JENNY LOPEZ HAS A BAD WEEK (2 page)

‘Oh my god, Jenny, you look like shit.’

Erin and I had been friends for years but still, that kind of hello was not going to fly.

‘Hey Erin,’ I replied with two breezy kisses. ‘Your ass looks fat. How’s married life working for you?’

‘My ass is twice the size it was a year ago and I’m fucking ecstatic.’ She pushed a bellini across the table towards me. ‘What’s your excuse?’

‘I’m having tons of super-hot sex with super-hot strangers all the time,’ I lied. ‘Ten orgasms a night take their toll on a girl.’

She narrowed her eyes, flicked her newly bobbed blonde hair behind her ears and shook her head. ‘Right.’ She tapped the platinum bands of her engagement ring and wedding band against the stem of her glass. ‘Only, I can tell by looking. If ever anyone needed to get laid, it’s you.’

‘She told you about her dating drama then?’ Angela dropped into the spare seat on the opposite side of the table with a cheery smile. A cheery smile that vanished as soon as she registered my expression. ‘What? What did I say?’

Erin laughed happily and ordered another round of cocktails, even though it was Wednesday and even though we still had full glasses in front of us. Oh to be a married PR maven in Manhattan.

‘So, bad date?’ She had the decency to wait until we’d ordered before quizzing me any further, but curiosity finally got the better of her. ‘Tell me everything.’

‘I’m glad my tragic encounters with the opposite sex keep you guys entertained.’ Even though I was thoroughly depressed about my single status, I couldn’t deny that I loved being centre of attention, and when you’re the only single lady at a table full of coupled-up gals, you’re pretty much the star attraction. ‘It was nothing, that Brian guy I met at your birthday party.’

‘The cute geek?’

‘He had glasses, yeah,’ I frowned at the definition. It was a slur against geeks. ‘He wasn’t a geek though. Just an asshole.’

‘Example?’ Angela requested.

‘He didn’t own a TV.’

‘Ouch.’

‘And he said he most closely identified with Kierkegaard.’

‘Oh, no.’

‘And he said women couldn’t understand Ayn Rand.’

‘Strike three,’ Erin said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Hang on, wasn’t Ayn Rand a woman?’ Angela looked confused.

‘She wrote the book Robbie tried to loan Baby in
Dirty Dancing
,’ Erin replied.

‘You went on a date with the Brooklyn equivalent of Robbie the Creep?’ Angela shook her head sadly. ‘I can’t believe it’s come to this.’

‘Some people matter and some people don’t,’ I confirmed. ‘So, yeah, he wasn’t the one.’

‘Did he at least have an Alfa Romeo?’ Erin couldn’t help herself. ‘That’s my favourite car.’

I coiled a loose chocolate-brown curl around my finger and tried not to think too much about what she’d said when I came in. Did I really look like shit? Maybe my tan had faded a little since I’d gotten back from LA, and my hair could use the teensiest trim, but my Ella Moss sundress was totally cute and everyone loved a gladiator sandal. Another glance at my pedicure confirmed it remained unchipped and I was even wearing mascara. I was officially making an effort. There was no room in my dating timetable for leaving the house looking shitty from here on in. You never knew who was around the corner in this city. Lest we forget, Ryan Reynolds was single now.

‘I feel responsible.’ Erin smiled at the waitress as our food arrived. Prompt and plenty of it. I loved this place. ‘He was at my party, after all. Let me hook you up with one of Thomas’s friends.’

Thomas was Erin’s husband, one of the few Wall Street traders I knew who hadn’t been totally stung in the recession. Not that my address book was teeming with Wall Street traders.

‘Maybe.’ I took a deep breath, readying myself for the inevitable reaction I would get to my next statement. ‘You know, I kinda thought maybe I might give Jeff a call.’

Their choruses of negativity were loud and indecipherable but the general theme seemed to be a no. I sighed and poked at my eggs, suddenly not so hungry any more.

‘Jenny, you know that’s a bad idea.’ The blonde began her practised argument.

‘I know but I need to do it, OK?’

To be fair, it wasn’t as though this wasn’t old ground. Jeff and I used to date, used to live together, but we’d broken up a couple of years earlier when I’d been dumb enough to confess a drunken one-night dalliance and he’d completely flipped. It wasn’t as if I wasn’t ready to take responsibility – yes, technically I’d cheated, but a) I was wasted and b) I’d told him about it right away. But apparently that didn’t help. He didn’t trust me any more and that was even more hurtful than if he’d stopped loving me. Because he hadn’t. And knowing that was the worst.

‘Jeff is the past, Jeff is bad times, Jeff is staggering around at four a.m. singing “Hopelessly Devoted” in every karaoke bar in the East Village.’ She shook her head. ‘Jeff isn’t happening.’

‘But if I just called him,’ I suggested weakly. I was playing to the wrong crowd. ‘Or send, like, a Facebook message?’

‘I wouldn’t,’ Angie said, sounding nervous. ‘Really, I wouldn’t get in touch at all.’

I bit my lip. ‘Is that girl still living there?’

It was hardly Angela’s fault, but her boyfriend had the misfortune to live in the same building as my ex. Which of course meant that Angela now lived in the same building as my ex. Awesome.

‘Uh, yep.’ She looked down at her burger and then at the ends of her shiny bob. ‘I need a trim. Shall we see if we can get a trim this afternoon?’

She was about as good at hiding something as Lindsay Lohan was at shoplifting, i.e. not very.

‘Spill.’

She gave me a pained expression before dropping her head to hide her blue eyes behind her hair. ‘They’re engaged. They got engaged.’

If driving into Manhattan had been like taking a breath of fresh air, this was like getting every breath kicked out of me. By a pissed off mule. Onto train tracks just as a train was pulling in. I did the only thing a girl could do with that kind of news. I sank my first bellini and made a pretty good attack on the second.

‘He proposed?’ I asked, twisting the knife that was suddenly wedged in my chest. ‘He got a ring?’

‘I assume so.’ She raised her shoulders up to her ears in a dramatic shrug. ‘Alex told me. He saw them in the lift yesterday and she was wearing a ring.’

‘Alex noticed a girl was wearing a new ring?’ Erin asked. ‘Damn, that guy’s a keeper. You need to lock that down, honey.’

‘One problem at a time,’ I responded, my voice becoming ever so slightly hysterical. ‘He’s definitely engaged? She’s not just some tacky ho who wears jewellery on her wedding finger?’

‘Definitely engaged.’ She held her hands up in front of her. ‘I don’t know any details; please don’t shoot the messenger. Or punch the messenger. Or anything the messenger. Please. I’m sorry.’

In Angie’s defence, my first thought was violence. I really, really wanted to hurt someone. It was a long time since I’d had to pull out a bitch-slap – but I wasn’t above it. What was I supposed to do in this situation? The love of my life had got engaged to someone else. The way I saw it I had three choices. Beg him to take me back, cry myself blind or kill them both. Now begging hadn’t worked in the past, and while I could totally beat that man-stealer down, killing her might be a little far-fetched. Besides, there was a teensy chance that Jeff would hold it against me instead of being won over by the romance of the whole murder thing. Which left crying myself blind. Hmm.

No, I was not going to bawl over brunch. It was not an appropriate sobbing meal. I’d find a quiet spot in Saks to weep over some twelve-hundred-dollar purses later. No, right now, I required a plan. That’s what friends were for. Might not have been in the lyrics to that song, but still, fact.

‘Ladies,’ I gave my friends an affirmative nod, ‘I can’t freak out over this. I’m going old-school Lopez on this shizz. What would Oprah do? I have a great network of people around me, I just need to put it into action, right?’

‘Very sensible of you,’ Angie replied. ‘What can we do?’

This was my forte. Getting over break-ups. Moving on. Having a plan. I could do this. Gut-wrenching, desperate urge to vomit because the man I loved was engaged. To someone else.

‘You,’ I pointed at her with my fork for emphasis, ‘can get me a date. Seriously, Angie, you’re living with some hot-ass guitar boy and you haven’t even once tried to set me up with any of his friends?’

‘All his friends are arses.’ She managed to make the ‘r’ in arses last for a lifetime. ‘Really, don’t make me do this.’

‘It’s done.’ There was no time for refusals. When I was on a mission, I was on a mission. ‘I want a date by Friday night. Which brings me to you,’ I smiled sweetly. ‘Give me a job. Any job. Seriously, you must have something? Anything.’

While Angela flicked through the contacts in her cell phone, pulling a face at each and every one, Erin looked to the heavens for an answer.

‘OK, there’s something.’ She was making pretty much the same face as Angela. ‘But it’s not styling. I mean, it’s fashion but it’s really events management.’

‘I can manage events.’ I slapped the table so hard, the lid popped off the ketchup pot. ‘For real, I’m awesome at events. I was a concierge, for Christ’s sake, what’s that if it’s not organizing? Tell me everything.’

‘I guess.’ She didn’t look quite convinced. ‘We’re working with this new design house, Boyd & Norrell, and they’ve managed to bag Sadie Nixon as their spokesperson.’

‘The model?’

‘The supermodel,’ Erin corrected. ‘The Victoria’s Secret model, the Maybelline spokeswoman and, if rumour has it right, the world’s biggest asshole.’

‘Nope, I went on a date with that guy last night,’ I reminded her. ‘So she’s a difficult model. They’re all difficult; that’s what happens when all you eat is one packet of Nutrasweet in seven years. What do you need me to do?’

‘I need someone to handle her for the showcase we’re running on Friday.’ She took out her own phone and pulled up an email. ’I’ve just forwarded you the details. You pick her up at the hotel, bring her to the event, make sure she’s there for fittings, feed her, water her, Nutrasweet her, whatever, and make sure she doesn’t do anything crazy until she’s off the clock for the client.’

Now, it seemed like a ‘famous last words’ kind of a situation, but really, how hard could it be? I was great with people and I loved fashion. Hang out with a model all day for money? Yes please. And the more demanding the better – the less time I had to sulk right now, the better.

‘I always need extra hands for events,’ Erin said. ‘But really, it’s no fun. It’s a lot of pressure, a lot of stress, and people are, for the most part, dicks. Including me.’

‘Dude,’ I placed a hand over hers, dodging the rocks. ‘I have seen you at your dickiest and I am not afraid.’

‘Dude,’ she turned her hand over to give mine a squeeze. ‘You have no idea.’

After lunch, Erin took a cab to work and Angela and I took the subway back to Williamsburg. If my days as a slacker were numbered, I wanted to slack as much as humanly possible. And where else to do it but the slacker capital of the world? Angie could try and pass them off as hipsters and artists as much as she liked, but all I could see were two dozen thirty-year-old white boys in too tight jeans, sponging off mommy and daddy. I wondered if any of them were single. Once we were in possession of vomit-inducing ice-cream cones, we took to the bench outside the ice-cream parlour to watch Bedford Avenue’s crazies pass us by.

‘You really all right about the whole Jeff thing?’ Angela asked. “I didn’t know if you were just putting on a brave face for Erin.’

‘She has been known to be less than tolerant about my Jeff issues,’ I acknowledged. ‘But what can I do? I guess maybe it hasn’t sunk in yet?’

She gave me her best sympathetic expression. It was kind of ruined by the chocolate ice cream on her nose, but I didn’t have the heart to tell her. ‘Maybe it’s for the best, you know,’ she suggested. ‘You can finally draw a line under it.’

‘Yeah, maybe.’ I couldn’t start talking about it here. Because the moment it did actually sink in, there was every chance I’d have a complete emotional meltdown and I was really hoping to keep that between me, a pinot noir and my
Vampire Diaries
DVD. Ian Somerhalder made the hurt go away.

‘So, names, Facebook profiles, phone numbers. And don’t think anyone’s not good enough. For the first time ever, my standards are officially way low.’

‘Honestly, Jenny, even when after that time you ate all my Ben & Jerry’s, drank every bottle of wine in the house and broke my MacBook searching for gay
porn, I wouldn’t have set you up with a single one of Alex’s friends. The ones that show any sign of humanity are already coupled up and the others are either gross, gay or evil.’

‘I’ll take evil,’ I rationalized. ‘Evil might be hot.’

‘You want evil? Is that on your Match.com profile?’ Angie messed with the fraying seams of her purse to avoid making eye contact with the guy who had paused in front of us. Although, if you asked me, wearing tiny Seventies running shirts, a tuxedo shirt and a bow tie meant you wanted to be looked at. I didn’t know how she could live in this crazy neighbourhood.

‘I’m looking for cute and smart and funny and awesome, but that’s kinda hard to come by,’ I replied. ‘But we all know it’s easier to find a man if you have a man. And you know I don’t have a Match.com profile. Too depressing.’

‘So, cute, smart, funny and awesome,’ Angela checked off the qualities on her spare hand. ‘Anything else while I’m taking notes?’

‘Tall would be nice,’ I closed my eyes and conjured up my dream guy. ‘Blond. Tan. Handsome but, you know, like in a goofy way? Maybe he has crooked teeth or something?’

‘But nothing that would push him out of the handsome category?’

‘Oh god no,’ I said, my eyes still closed. ‘I don’t know, maybe he’d be an architect or something. Or a teacher. Something he was passionate about.’

‘Location preferences?’

‘I’m not that picky,’ I wrinkled my nose. ‘But Manhattan would be convenient.’

‘Oh, you know what!’ Angela’s voice was full of delight. ‘Alex has a friend who meets those requirements exactly!’