“I can’t breathe,” he said, flipping his sunglasses back down over his newly spray-tanned nose.
“Look, we’ve been through this before,” Gracie said. Her enthusiasm for the old house would not be deterred. When Sam had surprised her with the notion of buying the Kennicot place, she had demurred at first. She still had her heart set, somehow, on The Brown House. So she and Sam had taken a drive to The Brown House. And guess what? The Brown House was now a private tennis court. And the oak trees in the back? The canopy of green hovering protectively over her baby? They now existed only in her cherished memories.
Luckily Gracie had grown fond of the Kennicot house—in fact, felt oddly protective toward the old place, as though she had to carefully preserve whatever moments it held, whatever secrets it sheltered.
“I need water,” Will said, his voice scratchy. He clutched at his scarf.
“I am not hiring you,” Gracie said.
Will went to sit down on one of Mrs. Kennicot’s couches. It was Sam’s favorite.
“What is this?” Will asked, jumping away from the dust that had sprayed out around him.
“A couch.”
“Well, there’s something living in there—”
“I’m not hiring you,” Gracie repeated. “You’re too expensive and I want to try decorating this house on my own.”
Will looked at her as though she had just told him she was going to jump out of a speeding train. He put his hand to the side of his face. And stared at her. Finally he waved his hand dismissively.
“Fine, I’ll do it for free!”
Gracie looked at him. Will’s least favorite four-letter word was “free.”
“Now, I want you to meet someone,” he said, his voice becoming softer. “Come in, honey,” he called out. Gracie thought she detected a bit of a blush in Will’s cheeks and then decided the spray tan had turned blotchy.
“Gracie, this is Aristo,” Will said as he turned toward the vision who had just walked into the living room. He was in his thirties, had short, thick dark hair, skin that reminded Gracie of olive oil and hot sun and a Mediterranean breeze, and light-green eyes that reached back generations.
“He’s Greek,” Will said, rubbing the sheen on Aristo’s arm lightly. Aristo smiled, his teeth as white as the shirt he wore, his sleeves rolled up to the elbow, revealing forearms that should have been bronzed and mounted. Gracie thought they’d make very nice bookends.
Aristo put his hand out. Gracie shook his hand. Dry and warm and capable.
Will had not taken his eyes off Aristo, but continued to speak to Gracie.
“Aristo means ‘best,’” he murmured.
“Well, any idiot can see that,” Gracie said.
“He’s a sailor by trade,” Will said. “Can you believe it? I found him working as a waiter in that Greek restaurant on Third. I was tired, I was having a shitty day, none of my fabrics had come in, I started to order the souvlaki, and I looked up and … there he was. This … angel.”
Aristo put his arm around Will’s waist and squeezed.
“Gay Kryptonite,” Gracie said.
Will was looking into Aristo’s eyes. He looked back at Gracie.“ What?”
“I said,‘Here Comes the Bride.’” Gracie smiled.
Will blushed for the second time in his life and planted a kiss on Aristo’s cheek. And then he clapped his hands and went right back to business. “I’m returning on Monday with painters in tow.We need to lighten this place up. It’s like the Poseidon Adventure in here, I swear to God.” He thought for a second, putting his index finger to his chin. “I’m seeing a light …”
“Green?” Gracie asked.
Will and Aristo stayed awhile for espressos, but only because Gracie begged. It was clear the boys were quickly bored with company that included anyone but the two of them, and they departed arm in arm ten minutes later.
Cricket stayed a little while longer, running back and forth, chasing this blur and that until she had to depart to a birthday party, which would hopefully solidify her chances of getting her oldest into an exclusive Brentwood private school. She had bought a three-hundred-dollar cashmere sweater at Fred Segal for the little girl, though she was unsure of the spelling of the child’s name. And really, unsure whether the child was in fact a girl or a boy.
Cricket fretted until Gracie unwrapped the gift and reassured her that the sweater was unisex. Finally she gathered up her brood and left. The house had never been more peaceful.
A moment later, Jaden insisted on visiting the dreaded pet store across the highway. The pet store, which sported several signs that read:
OUR CAMERAS ARE THEIR [SIC] WATCHING YOU!,
featured purebred puppies in glass containers. Gracie called them puppy-quariums. Jaden loved to press her nose up against the glass and tap her fingers on the smudged surface and “play” with the muted, high-priced fur balls on the other side. Gracie wasn’t crazy about the place; the signs were not only misspelled but offensive to Gracie’s sensibilities, and a chew toy there could easily cost twenty dollars. She rarely ventured near it.
Sam was not yet back from his morning swim, so there was no one to back Gracie in her argument against visiting the pet store.
“Don’t you like puppies, Mommy?” Jaden asked. “Who doesn’t like puppies?” She seemed genuinely perplexed.
“Can you say ‘puppy mill,’ Jaden?” Gracie tried to joke as she tossed out bagel remnants.
But Jaden just stared at her and crossed her skinny arms over her chest and stared some more, and Gracie finally buckled after twenty minutes of silent, relentless staring.
The pet store was filled with browsers. Jaden tapped on the glass cage of a particularly adorable mini-dachshund until Gracie was finally able to drag her away with the promise of a gumball from a machine outside.
Jaden ran toward the gumball machine, then stopped. “Mommy, books!” Jaden cried, pointing her arm toward the once-empty establishment next door.
Gracie caught up to her and looked inside. There was new life and a new sign:
MALIBU BOOKS.
She peered through the windows, expecting to see mostly spiritual titles or self-help books for one’s colon but instead saw … Philip Roth. Richard Russo. Coffee table art books. The new Anne Tyler title.
She grabbed Jaden’s hand and pushed the door open. And exhaled. For here was a genuine bookstore. Intimate as a dear aunt’s living room. A tall, angular fellow wearing a fedora at the register. Jaden ran toward the back, where Gracie could see a whimsically decorated children’s section.
“Nirvana,” Gracie whispered to herself.
She followed Jaden, who had already opened a book and was being complimented on her choice by a woman with a gray bob and reading glasses sliding down her nose.
There was another mother there, holding her child on her
lap, reading to her. Gracie was bending over Jaden’s shoulder to examine her choice when she heard:
“ ‘Do belly buttons hold our bodies together? What if we unbuttoned our belly buttons? Would we explode? What if … ? ’”
Gracie’s words to Jaden caught in her throat. She looked over at the woman sitting next to her. The woman was reading her book. Gracie’s book. Gracie scooped Jaden up with the promise of buying the book that was still in her hand and made her way to the front of the store. The tall fellow at the cash register, the type that should be seen at any self-respecting bookstore, had flung off his hat and was running his fingers through his hair and muttering to himself.
“Excuse me,” Gracie said, “I couldn’t help noticing …” He looked up at her.
“You have some titles by … Gracie Peters?”
“Children’s books,” he said. He started tapping away at his computer. “Yes, we have a few of her titles. Ah,
Question Boy.
Quite a few people like that one.”
Gracie grinned at him. And grinned.
“Is it out of stock?” he asked. “Would you like to order it? We can have it for you within—”
“Mommy,
you’re
Gracie Peters!” Jaden declared.
“I’m Gracie Peters,” Gracie said to the clerk. She could not stop herself from grinning. She looked like one of those dullards who stands behind the president at town hall meetings.
“A local author!” the clerk said, showing signs of life. “Listen, we’re new here. If you want to do a book signing sometime …”
“A book signing?” Gracie asked.
“You’re not supposed to write in books,” Jaden said.
“Are you working on something new?” the clerk asked.
Gracie looked at him. And then she heard a tapping at the picture window facing the parking lot. She and the clerk looked up. Sam was standing outside the bookstore waving to her. His hair was combed back, still wet from the ocean. Grooves formed around his eyes at the sight of her.
“Sam!” Jaden said before she ran out the door and into his arms.
Gracie looked over at her daughter, laughing as she was being hoisted onto Sam’s shoulders. She looked back at the clerk. She wondered if he sensed why she was crying now. There was no sadness. Her sadness had been replaced by something infinitely more powerful.
“I am writing a new book,” Gracie said finally. “It’s called
What Do I Love?”
Really … The End.
WHAT IS A STARTER WIFE?
A Starter Wife is the first wife—but in my book, I specifically use the term to apply to the first wife of a powerful man. A Trophy Wife is the second wife of a powerful man—younger, fetching, hairless, able to maneuver her body like a Cirque de Soleil extra. A Finisher Wife is either the woman who stays married to a powerful man for all eternity (as rare as a dry handshake in Hollywood) or the last wife a powerful man marries. I have had a Starter Husband; I highly recommend them. I think everyone should have a Starter Marriage—how else are we supposed to learn, if not from mistakes? (By the way, I’m sure he would say the same!)
HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THE IDEA FOR
THE STARTER WIFE?
I saw a woman on the beach in Malibu—a very attractive woman in her fifties, who’d just been publicly dumped by her powerful husband—and she was flirting with a tanned, handsome, strapping man of her age who just happened to be homeless. She had no idea. Here she is living in a tenmillion dollar beach house, and the only man in her demographic who will take her seriously as a woman is a homeless man who can offer her nothing but himself. The picture was burned into my brain. I loved the idea of a woman of means falling for a man of no means. I couldn’t rid myself of it, so I wrote it.
I also wanted to comment on the fact that in Los Angeles there is so much eye candy. A woman who has lived a life and has a few folds and maybe a few crow’s feet, and has stories to tell, has about as much a chance of getting a date as Britney Spears has of getting on a best-dressed list. If I ever wind up single, I’m heading East—to St. Petersburg, Russia.
DO YOU BELIEVE THAT PEOPLE CAN FALL IN LOVE WITH STRANGERS?
Yes. In fact, I’ve seen it happen. I’ve seen marriages happen as a result, and babies—and not necessarily in that order.
HOW DOES
THE STARTER WIFE
REFLECT THE STATE OF THE HOLLYWOOD MARRIAGE?
Hollywood marriages have always been and will always be even more difficult than marriage between “civilians.” Imagine being in the public eye all the time. Imagine your husband and you having a heated discussion at The Coffee Bean and then seeing it digitally reproduced in
Us
magazine. I mean, it’s great for us mortals—of course we love seeing the beautiful people experiencing a dash of angst. But I’m sure it’s not great for stars, especially the young ones. They’re dealing with their blossoming careers and working their way through the Hollywood fun house maze, and now they have to fend off the vultures waiting to pick over the remnants of their failed unions. But, hey, they still look better than the rest of us. That’s gotta help.
HAVE YOU GOTTEN INTO TROUBLE OVER PEOPLE WHO MAY RECOGNIZE THEMSELVES? ARE ANY OF THESE PEOPLE “REAL”?
To the contrary, I’ve had people running at me with their personal stories since I’ve started writing novels with a Hollywood backdrop. Seriously, I’ve stepped into parties and had to stop people from telling me about their husband’s latest affair or their teenage daughter’s third rehab stint. There’re a lot of people out there starving for attention, and I’m happy to give it to them—but I always warn them that, after all, I am a writer.
And, by the way, most of the time I have enormous affection for my characters and the people who may inspire them, and I think that comes out in my writing. I would hate to truly offend someone, unless it’s a politician. Politicians and political talk show hosts are open game.
WHAT IS UP NEXT FOR YOU? ARE YOU WRITING A NEW BOOK?
I am. I’m writing a novel set in New York City. It’s a love story. I’m happy to get out of Los Angeles, and specifically Hollywood for a while. I need a little breathing room, and I think people here in Los Angeles need it as well! You have no idea how happy my husband is that my next novel has nothing to do with Hollywood!
If you loved Gracie’s story in THE STARTER WIFE, wait till you meet Clarissa Alpert in Gigi Levangie Grazer’s novel
MANEATER
Here’s an excerpt from
Maneater,
available from Downtown Press.
M
y God, the wedding was beautiful. So what if the bride with the translucent skin and white-gold hair (courtesy of the ex-gay-porn-star hairdresser with the pregnant Amazonian wife) had fucked every one of the groomsmen at one point or another in her short life.
Back up. Clarissa Alpert’s life wasn’t actually as short as she liked to let on. She deemed herself twenty-eight, which was a surprise to everyone who’d grown up with her in the relative impoverishment of the (Lower) Beverly Hills flats, where bungalow after bungalow had trudged only recently into the halfmillion dollar range. In fact, she was thirty-one, but to her twenty-seven-and-a-half- (“halves” were still important to the boy) year-old bridegroom, the damaged scion of an old-money family, she was twenty-eight. Even her brittle-boned, anorexic, four-pack-a-day-smoker, Jewish mother, confused by the conviction of her daughter’s lie, came to believe she had given birth to this unnatural force twenty-eight years ago.