Last Night at Chateau Marmont (16 page)

“We usually go to my father’s in Pennsylvania, but he’s been saying they may go to my stepmother’s family’s this year. So there’s a
chance we’ll just suck it up and host in New York. If we do, will you guys come? Please?” Brooke knew both their families lived in India and neither one especially celebrated Thanksgiving, but they would be such a welcome distraction from all the intense family time.

“Of course we’ll come! But can we just backtrack for a second, please? Can you even believe what’s going on in your life right now? Are you pinching yourself every day? It’s just the craziest thing ever. What does it feel like to have a famous husband?”

Brooke took a deep breath. She thought about being honest with Neha, telling her how much the picture had turned their world upside down, how ambivalent she felt about everything that was happening, but suddenly it all seemed too exhausting. Not really knowing how to handle it, she just laughed a little and lied.

“It’s amazing, Neha. It’s just the coolest thing in the world.”

There was nothing worse than being at work on a Sunday. As one of the more senior nutritionists on staff, Brooke hadn’t endured regularly scheduled Sunday shifts in years, and she’d all but forgotten how lousy they were. It was a perfect late June morning; everyone she knew was having brunch outside or picnicking in Central Park or jogging along Hudson River Park. A group of teenage girls in jean shorts and flip-flops sat gabbing and sipping smoothies at a café a block from the hospital, and it was all Brooke could do not to tear off her lab coat and hideous clogs and join them for pancakes. She was just about to walk into the hospital when her cell phone rang.

She stared at the screen and debated whether or not to pick up the unfamiliar 718 area code that indicated an outer borough, but she must have thought about it too long, because it went to voice mail. When the caller didn’t leave a message and called back a second time, Brooke got worried.

“Hello, this is Brooke,” she said, instantly certain she’d made a mistake and the mystery caller was going to be a reporter.

“Mrs. Alter?” a timid voice squeaked through the line. “It’s Kaylie Douglas. From Huntley.”

“Kaylie! How are you? Is everything okay?”

Just a couple weeks earlier, at their last session before school broke for the summer, Kaylie seemed to take a turn for the worse. She’d abandoned her food diary, which until then she had been diligent with, and had announced her determination to spend the summer on a punishing workout regimen and various quick-loss diets. No attempt at trying to talk her out of it seemed to work; Brooke had only succeeded in bringing the girl to tears and an announcement that “no one understood what it felt like to be poor and fat in a place where everyone else is rich and beautiful.” Brooke was so worried that she had given Kaylie her cell phone number and insisted the girl call her anytime over the summer, whether anything was wrong or not. She had certainly meant it, but she was still surprised to hear her young patient on the other end.

“Yeah, I’m okay. . . .”

“What’s been going on? How have your couple weeks off been?”

The girl started to cry. Big, gulping breaths interspersed with the occasional “I’m sorry.”

“Kaylie? Talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“Oh, Mrs. A, everything is such a disaster! I’m working at Taco Bell and I get a free meal every shift and my father says I have to eat the free food, so I do. But then I come home and my grandmother’s made all this fattening food and I go to my friends’ apartments, from my old school, and it’s, like, buckets of fried chicken and burritos and cookies and I eat all of it because I’m just so hungry. I’ve only been out of school for a few weeks, and I already gained eight pounds!”

Eight pounds in three weeks did sound alarming, but Brooke kept her voice soothing and calm. “I’m sure you haven’t, sweetheart. You just need to remember what we talked about: meat portions the size of your palm, as much leafy green salads and vegetables as you want so long as you’re careful with the dressing, cookies in moderation. I’m
not at home right now, but I can check out the Taco Bell menu and give you some healthier alternatives if you want. The important thing is not to panic. You’re young and healthy—go for a walk with your friends, or kick around a ball in the park. It’s not the end of the world, Kaylie, I promise.”

“I can’t come back to school next year if I look like this. I’m over the limit now! Before I was just at the high end of normal, and that was bad enough, but now I’m officially obese!” She sounded almost hysterical.

“Kaylie, you are nowhere
near
obese,” Brooke said. “And you’re going to have a wonderful year at school this fall. Listen, I’m going to do a little research later tonight, and I’ll call you back with the info, okay? Please don’t worry so much, sweetheart.”

Kaylie sniffled. “I’m sorry to bother you,” she said quietly.

“You didn’t bother me at all! I gave you my number so you would use it, and I’m happy you did. Makes me feel popular.” Brooke smiled.

They hung up and Brooke sent herself an e-mail reminder to look up the nutritional information for fast-food restaurants and pass it along to Kaylie. She was a few minutes late getting upstairs to the hospital break room, and only her colleague Rebecca was there when she arrived.

“What are you doing here today?” she asked.

“Oh, I’m making up a few missed shifts. Unfortunately, the trade was three shifts for a double on Sunday.”

“Ouch. Tough terms. But worth it?”

Brooke laughed ruefully. “Yeah, I think I got killed, but seeing Julian perform at Bonnaroo was really cool.” She placed her purse and her packed lunch in her locker and followed Rebecca into the hallway. “Any idea if Margaret’s in today?”

“I’m right here!” A cheerful voice trilled out behind them. Brooke’s boss was wearing a pair of black dress slacks, a light blue blouse, and black loafers, all topped by a perfectly starched and pressed lab coat that was embroidered with her name and credentials.

“Hello, Margaret,” Rebecca and Brooke said in unison before Rebecca peeled out, claiming she was late for her first patient.

“Brooke, why don’t you join me in my office for a minute? We can talk there.”

Nightmare. She should’ve remembered that Margaret almost always put in an appearance on Sunday mornings just to make sure things were running smoothly.

“O-oh, everything’s fine,” she stammered. “I, uh, I was just wondering if I was going to get to say hello to you.”

Her boss had already begun walking down the long hallway toward her office. “Come now,” she called to Brooke, who had no choice but to follow her. The woman must have sensed Brooke was about to ask for more time off.

Margaret’s office was located down a dark hallway, next to the supply closet and on the same floor as the maternity ward, which meant there was a pretty good chance the conversation would be punctuated by an errant scream or a groan. The only upside was getting to glance in the nursery as they walked by. Maybe she’d have a free second a little later to go in there and hold a baby or two. . . .

“Come right in,” Margaret said as she swung open the door and turned on the lights. “You caught me at the perfect time.”

Brooke tentatively walked in behind her and waited for her boss to clear a pile of papers off the guest seat before lowering herself into the chair.

“To what do I owe this honor?” Margaret smiled, but Brooke read between the lines. They’d always enjoyed an easy, natural relationship, but lately Brooke had begun to sense tension between them.

She forced herself to smile and prayed this wasn’t an inauspicious start to a conversation she really needed to go well. “Oh, hardly an honor, I’m sure, I just wanted to talk to you about—”

Margaret smiled. “It is a bit of an honor considering I haven’t seen much of you lately. I’m glad you’re here, because there’s something I need to discuss with you.”

Brooke took a deep breath and reminded herself to keep calm.

“Brooke, you know how fond I am of you, and it goes without saying that I’ve been extremely pleased with your performance in all the years you’ve worked here. And of course, so have your patients, as evidenced by those terrific evaluations a few months ago.”

“Thank you,” Brooke said, unsure how to respond but certain this wasn’t going somewhere good.

“Which is why it’s upsetting to me that you’ve gone from having the second-best attendance record to having the second-worst in the entire program. Only Perry’s is worse than yours.”

She didn’t need to finish. They’d finally been briefed on what was happening with Perry, and everyone had been relieved it wasn’t something worse. Apparently she’d suffered a late miscarriage six months earlier, which accounted for some of her absences. Now, pregnant again, she’d been put on mandatory bed rest in her second trimester. It meant that the remaining five full-time RDs on staff needed to work extra hours to cover for Perry, which, considering the circumstances, no one minded. Brooke was doing her best to cover her extra workday each week and her extra on-call weekend, now bumped from once every six weeks to once every five, but trying to keep up with Julian’s travel schedule—to share in the excitement with him—was making it almost unbearable.

Don’t explain yourself; don’t apologize; just reassure her you’ll do better,
Brooke told herself. A psychologist friend had once told her that women felt compelled to offer long explanations and excuses whenever they needed to deliver negative news, and that it was much more powerful to state it without an apology or an excuse. Brooke worked on this often, to little success.

“I’m so sorry!” she blurted before she could stop herself. “I’ve been having, um, a lot of family issues recently, and I’m doing my best to handle them. I’m really hopeful that things should calm down soon.”

Margaret raised a single eyebrow and peered intently at Brooke. “Do you think I’m not aware of what’s been happening?” she asked.

“Why, no, of course not. It’s just that there is so much—”

“One would have to live in a cave.” She smiled, and Brooke felt a little better. “But I do have a staff to run and I’m getting concerned. You’ve taken seven days off in the last six weeks—which isn’t even counting your three sick days from the first part of the year—and I’m assuming you’re here to request even more time. Am I correct?”

Brooke quickly debated her options. Deciding she had none, she merely nodded.

“When and for how long?”

“In three weeks, just the Saturday. I know I’m scheduled to work all weekend, but Rebecca is going to switch with me and I’ll take her weekend in three weeks. So it’s, uh, technically just one day.”

“Just one day.”

“Yes. It’s an important, um, family event, or I wouldn’t even ask.” She made a mental note to be even more diligent than usual about avoiding the cameras at Kristen Stewart’s birthday party in Miami, where Julian had been invited to perform four songs. When he’d balked at appearing at a young starlet’s birthday party, Leo had pleaded with him. Brooke couldn’t help but feel a little queasy for Julian; the least she could do was be there to support him.

Margaret opened her mouth to say something and then changed her mind. She tapped her pencil against her chapped lower lip and stared at Brooke. “You do realize you’re already closing in on your total number of vacation days this year and it’s only June?”

Brooke nodded.

Margaret tapped her pencil against her desk.
Tap-tap-tap,
it went in unison with Brooke’s pounding headache.

“And I don’t need to remind you that calling in sick to attend parties with your husband cannot happen anymore, right? I’m sorry, Brooke, but I can’t give you special treatment.”

Ouch. Brooke had done that only once so far and was certain Margaret didn’t know, but she’d definitely been planning to dip into her ten remaining sick days once her vacation ran out. Now that was
clearly not an option. Brooke did her best to look unruffled and said, “Of course not.”

“Well, all right then. Saturday is yours. Is there anything else?”

“Nothing else. Thank you for understanding.” Brooke stuck her feet back into her clogs underneath Margaret’s desk and stood up. She gave a little wave and disappeared through the office door before Margaret could say another word.

B
ROOKE
walked into Lucky’s Nail Design on Ninth Avenue and found her mother already seated and reading a copy of
Last Night.
With Julian gone so often, her mother had volunteered to come into the city, take Brooke for a post-work mani and pedi, get some sushi for dinner, and spend the night before heading back to Philly in the morning.

“Hi,” Brooke said, leaning over to kiss her. “Sorry I’m late. The train was weirdly slow today.”

“Oh, you’re fine, dear. I just got here and was catching up on my celebrity gossip.” She held out the copy of
Last Night.
“Nothing about Julian or you, so don’t worry.”

“Thanks, but I’ve already read it,” she said, plunging her feet into the warm soapy water. “Comes in the mail a day earlier than it hits the newsstands. I think you can officially call me an authority on the subject.”