With Friends Like These

by Sally Koslow

  “I see,” I said. “You’d rather go to the ersatz Italy, the one in Nevada?”

  “The fountains at the Bellagio are choreographed to opera,” Chloe said.

  As if that were a selling point. “Go on,” I drawled.

  “You can ride in a gondola at the Venetian,” she added.

  “The gondolier will have a ya-you-betcha accent,” I countered. William Macy in Fargo had wormed his way into my brain in my attempt to see Arthur’s features as quirky rather than porcine; I’d been thinking about an article I’d read on sexual attraction that insisted that only unimaginative women require handsome men.

  “I’ve read about great deals to Vegas,” Talia said. “You can stay at Caesars Palace for about a hundred bucks a night.”

  Quincy cut in. “But isn’t it a dump?”

  Chloe looked hurt. “Midweek every hotel’s a bargain in Las Vegas, even the Wynn.”

  “Midweek won’t work,” I said, “at least not for me. We blocked out a long weekend months ago. I can’t change my schedule.” I’m not like the rest of you, whose lives come with male safety nets.

  Chloe had retreat written all over her face. “Of course we’ll stick with those dates. But think of all the shows.”

  I was trying not to.

  “What about you two?” Chloe turned to Quincy and Talia.

  “Vegas is depressing,” Quincy said. “People gambling away rent money and chasing ninety-nine-cent shrimp cocktails.” I tried to catch her eye, to show that I agreed. She looked through me. “Graceland. That’s America.” She got up, hummed a few bars of “Don’t Be Cruel,” and announced, “I’m already holding the Gold and Platinum Suite.”

  And they thought I was pushy?

  “The hotel plays Elvis movies on a constant loop.” I saw Quincy’s mouth continue to move and Chloe and Talia respond. Had I really screwed Quincy? Absolutely not, since under no circumstances would she and Jake wind up with that Eldorado apartment. In that case, shouldn’t Arthur have a crack at it? He’d already lived for years in that pile of choice bricks. Bottom line, it had nothing to do with me. He and the young Blues could slug it out.

  When I woke from my coma, Talia had transported us to Maine, with all its bushy-tailed wholesomeness. “We’ll burn calories every morning hiking or sailing or riding bikes,” her California voice-over was saying, “hang around the lake, go antiquing, and finish each day with lobster everything and corn on the cob, washed down with local wine.”

  “Do we buy it at L.L. Bean?” I asked. “Does it come in a box? With a screw top?”

  “Or we’ll drink beer and after dinner light a fire, make s’mores, read big beach books, and sleep like the dead.”

  “What if it rains?” Quincy asked.

  “Factory outlets.”

  “I’ve never been to one,” Chloe said.

  I had, and would pass on the chance to shop for seasons-ago five-inch Swarovski-crystal-encrusted Lucite heels that “may” be Christian Louboutin. “Hear, hear,” I said. “I call for a vote.” I sensed that Rome had not caught fire but, since we weren’t gamblers, Vegas was no better than going to Madison Avenue. Graceland appealed to me far more than Maine, no matter how many blueberry pancakes I could eat, but why should Quincy get her way? She’d had a loose hair up her ass all night.

  We cast our secret ballots. Chloe, the evening’s designated Pricewater-houseCoopers tabulator, made a show of counting the votes. “We have a clear favorite,” she announced. “The winner is … the magnificent state of Maine.”

  Talia bowed to our applause. “Don’t worry,” she said. “The indoor plumbing will be installed any day now.”

  I was ready for every guest to leave so I could get to part two of the evening, since I wouldn’t exhale until every leftover had been plastic-wrapped and each pot all but sterilized, but I spotted the gift from Chloe. You could set your watch by that woman’s kindness. I opened the wrappings and found a bestseller. While I hugged her, I yawned. Chloe and Talia took the hint and said their goodbyes.

  I hoped Quincy would join them. If she was ready to stick me in front of a firing squad over the fucking apartment, I’d defend myself, but what I really wanted was for her to go home. She’d disappeared into the bathroom and now walked back to the foyer, where I pretended to sort my mail while I felt her stare.

  “Is there something you want to tell me?” she asked. There wasn’t an edge to her voice, which made me more uneasy than if she’d bombed me with four-letter words. “I’ve waited all week.”

  I do outrage rather well myself. “Excuse me? If anyone should be pissed, it’s me. You ignored my e-mails.”

  “How could you?” she said.

  “Help me out here.”

  “When were you going to tell me you looked at the apartment Jake and I hope to buy? That you told your boyfriend and he went after it?” The stiffness in her voice was freezing into anger.

  “Oh, that.” I shrugged. “Good Lord, it’s no major Machiavellian plot. Arthur thought the apartment might work for him. He’s thinking of downsizing.” She continued to glare. “The doorman told him about it.” Technically, it was true.

  “How did he hear about it?” Quincy’s face was getting red. “It had to be from you, my friend who hurried over to see my dream apartment the first chance she got.”

  I folded my arms under my breasts and remained composed. Thank you, twenty-five years of acting classes.

  “Did you think I wouldn’t find out?” Quincy said when I wouldn’t react.

  “Arthur had every right to look at the apartment.” Was my manner a tad imperious? Perhaps.

  “You seem to be missing the point.” Quincy had balled up her hands as if she was going to throw a punch. “Maybe I need to put this in terms you can understand. If we were shopping at the Barney’s warehouse sale,” she began, dripping condescension, “and I spotted a pair of pants and took them to the try-on area, when I turn my back you don’t get to grab them.”

  As if we’d ever wear the same size. This was an insult on so many levels. “Maybe I need to put this in terms you can understand,” I countered. “Arthur is entitled to go after the apartment—he already lives in the building.” That had to count for something.

  “But you gave him information you stole.” Her voice was low and slow. “Don’t you know it’s wrong to misappropriate intellectual property?”

  I wasn’t about to admit any such thing, and I doubted if Mrs. Lawyer was even using that term correctly. Was I wrong? Wasn’t real estate an open market, like love, war, and corporate expense accounts, where she who’s most clever wins? I pinned Quincy with my eyes and low-and-slowed her back. “I’m sorry you’re upset.” It was the kind of bogus apology designed to drive people nuts.

  She did an eye roll. “You! Who claim to be my friend.” With that, Quincy walked out the door.

  I stood in my foyer for a good five minutes before I popped open the prosecco, filled a tall tumbler, drank it down, and dialed Arthur.

  CHAPTER 7

  Quincy

  I roared out of Jules’ driveway and started composing what I’d scribble into my journal later tonight.

  If I didn’t love Jules, her betrayal would be easier, I started. I’d turn my back and never look at that woman again. Except we have too much history and I always thought she was the one who really got me. I haven’t told either Chloe or Talia about what’s going on because … do they pity Jake and me? Try to take the shine off their mommy gloss when I walk into the room? Or is it that their kids have brought into focus what I should have noticed years ago: Talia’s a tough nut no one’s ever going to crack—maybe not even Tom—and Chloe will forever float in insecurity, despite having the baby, the beauty, the luxuries, the love?

  I turned onto the highway and pushed the gas pedal. I’d forgotten about the pure exhilaration of driving, every Minnesota girl’s preferred escape.

  Jules has always been different. I’ve lived off her fumes, ignoring that they were toxic. I’ve seen
her be stubborn and irrational, but until now it’s amused and even amazed me. If Jules had the faintest interest in politics, she’d clean things up in the Middle East before she cooked the troops dinner.

  I passed one car. Then another.

  But this time she’s really done it.

  I passed a third car, cutting in close. The driver gave me the finger. I gave it back. Ja, I’m talking to you, Herr Doktor in the black Mercedes. Achtung.

  Where does Jules get her shameless-girl guts? Not from her pop, who left for the track, permanently, or that mother who likes gin better than Jules. Definitely not from the older sister Jules idolizes, the one who was forced to give up a baby and got back at her parents by going AWOL, leaving Jules waiting for visits. But Jules would never feel sorry for herself this way, as I would. She moves ahead with no apparent regret, no wallowing.

  I glanced at the speedometer. Eighty mph. My fury was powering the car. Except that it wasn’t. I needed gas, and probably a good Tasering from a state trooper. I spotted a gas station and pulled in. With any luck, it would sell over-the-counter Xanax.

  I filled my tank and called Jake. “You need to talk me down from the ledge,” I said. “The one I want to push that selfish pig Jules off.”

  “Ah, and what did you all eat for dinner?” Jake followed with the sort of laugh you have to call a chuckle. When he tries to calm me I usually melt into a puddle of butter, but not tonight.

  “Jules thinks she’s actually in the right!” I screamed. This took a certain talent while crying. “Or at least not wrong.” In the moment I gave myself to decide if there was a difference, a ten-foot-tall guy beelined to my car.

  “Everything okay here, ma’am?” he asked in a chewing-tobacco accent, tipping his cowboy hat. Had he wandered out of a country-and-western ballad or was he simply a serial killer dressed for a rodeo?

  “I’m fine,” I lied. I didn’t care who heard and saw me, not even with snot dripping onto my hand, which I wiped on my jeans before I waved him away. “Just fine.” The Marlboro Man returned to his pickup but gave me a sideways look.

  “Q, who the hell was that?”

  “No one,” I said, and wailed, “It’s not fair. But it’s not the apartment, it’s the hubris.” I reconsidered. “No, it is the apartment. I found it. I want it for us. Heck!”

  Jake and I had talked about walking away and letting Arthur buy the apartment, where I pictured him living unhappily ever after. We would continue in our quest for a home. But Horton had had another opinion. “Are you out of your mind?” he’d bellowed when I ran the idea past him. “Listings like this are comets that fly by every fifty years. You’re not going to get another chance. If you buy this place, you could live there for the rest of your life—Central Park isn’t going anywhere, kiddo. And if you want to resell later, at this price you’d make a killing. Besides, I thought you and Jake loved it.”

  “We do.” In my mind I’d seen walls with the faintest blush; bare ebony-stained floors, squishy white couches, a long buttery gray suede chaise, and bouquets of peonies in tall clear glass cylinders. The windows would be free of curtains to welcome the view. My home would be airy, filled with light. A happy but subtle sound track would always play.

  Horton had continued. “I say this now as a person who’s looking out for you: finders keepers. Don’t let that snitch friend of yours and her—you should excuse my French—A-hole, rat-bastard douche of a boyfriend walk off with a property you deserve. And by the way, Fran wants you to have it.” I could hear Horton hyperventilating. “I can recommend an attorney today and she can draw up the contract. What do you say?”

  I’d said yes. Later in the week Jake and I met with Horton’s lawyer lady and soon we were shifting around money and writing checks, one with a stuttering echo of zeroes. Ten percent of the apartment’s price went into escrow; another chunk was set aside for attorney’s services.

  The next day I looked at our accounts and broke out in buyer’s remorse. Not that we were necessarily buyers. We had weeks of drudgery ahead to complete a meandering paper trail so that Horton could present a thorough invasion of monetary privacy to the building’s admission board. These strangers would learn details about us that we wouldn’t even tell my parents if they were still alive. Only after the board received our set of Peeping Tom documents would they consider scheduling an interview. His point was that I should prepare to be patient, extremely patient.

  “What have we done?” I’d asked Jake the week before. “Did we rush into this?”

  “I hate when you second-guess,” he said, which I do, regularly. To me, a decision is a suggestion with a short-term expiration date. “We’ve settled this—we’re getting into a damn good deal and we’re both sick of looking. Besides,” he predicted, “that Arthur guy will go away as soon as he knows we have a contract.”

  Except he didn’t. According to Horton, who heard it from Fran, Arthur Weiner did everything short of holding a public symposium in the Sheep Meadow on why he, Mr. I-Bought-in-1989, deserved the apartment. I pictured him assaulting his neighbors until he filled a petition to have our contract tossed into the Bethesda Fountain.

  “Don’t you want the apartment?” Jake repeated as I stood at the gas station. I looked at my watch. Ten-thirty, my witching hour.

  “Very much.”

  “Fine. Settled. Now get yourself home. I’ll make it worth your while.”

  He did. Jake had set the table with the good stuff. “I took one look at your ribs this morning and decided you needed fattening up,” he said. “Sit down.” After he popped the cork and filled two flutes with champagne, he returned to our molecule-sized kitchen and emerged with a soufflé, sagging dramatically, but a love offering just the same. “My mother’s recipe,” he announced as he smothered the chocolate fluff with whipped cream.

  I realized I was hungry, in every way. Dessert led to kissing and kissing led to bed, which led my fingers to the drawer where we kept the condoms. I was reaching for a foil packet when Jake stopped me. “Listen, Q, I’m thinking …” He hesitated. “I know I’ve been a prick since that business with the cradle, but maybe we should try again.”

  Could I take myself to the baby altar one more time and call on a God whom I’d abandoned when I felt He abandoned me? Was I the definition of crazy, repeating the same mistake, hoping for a different outcome? Jake held me tightly, murmuring, “Baby, baby, baby.” I didn’t know if it was a term of endearment or a prayer.

  “Honey, I’m afraid,” I said, talking to his chest. “I can’t handle another—”

  He put his fingers on my mouth and tenderly traced the outline of my lips, then slowly caressed my neck, my breasts, and the pathway between them that led to even greater pleasure. My hands repeated the pattern in reverse.

  “Do I have to make every decision?” he said. When Jake left the condom in the drawer and entered me, he had a smile on his face, which I always find most handsome when it is millimeters away from my own.

  “Do I have to tell you how much I love you?”

  “You do, Mrs. Blue,” Jake answered. “You do.”

  “The verdict is in, Attorney Blue. I love you, love you, love you,” I said, timing my words to his thrusts, raising my face to find his fine gray eyes. They were closed.

  “Keep talking, Q baby,” Jake said. “Keep doing what you’re doing and keep talking, baby.”

  “I love you,” I yelled as he came and I came, almost together. I closed my eyes and let my mind go blank as it took me to a place tinted by the flush of hope. I reached for his hand in the darkness, holding it tightly.

  CHAPTER 8

  Talia

  “What was going on back there?” Chloe asked as she backed out of Jules’ driveway. “It wasn’t just Jules being Jules, stamping her feet and wanting her own way. There’s got to be more to it. She and Quincy are furious at each other about something.”

  “No one’s unloaded a thing on me.”

  I tried, but failed, to imagine Chloe angry enough
to ice me with a glance. At least four times every day, I’d think about how she’d feel if she found out that I was all over a job possibility meant for her. Would she say, No big deal, go for it—the position doesn’t interest me in the least? Perhaps, but more likely she’d be shocked and hurt. No Mean Maxine controlled her like an evil cyborg. This is a woman who changes the toilet paper roll in public restrooms.

  “Quincy was a little cold,” Chloe said with uncharacteristic certainty. “Jules had gone to all that trouble to make dinner.”

  “Come on. That show was pure calculation. I was waiting for Placido Domingo to serve the pasta. Jules guilts you into letting her have her way. Maybe Quincy’s sick of it.”

  “What went on back there wasn’t about where we’d go on vacation. I can’t imagine Quincy cares that much. I don’t.”

  I did. “You’re not annoyed we didn’t pick Vegas?”

  She turned toward me. “Of course not,” she said. “I can go there some other time, with Xander…. Are you happy we picked Maine?” she asked after a few miles of companionable silence. I could hear her smile.

  “Of course,” I said. Still, Maine meant another mountain of work. Tom and I hadn’t visited since the previous summer, and it was entirely possible that the locals might have appropriated the place for firewood. I’d need to drag my tush up there at least three days before my gang arrived. That would mean renting a car, driving nine hours, cleaning like a one-woman sanitation crew, stocking the cupboards beyond my in-laws’ cocktail olives and soggy Ritz crackers, and shopping for extra towels, sheets, and blankets. Mousetraps, too. Chloe was thousand-thread-count royalty. Jules and Quincy liked their creature comforts, too, though not the small, furry ones, which last year had invaded the linen closet, partied, and multiplied.