Stevie laughed. “Kind of.” “A great city,” offered Casey.
Stevie and Lara snorted at the same time. Like most Londoners, patriotism was not in their repertoire.
“The weather sucks. But cute men,” Casey said. “I mean, look at Lara, comes four thousand miles across the Atlantic to make out with Englishmen! It’s the same with all my Brit friends over here.” She put her hands up in mock defense. “No, no, I don’t blame you.”
“Take no notice,” said Lara with raised brows. “She had a bad date last night. Still smarting.”
Casey glanced at Stevie’s finger. “You’re married, then?” She smiled. “Quaint.”
“Just married.”
Sam tightened his grip on his teacup.
“Oh, you’re still in the blissed-out stage. Lara, you should have warned me.”
Stevie smiled, engulfed by a sudden wave of exhaustion. If only they knew. She yawned.
“Stop that!” Lara tapped her foot against hers. “Don’t crash yet. You’ve got to stay up to get in the right zone. Now, what do you fancy? Shower? Bath?”
“Bath? Are you kidding me?” said Casey. “Typical journalist.
Bucket would be a better description, I’m afraid.” “A shower would be great, thanks.”
Lara stood up, then quickly sat down again on the arm of the sofa, agitated. “Now, I’ve got to talk to you, Stev. I’ve got some bad news. You are in fact going to kill me. And you have every right to kill me.”
“Hit me with it.”
“I know I said I’d take Monday off, but I’ve now got an interview in LA . . . so I’m not going to be around. I’ll have to fly out Sunday night. I’m so sorry. I know. I know. But I’ve just found out. It’s an interview with an actress, little princess keeps changing the dates.” She looked at Stevie appealingly. “There’s nothing I can do apart from not go and get fired.”
“Oh,” said Stevie, disappointed. “Don’t worry.”
Lara scrunched up her face apologetically. “Sorry, Stev.” She looked at Sam and smiled gently. “But we’ve got the weekend. And the man’s around all Monday, if that’s any consolation.”
Sam cupped his chin in his hand, studying them all with an air of laid-back amusement. “I fall short on many levels. I don’t do Bloomingdales, Barneys . . . But I wondered if you were inter- ested in seeing the studio and just knocking about a bit after- ward.”
“Absolutely.” Stevie waved away their concern. “I don’t expect
your lives to stop just because I’ve arrived. Honestly, I can easily spend a day at the Met or whatever. Don’t worry.”
Lara looked relieved. “Well, now that’s all sorted. I’ll show you the shower.”
The shower was coffin-sized, but accessorized with more de- signer toiletries than Stevie had ever seen in a domestic bathroom. She rubbed herself down with something foamy and spicy from Hermès and studied her body in the mirror. Yes, fat. She’d defi- nitely put on weight. Her boobs looked far larger than normal, and they ached. Was that a sign of pregnancy? And was it her imagina- tion, or were her nipples darker than normal, aubergine rather than the normal pink? The more she looked at her body, the more it seemed to conform to the pregnancy “signs and symptoms” list that she’d found on a pregnancy website. But she still wanted to hold out for a conclusive pregnancy test, to do at home with Jez. Perhaps there was also a part of her that wanted to delay the test be- cause she wasn’t sure what she wanted the result to be.
“Come on. Put your glad rags on. We’re off out,” shouted Lara, just as Stevie’s lids began to shut in accordance with the British time zone.
The cab blasted to the meatpacking district. Stevie jolted awake when they entered Soho House, taking the padded lift up to the cavernous bar area where the carousel of faces seemed strangely fa- miliar, as if she might have seen them in a TV show sometime long ago, beautiful faces all flatteringly lit by low drum lights, the hum of whispered gossip hanging over them like smoke. But after a while, the jetlag began to pull her down once more. She huddled into a button-back sofa, seeking sensual reassurance in its olive- colored velvet, half-listening to Lara and Casey analyzing the case of a magazine editor who’d started leaving a telltale smell of vomit
in the staff loos and wondering whether she’d do the same thing next weekend when they all went to stay at her place on Shelter Is- land.
Sam put his hand on her elbow. “Man, look at you. Can I carry you home?”
“Sorry for being such a lightweight.” Stevie tried not to yawn in his face. When she stretched her arms, it felt as if they were crack- ing. “I’m fried, Sam, fried.”
“You do look like you belong in bed.” He grinned sheepishly at his verbal slip. “But I imagine it’s been pretty tough since you got back, what with Poppy and everything.”
“Yeah.” She had the sense that he was digging for something and instinctively her eyes had begun to water. Get a grip, girl. She’d feel so deeply humiliated if he ever,
ever
found out about Jez’s baby money. Then it occurred to her that perhaps she couldn’t tell Lara about that, either, now that Lara and Sam were together. Lara would tell Sam: Her loyalties were now divided. It gave Stevie a sudden, unexpected kick of isolation.
“I’ll get this.” Sam settled the bill, refusing all offers of contri- butions.
Ten minutes later, they stood on the street, the streams of head- lights reinterpreted by Stevie’s tired eyes as streaks of yellow paint. It was a relief when Sam did not get into their cab, but kissed them all good night before striding off toward the Brooklyn-bound sub- way. It would have felt weird if he’d spent the night there, too.
Stevie settled into the sofa bed, trying to ignore the spring that thrust into her left buttock, safe in the knowledge that there would be no postcoital awkwardness in the morning.
A few minutes later, Lara padded into the room, barefoot, wrapped in a Chinese silk robe. She perched on the end of the bed,
cradling a cup of chamomile tea, her hair hanging in a gleaming plait across her shoulder. “Having you around reminds me how much I’ve missed you,” she said softly, the city lights escaping through the gaps in the blinds and painting the soft planes beneath her cheekbones pewter.
“Me, too. But you’ve got a good thing here.” “I know.” Lara sighed. “You like Casey?” Stevie nodded. “Very much so.”
Lara beamed, as if it were important to have her new life wit- nessed and approved by an old friend.
“You like Sam?” Stevie retorted.
Lara blushed, one finger tracing the rim of her cup distractedly. “Yeah, I like Sam,” she said slowly. “He’s a good guy.”
“He is.”
“But I’m not sure we have that spark. I still think I’m a
total
calamity zone when it comes to relationships, Stev.”
Stevie pulled the duvet tighter under her armpits and smiled sleepily. She was dying to go to sleep. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re not a calamity zone. There’s nothing dysfunctional about being choosy.”
Lara rolled her eyes. “Come on, Stev. We both know that unsuit- able men exert some kind of weird lunar pull over me.”
“Well, hoorah for breaking the cycle.”
“Hoorah,” whispered Lara, bending over to kiss Stevie good night. “Thanks for being so understanding about LA and . . .” Ste- vie dropped her eyes. Lara picked up the evasive signal, lost her nerve. “. . .
everything
.”
THIRTY-ONE
Æ
every time stevie felt a kick of nuptial intro-
spection, New York City kicked back. The distractions began with an egg-heavy late brunch on MacDougal Street, a scoot around a Mulberry Street flea market, where she bought some old amber beads that smelled of someone else’s Chanel No. 5, then a long walk farther downtown to Century 21, the city’s warm winds blown down Broadway like breath through a giant straw. Lara kept her moving, kept her shopping until there was no point of repose, no point at which Stevie could stop and crumple into Lara’s arms.
Of course she couldn’t resist telling her about the cash-for-baby issue. But it didn’t get the outraged attention Stevie felt it deserved (suggesting Lara wouldn’t mention it to Sam, anyway). In fact, Lara, seeming a little preoccupied, dismissed it as “typical Jez,” a buf- foonish but benign mishandling of events. And then they’d spotted some superb wedges in the Marc Jacobs shop window and laid the conversation to rest prematurely.
They circumvented the Sam issue, too, for different reasons. Ste- vie had been unsure how to play it, she being friends with both of
them: It felt disrespectful to Sam to treat the affair with the usual interrogative hilarity. She was more comfortable waiting for infor- mation volunteered rather than poaching it herself. But the volun- teering never came. Lara was discreet to the point of oddness, Stevie thought. Was Lara in love?
After a final Sunday-afternoon shopping spree, they went back to the apartment, exhilarated and exhausted, and burst noisily through the front door. In the living room, Casey sat very still at a table, facing a laptop, her yoga-honed neck and shoulders silhou- etted against the backdrop of green screen. Ella Fitzgerald’s voice spiraled up and down, filling the room. Casey didn’t turn around, but greeted them with a “hey” and continued to stare at the laptop and pick at a carton of blueberries.
“How’s it going?” Lara asked.
“I’m good,” Casey said distractedly, not turning around, beckon- ing them over with one hand. “Look, look at this, Lara. He might actually be perfect. I’m feeling a connection with him . . . he could be
the one
.”
Stevie craned her neck forward to see. Internet dating? “Sperm hunting,” Lara informed her dryly.
“Listen up,” said Casey, starting to read from the screen. “Jens. Six foot four. Medical student. Blond. No, wait a minute, the writer, yes, he’s a contender, too. Although it would help if they elaborated a bit. There’s me thinking, we’ve got a young Ibsen here, but he could be writing copy for cans of sardines.” She puts her hand to her face and groans. “Check out this one. Two hundred and forty pounds! A genetic predisposition to obesity, anyone?” She tapped a key and laughed. “I don’t think so.”
“You’re hooked.” Lara laughed, dropping her bags to the floor in
a heap. “I bet there are chat rooms full of recovering sperm-donor- shopping addicts.”
Casey swiveled around on the chair, smiling impishly. “You call me when you’ve got your white picket fence all sorted out. Until then . . .” She swiveled sharply back to the laptop. “Hold your tongue.”
Stevie collapsed onto the sofa. “Isn’t this a bit extreme? You’re bound to meet someone.”
Casey shook her head kindly, as if humoring her. “Honey, even my mom has given up on that one.” She clicked on another donor, talking slowly as she read his details. “I don’t want to be waiting around for the right man, who may or may not deign to make an appearance in my life. I want to be proactive about this while I still can. Hell, I’m proactive about everything else in my goddamn life.” She sat back in her chair, stretching as if she’d finished a long homework assignment. “Juice?”
As Casey sauntered through to the kitchen in her skinny jeans, Stevie whispered to Lara, “She’s serious?”
“Kind of.”
“I can hear you! Don’t project your English romanticism on me,” shouted Casey from the kitchen as she rustled through the cup- boards. “This is New York. Now, where’s the ginger?” In between the whirrs of the juicer, Casey shouted over her shoulder, “I’m thirty- seven years old, and I haven’t been in love since I was twenty-six. The last time I got to third-date stage was when I was thirty-five, and that was because I lied about my age.” She walked back into the room, smiling broadly, with a tray of murky-looking brown juice in a jug and three glasses.
“Can’t you have a one-night stand or something?” joked Stevie.
“Totally. It’d be a lot cheaper.” Casey grinned. “And you get a good look at the prototype. But it’s not as easy as you might imag- ine. Men have gotten wise to it. My friend Anna is having an im- possible time getting any one-night stand to mate
au naturel
. They’re not stupid. Well, not the ones you’d want to father your child, at any rate.” She kicked out her lean legs. “Still, it doesn’t seem like fair play to me. I’d rather pay for a neat sperm-washed sample.”
Washed? She wouldn’t go there. Stevie marveled at the way Casey seemed so matter-of-fact in her appraisal of the situation. It was liberating to meet somebody who so clearly refused to become hostage to her single status, as she always feared she would if it hadn’t been for Jez. Yes, perhaps there was, in theory at least, a way of reconciling maternal urges with partnerless independence. Stevie nodded, feeling, for no particular reason, a flush of gratitude. “Yeah, I get it.”
“Well, I don’t, I’m afraid,” said Lara quickly. She sipped her juice, leaving burrs of pulverized ginger stuck to the glass. “Hu- man beings are a plague enough as it is. The whole planet will soon have the same person-to-square-foot ratio as Manhattan.”
“Argument sucks, I’m afraid.” Casey raked through her choppy hair with her fingers, leaving it spikier and more boyish than be- fore. “The West’s birthrates are declining. And this is evolution: high-earning intelligent single women—the kind of women who
should
procreate, let’s face it—adapting to the changing sexual habitat, assuring the continuation of the species.”
Stevie grinned. Hard not to agree with that, imperfect though it might be.
“The other not-so-minor point is that I’m perfectly happy to adopt. I may yet have my Angelina Jolie moment.”
“I just don’t understand. You’ve got this great independent life . . .” Lara paused and shrugged. “Well, I suppose I’m not made that way. Not like you two.” She looked at her watch. “Shit. Six- thirty already. I’m going to have to run.” She winced at Stevie. “This is crap, isn’t it? I feel like I’ve hardly seen you.”
“Don’t worry.” This was Lara’s life. Not her vacation. Stevie had just parachuted into it for a few days. And actually she was much more comfortable with this situation than she would be playing the role of fussed-over visitor.
“And I’ll see you the evening you fly out. We’ll get you nice and comatose for the flight.” She stood up. “Right.”