekend beer, two at the most.

  “And while I don’t mind a joint at a party, I can’t abide cigarettes. Neither of you smokes, do you?”

  “Absolutely not,” Talia said, feeling Chloe’s eyes. She knew she could quit. Tom hated her habit as much as Chloe did.

  The three waited for someone to speak. “I assume you’d know better than to let boyfriends hang around in boxers.” Quincy stopped and—what the hell—declared her fantasy. “But one thing I do care about is having dinner with my roommates, at least every Sunday. Not that it’s a deal breaker.”

  Chloe jumped in, although she would later wonder how she’d found it in her to be so bold. “We’re hoping to find a house share where we could all be friends.” Quincy might be another Talia, a woman who could help unlock the city.

  Quincy wondered the same. Could she be friends with these women? She’d never had female confidantes, never wanted to be part of a sorority, Greek-lettered or otherwise. By the time she decided she liked another woman enough to hope to befriend her, that person had generally dismissed her as too midwestern, too anal-retentive—two too’s her boyfriend had liked to list. “Okay, I’m prattling,” she said. “Your turn.”

  “I graduated from Trinity last spring, majored in art hist
ory,” Chloe began. They heard a buzzer.

  Quincy walked to the intercom. “Sure, send her right up.” She returned. “You were saying?”

  Chloe did a quick climb through her family tree. Her father was a pediatrician; her mother grew orchids; her only sibling, Jack junior (she chose not to refer to him as Jack Off, the nickname of which he was proud), played lacrosse. Chloe moved on to her love of tennis and museums and skipped her college boyfriend. A woman fresh from a breakup didn’t need to hear about Xander.

  The foyer door opened. A woman strolled toward them as if she were taking center stage at the Metropolitan Opera. The first thing Chloe noticed were her fingernails—impossibly long, in a shade of orange that matched Quincy’s Zabar’s bag. The first thing Talia noticed was the woman’s hair, as curly as hers. The first thing Quincy noticed was the lavender roses, which convinced Quincy that her prospective tenant must be in sales. All three women stood to meet her.

  “I’m Julia de Marco.” She presented the bouquet.

  “Quincy Peterson, and this is”—she considered it promising that she was able to remember the other names—“Chloe and Talia.” They smiled at the woman, all of their eyes widening that on a Sunday afternoon she was wearing an ankle-length black velvet skirt.