‘Great. Why don’t you meet me at my uncle’s apartment at, let’s see, maybe around six? He’s on Central Park West, northwest corner of Sixty-eighth Street. Is that okay?’
He had just enough time to say that he was really looking forward to it before Philip materialized outside and literally dragged me back inside by the arm. I didn’t much mind, though, considering what I had to look forward to the next day. I floated happily around the room, accepting compliments from everyone on staff and listening as guests talked about what a ‘great scene’ we had going on that night. When the party began to wind down around two, I pleaded yet another headache to Philip, who seemed happy to remain behind with Leo and a bottle of Cristal. At home, I curled up in bed with a Slim Jim and a brand-new Harlequin. It was the most perfect evening I could remember.
I could barely contain my excitement as I waited for Sammy in the lobby of Will’s building. That day had dragged on interminably. Never mind that Kelly had bought the entire office breakfast in celebration of the previous night’s success, or that she’d brought me into her jungle lair to tell me that she was so impressed with the evening that she was officially making me second-in-command of the Playboy party, reporting directly to her. Elisa’s face tightened when the announcement was made; she’d been there a year and a half longer than me and clearly had expected to oversee the company’s biggest event. But after a few remarks about how she was happy to ‘give someone else a chance’ at overseeing what would surely be total chaos, she plastered on a happy face and proposed celebratory drinks. Newspapers and websites that weren’t even at the party had covered it, breathlessly writing how the ‘slew of celebs and socialites’ had come out to fete the ‘hottest new urban accessory.’ It almost didn’t register when a box arrived directly from Mr Kroner’s office with enough BlackBerries to stock an entire wireless store, the note sounding so effusive I was almost embarrassed. I barely even noticed the few lines in New York Scoop that announced I’d been spotted sobbing in a corner as Philip made out with a Nigerian-born soap star, and I didn’t get the least bit upset when Elisa confided to me that she’d ‘accidentally’ gotten a ride with Philip on his Vespa because ‘she was so drunk and she and Davide had gotten in a fight but that nothing – nothing, I swear on your life and mine – had happened.’ No, none of that had even really registered because none of it made the minutes any shorter or got me in the same car with Sammy any faster. When he walked through my uncle’s lobby’s door wearing a pair of broken-in jeans and a very snuggly sweater, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder, I didn’t know if I’d be able to keep my eyes on the road long enough to get us out of the city.
‘Hey,’ he said when he saw me sitting on the bench, pretending to examine the paper. ‘I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I said, standing on tiptoe to kiss him hello on the cheek. ‘You’re the one doing me the favor. Hold on a sec, I’ll have my uncle come down with the keys.’
Will had agreed to lend me his Lexus for the weekend only after I’d sworn to uphold the story he’d fabricated to explain his absence. Even though I was just giving Sammy a lift to his parents’ house, he insisted that Sammy be fully apprised of the cover story as well.
‘You promise you’ve got the details down, darling?’ he’d asked nervously upon relinquishing the keys as the three of us stood in his underground garage.
‘Will, stop stressing. I promise I won’t give you up. I shall endure the suffering alone. As always.’
‘Humor me. Let’s go through it one more time. When she asks you where I am, what do you say?’
‘I simply explain that you and Simon couldn’t bear the idea of spending an entire weekend in a solar-powered house where there’s never enough hot water and the all-natural, undyed sheets are itchy and nothing’s really ever clean since chemicals aren’t used, so instead you decided you’d rather admire the harvest from your comped beachfront suite in Key West. Oh, yeah, and that you find it quite dull when the dinner-table conversation consists solely of ecopolitics. Is that about right?’ I smiled sweetly.
He looked helplessly at Sammy and coughed a few times.
‘Don’t worry, sir, Bette’s got the story down,’ he assured him, climbing into the passenger seat. ‘Simon had a last-minute request to fill in for one of the missing musicians, and you felt it wouldn’t be right to leave him alone on the holiday, as much as you’d like to see everyone. You would’ve called them yourself, but you’re on a tight deadline for your bastard of an editor and will call next week. I’ll get her up to speed on the ride.’
Will released the keys into my open palm. ‘Sammy, thank you. Bette, I want you to pay close attention to the empowerment lectures – women can do anything, you know – and try not to feel too bad for little old me, kicking back poolside with a daiquiri and a paperback.’
I wanted to hate him, but he looked so happy with his alibi and his sneaky plans that I didn’t do anything but hug him and turn on the car. ‘You owe me for this. As usual.’ I tucked Millington’s Sherpa Bag in the backseat and tossed a Greenie inside so she wouldn’t cry or whine while we drove.
‘You know it, darling. I’ll bring you back one of those kitschy fringed T-shirts, or maybe a coconut candle or two. Deal? Drive safely. Or don’t. Just don’t call me if anything happens, at least not for the next three days. Have fun!’ he called, blowing kisses in the rearview mirror.
‘He’s great,’ Sammy said as we worked our way slowly through traffic up the West Side Highway. ‘Like a little kid who got out of school by pretending to be sick.’
I stuck Monster Ballads (ordered from an 800 number in an insomniac three A.M. fit) in the six-disc changer and skipped through until I found Mr Big’s ‘To Be with You.’ ‘He is really great, isn’t he? I honestly don’t know what I would do without him. He’s the only reason I’m normal today.’
‘What about your parents?’
‘They’re sixties throwbacks,’ I said, ‘and they take it very seriously. My mother cried the first time I shaved my legs, when I was thirteen, because she was afraid I’d subjugated myself to the male-dictated cultural expectations of female beauty.’
He laughed and started to settle in, stretching out his legs and putting his hands behind his head. ‘Please tell me she didn’t talk you out of that particular practice?’
‘No, she didn’t, at least not now … although it took me until college to shave again. They once insisted that I alone was responsible for disrupting an entire ecosystem because I bought a snakeskin keychain. Oh, and then there was the time I wasn’t allowed to go to the biggest slumber party in fourth grade because they noticed that the parents of the girl hosting it refused to recycle their newspapers. They thought it was a potentially evil environment for a child to spend twelve hours in.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘I’m not. It’s not to say they’re not really great people, because they are. They’re just really committed. Sometimes I wish I were more like them.’
‘I sure didn’t know you well in high school, but I remember you being more like that than, uh, than this New York thing.’
I didn’t quite know what to say.
‘No, I didn’t mean it like that,’ he hastened to say. ‘You know, you just always gave the impression of being really involved in so many causes. I remember you wrote that editorial on a woman’s right to choose in the school paper. I overheard some of the teachers talking about it in study hall one day – they couldn’t believe you were only a freshman. I read