Happily Ever After: A Novel (10 page)

“You know what I mean.”

Aruba, fix me an umbrella drink! Here I come!

“He hadn’t come to terms with being gay when we got married,” I say. Plus I was knocked up. Oddly, admitting I married a man who loves musicals and rom-coms with Jennifer Aniston and can discuss what shade of green to paint the bedroom for hours on end is easier than saying I got pregnant when I wasn’t paying attention. I wish I understood why that is the case.

“We’re still good friends,” I say. “And both very involved in Allison’s life.”

Well, I do all the heavy lifting, but why quibble over details? I don’t want to talk about this anymore. It’s killing my buzz.

“How’s your list going?” I ask.

“I think I’d do better with another drink,” Aidan says. “To the bar? Shall we mingle along the way? Work the crowd a bit?”

He holds his arm out to me, and I take it. If he’s concerned about his one true love being stranded in some godforsaken place all alone, he’s doing a good job hiding it.

Chapter 17

A
idan and I move slowly around the room. Everyone wants to talk to us. Aidan gets invited on seven golf outings and I to four country club lunches that I will skip as my threshold for torture is not quite that high. Everyone talks about the heat wave, the need to support Holt Hall’s endowment, and how fantastic Aidan must look naked. I exaggerate, yes, but I know what they’re thinking. We secure more drinks and snack on sushi and fresh spring rolls.

Aidan feeds me a cold shrimp dripping with cocktail sauce as if it were the most natural thing in the world. It’s oddly erotic, but perhaps that’s my two stiff gin and tonics talking. I make a concerted effort to lock my knees. Having them buckle here will not help my reputation. I’m already at risk of waking up not as “Allison’s mom, the writer” but as “the divorced lady with the delicious young lover.”

That we are not actually lovers is beside the point. Every single person in this room assumes I’m having sex with Aidan Hathaway. The women are thinking I must have taken those postbirth Kegel exercises seriously to land such a perfect specimen, and the men are wishing they could
be
Aidan Hathaway just for an afternoon. Of course, they would immediately dump their forty-something wives and make a beeline for the nearest anorexic Brazilian model, but that is to be expected. Pop culture almost demands it.

I stop thinking about Brazilian models long enough to realize Aidan is gone. I scan the room. Off to one side, along a wall, long tables have been uncovered to reveal silent auction items. Felicity has her arm linked through Aidan’s, giving him a personal tour of what’s available. I fully expect her to hop up there and add herself to the auction booty. Aidan waves me over.

“I’d like to buy something to support Allison,” he says. “Felicity here suggested the rare champagne collection. What do you think about that?”

I glance at the suggested bid, which is three thousand dollars.

“It’s a lovely thought,” I whisper to him. “But you can’t. You have no money.” And as much as I enjoy a chilled glass of bubbly, four bottles at that price feels a bit steep. Let the investment bankers have at it.

“What are you talking about?” Aidan asks. “I have billions. Really, Sadie, I’m very rich. I have a warehouse full of vintage sports cars and a penthouse.”

“Not here.”

Aidan instinctively goes for his wallet, to prove his point. I shake my head.

“You have the clothes you came through with,” I say quietly. “And probably you should be grateful for that.”

But I give him credit. While he mentally reorganizes the known universe and his place in it, his face remains neutral.

“Nothing?”

“No,” I say.

“I can’t even afford a bottle of champagne?”

No. The auction does not accept alternative reality Visa or MasterCard. I shake my head again.

A tap on my shoulder interrupts our discussion of fiscal solvency. I turn to find my neighbor Belinda wearing a skintight getup designed to highlight her long hours in the gym, and her date, Jason. My Jason. More specifically, my Friday late morning Jason. This does not help my equilibrium.

“Hello there,” Belinda says, scanning Aidan head to toe, as if figuring how she can stuff him in her tiny clutch and dash off to Hedonism II for a spell of nakedness. “This is my
date
. Jason Blair. Jason is an
attorney
in New York. For a
big
firm.”

How on earth do we play this? We can’t very well confess we met a while back when we were both trolling for sex on Craigslist. This is Billsford. They would ask us to leave. I wait for Jason to say something, but his eyes are locked on Aidan.

“Hi,” I say too loudly. I stick out my hand. “Nice to meet you.”

Jason takes it, but he can’t stop looking at Aidan.

“This is Aidan Hathaway,” I say. All night, I’ve introduced him as my second cousin once removed, but not now. His name hangs in the air.

I wait to equalize, for the rational part of my brain to remind me that Jason and I use each other only for sex. There is no commitment or relationship beyond Friday mornings, thus making any level of jealousy inappropriate.

Belinda likes Aidan even better up close. She quizzes him about how he’s enjoying the food because, of course, she has yet to take a bite. She tells Aidan she lives next door. She does not mention the binoculars. Aidan tells her he’s staying with me for a bit and maybe they can wave hello to each other. He winks. She quivers. Jason grinds his teeth, the muscles in his jaw jutting out. I remain off balance.

“We should go,” I say to Aidan. “Allison’s at home watching
Dancing with the Stars
. That can be dangerous after a while.”

It’s a lie. Allison is fine, but the wind has gone out of my fun sails. I now have an image of naked Jason and naked Belinda, naked together, to keep me company, and it is making me queasy. Or maybe it’s the heat, the alcohol, and the Spanx.

“We can’t leave just yet,” Aidan says. He throws a big smile at Belinda, who clutches Jason’s arm to keep from being knocked over by pure radiance. “You’ve got three minutes at the microphone in . . .” He glances at his watch. “Well, look at that! Right now.”

Before I can protest, Aidan takes me under a sweaty armpit and tosses me right into the loving embrace of Headmistress Leticia Woolworth, who stands very erect by the buffet table, clutching the cordless microphone. Aidan greets her with a slight bow. She lowers her eyes demurely and extends a hand. Blue bloods recognize blue bloods. It’s like they can smell each other, the musty whiff of eau d’Mayflower.

“Such a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Hathaway,” she says with a coy smile. “I’m always so happy when our single parents find love again, especially with our kind of people.” She winks. My jaw literally drops in horror.

“Sadie’s quite a woman,” Aidan says. I can see the gears turning in his head. There’s an opening and he’s taking it. He slides an arm around my waist and pulls me toward him as if I am a much less ravishing Scarlett O’Hara. The motion throws my head back, so I have no hope of avoiding his luscious lips as they lock onto mine.

I see stars and stripes and glitter. Or maybe the restaurant has an American flag painted on the ceiling? Aidan tastes like good scotch, and I can’t help but reach my arms around his neck as he kisses me hard and deep. Kissing cousins indeed. The restaurant grows silent. If I open my eyes, I will see everyone gawking at us. I will see Leticia Woolworth blush a deep purple that perfectly matches her vintage Chanel suit. I will see Belinda radiating with the injustice of it all and Felicity appear as if her life has flashed before her eyes. But I’m too busy kissing to do much noticing.

Finally Aidan pulls away, licking his lips like the fox who has just charmed the chickens right out of their feathers. I’m awash in lust and embarrassment, horrified that the clichéd hot guy can have this effect on my knees. I’m a grown-up, for God’s sake, with a realistic view of the world. I’m too old for buckling knees. I straighten my dress and grab the microphone from Ms. Woolworth, whose eyes remain averted.

“I want to thank you all for coming,” I say, “and for supporting our beloved Holt Hall. It was an honor to serve on the organizing committee this year, and I encourage all of you to get involved next year.”

There are a few more things I’m supposed to say about future fund-raising efforts, but I find I don’t care. Toward the back of the room I see Jason. He catches my eye, drapes an arm luxuriously over Belinda’s bare shoulders, and gives me a smile of the not-so-nice variety.

Chapter 18

T
he laptop sits before me on the kitchen table. Beside it is a glass of Chardonnay with a few ice cubes. The night has brought no relief from the heat, and I think about dropping the ice cubes down my dress. I sip my drink. I stare at the ceiling. I pull on the hem of my Spanx suit.

On the way home, I gave Aidan a lecture on the inappropriateness of his kissing me like that in front of all those people. He laughed it off, told me I had nice lips and that I should not be so uptight. I asked him how a woman who writes about sex all day can possibly be uptight. He told me he didn’t know but I was giving it a good effort.

After chewing on that for a few minutes, I changed the subject to dark places in New York City where we might look for Lily, because I no longer wanted to think about kissing.

Aidan threw out Lily’s home address, her favorite coffee shop, a bistro where she has lunch. When I reminded him none of those places were dark, he gave me the silent treatment, which in turn, gave me time to focus on the pain lodged in my middle, as if someone had given me a swift kick with a steel-toed boot. Seeing Belinda and Jason together was not supposed to ruffle my feathers, and yet here I was with the bitter taste of jealousy in my mouth.

I move the cursor on the laptop and the machine whirs to life, but there are no new words. There is no chapter telling me exactly where to find Lily. The written story seems to have ended when Clarissa followed Aidan, who followed Lily. And my influence seems to have ended too. The characters I knew are hardly as they once were. They are like the difference between an eight-year-old huddled in your lap and a thirteen-year-old who will not let you enter her room for any reason.

All characters arise differently. Usually, before I start a new novel, I give myself a day off from suburbia and head into the city. I take an early train in and walk slowly downtown, following a slightly different route each time. I’m there to absorb the people.

I saw Lily in Grand Central Terminal. Of course, it wasn’t the Lily we search for now but the woman upon whom that Lily would be based. She walked onto the main concourse just as I popped a plastic lid on my hot coffee and stuffed a heavily cream-cheesed bagel in my jacket pocket. As I turned toward the Forty-Second Street exit, there she was, curly strawberry hair creating a halo around her Botticelli-perfect face. With a phone pressed to her ear and a leather briefcase in one hand, she gazed up at the heavens depicted on the terminal’s famous ceiling.

“Oh,” I said, drink frozen halfway to my face. “Perfect.”

I was prepared to take my bagel and hoof it down to Union Square, maybe sit in the park for a while or shop one of the new stores that seem to appear almost daily. But as soon as I saw the redheaded woman, all of that changed. I had to follow her.

This wasn’t the first time I’d stalked people who then, unbeknownst to them, had ended up in one of my novels, almost always eventually naked and in some rather compromising positions. If only they knew! Would they be horrified? Would it feel like infidelity even if they had no hand in it?

I thought about these things as I followed my mark out of the station and onto a Forty-Second Street teeming with people. Rush hour on foot was much more immediate than rush hour in a car. Using my elbows to push through the crowds, I worked hard to stay with her. How she kept up such a pace in those three-inch heels was beyond me, but she did. The lights seemed to magically change for her, so she never had to ease off. She just kept charging forward.

After a few blocks, she stopped at a coffee cart and took another phone call. I got in line immediately behind her.

“Hello,” she said in a soft, lilting voice. “This is Lily. Oh, right. Hi, Brad.”

She paused to listen to Brad. I inched closer.

“Sure,” she said. “Five thirty still works great for me. Okay. I’ll see you then.”

There was a touch of the South in her voice, and my heart started to race. An innocent southern girl named Lily, running hard from her past, trying to make a go of it in big, bad New York City. I took another step forward, bumping her ever so slightly with the toe of my shoe. She turned toward me.

“So sorry,” I said.

She smiled, flashing a set of perfect teeth and ripe lips that seemed kissed by summer raspberries. It was a genuine smile, not one offered as a distraction while the giver sizes you up and tries to figure out your angle. Because in New York, even if you just accidentally step on someone’s toe, you
must
have an angle.

“It’s okay,” she said. I concentrated on her voice. Sometimes the sound of a character is the best way into her soul. It’s hard to believe, I know, as characters in novels don’t actually speak unless they’ve been subjected to the Hollywood blender, but for me a voice is crucial. I have to hear it in my head for the character to come alive on the page.

Before she returned to the phone call, I noted her cornflower-blue eyes and a subtle spray of freckles across her nose. The rest of her skin was creamy alabaster, as if she really did slop on the sunscreen and wear a big hat when her mother told her to. Lily was nearly flawless.

As she ordered a black coffee, I examined her clothes. A trendy suit jacket with bold geometric patterns and a tight, thigh-skimming skirt. Her stilettos were bright orange, and she wore a selection of chunky orange costume jewelry to match. Definitely not Wall Street, and no way she was a lawyer.

“Something creative,” I said out loud. “Something that moves fast.”

Marketing, of course. She’s starting with a handful of little clients, maybe a group that sells organic perfume or shoes designed to tone your ass while you walk. But she has her eye on the bigger fish, the multinationals, the brands known even in the sandy deserts of Mali, and she’s working hard to get them. Coffee in hand, she turned onto the Avenue of the Americas, and I watched her go.

She’ll be fine, I thought at the time, whoever she is. A decent brain, a short skirt, and that hair will take her places.

I take another swallow of wine. I call Roger. After three rings, he answers.

“Something better be terribly wrong,” Roger says. “It’s two o’clock in the morning.”

Have I really been sitting here that long? The wine bottle is almost empty. I guess so.

“Nothing’s wrong,” I say. “I have a question.”

“I’m tired,” he says. I ignore him.

“Tell me a dark place in New York City.”

“My bedroom two minutes ago before you woke me up.”

“I’m serious, Roger.”

“Why are you on the phone with me and not in bed with your hot young thing? I saw him kiss you.”

You and everyone else. Oh, I will have some explaining to do on Monday morning. I take another drink.

“He went to bed hours ago,” I say.

“So?”

“And because he’s perfect. And I have wrinkles and a kid and these awful brown age spots on my hands.” Not to mention the spare tire.

“You’re a real person, Sadie. Nothing wrong with that.”

He has no idea just how right he is. About the “real person” part anyway.

“He’s too young,” I say. “He’s probably never seen a woman with body hair. Anyway, what about dark places?”

“New York is never dark,” Roger says, yawning. “You know, the city that never sleeps? Can I go back to bed now?”

“No! Just give me one place. Stretch if you have to. I’m desperate.”

“If I live a thousand years, I will never understand the way your mind works,” he says. “Okay. How about Central Park? The Ramble. I had a very dark and scary experience there once. The woman was a man who was a woman. Dear God. Dreadful. Good night, Sadie.”

Roger hangs up. I lean back in my chair and consider the Ramble. It
is
dark and probably disconcerting if you’re dropped there directly from an alternate reality. It’s the kind of place Clarissa would come up with.

I repeat the word
ramble
over and over as I drag my tired body up the stairs. Once in my room, I slowly undress, taking a moment to savor the joy I feel being released from the Spanx prison. I crawl into bed. But before I turn off the light, I take a small notebook from my night table and write the word
ramble
in big block letters.