Dumping Billy

by Olivia Goldsmith

  Stranded. She knocked on the glass and tried desperately to get someone’s attention, but the hall was abuzz with noise. She could make out older female guests loudly declaring the ceremony to be the most beautiful they’d ever seen, while the men called across the room to one another, inquiring about the outlook for the Mets.

  In moments, the room had changed from tranquil to chaotic, from empty to full, and myriad poof skirts and dangerously high hairdos blocked her line of vision. She had lost sight of her friends. Kate thought she caught a glimpse of Brice and someone who might be Bina, now on the side of the room opposite their table, but she couldn’t be sure. She ran back down to the remaining doors of the terrace to try to get in, but they were all locked. Well, she would just have to wait until someone—

  Just then, a tall blond stepped out the door at the other end of the terrace. What a relief!

  “Wait!” Kate yelled. “Wait! Hold the—”

  But before she could finish her sentence or make a move, he had turned to the side and the door slammed behind him.

  Chapter Twelve

  Damn it,” Kate muttered. She walked over to the slammed door and tried the handle, but it was locked. Meanwhile, the guy had moved to the ivy-covered wall and was looking around casually. He was, she couldn’t help but notice, one of the best-looking men she’d ever seen. His blond hair must have had a dozen shades in it—the kind of hair women paid hundreds of dollars to salons for but never achieved. He was probably only a little over six feet tall, but his wide shoulders and the way his jacket tapered from them, along with legs that didn’t quit, made him incredibly well proportioned. Kate wondered whether his upper arms were muscled and cut in the way she found so attractive. She could barely see his profile, but even from here she could tell that he didn’t have the usual pale coloring of a blond. There was a golden tone to his skin that . . . well, he was altogether a golden guy, the type who is all looks and no substance.

  Then he saw Kate and turned to face her. From a full frontal, he was—if it was possible—even more alluring. To her dismay, Kate felt a blush rise from her chest to her neck, but he didn’t seem to notice. He just asked, “At the risk of sounding clichéd, what’s a pretty girl like you doing in a place like this?” He took a few steps toward her. “And you look distressed. Um, in the damsel, not the furniture, sense.” He smiled. The smile was the coup de grâce. It was marvelous the way his teeth lightened his face, how parenthetical dimples formed around it, and how his eyes, unlike most people’s when they smiled, stayed wide open. He was what might be called un canon, a living embodiment of male beauty.

  Kate took a step back. She was suspicious of men this good-looking and with charm as well, but she couldn’t help staring. Something about him looked familiar, but she would never have forgotten him if they had met. Perhaps he was a newscaster or someone she had seen on television. She forced herself to take her eyes away from his.

  “You could have helped by holding the door open,” she said, trying to keep her embarrassment from showing. “Now we may have to wait until someone from the Eisenberg bar mitzvah lets us in tomorrow afternoon.” The words had come out more sharply than she’d meant them to. He cocked his head and observed her. She felt self-conscious at the way he looked at her. Not because it was a once-over, merely because it was so intent—as if he were memorizing every detail of her, from her exposed collarbone to her Jimmy Choo shoes. She turned and looked in at the party through the long window.

  “Would that be such a bad thing?” he asked.

  Still peering through the window, Kate could see Bina at the far side of the room, flanked by Brice and Elliot, who was looking around, presumably for Kate. Oh no, she couldn’t let Bina sit down among their old crowd without her protection! There would be a feeding frenzy. She rattled the door handle. No luck. “Merde!” she said.

  “Ah. Parlez-vous français?” he asked, almost too quickly.

  She turned away from the party to look at him. This guy wasn’t just an average hunk. He had the smile of a man who knew he was more than handsome and irresistible to women. It was a well-practiced smile that bathed Kate in warmth. She felt as if she were the first woman in the entire world to ever see such an expression of welcome. The guy was absolutely gorgeous, what French slang would describe as “un bloc.”

  “Oui.” Kate blushed and cursed the paleness of her skin. She might as well have her feelings written in neon on her forehead. “Je parle un petit peu, mais avec un accent très mauvais,” she told him.

  “Mais non. Pas mal. Vraiment.”

  Handsome as the guy was—and his accent was perfect—Kate was in no mood to test her skills in a foreign tongue right now, though the thought of his tongue provided a momentary distraction from her desperation. She turned and tried once again to open the doors, but they were clearly catch locks, openable only from the inside. “We’re stuck out here,” she said.

  “What an unexpected bonus at an affair like this. Maybe it’s an omen,” Mr. Gorgeous continued. “Maybe we’re not meant to participate in the Bunny Tromboli and Arnie Beckmen nuptials.” He leaned back on the terrace railing, crossed one foot in front of the other, and gave Kate an appreciative once-over. “Personally, I would take that as a gift.”

  Kate was too uptight to flirt or respond to compliments, especially from a guy as practiced at them as he obviously was.

  “You don’t look like you’re from around these parts,” he said, doing a passable Gary Cooper accent. He even looked a little like Cooper, and he probably knew it.

  Kate had always preferred slightly nerdy boyfriends, no matter what Elliot said. They were more real, more sincere. Ever since a really handsome Oxford exchange student had asked her on their first date, “How can I possibly keep from falling in love with you,” and subsequently dated her roommate a week later, she’d been wary of charm. “Et vous?” she asked, just as a test.

  “Oui, je suis un fils de Broooklyn,” he answered with a mischievous smile.

  “Your accent is perfect,” Kate observed admiringly.

  “My French accent or the Brooklyn one?” he asked, and smiled again. Looks like his should be against the law, she thought, and despite herself, she couldn’t resist glancing at his hand, checking for a wedding band. There was none. Not that it mattered to her, she told herself. She didn’t know what this guy was about—the answer was probably rien—and she didn’t have the time to find out.

  Turning, she peered through the glass. She could see that Elliot had found the table and their place cards. She couldn’t see his face, but she could see Bev Clemenza and her husband, Johnny, headed directly toward him. Predictably, Barbie and Bobby Cohen were right behind them. “I have to get in there,” Kate said in a panic. She grabbed the knob and shook the door frantically.

  “Are you a friend of the groom or the bride?” he asked her.

  She knocked again on the window. “Bride,” she answered tersely, then realized how rude it sounded. “Bunny is one of my oldest friends,” she added. Through glass she watched in a paralysis of horror as Elliot shook Bobby’s hand and then Johnny’s.

  “A much older friend, right?” the charmer asked, and moved beside her.

  Kate was not in the mood. “Bunny and I have been friends since grade school,” she told him, waving wildly through the glass, hoping someone would notice the movement. “And yes, in fact, Bunny is older—by almost a month. But we didn’t let that come between us.”

  “So what’s the problem if you miss some of the earlier festivities?”

  “I have to be there to support a friend from my posse.”

  “Your posse?” he asked, and smiled. “Anyone I know?”

  “Bev Clemenza, Bina Horowitz, Barbie Cohen.”

  “You’re kidding!” he began, and he stepped away to get a better look at Kate. She turned to him, just for a moment.

  “C’est incroyable, mais vraiment.” What was it, she wondered, with the friggin’ French? She looked back in at the party. God, the DJ
was starting to play! “You must be one of the infamous Bitches of Bushwick,” he said. “I’ve heard about you girls.”

  “Excuse me?” Kate asked, turning to him in surprise.

  “How come I’ve never met you?” he asked, oblivious to her hostility. Typical narcissist, Kate thought.

  He looked over Kate’s head into the room and pointed. “I already know Bev, Barbie, and, of course, Bunny. All the busy Bs. Who are you? Betty?”

  “My name is Katherine Jameson,” Kate told him.

  “I’m Billy Nolan. Why haven’t I met you before?”

  “I left Brooklyn to go to college.”

  “I left Brooklyn to go to France. What did you do in college? And where have you gone since?”

  “I got my doctorate. I live in Manhattan now.” She paused. “Look, Billy, I have to get in there.”

  “I’m willing to cover my hand with my jacket and bust through the glass, but it . . .”

  “It might be a bit much,” Kate finished for him.

  “They’ll open the doors once it gets too hot in there,” he said, sitting on the balustrade. “Have you noticed how no one from Brooklyn ever outgrows having their name end with an ‘e’ sound? Barbie. Bunny. Johnny. Eddie, Arnie.” He chuckled. “Here in Brooklyn I’m never William or even Bill. I’m Billy.”

  He held out his hand, and Kate couldn’t resist shaking it. She tried to appear casual, despite the thrill that ran up her back, causing hairs on her neck to rise. “Do you prefer Billy to Bill?” she asked.

  “Hey. We’re in Brooklyn,” he answered. “Go with the flow. Here I’m Billy Nolan. And should I call you Dr. Katherine? Kate? Kathy or Katie?”

  “Oh, please, Kate. Not Katie. I hate it,” Kate confessed. “Oh, look, they must be playing their song.”

  To her complete surprise, Billy stood up, grabbed her hand, and started to dance. Before she could make a move, he stopped abruptly. “‘Doo Wah Diddy’ is their song?” He made a face, looking puzzled in a really exaggerated way, his head cocked to the side.

  Kate laughed. “Well, maybe not.”

  “I hope not. If it is, I give the marriage three weeks. You have to at least start with some romance.”

  She bet he did—and that for him romance wore off fast. Kate looked him over. The sun glinted on his golden hair. He was one of those very few lucky Irish with the kind of skin that tanned and made their blue eyes bluer. “So you don’t think you can keep romance going?” Kate asked him.

  “If I thought that, I’d be married.” Billy Nolan laughed, and from nowhere the phrase coup de foudre, a lightning bolt, entered Kate’s mind. He was something—and he knew it, she reminded herself.

  “Ah. The tyranny of commitment,” Kate said, nodding.

  Billy reacted with widened eyes. Then he clutched at his chest. “Now they’re doing the hokey-pokey!” he said, as if that upset him.

  “So unusual at a Brooklyn wedding,” Kate agreed a bit sarcastically. They always played the hokey-pokey or the alley cat or both. She looked in the window, where dozens of old ladies were dancing, their backs to them. “We definitely won’t be able to get their attention now.”

  “Uh-oh. I think I’m in trouble,” Billy said, and began to shake. Kate wondered if he was still reacting to the word commitment. “Good thing you’re a doctor,” he said.

  Kate looked at him suspiciously. “Why is that?”

  “I may need treatment right now. I have a terrible phobia of the hokey-pokey.”

  “Really?” Kate said. She didn’t need this kind of banter now, but as long as they were stuck outside . . . “As I say in my practice, ‘Why do you feel that way?’”

  “It seems obvious,” Billy told her. “Did you ever think about it?”

  “About what?”

  “About the song? I mean, ‘You put your left foot in, you take your left foot out.’ Yadda, yadda. You do the hokey-pokey and you turn yourself around. And that’s what it’s all about.” He did an exaggerated shiver.

  “So?”

  “Well, what if that is what it’s all about? What if life is just putting one foot in front of the other and that’s it? Doesn’t the thought terrify you?”

  Before Kate could decide how tongue in cheek he was being and come up with an answer, the doors at the other end of the terrace flew open and a big guy in a wrinkled blue suit stuck his head out. “Hey, Nolan!” he shouted. “Get your ass in here. Arnie wants to talk to you about the toast.”

  Before he vanished again, Billy shouted: “Larry! Hold that thought and that door!” He gracefully ran the length of the terrace, catching the handle just in time. Then he turned back to Kate, held the door ajar, and said, “After you, chère mademoiselle.”

  Kate felt her cheeks color again but wasted no time stepping through the doors and into the crowded room. She was about to thank Billy when she heard Bev Clemenza’s high-pitched voice screech, “Katie! Katie! Over here,” and didn’t dare look back.

  Chapter Thirteen

  As Kate crossed the room toward her posse, she almost felt a gravitational pull back toward Billy Nolan. She was deeply embarrassed by the strength of her attraction and decided to put it out of her mind. He was just a superficial Brooklyn flirt. And she had an important job to do now.

  “Katie!” Bev called again. Kate didn’t want to see how terrified Bina was going to be. Though it wasn’t her choice, she bitterly regretted that she hadn’t been beside Bina during the first few critical minutes. As she moved through the crowd—now twisting again as they did last summer, or at the last wedding—she silently cursed Billy Nolan and the time on the terrace, diverting as it had been.

  At last she managed to get across the dance floor and could clearly see table nine. Luckily, Bina was still somewhere in the crowd and Elliot had apparently abandoned the table for greater intrigues. There was Bev, her frosted hair slicked back and her visibly pregnant belly stretching her unsuitable Lycra dress. Barbie, with her big hair hanging halfway down her back, was already seated, too. Barbie’s dad, in the jewelry trade, had been more successful than the other friends’ fathers had been. She’d always had more clothes, trips to Florida, weekends in the Poconos, and things that seemed enviable at the time. But now she was a Brooklyn wife, a buyer for a women’s clothing store on Nostrand Avenue. Her husband, Bobby, was in insurance. Kate could look at her now and feel no envy at all.

  Barbie sat beside Bobby, her plunging neckline revealing the half of her breasts not covered by her push-up bra. Kate averted her eyes, but the husbands were, in their own way, more difficult to look at. If each of them hadn’t been wearing a bow tie and cummerbund that matched his wife’s dress, Kate wouldn’t have been able to tell Bev’s and Barbie’s husbands apart. They were nice-looking Brooklyn boys, but neither of them was the kind of handsome that Billy Nolan was. And behind their eyes was none of the genuine intellect that Michael possessed. The thought of Michael trying to communicate at table nine raised goose bumps on her arms. “Hey,” Bev yelled. “Look who’s here.”

  For a moment Kate thought she was being greeted, but Bev was staring past her. Kate turned to see Billy Nolan join the wedding party at the head table, talking to the groom. Bunny looked down from the dais and gave Kate a quick wave and a big, proud smile, while taking Arnie’s arm. Kate waved back, but her eyes strayed to Billy, talking earnestly to the groom, then laughing with him. Well, there would be no laughs at table nine, Kate reminded herself. She forced herself to turn back to her own companions.

  “Wow, Kate, you look great!” Bev said. “Of course, you’re a Scorpio and your ruling planet has come out this month, so no wonder.”

  “Yeah, there’s that. And the sale at agnes b.,” Kate said with a smile. Kate’s simple dress, sleeveless and high collared, with a placket that covered the buttons, was the antithesis of all the overdone outfits of her old friends. If she but knew it, she easily looked the most elegant woman in the room. It was always curious to Kate that while her Brooklyn crew never missed an issue of Vog
ue, Allure, or Cosmo, they never seemed to dress any differently from the way they always had. Or if there had been a change, it seemed merely to be that blouses had gotten tighter and patterns had gotten louder. Bev, despite her belly, was wearing a black-and-lemon tiger-striped Lycra thing. Barbie wore a tight, strapless dress in a Hawaiian floral print, all banana leaves and toucans wreathing (and writhing) around her torso. Kate could never quite decide if their taste was unbelievably bad or whether hers had been permanently repressed by the nuns at Catholic first school.

  “You could use some accessorizing,” Barbie opined by way of a hello. “A scarf, or maybe a pendant.” Barbie herself was wearing an emerald—no doubt real—that was suspended just above her cleavage.

  “I have to wait until I get the chest and the gem for it,” Kate said smoothly.

  “You are so cynical,” Bev snorted. “Such a Scorpio.” Since she had become pregnant, Bev, always a horoscope reader, had really gotten into astrology. Hormones or something, Kate thought. Or perhaps the feeling of being out of control and the comforting compensation of a system to predict the universe. Kate turned to face the wedding hall again, to try to spot Bina and the guys. She was getting nervous about them. At last she saw Elliot making his way across the room. He arrived carrying three drinks.

  “For you, and you, and you,” he said, and gave each of the women a cosmopolitan.