With Friends Like These: A Novel (24 page)

  
Jules

In that lobby, could Quincy have ditched me any faster? I didn’t get a good long look at her, except to notice she was wearing the same raincoat she’d had when we were roommates. I’d have loved to see if someone pregnant with three babies was triple my size. I might have liked to have a real chat, though even under ideal circumstances I’d never ask her opinion about what the fuck I should do next in my life, and not only because, officially, I’m not supposed to know she’s pregnant. Neither Talia nor Chloe had mentioned Quincy’s delicate condition, so either the little mama hadn’t told them yet or—ouch!—those two biddies had been sworn not to talk about the blessed event to the likes of me, the woman robbing Quincy’s triplets of a home.

“Good evening, Miss de Marco. Can we help you?”

Oh, that you could
. “I’m fine, Esteban, but thanks,” I said. All the doormen had learned my name. It’s highly civilized to be greeted whenever I enter this lobby, but as I walked across a rug so plug-ugly it would go begging on Craigslist, it occurred to me that the snoots here must think simply that because this was their address, they had style. I’d have bet my ass
that was the crew that had picked the rug. I wondered how many owners are like Arthur, who bought here when the neighborhood was a gulag.

As I got off the elevator, I heard the howling. That meant one thing: Arthur had been paid a visit by his neighbor. Her horselaugh rang through the hall.

Jennifer is one of those women aroused by competition. Until I erupted on the scene, I doubt she’d have grunted hello to my Artie when they bumped into each other tossing garbage down the chute. Now, with me across the hall several nights a week, she pops up like spam. I’ve suggested that he install a firewall—shouting “I have a girlfriend” would be a start—but he loves the pig-in-shit attention.

Turning my key in the lock, I could hear her say, “The wife got so rattled she had to make a bathroom run.” When I walked through the door, tears were running down Jennifer’s cheeks, streaking gullies in her makeup.
Should I hand her a rag? Offer to hose her down?

“Holy crap!” Arthur said, apparently unaware of my presence. “What else went on?” He poured wine into his guest’s half-empty glass. It was from a bottle I’d brought two days ago.

“The woman could not stop talking. Diarrhea of the mouth and—whatever!” Jennifer whooped again and took a big swallow, which brought on a coughing spell.

“Hello!” I shouted as I put down a bouquet of yellow roses and a bag containing Hostess Twinkies and bacon. I’d been craving both, along with the obscenely expensive red beet sorbet at Rosa Mexicano. I hoped Sheila had been correct when she announced there was a baby inside me, because I’d already gained seven pounds. The buttons on my shirts were popping. “Could you give me a hand here?” I yelled over the hilarity.

“Jules, doll,” Arthur said, walking toward me. He gave me a showy tongue kiss and let his hand linger on my ass. I leaned against him and joined my arms around his waist.
Jennifer, eat your jealous little heart out
.

“I was filling Arthur in on tonight,” she said with her usual stuck-on-herself air.

“The ‘confidential’ meeting?” I asked.

Her beady eyes darted to Arthur as if to ask,
Whose team is
she
on, anyway?
“Arthur’s a close friend whose interest I support,” she sniffed. “I thought he deserved to know.” To her credit, she kept her tone light, despite the defensive position.

I’ll admit I was curious about the Blues’ interview, but my interest was trumped by a far more dominant need to prevent Jennifer from enjoying the luxury of feeling essential. Last I checked, I don’t suffer from adult-onset idiocy.

“Cut to the chase,” Arthur said. “When’s the vote?”

“Basil’s call.” Jennifer shrugged. “He’ll schedule a second meeting to chew up the buyers whenever he feels like it, and we’ll vote at the end. Secret ballot.”

“It’s a democracy?” I asked. These days, so little is.

“Not exactly. Let’s just say you don’t want Basil on your bad side, not if you’d like to install a washing machine or get your new couch delivered on a Saturday. He’s the imperial wizard.”

Jennifer’s analysis of this ant colony might be mildly intriguing, but no other good would come of having her hang around. When Arthur left the room, I deployed the most basic of Jules’ Rules:
To make someone disappear, ignore them
. I turned my back on Jennifer to fill a vase, which I took with casual propriety from a cabinet in the wet bar, and concentrated on cutting the roses’ stems under running water, meticulously plucking away thorns and excess foliage. After two minutes of silence, Arthur reemerged from the bathroom, zipping his fly, and Jennifer stood to say goodbye. “I’ll call as soon as I hear anything,” she promised as she flounced away.

“Why ya leaving, Jen?” She looked at me cross-eyed and walked out. “Now she’s probably pissed, and where’s that going to get me?” a petulant Arthur asked after the front door closed. He walked toward me and put on a hangdog expression. “Why’d you scare her off?”

Corollary:
Don’t feel obligated to answer a question merely because someone
poses it
. “Twinkie?” I asked as I stood back to admire the flowers’ lush fullness, not, I hoped, unlike my own.

He looked at me as if I’d said,
Industrial-strength sodium stearoyl lactylate, darling?
“How can you eat that crap?” This from a man who considers pork and beans a company meal.

“I offered you a snack cake, not a glass of weed killer,” I said as I bit into the spongy confection.

Arthur pulled me toward him, which I allowed, and tried to kiss away my incipient foul mood. He obviously wasn’t up for a fight, and neither, frankly, was I. For all his faults, Arthur was not without talent in bed, and that’s where I wanted to wind up, as soon as possible. One thing led to another, and then another.

“Doll, is it my imagination, or are you even more voluptuous than the other day?” he asked as he unhooked the oldest, most stretched-out bra in my lingerie drawer. I’d been wearing it on the loosest hook, but it still created cleavage dangerously rivaling Aretha Franklin’s and, when removed, left an angry red ring around the softness of my rib cage. I wanted Arthur’s question to be another I left unanswered, but he persisted. “Seriously,” he said. “You look different.”

“You and your imagination.” I aimed for nonchalance, but this was like saying,
Omigod, Arthur, your hairline is receding, I never noticed
.

“Getting your period?” He leaned back and looked at me.

We were now in the vicinity of land mines. “Artie,” I said, moving my hands to parts of his body that I felt certain would lead us away from the line of fire if serviced, “you’re right, maybe I’m late. I’ve never been regular.” Another lie. My periods were as reliable as a utility bill.

He started fondling the tattoo on my breast, but his touch on my swollen flesh felt like sex abuse. I flinched.

“A tad PMS-y, are we?”

A tad retarded, are we? I’m having your goddamn baby, you cretin
. One minute I’d be visiting the site for Planned Parenthood and every other earnest resource where I could be counseled on Trying to Decide. The
next, Sisters Chastity, Consuelo Lingus, Butch, and Dildo—the bitch quartet that haunts my high school memories—had lined up to hiss,
Julia Maria de Marco, we will not allow you to sin. You are not going to harm your precious unborn child. You are not going to even fucking think about it. Just try
. All the nuns I ever knew then joined them in a line of shrill, frowning sopranos, their rulers keeping time with the message:
You fornicating ho, what did you think would come from banging thirty different guys in almost three decades?

Perhaps they didn’t say
bang
. Maybe the word was
boff
or
hump
, but I got the message. Sisters of Mercy, my fat ass.

I backed away from Arthur. “No!” I shouted.

“What’s this about?” he asked.

To my absolute horror, I started to weep. I probably looked worse than Jennifer during one of her spastic laugh attacks.

“Shit, Jules—what’s wrong?” Arthur looked genuinely concerned, until I swear I saw him smile. “Is it Jennifer?”

I wanted to strangle him with my bra until his eyes popped out. “That loser?” I said, wiping away my tears.

Arthur leaned back on his sturdy haunches and looked smug. “You’re worried she’s got me covered on the nights you aren’t here.”

To think that the innocent lump of cells multiplying inside me had half of this douche’s genes was, in itself, a compelling pro-choice argument. “Arthur, I don’t give a shit what you do with Jennifer,” I said, drawing out her name until it was as long as a plumber’s snake. Yet I realized it wasn’t entirely true. I suddenly did care. “Except the way the two of you are trying to trash Quincy’s chance to get the apartment.”

“Julia de Marco, what are you implying?”

“I’m not
implying
, Arthur Weiner.” I managed a snarky laugh. “I believe I’m being explicit.”

“Fuck, you don’t think I deserve that co-op as much as a complete stranger?” He sounded as hurt as he did angry.

“She’s not a stranger, not to me,” I blurted out. “Quincy is my friend.”

“Oh, really?” he said. “‘Quincy is my friend,’” he mimicked. “So what does that make me?”

“I’m going to have to get back to you on that one.”

I took a moment, dressed at my leisure, and left the bed, the room, and the apartment.

  
Chloe

After California, I decided I required a makeover, inside and out. Not the kind involving Infallible Lustrous Never-Fail Lip Color and a haircut that cost double what my first semester of college had. I wanted to become a tough cookie, someone who would never again get scammed by a friend. In my survival-of-the-fittest world, I needed to reconstitute myself as more lean mean protein, less sugar and boggy fiber.

I’d begun to inhale self-help books and motivational tapes, often while I walked on the treadmill. Before bed, TiVo’d
Oprah
episodes became my sound track for a vigorous free-weight workout that balanced the yoga I started practicing five times a week. I’d also dived deeply into Internet chat rooms, but since I wasn’t a pedophile, gambler, sex addict, or date rape victim—just your basic wuss for whom a fearless act is wearing a red strapless dress—I found no help there.