A few days later, as Kathryn was passing her local newsstand, she did a double take. Next to the headline for New York magazine’s cover story on “From First Kiss to Nuptial Bliss: New York’s Hottest Matchmaker” was a terrific photo of Walker Hart looking eminently confident and approachable in his tortoiseshell frames. She grabbed three copies of the issue and raced up to Park Avenue.
Eleanor was completing the invitation list for the official debut of her Brownie Points at the Upper East Side’s trendiest new bakery, Let Them Eat Cake; the event was the culinary equivalent of a book signing. “Oh, God,” she said, having grabbed one copy of the magazine away from her sister. “Listen to the very first sentence of the article: ‘One of the hottest selling points about New York’s most stylish matchmaking service, Six in the City, is that the manager himself, Walker Hart, is available.’ ”
“Little do they know his bachelorhood would appear to be permanent.” Kathryn sighed heavily. “Did they print that?”
The sisters each skimmed a copy of the article in silence. “Guess not.” Kathryn concluded. “So much for truth in advertising.”
“They give Rushie a lot of ink, too,” Eleanor observed. “And it would appear that we’re not the only ones to refer to her as a yenta. But clearly, Walker is their poster child. They refer to him as ‘the pianist in the penthouse’ . . . as opposed to the fiddler on the roof, I guess.”
“This is hysterical,” Kathryn muttered, reading about Rushie. “They make it seem like her oft-married status gives her more credibility in the field. And I think they left out a Haggerty in this list of surnames. She married the same guy more than once, you know.”
“Hey! This is you, Kitty!” The sisters flipped back to page forty-three.
“Whoa! It’s that photo with Rick Byron that was taken at Nebuchadnezzar. What kind of a caption is this: ‘Two on a Match’? Great. Bear must love this.”
“Are you reading this?” Eleanor asked. “The journalist put a spin on it so it makes Six in the City seem even hotter, instead of referring to the incident as the total screw-up that it was. Walker couldn’t be having sex with the writer, could he?”
Kathryn winced and got that “icky” feeling in her gut. “Let me see the byline.” She flipped back to the beginning of the article. “Nope. Not in this case, anyway. I know who this Bea Friedman woman is; she’s fiftyfiveish, extremely heavy, bad perm, bad skin, and most people think she’s a lesbian. This is the most complimentary piece she’s done on a man in a decade.”
“Check out the very end of the story,” Eleanor said. “Can I read this to you?”
Kathryn nodded and rested her chin in her hands.
“She asks him ‘What about your own matches? Has there ever been “one that got away”? Hart lowers his sexy tortoiseshell rims and looks down at me, past the bridge of his perfectly straight nose. “Yes,” he says, without a hint of the twinkle he displayed during the rest of our interview. “There certainly was.” ’ ”
Walker’s quote in the New York magazine article had made Kathryn consider initiating contact with him again. Her best bet was to walk back into Six in the City under the pretext of agreeing to his promise to make things right and give her a sixth fix-up for free. But at the moment, there was something even more immediate to be attended to, and that was Eleanor’s Let Them Eat Cake soirée. Kathryn combed her closets for something expandable, as she would no doubt be packing in plenty of free Brownie Points. After multiple wardrobe changes, she settled for the all-purpose black leggings and a velvet vest the color of saffron. Caramel suede over-the-knee boots and a green devoré scarf completed the look. Checking her watch, Kathryn realized that she’d never make it to the party on time via the route she’d originally intended to take: a crosstown bus and an uptown subway. She’d have to splurge on a cab.
Thirty minutes later and twelve dollars poorer, Kathryn arrived at the brownie fête, which was already in full swing. Dan seemed to be having a blast playing host at the bakery. He immediately steered each guest over to the mouthwatering trays of Brownie Points, proudly pointing out the eye-catching display card that proclaimed “Half the fat and twice the fun of donut munchkins!”
Kathryn was in the process of stuffing one of the cakes in her mouth when she noticed two women next to her elbowing one another and gesturing in the direction of the door.
“Ohmigod, it’s that guy from New York magazine,” one of them blurted. “And the first thing he’ll see is me with my mouth full.” She stuffed her face with the last of her Brownie Point and tried to discreetly turn away as she chewed.
Kathryn watched as a bespectacled Walker shook hands with Dan, who greeted him warmly, and then confidently strode over to the Brownie Points table. The besotted female guest noticeably straightened her posture and brushed the crumbs from her bosom. Walker picked up a Brownie Point and leveled it at Eleanor. “Hey, I hear these make you lose weight!”
Eleanor leaned across the display and gave Walker a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Not only that, they’ll make you smarter, your love life will be successful beyond your wildest fantasies, and your first born will be guaranteed to become a doctor.”
“But today I have to pay retail, huh?” Walker chuckled.
Kathryn turned around and tried to act calm. “I don’t go in for hype. I like Brownie Points because they taste great and are less filling. Just read the sign.” It was the first time they’d seen one another since the eyeglass-shopping trip. Her stomach was pumping with butterflies. “Well, Bear, I had a funny feeling you might show up this evening,” she lied, looking meaningfully at Eleanor.
“I received an invitation, same as everyone else,” Walker said pleasantly.
“You seem to have very little problem communicating with my sister.” Kathryn replied. “Too bad it doesn’t extend to the other sibling in the family.”
“What are you talking about? I think we communicate very well, you and I.”
Johanna skirted between them. “Aunt Kittycat, kiss!”
“Of course, jujube.” Kathryn interrupted her conversation with Walker and knelt down to greet her little niece.
“Taste!” The toddler thrust a Brownie Point in her aunt’s face.
Kathryn took a bite of the cake. “Yummy! Johanna, tell your mommy these are very, very yummy.”
Johanna scampered off and Kathryn continued edgily, her volume increasing. “Yeah, right, we communicate terrifically. Except that we only communicate about things that aren’t important. I put myself on the line and pour my heart out to you and you look back at me as though I were speaking in Urdu or something.”
“Excuse me, could you sign this, please?” The young woman who had recognized Walker from his New York magazine cover photo pulled a copy of the periodical from her purse and shoved it under Walker’s nose.
“I’m a little busy right now,” he replied, somewhat flustered.
“Oops, I thought I had a pen. I’m so embarrassed,” she said, fishing through her handbag. “Have you got one?”
Walker flipped back the lapel of his navy blazer and retrieved a ballpoint from his pocket.
“You should be embarrassed,” Kathryn said loudly. “Can’t you see you’re interrupting something here?”
The autograph seeker ignored her. Walker signed the cover of the magazine and handed it back to its owner.
“Look, lady, we’re trying to have a private conversation!” Kathryn shouted.
“Just one more thing, then. Could you just kiss me, here?” the woman shyly asked Walker, pointing to her cheek.
Walker had lost all patience by this time. “No. Go away!” The woman skittered off to show the precious autograph to her friend. “Good Lord, how pushy can one person be?” Walker muttered to Kathryn.
“I don’t know, Bear. Ask your mother,” Kathryn said pointedly.
“That was a low blow, Kitty.”
“We were talking—before we were so rudely interrupted—” Kathryn continued, “about how the only time we
seem to manage to communicate with each other is when the stakes are low.”
Walker raised his voice. “That is absolute bull. We had mind-blowing sex several times in one night! That’s not exactly communication on an ‘unimportant’ level.”
The room suddenly grew quiet. Guests stopped to gawk at the now red-faced participants in the escalating confrontation.
“You’re right, it’s not. But then I practically rip open my chest, tear out my heart, all red and warm and passionately pulsing, and virtually tie it to my sleeve, and you act like you don’t even notice! I tell you I love you and you don’t say a goddamn thing?! That’s your idea of communication?” Without thinking, Kathryn snatched a Brownie Point from Eleanor’s central display table and pelted it at Walker’s head. The pointed tip caught him just below the right eye.
“Who decided that the game of love was being played by your rules?” he demanded, ducking to avoid a second chocolate cake missile. He feinted to her left and seized a Brownie Point from the table. “Is that what this is all about? Why does saying the three little words ‘I love you’ automatically make it so?” He hurled the Brownie Point at Kathryn, hitting her squarely in the chest.
She brushed the crumbs from her bosom and reached for another round of ammunition. “It doesn’t. But when somebody tells you they love you, there is usually some response. Is my name ‘Claire Voyant’? How am I supposed to divine what thoughts are zinging around in your head?” Kathryn hurled the Brownie Point like a dart, hitting the breast pocket of Walker’s blazer. She grabbed another one, rushed at Walker and smooshed it all over his chin, smearing the chocolate cake down the front of his previously pristine white shirt.
They grappled, each struggling to reach the Brownie Points table while attempting to keep the other from taking more cakes. Walker finally managed to pin Kathryn’s hands behind her back and hold them there with his left hand while he reached for a Brownie Point with his right. He snagged two of them and rubbed them into the V-shaped expanse of flesh above her breasts.
“Hey, watch where you’re smearing. This vest is velvet. Do you have any idea how much it costs to dry-clean?”
Walker threw open his arms in a gesture of futility and yelled, “What makes you think it’s as easy for me to say ‘I love you’ as it is for you?”
“Because you just said it,” Kathryn said, pushing her weight against his. She managed to hook her right leg into the crook behind Walker’s left knee, catching him unaware. He lost his balance and they both went crashing to the floor. She rolled on top of him, rubbing cake crumbs into his hair. “What do you have to say about that?”
Walker collected a fistful of bits and pieces of brownie from the floor and dropped them into Kathryn’s curls. “First of all, I think you need to know that I did decide to share my feelings for you and even sought you out to tell you what was in my heart. I deliberately went to Central Park to look for you the week after we got back from the Vineyard and saw you by the carousel with Eleanor and Johanna. But I chickened out. When I asked you to accompany me to the optician’s I had every intention of letting you know how much I care for you, but I just couldn’t get the words out—and not because I didn’t feel them. Kathryn, you didn’t grow up in a household where your mother said ‘I love you’ as often as she said ‘I’m going to get a manicure.’ The most important words in the world became utterly meaningless, as ephemeral as her pastel cigarette smoke. When Rushie told a man she loved him it meant she’d marry him until it was time to get divorced. When she said those words to me, it was usually before she left me to grow up on my own while she embarked on yet another honeymoon excursion. So I learned that ‘I love you’ means you’ll probably be abandoned before you can ratchet up the courage to say those words back. It’s not what you say when you love someone, Kitty, but what you do.”
Kathryn by now had managed to get to her knees and hobble over to the Brownie Points table. She stocked up on artillery, then pounced on him again, punctuating her words with the sweet projectiles. “You’re so damn scared that you’re going to lose love that you don’t even try to go for it. Are you afraid to begin because there’s a chance that things might end? Love is about taking risks, Bear.”
The couple had been doing their best to smother one another with chocolaty crumbs as they tussled on the floor. In Walker’s attempt to roll away from Kathryn’s brownie bombardment, a small beribboned box in a highly identifiable shade of robin’s egg blue fell out of his jacket pocket and onto the floor.
Kathryn’s eyes lit up and she flung herself, breathless, toward the box. “Been shopping at Tiffany, have we?” she asked Walker sweetly.
“Not yet,” he replied, pushing the box out of her reach.
After a few more thwarted attempts to reach the jewelry box, amid chanted shouts of encouragement from Eleanor’s female party guests, Kathryn finally wrested it away from Walker’s grasp, by going for his midsection and starting to mercilessly tickle him.
“Stop! Wait!” he said just as she was untying the ribbon. Walker stood up and brushed himself off. They both looked like they’d been mud wrestling. “Hand me that magazine,” he told the infatuated autograph seeker. The young woman reluctantly obliged and Walker waved his arms to call everyone’s attention to the publication in his hand. “If I might have your attention for a moment or two, please, everybody.” The room grew quiet. Kathryn rose and ran a hand through her hair, trying to extract as much of the Brownie Point crumbs as she could.
“It was the journalist’s assignment to make me seem like New York’s most eligible bachelor. In fact, that’s not the case.”
There was a flurry of conversation from the intrigued bystanders.
“In fact, that’s only a half-truth. I am a bachelor, but I am not eligible.”
“No kidding,” Kathryn kibbitzed.
“And not for the reason you think, Kitty,” Walker replied, addressing her directly. “Folks, the issue of New York magazine currently on the newsstands is about to become a collector’s item. Because some of the information contained in the magazine’s profile of me will soon, I hope, be obsolete. Kitty, you can open that box now.”
Kathryn pulled the white ribbon off the Tiffany box and lifted the lid. Nestled inside was a brass ring from the Flying Horses carousel on Martha’s Vineyard. She stood, stunned and speechless, looking from the ring to Walker and back again.
“Now, look who can’t put emotions into words,” he said gently. “See? It happens to the best of us.”
The only thing Kathryn finally managed to say was “I can’t believe you stole this for me!”
Walker turned to their captive audience. “I told Bea Friedman who wrote the New York magazine article that in my own life, there was a woman who had ‘gotten away.’ Well, she’s here now, and I hope she’ll stay. Kitty, I know that gold is traditional, but that brass ring is meant to be a temporary stand-in for the real thing, if that’s okay with you. You’ve got a room full of witnesses; I’m publicly hanging up my fear-of-commitment spurs. The idea of spending the rest of my life without you in it beside me is not only a really stupid one, it’s entirely unacceptable.”
She beamed up at him, tears rolling down her cheeks in silent but happy sobs.
“Oh, and one more thing,” Walker added. “I love you, Kitty Lamb.”
She ran forward and threw herself in his arms. Who cared if two hundred people saw them kiss and make up?
“I think we need to apologize to Ellie,” Kathryn said, after she finally regained her composure.
Walker grimaced. They headed for the central display table where, upon their approach, Eleanor practically threw herself protectively over her remaining wares. He picked up a Brownie Point and noticed Eleanor’s look of panic. “Don’t worry,” he told her, popping it in his mouth. “You’re onto something here. I don’t recommend them for a food fight, but they taste terrific. These are really spectacular. Open up.” He steered the cake toward Kathryn’s mouth and fed her the brownie, point f
irst.
“Hold that pose!” Dan snapped a picture.
“You two have just given me an idea,” Eleanor said. “Ice them with white fondant, pipe the lower edge, stick a crystal of rock candy through the bottom and I’ve got Wedding Bells.” She grinned like the Cheshire Cat.
“If you don’t mind our cutting out early, we’ve got a lot more communicating to do,” Walker said to Eleanor and Dan. “Just one more thing before we go.” He removed his checkbook from his inside breast pocket and dated and signed a blank check made out to Eleanor Lamb Allen. “I feel largely responsible for all this . . .” he said indicating the residual effects of the food fight. “Kitty, would you care to join me for dinner? I feel a sudden craving for more substantial fare.”
Kathryn turned to her sister and winked.
Eleanor was about to hug her chocolate-cake-coated sister, but thought better of it. She mouthed her reply instead, so Walker wouldn’t hear. “Congratulations! And good luck.”
They had taken only a few steps outside Let Them Eat Cake when Kathryn stopped walking. “Can I have another hug, please? If you wouldn’t mind?”
“My absolute pleasure.” Walker enfolded her in his arms, stroked her hair, and held her close.
“This,” she said holding him tighter, straining to reach her arms around his broad torso and back, “this feels so beautiful.”
Walker lifted her face to his and gently kissed her eyelids. “Because it is, sweetheart. What do you say we skip the restaurant, go back to your place and hit the showers?”
Chapter 30
Kathryn lit a handful of candles and carefully placed them at strategic locations throughout her bathroom. She drizzled a few droplets of essential oil into a terra cotta burner and lit the flame beneath it. Some Mozart on the stereo completed the mood.
Miss Match Page 30
