by Sue Margolis
—Good Housekeeping (U.K.)
“A saucy romp.”
—The Independent (U.K.)
Praise for
SPIN CYCLE
This delightful novel is filled with more than a few big laughs.”
—Booklist
“A funny, sexy British romp . . . Margolis is able to keep the witty one-liners spraying like bullets. Light, fun . . .”
—Library Journal
“Warm-hearted relationship farce . . . a nourishing delight.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Margolis does a good job of keeping several balls in the air at once.”
—The Pilot (Southern Pines, NC)
“A nice, refreshingly funny read.”
—America Online's Romance Fiction Forum
“Satisfying . . . a wonderful diversion on an airplane, pool side, or beach.”
—Baton Rouge Magazine
Praise for
APOCALIPSTICK
Sexy British romp. . . . Margolis's characters have a candor and self-deprecation that lead to furiously funny moments. . . . A riotous, ribald escapade sure to leave readers chuckling to the very end of this saucy adventure.”
—USA Today
“Quick in pace and often very funny.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Margolis combines light-hearted suspense with sharp English wit . . . entertaining read.”
—Booklist
“A joyously funny British comedy . . . a well-written read that has its share of poignant moments. . . . There are always great characters in Ms. Margolis's novels. With plenty of romance and passion, APOCALIPSTICK is just the ticket for those of us who like the rambunctious, witty humor this comedy provides.”
—Romance Reviews Today
“Rather funny . . . compelling . . . brilliant send-ups of high fashion.”
—East Bay Express
“[An] irreverent, sharp-witted look at love and dating.”
—Houston Chronicle
Don't you love to read novels like
It's fun.
It's fashionable.
And it's completely fat-free!
And now, here's something completely indulgent: Two exciting sneak peek excerpts from two debut novels sure to hit the “must read A-list” upon release.
Whitney Gaskell's
and Kim Green's
by WHITNEY GASKELL
on sale October 2003
© 2003 by Whitney Gaskell
THE ONE THING YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT ME IS THIS: I'm the consummate Good Girl. I wash my makeup off every night, no matter how tired I am. I mail out my Christmas cards every Thanksgiving weekend without fail, and thank-you notes are written and posted within three days of receipt of any gift. I've only called into work sick once when it wasn't really true, and even then I spent the entire day too racked with guilt to enjoy it. I'm an extremely loyal and dependable friend, and have never cheated on a boyfriend or tried to steal a man away from another woman. And I never, ever say yes when a friend asks me if she looks fat, particularly if in the throes of a heartbreak she's been hitting the Häagen-Dazs pretty hard, because girlfriends should stick together and not make each other feel self-conscious about their weight. But the problem with being a Good Girl is this—I'm terrible at conflict. Absolutely hate it, am terrified of it, will do anything to avoid it. When it comes to the fight-or-flight phenomenon, my fight is nonexistent, as wimpy as Popeye pre-spinach. Luckily, I am a world-class sprinter when it comes to running away from everything having to do with anything that even remotely resembles strife.
Which is why, as I sat in the wood-paneled bar of McCormick & Schmick's on K Street nursing a glass of merlot, I was dreading the arrival of my soon-to-be ex-boyfriend, Eric Leahy. After weeks of dodging his phone calls, I was resolved to finally end the relationship. And unlike every other breakup I had ever muddled with my pathetic timidity, this time I had a plan: I would tell Eric gently, but firmly, that it was over, and at all costs preserve our dignity. I was a career woman, an attorney (a career you might—as my friends do—find amusing for me to have stumbled into, considering my above-mentioned aversion to conflict), and there was no reason why I couldn't end this relationship gracefully. No matter what, there would not be a messy emotional scene, nor would I allow myself to be guilted into giving it a second chance or entering into couples counseling. I had let this relationship drag on for far too long, and just like with a Band-Aid, it's better to rip it off all at once. Of course, as I sat there, hunched up on a hard wooden chair that was putting my butt to sleep, while dipping pieces of pita into a pot of lemony hummus, I didn't feel cool or dignified; I felt sick to my stomach.
I'd come to the bar directly from the office, and I had that end-of-the-workday feel—grimy and sweaty, my feet tired from walking the five blocks to the bar from my office in my three-inch stacked loafers, the waistband of my favorite black pantsuit digging into my skin. I didn't feel elegant and composed; I was sticky and weary, and dreading what was sure to be an unavoidably messy scene.
Eric arrived. I caught sight of his affable, smiling face as he waved at me and cut through the after-work crowd of yuppies gathered in the bar heading toward the table I claimed. He collapsed in the empty chair I'd been fighting to keep for him, and kissed me on the cheek.
“Ellie,” he said. “You look beautiful.” Considering how grubby I both looked and felt, I knew he was lying. But as far as lies go, it was a sweet one. And Eric was always saying things like that—heaping compliments on me, telling me how wonderful he thought I was. It was a very appealing trait in a man, one that had kept me from breaking up with him before.
It wasn't that Eric was unattractive—he had glossy black hair, ruddy cheeks, and bright blue eyes, and looked sort of like a pudgy J.Crew model. And while he was a little chunky, and dressed in stodgy three-piece suits and shirts with cuff links (both of which looked pretentious on a thirty-two-year-old man), he was gentle and thoughtful. Not funny exactly—well, no, not funny at all. He tried to crack jokes now and again, but they were always the kind that had obvious punch lines, and he usually mangled the telling of the joke so badly you couldn't even laugh at the sheer silliness of it. But he was a good man. A kind man. Exactly the kind of boyfriend the Good Girl aspires to, and nearly identical in appearance and personality to my last four boyfriends. We even had cutsie, matching names—Ellie and Eric, E & E.
But, just like my previous four boyfriends—Alec, Peter, Winston, and Jeremy—Eric bored me to tears. All he wanted to talk about was his job—something having to do with international finance (although I still wasn't exactly sure what, even though he'd explained it to me more times than I cared to recount)—or whatever football/basketball/baseball/foosball game ESPN had broadcast the night before. I'm not one of those women who pretends to like sports in order to snag a guy; in fact, I'm pretty up-front about how I couldn't care less about grown men cavorting around on fake grass in Lycra pants with a ball tucked under one arm. But despite explaining my lack of interest to Eric pretty much every time he started a conversation with “You wouldn't believe what happened in the game last night,” he persisted in boring me to tears with a play-by-play analysis. Spending dinner with him was pleasant as long as I could coax him into talking about something else, and the sex was tolerable, if not predictable. But just the idea of something more permanent, of lying beside him in bed every night and waking up to his face every morning, made me feel like I was being buried alive.
And besides, Eric just didn't smell right. It wasn't that he had b.o., or that funky ripe odor some men get when they're sweaty. He was very clean and deodorized, but there was something about the way he smelled when I wrapped my arms around him and breathed in deeply that was just . . . off. And his cologne—Polo, just as Winston and Alec had worn (Peter wore Drakkar Noir, and Jeremy, who had spent a semester studying in Paris, wore Hermès)—which he practically showered in, was overpowerng and artificial smelling. Surely the man I was mean
t to spend my life with would smell sexy and good and safe, and not like a cheesy club promoter.
“I'm so glad you called,” Eric said.
Why is everyone in my generation always ordering martinis? Is it a desperate attempt to try to resurrect the world as it was before the Boomers came along and wrecked everything with their self-indulgent Me Generation crap? As though a single cocktail can undo the sixties, I thought, forgetting about the impending breakup just long enough to get annoyed by Eric, who had a tendency to be pompous, and then promptly feeling a flood of guilt when I remembered what I was there to do.
“I've been wanting to talk to you about something,” he said, stirring his drink and spearing the olive on a toothpick.
Oh, good, I thought, relieved. He's probably sick of the way I've been acting—ducking his phone calls, avoiding sex, snapping at him when he launches into one of his insufferably long diatribes about the yen—and wants to dump me. It will make this so much easier. He'll try to let me down easy, and I'll try to look a little stricken, but say of course, I understand, I've been so caught up at work (ha ha!) that I haven't devoted enough time to the relationship. A dignified, understanding split, and I'd be mercifully spared from having to do it myself.
“Oh?” I said, and smiled at him encouragingly. “I've been wanting to talk to you, too.”
“Okay. What about?”
“No, you go first.”
“Well . . .” Eric said, and then ducked his head shyly, a nervous smile playing on his thin lips. “I want you to move in with me.”
What? Move in. With him. As in not breaking up. As in living together. I thought I was going to be sick. No, no, no, this can't be happening, I thought. This is the part where he's supposed to say something like “I never meant to hurt you,” or “We've been growing apart for a long time.”
Eric—obviously misreading my hesitation—said, “I don't mean without other plans. We could get engaged first. Maybe over Labor Day weekend we could take the train to Manhattan, go ring shopping, maybe see The Lion King—” and then, seeing my stricken face, “What is it? What's wrong?”
“It's just . . . um . . . is the air conditioner working in here?” I asked.
The bar had become so hot and stuffy I could barely breathe, much less think clearly. Eric's words— “engagement,” “plans,” “move in together”—were jumbling around my brain. A minute ago I thought we were nicely on our way to a collegial breakup, and now all of a sudden he wanted to live together forever, buy a house in the suburbs, and have babies and minivans. What was it with men, anyway? Why is it that when the woman wants a commitment, they panic and flee the jurisdiction, but grow a little distant and suddenly they're out shopping for diamond solitaires and monogrammed guest towels?
“What were you going to say?” he asked.
“God, it's hot in here. Do you think it's hot in here? I'm burning up,” I blathered, and chugged a glass of ice water.
“No, it feels fine to me. Are you okay?”
“Oh. Yes, yes. Just hot,” I said gaily, shrugging off my jacket, no longer caring about the stain on my top.
Eric had a strange look on his face. “What were you going to say?” he asked again.
“I was going to say . . . well, I don't think we should move in together,” I said weakly.
“You don't? Why not?”
Why not indeed. If I had been incapable of a brisk “It's over. Let's be friends,” before, now, in the face of his proposal, I had no idea where to start. “Well . . . I was thinking that maybe we should think about, well, you know . . . maybe think about taking it a little more slowly.”
“Slowly. But I thought this is what you wanted, to get engaged, to move forward. I thought you'd be happy,” Eric said.
“Um,” I said.
“What do you mean by taking it slower? I mean, you still want to see each other, don't you?” he continued.
“Er,” I said.
“You don't want to see other people, do you?” he asked in an incredulous tone.
This was just the break I was looking for. I nodded eagerly, and said, “Well, yes, we could do that. See other people. That might be a good idea,” I said, as though it was his idea, and I was just going along with it. Encouraging his sound judgment.
But I don't think Eric bought it. Instead, he looked startled, with that deer-in-the-headlights expression people always talk about (although since I don't commune with nature, I've never come that close to running over Bambi).
“See other people,” he repeated, and as he absorbed my words his face fell like a child who's just been told that there's no such thing as Santa. “You mean, instead of being exclusive. But you don't want to break up, do you? Not entirely? I mean, you still want us to see each other, right?”
Again, typical male reaction—complete and utter shock at the very suggestion that they somehow fall short of your ideal. And it's not just the smart, handsome, successful, rich men—the stupid, ugly, losers are equally flabbergasted that a woman could find them anything less than highly desirable. But when a woman gets dumped, she immediately starts moaning about how if only her thighs were thinner or if she had only been more willing to engage in nightly fellatio, if she could only have been more perfect, then he wouldn't have left. This is a universal female reaction, no matter how brilliant and smart and wonderful the woman in question happens to be, nor how much of a reject the boyfriend is.
“Oh, no. No. Well, I mean, we could see each other,” I hastened to say, and then, remembering my resolve about Band-Aids, whispered, “As friends.”
Eric just sat there, holding his martini, his head bowed forward. He looked . . . sick. I felt sick. This wasn't going well at all. Why did I do this? Why hadn't I gone first, said my peace, and avoided the whole engagement/move-in-together thing? Why? Why?
Eric still didn't say anything. He just got all droopy, and sniffly, and for a horrible moment I thought he was going to cry. He looked at me with wide, wet, dog-being-dumped-in-the-country-because-he's-no-longer-a-cute-fluffy-puppy eyes. And I felt dreadful, worse than a dog deserter—more like a monster who'd just finished gleefully decapitating a nest of fuzzy baby bunnies.
I couldn't bear the silence any longer. “I'm so sorry. I had no idea that you thought . . . that you'd been thinking . . . I didn't know,” I finished lamely.
“I noticed that you'd been distant. At first I thought it was just your work or something, but then you never wanted to get together, so then I thought that you were getting annoyed that we weren't making plans for the future. I thought that you wanted a commitment. But I guess that wasn't it at all,” Eric said, shooting me another reproachful, teary look. “I thought that we were in love.”
And just like that, my resolve wavered. He thought that I loved him. It was such a terrible, terrible thing to tell someone who thinks that he is loved that no, sorry, you aren't. I didn't want to be that person, the one who takes what's all warm and cozy—winter afternoon mugs of cocoa, Saturday night video rentals, Sunday morning crossword puzzles over pancakes—and rips it to shreds. And the part of me that didn't want to be the heartbreaker was pulling way ahead of the side of me that wanted to shake Eric out of my life. I couldn't stand his desolate, reproachful gaze. I was willing to do anything—maybe even go ring shopping—to make it end.
“Oh, Eric,” I said, my will collapsing. If at that moment he had said one more word about love, or wanting to give it another try, I would have done it. Knowing all the while that five years later when we'd married and had babies, and I was having lustful fantasies about the neighbor's teenage son who cut our grass, we'd be able to trace all of the marital discord right back to this very moment.
But thankfully, it didn't come to that. Eric pulled himself together. He took a deep breath, drew his shoulders up and his chest in, lifted his chin, and moved from lovelorn victim to Gloria Gaynor singing “I Will Survive.” He smiled bravely and stood up, thrusting his balled-up fists into the pockets of his wool Brooks Brothers s
uit pants with a certain resolute dignity, and stood for a minute at the edge of the table.
“Well. Bye. Maybe I'll call you later?” he asked.
I nodded encouragingly and said, “Oh, yes, please do,” while my conscience was screaming, No! Tell him not to call! Like the Band-Aid! Tell him about ripping off the Band-Aid, and how even if it seems worse now it's actually much, much better in the long run.
After Eric left, I sat in the bar and finished my wine, which felt like battery acid churning around in my stomach. When I was sure that he'd had enough time to get a taxi, so I wouldn't have to bump into him on the street, I dug my cell phone out of my bag and called my best friend, Nina, and asked her if I could come over.
“I need to talk. It's an emergency,” I said.
And then, before leaving McCormick & Schmick's, I went to the ladies' room and managed to make it to a stall just before I puked up all of the hummus and pita bread.
It was five months to the day before my thirtieth birthday.
by KIM GREEN
on sale November 2003
© 2003 by Kim Green
JANUARY 2001 / SAN FRANCISCO
IT STARTED WITH AN E-MAIL, AS THINGS OFTEN DO THESE days. You see, I never intended to move to Montana. Or fall in love with a guy who thinks crème brûlée is men's hair gel. Or get caught in flagrante delicto with my ex-boyfriend by, of all people, my parents. Or commit industrial espionage. (Okay, that one had crossed my mind on occasion.)
In fact, the spring of my thirtieth year, getting away from it all was the last thing on my mind. My job as a Web-site editor was going well. I had lots of friends and a nice apartment, and, having been raised in Miami, where the unceasing sunny days and rows of scorched backsides tend to give one a permanent headache, I was looking forward to a typically bracing, fog-shrouded, tourist-lamenting San Francisco summer.
My stats: Name: Jennifer Maya Brenner. Born: Miami. Live: San Francisco. Surrendered virginity: Fort Lauderdale (embarrassing, but true). Provenance: Eastern European Jewish-American with a dash of French Catholic—just enough to cause me to turn up my nose at a youngish Brie, but not sufficient to know how to tie a scarf with panache. Family: Quite mad. Siblings: Karen, 38, and Benjamin, 34. Parents: See Family. Age: As I said, 30. State: Relatively, if inconsistently, well preserved. On my best days, I've been known to get carded for buying cigarettes. (Yes, I used to smoke, back when it was socially acceptable in California.) On my worst days, I can sometimes score a senior discount at the movie theater. Therapy: Most definitely. Light therapy: Probably not. Massage therapy: Whenever and wherever. Exes: Too many for sainthood; too few for a memoir. Interests: Writing, editing, drinking red wine, drinking white wine, killing green plants, extracting twenty-dollar bills from ATMs, stalking attractive fellow gym-goers, buying red shoes, yoga, and feeding the poor (okay, once, but I intend to repeat the act next Christmas, so I'm claiming hobby status in advance). Things I would never say in a personal ad, even though I enjoy them: walking on beach, seeing movies, cruising to Mexico, dining at fancy restaurants, watching sunsets, and doing it in hot tubs.
