Lauren Weisberger 5-Book Collection

by Lauren Weisberger

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Oh, and leave all your borrowed stuff in the backseat of the car. The driver will return everything to the hotel, and they’ll make sure to get it back to the stylist.’

  ‘I don’t know how I can thank you.’

  ‘Save it, Brooke. You would do the exact same thing for me if my husband became a megastar overnight and I was being hounded by the paparazzi. Of course, that would mean I actually had a husband, which we both know is highly unlikely, and that my hypothetical husband would have a modicum of talent, which is even more unlikely …’

  ‘I’m too tired to argue, but for the record, your current chances for happiness and relationship success outweigh mine by, like, a factor of ten thousand, so quit your bitching. I love you.’

  ‘I love you, too. Remember – cute socks and call me.’

  She spent the ride from the Staples Center to LAX carefully packing her dress into the provided garment bag, tucking her shoes into their dust bag, and arranging her jewelry and clutch neatly into the velvet-lined boxes stacked on the seat next to her. It was only when she pulled the giant rock off her left ring finger that she realized the stylist still had her plain wedding band, and she made a note to herself to remind Julian to get it back from the girl. She resisted the impulse to think of it as any kind of sign.

  Two in-flight Bloodys and one Ambien guaranteed a much needed five-hour blackout, but as her mother’s reaction at baggage claim revealed, it did not do wonders for her appearance. Brooke smiled and waved when she spotted her mom at end of the escalator and nearly knocked over the man standing in front of her.

  Her mother hugged her hard, then pushed her away and held her at arm’s length. She took in Brooke’s terry-cloth sweatsuit, sneakers, and ponytail and declared, ‘You look horrible.’

  ‘Thanks, Mom. I feel pretty lousy, too.’

  ‘Let’s get you home. Did you check a bag?’

  ‘Nope, just this,’ Brooke said, motioning to her wheel-aboard. ‘When you have to give back your dress, shoes, bag, jewelry, and underwear, there’s not much left to pack.’

  Her mother began weaving through people toward the elevator. ‘I promised myself I wouldn’t ask a single question until you’re ready to talk about it.’

  ‘Thanks, I appreciate that.’

  ‘So …’

  ‘So what?’ Brooke asked. They stepped off the elevator. The cold Philly air hit her hard, as though she needed a reminder that she was no longer in California.

  ‘So … I’ll be there, waiting, should you want to talk. About anything.’

  ‘Great, thanks.’

  Her mother threw her hands in the air before pulling open the car door. ‘Brooke! You’re torturing me.’

  ‘Torturing you?’ Brooke feigned incredulousness. ‘I’m taking you up on your very kind offer of a little breathing room.’

  ‘You know perfectly well that offer wasn’t genuine!’

  Brooke hoisted her suitcase into the trunk and settled into the passenger seat. ‘Can I just have the car ride to relax before the interrogation begins? Trust me, once you get me started, you’re not going to be able to shut me up.’

  She was relieved when her mother chatted the entire car ride to her Center City apartment, telling Brooke all about the people she’d met in her new jogging club. Even once they parked the car in the building’s underground garage and took the elevator to her mother’s two-bedroom on the fifth floor, Mrs. Greene maintained a steady, upbeat soliloquy. It was only once they stepped inside and shut the door that she turned to Brooke, who braced herself.

  Her mother, in a rare moment of intimacy, cupped Brooke’s cheek in her palm.

  ‘First, you shower. There are clean towels in the bathroom and I put out some of this new lavender shampoo I’m in love with. After that, you eat. I’m going to make you an omelet – whites only, I know – and some toast. And then you sleep. Red-eyes are hell, and I’m guessing you didn’t sleep all that much on the plane. The second bedroom is all made up and I’ve already got the AC jacked up as high as it will go.’ She took her hand away and began walking toward the kitchen.

  Brooke exhaled, rolled her suitcase to the bedroom, and collapsed on the bed. She was asleep before she could take off her shoes.

  When she finally woke with a need to pee so strong she couldn’t ignore it any longer, the sun had moved to its late afternoon position behind the building. The clock read four forty-five and she could hear her mother emptying the dishwasher. It took only about ten seconds for the night to come rushing back. She grabbed her cell phone and was both dismayed and satisfied to see twelve missed calls and as many text messages, each and every one from Julian, beginning at about eleven last night California time and continuing straight through the night and next morning.

  She pulled herself off the bed and headed first to the bathroom and then to the kitchen, where her mother was standing in front of the dishwasher, staring at the small television mounted underneath a cabinet. Oprah was hugging an unidentifiable guest as Brooke’s mother shook her head.

  ‘Hey,’ Brooke said, wondering for the umpteenth time what her mother would do when Oprah finally went off the air. ‘Who’s on?’

  Mrs. Greene didn’t even turn around. ‘It’s Mackenzie Phillips,’ she said. ‘Again. Can you believe it? Oprah’s checking in with her to see how she’s faring after the initial announcement.’

  ‘And how’s she faring?’

  ‘She’s a recovering heroin addict who had a ten-year sexual relationship with her father. You know, I’m not a shrink, but I wouldn’t say her prognosis for long-term happiness is terrific.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Brooke grabbed a hundred-calorie pack of Oreos from the pantry and ripped it open. She popped a couple pieces in her mouth. ‘My god, these are good. How can they only be a hundred calories?’

  Her mother snorted. ‘Because they only give you a few lousy crumbs. You have to eat five packs to feel even remotely satisfied. The whole thing is such a scam.’

  Brooke smiled.

  Her mother clicked the television off. She turned to face Brooke. ‘Let me make you those eggs and toast now, what do you say?’

  ‘Sure. Sounds good. I’m actually starving,’ she said as she emptied the remainder of the Oreos directly into her mouth.

  ‘Remember when you kids were little and I’d make breakfast for dinner a couple times a month? You both loved it.’ She pulled a frying pan from a sliding drawer and sprayed it so heavily with Pam that it looked like it had been dunked in water.

  ‘Mmm, I sure do. Only I’m pretty sure you made it two or three times a week, not a month, and I’m positive I was the only one who liked it. Randy and Dad used to order a pizza every time you made eggs at night.’

  ‘Oh come on, Brooke, it wasn’t that often. I cooked all the time!’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘I made a huge pot of turkey chili every week. You all loved that.’ She cracked a half-dozen eggs into a bowl and began to whisk them. Brooke opened her mouth to object when her mother added her self-proclaimed ‘special sauce’ into the mix – a splash of vanilla soy milk that gave the eggs a nauseatingly sweet taste – but thought better of it. She would just drown them in ketchup and choke them down, as usual.

  ‘It was from a mix!’ Brooke said, cracking open another packet of Oreos. ‘All you did was add turkey and a jar of tomato sauce.’

  ‘It was delicious and you know it.’

  Brooke smiled. Her mother knew she was an atrocious cook, never claimed to be anything but horrible, and they both enjoyed this little back-and-forth.

  Mrs. Greene mother scraped the vanilla soy eggs from the nonstick pan using a metal fork and divided them up between two plates. She pulled four slices of bread from the toaster and divided those up too, failing to notice that she’d never pressed the Toast button. She handed a plate to Brooke and motioned toward the little table right outside the kitchen.

  They took their plates to the table and claimed their usual sea
ts. Her mom darted back to the kitchen and returned with two cans of Diet Coke, two forks, one knife, an ancient jar of grape Smucker’s, and a spray bottle of butter flavoring, all of which she unceremoniously dumped on the table. ‘Bon appetit!’ she trilled.

  ‘Yum!’ Brooke said, pushing her vanilla-scented eggs around the plate. She spritzed her untoasted bread with the butter spray and held her can up high. ‘Cheers!’

  ‘Cheers! To—’ Brooke could see her mother stop herself, probably from saying something about being together, or new beginnings, or some other none-too-subtle reference to Julian. Instead she said, ‘To gourmet meals and good company!’

  They ate quickly, and Brooke was pleasantly surprised that her mother still didn’t ask her any questions. Of course, it had the desired effect of making Brooke desperate to discuss the situation, something her mom must have known. Regardless, Brooke couldn’t get the electric kettle plugged in fast enough. By the time they both settled into the couch with mugs of Lipton and a plan to watch the last three episodes of Brothers & Sisters off the DVR, Brooke thought she might explode.

  ‘So, you’re probably dying to know what happened last night,’ she said after taking a sip.

  Mrs. Greene pulled out the tea bag and let it drip for a second and then rested it on a napkin on the table. Brooke could tell she was taking great care not to look directly at her. Things must be bad, she thought to herself. Her mother was definitely not the no-pressure type. ‘Whenever you’re ready,’ she said vaguely, waving her hand in a totally nonbelievable I’m laid back gesture.

  ‘Well, I guess … my god, I don’t even know where to start. The whole thing is such a mess.’

  ‘Start at the beginning. Last I spoke to you was around noon your time and you were getting ready to put on the dress. It sounded like everything was great then. So what happened?’

  Brooke sat back on the couch and rested a foot on the edge of the glass coffee table. ‘Yeah, that’s about when everything went to hell. I had just put on the dress and the jewelry and everything when Margaret called.’

  ‘Okay …’

  ‘Well, there was some huge screw-up that’s not worth getting into right now, but the long and the short of it is that she fired me.’

  ‘She what?’ Her mother snapped to attention. She had the same expression that she used to get when Brooke would come home from elementary school and explain how the mean girls had made fun of her at recess.

  ‘She fired me. Told me they couldn’t count on me anymore. That the hospital wasn’t confident in my commitment to my career.’

  ‘What?’

  Brooke smiled and sighed. ‘It’s true.’

  ‘That woman must be out of her mind,’ her mother said, slamming her hand down on the table.

  ‘Well, I appreciate that vote of confidence, Mom, but I have to admit that she’s got a point. I haven’t exactly been giving an A-plus performance these last few months.’

  Her mother was quiet for a moment as if she were trying to figure out what to say. When she spoke, her voice was low and measured. ‘You know I’ve always liked Julian. But I’m not going to lie – seeing those pictures made me want to kill him with my bare hands.’

  ‘What did you say?’ Brooke whispered, feeling ambushed. She hadn’t exactly forgotten about the pictures – the ones her own husband had described as similar to the Sienna/Balthazar spread – but she had managed to push the idea of them to the far back recesses of her mind.

  ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart. I know it’s none of my business, and I swore to myself that I wouldn’t say anything, but you can’t just pretend nothing happened. You need to get some real answers.’

  Brooke was irritated. ‘I think it’s pretty clear that he and I have a whole lot of things to figure out. I don’t recognize this Julian anymore, and it’s not just because of some horrible paparazzi pictures.’

  Brooke looked to her mother and waited for a response, but she was quiet.

  ‘What?’ Brooke asked. ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘You haven’t seen them yet, have you?’

  Brooke was quiet for a moment before she said, ‘I want to, but I can’t. It’ll all be so real as soon as I see them …’

  Mrs. Greene folded her legs up under her and reached across the sofa to take Brooke’s hand. ‘Sweetheart, I hear what you’re saying. I do. You must feel like you’re on the ledge of a tall building. And it kills me to have to say this, but … I think you need to take a look.’

  She turned and stared at her mother. ‘Really, Mom? Aren’t you always the one advising me to ignore all that crap? Haven’t you been reminding me all along, pretty much every time I get upset with something I read, that ninety-nine percent of what’s written in the tabloids is lies and distortions?’

  ‘There’s a copy on my bedside table.’

  ‘On your bedside table?’ Brooke screeched, hating the sound of her own voice, a combination of shock and panic. ‘Since when do you subscribe to Last Night? I thought this was strictly an O magazine and Newsweek household.’

  ‘I started subscribing when you and Julian began appearing in it regularly,’ her mother said quietly. ‘It was exciting, and I wanted to know what everyone meant when they were talking about it.’

  Brooke laughed mirthlessly. ‘Oh, well aren’t you glad you did? Isn’t it just a fount of fascinating information?’

  ‘It kills me to do this, but I’d rather you see them here for the first time. I’ll be right here waiting for you. Go.’

  Brooke looked at her mother and could see the pain on her face. She pushed herself up from the couch and tried to ignore the overwhelming feelings of fear and dread. The walk from the living room to her mother’s bedroom felt like an eternity, but before she could even process what was happening, Brooke sat on the edge of the bed. The cover featured the smiling faces of Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biehl with a long, jagged crack down the center. The words ‘It’s Over!’ were splashed in bright red across the top.

  Comforted by the fact that Julian wasn’t big enough yet to warrant the cover, Brooke turned to the table of contents, planning to scan the headlines. It was unnecessary. At the very top of the page, occupying more than its fair share of space, was a photo of Julian at an outside table in the courtyard of the Chateau Marmont. The girl sitting next to him was mostly shielded by a huge potted plant, but you could make out her profile as she leaned in toward Julian, her head tilted and her mouth open, as though they were just about to kiss. He was holding a beer in one hand and flashing the girl his dimples. Brooke felt a wave of nausea, followed quickly by the sick realization that these magazines never squander their juiciest pictures on the contents page. The worst was yet to come.

  She took a deep breath and turned to page eighteen. Whoever claimed that horrible things took a while to process had obviously never faced a double-sided spread of her husband seducing another woman. Brooke’s mind took it all in seamlessly. Without the least bit of effort, she saw another version of the first photo, only in this one, Julian appeared to be listening intently as the girl whispered something into his ear. It was time-stamped 11:38 P.M. The next one, stamped with a neon-red 12:22 P.M., showed him throwing his head back in laugher; the girl laughed, too, and now she had her palm planted firmly against his chest. Was she playfully pushing him away? Just looking for an excuse to touch him? The third and final picture on the left-hand side of the page was the worst: it showed the girl pressed right up against Julian, sipping what looked like rosé champagne. Julian was still holding his beer bottle in one hand, but his other hand appeared to be up the girl’s dress. You could tell from his arm’s angle that he wasn’t doing anything more X-rated than touching her upper thigh, but there was no denying that both hand and wrist were completely obscured by fabric. Julian was winking at the girl, giving her that mischievous smile Brooke loved so much as she gazed at him adoringly through big brown eyes. It was 1:03 A.M.

  And then the whammy, no doubt Last Night’s crowning glory. On the r
ight-hand side of the page was a full-bleed photo that may as well have been the size of a billboard. The time read 6:18 A.M. And it featured the girl, wearing the exact same drab blue dress from a few hours earlier, walking out of a poolside bungalow room. Her hair was disastrously mussed and she looked every bit the part of a morning-after cliché. She clutched her bag to her chest as though protecting herself from the surprise of the flashbulb, and her eyes were wide, shocked, but there was something else there, too. Pride? Accomplishment? Whatever it was, it clearly wasn’t shame.

  Brooke couldn’t keep from examining each photo with the care of a scientist studying a specimen, looking for clues and signs and patterns. It took a few more sickening minutes, but after staring intently at the last photo, Brooke knew what bothered her the most. The girl wasn’t a famous actress or supermodel or pop star, at least not as far as Brooke could tell. She looked ordinary. She had limp, slightly too-long reddish-brown hair, a nondescript blue dress, and a figure so unmemorable – so stunningly average – that it almost took Brooke’s breath away when she realized: the girl sort of looked like her. From the extra five pounds to the inexpertly applied eye makeup to not-quite-right sandals (the heels just a little too clunky for a night out and the leather just slightly too worn), Julian’s Chateau fling and Brooke could have been sisters. And, almost most distressing of all, Brooke was fairly certain she would be considered the more attractive one.

  It was all too weird. If your husband was going to cheat on you with some stranger he met at a Hollywood hotel, couldn’t he at least have the self-respect to choose someone hot? Or, at the very least, someone plastic and cheesy? Where were the huge fake boobs and the skintight skinny jeans? The airbrushed spray tan and the five-hundred-dollar highlights? How’d she even get into the Chateau? Brooke wondered. Maybe a famous musician couldn’t always score a Giselle-level model, but couldn’t he at least have found someone who looked better than his own wife? Brooke tossed the magazine aside in disgust. It was easier to focus on the absurdity of your husband cheating on you with a less attractive version of yourself than it was to acknowledge the actual cheating part.