Lessons in Heartbreak

by Cathy Kelly

  ‘Yeah, been there, done that, got the T-shirt,’ sighed Linda. ‘I used to give advice like that too, when I was your age. But I’m not any more: your age or giving that advice. Let me tell you, honey, when you get older, you get desperate. You don’t care if they know it. Shit, they know it anyway. This town’s full of women like me, and the guys all know the story. I don’t want to be alone. Why hide that?’

  Izzie’s soft heart contracted. She grabbed Linda’s bony arm and squeezed it. She hadn’t expected this sort of honesty in such a place. Here, where it was all for show, it was strange and yet refreshing to find Linda and her straightforwardness.

  ‘Oh, listen to me, I sound all whiny,’ Linda said, finally putting her fork and knife down on her pushed-around-yet-uneaten meal.

  ‘That’s not whining – that’s being truthful,’ Izzie smiled. ‘I have this conversation with my girlfriends all the time. It’s a toss-up between being on our own for ever and getting used to it, or boarding the first plane to Alaska where there are single men dying to meet you.’

  ‘Why can’t the Alaska guys come to the Upper East Side?’ Linda wanted to know.

  ‘Because then, I guess, they’d become New York men and suddenly they’d have supermodels throwing themselves at their feet and they wouldn’t want us normal women any more.’

  ‘Oh, save me from models,’ sighed Linda.

  Izzie laughed this time. ‘I work with models,’ she explained. ‘I’m a booker with Perfect-NY.’

  Linda looked at her with respect. ‘Look at me whining about being lonely, when you’ve got to compete with that. There isn’t enough Lexopro in the world to make me work with models.’

  ‘Really, they’re just kids who happen to look that way,’ Izzie pointed out. ‘Lots of models are just as messed up as the rest of us. Looking amazing doesn’t fix any of the stuff on the inside.’

  ‘I could deal with a lot of shit inside, if I looked like that on the outside,’ Linda said fervently. ‘Still, I guess they’ll get old too one day.’

  ‘You’re not old,’ Izzie insisted.

  Linda looked at her. ‘In this town, Izzie, once you’re sliding down towards fifty, you might as well get a Zimmer frame. Screw surgery and botox: men want real youth and taut little asses and ovaries that still pump out an egg. They might not want a kid, but they want a woman who could have one if they changed their mind. They want youth, end of story.’

  She sounded so harsh, so bitter, that Izzie could say nothing in response. For once, her appetite deserted her.

  All conversation stopped while the fashion show and auction part of the lunch began. Waiters silently cleared away the dishes, African-inspired techno music pumped out of the speakers, and the show began.

  Izzie watched as the models – many of whom were from Perfect-NY, supplied free of charge for the event – stalked up and down the runway. Normally, she watched her girls intensely, scanning their moves and faces to see who looked content, who looked bored and whose pupils betrayed too many sips of the pre-show champagne. But today, Izzie was still shaken as she thought about her conversation with Linda and what she’d left unsaid: that she was scared of being alone too.

  It had been a long time since she’d admitted that to anyone, or even to herself.

  Marriage had seemed inevitable when she was growing up in Tamarin: you met someone and got married, simple as that. It would all fall into place gently, without you having to do anything.

  Except that she’d left Tamarin for London and then New York, a place where the same boy-meets-girl-and-get-married rules didn’t seem to apply. Now, while all of her old school friends had at least one marriage under their belts, she hadn’t even come close to being engaged.

  Finding the right person seemed a bit like a space shuttle coming back to earth – there was a remarkably small window of opportunity, much smaller than anyone realised, and if you missed it, you had to hope you’d find another window before it was too late.

  When the single guys were gone, you had to wait for the next round – the ones who’d been married, got divorced, and were ready to go again. Except that they went for younger women, maybe ten years younger. And the women the same age as the guys were the ones who lost out.

  Izzie thought about her forthcoming fortieth birthday in November.

  A passionate Scorpio, as her astrologically-mad friend, Tish, liked to remind her. Izzie and Tish had lived together on the second floor of a three-storey walk-up in the West Village when Izzie had first come to New York.

  They were the same age, in the same industry – Tish was a photographer’s assistant – and both were immigrants. Ten years on, Tish’s lilting Welsh accent was as pronounced as ever. She was also married and the mother of a six-month-old baby boy.

  Tish would be forty soon too, but Izzie was facing it from a different vantage point to her friend.

  Everyone had moved their chairs to get a better view of the fashion show, so when it was time for the auction, Brioni Suit Guy was sitting much nearer to her. Izzie hadn’t noticed until her auction programme fell and he got up smoothly, picked it up and held it out towards her.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, startled, reaching for it.

  ‘Unpainted nails, how refreshing,’ he remarked.

  Izzie never polished her nails with anything but clear gloss. In a sea of exquisite manicures, her almost-nude hands stood out.

  ‘I’m not a curly girl,’ she said absently. She felt too jolted by Linda’s conversation to resume the same level of interest in the guy. He’d hardly be interested in her, anyway: what with her shrivelling ovaries and skin that no amount of Dermalogica facials could refresh.

  ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m not a curly girl.’

  ‘I wasn’t talking about your hair.’ His fingers didn’t reach to touch the caramel curls that were streaked with honey tones at ferocious cost in Salon Circe every six weeks. But he looked at her as if he was thinking of it.

  Linda had slipped off to the bathroom, so her seat was free and Brioni Suit took it, pulling it so close to Izzie that she felt her breath catch. She was a tall woman and instinctively knew if people were taller than her. He was.

  ‘I’m Joe Hansen,’ he said, holding out his hand.

  ‘Izzie Silver,’ she replied automatically, catching his and feeling something inside her jolt at the touch of that firm, masculine hand.

  Nearly forty, but she could still feel the surge of attraction, couldn’t she?

  And the way he was looking at her, watching, made her think that he wasn’t looking for a twenty-five-year-old. He was looking at her.

  Smiling, a nice, real smile. Making her think of him with that shirt ripped off, and her close to him, kissing him, being cradled in those big arms, his mouth closed over the brown nub of her nipple. Phew.

  Even now, Izzie could recall every precise detail of the moment. ‘So, what’s the “curly girl” thing?’ he asked.

  Wiping the nipple-sucking vision from her mind, Izzie grinned at him now, not her sassy New Yorker-by-adoption grin but the born-and-bred-country-girl grin her family would have recognised. ‘My best friend from school used to call that sort of thing “curly”. Don’t know why. She had an odd way with words. Curly means the sort of person who loves pink ribbons and hairclips, makes her eyes look like Bambi’s and believes in eating before a dinner date so men won’t think she’s a great horse of a creature with a huge appetite.’

  ‘I’d warrant a guess you never did anything like that in your life,’ he said, assessing her with his eyes. ‘Not that there’s anything wrong with a huge appetite.’

  A quicksilver flip in her stomach made Izzie think he wasn’t referring to appetites at mealtimes.

  ‘I like my food,’ she said flatly.

  He’d get no games from her. She knew how they were played after years of dating in Manhattan. Games were games. This was for real, wasn’t it?

  ‘Favourite meal, then? Your last meal on earth?’

&n
bsp; He was leaning back in Linda’s chair by now, totally oblivious to everyone round them. The charity auction had begun. Some hideous piece of sculpture was being sold and the other alpha males in the room were practically beating their chests like gorillas trying to buy it.

  But Joe wasn’t interested. His total focus was on her. In turn, she couldn’t take her eyes off his face, off the steely grey eyes that were making her feel like the most important person in the room. That couldn’t be a trick, could it? Could a person fake absolute fascination?

  Izzie sensed rather than saw the women at their table noticing the courtship going on between her and Joe, and she knew that it was time to put a stop to it all, and go back to the real world. Somebody would notice. She half-recognised his name and was sure that Mr Hansen was big fry, while she was just a shrimp in the pond. But somehow, she couldn’t put a stop to this just yet. It had been so long since she’d flirted with a man or felt even a quarter of the attraction she felt right now. Just a few minutes more, that couldn’t hurt, right?

  ‘Cough medicine and painkillers, probably,’ she joked. She joked when she was nervous.

  ‘Not your last meal in Cedars-Sinai,’ he said, eyes glinting now and a smile turning up his mouth ever so slightly. He smiled with his eyes, Izzie realised. So few people did that.

  ‘Trout caught from the stream beside my home in Ireland, with salad – rocket from the garden my grandmother set. She says it’s a great cure for grumpiness, puts a bit of pep back into you, and gooseberry tart with cream.’

  ‘Real food,’ Joe said, and his eyes were smiling more, sending out even more warmth that hit her square in the heart. ‘I was afraid you might say something about rare Iranian caviar or champagne out of a small vineyard that they only stock in five-star hotels in Paris.’

  ‘Then you don’t know me very well,’ Izzie countered. There weren’t many things that surprised Mr Hansen very much, she felt sure. Shrewd wasn’t the word. Izzie had a feeling she’d managed a feat few people ever had, and all because she’d been herself. Normally, being herself got her nowhere with men. How lovely to meet one who liked the unvarnished, raw Izzie Silver. The on-the-verge-of-forty Izzie.

  ‘I’d like to,’ he said. ‘Know you well, I mean.’

  ‘Sold at seventy thousand dollars!’ yelled the auctioneer triumphantly. Izzie glanced up. The red-faced oil billionaire at the table next to theirs was now the proud owner of what looked to Izzie like a squashed car gearbox painted with acid yellow dribbles. Art, schmart.

  ‘I’m boring you,’ Joe said softly.

  ‘No.’ Izzie flushed. She never flushed. Flushing was man-hunting girlie behaviour, ranking alongside her pet hates like hair-flicking and the tentative licking of lip thing that men always seemed to fall for, brain surgeons and cab drivers alike. Men could be so dumb.

  ‘You’re not boring me at all,’ she said quickly. He was unsettling her, though. Not that she could say that. Hello, I haven’t been on a date in six months and have given up on men, so you’re not boring me, but you’re freaking the hell out of me because I like you. No, definitely not something she could say.

  He was talking again: he’d think she was a total nutter, the way she kept tuning in and out.

  ‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘I’d hate to be boring.’

  As if, Izzie thought with a little sigh.

  The voice of the MC boomed out of the sound system: ‘The next item in today’s auction is a portrait painted by art legend, Pasha Nilanhi. Who’ll start the bidding at twenty thousand dollars?’

  Everyone made the correct noises of appreciation. Izzie had no idea who this Pasha person was, but everyone else must from the approving murmurs. Or else, they were pretending in case they looked like art philistines.

  ‘Do you collect art?’ he asked her as she craned her neck to see the picture that was now being carried round between the tables.

  ‘Only if it’s in the pages of magazines,’ she said with a mischievous smile. ‘To let you in on a secret, I didn’t pay for my ticket today,’ she added. ‘I’m not one of the art-collecting ladies who lunch.’

  She waited for him to retreat. She was too old and not rich, either.

  ‘I’ve a secret too,’ he murmured, moving closer so that she instinctively bent her head to hear him. ‘I figured that out for myself. That’s why I’m talking to you.’

  Izzie felt another swoop deep in her belly. ‘You’re saying I stand out like a sore thumb?’ she teased.

  ‘In a good way,’ he grinned. ‘The big giveaway was seeing you actually eat the entrée.’

  Izzie couldn’t help herself: she let out a great roar of laughter.

  ‘Greed was the giveaway,’ she laughed. ‘How awful.’

  ‘Not greed,’ he insisted. ‘Hey, I ate mine too.’

  ‘You’re a guy,’ Izzie said, as if explaining experimental physics to a four-year-old. ‘Guys can eat and it looks macho. In our screwed-up universe, women can’t eat.’

  ‘Except for you,’ he urged.

  ‘Except for me,’ she agreed, feeling suddenly heifer-like.

  ‘Good. Because I was going to ask you out to lunch and there wouldn’t be any point if you wouldn’t eat. Or if lunch isn’t acceptable, we could have dinner?’

  Izzie wanted to shriek ‘yes!’ at the top of her voice. This man, all elegance in a Brioni suit that cost more than a month’s rent on her apartment, had captured her as surely as if he’d caged her. He might dress like a civilised man, but he was a hunter all the same, a predator, the alpha male.

  And playing with alpha males was madness. They knew what they wanted and went after it ruthlessly. Izzie didn’t want to be hurt.

  To steady herself, she reached for the stem of her wineglass and twirled it. The table no longer looked pretty. It was sad now: the menus tossed aside, place names scrunched up, dirtied napkins left carelessly alongside coffee cups and untouched petits fours.

  The whole shebang was nearly over and she had to go back to work afterwards, back to her normal life where millionaires didn’t flirt with her.

  She lived in a tiny apartment with a dripping shower head, mould in the cupboard under the sink in the kitchen and still owed $1,200 on her credit card, for God’s sake, after splurging on those Louboutin platforms and the Stella McCartney trousers. Had he mistaken her for someone else from his blue-chip world? She imagined people she knew hearing about her flirting with Joe Hansen and winced. She’d never wanted to be a rich man’s arm candy: arm candy was twenty-something and ninety pounds, most of it breast enhancement, veneers and ego.

  ‘Everything is possible,’ she said cheerily, the way she spoke to woebegone models on the phone when they hadn’t been booked for something they were sure they’d got. ‘Not probable, though.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Izzie thought about her words. ‘Because although I don’t know you from Adam, Mr Hansen, I have a pretty good idea that you live in a different world to me and it’s not my world.’

  ‘What’s your world?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m a booker for a model agency,’ she told him and explained a little about her job.

  ‘Why is that different from my world?’ he asked.

  Izzie threw up her hands. ‘OK, I’ve got three questions for you and if you answer yes to any of them, then we agree that you come from a different world. Deal?’

  ‘Deal,’ he agreed, his eyes amused.

  ‘Have you flown commercial in the past year?’ She smiled and so did he.

  ‘No,’ he admitted.

  Izzie held up one finger. People needed more than the average production-line worker’s salary to fly on private aviation.

  ‘Were there three or more noughts on the cheque you gave for today’s charity?’

  This time he laughed. ‘You’re clever.’

  ‘Is that a yes?’

  ‘That’s a yes.’

  She held up two fingers. ‘Two yeses,’ she said. From the way one of the table-hopping organisers had gushed
over him earlier, Izzie had surmised that Joe had dropped a cheque for at least $100,000 on the charity.

  ‘Finally, do you own another home on the East Coast, say in the Hamptons or Westchester or fill-in-the-blanks Ralph-Lauren-style destination?’

  He closed his eyes and ran a hand over a jaw that already had stubble shading it. Sexy, Izzie thought. Men who were smooth in every sense worried her: this guy was very real, very male. She liked that.

  ‘You got me,’ he said. ‘None of that explains why we can’t be friends.’

  Izzie favoured him with her narrowed eyes look that said, without actual words: And the cheque’s in the post, right?

  ‘I’m not very good at this,’ he added ruefully.

  ‘You’re probably marvellous at it,’ she said. ‘I’m the one who’s out of practice.’

  ‘I find that hard to believe.’

  ‘Well, believe it, Mr Hansen,’ she said. ‘I’ve just had a depressing conversation about age with the woman whose seat you’re sitting in. New York older women age in proportion to dog years. Once we hit forty, we freewheel downhill to becoming senior citizens, wearing elasticated waists and going on cruises so we can put on another twelve pounds at the buffet. To sum up: I am all out of sexy chat with new men.’

  She was sort of sorry by the time the words had left her mouth but still, she didn’t want to be toyed with. Joe was probably only amusing himself with her until a more likely prospect came along.

  ‘You don’t look forty,’ he said. ‘And, I’m really not good at this. I’m out of practice too. I was married for a long time and my wife and I have, well – separated.’ He said it all slowly, like he was just getting used to the phrase.

  ‘Sorry to hear that.’

  ‘Thanks but it’s been a long time coming.’ He shrugged. ‘We were married young. We’ve been trying to make it work for a long time but hey, it hasn’t.’

  ‘You’re on the lookout for a second wife, then?’ Izzie asked cheekily. ‘Because your neighbour’ – she meant the woman with the bank-vault jewellery – ‘seemed to be auditioning for the role.’