‘Hot-girl diet, huh? Good for her. You’ve got to admire that level of commitment.’ Penelope sighed again. ‘I’m headed home in a few. Want to share a cab downtown?’
‘Perfect. I’ll pick you up at the corner of Fourteenth and Fifth a little before nine. I’ll call when I get in the cab,’ I said.
‘Sounds good. I’ll wait outside. Bye.’
I headed for my closet. After some discards and retries, I settled on a pair of tight black pants and a plain black tank top. I extracted some decently high heels, bought during a shopping trip in SoHo, and took the time to blow out the exceedingly thick black hair I inherited from my mother – the kind that everyone thinks they want until they realize it barely fits in a ponytail and instantly adds thirty minutes to any preparation time. I even attempted some makeup, which got put to use so infrequently that the mascara wand was all clumpy and a few of the lipsticks were stuck inside their tubes. No matter! I thought, singing along to Mike & the Mechanics’ ‘The Living Years’ as I worked on my face … this was even kind of fun. I had to admit, the end results were worth the extra effort: my love handles no longer bulged over the waistline of my pants, my boobs had retained their chubby-girl fullness even though the rest of me had shrunk, and the mascara I’d haphazardly brushed across my lashes had accidentally smeared to perfection, giving my somewhat bland gray eyes a sexy, smoldering look.
Penelope was waiting outside at exactly ten to nine, and we were deposited at our requested address right on time. There were a ton of restaurants on West Broadway, and everyone seemed to be clustered at outdoor tables looking exceedingly well-scrubbed and unnervingly happy. We had a little trouble finding the place because the restaurant management had neglected to post a sign. Perhaps it’s an issue of practicality; since the shelf life of most New York hot spots is under six months, it actually leaves one less thing to remove when they close. Luckily, I remembered the street number from Zagat and we scoped it out from the far corner. Groups of scantily but expensively clad women congregated around the bar as older men kept their drinks filled, but I didn’t see Elisa or anyone else from the office.
‘Bette! Over here!’ Elisa called, a champagne glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other. She was planted in the middle of Cipriani’s outdoor tables, leaning seductively against one of the Italians’ chairs, her branch-like limbs looking as though they might snap at any moment. ‘Everyone else is inside. So glad you could come!’
‘Jesus Christ, she’s skinny,’ Penelope muttered under her breath as we walked toward the tables.
‘Hi,’ I said and leaned in to kiss Elisa hello. I turned to introduce her to Penelope but noticed that Elisa was still waiting there, her face thrust forward and filled, eyes closed. She had expected the traditional Euro double kiss, and I’d given up halfway through. I’d recently read a convincing piece in Cosmo decrying the double kiss as a stupid affectation and decided to make a stand: there would be no more double kisses for me. I left her hanging but said, ‘Thanks for inviting me. I absolutely love it here!’
She recovered quickly. ‘Ohmigod, me, too. They have the best salads of anywhere. Hi, I’m Elisa,’ she said, offering a hand to Penelope.
‘I’m so sorry, that was so rude of me.’ I flushed, realizing I must have sounded ridiculous to Penelope. ‘Penelope, this is Elisa. She’s been showing me around all week long. And, Elisa, this is Penelope, my best friend.’
‘Wow, fab ring,’ Elisa said, grabbing Penelope’s left hand instead of her right and softly fingering the massive stone. ‘That carat-glare is, like, blinding!’ Penelope was, in fact, sporting her ‘wearable’ three-carat rock, and I wondered what Elisa would think of her second ring.
‘Thanks,’ Penelope said, clearly pleased. ‘I just got engaged last—’ But before she could finish, Davide grabbed Elisa from behind and wrapped his arms around her tiny waist, careful not to hug too hard and break her. He leaned in and whispered something in her ear and she threw her head back with laughter.
‘Davide, honey, behave! You know Bette. Davide, this is Bette’s friend, Penelope.’
We all air-kissed on both cheeks (my no double-kiss rule hadn’t lasted twenty seconds), but Davide didn’t manage to remove his eyes from Elisa for a single second. ‘Our table. It is ready,’ he announced gruffly in Italian-accented English, patting Elisa’s bony ass and leaning his pretty face toward her neck again. ‘Come in when you are finito.’ Something about Davide’s accent still didn’t sound quite right. It seemed to meander from French to Italian and back to French again.
‘I’m finished,’ she sang merrily, tossing her cigarette underneath a table. ‘Let’s go in, okay?’
We had a table for six tucked in the back corner. Elisa immediately informed me that marginally cool people obsess about getting a table in the front of the restaurant, but the truly cool request tables in the back. Skye, Davide, and Leo comprised the rest of the group that had worked on the Candace Bushnell book party the night before, and I was relieved to see that Elisa and Davide were the only couple. They were all sipping drinks and arguing about something, looking relaxed in the way that only the truly confident ever can. And naturally, no one was wearing black. Skye and Elisa were wearing almost identical short dresses, one in a bright coral color with gorgeous silver heels and the other in a perfect aquamarine with matching metallic sandals that tied halfway up her calves. No matter that it was mid-October and relatively cold at night. Even the guys looked like they’d been prepped at Armani before dinner. Davide was still wearing his charcoal gray suit from work. Although it was significantly snugger than most American men would wear, it looked fabulous on his tall, built frame. Leo was the perfect combination of hip and casual in a pair of distressed Paper Denim jeans, a tight vintage T-shirt that said VIETNAM: WE WERE WINNING WHEN I LEFT, and the new orange Pumas for guys. I went to claim the last remaining seat next to Leo, but he hoisted himself effortlessly to his feet without so much as a break in his sentence, kissed both my cheeks, and pulled the chair out for me, and then one for Penelope, who was obviously trying as hard as I was to act like this was a usual night out for us. When we’d settled in, Leo handed us menus and motioned for the waiter to take our drink orders, although he still hadn’t so much as paused in the conversation.
I racked my brain trying to think of some remotely cool drink, but after years of only drinking with my uncle, it was impossible. Absolut was popular these days, wasn’t it?
‘Um, I’ll have an Absolut and grapefruit juice, please,’ I mumbled when the waiter looked to me first.
‘Really?’ Elisa asked, looking at me, wide-eyed. ‘I don’t even think they serve Absolut here. Why don’t we get a few bottles of wine for the table to start?’
‘Oh, sure. That would be great.’ Strike one.
‘Don’t feel too bad – I was going to order a beer,’ Penelope leaned over and whispered. I laughed like it was the most amusing thing I’d ever heard.
Davide spoke to the waiter in fourth-grade Italian, supplementing with hand gestures and at one point kissing his fingertips as though the mere thought of his order was too delicious to resist. Elisa and Skye just gazed at him in adoration. He switched to his faux-accented English for the rest of us monolingual idiots. ‘I have ordered three bottles of this Chianti to start, if this is acceptable. In the meantime, everyone prefer sparkling or flat?’
Elisa turned to me and announced, ‘Davide is from Sicily.’
‘Oh, really? How interesting,’ I said. ‘Are his parents still there?’
‘No, no, he’s been here since he was four, but he still has such affection for his birthplace.’
Votes were tallied for the bottled water preference – I wisely resisted saying that I’d be fine with plain old tap water – and Davide ordered three of each. By my calculations, we’d already spent just under $300 and hadn’t so much as ordered an appetizer yet.
‘Great call on the wine, Davide,’ Skye announced while punching her manicured