The Best Laid Plans
Page 11
I’ve rehearsed this part for days.
“We’re a very exclusive escort agency,” I say, gazing out steadily at the sea of faces. “We’re looking for a few special women to match up with our clients. Successful businessmen who spend too much time at the office and need some help relaxing.”
“Relaxing, is that code for jerking them off?” a busty blonde bluntly asks as half a dozen women hurriedly excuse themselves from the room.
“Can you tell me how to get to Al-Anon? Or any 12-step program?” asks a brunette, nearly tripping over her feet.
“Yo no hables ingles,” mutters a woman who I swear is Irish-looking.
“That’s perfectly all right,” says Bill, smoothly. “That’s why we’re here today, to see which of you ladies is a good match for us and vice versa. We expect that our clients will want to get to know our employees more intimately, although you never have to stay with a man if you don’t want to. But I know all of the men personally and I think you’ll enjoy their company. The pay is excellent and we’re hoping to help you develop long-term relationships, not one-time dates.”
“Anna,” a voice rings out from the back of the room and it takes me a moment to realize she’s addressing me. “I’m a little confused. The ad said that you’re looking for women over forty? I thought that these kinds of jobs went to younger women.”
“We’re looking for women of character and experience,” says Bill. “Our clientele are the kind of men who appreciate a fine wine.…”
“My ex-husband always said I had a fine whine,” cracks the faux-fur-wearing fireball, who introduces herself as Lucy.
“And mine said no one would ever want me,” a fine-featured woman in the back, named Rochelle, says quietly.
“You’ll show him!” Lucy says, encouragingly. “Forget about that jerk. The idiot’s your was-band.”
“Do we have to sleep with the men?” someone calls out.
“Hell, do we get to sleep with the men?” Patricia, the woman with the alligator purse asks, eliciting another round of generous laughs.
One by one, we ask each woman to step into the back office for a private interview. Bill and I answer their questions, and we rate each applicant for PAL—personality, attitude, and looks.
We eliminate one with a strong New Yawk accent, and another who asks if she can get an advance on her salary “to have my tits done.” I don’t think it’s a good idea to give an employee money she hasn’t earned yet. Or—unless we’re going after a different type of clientele—to hire an escort who’s going to spend a month on the job in bandages. One potentially promising candidate has red runny eyes, which she admits is a permanent condition. “Can you believe it? I used drops every day for about a year, and now I’m having a rebound effect—no matter what I do, I can’t get my eyes to look normal. Who’d have guessed?” she says mournfully, putting on her coat and thanking us for our time. “You can kick heroin, but you can’t kick Visine.”
By the end of the afternoon, we’ve hired ten attractive, well-educated women I’m looking forward to getting to know better—like the lanky Patricia, an out-of-work money manager with a master’s degree from the Wharton business school, and Rochelle, the recent divorcée whose husband dubbed her undesirable, but who in fact is an avid Knicks fan with a thirty-six-C chest. And we hire the rabbit-jacket-wearing Lucy, too. She seems like a team player and I admire her moxie.
As our new employees file out the front door, Bill apologizes for having to rush off to a meeting with another client. Until we’re operating in the black he’s keeping his day job. “Great start,” he says. “I can’t wait to tell Sienna all about it tonight.”
“Give her a hug for me, will you? And tell her I’m really sorry she couldn’t be here today. Working with the woman is going to be half the fun.”
“I know, but you can’t be too careful. Besides, she’s in charge of keeping all our clients’ records—their contact information, credit card numbers, hobbies, allergies, likes and dislikes—and she’ll track what our escorts are paid. There’ll be plenty for Sienna to do.”
“That’s true, but Sienna’s not one to take a backseat in anything,” I say, thinking how my best friend has spent a lifetime in the spotlight, and wondering how she’s going to adjust to being behind the scenes.
Bill laughs and tells me not to worry. “Everything’s under control,” he says, planting a light kiss on my cheek and heading out the door. “Don’t borrow trouble.”
BACK AT THE apartment, things seem to be under control, too—Tiffany Glass’s control. While their new office space and warehouse are being renovated, Tiffany and Peter have set up headquarters in our apartment. Just when I’d started to enjoy the peaceful ambience of our eBay-induced, clutter-free living room, Tiffany’s boxes, brochures, and hundreds of pots of BUBB face cream have transformed my home into a mini-storage.
“Where is everybody?” I ask, surprised to see a wildly extravagant orchid on the Georgian table in the entrance hall and following peals of laughter across the apartment into my bedroom. There’s a crack of light coming through the slightly opened door of the master bathroom—the master bathroom that’s been out of commission for weeks.
“Tru, you’re home, I didn’t expect you back for a couple of hours,” Peter says uneasily, as I swing open the door and survey the scene. The broken tile floor has been artfully restored, the Carrara marble tub that the workmen had refused to install is now magically in place and Tiffany Glass—in all her gilt-blond glory—is, infuriatingly, sitting in front of my vanity, admiring her own reflection.
“Surprise!” she says, standing up and clapping her hands. “When I came in to use the bathroom and I saw that you didn’t have a tub in the master bath, I just had to have it fixed right away! I couldn’t have Peter living that way. Or you either,” Tiffany adds, almost an afterthought. “No, no, no, no, no!”
Tiffany has the unbridled enthusiasm of a kindergartner gifting a painted Popsicle-stick picture frame, although her present is much less welcome.
“How sweet,” I say, pursing my lips. What was Tiffany doing in the master bathroom in the first place when she could have just used the one in the hall? And why the heck didn’t she stop playing around in my bathroom after she’d swapped out the tubs? I’m irritated to see that Tiffany’s replaced my discreet round magnifying mirror with a curved three-foot-long wall fixture that makes every crow’s-foot and wrinkle look deeper than the San Andreas Fault. “And what happened to my Roman shades?” I wail, walking over to the once elegant window that is now draped with a red Swiss dot fabric and an upholstered cornice with comic-book-sized stars.
“I know, don’t you love it?” Tiffany exclaims, coming over and playfully twirling a piece of the diaphanous fabric. “It’s Tilly and Milly. They did Tori Spelling’s nursery! It was quite a coup to get them to do an adult’s bathroom, but for me—well, let’s just say that I helped one of them clear up a certain acne problem though I’ll never say which one. No, no, no, no, no! But they owe me! And you do not have to thank me. The look on your face is gratification enough.”
I swivel around to catch my stern, tight-lipped reflection in the CinemaScope-sized mirror. Either Tiffany is totally clueless and thinks I actually do appreciate her unwelcome bathroom overhaul, or she’s playing blond-bombshell-dumb to steamroll her way into getting what she wants—which I’d be a fool not to see includes my dimpled, blue-eyed husband. Either way she’s a formidable adversary. But only if I let her be, I think to myself, remembering my pledge not to be thrown by Tiffany’s tactics.
“That was very kind.” I walk over to put my arm proprietarily around Peter’s shoulder. “And I guess I should thank you for the beautiful orchid in the entryway, too?”
“Actually that was my contribution,” says Peter, beaming, relieved that I’m not upset by the renovation—or the invasion of my personal space by his bodacious blond boss.
“Yes, Peter’s always very thoughtful,” says Tiffany, coming over and chucking
my husband under the chin.
“Yes, he is!” I tighten my grip on Peter’s shoulder and press a kiss on his cheek. Tiffany counters by taking Peter’s hand. I move my fingers sinuously down his body and let my fingers dance across his bum. Tiffany eyes me and considers her next move. I know we’re in the bathroom, but I’m praying we don’t get to the point where one of us has to lift our leg to leave our scent.
Tiffany, it turns out, has a better move up her sleeve. Make that Manolo mule.
“Oh dear me, I slipped,” she says, pretending to have gotten her heel caught on the new tile and falling backward toward Peter—who wriggles out of my embrace to catch her.
Tiffany wraps her arm around Peter’s neck and leans tightly into his body, as if her tiny waist and his broad chest were matching pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
“My hero!” she cries, and my husband actually blushes.
“Oh no, no, no, no, no!” Peter echoes Tiffany’s trademark protest as both of them giggle.
For a moment, I’m frozen, unsure of what to do.
I could knock Tiffany over the head with a pot of her BUBB face cream and see if she can actually stand on her own. (Like that’s in question.) Or I could kick her in one of her well-turned shins and hobble her for real. Instead, I clear my throat and edge a shoulder between them. “Here,” I say, clapping my arm on Tiffany’s and steering her toward the door. “Let’s get you back to your apartment and off your feet.”
“I’ll take her,” says Peter gallantly, and although I agree to let him help, I insist on coming along.
Inside her apartment, Tiffany makes a show of limping to a hot pink chenille daybed. Once she realizes I’m not leaving without Peter, she tells us not to worry. “Go home to your family.” She sighs theatrically. “I’ll be fine here all by myself. I’m used to being on my own. Even if my ankle is sprained—or possibly fractured.”
“Okay, well bye, take care,” I say, wheeling Peter around. And then stupidly, I add, “Anything you need, just let me know.” Damn my Hebrew School training! Fifty-two times a year for seven years I was told that the Torah commands us to help our neighbors—not to mention that it forbids murdering them.
“Well, now that I think of it, Tru, I could use just a teeny-weeny bit of ice. And maybe a couple of magazines. And oh yes, there’s a fuzzy-wuzzy blanket on the top of my closet that would make me feel ever so comfy.”
“That’s okay, I’ll get them,” says Peter, who unlike the doggedly oblivious Tiffany can read the expression on my face and knows that I’m losing my patience.
Moments later Peter returns with Tiffany’s essentials. I slap the ice bag unceremoniously on her foot, wrap the blanket Egyptian-mummy-tight around her body so that she can barely move, and prop up a copy US Weekly on her chest, two inches away from her nose. Tiffany perfunctorily thanks me for my help. But of course she doesn’t miss a chance to gush over Peter.
“If you hadn’t caught me I don’t know what I would have done!” she oozes.
“ ’Twern’t nothin’, ma’am,” Peter says with a bow. Then he promises to call and check in on her later.
We leave the apartment and silently walk toward the elevator. My mouth is clenched and my arms are hanging stiffly by my sides. Peter smiles and reaches out to take my hand.
“I know, I know, I know,” my husband says with a chuckle. “You don’t have to say it, Tiffany is a little bit over the top. You hated the bathroom, didn’t you?”
“Uh-huh,” I say, as we step inside the cab and I punch the “penthouse” button. “And that thing with her foot, it wasn’t a very original move.”
“Tiffany can be a little flirtatious,” Peter says, in a masterpiece of understatement. Next he’s going to tell me that Henry VIII has commitment issues.
I cock an eyebrow.
“Okay, Tiffany’s very flirtatious. But that’s just the way she is. And despite her looks, she’s a surprisingly good businesswoman.”
“Maybe it’s because of her looks,” I say petulantly.
Peter looks into my eyes and cups his hand underneath my chin. “You know you don’t have to worry about me, right, honey? I’m yours, all yours. Although I was pretty turned on when the two of you started fighting over me.”
Fighting? Over him? Before I get a chance to act all innocent and tell Peter that I don’t have any idea what he’s talking about—or that I’d wrestle Tiffany to the ground before I let her come between us—Peter gets a mischievous twinkle in his eye. He throws his jacket over the security camera and hits the stop button on the control panel. Within seconds, the elevator comes to a bumpy halt.
“What?” I ask as Peter presses me against the back wall of the elevator and kisses me hard, impeding my ability to speak—or even think.
“Good thing the co-op board never installed that new elevator they were arguing over,” Peter says, brushing his lips against mine. “The one that has all sorts of alarm buttons.” Then he pulls my sweater over my head and hungrily reaches for my breasts.
Ten
A Change of Heart
LIKE A COUPLE OF preteens with their first tampon, Sienna and I are sitting cross-legged on the zebra-print rug in her living room, trying to figure out how to use the Lumigan she’s scored from her eye doctor.
“Why didn’t you just get him to give you a prescription for Latisse?” I ask, twisting the bottle’s rubber-top stopper and wondering why Sienna didn’t buy the beauty-strength version of the new eyelash-enhancing drug instead of the glaucoma medicine from which it’s derived.
“It’s not going on sale until December. Besides, we’re on budgets now, remember?” Sienna says, batting her lashes, which look entirely lush to me. “The glaucoma medicine sells for half the price.”
“Interesting. The American consumer is only willing to pay so much to stave off blindness, but the sky’s the limit for longer, thicker, mascaraless lashes?”
“And this is a surprise?” Sienna laughs.
“What would be a surprise is if this actually works.” Sienna turns to her laptop and Googles for instructions. Bill passes through the living room with a cup of coffee and the Wall Street Journal and bends down to give Sienna a kiss.
“See you at two o’clock, Tru?” Bill asks, confirming our shopping expedition with the Veronica Agency’s new hires to pick out work clothes. Then he plunks his coffee mug down—without a coaster—on Sienna’s prized triangular glass Noguchi coffee table and makes his way toward the door.
Since Bill’s been with Sienna he looks happy and relaxed and I’d swear, he’s even standing taller. As for Sienna, she’s radiant, and why not? Good sex is better for your skin than even the priciest carrot-and-sesame body buff. More impressively, she seems completely unfazed that the perfect order and symmetry of her living room has been upset by the intrusion of this errant coffee mug—or this man.
“Looks like it’s going well,” I say, reaching across the zebra area rug to rap my fist on the blond wood floor. Sienna shrugs.
“We’ll see. My longest intimate relationship to date is with the woman who gives me my colonics.” Sienna scoops up the mug and I follow her into the kitchen where she busies herself piloting a foamy cloth across a spotless counter. “I will tell you one thing about Bill, though,” Sienna says, wringing the wipe with both hands as soap drips onto the counter and a big smile spreads across her face. “We’re having terrific sex.”
“Me too!” I’ve been waiting all morning for an opening to describe my hot elevator tryst with the man I’ve been married to for more than twenty years. “Peter was thrusting inside me. The back of the elevator cab started shaking and I was scared to death the whole time that the wires on the cab might break loose or that the elevator would open and someone would catch us!” I feel my face flush and I cover my mouth with my hands. “It was great.”
“Elevator sex? You and Peter? Like in Fatal Attraction?”
“Well, it was deliciously illicit but I’m not going to end up boiling a bunny.” I smile.
“I know, I mean, it just came out of nowhere, I can’t imagine what got into Peter.” Although one particular explanation has been haunting my thoughts all night. “You don’t think Tiffany was the foreplay, do you?” I ask anxiously.
“What? Of course not,” says Sienna, slamming down the sponge.
“Well, Tiffany couldn’t keep her hands off Peter and Peter certainly looked like he was enjoying the attention. And my husband and that woman spend hours every day alone, holed up together in our apartment until the girls get home from school.”
“So what? You’re the one Peter … Well, what would be the word here? Plundered? Ravished?”
“Schtupped is what Naomi would say. But really, do you think Peter’s passion for me was all about his wanting Tiffany?”
“Of course not,” Sienna says loyally, because even if she believed otherwise, what else could she say? “You’re sexy and beautiful and desirable and your husband lustily schtupped you in an elevator. The other thing? That silly Tiffany girl? Forget about it. Why borrow trouble?”
Sienna’s right: There’s nothing to be gained in my fantasizing about Peter fantasizing about Tiffany. Though I’d still like to know how Tiffany Glass came to be in my private bathroom, the one that’s attached to my private bedroom, in the first place. Still, at the moment another, more pleasurable picture is forming in my mind—Sienna and Bill making a cozy home together. Because whether or not she realizes it, something pretty seismic is happening to my best friend.
“Just before, when you said, ‘Why borrow trouble?’ You know Bill says that, too,” I hoot. “Better watch it, Ms. I’m-Never-Going-to-Get-Married Post. That man’s getting to you in more ways than you know.”
IT WAS PATRICIA, our ex–money manager, who suggested that we bypass Madison Avenue and hunt for lingerie bargains on the Lower East Side. My parents used to take me there every Sunday when I was a kid, but as I emerge from the subway to meet Bill and our new employees for our shopping expedition, I see that a second wave of immigrants—the hip and trendy—have arrived. Brand-new balconied apartments jostle turn-of-the-century tenement buildings. Cute little designer shops and cool-looking after-hours clubs have sprouted up along the area’s narrow streets, like dandelions poking through cement. My walk down Orchard Street turns into a stroll down memory lane as I pass a store where I used to buy penny candy that now sells forty-dollar candles, and just a few doors down from Russ & Daughters (where my father always went for “the best” sturgeon), I spot the Landmark Sunshine Cinema, so chic that they have red-carpet premieres. Still I’m glad to see that Patricia’s lingerie shop is one of the last of the old-fashioned hosiery stores, the kind I remember shopping in with Naomi.