by Nancy Martin
When the camera light went off, the host praised Grace for a job well done. Still, it was a
great relief when she and Nora managed to disengage themselves from the station staff.
“Great appearance,” Nora said when they were alone. “You looked comfortable in front of the camera, Grace. And you really connected with the kids on the set.”
“Thanks. This one felt better than my flashing my undies.”
Nora laughed. “As your confidence grows, you’ll get better and better. And business etiquette might be your best bet, don’t you think?”
“It certainly feels more natural than tea parties.”
They talked more about the possibilities as they dashed around the block for the meet-and-greet at one of Nora’s favorite restaurants, Champagne. Nora must have invited many friends, because the room was full of smiling faces. Most of them were taking a lunch break from nearby desk jobs, though, and they were already glancing at their watches. Grace could relate. Not so long ago, she’d also been an employee trying to network over her lunch hour. She met everyone, and Nora expertly kept the guests circulating. Waiters carried trays of nibblies through the crowd—tiny crab cakes, little veggie canapés, even cake pops for dessert. Although she told herself she was working as she talked with everyone, Grace enjoyed herself. Many of the guests told her anecdotes that she might be able to work into future interviews.
Grace signed a few copes of Miss Vanderbine’s Modern Manners and made a little speech at the end, thanking Nora for her kindness and sharing one of the anecdotes, which made everybody laugh and leave the restaurant smiling.
“You know how to throw a great party,” Grace told Nora when they were out on the street just as quickly, bundled against the cold and hurrying to the next event.
“Funny you should say that,” Nora said as they walked together. “I think I’m going to take a job.”
“What kind of job? Party planning?” Grace knew Nora’s financial situation wasn’t great, but this news surprised her. Nora had grown up in the lap of luxury and was well-educated—but she was hardly the working girl type.
“I’ve been asked to write for the Philadelphia Intelligencer. Rory Pendergast’s newspaper. Do you know Rory?”
Of course Nora would know the old tycoon who dabbled in newspapers when the mood struck him. Nora knew everybody. Grace said, “Mama knows Rory, but I’ve never met him.”
“He’s an old sweetheart and has always been so kind. He wants me to be the society columnist’s assistant. I think he’s creating the job just for me, so I feel a little guilty. But I need a job desperately. So I’d attend parties and report on them.”
“Nora, that’s so perfect for you! You know everybody, and you have such good taste.” Mostly, it was a relief to hear that Nora was moving on, trying to get past her husband’s death. Work was always good medicine. Although Nora’s naturally porcelain face looked very pale, there were tiny spots of healthy pink returning to her cheeks. With fondness, Grace said, “You’re going to have fun with it, too, aren’t you?”
“I hope so,” Nora said cautiously. “I’m a little afraid of the society columnist, Kitty Keough. She’s a bit of a character. I hope I can work with her.”
“You can work with anybody,” Grace said. “Rory knows what he’s doing by hiring you. But—I can see the look on your face. You haven’t accepted the job yet, have you? Second thoughts?”
“I haven’t accepted yet, no. I have a lot on my mind.” Nora tried to shake off her reluctance. “Grace, I think I’m going to move. Back to Blackbird Farm. My parents left it to me, you know, and I feel as if I need to be there now.”
“Are you sure?” Grace remembered visiting Blackbird Farm one summer. It was a lovely old place, but falling apart at the seams. The house was a creaky old mansion that should probably be torn down for safety’s sake, and the barn wasn’t much better. “I know it’s your ancestral home and all, but—why would you want to isolate yourself like that? When I moved back to Connecticut, it was a culture shock, and I’m still not sure it was the right decision to be so far from my friends just to be closer to my mother. Do you really think it’s a good idea?”
“I don’t have a choice,” Nora finally admitted. “I can’t afford my condo much longer. And Mama and Daddy have skipped town.”
“Skipped town?”
“I think they’re running from creditors. For better or worse, they’ve left the farm in my hands. To tell the truth, they took my trust fund when they left. I can’t afford to keep both the condo and the farm.”
Nora’s parents were a couple of idiots, Grace thought. Always thinking of themselves and spending money as if they were throwing it off a parade float. But she didn’t say so aloud. Nora was already on the edge, she could see. It broke Grace’s heart to see her plucky friend so down on her luck.
“Do you need money?” Grace asked bluntly. “I have some savings.”
“I do need money,” Nora replied, managing a smile. “But not from you. It’s time I grew up, Grace. It’s time to get a job like a real person. I need to pay a mortgage and learn how to get along by myself. Don’t feel sorry for me. I want to do this.”
Grace hugged her friend, sorry to see her still so emotionally vulnerable. “If you need help—anything at all—you know you can call me.”
Nora’s eyes welled with tears. But she laughed and said, “You’ll be too busy with that new man of yours to answer the phone.”
“He’s not my new man,” Grace said.
“Well, have a fling with him, darling.” Nora pulled out a lace handkerchief and dabbed her eyes. “He looks as if he could tickle your fancy.”
“Have a fling? That’s your advice?”
“You and I have both had serious relationships that blew up in our faces. Maybe we should have played the field more. Built better careers. Gotten to know ourselves a little better before we tried settling down.”
“I see your point. We should have decided what we really needed to make our lives complete before we put those diamonds on our fingers.”
Nora nodded. “Experimenting with a few different men might have helped us along that road a little farther.”
“Nora, I had no idea you felt this way.”
“Maybe I didn’t.” Nora peeped a smile at Grace. “Maybe not until I got a glimpse of that hunk you’re traveling with. Is he interesting?”
“Interesting? He’s not exactly sophisticated,” Grace said with honesty. “He was married once, did I tell you that? But he’s got some pretty appealing family values. And I know this sounds unlikely in a football player, but I think he has … depths.”
“Depths? You mean he wants more than sex from you?”
“Oh, he wants sex from me,” Grace admitted, laughing. “And to tell the truth, that’s really what I wouldn’t mind getting from him.”
“Well, that’s honest. He turns you on.”
“Yes. Oh, yes. I mean, you’ve seen him. And it’s been a long time for me, so I have a few pent up hormones. But he’s also … kind to people. I think he might actually have some emotional intelligence.” Luke’s willingness to divulge his sister’s drug problem had been rolling around in Grace’s head since he told her the whole story. She had spoken first, and he had reciprocated. He was sexy, and he could hold a conversation about more than superficial things.
Nora looked intrigued. “How does he make you feel about yourself?”
The question startled Grace. She considered her response. “I feel as if I don’t have to pretend to be somebody I’m not.”
Nora smiled. “Then have a fling. See what else he makes you feel.”
Nora pulled Grace into a small boutique on the chic side of Walnut Street. It was a high-end lingerie store. Elegant nightgowns were on display on mannequins and on padded hangers. Sexy corsets were fetchingly draped on a plush bed in the middle of the sales floor. Stockings of all descriptions were displayed in lighted cases.
Nora introduced Grace to the prop
rietor, an elderly woman wearing a snug pencil skirt with a low-cut blouse that revealed the lacy edges of a fancy brassiere underneath. Her patterned stockings had seams up the back, and her sky high shoes were the latest fashion. Only her white hair and considerably powdered face indicated her age, which Grace calculated as approaching eighty.
“I’m Anne Marie Fouchet,” the woman said in perfect English slightly laced with a French accent. Firmly, she shook Grace’s hand. Her gnarled fingers were decorated with many rings, and her long, long fingernails were lacquered killer red to match her lipstick. She said, “Nora and I thought you should come to my shop and talk about bedroom etiquette. I have a few customers gathered in the back who are excited to meet you and talk naughty things. Are you up for it?”
Grace wasn’t sure what she was getting into, but she trusted Nora wouldn’t lure her into anything unpleasant. Besides, there was a new chapter in Miss Vanderbine’s Modern Manners that addressed a few topics Mama had disapproved of, but Grace felt couldn’t be ignored. Truly modern men and women were still struggling with how to start relationships, build them and end them. Good manners, Grace said, shouldn’t be left behind at the bedroom door. Mama had argued for days, saying the subjects were tacky, but Grace won. Here was a chance to find out if her instincts were right or not.
To Anne Marie, Grace said, “I’m definitely up for it.”
In a kind of public anteroom in front of three private dressing rooms that were draped with acres of pink chintz, a clutch of young ladies eagerly surrounded Grace. She gathered they were all members of a book club that had come to try on lingerie together after reading an erotic novel together. Their bedroom etiquette questions were fun.
“Who brings the condoms now?” one exasperated young woman asked as she waiting for a dressing room to try on sexy nighties. “Do I have to be in charge of everything?”
“Have you ever known a man to have one when he needs it?” her friend scoffed, coming out of the dressing room in a sexy teddy and tap pants. She frowned at her reflection in the mirror. “Besides, would you trust that man you’ve been seeing to carry a rubber that hasn’t been deteriorating in his wallet for ten years?”
“How do I bring up the health discussion with my new boyfriend?” another anxious woman asked in a much softer voice. “I don’t want to have sex with him if he’s been fooling around with a lot of other partners. How can I ask him if he’s had a blood test recently?”
Grace did her best to provide honest answers, but with a sense of humor.
“It never hurts to have a condom or two in your handbag,” she said to the first woman. “Have you seen the fun ones, different colors, different options? You might as well be prepared, but make it playful.”
To the health-conscious woman, she said, “Maybe it’s best to be frank.”
“Yeah,” said the woman in the teddy and tap pants. “Tell him you don’t want to catch an itch.”
Grace was soon swept up in their laughing discussion, and all of the ladies purchased autographed copies of her book.
“You’ll want to buy copies for your friends,” Nora encouraged. “The book makes a wonderful gift.”
More copies flew off the stack piled by the shop’s register.
A couple of hours passed before Grace realized it. When all the books were gone, she went back out onto the shop’s sales floor, feeling euphoric. She thanked Anne Marie profusely, but the proprietress was too busy ringing up sales to chat. Grace found Nora sitting in one of the pink armchairs by the front window.
Talking with Nora was none other than Luke, who looked perfectly comfortable in the other pink chair while the chattering women of the book club swooped around him, choosing last items of delicate lingerie and discussing their sex lives in loud voices.
Luke saw Grace coming and got to his feet. “Hey,” he said warmly. “How’d it go?”
“It was marvelous. Nora’s a genius.”
Nora said, “Just don’t tell Grace’s mother I had the new Dear Miss Vanderbine signing books in a lingerie store.”
“I bet her mother wouldn’t care,” Luke said, looking amused, “as long as the books got sold.”
“You haven’t met Grace’s mother yet, have you?” Nora asked, slanting a teasing glance up at him. “She has definite ideas about the kinds of things Dear Miss Vanderbine should say and do.”
To hijack the conversation before they got to dissecting Dear Miss Vanderbine, Grace said to Luke, “Did you get that burger you wanted?”
“Actually, I called a friend. We had lunch at his place.”
“He had an enviable lunch,” Nora reported. “With one of our city’s biggest celebrities.”
“Darrell Washington,” Luke supplied when Grace looked mystified. “Running back for the Eagles. He’s the one who owns a club, too.”
Nora said, “That club is very hot right now. You should visit it later. But first--your next stop is a bookstore just around the corner. I’m going to have to let you do that event on your own, though. I’ve got a lead on Emma.”
“I’ll skip the bookstore,” Grace said at once. “I’ll come with you.”
“Nonsense. I can handle my sister on my own. You must stick to the schedule, darling. Go to the bookstore. And Luke has plans for you later.” Nora smiled.
Grace looked up at Luke. “Plans?”
“Only if you want to. Darrell invited us to stop by.”
“Which you should definitely do,” Nora advised as she put on her coat. “I’m very jealous. I’ll leave the porch light on, Grace.”
Luke helped Nora with her coat and said to her, “Come with us. We’ll have a good time.”
“Three,” Nora said firmly, “is definitely a crowd. Besides, I hope to catch up with my sister tonight.”
“Good luck,” Grace said.
They hugged, promised to talk soon, and then Nora was gone in a whirl of scarf and coat.
“She’s nice,” Luke said when they followed Nora outside into the cold. “She says you’re going to be a big hit with your book.”
“Nora’s wonderful. But sometimes overly optimistic.” A brisk wind caught Grace by surprise, and she put one hand up to keep her hair in place.
“She caught me looking through the inventory in there. She advised me not to buy you something sexy. I was tempted, but she said it would spook you. Do you like black? Red? Virginal white?”
He was pushing her to think about the evening ahead, but Grace said. “Are you trying to get me to blush again?”
“Too obvious, huh? She also says your fiancée was an asshole.”
“Nora does not use words like asshole.” Grace put a foot wrong and skidded on the icy sidewalk.
Luke put a steadying arm around her, and they set off walking toward the bookstore. “You’re right, she probably said something else, but asshole was my takeaway. Why’d you stay with him so long?”
“Because at close range he didn’t seem like a—he wasn’t as much of--.”
“An asshole,” Luke supplied.
“He didn’t,” she said. “He wasn’t.”
“But he matched your mother’s expectations for you, so you stayed with him.”
“Is that Nora’s opinion, too?”
“I’m adding things up for myself,” Luke said. “Nora thinks your mother is sticking her nose in your life too much.”
“My mother is bequeathing me her life’s work,” Grace argued. “I understand why she’s protective of what she created. Anyway, you should know how it feels, trying to be exactly what your parent wants.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Luke looked surprised.
“Your father. He was your coach, and he pushed you into football instead of basketball, which you liked more, and now he’s your marriage counselor, too.”
Luke seemed startled by her observation of his life. “It’s not the same thing.”
“No?”
“Not at all,” Luke said.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.”
“You can say what you want.” His arm got snug around her again. “I don’t have to believe it.”
They paused on the corner and tried to figure out which way the bookstore was.
“This way,” Luke said, pulling.
Grace resisted and pointed. “I think it’s the other way.”
“No, it’s—oh, yeah, there it is.”
He changed course, and they walked a little further without speaking.
“My dad is not the same as your mother,” Luke said finally.
“We can discuss this later,” Grace replied.
“So there’s going to be a later?” He was smiling.
Before Grace had to come up with a snappy reply, they were inside the bookstore. The harried manager came out from behind the customer service counter to greet them. She gave Grace’s hand a perfunctory shake and ignored Luke. Sending Grace a look over the manager’s head, Luke excused himself. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and took it back outside.
The manager escorted Grace to a table set up with books and a small sign advertising Grace’s appearance. Mama had insisted this was the kind of event Grace needed to do—meeting readers in stores and chatting with them. Mama had excelled at entertaining large crowds of fans with her fast-paced chatter about good manners. The proper wording of wedding invitations, how to write a bereavement note—those were Mama’s bread and butter. Grace hoped she could be equally informative on those subjects. But the crowd Mama usually attracted was nowhere to be seen.
