With Friends Like These: A Novel (5 page)

The check arrived. She grabbed it. “This one’s on me.”

“Hey, I’m the one with the big payday.”

“I forgot to even ask about that!” Quincy said.

“True.”

“All the more reason for me to take this,” she said. “Besides, I’m feeling lucky.”

I thanked her and we said goodbye in a snowstorm of cheek kisses. For the next two hours I wandered in and out of shops in Soho, but I kept tripping over the four-leaf clover on steroids that Quincy had found that now gave her the chance to buy what must be an extraordinary bit of real estate.

I realized I wanted to tell Arthur the whole implausible, inequitable story. Was that wrong? It wasn’t illegal, and all I was going to do was share the information—and maybe, for kicks, take a peek at the place.

I began to feel like a child waiting for her birthday party, and soon enough my need became an itch I couldn’t ignore. “Hi there,” I said, catching Arthur on the first ring. We were still in that primitive state of romantic thrall when he wouldn’t have the balls to tell me I’d interrupted him at work, which I probably had. “You’re not going to believe this,” I began, using my most seductive voice, “but guess who may become your neighbor?” I retold the saga, possibly mentioning—I recall—that Quincy insinuated the apartment was a steal. But who was I kidding? The real point was that, given Quincy’s lousy track record on having bids accepted, she’d eventually lose out on this apartment and a stranger would land this deal. I couldn’t let that happen.

“Which floor’s it on?” he asked.

“She didn’t say.”

“If it has a reservoir view, that narrows it down.”

I detected excitement.

“Who’s the broker?”

“Howard something.”

“Is that his first name? What company is he with?”

I could see where this was going and felt a spasm of guilt on Quincy’s behalf. On the other hand, she was the same friend who’d forgotten to congratulate me on my starring role in a major commercial, the friend who didn’t want me to see the apartment with her. Also—and this
seemed far more compelling—I kept returning to the point that Quincy would eventually get outbid on this apartment, and this place sounded too good to let float away when Arthur was a resident in that very building, as well as maybe my future. If that apartment had anyone’s name on it, it was Arthur’s.

“I’ve got to see this place,” he said. “If I could sell my apartment for a bundle and stay in my building but get a place with a million-dollar view, well, all around, that’d be a pretty fair trade. My apartment has no view, but it’s huge. I’d definitely come out ahead.”

And with my subtle guidance, I thought, he’d invest that profit in me—travel, jewelry, a rental in the Hamptons, or a house in, say, Dutchess County? I briefly pictured myself riding to hounds, and then shook away the fantasy. De Marcos bet on horses; we don’t ride them.

“Aren’t you getting a little ahead of yourself here?” I asked him, as I thought the same thing of myself. But perhaps not. I’m past forty. Arthur is fifty. Sometimes in life you have to stop overthinking and just haul ass.

He laughed. “Hang tight, kid. I’ll see you at dinner.”

Four hours later I walked into the bistro I’d suggested on Columbus Avenue. Arthur was waiting, along with two chilled glasses of champagne, a most un-Weiner-like flourish. “What’s going on?” I asked.

“Do we require a special occasion to toast ourselves?” He stopped slightly short of a smirk.
Oh, my God, what if this man is asking me to marry him?
My mind instantly inventoried his less attractive qualities, beginning with his braying laugh. But there wasn’t a diamond twinkling in the bottom of my flute, nor did the waiter deliver even an opal hidden in an escargot. “Julia de Marco, I like the way you think,” Arthur said, raising his glass. “Thank you for being in my life.”

We drained the champagne, and the waiter asked us if we’d like a refill. Arthur answered immediately. “No, we’re ready to order. We’ll start by sharing the mussels.” Cheapest thing on the menu.

  
Talia

“Henry needs new sneakers. Don’t forget to take him to the shoe store,” I said to Tom.

“Since when do I ever forget?” he answered, kissing me goodbye.

Since never. “Don’t let that son of ours talk you into the kind that light up.”

“Do I look like the kind of dad who can be easily coerced?”

You do
. I am definitely Bad Cop, though, as my
bubbe
would point out, Tom’s the parent who resembles a Cossack. “Should I stop at the supermarket on the way home?” Our cupboards were sadly bare.

“Don’t bother. We’ll figure dinner out later.” Tom beamed. My husband, like a trick candle that burns bright no matter what. “You’ll be late. Just go.”

I let two trains go by my stop in Brooklyn before I wedged myself into a third, where I stood for forty-five minutes between a tourist’s backpack and a hugely pregnant woman whom people fortunate enough to have seats were actively ignoring, then got off at Manhattan’s Union Square and walked seven blocks to my office, arriving barely in time for a staff
meeting. While our team crafted what we were sure our clients would agree was a stellar pitch for roach motels, I used every trick I knew to stay awake. Three hours passed before I got to return to my desk and sort through the pile of paper our intern handed me.

That’s when I saw it. The message was from the much-touted June Rittenhouse, whom I knew by reputation as my field’s top-gun headhunter, a woman who handles positions in companies known to pay exceedingly well, a list that does not include the ad agency where I work. “
Urgent
,” the acid-green note shouted. It was addressed to Chloe Keaton.

I reached for the phone to dial her number. Chloe and I aren’t just close friends. We go back to Dartmouth, where we briefly met when we were both visiting our boyfriends for homecoming. After graduation, we recognized each other at a prissy women’s hotel. Now we share a copywriting job and are in almost constant communication. Chloe’s cell phone had rung twice when an evil voice in my head began to speak. I call her Mean Maxine.

Why should Chloe get all the breaks? Maybe June Rittenhouse is cold-calling and simply works in alphabetical order. You, Talia Fisher-Wells, are equally talented—maybe more talented—and need a better job ten times as much as Chloe does. Or the headhunter might be mining candidates for a position neither Chloe nor you would ever want, in a suburb of, say, Bismarck
.

Mean Maxine snarked away until, unconvinced and disgusted, I shut her down and got on with my work, even taking several calls from Chloe. She asked for her messages. I gave them to her, all but one.

On the ride home, from within my bag the green stickie continued to shriek,
I belong to Chloe
. Mean Maxine hooted back,
No way. Talia, don’t be a fool
. The debate segued into one of my least favorite quotidian themes, life’s mysterious, unjust collision between money and luck. By the time I walked into our apartment in Park Slope, I’d worked myself into a lather. This never bodes well for Tom. I sat at our kitchen table and opened mail, which today contained not only bills but an article featuring restaurants in Rome.
Think about it, my lovelies
, Jules had scrawled on the top in her back-slanted handwriting.
Diet
domani. Jules, Chloe, Quincy, and I were
planning to get together to hash out plans for our annual trip, and as if it were a presidential primary, Jules had been campaigning. She is nothing if not strategic.

I kvetched aloud. “Why am I the only person who ever has to think about money?”

Tom groaned, folding his arms over his broad chest. “Is this a question I’m expected to answer?” He hates when I bitch, as much as I resent the lectures he can’t resist giving about how I notice only the world’s haves. On this subject, we hit an impasse fast, because I like to point out that if he applied for membership to the have-not club, they’d reject him based on genealogy. What’s more, innuendoes suggesting that my value system is out of whack strike me as cheap shots because I think Tom and I agree that I, Talia Fisher-Wells, qualify as one of the good guys. I keep my carbon footprint dainty, and I’d compost if our backyard were bigger. Each month, I find four hours to donate to a food co-op in exchange for a deep discount on rutabagas and twenty kinds of beans. On a scale of 1 to 10, my materialism barely scratches 5. If I belonged to their tribe, the Catholics might canonize me.

“Forget I broached the subject,” I said. “In fact, why don’t you go for a bike ride?” With that, Tom did, but I continued to ruminate,
farklempt
, even after I parked Henry at the kitchen table and watched him scribble with his fat crayons. Shouldn’t Tom be able to comprehend how frustrating it is that my three friends on speed dial happen to be preeminent haves? These perfectly agreeable people never blink before buying another pair of shoes they want, a verb they confuse with
need
. When their roots grow in, they make an appointment, not a purchase from the drug aisle. They use their airline miles to upgrade, since they don’t have to hoard them for a ticket, which in my case is for my twice-yearly visit to my parents in Santa Monica.

Am I envious? Yes. And I think of this defect as more pathetic than my inability to calculate a percentage. I recognize that I lead a blessed life, and I am not a woman who flings around that adjective casually. I am healthy, with a husband, and not just any husband, but Tom Wells, a loving
mensch, smart and funny. I have Henry, our delicious little boy. I have a job that engages my brain and student loans that are 75 percent paid off. Yet despite how often I remind myself of my considerable privileges, Mean Maxine points out the economic chasm between my life and my friends’ lives, which every year yawns more profoundly. Next to any one of them, I, Talia Fisher-Wells, am a third-world country. What I need—no, want—from my husband isn’t judgment. It’s sympathy. And I wouldn’t mind if he produced a bigger income.

“That Maine is cheap isn’t even the point,” I complained to Tom, who soon enough returned and was unloading locally grown vegetables from canvas bags we carry to the food co-op in our bikes’ baskets. “I’ve got it worked out. We’ll stay at your family’s camp. In September the ocean’s practically a swimming pool. We’ll hang around the lake, hike and bike, and go to lobster pounds every night.”

“Preaching to the choir, babe,” Tom said as he began to rinse a head of buttery green lettuce while he entertained Henry with silly faces. “I’ve gone to that dump every year of my life.”

“It’s authentic.” Last year, when Chloe and Xander moved into their brownstone, her decorator talked her into buying moose antlers to hang over her fireplace. I’m fairly certain that beast’s ancestor hangs in Tom’s family’s living room, shot by Grandfather Wells. “Chloe just spent a thousand bucks on two new Hudson Bay blankets.”

“Dammit, no one can accuse my family’s blankets of being new.” Tom pounded his fist in mock indignation, which made Henry wave his pudgy hands. A crayon bonked Pontoon, our dog of indeterminate parentage and large appetite, who was snoozing under the kitchen table. The animal shook his hairy snout, and Henry started giggling so hard I couldn’t get him to look in my direction, even when I called “Henry Thomas” three times.

“Where does Mrs. Keaton want to go?” He never fails to be amused by the fact that Chloe’s husband, Alexander Keaton, has evolved from being someone who used to intern for Al Gore into a guy who quotes
Wall Street Journal
editorials. Does Tom expect that because Xander was raised in
Tennessee he should sing songs with lyrics like
the squirrel ate the cat and the cat ate the dog and they all danced a jig on the leg of a hog
? Since college he and Xander have both grown, in opposite directions.

“Chloe wants Vegas.”

“Does she like the slots or the craps table?”

“She likes to flip a coin between Fendi and Gucci.”

“Remind me why you’re friendly with her.”

“Because she’s the best present you ever gave me.” Tom and Xander, who were in the same fraternity, had been pleased when their girlfriends formed a mutual admiration society, one that in recent years has been more enthusiastic than their own. It’s also not a small thing that Chloe regards me as the ultimate source of motherly wisdom, although Henry’s only four months older than Dash.