“Oh, our old photographer flaked out—I’m pretty sure he ditched us to cover some Hilton sister wedding in Vegas—and I thought of Bradley,” Alex said.
See? Not such a long story, after all. A very brief story. Barely even a story at all. Hardly an anecdote. More like a caption.
“Diana, do you know if Gary’s downstairs?” Alex asked.
Diana murmured something into her lapel, like a Secret Service agent, then nodded.
“He just arrived,” she said. “He’s on his way up.”
“Why don’t we do a few photos of just you and Gary, then we’ll get the whole family together,” Bradley suggested, just as the door to the room opened and Gary strode in.
Gary wore a black suit that looked custom-tailored and a brilliant blue dress shirt that had to be pure silk. It made his eyes leap out from his strong-featured face. His overcoat was cashmere, and his watch was a Rolex. Forget woodsy bar soap—Gary reeked of pure, undiluted success.
“Hank, great to see you,” Gary said, crossing the room in long, purposeful strides—the kind of walk they taught in rich executive school—to shake my father’s hand. He leaned over to kiss Mom next.
“You look beautiful, as always,” he said. “Be careful or you’re going to steal away all the attention at the wedding.”
“Oh, go on,” Mom said, giggling like a schoolgirl and swatting him on the arm.
“I’m serious,” Gary said, mock sternly. “Hank, you should fill up your wife’s dance card early or you might not see her the whole night.”
Mom tittered and all but curtsied. I’ve never actually heard someone titter before, but she managed admirably.
“Lindsey, it’s wonderful to see you again,” Gary said, kissing my cheek softly. “I hope we get to spend a lot more time together now that you’re back in town.”
I had to choke back a titter myself. No politician has ever worked the room more smoothly; when Gary’s attention was on you, you felt like the only person in the room. Hell, in the universe.
“Gary, you remember Bradley,” Alex said. The two men shook hands. Gary was a full three or four inches taller than Bradley, and probably had twenty pounds of muscle on him. I wondered if there was some way I could subtly point this out to Alex, just in case her observational skills weren’t as finely honed as usual.
“So, what’s the plan?” Gary asked, wrapping his big arm around Alex and giving her neck a quick nuzzle. I silently cheered him on.
“I’d like to get a few photos of just you and Alex, then some of the whole family,” Bradley said. He surveyed the room quickly. “How about you two stand over by that bouquet of flowers?”
Gary and Alex complied, and the rest of us stared at them while Bradley snapped away. They looked custom-made for each other. Even though she wore three-inch heels, the top of Alex’s head just barely came to rest underneath Gary’s jaw, and she seemed more delicate than ever in his arms. They looked like an ad for a support group for Beautiful People Anonymous (“Hi, I’m Alex, and the first time I realized I was beautiful—sob—I was only six.” Shocked murmurs from the support group: “Only six.”).
“I got some really good ones,” Bradley said after a few minutes, clicking through the shots on his digital camera. “Of course, it isn’t hard with subjects like you two. I was just thinking we’d go for some candid shots next before we do the family photo. Why don’t you two just act natural? Forget I’m here.”
Gary looked at Alex and broke into a grin, then he pulled something out of his breast pocket.
“For me?” Alex asked. “What is it?”
“Just a little engagement present,” Gary said.
“You already got me one,” she protested. No, not protested. Protested would mean she didn’t want the gift, and she was already snapping open the box and shrieking. Inside were dangling earrings that glittered with green stones. Emeralds, I guessed, though I wasn’t close enough to see for sure. But somehow I sensed Gary wasn’t a cubic zirconia kind of guy.
Alex threw her arms around Gary, who swept her up like she weighed no more than a child and spun her around in a circle. Alex was laughing and tossing back her head, and Gary was staring at her in pure adoration. Bradley moved around them, trying out different angles as he snapped dozens of shots.
Mom and Dad and Diana and I stood back and watched. This was my sister in her element; this was the Alex I knew. The woman who’d curled up on the floor and admitted to being tired and stressed was a stranger. Now the vulnerability I’d glimpsed was long gone; Alex was the center of attention, as usual, and she was loving every moment of it.
Gary whispered something in her ear, then kissed her on the tender spot just below her ear, and she laughed again. I couldn’t imagine sharing such an intimate moment in front of a crowd, but Alex seemed to revel in it.
Then Bradley lowered his camera and looked over at me and smiled.
He looked at me! How many times had Bradley looked at me through the years? Hundreds? Thousands? Funny how it suddenly made my heart take a little leap. I smiled back and walked over to him, unconsciously reaching up a hand to check my hair.
“They look great together, don’t they?” he asked me, gesturing to Alex.
“They really do,” I said.
But enough about Alex. “Have you shot a lot of engagement portraits?” I asked Bradley.
“First one,” he said. “But I couldn’t turn down a friend.”
A friend. That’s all Alex was. And I’d been Bradley’s friend much longer, I reminded myself.
“I can’t wait to catch up. Want to grab a movie this week?” I asked, feeling inexplicably nervous. “I’ll even sneak in some honey for the popcorn.”
“Love to,” Bradley said. “I really want to hear about what’s up with your job.”
I kept smiling. “Same old stuff, just a new location. But it’s good to be back home.”
“I’m glad you’re back, too,” Bradley said.
His clear blue eyes, a much gentler shade than Gary’s, remained fixed on mine. I’d almost forgotten how Bradley did that; he’d keep his eyes on you the whole time you were talking, soaking in what you were saying, instead of scanning the room or impatiently waiting to interject his own thoughts. And he had this lovely habit of pausing for a moment when someone was done speaking, as though making sure they were truly finished, before he responded.
“Maybe we could hit the Thai place for a drink, too,” I said casually.
Suddenly I urgently wanted to go back there with Bradley; to smooth over any memories he’d created with Alex at the restaurant, like a wave erasing footprints in the sand. I wanted to replace them with memories of me.
“Great,” Bradley said.
I realized I’d been holding my breath, and I let it out slowly. Bradley still cared for me. He might’ve been momentarily dazzled by Alex, but he was a smart guy. He’d be able to see through her. She’d forgotten all about Bradley once Gary and his emerald earrings were in the room.
Maybe I didn’t look anything like Alex in my plain navy dress, but when the glitz was gone and the magic had lifted, who would Bradley rather be with? Someone who flirted with him and forgot him, or someone who’d always cared about him?
“I’ll call you this week,” Bradley said. He smiled. “Can you believe I still have your number memorized?”
And in that moment, I began to believe that moving home might not have been such a terrible thing, after all.
All in all, it wasn’t such a bad night. Not nearly as bad as I’d feared, anyway. After we took our family photo, things happened quickly. Diana ushered us into the grand ballroom for the party, and soon the room filled with close to two hundred people, who toasted Alex and Gary with champagne and nibbled on a giant raw bar’s offerings of caviar and oysters and sushi. Waiters passed by with trays of Kobe beef on garlic crostini and vegetable tempura and dozens of other appetizers that were as beautifully presented as they were mouthwatering.
“Must’ve set Gary b
ack a pretty penny,” Dad said at one point, hitching up his trousers and surveying the room with an appraising eye. “We offered to pay, but he wouldn’t hear of it.”
“Generous of you,” I said, giving Dad a gentle pat on the back. Score one for Gary: I wasn’t sure Dad would ever recover from the shock if he glimpsed the real bill.
All through the night, Alex was flitting everywhere, her slim silver dress catching the light as she hugged guests and danced with Gary and made everyone laugh. She and Gary moved in a special kind of magnetic space, where the very air around them seemed charged with excitement. People watched them out of the corners of their eyes, and when Alex and Gary joined a group, the laughter became louder and the gestures more animated. I had to hand it to Alex, I thought as I watched Gary tell a story and the crowd around him hang on his every word: She’d found the perfect male counterpart, one of the few guys who could hold his own with her.
As they worked the crowd, Bradley followed close behind them, his camera clicking constantly. I mostly stayed on the fringes of the party, dodging questions from my parents’ friends about my job and making sure the quality control remained constant for the chocolate-covered strawberries. It was an important job, and one I undertook with grave seriousness.
But Bradley came over to talk to me not once, or twice, but three times. And every time he did, I felt a giddy, rising sensation in my chest. I found myself watching him as he worked, admiring the way he took the time to put people at ease before snapping their photos. He was even careful to stay out of the way of the dozens of waiters and waitresses ferrying around trays of champagne.
As the night wore on, I began to relax. People weren’t looking at me and instantly realizing I was a fraud. No one grabbed a microphone away from the bandleader and pointed at me and yelled, “She was fired! And she mounted a subordinate on a conference room table!”
Maybe things were going to work out for me after all, I thought as I turned down a waiter’s offer of a glass of champagne and stuck to my seltzer. I doubted I’d ever be able to look champagne in the eye again. But at least Mr. Dunne had promised me a reference, and my résumé was stellar. I’d have a new job within a month, just like I’d vowed. And Bradley and Alex were friendly, but it was obvious to everyone she and Gary belonged together.
Plus Bradley had said he would call me soon.
I hugged that secret knowledge all night long like it was a pillow. Seeing Bradley had awoken all sorts of feelings in me, feelings I hadn’t known had been lying dormant for so long.
Why hadn’t I ever felt attracted to Bradley before? I wondered as I watched him drop to his knees to take a photo of Gary’s four-year-old niece, who would be the flower girl at the wedding. At first she was shy and hid under her mother’s long skirt. But then Bradley started joking around, saying to the mother, “Ma’am, I hate to have to tell you this, but you’ve grown two more feet! Look down!” And the little girl started giggling and eventually came out.
Was it possible I’d known Bradley too well? I wondered as he turned around and caught my eye and smiled his familiar, shy smile. Had I seen him as more of a brother, and just needed a bit of distance to recognize how desirable he really was?
Bradley had had a crush on me for years. Maybe he’d known something I’d been too busy or blind to see. Maybe he’d known all along we were meant to be together, that we were each other’s destiny, and he’d been biding his time until I realized it, too.
Ten
“I SHOULDN’T BE TELLING you this,” the president of Givens & Associates said, reaching out with slim fingers to realign the stack of papers on her desk. I sat ramrod-straight in the hard wooden chair across from her desk, barely daring to breathe. She gave me one last appraising look. I was glad I’d worn my charcoal Prada suit today, even though the last thing I’d expected when I got dressed this morning was that I’d need its professional mojo. I silently thanked my trusty anal gene for making sure I was always prepared; I’d have to reward it with a new day-by-day organizer.
“I think you’d fit in very, very well here,” Ms. Givens said slowly, nodding her head slightly, as if to second her own opinion. She had one of those powerfully soft voices that made me strain to hear her every word.
“Thank you,” I said. I smiled back in a way that I hoped was modest but confident, but my heart was smashing against my chest. I could hardly believe this was happening. It was Wednesday, just three days after Alex’s engagement party, and my life was clicking into place so quickly it seemed unreal. I’d come by this office—the biggest ad agency in D.C.—just planning to drop off my résumé. The personal touch was important, and I thought that, by handing it to the receptionist, I might have a slight edge over other candidates for the open account director position. Maybe the receptionist would put my résumé on the top of the pile, or tell her boss I hadn’t looked like a mass murderer. Who knew that Cynthia Givens herself would be hurrying across the lobby toward the elevator at the exact moment I stepped inside, and that when I put out my arm to keep the door from closing on her, she’d look at me and say, “Thank you. You wouldn’t believe how many people don’t bother to do that.”
Her hair was shorter now and she was wearing glasses, but I’d done my homework and I instantly recognized her from the photo on her website. She was the founder of D.C.’s top ad agency, the agency that was number one on my list of places I wanted to work.
By the time the elevator reached the sixteenth floor, Ms. Givens was scanning a copy of my résumé and I was desperately trying to remember nuggets from her bio, which I’d read last night on the website. She’d founded the agency eighteen years ago with five thousand dollars and a single employee. Her agency had produced four Super Bowl commercials, and its clients included Sprite and Snickers. She spoke three languages fluently, had opened up offices in Hong Kong and London, and was recently profiled in a glowing front-page article in Advertising Age.
As I sat across from her, I snuck quick looks around her office, trying to glean any tidbit of personal information I could use to help me make a good impression. If she’d had one of those lumpy clay paperweights kids made in preschool, or a bunch of flowers in a vase I could compliment her on, or a framed photo . . . But no. Her office was bereft of knickknacks and personal touches. Her bio hadn’t mentioned anything about a spouse or children, and she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.
Ms. Givens herself—somehow I couldn’t see myself calling her Cynthia—sat in her chair with the erect posture of a ballerina. She wore a black suit, and her only pieces of jewelry were a delicate gold-and-diamond necklace and a Chopard watch. Her makeup was minimal and tasteful, and her movements were careful and deliberate. Everything about her screamed, “Money! Success! Power!” Or maybe whispered it in a cultured, boarding-school-bred voice.
“I mean, this work on the airline campaign . . . ,” Ms. Givens said, letting her words trail off as she picked up the ad from my portfolio and studied it more closely.
“Business increased by fourteen percent within two weeks of that ad’s launch,” I said quickly, pulling a page filled with the relevant statistics out of my briefcase and handing it across the desk to her.
She nodded again.
“Do you have any questions for me?” she asked, steepling her fingers.
Just one: How do I get your life? I thought.
Everything in her enormous corner office shone. Her leather couch looked like it had never suffered the indignity of meeting a behind, and her desk held only a computer so thin it would make a supermodel jealous and the stack of aforementioned perfectly aligned papers. Even the trade magazines arced across the coffee table with a businesslike precision.
Before I could answer—I had to have a question, otherwise I’d look too eager—someone knocked on her open door.
“I apologize for the interruption.”
It was a heavyset woman in her mid-forties—about the same age as Ms. Givens—and she really did look sorry, and also the tiniest bit scared. Sh
e glanced at me, and Ms. Givens nodded sharply at her. “Go on.”
“Kaitlin hasn’t come in yet,” she said, speaking in a hushed voice. “I don’t think she’s coming in today.”
Ms. Givens didn’t betray any emotion, except a slight tightening around her eyes.
“Call the temp office immediately and have them send a replacement,” she said. “Let them know if this one doesn’t work out we’ll be withdrawing our business permanently.”
The woman eased out of the room as Ms. Givens leaned forward and picked up her phone: “Jocelyn, please forward all my calls to the front desk and go cover it while we deal with this mess. And I’ll need you to book me through to Hong Kong after my speech in San Francisco tomorrow; then I’ll stop in at our London office on the way home. Unannounced—do not tell them I’m coming.”
Ms. Givens didn’t wait for a response before she hung up the phone. She exhaled and refocused her attention on me.
“This isn’t how I enjoy starting off my day,” she said, briefly rubbing her temples. I wondered why she was handling such low-level personnel issues. Wasn’t that what her assistant was for? Maybe her assistant didn’t have initiative, in which case Kaitlin probably wasn’t the only one who would be pounding the streets in search of a new job.
“Personnel issues are always complicated,” I said sympathetically. “I oversaw twenty people at Richards, Dunne and Krantz, and I know how important it is to have employees who are conscientious.”
“Why did you leave?” Ms. Givens asked.
I’d prepared for this one.
“A family member is ill”—my temporary insanity counted as mental illness—“and I want to be closer to home. But be assured my work has never suffered and would never suffer because of personal issues.” So it was only half a lie, really. A lie-light. They could sell it in the diet aisle, and women could check its calories against fibs and white lies.
Ms. Givens nodded, then stood up abruptly and stuck out her hand.
The Opposite of Me Page 12
