Kate never stopped being astonished by the way the women passed over cruel taunts without a ruffled hair. She watched as they sat down and checked out the apartment around them as if they’d just stepped into a den of unimaginable iniquity. It was a big adventure for four girls from Bushwick to finally see the inside of a homosexual couple’s apartment—even Bina hadn’t really had a chance to look around the last time she was there. Kate could only imagine what they thought they were going to find. And she wasn’t going to point out that Bunny’s uncle Tony and Barbie’s youngest brother were most certainly gay but hadn’t come out. Anyway, it must have been reassuring to see that there was nothing terrifying or exotic about Elliot’s home—thanks to Brice, it was all done in stylish taste (though the Beanie Babies were a little camp). The situation made Kate smile. She knew how frightening good taste could be to someone from Bushwick.
They all sat on various perches like colorful birds with big mouths. Toucans, maybe, Kate thought. Despite their provincialism (and some morbid curiosity), it was really moving to see that all the girls had shown up for Bina. Kate loved them for that.
Barbie, of course, was the most brazen. She looked around as if she were assessing everything. “How much does a place like this cost in Manhattan?” she needed to know.
“It’s a steal,” Brice obliged willingly. “It’s stabilized. We’re still paying only eighteen a month.”
“Eighteen dollars a month for rent?” Bina asked in utter amazement. “My grandmother’s apartment on Ocean Parkway is rent-controlled, but she pays sixty-six bucks a month.”
The better-informed Bunny was not as confused. “Jeez,” she spat in disgust, “for eighteen hundred dollars a month, you’d get three bedrooms and a balcony in Brooklyn.”
“Honey,” Brice replied, “call me crazy, but I’d rather have a closet in Manhattan than a palazzo in Prospect Park.”
“I thought you guys were all out of the closet,” Barbie said, grinning and obviously pleased with herself.
“Sweetie, some of us were never in it,” Brice said. There was silence for a moment.
Almost desperately, Kate spoke first. “Well, isn’t this nice?” she chirped, turning to Elliot as if to say “I told you so.” “Finally, all of my girlfriends together in one room.”
Bina let out a rather nervous giggle in response, but Bev just agreed. “You have a lot of girlfriends, Kate. But then you’re a Scorpio. Scorpio women always have lots of girlfriends.”
“And lots of boyfriends,” Elliot added sotto voce.
“So you have some plan to kill Jack the scumbag?” Barbie asked.
“Not exactly,” Elliot told her. He put down his fork, stood up, and self-consciously stepped next to the easel. He looked first to Bina and then back to Kate. He placed one hand on the first chart, turned it over so they could all see it, and said, “As Bina knows, I made an incredible mathematical discovery while we were at Bunny’s wedding.”
“Like what?” asked Bev.
“Probability,” Elliot said. “Some events can be predicted because of constancy and reliability of past data.”
“Huh!” Bina said. Kate suppressed a giggle. Poor Elliot.
“This helps us take down Jack the scumbag?” Barbie asked.
“Hey, what good would that do anyone?” Elliot asked. “What if I told you that instead of revenge, I’ve found a surefire way to get Jack to propose to Bina?” he asked the room. “And marry her.”
Bina dropped her coffee spoon, Bev choked on a mouthful of bagel, and Barbie and Bunny began to murmur together appreciatively. Only Kate let out a snort of derision. “Elliot!” she warned. Then she turned to Bina. “Remember, this is just a theory, a suggestion, Bina. It may not be correct. You don’t have to pay any attention to it. Personally, I think it’s a lot of hocus-pocus.”
Elliot looked down at her from his full height. “Kate,” he said, “I think we all know your views on magic. So it’s a good thing this has nothing to do with it. This is mathematical theory put into practice.”
“What’s wrong with you, Katie?” Bev asked. “Such a spoilsport.”
“What are you actually talking about?” Barbie asked.
Elliot nodded and pointed to the chart and said, “These statistics are . . . well, they are just incredible. But they are absolutely accurate. I’ve done a bit of research and worked out the probability, and you’ll see that even with a differential for the—”
“Is he a college teacher or something?” Bina whispered to Kate.
Kate snorted. “He’s an obsessive neurotic gone compulsive.”
“I know. Isn’t he wonderful?” said Brice, placing his hand over his heart.
Elliot was in his teaching mode and ignored them both. “Remember how Bev and Barbie both said that they had once dated that Billy guy who had just dumped Bunny?” He turned to her. “No offense.”
“None taken,” Bunny said. “When I dated him I was a size four—and weighed one hundred and sixteen pounds. My personal best.”
“Well, we both got dumped by him, too,” Bev added.
“Which was just fine with me,” Barbie assured everyone. “The guy’s a jerk.”
“That’s right,” Elliot said, nodding to Barbie, “and right after that you met Bobby and got married.”
“Well, it wasn’t right after. It was at least three weeks.” Barbie paused, then added, “And Bev got married to Johnny right after she got dumped.”
“My Johnny and I had our moons in Venus. It was fated,” Bev observed. No one paid any attention to her.
“So at the wedding, Elliot . . . well, began to snoop,” Brice explained.
“I collected data,” Elliot corrected Brice with dignity.
“Did I tell you about Gina Morelli and Nancy Limbacher, Elliot?” Bev asked, already eager to be part of the plan. “Billy dated and dumped them, too.”
“I found that out on my own. Both of them married right after Billy Nolan. They were at Bunny’s wedding.”
“Sure. I worked with Gina, and Nancy is best friends with my cousin Marie,” Bunny said.
“Marie Genetti?” Elliot asked. “Billy dated her, too.”
“He dated Marie? You’re kidding. She never told me!” Bunny exclaimed.
“So now we know that Billy Nolan has dated and dumped every woman from here to Albany. Who cares?” Kate spat out angrily. She thought of him charming her on the terrace. And to think that she’d been attracted to an idiot like him.
“Bina should, and as her friend, so should you,” Elliot told her. “I did some digging, and I made some calls. Everyone this guy drops gets married.”
“How did you find that out?” Barbie asked. Kate smiled. As the professional gossip of the group, she must be feeling a bit defensive.
“He pretended he was doing an article for Jane magazine,” Brice told her proudly.
“You’re a regular Columbo,” Bev said admiringly.
Elliot laughed and acknowledged Bev’s compliment with a slight bow. Then he turned back to his first chart. “Look at this,” he said, pointing. “All five of these women dated William Nolan.” On the chart were the names of each woman and the date, time, and place of their first encounter with Billy Nolan. “Now here,” he said, flying to the next chart, “is a time line that follows the period of each relationship. Please note that where Billy drops out there is a segment of between three point two weeks and four point seven months before each woman marries.” The room was silent. Even Kate was momentarily impressed.
“Was the bastard going out with Gina Morelli the same time he was dating me?” Bunny asked.
“From the data I’ve collected, he only goes out with one woman at a time. Anyway, that doesn’t matter,” Elliot said. “The point is”—he indicated the first chart—“soon after each woman got dumped by Mr. Nolan, each met or returned to another man—and sometimes, as in Bunny’s case, she was introduced to that man by Billy himself. In all cases, that very next man was the one they married.” He stopp
ed and looked at Kate and the Bitches with a broad smile, as if his message were perfectly clear.
“Wow, congratulations, Elliot—it’s quite an achievement,” Bev said, more serious than was necessary.
“Right. Now you qualify as the biggest gossip in all five boroughs,” Kate said coldly.
“Yeah. What’s the big deal?” Bunny asked. “We all know that Billy Nolan is the biggest player that has ever lived.”
“But you didn’t know this,” Elliot said, and flipped over a third chart. On it was a row of fourteen names with a column listing the time each had dated Billy and another column with wedding dates beside each name—except two. “It isn’t most of the women Billy Nolan dates. It’s all of the women Billy Nolan dates.”
The women examined the list.
“Don’t you get it?” Elliot asked. “Do you know the statistical likelihood of this phenomenon?” He flipped to his next chart. “I’ve worked it out with and without the standard deviation, the probability ranges from one in six million three hundred and forty-seven to one in eighty-two million six hundred and forty-three.”
Kate wondered about the two out of the fourteen but figured she’d get her chance to debunk all this later.
“I don’t get it,” Bunny admitted. “I don’t think even Billy Nolan could date and dump eighty-two million women. It’s just not humanly possible. Are there even that many women in New York?”
“He doesn’t have to date eighty-two million women,” Barbie told Bunny dismissively, “he just has to date Bina. Right, Elliot?”
“Really? Really, Elliot?” Bina asked, her voice filled with more hope and animation than it had since the afternoon of the manicure.
“Oh, Jesus H. Christ,” Kate said, no longer able to control her disgust. She stood up and started to pace around the room. “Elliot, you know I don’t approve of this whole scheme. It’s just ridiculous.”
“Be quiet, Kate,” Bev said, “I’m trying to understand this.” She narrowed her eyes and looked at Elliot. “You’re saying that anyone who dates Billy gets married right afterwards?” she asked.
“Everyone?” Bina asked.
Kate felt she couldn’t let this go on. Instead of spending the morning in bed with Michael, then reading the Times together and having a nice meal before they parted, she was stuck with this bunch of maniacs and a berserk plan. She never thought any of them would buy it. “It’s a bunch of superstitious crap,” she told Bina and the rest of them.
“This isn’t about superstition,” Elliot insisted, sounding hurt. “These are the facts.”
Bunny kept staring at the charts and now tried to sound smart. She used to do it in sixth grade to about the same effect. “Are you saying that the odds against Bina ever getting married are about eighty-two million to one unless she dates Billy Nolan?” she asked Elliot.
“Well,” Elliot said, pretending to give the ridiculous question some thought, “that’s not exactly what I’m saying. I can’t compute the odds of Bina getting married. I don’t have enough data. But the odds are eighty-two million to one in her favor if she does date Billy.”
Kate saw Bina pale and felt her own face grow warm with anger and agitation. She was about to speak when Barbie stood up and brushed off her skirt.
“Then it’s settled,” Barbie said. “Bina has to go out with Dumping Billy. That’s all there is to it. After all, what has she got to lose?”
Bina stood up, too, but she hesitated before she spoke. “Elliot, I appreciate all the time you must have put in this, but I’m not interested in dating anyone except Jack.” Kate watched as tears filled her eyes. “I just want Jack back.”
“This is a way to get Jack, Bina,” Elliot said. “You date Billy, then get dumped, then see Jack and . . . voilà!”
Kate turned to Bina. “This is all ridiculous. I didn’t know it was quite this insane, but I promised him I’d let him show you—”
“Why is it insane?” Bev asked.
“Well, it’s a long shot that we could get Billy to go out with Bina in her current state,” Barbie said, then narrowed her eyes speculatively. “But if we did some work on her . . .”
“Just look at the numbers, sweetheart. The numbers don’t lie,” Brice said to Bina. He took her hand in his, but he was watching Elliot with the look of a proud mother on his face.
Kate was sure that Bina, monogamous for so long, wouldn’t consider this nonsense.
“They all got married?” Bina asked Elliot in disbelief.
“Yes. Well, to be totally accurate, one joined a convent, and one came out as a lesbian,” Elliot confessed, “but both are hooked up, one to God and one to her girlfriend. So that makes fourteen for fourteen.”
“Isn’t he wonderful?” Brice asked no one in particular.
“He’s absolutely nuts,” Kate snapped. “Bina, don’t even consider it.”
“We’d have to time it so that Jack was back at the strategic moment—just after the breakup,” Bev said.
“And to be safe, we have to make sure he drops her,” Elliot cautioned. “I have no indication of what happens to his partner after she dumps him.”
Bev and Barbie laughed. “No one dumps him,” Barbie said.
“Of course, he’s gorgeous,” Bev said (it sounded like “Ov cous, he’s gowjus”). “But that doesn’t explain it. That only explains why he gets women.”
“And probably why he dumps them,” Elliot said.
“No,” Bunny told him. “To be fair, he is always nice, and he seems . . . well, I don’t know.” She thought for a minute. “Like really disappointed when things don’t work out.”
Elliot took a deep breath. “I don’t really care about his psychology,” he told them. “The key question is why women marry right after he leaves them.”
Kate wondered, too.
But Bina wasn’t listening; she was staring at the charts before her. Kate knew how desperate she was. Elliot, seeing that he had Bina hooked, asked, “Do you want a detailed cross section?”
Kate could see Bina’s love for Jack and the longing for him written all over her face. “I don’t need one. I’ll do it!” Bina exclaimed.
“Bina!” Kate cried, shocked.
“Then it’s all settled,” Bunny said, and stood up. “I gotta go back to Arnie.”
“Well, we’re not exactly finished,” Barbie said in the tone that had driven fear into many preteen girls in their junior high days. “He doesn’t go out with just anyone. He looks for a certain . . . style.” She preened for a moment. “Do you think Billy would go out with Bina?”
“Barbie!” Kate turned from Bina to Barbie, shocked yet again. Despite the usual cruelty of the girls to one another, this went too far.
“The boy is certainly hot,” Brice said to himself, pulling out the Polaroid from the wedding. He put it on the table.
“Very hot,” Bev said, also looking at the photo while pretending to fan herself.
“Good point,” Bunny agreed. “Maybe Bina would be out of her league.”
Before Kate could jump to Bina’s defense, her friend took control. “I’m still in the room!” Bina suddenly exploded. “Why are you talking about me like I’m not here?”
“We’re sorry, Bina,” Kate said, apologizing for the group. She could feel her friend’s mortification at having been reduced to a statistic. And for what? All she really wanted was to be with Jack.
“We didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, honey,” Bev said, and put her arms around her friend as best she could manage.
“Look, no one said you couldn’t become Billy’s type,” Barbie said by way of an apology.
“Right. We only wanted to help, not to hurt,” Elliot added.
“And to make it up to you . . .” Brice began to mime a drumroll. “A makeover!”
Once the magic word had been spoken, Kate knew there was no going back.
Chapter Eighteen
Kate sat in her office and tried to put the problems of Bina, Jack, Billy, and what for a moment she w
as thinking of as “the rest of that nonsense” out of her mind. Bina’s makeover and the idiocy of getting Billy to date her was not as important as the problem facing her at the moment. Jennifer Whalen, a pretty and neatly dressed nine-year-old, was sitting in front of her doing what she seemed to do best.
“So my father opens the door to the limousine and Britney Spears steps out. And she came into our building and right up to our apartment. She even had dinner with us. We had meat loaf. And if you don’t believe me, she gave me this bracelet.” Jennifer pulled the elastic of the bead bracelet she had around her wrist. “See? I have proof.”
Kate withheld a sigh. She knew there was no point in discussing this particular lie or any of the other whoppers that Jennifer had told not only her classmates, but also her teachers. The question was why Jennifer needed to lie. Did she crave attention? She was a middle child, with an older sister at Andrew Country Day and a year-old brother at home. Had the baby usurped her position in the family constellation?
Or was it feelings of inferiority? Kate knew that both Jennifer and her sister were receiving financial aid because their family, though well-off by Kate’s childhood standards, were only middle-class and could not afford full tuition for both girls. Maybe Jennifer felt inferior to her friends simply because their homes were bigger, their school vacations were often spent in Aspen, the Hamptons, or even Europe, and Jennifer couldn’t compete.
The worst-case scenario, of course, was that Jennifer might be showing early signs of a delusional problem. However, as Kate looked at her, she felt that she was studying a healthy, outgoing little girl who doubtless knew the difference between fantasy and reality.
Kate didn’t want Jennifer’s lies to continue, but neither did she want to argue with her. She had listened quietly without showing much reaction. She could, of course, recommend a therapist for the child, but she and Jennifer had a good rapport. This business was always tricky, but Kate thought of a quote from A. S. Neil: “Sometimes you simply have to trust your instinct with children. Analysis with them is an art, not a science.” She decided to take a chance.
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