“It’s so different,” he says. “For one thing, I had to drag you to get some blonde highlights. I can’t imagine anybody in the business who doesn’t have them. And then you nearly collapsed when you heard someone was getting her pubic hair dyed.” He shakes his head. “I don’t often meet women with such lofty values.”
Lofty values? An aversion to hydrogen peroxide and all of a sudden, I’m in a league with Nelson Mandela.
I finish off my third cup of cappuccino and my second lemon–poppy seed muffin.
“That’s another thing I like about you,” Kirk says, looking at the few crumbs left on my plate. “You eat absolutely everything and you’re not even bulimic. The only other women I know who scarf down that much food scarf it right back up.”
“I think I have to start introducing you to a different sort of woman,” I say, thinking that if Kate doesn’t last with Owen, Kirk might be a good choice. She did say he was cute after they met at the Food Network. And she has an impressive metabolism.
“Introduce away,” he says. “But now it’s your turn. Is Bradford still in Hong Kong?”
“Yup,” I admit, wishing my turn were over.
“But you two are still together?”
I hesitate. “The party line is that he’s just away on business and we’re getting married,” I say, flashing him my engagement ring. “But I guess I’ll find out if Bradford still wants me when he gets back from his trip.”
“Bigger question is whether you still want him,” Kirk counters.
“Of course I do,” I say quickly.
“Think about it,” Kirk says, leaning forward and putting his elbows on the table, ready for a deep talk. “You’ve told me all the stories. The guy works impossible hours. You’re worried about his ex-wife. And now he’s run off to Hong Kong. I’d say there are a couple of problems.”
I want to tell Kirk that none of those things matter. I love Bradford. When he was around, I convinced myself that all our silly problems were making me unhappy. But maybe I was just making myself unhappy.
“I’m lonely without him,” I admit.
“Lonely isn’t the reason to stay with someone,” Kirk says. “If you need something to do at night, come visit me.”
I groan. “Are you ever going to stop that flirting?”
“You better hope not,” he says with a wink. “Our fabulous chemistry is what pulls those viewers in every week. That and those disgusting desserts you keep coming up with.”
I laugh. “But what’s going to pull Bradford in?”
Kirk rubs his fingers across his stubbled chin. I’ve never figured out how he manages to keep that perfect two-day growth every single day. “Let me be serious for a minute,” he says. “If you want Bradford back all you have to do is go get him. You can have whatever you want, Sara. My advice is that you just have to figure out what that is.”
I pick up a crumb from the plate, lick it off my finger, and look out the window. I think I know what I want. But for now, I’d settle for seeing a bus with our picture on it.
Kate calls Sunday morning and asks me to come over because she can’t leave the house. Her Owen-free beauty weekend has gone awry and she’s all but hysterical.
“Everything’s red and swollen. You won’t even recognize me. My face looks like I went through a car wash in a convertible.”
I’m prepared for the worst, but when I get to the house, it looks to me like all Kate needs is to comb her hair.
“I know beauty is in the eye of the beholder but you look fine to me,” I say, coming into Kate’s darkened kitchen with the special strawberries I’ve brought to cheer her up. Since starting my show, I’ve gotten a little too creative. After dipping the imported berries into a honey glaze, I probably should have quit instead of swirling them into a cup of multicolored sprinkles.
“I look awful,” Kate says, taking my gift plate and skeptically eyeing my latest masterpiece. “And these look as bad as I do. Did you pick them off the rejects pile at Dunkin’ Donuts?”
I’m slightly hurt, but then again, Kate’s clearly out of her mind. She’s taking critical thinking to a new extreme.
“So what happened to you?” I ask, starting to pull up one of the shades to get a better look at her.
“Don’t let in any light!” Kate cries, pulling me away from the window.
Why is she sitting here in the dark? Kate had told me she had a bad injection. Hadn’t occurred to me it was a shot of vampire blood.
“Light sensitive?” I ask.
“Sensitive to being seen,” Kate says. “My left cheek is so puffy I could be storing nuts for the winter.” If I look carefully enough I can make out the slightest bit of swelling on one side. But Kate’s response is more inflamed than anything on her face.
“Who did this to you?” I ask, not quite sure what it is they’ve done.
“Idiot chief resident,” Kate says grimly. “Didn’t I teach her anything? I’ve given hundreds of Hylaform shots and nothing’s ever gone wrong. It’s a natural substance, for god sakes. Plumps out your wrinkles. You inject it as a gel and it draws fluid to the skin to fill out your smile lines. I don’t know how much of the stuff she injected but I’ve got so much water that I could live in the Gobi desert for six months.”
“And why were you doing this in the first place?”
“That wrinkle I told you about,” says Kate, glumly. “I believe in taking immediate action. Let one wrinkle go and pretty soon you have two.”
“Which is reason enough to kill yourself,” I offer. Before Kate can. “But help me out here. I thought you were supposed to use Botox to get rid of wrinkles.”
Kate shakes her head at my ignorance. “Botox if I had wrinkles on my forehead. It paralyzes the muscle. But you never use it for filling in lines. That used to be collagen. Now we use the hyaluronic acids, like Hylaform or Restylane, which last a lot longer. And half a dozen new ones are coming down the pike.” She sighs. “Maybe I should have waited for those.”
“Will they be better?” I ask.
“Who knows,” Kate says. “Everyone’s charging a fortune now for Juvederm. It’s got two things going for it. One, it’s French. And two, it hasn’t been approved by the FDA. Makes it much chicer.”
If it’s chic and French it must be okay. Has anybody ever had a bad word to say about brie, Beaujolais or Gauloise? No, wait a minute. I think Gauloise are cigarettes. Still, I’d rather the FDA spent time looking at a cure for the common cold than focusing on face fillers. But I may be the only person in America who feels that way. More women seem to be upset by a wrinkled face than a runny nose.
“So what else did you do on this beauty weekend before the great tragedy?”
“Just the usual. Salt sea scrub, green tea mask, and Pudabhynga foot ritual.”
“I don’t know if that’s a toe massage, a new sneaker or a country not yet recognized by the UN,” I say.
Kate laughs.
“And can you spell Pudabhynga?” I continue. “Because I’m betting not. And if I’ve learned anything in this world, it’s that you should never have any treatment that you can’t spell.”
She laughs again. “Okay, okay, you’ve done your job,” she says. “Make fun of me.”
“Can I convince you to get dressed?” I ask, although I’m not sure why I’d bother. Her strappy silk Eres nightgown is elegant enough for the Black & White Ball. Except it’s blue.
“I’ll put on clothes, but I’m still not going out,” Kate says, obviously feeling slightly better. We amble up to her bedroom and she disappears into her dressing room. I nosily poke around the pile of books on her bedside table. Some light reading. Two hefty dermatology textbooks, a stack of the New England Journal of Medicine, and a deluxe illustrated copy of The Art of Sexual Ecstasy. I guess she’s making a point of keeping Owen happy.
Though keeping Owen happy may be harder than I think. As I go over to the table on the other side of the bed, I notice that his reading includes a one-page real estate newsletter�
��and a stack of photographs of beautiful women with their bios tacked onto the back. Maybe he’s doing a casting call.
“Owen bankrolling a play?” I ask Kate when she emerges in a sheer blouse and a pair of Seven for All Mankind jeans. The brand is so low-cut that they’re apparently meant for All Mankind except me.
She pauses, and then seeing the photos in my hand she snaps, “What are you doing? Put those down!”
Instead, I turn over the picture of a luscious, long-haired brunette and begin reading from the bio.
Svetlana. Five-foot-eight beauty, PhD, speaks five languages, former gymnast, very flexible. Available for interesting encounters. Prefers threesomes.
Kate snatches the page from my hand and the rest of the photos go flying across her thick Oriental rug. She bends down on her knees to pick them up.
“Now see what you’ve done?” she says, sounding more agitated than she did about her chipmunk cheek.
“I haven’t done anything,” I say. “But what are you and Owen planning on doing?”
Kate stands up and furiously puts her face an inch from mine.
“A threesome!” she says vehemently. “Have a problem with that?”
I let the information sink in and then ponder her question for a moment. “A threesome,” I say slowly.
“You think a threesome’s disgusting, don’t you,” says Kate accusingly.
“I didn’t say that,” I reply carefully. “So I can only guess there’s a little transference going on here and that’s what you think.”
“Thank you, Ms. Freud,” she says snippily, turning to walk out of the room.
I race after her and grab her arm. “Hey Kate, wait. If you and Owen want to have some perverted threesome it’s your business. But why are you getting so mad at me?”
Kate shakes my hand off her arm and glares at me. “Because you were snooping.”
“Mea culpa,” I say, spouting Latin, which is what I tend to do under pressure.
“Apology accepted,” Kate says, calming down slightly. “Now let’s go on to something else.”
“Okay,” I say agreeably. “Next topic. Which girl did you pick for your threesome?”
“Leave me alone,” Kate says. But instead of sounding angry, she covers her face with her hands. I’m not sure if it’s because the sun is filtering in from the skylight directly above her and she wants to hide her face. Or if she’s crying.
Kate’s shoulders are shaking and I go over to put my arms around her. She moves her hands away, revealing a tear-streaked face and red eyes considerably puffier than her Hylaformed cheek.
“Oh honey,” I say, wondering how I can possibly comfort her. “What’s wrong?”
“I want to keep Owen, but I don’t want a threesome,” she says, gulping back her tears.
“Is that what it takes to keep him?”
“I don’t know,” Kate admits. “This all came up the other night when he brought home the pictures. He was so casual about laying it all on the table that I was almost too embarrassed to object. And then he was disappointed that I didn’t immediately jump at the chance.”
“He’s done this before?” I ask, thinking just how naÏve I really am.
“I guess,” she says, wiping her eyes on the sleeve of her sheer blouse. “He says he likes variety now and then. Threesomes. The occasional fling. When he and Tess were married, they had a little understanding. But I’m not so sure I really understand.”
“If he likes variety, why did he move in with you?” I ask.
“Because he loves me!” she wails. “More than he’s ever loved anyone in his life! But just because you’ve finally found your filet mignon doesn’t mean you can never again have a cheeseburger.”
I know she’s quoting him. But this isn’t about burgers and steaks. It’s about Owen feeding her a whole bunch of baloney. “Maybe when you’re as rich and powerful as Owen you think you can do whatever you want. But I do think it’s disgusting. If he loves you, he shouldn’t be treating you this way.” I stop myself, not wanting to give her a lecture. “Anyway, what are you going to do?”
“I haven’t decided,” says Kate, who seems finally to have realized that she wasn’t Owen’s first affair. And she probably won’t be his last. And then, looking at me with hurt, mournful eyes, she asks, “What would you do?”
I may have trouble making sense of my own relationship, but this one is crystal clear to me.
“I’d be out of here in a split second,” I say without missing a beat. “A guy like Owen may want filet mignon, but he doesn’t deserve it. I wouldn’t even let him eat cake.”
I’m walking briskly to school on Monday morning when I get a call from James.
“I can’t believe you’re right outside my window!” he practically screams into my cell phone.
“I’m not. I’m on my way to my art class at Spence,” I say, striding along the Upper East Side and knowing that James’s new apartment is at least thirty blocks away.
“But I’m looking right at you,” he says. “A bus is stopped in front of my building. I’m staring at your beautiful face.”
Instead of being pleased, I’m irked that the Food Network must have switched our ads from the Lexington line to First Avenue without telling me. If only I’d known. Kirk and I could have found much better cappuccino over there.
“This is really exciting,” James says, before we hang up. “I’m so proud of you.”
At school, I pull out the art supplies for my fifth graders. Today I’m having them draw in the style of Mondrian. With everything else going on in my life, Mondrian’s simple blocks of color are about all I can handle.
But the girls rush into my classroom with something else on their minds.
“You didn’t tell us you’re a star!” says one girl named Sadie, jumping up and down and shrieking, as only an eleven-year-old girl can.
“I watched your show yesterday,” another announces, joining her in front of my desk. “Your costar is hot.”
“Is he your boyfriend?” asks a third.
“No, Ms. Turner’s engaged to one of my dad’s partners,” says Sadie. “But he left her to go to Hong Kong.”
“Then if he left, she can definitely hook up with that hot guy,” says another in the know.
“You can get him,” says one of the girls, turning to me. “You’re blonde now and you’re famous. Boys like that.”
“We like it, too!” says Sadie. Who I now know is the daughter of Bradford’s partner. And who I’m hoping isn’t about to report to her father that the lovely art teacher Ms. Turner is hooking up with the daytime soap stud. “Now that you’re famous you’re our very favorite teacher.”
My, my. Apparently the girls are a lot more interested in my class than I’d thought. Although I’m not sure they’re learning the right lesson. I went into teaching because it’s a noble profession. But in terms of getting the kids’ respect, being on television wins hands down. You don’t get much money or recognition for influencing young minds. And you certainly don’t get a good table at the Four Seasons. But make a Snickers soufflé on a cable channel and the world is your oyster.
I try to get the class settled down with their red, blue and yellow paints so they can make their faux Mondrians but they have other things on their minds.
“Is it fun being a celebrity?” asks one of the girls.
It’s hard to think of myself as a celebrity. And I want the girls to know that making a change in the world is what really matters. Like James tried to do in Patagonia. Or Berni is doing right now.
“I am having fun,” I blurt our exuberantly. “I love working with Kirk. I loved the photo shoot. I love the phone calls when friends recognize me. I love being blonde. It’s just the best.” I certainly have my values in order, don’t I?
The girls giggle. Truth is if I said anything else, they’d know I was lying. I’m not the only celebrity in the school.
“But I also love art,” I tell them. “And what I really want to talk about toda
y is modern art, Mondrian and minimalism.” Amazingly, they’re willing. We get into a spirited discussion of art that’s about art. Pretty highfalutin for eleven-year-olds. But if they’re mature enough to be talking about hooking up, they’re ready to wax philosophical about painting.
The girls take out their paper and gouache paints and start creating their Mondrian interpretations. I watch them, feeling pretty good. I give a few autographs, but I also manage to teach something. Best of both worlds.
I’m making my way down the school steps at the end of the day when a man calls out to me from the lobby.
“You look even prettier in person than you do on the bus,” I hear him say. I do a double take and almost trip on the bottom step.
“James, what are you doing here?” I ask in total surprise.
“I just wanted to bring you a little something to celebrate your TV success,” he says. “I’m so excited for you.”
I walk over to him, seeing the pleased smile on his face. A gaggle of girls gather around us as James hands me a package wrapped in hand-stamped brown paper, tied with a raffia bow.
“What is it?” I ask, wondering how I can shoo our audience away.
“Dumb question!” calls out one of the girls. “Just open it!”
She has a point. Why ask what’s inside a present when the answer is one tear of a ribbon away? At least in most cases. I go to rip into the package, but this ribbon isn’t budging. The girls are peering and I’d like to cut the scene short, but I know nobody’s leaving to go home until I get the gift unwrapped.
“Can you help me?” I ask James.
“Of course,” he says, pulling out a Swiss Army knife that has so many gadgets it could probably do everything from cutting your nails to clearing a forest. And knowing James, he’s probably used it for both. With one swift motion, he disposes of the raffia and hands the package back to me.
I carefully remove the brown wrapping and pull out what looks to be an oversized book written on heavy parchment paper. I flip through the pages, and while it appears to be recipes, I don’t recognize a word, never mind a measurement.
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