‘I think I’m onto something, seriously,’ Gilles said as he artfully placed the foils in a face-framing halo, head cocked just so, forehead crinkled in concentration.
Adriana was accustomed to his ever-changing ‘lifestyle choices’ and loved to retell them to the girls. Previous appointments had brought gems such as ‘When in doubt, wax it,’ ‘Real men use decorators,’ and ‘No weights, no dates,’ all rules to which he adhered with surprising dedication. He’d struggled with only one promise, made on his fortieth birthday, when he swore off prostitutes and escorts forever (‘Tricks are for kids. From here on in, civilians only’), but a follow-up pledge to swear off Vegas had hoisted him back on the wagon.
Adriana’s phone rang. Peering over her shoulder, Gilles saw first that it was Leigh.
‘Tell her if she can’t convince that Adonis boyfriend of hers to put a ring on her finger soon, I’m going to kidnap him and introduce him to the wonders of the homo lifestyle.’
‘Mmm, I’m sure she’s terrified.’ To the phone: ‘Did you hear that, Leigh? You have to marry Russell immediately or Gilles is going to seduce him.’
Gilles brushed the solution onto a lock of hair using a smooth upstroke followed by a slight wrist flick. He then swirled the ends into the roots and crisply folded the foil over the whole goopy mess with a precise tap of the comb. ‘What did she say?’
‘That he’s all yours.’ Gilles opened his mouth, but Adriana shook her head and held up one hand in a ‘stop’ motion. ‘Splendid! Count me in. Of course I have plans tonight, but I’ve been desperate for a reason to cancel. Besides, if Emmy wants to go out, who are we to stand in her way? What time? Perfect, querida, we’ll meet in the lobby at nine. Kiss!’
‘What’s wrong with Emmy?’ Gilles asked.
‘Duncan met a twenty-three-year-old who’s dying to have his babies.’
‘Ah, but of course. How’s she doing?’
‘I actually don’t think she’s devastated,’ Adriana said, licking a puff of foamed milk off her lip. ‘She just thinks she should be. There’s a lot of the “I’ll never meet anyone else” stuff, but not much that really has to do with missing Duncan. She should be fine.’
Gilles sighed. ‘I dream of getting my hands on that hair. Do you even realize how rare virgin hair is these days? It’s like the Holy Grail of coloring.’
‘I’ll be sure to pass that along. Want to come tonight? We’re going for dinner and drinks. Nothing major, just the girls.’
‘You know how much I love a girls’ night, but I’ve got a date with the maître d’ from last weekend. Hopefully he’ll be leading the way directly to a quiet table in the back of his bedroom.’
‘I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you.’ Adriana clearly focused on the tall, broad-shouldered man in a checked blue dress shirt and perfectly pressed slacks who had approached the reception desk.
Gilles followed her gaze to the door as he secured the last lock of hair into a foil and waved his hands in a ‘voilà!’ motion. ‘I’m finished, love.’ The Bambi-eyed assistant grasped Adriana’s arm and led her to a dryer seat. Gilles called out from his station loud enough for everyone – and certainly the newcomer – to hear, ‘Just sit there and concentrate on keeping your legs closed, darling. I know it isn’t easy, but fifteen minutes is all I ask.’
Adriana rolled her eyes dramatically and gave him another finger, this time holding it high enough for the entire salon to see. She relished the shocked looks from the society ladies, all of whom looked like her mother. She saw out of the corner of her eye that the man who had watched her and Gilles wore a small smile of amusement. I’m too old for this, she thought as she sneaked another look at the handsome stranger. The man walked past her and turned his smile toward her. With equal parts calculation and natural instinct, Adriana gazed up at him through wide eyes, eyes that said ‘Who, me?’ and placed the tiniest tip of her tongue in the middle of her upper lip. She simply had to stop acting like this, there was really no question; but in the meantime, it was just too much fun.
Moving quietly around her apartment so as not to wake Otis, Emmy realized there wasn’t all that much to straighten. It was a small apartment, even for a studio in Manhattan, and the bathroom was a bit grimy and the light – especially on Saturday afternoons, when you were accustomed to staying at your boyfriend’s place – was virtually nonexistent, but how else could she hope to live on the best tree-lined block of the West Village for under $2,500 a month? She had decorated it as carefully as her graduate school budget would allow, which wasn’t much, but at least she had managed to paint the walls a pale yellow, install a space-saving Murphy bed in the far wall, and place some comfy floor cushions around an extra-fluffy shag carpet she’d found on clearance in a remnant store. It wasn’t big, but it was cozy, and so long as Emmy didn’t think about the kitchens in Izzie’s Miami apartment or Leigh’s new one-bedroom or Adriana’s palatial penthouse pad – especially Adriana’s – she might have even liked it. It just seemed so fundamentally cruel that someone who loved food as much as she did, who would happily spend every free minute at either the farmers’ market or the stove, should not have a kitchen. Where else on earth did $30,000 a year in rent not entitle one to an oven? Here she was forced to make do with a sink, a microwave, and a dorm-sized refrigerator, and the landlord – only after a ridiculous amount of begging and pleading – had bought Emmy a brand-new hotplate. For the first few years she’d fought valiantly to create dishes using her limited facilities, but the struggle to do anything more than reheat had worn her down. Now, like most New Yorkers, the ex-culinary student only ordered in or dined out.
She gave up on the idea of cleaning, flopped onto her unmade bed, and began to flip through the pages of the hardcover photo book she’d designed at kodakgallery.com to commemorate the first three years of her relationship with Duncan. She’d spent hours selecting the best pictures and cropping them to varying sizes and removing the red eyes. Click, click, click – she clicked the mouse until her fingers tingled and her hand ached, determined to make it perfect. Some of the pages were collage-style and others had only a single dramatic candid. The one she’d chosen for the cutout window on the cover had been her absolute favorite: a black-and-white photo someone had snapped at Duncan’s grandfather’s eighty-fifth birthday dinner at Le Cirque; Emmy remembered the transcendent sesame-crusted cod more than anything else from that night. She hadn’t even noticed until now, years later, how her arms wrapped protectively around Duncan’s shoulders, or the way she looked at him, grinning, while he smiled in that controlled way of his and gazed in another direction. The body language experts at US Weekly would have a field day with this one! Not to mention the fact that the book, presented at a dinner celebrating their third anniversary, had elicited the kind of excitement one usually expects only from the receipt of a scarf or a pair of gloves (which, incidentally, was precisely what he had given her, a matching set, prepackaged and professionally wrapped). Duncan tore the paper and ribbons painstakingly selected for their masculinity and tossed them aside without bothering to unstick – never mind read – the card taped to the back. He thanked her and kissed her on the cheek and flipped through it while smiling that tight smile and then excused himself to answer a call from his boss. He asked her to take the photo book home with her that night so he wouldn’t have to carry it back to the office, and it had remained in her living room for the next two years, opened only by the occasional visitor who inevitably commented on what a good-looking couple Duncan and Emmy made.
Otis cawed from his cage in the corner of her L-shaped studio. He hooked his beak around one of the metal bars, gave it a determined shake, and squawked, ‘Otis wants out. Otis wants out.’
Eleven years and counting, and Otis was still going strong. She’d read somewhere that African Greys can live to be sixty, but prayed daily that it had been a misprint. She hadn’t particularly liked Otis when he was squarely under the ownership of Mark, the first of Emmy’s three boyfriends, but she liked him even less now that he shared her 350-square-foot apartment