Virtually Perfect

by Paige Roberts

  Anyway, like I said, we can talk about some of this over lunch—though I’d love it if we could spend the bulk of the time talking about something else. I’m a little burned-out on the c word these days, as you can probably imagine.

  I’d love to pick your brain about Lizzie. I’m having a really tough time talking to her lately. Actually, I should clarify: We haven’t talked in a long time because I’m not sure what to say. I just feel so guilty keeping all of this from her. I know, I know—it was my choice. And I stand by it. But I miss her, and I’m not sure how much longer I can screen her calls. Ugh. I don’t expect you to have a solution for this (mostly because I’m sure it will involve telling her the truth sooner than I’d like), but you’ve always been a good listener, so I’m counting on you for that.

  Okay, gotta run. Gary is taking me to some new yoga class in Jenkintown. I swear, if it weren’t for the cancer, I’d say I’m currently in the best shape of my life, and it’s all thanks to him.

  See you tomorrow!

  xxoo

  S

  CHAPTER 24

  The Silvesters’ non-clambake clambake was a success, and Lizzie tried to tell herself that wasn’t because everyone was so drunk they probably didn’t know what they were eating. The party wore on past 1:00 a.m., at which point Sam Offerman was naked in the pool and another guest was passed out on the living room couch. Lizzie couldn’t believe how hard these people could party. They were around her parents’ age. How did they have the energy? She knew that was probably an ageist question, but she was only thirty and had already lost the ability to drink much past midnight. In another twenty or thirty years? Forget it. She’d be in bed by nine.

  Lizzie helped Renata clear plates and glasses that had been left around the pool deck, shielding her eyes to avoid an accidental glimpse of Sam’s anatomy. She was convinced that seeing his naked body up close would leave deep mental scars, from which she would possibly never recover.

  “Hey, cutie, why don’t you join me in here?” he called to Lizzie. “The water is per-r-r-rfect.”

  “No, thanks,” Lizzie said, her eyes trained on the small table in front of her.

  “Aw, come on. Don’t leave me in here all alone.”

  “Maybe I should find Barb.”

  He pretended to purr like a cat. “Sassy. I like that.”

  Lizzie heard splashing behind her and the smack of wet feet on the pool deck. The footsteps came closer, but she refused to turn around and instead walked quickly toward the house, a pile of dirty plates in her hands.

  “Hey, where you running off to? I promise I don’t bite.” Lizzie waited for the inevitable punch line. “Hard,” he added before exploding with laughter.

  Lizzie hustled into the house without turning back and shivered as she closed the door behind her. Was it the air-conditioning or Sam’s lecherous advances that sent chills up her spine? She wasn’t sure. He was just so thoroughly unappealing—the fake tan, the peachy hair, the brash chauvinism. The fact that Barb was sleeping with him baffled Lizzie. Was she really that desperate?

  Lizzie dumped the dirty plates in the sink in the butler’s pantry. Part of her hoped to run into Nate, but she hadn’t seen him since Kathryn lured him away earlier and she wasn’t sure where he was. He hadn’t eaten with the Silvesters’ friends, but she wasn’t sure whether he’d left or gone to bed. She knew she shouldn’t care—she was effectively being paid to cook for him—but she did. He was kind and smart and funny, and he was the closest thing she had in this town to a friend.

  Renata came into the kitchen carrying a tray full of dirty wineglasses. “I’ll put all of this in the dishwasher if you wouldn’t mind gathering up the rest of the napkins and other trash,” she said.

  Lizzie agreed and headed outside. She prayed Sam had put clothes on or gone to bed, but as she approached the glass doors she could hear him bellowing into the night about how he could have been an Olympic swimmer.

  “You don’t even know. I’ll race ya. I’ll frickin’ race ya right now. Don’t be such a pussy—come on.”

  Lizzie averted her eyes as she walked onto the patio and began gathering up crumpled cocktail napkins and empty bottles.

  “Hey, sugar tits—you believe me, right?”

  Lizzie knew nothing would be gained by answering one way or the other, so she kept her head down and continued picking up bits of trash.

  “Oh, so now I get the silent treatment? Please. I’m more man than you’ll ever meet in this town. Where do the young chicks hang out these days? The Whitebrier? The Princeton?” She heard the splish-splosh of wet feet on the pool deck. “That’s where the boys go. You need a real man. Tell me, can those boys do this?”

  She heard a loud splash, followed by silence. Then a scream.

  “Blood! Blood!”

  Lizzie whipped her head around and saw a red cloud blooming in the deep end of the pool. Sam lay at the bottom. He wasn’t moving.

  “Oh my God,” Lizzie said. She dropped the pile of trash on the ground and rushed into the house. “Renata!” she shouted. “Call nine-one-one!”

  Renata came running into the kitchen. “What’s happened?”

  “Sam hit his head on the bottom of the pool. I don’t know how. But he isn’t moving, and there’s blood.”

  Renata’s eyes widened. She ran for the phone and dialed 911.

  Lizzie hurried back outside, where two of the men had pulled Sam out of the pool and onto the pool deck. “He’s breathing!” one of them shouted. “Sam! Sammy boy!” He slapped Sam’s face. “Wake up!”

  Sam let out a loud groan as water spurted out of his mouth. Blood trickled onto the pavement from a large gash on his crown. He was also still naked, but to Lizzie’s infinite relief his blubbery belly rose high enough to obstruct any view of his penis. She couldn’t help but think he looked like a beached whale, though given the unnaturally orange shade of his hair and skin, it was more like a beached orangutan.

  “An ambulance is on its way!” Renata called from the doorway.

  In a flash, the ambulance arrived, and a team of paramedics heaved Sam’s naked body onto a stretcher, covering his lower body with a white sheet. They pushed him on the stretcher to the ambulance and whisked him away in a cacophony of sirens and bells, the red and white lights illuminating the night sky.

  “What happened . . . ?”

  Barb stumbled into the living room. Her dark hair was matted to one side of her face, and she had rings of mascara beneath her eyes. She looked as if she’d just woken up, only she was fully dressed, minus a shoe, which led Lizzie to believe she’d passed out somewhere in the Silvesters’ house.

  “Sam cracked his head on the bottom of the pool,” Lizzie said. “He’s on his way to the hospital.”

  “Oh!” Barb covered her mouth, her eyes wide. “Oh, Sammy!”

  She hobbled toward the stairs, alternating heeled and bare feet with a clack-thump, clack-thump, clack-thump.

  “Sammy!” she called. “Sammy, wait!”

  “They’re gone,” Lizzie said.

  “Then I’ll meet him at the hospital. Where are my keys?” She patted down her body. She was wearing skintight jeans and a tight black tank top, so Lizzie doubted her keys were anywhere on her person. She was also clearly still drunk, so no matter where her keys were, Lizzie thought her driving anywhere was a very bad idea.

  “I can take you,” Lizzie offered, though as soon as she did she regretted it. What was she thinking? Did she really want to spend all night at the hospital with Sam and Barb? She’d rather chew on rusty nails.

  “I’m fine—I can drive myself. I just need to find my keys.”

  “You don’t have any keys, dear,” Renata said. “Sam drove you. Remember?”

  “Oh. Right. Whatever. Then where are his keys?”

  “I don’t think you are in the best shape to drive,” Renata said.

  “I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re not,” said a stern voice. Nate descended the stairs from the second floor.
He wore red boxers and a gray T-shirt and looked as if he’d just woken up. “Look at you—you can barely stand upright. Let Lizzie take you.” He met Lizzie’s eyes and seemed to read her misgivings. “I’ll come, too. To keep you guys company.”

  Barb began to protest but, apparently too tired and drunk to put up much of a fight, ultimately relented. “Fine,” she said. “Let me just get my other shoe.”

  Barb got her shoe and Nate threw on clothes while Lizzie ran to her room to grab her keys and purse. They all met in the driveway and piled in Lizzie’s car, Nate riding shotgun and Barb in the backseat.

  “Thanks for tagging along,” Lizzie said as she started up the car.

  “No prob.” He lowered his voice. “I figured you might need moral support, given the players involved.”

  “Much appreciated. Sorry to have disrupted your evening.”

  “Eh, it’s just sleep, right?”

  Lizzie smiled.

  “Hello-o-o-o-o! Can we get going?”

  “Sorry—here we go.” Lizzie threw the car in reverse and pulled out of the Silvesters’ driveway.

  “Thank God,” Barb said. Then she frowned as she sniffed the air. “Is it me, or does this car smell like piss?”

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later, Lizzie pulled in front of the entrance to the Cape Regional Medical Center. Barb bolted from the backseat, teetering in her strappy stiletto sandals as she ran toward the sliding glass doors.

  “Sammy! Sammy, I’m coming!”

  Lizzie stared in amazement. “Wow.”

  “Are you marveling at her ability to run in those shoes? Or the fact that she is so emotionally invested in Sam’s well-being?”

  “Both.”

  Nate laughed. “There’s parking in the lot over there. We should probably stick around to make sure he’s okay.”

  “Aren’t they going to need a ride home?”

  “That’s your call. You were nice enough to drive them here. At their age, if they can’t figure out how to call a cab that’s their problem. The two of them are drunker than some twenty-two-year-olds. It’s ridiculous.”

  Lizzie parked the car in the lot, which was pretty empty, though at two o’clock on a Monday morning she wouldn’t have expected otherwise. She and Nate walked through the entrance and approached the registration desk.

  “Hi, we’re here for Sam Offerman?” Nate said.

  The receptionist typed at her computer. “I believe he is being seen by the doctor at the moment. He already has one companion, so only one of you can go back. We have a two-person maximum.”

  Nate and Lizzie looked at each other. Neither of them had any interest in being that person.

  “You know what? We’ll both hang here in the waiting room. Give us an update when he’s talked to the doctor.”

  Nate gave his name, and then he and Lizzie found two seats in the waiting room. Lizzie collapsed into one as she let out a loud sigh. “What a night.”

  “Not exactly what you expected when you took the job, huh?”

  “Not specifically.”

  “Still insist you want to work for them for the rest of the summer?”

  “Yep. And into the fall, if they’ll have me.”

  “Seriously?” He shook his head. “I know it isn’t really my place, but I have to confess: I don’t get it.”

  “What’s to get? The pay is good, and I don’t have any other options.”

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  “Believe it.”

  “Come on—you had a show on the Food Network.”

  “Five years ago. People’s memories are short.”

  “Okay, but you graduated from Penn. That has to count for something.”

  Lizzie gulped. She could feel her cheeks turning pink. “It isn’t quite that simple.”

  “I guess. You just seem way too smart and competent to have to put up with this kind of bullshit.” He gestured around the waiting room.

  “You’re here, too, thank you very much.”

  “True. But Sam and Barb are almost family, at least as far as my dad and Kathryn are concerned. I can’t really avoid them. But you—you don’t have to deal with these people.”

  “If it weren’t them, it would be another pair of crazies. Trust me. Some of the people I dealt with in New York . . . One guy made me cut all of his food into bite-size pieces for him. Another lady had a separate freezer filled entirely with Arctic Zero. Like, at least fifty pints.”

  “Arctic Zero?”

  “It’s this terrible low-calorie, non-dairy ice cream. It tastes like hunger and tears.”

  He laughed. “Still doesn’t sound quite as bad as sitting in a beachside ER at two a.m., waiting for a drunken sixty-something chauvinist to get staples in his head.”

  “When you put it that way . . .” She slid down in her seat and sighed. “Jesus.”

  “Sorry—I didn’t mean to pour salt on the wound.”

  “No, listen, it isn’t your fault. I’m the one who put myself in this position. I just . . .” She sat back up, wondering how much to confide in Nate. “When you’re on top of the world, you don’t think there’s anything that can bring you down. At least I didn’t. I thought the ride would last forever. I was twenty-two, and that’s how twenty-two-year-olds think. I wasn’t worried about career stability or longevity. I mean, on some level I guess I knew I wouldn’t be hosting a college cooking show when I was forty, but forty sounded so far away. Frankly, thirty sounded far away, too, and yet here I am.”

  She played with the hem on her shirt. She typically hated talking about the demise of her career, but tonight it felt good to articulate all the thoughts that had been weighing on her for years.

  “Anyway, it just kind of sucks, because on some level I feel like I had my shot, and I blew it, and now I don’t have a lot of choices left.”

  “Sure you do. Maybe not as many as when you were twenty-two, but you always have choices.”

  “I guess. I just sometimes wish, if I had it all to do over again . . .” She trailed off.

  “What? You’d do something else instead?”

  “No. But I’d plan better. More backstops and safety nets.” She thought about it more. “Actually, maybe I would do something else. I don’t know. Sometimes it feels as if I peaked too early. Like, if I had just been patient and put in my time, I would have built a career that would last, instead of one that would flame out before I hit thirty.”

  “I wouldn’t say you’ve flamed out.”

  She gestured around the emergency room. “Need I remind you where we are . . . ?”

  “I’m the one who brought that up to begin with. But I only did that because you still have a star quality. And to be honest, if you don’t mind me saying so, you kind of seem like you’re settling.”

  “It’s not settling when it’s the only option on the table.”

  “This isn’t the only option.”

  “It is at the moment. And before you tell me I can always get back into TV, let me assure you: I can’t. That isn’t how it works. That door has closed, at least for a while.”

  “I hate to break it to you, but having doors close is part of getting older. That’s just a fact. I’m thirty-five, and already I know I’ll never be on the Supreme Court or the Olympic swim team or serve as president of the United States. But that’s because I made choices a long time ago that ruled those options out. That doesn’t mean all doors have slammed shut. I could still start a business, or become an author, or take up competitive poker. Okay, maybe not the poker in my case, but you get the idea. Hell, I could even go to culinary school and become a chef.”

  “At which point you, too, could cook for crazy millionaires.”

  He laughed. “You get what I’m saying. It isn’t over at thirty. Even if it feels that way sometimes.”

  “I guess.” She felt her lip start to quiver and tried hard to tame it. If she started crying—oh, God. What if she started crying? Part of her knew it would feel good. So good. Better
than anything had felt in a long, long time. But then there was Nate, whom she barely knew, and all these strangers in the waiting area. Was she ready for them to see her ugly cry? Because it would be ugly. She’d held on to these feelings for so long, and if she let them out all at once it would be a huge, hideous catharsis, the likes of which these people had probably never seen. But the more she thought about it, the more she wanted it—the immense satisfaction of an explosive cry, with wailing and moaning and rivers of tears and snot. Right now, she wanted it more than anything, more than sex or money or chocolate.

  “Nate Silvester?”

  Lizzie’s fantasy was interrupted by a young nurse who entered the waiting area. Nate jumped up, and Lizzie followed him to meet her.

  “The doctor is just finishing up with Sam. He has a two-centimeter laceration on the crown of his head. We’re finishing up his staples now while we wait for the results of his CT scan.”

  “CT scan?”

  “To make sure he doesn’t have a brain bleed or a fractured spine.”

  “Jesus.”

  “It’s standard procedure when anyone his age comes in with a head injury. In all likelihood, it’s just a mild concussion.”

  “How much longer until he gets the results?”

  “Probably another forty-five minutes or so.”

  “Forty-five minutes?” Nate groaned. “Is Barb still back there with him?”

  “You mean the woman in the heels?”

  “And tight pants. Yeah.”

  “Yes, she’s still there.”

  Nate met Lizzie’s eyes. “They could take a cab,” he said in a low voice.

  “Yeah, but . . .” Lizzie wasn’t sure why she was about to oppose Nate’s idea. Maybe it was because she felt guilty. Or maybe it was because she knew waiting for them would mean more time with Nate and she was enjoying his company.

  “You really want to wait around for these clowns?” he asked, incredulous.

  “No, but I feel bad. The guy has a concussion. And staples in his head.”

  “None of which is your fault.”