Dumping Billy (3 page)

Kate noticed the time—she’d have to hurry now—and gathered up her backpack and cotton sweater. “No can do. I must run. I have a date.”

“You’re meeting this early with Michael?” Elliot asked, surprised. “You have a date with him
before
he’s coming to dinner with us?”

“It’s not with Michael.”

“You have another date with someone else before Michael? And I don’t know about it?” Elliot’s voice rose with shock and offense. “How could that happen? On average we speak six point four times a day in person and two point nine times by phone. A date I don’t know everything about is a statistical improbability.”

Kate rolled her eyes and decided to put him out of his misery. “It’s just a date with Bina. Barbie’s told her Jack is finally popping the question tonight—they’re going to Nobu because Jack wants to make it really special—and to help prepare her, I’m taking her out for a manicure.” She wiggled her fingers in the air. “They should look good for the ring,” she said in an accent similar to Bina’s Brooklynese.

“You’re kidding! And you didn’t tell me?” Elliot asked.

She shrugged, slipped on her jacket, shouldered her bag, and started toward the door. “I guess not.”

Elliot followed her to the school door. “The fabled Bina and the much-sought-after Jack. Together at last.”

“Yep, wedding bells have broken up that old gang of mine,” Kate said. “Bye-bye, Bitches of Bushwick. It’s only Bunny and me left unmarried.” She looked down at her Swatch, refusing to acknowledge the depression this thought gave her. “Gotta go.”

“Where are you and Bina getting together?” Elliot demanded.

“In SoHo,” Kate answered as she pushed against the bar of the school safety door.

“Oh, good. I’m going that way. Just let me pick up my stuff.”

“Forget it,” Kate told him sternly.

“No. No. Wait for me!” he begged. “We can take the subway together, and I can finally meet Bina.” Kate tried to keep her face still. Elliot had waged a year-long campaign to meet her old Brooklyn gang. But Kate didn’t need it. In fact, as she’d made it clear more times than she could count, she loathed the idea. She’d tried in the dozen years since she’d left home to erase most of the dark memories of her troubled background, and though she was still close friends with Bina Horowitz and occasionally saw her other old pals, she didn’t need Elliot’s jaundiced eye appraising them.

Kate gave him a look. She disappeared out the door, then called back, “You need to meet Bina like I need another unemployed boyfriend.”

She thought she was safely away and down the steps of the school when she heard Elliot behind her. He had on a madras hat and was clutching his backpack with one hand while he ran in a crouched posture that was a cross between Groucho’s walk and a begging position. “Oh, come on,” he pleaded. “It’s not fair.”

“Tragic. Absolutely tragic. Just like so many things in life,” Kate told him, and kept on walking while he flapped at his other backpack strap.

“How come I never get to meet any of your Brooklyn friends?” he demanded. “They sound so fascinating.”

Kate stopped in the schoolyard and turned back to Elliot. “Bina may be a lot of things, but fascinating is not one of them.” Bina Horowitz had been her best friend since third grade and was still, in some ways, the most dependable. Kate had spent every holiday and most summer vacations at Bina’s, partly because the Horowitz house was so clean and orderly and Bina’s mom was so kind, but mostly because it allowed Kate to avoid the empty apartment that was her home or, worse, her father, who was too often drunk.

If Kate had perhaps outgrown Bina, who’d dropped out of Brooklyn College and worked at her father’s chiropractic office, it didn’t stop her from loving her. It was just that they had different interests, and none of Bina’s would appeal to Elliot or any of her other Manhattan friends.

“Elliot,” Kate said sternly as they made their way down the street. “You know your interest in Bina is only idle curiosity.”

“Come on,” Elliot coaxed. “Let me come. Anyway, it’s a free country. The Constitution says so.”

Kate snorted. “Unlike the U.S. Constitution, I believe in the separation of church and state.”

“No,” retorted Elliot, “you believe in the separation of gay and straight.”

“That’s not fair. You had dinner with Rita and me a week ago.” She wasn’t going to let him manipulate her with his politically correct blackmail. “You’re not meeting Bina because even though she’s my oldest friend, you have nothing, absolutely nothing, in common with her.”

“I like people I have nothing in common with,” Elliot argued. “That’s why I like you and live with Brice.”

“Don’t be greedy, you’re getting to meet Michael tonight,” said Kate. “Isn’t that enough for two yentas like you and Brice?”

“Yeah,” Elliot conceded, giving in. “It will have to do.”

Kate laughed and said, “Come on, I’m going to be late for my girlie date. Let me give you the same advice I gave Jennifer Whalen, my student, a few hours ago. ‘Try to make your own friends, dear.’”

They were at the IRT subway entrance. She gave Elliot a big smile and then hugged him good-bye. He shrugged, admitting his defeat. As she descended into the shadow of the subway, Elliot shouted after her, “Don’t forget; dinner’s at eight!”

“See ya there!” she yelled back, and ran to get the train.

Chapter Three

K
ate and Bina walked down Lafayette Street, gazing in the windows of the fashion boutiques and art galleries that lined the SoHo strip. Kate looked and felt at home in SoHo. She would have liked to live in the neighborhood, but it was far too pricey for a school psychologist’s salary. Her apartment was in Chelsea, but Kate could pass as a downtown hipster. Bina Horowitz, on the other hand, was still all Brooklyn: her dark hair too done, her clothes all “matchy-matchy,” as Barbie used to say back in high school. Short, a little dumpy, and wearing too much gold, Bina stuck out like a sore thumb among the modelesque shoppers converging in one of the coolest sections of downtown Manhattan. That didn’t stop Kate from loving her friend dearly, but she was grateful for all she herself had learned about style from Brice, college, Manhattan boutiques, and her current New York friends. She’d left her Brooklyn look far behind, thank goodness.

“My God, Katie, I don’t know how you live here,” Bina said. “These people in Manhattan are the reason girls all over the country go anorexic.” Kate just laughed, though Bina wasn’t far from wrong. Bina continued to crane her neck at every opportunity, slowing them down to look at a pedestrian painting of a nude, or a dress shop window where the clothes were torn into strips, and to marvel at the boutique called Center for the Dull. Kate had to explain it was just a clothing store like Yellow Rat Bastard—a store Kate didn’t shop in, although she had one of their shopping bags.

“Why all the confusing names?” Bina asked. “And isn’t it hot?” she added, fanning herself frantically with a flyer for a failing Off-Off Broadway show that some guy had just shoved into her hand as they walked by. He hadn’t tried to palm one off on Kate, but then she didn’t look like the kind of person who accepted garbage.

“Just calm down,” Kate said. She tried to quicken their pace—the salon was notorious for demanding promptness—but Bina was Bina, and she simply couldn’t be rushed or silenced. The Horowitz family had taken Kate in when she was eleven, and Kate knew practically everything about Bina. Kate had once done the math and realized that Mrs. Horowitz had fed her more than five hundred meals (most of them made with chicken fat). Dr. Horowitz had taught her to ride a two-wheeler bike when Kate’s own father was too drunk or too lazy (or both) to bother to do it. Bina’s brother, Dave, had taught the two of them to swim in the municipal pool, and Kate still swam laps whenever she could.

Back in Brooklyn, when Kate had had no other outlet and longed for more sophisticated friends—like Elliot and Brice and Rita—with whom she could banter or talk about books, Bina had sometimes annoyed her. But now that she had a circle of intellectual, cosmopolitan pals, she could give up the frustration over Bina’s provincial interests and conversation and simply love her good heart.

“It’s really hot,” Bina repeated—a habit she had when Bina was paying no attention to Kate’s response.

“Is it hotter in Manhattan than it is in Brooklyn?” Kate asked her, teasing.

“It’s
always
hotter in Manhattan than it is in Brooklyn,” Bina confirmed, completely missing Kate’s irony. Bina definitely had an irony deficiency. “It’s all these damned sidewalks and all this traffic.” She looked up and down Lafayette Street and shook her head in disgust. “I couldn’t live here,” she muttered, as if the choice were hers and million-dollar lofts were an option she and Jack could consider. “I just couldn’t do it.”

“And you don’t,” Kate reminded her, “so what’s the problem?”

Bina stopped fanning herself abruptly, looked at Kate with a wide-eyed appeal, and meekly asked the question that she always asked midway through one of her anti-Manhattan tirades. “Am I being horrible?”

Kate felt a rush of affection overcome her annoyance and, as always, remembered why she loved Bina. Then she gave her the answer that she always did: “Same old Bina.”

“Same old Katie,” Bina responded in the litany they’d used to make peace and settle differences for two decades.

Kate grinned, and the two of them were right back on track. Kate could neither imagine introducing Bina to her Manhattan friends nor envision life without Bina—although she sometimes tried. Bina absolutely refused to grow, and that was both irritating and comforting to Kate—and sometimes downright embarrassing.

Just as they crossed Spring Street, Bina, as if reading Kate’s thoughts, virtually shouted, “God, look at him!”

Kate turned her head, expecting at the least to see a mugging in progress. Instead, across the street she saw a pierced and tattooed guy going about his business, not the slightest bit fazed by the local wildlife. Kate didn’t even comment; she merely looked down at her watch. “We can’t be late,” she warned Bina. “I have something special reserved.” And to change the subject, “So have you picked out a manicure color?”

Bina dragged her eyes away from the local sideshow with obvious difficulty and focused instead on Kate. “I was thinking of a French manicure,” she admitted.

Kate felt distinctly unenthusiastic, and it must have shown. Bina had been having the tips of her nails painted white with the rest a natural pink since high school.

“What’s wrong with a French manicure?” Bina asked defensively.

“Nothing, if you’re French,” Kate retorted, having conveniently forgotten her teenage days when she, too, thought a French manicure the height of sophistication. Bina looked puzzled by Kate’s remark. Kate had forgotten Bina’s irony deficiency. “Hey, why not just try for something a little more up-to-date?”

Bina held out her hands and studied them. Kate noticed she was still wearing the Claddagh friendship ring Kate had given her for her sweet sixteen. “Go for something . . . daring,” Kate suggested.

“Like what?” Bina asked, again defensively. “A tattoo on my fingernail?”

“Oooh, sarcasm. The devil’s weapon,” Kate said.

“Jack likes French manicures,” Bina whined, still looking at her left hand. “Don’t push me around like you always try to.” Then she dropped her hands to her sides. They were both silent for a moment. “I’m sorry,” Bina said. “I’m just a little nervous. You know, I’ve been waiting for Jack to propose for over—”

“Six years?” Kate asked, forgiving her friend. She had to start remembering to stop giving unwanted advice, which was difficult for a woman with her temperament in her profession. She smiled at Bina as they continued to walk down the street. “I think that on your first date with Jack, you started designing the monograms for your towels.”

Jack and Bina had been going out for so many years. He had been her first and only real love. He’d made her wait while he finished college, got his degree, and became a CPA. Bina giggled. “Well, I knew right away he was the one. Such a hottie.”

Kate reflected on the wide variation of people’s tastes. To her, Jack was so far from a hottie that he left her ice cold. Of course, she’d never, ever, in all the six years of their courtship revealed that to Bina. And Bina had thought Steven was sour and gaunt, while to Kate he’d been—

“I just can’t believe that he’s leaving for Hong Kong for five months tomorrow, and tonight’s the night,” Bina chattered on, interrupting Kate’s thoughts. Kate smiled at her.

There were few secrets among Kate’s old Brooklyn posse, so when Jack had consulted with Barbie’s jeweler father to get “a good deal” on an engagement ring, the news had traveled faster than e-mail among them. The day Bina had waited for for so long had finally arrived, but when Kate glanced at her friend, she noticed something odd: Bina seemed anything but happy. Surely she couldn’t be having second thoughts. But Kate knew Bina well enough to see that something wasn’t right.

Oh, my God, thought Kate. Bina has changed her mind, and she’s afraid to tell anyone. Her parents—especially her mother!—will be beside themselves if . . . “Bina, are you starting to have doubts?” she asked as gently as she could, stopping to look at her friend. “You know, you don’t
have
to marry Jack.”

“Are you crazy? Of course I do! I want to. I’m just nervous that . . . well, I’m just nervous. Normal, right? Hey, where is this place, anyway?”

“Just to the left on Broome,” Kate said. And if Bina didn’t want to talk about her nerves, it was fine, she told herself. Give the girl a little space. “This is the Police Building,” she said as a diversion while they passed the domed monument that Teddy Roosevelt had built when he was chief of police. “It’s condos now,” she went on, “and they found a secret tunnel from here to the speakeasy across the street, so—”

“So the Irish cops wouldn’t be caught getting drunk,” Bina said, then stopped in embarrassment. Kate just smiled. Her father, a retired Irish cop, had died three years ago from cirrhosis of the liver, and Kate couldn’t help but consider it a release for both of them. It was the Horowitzes who couldn’t get over it.