Last Night at Chateau Marmont (42 page)

“Hmm, let’s see.” Nola grinned. Clearly she’d been waiting for an opening.

“What?” Brooke asked. “Or should I ask ‘who’?”

“I’m going to Turks and Caicos next week for a long weekend.”

“Turks and Caicos? Since when? Don’t tell me you’re going for work. My god, I am so in the wrong industry.”

“Not for work. For fun. For
sex.
I’m going with Andrew.”

“Oh, he’s
Andrew
now? How grown-up. Does that mean it’s serious?”

“No,
Drew
and I are finished. Andrew is the cab guy.”

“Stop it.”

“What? I’m serious.”

“You’re dating the guy you screwed after meeting in the back of a cab?”

“What’s so weird about that?”

“Nothing’s so weird about it, it’s just incredible! You’re the only woman on the planet who could pull it off. Those guys don’t call the next day. . . .”

Nola gave a sly smile. “I gave him good reason to call the next day. And the day after that. And the day after that, too.”

“You like him, don’t you? Oh my god, you
do.
You’re blushing. I can’t believe you’re blushing over a boy. Be still, my heart.”

“All right, all right, I like him. Big deal. I’m into it. For now. And I’m very into Turks and Caicos.”

They were interrupted again by the waiter, this time bearing their chopped Chinese chicken salads. Nola nose-dived at her food, but Brooke merely pushed hers around on the plate.

“Okay, so tell me how this came about. Were you lying in bed one night and he said, ‘Let’s go away together?’”

“Sort of. He actually owns a place there. A villa at the Aman. Takes his son there pretty regularly.”

“Nola! You bitch! You didn’t tell me any of this!”

Nola feigned innocence. “Any of what?”

“The fact that you have a boyfriend and he has a villa and a
son
?”

“I don’t know that I’d call him my
boyfriend
. . . .”

“Nola!”

“Look, it’s been fun. Very relaxed. I’m trying not to think about it too much, and you’ve had a lot going on lately. . . .”

“Start talking!”

“Okay, his name is Andrew, you know that part. He has brown hair and he’s an excellent tennis player and his favorite food is guacamole.”

“I’m giving you ten seconds.”

Nola clapped her hands together and did a little jump in her seat. “It’s too much fun torturing you.”

“Nine, eight, sev—”

“All right! He’s about five-ten, maybe five-eleven on a good day, and he’s got a six-pack, which I find more intimidating than attractive. I suspect that he has all his shirts and suits custom-made, but I don’t have confirmation of that. He was on the golf team in college and spent a few years bumming around Mexico teaching golf before he founded an Internet company, took it public, and retired at age twenty-nine, although he still seems to do a lot of consulting, whatever that means. He lives in a town house on the Upper West Side,
to be near his son, who is six and lives with his ex-wife. He has a flat in London and the villa in Turks and Caicos. And he is absolutely, positively inexhaustible in bed.”

Brooke clutched her heart and pretended to collapse backward on the booth. “You’re lying,” she moaned.

“About which part?”

“About all of it.”

“Nope,” Nola said with a smile. “All true.”

“I want to be happy for you, I really do, but I can’t seem to overcome my own bitterness.”

“Don’t get carried away. He’s still forty-one, divorced, and a father. It’s not exactly the fairy tale. But I will say he’s a pretty good guy.”

“Please. Short of beating you or the kid, he can do no wrong. Have you told your mother yet? She might up and die on the spot.”

“Are you kidding? I can hear it now. ‘What did I tell you, Nola? It’s just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as it is a poor one. . . .’ Uch, knowing how happy it would make her takes the joy out of it for me.”

“Well, for what it’s worth, I think you’d make a great stepmother. You’d be a natural,” Brooke mused aloud.

“I’m not even going to dignify that,” Nola said, rolling her eyes.

It was getting dark by the time they finished, but when Nola went to hail a cab, Brooke gave her friend a hug and said, “I’m going to walk home.”

“Really? It’s gotten so gross out. You don’t even want to jump on the subway?”

“Nah, I feel like walking.” She took Nola’s hand. “Thanks for making me do this, Nol. I needed a kick in the ass, and I’m glad you’re the one who delivered it. I promise I’m going to rejoin the land of the living. And I’m so excited for you and your taxi lover.”

Nola kissed her on the cheek and hopped into the backseat. “Call
you later!” she said as the cab pulled away, and once again, Brooke was alone.

She walked up Tenth Avenue, pausing to watch the dogs play in the small dog run on Twenty-third Street, and then cut over to Ninth, where she backtracked a couple blocks to treat herself to a Billy’s red velvet cupcake and another cup of coffee before continuing back uptown. It had started to rain and by the time she got home, her peacoat was soaked and her boots were covered in the city’s special salty-dirty-slushy mix, so she stripped in the hallway and immediately wrapped herself in the purple cashmere blanket her mother had knitted years earlier. Six o’clock on a Sunday night, she had nothing to do for the rest of the evening and, weirder still, nowhere to go the next morning. Alone. Jobless. Free.

With Walter curled into a ball and pressed against her thigh, Brooke pulled out her computer and scanned her e-mail. Nothing interesting except for an e-mail from someone named Amber Bailey, which sounded familiar. She clicked on it and began to read.

Aside from the overly enthusiastic use of exclamation points, Brooke thought the e-mail seemed perfectly nice. She read it once
more and then, without thinking or allowing herself to list the thousand and one reasons she shouldn’t go, she hit Reply and typed:

“Might be a disaster, Walter, but I sure don’t have anything better to do,” she said, snapping the laptop closed and pulling the spaniel onto her lap. He stared at her and panted, his long, pink tongue hanging out the side of this mouth.

Without warning, he leaned in and licked her nose.

“Thanks, buddy,” she said, kissing him back. “I love you, too.”

W
HEN
Brooke woke up the next morning and saw it was nine thirty, her heart started racing and she jumped out of bed. And then she remembered: she wasn’t late for anything. She had, at that moment, exactly zero places to be, and while this wasn’t the ideal scenario—or a sustainable one—she was determined not to think of it as the end of the universe. Besides, she had a plan for the day, which was the first step toward establishing a routine (routines being very important, according to a recent
Glamour
article on being unemployed).

Number one on the
Glamour
to-do list was Get Your Most Dreaded Tasks Done First, and so before she even changed out of her robe, Brooke willed herself to pick up the phone and dial Margaret. She knew her ex-boss would’ve just wrapped up the Monday morning staff meeting and would be back in her office working on the next week’s schedule. Sure enough, she picked up on the first ring.

“Margaret? How are you? It’s Brooke Alter.” The pounding in her chest made it hard to speak.

“Brooke! Good to hear from you! How is everything?”

It was clearly not a weighted question—Margaret was just making small talk—but Brooke panicked for a second. Did she mean how
was everything with Julian? With the Chateau girl situation? With all the media conjecture about their marriage? Or was she just being polite and using a basic figure of speech?

“Oh, everything’s great. You know,” she said, immediately feeling ridiculous. “How are you?”

“Well, we’re managing. I’ve been interviewing to fill your spot, and I have to say it again, Brooke, I’m sorry about what happened.”

Brooke felt a glimmer of hope. Was she saying that so Brooke would ask for her job back? Because Brooke would beg for it back, do anything, anything at all to prove herself to Margaret. But no, she had to be sensible: if they were willing to hire her back right now, she wouldn’t have fired her in the first place.
Just act normal. Say what you called to say and hang up the phone.

“Margaret, I know I’m hardly in any place to ask you a favor, but . . . I was wondering if you would keep me in mind for any opportunities that come across your radar? Not at NYU, of course, but should you hear of anything else . . .”

There was a brief pause. “All right, Brooke. I’ll certainly keep my eyes open for you.”

“I would appreciate it so much! I’m very eager to resume working, and I promise you—and would promise any future employer—that my husband’s career will
not
be a problem anymore.”

Although she might have been curious, Margaret didn’t ask any follow-up questions. They made small talk for another minute or two before hanging up, and Brooke breathed a huge sigh of relief. Dreaded Item Number One: complete.

Dreaded Item Number Two—a call to Julian’s mother to discuss the travel details of Trent’s wedding next weekend—wasn’t going to be quite as easy. Her mother-in-law had taken to calling Brooke nearly every day since the Grammys to offer long and unsolicited monologues on how to be a supportive and forgiving wife. They usually included examples of Julian’s father’s trespasses (ranging in seriousness from flirting with his entire reception and nursing staff to
leaving her alone many weekends a year to go on golfing trips with his buddies and do “god knows what” else), and they always highlighted Elizabeth Alter’s abundance of patience and understanding of the male species. The clichés along the lines of “boys will be boys” and “behind every successful man there is a woman” were starting to feel not just repetitive but downright oppressive. On the bright side, Brooke wouldn’t have guessed in a million years that Julian’s mother cared one way or another if they stayed married, got divorced, or both simply vanished altogether. Thankfully, she got her mother-in-law’s voice mail and was able to leave a message asking her to e-mail their travel plans since Brooke wouldn’t be available to talk the rest of the day.

She was about to cross the next item off her list when her phone rang.

“Neha! Hi, sweetheart! How are you?”

“Brooke? Hi! I’ve got some great news: Rohan and I are definitely moving back to New York. By this summer!”

“No way. That is such great news! Did Rohan get an offer from a New York firm?” Brooke’s mind had already begun cycling through all the exciting possibilities: what they’d name the company, how they’d recruit their first clients, all the different ideas she’d had for getting the word out. And now, it was one step closer to happening.

“Actually,
I’m
the one who got the offer. It’s so crazy, but a friend of mine just signed on to cover for a staff nutritionist who’s on a yearlong maternity leave. Well, my friend can’t work right now since she’s taking care of her sick mother, so she asked me if I’d be interested. Guess who it’s for?”

Brooke cycled through a list of celebrities, just certain Neha was going to say Gwyneth or Heidi or Giselle, already in mourning for the business that wasn’t going to be. “I don’t know. Who?”

“The New York Jets! Can you believe it? I’m going to be the team nutritional adviser for the 2010 to 2011 season. I have less than zero
knowledge about the nutritional needs of three-hundred-pound linebackers, but I guess I’ll have to learn.”

“Oh, Neha, that’s incredible! What an amazing opportunity,” she said, and meant it. Brooke had to admit that if something like that came up, she’d ditch everything else in a heartbeat.

“Yeah, I’m pretty excited. And you should see Rohan. The second I told him, he was like, ‘Tickets!’ He’s already got the whole schedule printed and hanging on our fridge.”

Brooke laughed. “I’m envisioning little five-foot-three you walking through the locker room with a clipboard and a bullhorn, batting Big Macs and tubs of KFC out of their mammoth hands.”

“I know, right? Like, ‘Excuse me, Mr.-NFL-All-Star-I-make-eighty-trillion-dollars-a-year, but I’m going to have to ask you to cut back on the high-fructose corn syrup.’ It’s going to be awesome!”

When Brooke hung up the phone a few minutes later, she couldn’t help but feel that everyone’s career was on track except her own. They weren’t going to be starting a company together after all. Her phone rang again immediately. Certain it was Neha calling back to give her one more detail, Brooke picked up the call and said, “What, exactly, is your plan for when one of them hits on you?”

She heard the sound of a throat clearing and then a male voice asked, “Is this Brooke Alter?”

For just a moment—and for no good reason whatsoever—she was convinced it was someone calling to say Julian had been in a terrible accident, or was sick, or . . .

“Brooke, this is Art Mitchell calling from
Last Night
magazine. I was wondering if you had any comment about the piece in ‘Page Six’ this morning?”