“Oh, not really, I-”
“Don’t be silly. You have to dress the part. And I’ve got just the thing.” Out of her bag came another album, this one filled with designer sketches. “Look here, darling.” She pointed to a drawing of a woman in a yellow suit with black lapels and wide shoulders.
“I think that’s a little much, Mom.”
“Nonsense. I’ll get it for you. You deserve it! And there are others.”
Soon we had pushed our dinners away and were poring over sketches that now lined the table. I didn’t have the strength to fight her enthusiasm, and somehow, I agreed to have three suits made for me by an Italian designer called Pravadelli. After an hour of this, my mother abruptly claimed jet lag and said she needed to get home. “I’m playing bridge tomorrow with Marjorie and Carol,” she said offhandedly.
“Aunt Marjorie and Aunt Carol?” My mother, like me, had two sisters, but they both lived on the North Shore, and they weren’t close, due in large part to the fact that the sisters had disapproved of my father so many years ago. I’d often told her that she should make up with them and get back in each other’s lives.
“Yes, you were right about that, too. No need to hold grudges.”
“That’s great, Mom.” My mother needed her sisters, her new friends, but I needed her too. And yet for some reason, I felt her slipping away.
When I got home, I slid my key into the lock, anticipating the cool, inky darkness of the condo. I would put on my red checked pajamas that had been washed to a soft sheen, I would make myself a cup of tea and I would read for a few quiet minutes in the big chair, under a soft pool of light. Later, I would slip into the bed, already warmed by Chris’s sleeping body. I nearly sighed with anticipation.
But our place was bathed in light, and there was Chris, wearing an apron over sweatpants and a T-shirt.
“Hi, sweetie,” he said. He crossed the kitchen, wiping his hands on a towel, and kissed me.
“What are you doing up?”
“Making you crème brûlée.”
“Now?”
“Sure, what’s wrong with now?”
“It’s Tuesday night, and it’s practically midnight.”
“Only the best for my wife. It’ll be done in five minutes.” He spooned a fluffy concoction into small white dishes. “So tell me about your mom. I want to hear everything.”
“She’s good. She’s great actually.”
“And how about you? I know you’ve missed her. Was it nice to see her?”
“Yeah, sure,” I said. I felt weary from these questions, all of them designed to let us talk for hours, when for the last few years we’d barely spoken for minutes at a time.
Chris switched on a mini blowtorch and went at the top of the desserts, turning them a golden brown. “Chris,” I said, over the loud, humming noise of the torch. “Thank you. This so sweet, but I can’t eat crème brûlée now.”
“What’s that?” He kept at his work.
“Honey, I just had pasta with my mom. I really can’t eat anything else.”
“Voilà!” Chris said in a goofy way. He handed me a dish of crème brûlée piled high with red raspberries.
“Did you hear me?” I pined for my fantasy of the cool, silent apartment and me alone in it. It seemed I rarely had a second to myself anymore.
“What?” He picked up a dish for himself and dug into it with a spoon. “Mmm, it’s perfect. You’ll love it.”
“Chris, thank you. I appreciate it, but I simply can’t eat it. I’m full, and I want to go to bed.”
“Well, in that case,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “I’ll take you there.”
“No, Chris, not tonight.” I couldn’t believe the words coming from my mouth, but we’d had so much sex over the last week that I really wanted a quiet evening.
“C’mon, have a few bites.” He handed me a spoon. “I made it for you,” he said with his mouth half full.
“I know, baby. I really do appreciate it, but I just can’t.”
“Sure you can.”
“No, I can’t!” My voice shot up a few decibels, surprising both of us.
Chris stared at me with the look of a forlorn child.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“I just want to make you happy,” he said softly.
“You do.”
Chris shook his head.
“You do,” I repeated.
God, what was happening here? I’d longed for some attention from my husband, but I’d gotten constant passion and attentiveness. It was too much. A real marriage had to exist somewhere in the middle, didn’t it? But how could I explain this now to Chris, whose eyes were filled with pain?
I reached out and squeezed his hand, then I lifted the spoon and broke the hard shell of brûlée.
chapter nine
A round noon on Wednesday, I called Alexa from my cell phone. I stood outside my office building on Michigan Avenue, surrounded by bored smokers and workers hustling to run errands during lunch.
“Hola,” a woman’s voice answered.
“Is Alexa there?” I squeezed the phone tight. I half hoped she wasn’t around, since I had no idea what to say or even why I was calling, except that I couldn’t shake my guilt.
“Un momento.”
Some scuffling sounds, some Spanish being spoken, and then the phone being picked up. “Alexa Villa.”
I squeezed the phone tighter. The optimistic, professional tone of Alexa’s voice made me feel worse. She’d obviously been hoping this was a work call, maybe someone responding to one of her résumés. She pronounced her last name like “vee-ya,” I noticed; while at Harper Frankwell, everyone had said “villa” like a villa in France.
“Alexa, it’s Billy.”
Silence.
“Look, I’m sorry to bother you, it’s just…” It’s just what?
“What do you want, Billy?” Her voice had lost the cheery professionalism.
“Could we meet? Maybe for coffee?”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Because I want to apologize, I guess.”
“You already did that.”
“Please.”
More silence. Finally, she spoke again. “I can meet you in forty-five minutes.”
“Oh.” I was surprised she’d accepted, surprised she’d suggested today.
She snorted. “Don’t worry about it. You have to work, right?”
“No, it’s okay. That’s great. Where?”
“Do you know the Bongo Room?”
“Yeah, but-” I was about to point out that the Bongo Room was all the way over on Milwaukee Avenue. I might as well forget work for the afternoon. But then I remembered the legions of people living in Alexa’s apartment, counting on her. “That’s fine.”
Forty-five minutes later, I was seated in a booth in the restaurant, a funky place with walls painted purple, orange and green. Alexa arrived, wearing dark jeans, a crisp white blouse and a silver necklace with a pendant shaped like a leaf. Her dark hair tumbled around her shoulders. She looked human, pretty. So different from her office look.
“Hey,” she said, slipping into the seat across from me. Her tone was light, but her expression was hard.
“Hi.”
Now what to do? I looked at the menu.
“Have you eaten here?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Always wanted to.”
“The French toast is delicious.”
The waitress stepped up to our table, and I ordered the French toast, even though I preferred pancakes, and a cup of decaf coffee.
“I’ll have the same,” Alexa said, “but make mine regular.”
When the waitress was gone, we stared at each other. “I wanted to apologize,” I said.
She shook her head. “You did that when you came to my house.”
“Just hear me out.” I sipped my water, wishing the coffee would come, something else I could do with my hands. “I do believe you had some-” how to put this lightly? “-things you n
eeded to work on in the office.”
Her expression was blank.
“And you and I never got on very well,” I continued. “However, I shouldn’t have fired you. I admit that. And I wanted to say I’m sorry. I tried to get you your job back, but-”
“The company has a policy that it doesn’t rehire people terminated for cause.” She said this swiftly and without expression.
“That’s right.” Which made me feel even worse. The girl could quote company policy chapter and verse. “So, I guess I don’t know what else to do, except to once again say I’m sorry.”
She blinked a few times, then her eyes shot to the table. “Well, I’ll admit, I didn’t make it easy for you. I can be such a bitch, especially when I’m envious of someone.”
“Why would you be envious?”
She shrugged. “You seem so smart and together, and I knew you had a shot at being a VP, even though I tried to piss you off and make you think you didn’t.”
“Wow. I didn’t know that.”
The coffee came then. I eagerly pulled the cup to me and began doctoring it with drops of cream poured with scientific precision, and a packet of Equal, which I took elaborate pains to shake and snap before pouring every bit into my mug. Alexa sipped hers black.
“I have a favor to ask,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“Help me get another job.”
Alexa reached into her bag and pulled out a file. Inside, she had lists and graphs and charts, all apparently cross-referencing the PR firms in town, along with their clients and staffing needs. “I’ve done some research.”
“I see that.”
We talked for the next hour, picking apart the French toast, which was, incidentally, topped with an utterly sinful dollop of butter mixed with crushed Heath bars. We discussed the other firms in the city, gossiped about the people Alexa might contact and what we’d heard about them. This was the first time I’d had a real conversation with the girl, and I found that she was smart and strangely funny in a deadpan way.
“I’ve considered suicide,” she said at one point, causing me to cough up a chunk of Heath bar butter. “But,” she continued without glancing at me, “I’ve decided that the only way I’d want to go is death by overdose of Mint Milanos, and have you ever noticed how expensive those cookies are?”
My coughing turned to laughter. But I felt worse and worse, because as we brought the conversation back to other PR firms, I realized that I’d looked into all those firms myself.
“I have to tell you,” I said at last, “I don’t know how many firms are hiring.”
Alexa pushed her plate away. “I know. But I have to try.”
“Of course.”
“You know what I’d really like to do?” Her face brightened a little. “Open my own firm. One that caters to Hispanic businesses. There isn’t anyone like that in Chicago.”
“That would be amazing!”
She shook her head. “But that takes money. And I don’t have it.”
My guilt seeped further into my bones. “Maybe someday?” I said weakly.
She sat up taller. Her earlier hardened expression had returned. “Look, thanks for talking. If you hear anything or talk to anyone…”
“I’ll let you know,” I finished for her.
She took out her wallet and withdrew a twenty.
“I got it,” I said.
“No.” All traces of the friendliness I’d seen during our talk vanished. “I don’t take handouts.”
“Okay.” I fumbled around for my own wallet.
She dropped the twenty on the table. “See you,” she said. She turned and left.
I hailed a cab and gave the office address, filled once again with guilt about Alexa, but also feeling a low-grade anxiety that seemed to permeate everything these days. I called Tess, but she was on her way to a Mommy & Me yoga class and couldn’t talk. I tried my own mom, but I got the Ta-ta! message again. I’d talked with her this morning, but our chat had been overwhelmed by her social calendar-tennis with friends in Barrington, shopping with her sisters, dinners with neighbors. I called Chris at work. He was in a deposition, I was told by his secretary, but she was to interrupt if I called.
“Oh, no, don’t do that,” I said, but it was too late.
A minute later, Chris was on the phone. “Hi there,” he said, “I’m so glad to hear your voice.”
“You, too, but you didn’t have to come out of your dep.”
“Shit, we’ve been in there for four hours already. We needed a break. How’s your day going?”
“Well, I just had lunch with Alexa.”
“How in hell did that happen?”
I paid the cabbie and slid onto the street. “I called her.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I’m still feeling guilty.”
“Billy, you’ve got to get over that. You had every right to fire her.”
I felt a rush of gratitude for Chris’s blind support of everything Billy, but I knew he wasn’t correct on this one. And somewhere deep inside, I felt irked at that support. I wondered if I confessed to a fake murder if he would support me so blindly. I had a sneaking suspicion he would.
“I had the right to fire her, given my new position,” I said, “but I still shouldn’t have done it. I got drunk with power. It wasn’t the proper decision.”
“Of course it was.”
I sighed.
“Well, let me make you dinner,” Chris said. “That will make you feel better. And then I’ll give you a bubble bath, and we’ll talk it all through.”
I smiled a sad smile as I stood on Michigan Avenue in front of my office building. How I loved my husband. But I wanted Chris to be honest with me, the way Tess was. I wanted him to smack me upside the head (metaphorically, of course) when I fucked up. Instead, he seemed to talk and talk and talk without ever acknowledging that I made a misstep somewhere. It was as if someone had slipped Chris a pill that made him unconditionally supportive-something I’d always wanted in theory. In reality, I wanted less intensity and more authenticity.
“I might have to do something for work,” I answered. After taking two hours out of my day to eat at the Bongo Room, I definitely had work awaiting.
“You’re sure? I’m supposed to be here late on this merger, but I can get out early for you.”
“No, no. You do your thing. I’ll see you later.”
At seven-thirty, I roamed the halls of Harper Frankwell in search of coffee and found Evan in the kitchen, pouring his own.
He smiled when he saw me. He held up the pot.
I nodded. It was blissfully quiet in the office right then, with only the hum of nearby computers.
Evan poured coffee into a mug and handed it to me. Our fingers touched briefly. My belly clenched. We stood silently in the kitchen, drinking our coffee. Neither of us had spoken, and it was so nice to simply coexist at that moment, free of the constant talking and analyzing that had characterized my relationship with Chris lately. Of course, the talking and analysis and sex had been exactly what I wanted, but getting it overnight and without explanation had the effect of shopping for your own birthday present.
At last, Evan spoke. “This coffee sucks. I need a beer.”
“Heading to Wrightwood Tap?”
“Nah. I’ve got a party. Want to come?” He dumped his coffee in the sink.
“A party on a Wednesday night?”
“It’s somebody’s birthday. And this is an interesting crew. They don’t care if it’s Sunday morning.”
“Where is it?”
“Old Town. Wells Street.”
Close to my condo. “I don’t know. I should probably keep working.” The prospect made me want to cry with boredom.
Evan took a step closer. “Come with me.”
Tess’s warning flew through my head. Be real careful. But I could handle myself at a party. There would be other people around, and I could escape and walk home whenever I wanted.
�
��I’ll get my purse,” I said.
The apartment on Wells Street was filled with about twenty people, most of them dressed in black, most of them young and impossibly hip, the type of people who slept until three in the afternoon and hit the clubs after a very late, very light dinner. A number of people had martinis in hand. There was the unmistakable scent of pot in the air.
“Billy, this is my friend, Carly.” Evan introduced me to a small woman wearing a black, spaghetti-strap dress. She had straight blond hair, parted in the middle to show the smooth skin of her face and light blue eyes ringed with dark liner.
We shook hands. “How do you two know each other?” I asked.
“Evan and I used to fuck,” Carly said.
“Oh.” I felt a little zing of shock and then envy toward this tiny blond thing. I couldn’t help imagining the two of them together. They must have looked amazing, with their blond hair, their smooth skin close together. I flushed at the thought.
Evan and Carly cracked up at my reaction.
“Sorry to be crude,” Carly said, “but let me explain. When we were together, Evan kept asking me if I’d ever been with a woman.”
I glanced at Evan, who shrugged. “Two women together-that’s hot,” he said. “I just wanted to hear about it.”
“But it backfired on him,” Carly said. “He got me to thinking, and then the thinking got me to doing.”
“And the rest is history,” said a tall woman, entering our circle. She laid a soft arm around Carly’s shoulders. She had black ringletted hair and a voluptuous body.
Carly, Evan and the woman laughed.
“So you, two?” I pointed a finger between Carly and the woman.
“Yep,” the woman said. “It’s been four years.” She leaned down and kissed Carly on the forehead.
“Wow, that’s great.” I said. My spirits buoyed with the thought that Carly was off the market.
“One of these two should have introduced me,” the tall woman said. “I’m Sharon.” We shook hands. “And it looks like you need a drink.”
“Please,” I said.
Soon, Evan and I were in the kitchen holding mandarin martinis. The drink went down my throat in a smooth, tangy rush. The rest of the guests seemed light years ahead of us in terms of intoxication, and I sipped my drink quickly in an effort to catch up. A funky song with a strong bass and violins in the background surged from the overhead speakers. In the room next to the kitchen, people were dancing.
The Night I got Lucky Page 10