The Best Laid Plans (22 page)

“Let them. I don’t care about other people, I care about us. You make all the big decisions, you say you’re looking out for my best interests but you don’t know what those interests even are anymore. I’ve changed and you don’t even see that. You’ll never see that!”

“Never see what—what in hell do you mean?”

“I don’t know, I just don’t know,” I say, starting to sob. Big, bubble-sized raindrops of misery that are salty and fierce.

Peter, my hankie-ready husband who was such a comfort
just a few days ago when I was so upset about Naomi is not only unmoved by my tears but finds them a personal assault.

“Oh, so now I’ve made you so miserable that all you can do is cry. Fine, I’m the bad, rotten, stinking, good-for-nothing husband, and you’re the poor, put-upon wife. Glad we got that straight,” he says testily.

“Nothing’s straight, and nothing’s right,” I moan.

“You’re damned right about that!” Peter says, pushing the bench away from the table. “And nothing’s going to be right until you tell me what’s going on. We promised to tell each other the truth, or have you conveniently forgotten that?”

“Conveniently? Forgotten?” I repeat Peter’s words, letting them sink in. “You’re the one who
conveniently forgot
to tell me that you were fired. Or how you and Tiffany got cozy enough in the laundry room for her to invite you up to her apartment and offer you a job.”

“Is that what this is about, some trumped-up irrational fantasy about Tiffany? Don’t make such a big deal about it. Tiffany’s new to the city and she doesn’t know who to trust.”

“And neither do I!” I’m sobbing now so furiously that I can barely get the words out. I cover my face with my hands and try to press back the tears.

Peter signals the waiter for the check, and when it arrives, I snatch the black leather folder. “I’m paying,” I say, stuffing my American Express card inside and handing it back to the server.

“With whose money?” Peter snickers, and then he starts to walk away. “In case you’re interested, I’m going back to meet with the construction manager at our warehouse.”

“I’ll be in the same building,” I mumble under my breath, although by now Peter’s stormed across the room and can’t possibly have heard what I said.

B
RAZENLY, I WAS ALMOST
hoping that I’d run into Peter at the entrance to the building. That would show him! But by the time I’d ducked into the ladies’ room to fix my mascara, Peter had gone upstairs first to—judging from the sounds coming from the floor above me—do something with a chain saw.

“You don’t think he’ll hurt himself, do you?” I ask Sienna, though I’m still smarting from the fight. “Not that I care. But I’m still his wife; I suppose I’m the one who’d have to take him to the doctor.”

“Nah, one of the girls brought in a sewing kit. I’m sure we could fix him up right here. I think I even saw a bottle of mercurochrome in the bathroom—we’ll pour it all over his wound and make sure it stings like hell.” Sienna closes her computer and comes over to lean against the edge of my desk.

“I hate him, you know,” I say dispassionately.

“Yes, I know.”

“I’m serious. The man is a Neanderthal.”

“Sweetie,” Sienna says gently. “Peter did catch you in a lie.”

I shift uncomfortably in my ergonomically correct chair. “For what this thing costs it should be padded with Mother Goose feathers,” I complain.

“Tru—”

“I don’t want to talk about it. Peter doesn’t have to talk about things when he doesn’t want to, why do I? Why do women have to be the great communicators, the person in a relationship who’s supposed to go the extra mile, or ten, when a guy isn’t capable of meeting you in the middle? As if a guy could find his way to the middle!” I sneer. “How many times have you been in the car with some asshole when he gets lost and refuses to ask for directions?”

“I always drive.”

“That’s not the point. Or maybe it is.”

“Or maybe every couple just needs a good GPS. You could think of it as a marital aid.”

“I love you,” I say, smiling. “I hate Peter, but I love you.”

“Tru …”

“Okay, I love you but I don’t hate Peter. I just hate Peter now. I hardly recognize that man anymore.”

“He’s the cute one. With the infuriating ego.”

“Look, I know that I have to forgive Peter for not telling me about losing his job. Or not. But I know we have to move on. I can’t throw it up at him every time we have a fight. And I’m going to tell Peter about the business,” I say, looking around at the smartly furnished Veronica Agency offices, which started out as nothing more than two empty rooms with peeling paint. “But I still don’t know why I’m the one who has to make the first move.”

“Maybe women are just emotionally superior human beings,” Sienna says with a shake of her head. “Well, I’m not, but most women are.”

“And men take out the garbage and schlep luggage through the airport.”

Sienna gives me a hug. Then she plucks a red paper clip from the Lucite holder on my desk and unbends it. “If I were a different kind of a person I might make this into a heart,” she says, as instead she zings the S-shaped piece of metal across the room.

“If you were a different kind of a person—” I start as the phone rings and we both dive for it.

“Veronica Agency!” we sing in unison. I punch the speaker button so we can listen together.

“Veronica, Anna, is that you?” a lissome brunette named Treena trills. “I’m upstairs, at the hotel, I mean, I’m calling from the
job
, it’s good, everything’s A-okay, mission accomplished. And accomplished and—”

“I think we get the picture.” Sienna laughs as Treena recounts the high points: dinner at a restaurant she’d always wanted to go to but could never afford on her own; an easygoing conversation with her date, Timothy; and a lovely and still-in-progress night at a fancy hotel. “You’re sure I’m getting paid for this?” she quips. “Not the other way around?”

Sienna and I get off the phone and start screeching like schoolgirls. Whatever problems I’m having on the home front are overshadowed, at least for the moment, by our opening night success. Bill comes in, grinning ear-to-ear, nodding enthusiastically into his cellphone.

“Tomorrow, can do … Wait a minute, I have another call.… No, I didn’t know she wasn’t a natural redhead.… You liked her anyway.… Threesomes? I don’t think so.… If you like
Shrek
, she’ll like
Shrek,
” Bill says, balancing his Palm Pilot to his ear while he pens notes on the back of his hand.

“Fun,” “perfectly natural,” “a little uptight, but not
anymore,” “wants to see me again”: the reviews are—hallelujah!—mostly raves. Georgy, who’s curious about who I was out with at the Hudson Cafeteria, thought her date Gabe could lose a couple of pounds. “I’m putting him on Atkins, nothing but protein for the first two weeks,” she says, as if her services include nutritional counseling.

“Can we charge extra for that?” I mouth as I playfully punch Sienna’s arm.

“No, but we can for the role-playing,” she whispers. “French maid’s uniform and handcuffs? He brought them in his briefcase?” Sienna asks Georgy as she scribbles notes furiously in Gabe’s file. “Twenty-five hundred dollars extra.” She whistles. “And another five hundred in the future if we provide the props.”

An hour later, most of the women have checked in. Several comment on their younger, thirty-something partners’ staying power. “I’d forgotten they can do it again, right away!” Treena exclaimed enthusiastically. Another offers a different take: “I’d forgotten that they want to do it again, right away,” she grouses. “I’ll have to get TiVo if I ever want to see Stephen Colbert again.”

I’ve just snagged three bottles of water and plopped one in front of each of my partners when we’re interrupted by squeals and a loud rapping outside the door. Bill looks out the peephole and tells Sienna to hightail it to the other room. “It’s Patricia and Lucy. Quick, before they recognize you.”

Sienna makes a face. “I’m tired of being a silent partner. I want to meet the women. Who cares if they know who I am?”

“We’ll talk about this later.
Ssh
!” Bill says, physically escorting Sienna and her laptop behind a rice paper shoji screen that separates the two work areas.

“
Ssh
?” Sienna says peevishly.

“Talk about what?” asks Lucy, flouncing into the room. She and Patricia are holding fistfuls of money, which they giddily toss into the air.

“It’s raining money, honey!” Lucy sings as we’re deluged in a shower of fifty- and hundred-dollar bills.

“We’re so money!” babbles Patricia excitedly. “I love the color of money! Don’t you love the color of money? It’s sooo deliciously green!”

“Show me the money!” I say, snagging a handful of bills and clutching them to my chest.

Bill steps on a hundred-dollar bill and quickly bends over to pick it up and straighten out the creases. “We’re charging our fees to our clients’ credit cards, what’s all this?”

“Tips!” Lucy chirps. “Hard currency, a pretty penny, legal tender …”

“
Illegal
tender,” I say with a laugh. I’d break into a chorus of “We’re in the Money,” but I don’t want to seem like the oldest person in the room. “This is good!” I say instead.

“Yes, it’s very good!” Lucy grins and flops onto the red Ligne Roset couch. “Everything went smooth as silk. Larry was a little nervous about checking into the hotel without any luggage, but as we were signing the register with the fake credit card you gave us I took his hand and looked up at him adoringly. ‘What a great anniversary surprise, sweetheart! And the sitter said she could stay until two?’ The concierge even sent up a free bottle of champagne.”

Patricia laughs. “I usually tell my John to go up to the hotel room first,” she says. “Then I come a few minutes later and walk right up to the guy who looks most like a security guard and ask, ‘Do you know where I can find the elevator to the tenth floor?’ They’re expecting someone in our line of work to skulk around. They never suspect a thing. By the way”—she winks—“turns out Matt’s a good dancer. On the dance floor
and off. And I even ran into a former colleague at the Literary Partners benefit who gave me a lead on a job.”

“You wouldn’t leave, would you?” I ask, tightening my grip around a fifty.

“No, of course not; that other thing would be a day job. I like this line of work. I put myself through college by having a couple of different sugar daddies, as I liked to call them. The only difference between me and the girls who slept with their professors was that I earned thirty thousand dollars a year for my trouble. And I went to bed on better sheets.”

“Well how about that,” I say, at a loss for words but not questions. Why am I so surprised to learn that the elegantly tailored Wharton Business School graduate was a college call girl? And why, oh why, am I feeling just the teensiest bit judgmental? Pairing up women with a few well-chosen men is precisely what my new profession is about.

There’s another knock at the door and this time, it’s the shy divorcée Rochelle, who, unlike Lucy and Patricia, looks anything but thrilled about her evening. Lucy puts a protective arm around Rochelle’s shaking shoulders and walks her toward the couch. “What is it, sweetie?” she asks.

“I thought I could.… I’m sorry.… My husband said no one would ever want me but Gary did and I couldn’t.” Rochelle blinks, looking as ashamed as Dick Cheney should have been on, well, who can pick just one occasion? Though she has no reason to be embarrassed.

“Here, have some water,” I say, handing her a Poland Spring. “It’s okay. Remember, we said you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to?”

“I know, but Gary seemed pleasant enough and it’s part of the job. But then I started to take off my clothes in the hotel room.…” Rochelle wipes her tears away with the back of her hand. “That sweet lingerie salesman, Morris, I was wearing
the bustier with the crystals he picked out for me, but all of a sudden I was just so embarrassed, I ran out of the room with my dress still wrapped around my waist. What must Gary think? And you? And everyone? I’ve let everyone down.”

“You didn’t let anyone down,” Patricia says soothingly.

“I wasn’t any good at marriage and I’m not any good at being a hooker,” Rochelle says dispiritedly, as if somehow not being able to sleep with a stranger for money is a moral failing. “I guess I’ll have to go back to computer programming. At least I can interface with a mainframe without turning beet red.”

Lucy smiles. “C’mon, Patricia and I will take you out for a drink.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. This line of work isn’t for everyone,” Bill says. Rochelle insists that she doesn’t deserve to be paid for the evening, but my partner forces her to accept a check.

“Your date, Gary, already called. He said he hoped he hadn’t scared you and that he enjoyed talking with you about baseball. And also, that he thought you were very pretty.” For the first time since she got here, Rochelle smiles.

“I thought Gary called to ask for a refund? You handled that really well,” I say admiringly after the three women leave.

“Thanks.” Then Bill points to the paper partition that stands between us a wrathful Sienna. “Try telling that to our friend in there, would you?”