by Sally Koslow
nolia closed her eyes and let the warm, jasmine-scented water wash
away the last few days.
“First we went to dinner at Balthazar, and you know how much
I love it,” Abbey started. “We’d gone there for our last anniversary.”
When you fought about the gift you received, Magnolia recalled.
“Dinner turned into coffee back at the apartment,” Abbey said.
“Did he seem mildly contrite?” Magnolia asked. “Deeply apolo
getic? Fraught with anguish?”
“No, no, and yes.” Abbey said. ” ‘Disabled’ was how he put it,”
“Well, we all want to embrace diversity,” Magnolia said, striving
for funny and realizing she’d failed. “How did the conversation go?”
“Quickly, with a trail of clothes to our bedroom,” Abbey reported.
“Sex was never the problem. It was almost like the first time.”
Magnolia thought back to her own first time, which had been fast but
worth the wait. Reverend Peterson’s Pontiac after the prom. She and
Tyler Peterson, the preacher’s son, had dated for two years. Soon she’d
leave for Michigan and he to St. Olaf, where bright Lutheran boys with
good baritones go. During the summer he’d be in Montana, working
cattle or whatever you did with cows. The end was closing in on them—
graduation, college, another life. The nightly phone calls and Saturday
movie dates would be fading to black. They both knew it and never dis
cussed it. Tyler couldn’t imagine he’d ever again meet a girl as full of
dreams as Maggie Goldfarb and she, a sweeter guy—or better-looking.
The Norse gods had kicked in, and Tyler had shot up to well over six feet.
“Magnolia, are you with me?” Abbey asked.
“I’m listening to every word,” she said. “Does this mean you guys
are back on track?” “Hardly. Even when we were kissing, I knew it was a mistake.
Not the kissing—he can still speak in tongues—but change is not in
Tommy’s vocabulary. Talk about fraught, though. I was definitely
fraught. With lust fraught. Incredible night.”
“And the morning?” Magnolia asked. She believed in the revealing
powers of mornings after.
“There was no morning,” Abbey answered, shrugging. “I asked
him to leave at around four A.M.” She drew her hands away from Lily
and turned toward Magnolia. “Tommy’s always going to be a baby.
Who can wait for him to grow up?”
“How do you feel?” Like backup singers in a Motown group, Lily
and Magnolia begged the question in unison, giving the last word
emphasis.
“Sad. Resigned. Pretty sure it’s the end.”
Magnolia wished Abbey could be happier—she deserved to be hap
pier—but her assessment of Tommy was dead-on accurate. “You’re
tough,” Magnolia said. “You’ll get through this. I’ll help you. Do some
thing today that will make you smile.”
“Such as?”
“Hmm …” Magnolia said. “Make dessert lunch?”
“Pecan pie and cheesecake,” Abbey said. “And buy slutty underwear.”
“That’s a start,” Magnolia said.
“Pick different polish,” Lily insisted. “Your nails have been Dead
Red since 1999.”
The three of them deliberated over Lily’s newest choices. Abbey
chose Kinki in Helsinki. Magnolia considered Chocolate Moose, but
decided it would make her fingers look as if she’d been digging for
worms. Pink Slip? Definitely bad karma. She settled for Jewel of
India, a shade the red of Shiraz. Magnolia guessed she could live with it for a week, and if things didn’t work out at Bebe, perhaps she’d get a job naming cosmetics. Or erectile dysfunction drugs.
Kinki in Helsinki and Jewel of India progressed to the nail dryers.
“Give me your world news of the week,” Abbey said. Magnolia hit
the high notes, compressing Bebe, the new office, and her cosmic panic
to a chunk of conversation that she felt came across with minimal self-pity and admirable cheer. Magnolia wasn’t up to analysis. She
wanted only to coax herself into the right mood for tonight.
“All I’m thinking about now is Sub-Zero,” she said, knowing
Abbey would see through her fiction but wouldn’t press.
After lunch, Magnolia took a nap and didn’t dream of Bebe, Jock, or Darlene, just a long riff involving Jude Law and chocolate.
She awoke refreshed, and dressed quickly. Magnolia had insisted to
Harry—who lived in the Village, as did most ex-pat media Brits—that
he didn’t have to pick her up just to drive her back downtown for din
ner. Women who played the high maintenance game infuriated her.
On the cab ride downtown, she ruminated on how second dates
were loaded, especially when Date One lasted for eighteen hours and
ended with a tasting menu of I’d-forgotten-how-this-feels sex. Would
the two of them fumble for conversation—the bioethics of lobster
boiling, perhaps? Magnolia often wondered why couples in long rela
tionships didn’t run out of chat but then considered her own parents.
After thirty-eight years of marriage, Fran and Eliot Goldfarb never
failed to find something about which they didn’t agree; conversation
thus wasn’t a problem.
Just this morning, when they called her—as they did every Satur
day morning on the dot of ten—Magnolia’s father thought he had
the sure cure for her work-related problems. “Quit and move out here
to Southern California,” he said. “I don’t know why anyone in their
right mind would put up with New York.”
“But, Eliot,” her mother interrupted, “Magnolia is a magazine edi
tor and New York is where all the magazines are. That’s why she
moved there. Am I right, Maggie, honey?”
“Right, Mom,” she said.
“Now tell me about Bebe,” she said. “I’ve read that her last hus
band was ten years younger and she had to pay him a fortune after
they divorced? Is that true?”
“Mom, she’s not exactly confiding in me,” Magnolia said.
“Fran, you’re wrong,” her father said. “She’s gay.” “Eliot, you’re crazy,” she said. “That’s Rosie.”
The bickering raged on, until Magnolia told them she needed to get
off the phone because she had a date and wanted to get a manicure.
“A date, honey?” her mom said. “That’s fabulous. Is he Jewish?”
“No, Mom,” she said. She had no idea what Harry’s religion was,
but she was fairly sure he wasn’t Jewish.
“It’s the most important thing, doll,” her father said. “Never forgot
that.”
“Because it’s been the charm for you two?” Magnolia said, and
instantly regretted it.
“Do you ever hear from Wally?” her mother asked.
“Not in years, Mom,” she said. “And, anyway, he remarried.”
“You blew it, kiddo,” her father said.
“Eliot, shame on you,” her mother said. “What’s wrong with you?”
And on and on.
Magnolia relived the conversation until she arrived on West
Fourth, the kind of tranquil, leafy street where she could easily pic
ture living. She opened the door to Extra Virgin and found Harry
waiting at a corner table. He stood as she entered. Tonight he wore
faded jeans
, a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up—a jacket hung on
the back of the chair—and a faint scent which, when they hugged,
recalled long walks in Nantucket.
“Magnolia, duckie, the week you’ve had,” he said, holding her face
in his hands and giving her a short, tender kiss. “Has that big bully,
Bebe, stomped all over you?”
“I have a little bruise right around here,” she said as she pointed to
her heart. “But don’t underestimate me.”
“You?” he said. “Never. Here, have a look at the menu. The chef
here is a genius.”
Magnolia’s appetite usually left men asking “Where do you put all
that?” For this biological blessing, she thanked her mother, who still
fit into a Pucci dress from her honeymoon. Magnolia started with
Chardonnay-steamed mussels, but nibbled one of Harry’s roasted
artichokes. He continued with the branzino. She wavered between
crabmeat ravioli and lamb tangine. Ravioli won. Having eaten dessert for lunch—her own flan and half of Abbey’s tiramisu—she slowed,
but couldn’t resist a taste of Harry’s tarte tatin, sipped with strong
espresso. Tonight she hoped she’d be up for hours.
“Caught a moment of that press conference on the telly,” Harry
said. “You looked ravishing, if a little frightened. Or was it bored?”
“Maybe I should be frightened, but for the moment I’m wearing
the red badge of courage.”
“Bebe—she’s got eyes like a nasty little hedgehog,” Harry said,
sliding his hand on top of Magnolia’s. “I knew her stunt double at
university. Or maybe I’m confusing her with the mean nanny of my
nightmares. Is she the type who hangs around with a lot of poofs?”
“I’m told she likes real men,” Magnolia said, “and lots of them,
the younger the better. Her last husband was twenty-eight.”
As the candles burned low, dripping on the roughly hewn wooden
tables, Harry’s hand slid under the full skirt of her gauzy white sun
dress and skillfully climbed her bare thigh. While they discussed
work—tactics to handle Bebe, how he could land an account with
Banana Republic—Magnolia’s mind settled between her legs. She
knew Harry lived only blocks away, but he wasn’t rushing to end their
dinner. He was setting the pace, slowly and confidently.
“Amaretto?” he asked. At this point, the only thing she wanted to
put in her mouth was an appetizing part of his anatomy, but he nod
ded to the waitress. A brunette with long, silky hair and a personal
trainer’s body sprinted across the room.
“Heather, luv, two Amarettos, please,” Harry said, letting his hand
graze the waitress’s slim waist.
“Mr. James, of course,” she responded, holding his gaze and never
glancing in Magnolia’s direction.
Harry brushed her hand, but turned back to Magnolia and stroked
her arm. Twenty minutes later, she and Harry were the last diners to
leave Extra Virgin. Magnolia tossed a tiny bottle of olive oil—compli
ments of the chef—into her bag, in which she’d stashed a toothbrush
and an extra thong. Without discussing it, Harry steered them toward
his brownstone. They entered through a foyer containing a small
table with an antique brass bowl for keys and a slim Steuben vase filled with several deep purple dahlias. The foyer opened into a large
room dominated by an enormous kitchen, as full of equipment as a
small restaurant.
She noticed several black-and-white paintings on the far end of
the room, which held low, oversized, red leather couches and a grand
piano. The canvases were well over ten feet tall. Just as Magnolia real
ized the sensual form in the largest painting was female, Harry
wrapped his arms around her from behind, caressing her face and
sliding down over her breasts to her hips.
“She reminds me of you,” he said. “Curves in the right places, but
understated. Not too showy.”
Perhaps it was his regular line. Maybe he was silver plate. But at that
point, “Miss Gold, please remove your clothes and put on this paper
gown” would have worked. They walked upstairs and entered Harry’s
spartan bedroom—a simple black iron bed, a dark walnut Empire
armoire, a table, a chair loaded with art books, and a painting featuring
another fertility goddess. Harry gathered Magnolia’s clothes and care
fully hung them on a heavy wooden hanger on the back of the door.
For a split second, an image of Harry and Extra Virgin’s waitress,
together in this very room, crossed Magnolia’s mind. She imagined
them naked, clinking Amaretto glasses, sharing a postcoital joke at her
expense. “Did you catch the business-class-sized butt on her, Harry?”
the girl would say. But then Harry pressed Magnolia to him, drew her
down to the cool, cotton sheets, and pinned her body under his.
“Magnolia Gold, my darling, surrender your red badge of courage,”
he ordered, in a low growl. “I am the big bad wolf.”
C h a p t e r 1 4
Whatever Turns You On
“Magnolia Bakery?” Magnolia said.
In every relationship, the man came up with the same idea. Harry just
thought of it sooner than most. On Sunday, a few weeks after they’d
started seeing each other, Magnolia met Harry at the front of the bakery’s
line. Hipsters and tourists alike trailed out the door, waiting for sugar
transfusions. Magnolia Bakery might be in the Village, but inside, under
the swirl of a lazy ceiling fan, you could easily imagine Scarlett waving a
confederate flag. Magnolia found Harry’s gesture as endearing as the bak
ery’s signature cupcakes iced in the hues of little girls’ party dresses.
“Four, please,” he said to the guy behind the counter.
“Four?” Magnolia said. “I’ll be as big as Bebe.”
“On you it would look good,” he said, putting a piece of cupcake in
her mouth. She wondered what life might have been like if she’d
been named, say, Hermès: smaller butt, better bags.
It was definitely the gold rush. She and Harry had been seeing
each other two or three times a week and last night, at bedtime, he
signed off his phone call with “You’re growing on me.”
“Sweet dreams,” she replied. And that’s what her dreams were.
She was gaga over Harry, and his attentions arrived with superb timing. Which made it all the harder to be sitting in her crowded
new office on Monday morning, watching a leftover cupcake disap
pear into Sasha’s mouth as she sought Magnolia’s opinion on her
new blog.
“What do you think of me calling it Almost 24/7?” Sasha asked.
“I’m almost twenty-four, and I’d yak about everything in my life—
oral sex, work, my 32AA boobs. Other women should know what it’s
like to go through life built like a playing card. I’ll call that entry ‘No
Boobies, No Rubies.’ “
“Almost 24/7? What will you do when you turn twenty-four?”
Magnolia asked.
“Not going to work,” Sasha realized. “I’ll give it another think.”
She licked cupcake crumbs off her fingers. “Nutritious breakfast.
Should we go over your ag
enda?”
They both knew the daily ritual was pointless. Without discussing
it, Sasha had canceled the meetings she’d engineered weeks in
advance, her normal drill in order to accommodate editors’ frantic
travel and shoot schedules. Except for an 11:45 dental appointment,
Magnolia’s calendar stood empty.
Downtime at work had never existed before, and Magnolia didn’t
like it one bit. Yet at the magazine it would be impolitic to charge
ahead—assigning features, approving photographs, interviewing
applicants for unfilled positions—as if Bebe weren’t down the hall, at
least theoretically. The painters were still at it in Magnolia’s old
office, and Bebe was nowhere in sight. Magnolia freshened her lip
stick and wandered over to the office next door. She stood for a full
minute before Cameron became aware of her, took out his iPod ear
phones, and smiled.
“And so it begins,” he said.
“Have you done magazine 101 with our Queen B, explaining that
we actually have deadlines?”
“Planning a sneak attack for noon,” Cameron said. “If she shows.”
With Bebe apparently not realizing she needed to be the orchestra leader, Lady’s symphony had ceased. The staff hadn’t reached complete cacophony—all her colleagues were still at their desks,
nervously awaiting orders, whispering into phones, and dashing off
e-mails they tried to conceal should anyone approach their computer
screens. But it was already July. In weeks the October issue, com
pressed to a few computer disks, would be due at the printer. The
deadline could be stretched only a little—and at great expense.
October wasn’t the only problem. November needed to get well
under way, along with issues after that. To save money, smart editors
always photographed in season. This very minute they should be
planning next summer’s food stories to be shot now, at a nearby beach,
instead of spending $17,000 to fly a crew to the Caribbean in the high
season next February.
Editors were dodging calls from photographers’ reps eager to con
firm dates. Writers, needing reassurance from motherly assigning
editors, whimpered for contracts. Freelancers were threatening to
defect to other jobs.
“I hate that you have to be the badass, Cam,” Magnolia said. “But
with it coming from you, maybe Bebe will listen.”