Dumping Billy (12 page)

Two cards above her own was “Miss Bina Horowitz and Mr. Jack Weintraub.” That was something Kate knew she couldn’t afford to let Bina see. Bunny’s mother obviously hadn’t remembered about Jack’s trip. Kate picked up the card, turned it over, and, using a black marker she had put in her purse for this very purpose, wrote, “Miss Bina Horowitz and guest” on the back of the card and replaced it. She hoped that Bina wouldn’t turn the card over and that Brice would be smart enough to pocket it.

So far, so good, Kate thought. Next, and last, was getting to the actual table to manipulate the place cards. If Bina was seated next to Bev or Barbie, she wouldn’t last five minutes. Of course, they might be seated in the traditional boy-girl-boy boring arrangement. Kate sighed, thinking of one more dinner beside Bobby, Barbie’s excessively dull husband. She walked to the closed entrance of the banquet hall, and as luck would have it, a hassled-looking waiter came out. She grabbed at the door closing behind him as he departed with an armful of linens and stepped into the room.

A sign read “Tromboli-Beckmen Wedding Saturday.” Under it was “Eisenberg Bar Mitzvah Sunday.” Kate surveyed the room. The interior of the hall was Bunny Tromboli’s dream come true, amazingly close to Kate’s nightmare. The decorations, the centerpieces, the candles—everything was a middle-class version of photographs Bunny had been clipping and saving from society pages since she was ten. All of the Bitches except Kate had done the same. Kate sighed deeply. Whenever she had allowed herself to envision the elements of a dream wedding, the major emphasis had been on the groom, not the flatware.

Yet despite the inconceivably garish tablecloths and place settings—hot pink and orange, a combination Kate saw no use for in either clothes or furnishings, along with black dinnerware and centerpieces that looked like patent leather with flourishes of net—there was something lovely, calm . . . even magical about a vacant room prepared for but empty of revelers. She allowed herself to pause for a moment to take it all in. Then the colors and her mission moved her forward. She found table nine, looked it over, and moved the cards so that the lineup on their side of the table was Elliot, then Kate, then Bina, and then Brice. She had to juggle Bobby and Johnny, Barbie’s and Bev’s husbands, to get it to work out, but in a few moments it was done. She pulled out the four chairs for her party and leaned the backs against the table—a very déclassé way to show the seats were taken and to ensure that nobody reedited her editing.

The noise of new arrivals outside the banquet hall had gotten much louder, and then, without warning, the doors swung open. The guests began to pour in. Kate, not wanting to be found alone in the room, a target worse than a lonely duck before the hunter’s blind, decided to make her way out to the terrace that ran along the east wall of the room. She would wait outside, get a breath of air and a bit of privacy before the onslaught. Once her crew came back, there would be enough people and enough noise to allow her to slip back inside, find the Trouble Trio, and begin the minimum required mingling. She’d mingled at dozens of weddings before, and she could do it again, she told herself.

Out on the terrace, Kate had a moment to reflect. She was overwhelmingly glad that she had not invited Michael to the affair. She would have been self-conscious and, although she shouldn’t be, rather ashamed. The clothes, the accents, the loudness, the . . . well, the vulgarity of it all, made her wince. She was used to it, and loved many of these people, but she did not want to have to translate them for Michael or anyone else. At the same time, she wasn’t enjoying how much Elliot and Brice were enjoying their Brooklyn visit. It was too much like a visit to Great Adventure Safari Park. They were observing the wildlife with the detachment of another species.

Kate peeked into the room. It wouldn’t take long for it to fill. And then Elliot and Brice would get to talk to the creatures they had been observing at church. Somehow, while it was all right for Kate to think of these people as strange, she didn’t like the idea of outsiders observing them in that way, not even Elliot and Brice. Yes, she reflected again, it was the right thing to do to leave Michael out, and how on earth would she have managed Bina without the help of the guys?

She continued to watch as people entered, rearranged their own place cards, hugged or kissed one another, and went for the drinks. Even through the windows, she could hear them speculating about the estimated per plate cost of the upcoming meal, where the bride had bought the dress, whether there was a bun in the oven . . . and then Kate saw Elliot, Brice, and Bina enter the room. She had to admit it: Bina did look a thousand times more sophisticated with the terrific makeup and more gentle upswept hairstyle Brice’s lengthy ministrations had created. Kate reached for the handle of the French door to let herself in, only to find that it had locked itself behind her. She tried the second one, then the third. All locked.

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

D
amn 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.”