With Friends Like These

by Sally Koslow

  I found my way to the water, kicked off my shoes, and tried to talk myself into relishing the ordinary pleasure of bare feet sinking into the sandy bottom. Lapping against my ankles, the late-day September water felt soothingly tepid. I took my cell phone from my pocket, was relieved to see that I had a signal, and called home. “Everything fine,” Jamyang said. “Dash ate two lamb chops.”

  I put away my phone, then pulled it out again. It was after six—perhaps Xander would answer his line himself. He did, but as soon as he heard my voice he said, “I have to call you back.”

  “Just a second, I promise.”

  “Something wrong?”

  Yes! “It’s only this.” I counted to ten. “You know how I said I didn’t want you to ask Edgar to write a letter on Dash’s behalf?”

  “I believe your exact words were, ‘I’m shocked. Ask your boss? That’s cheating. I want our son to get into school on his own merits, like we did.’” He’d nailed my priggish tone.

  “I’ve decided you were right. In fact, I think we should find as many people as we can to write letters. Can you start to ask around?”

  “Well, well, have you been talking to Mrs. McCoy?”

  “Not at all—I just realized we’d be fools not to play the game by everyone else’s rules.” The real rules! “I read that in the last ten years the number of city kids under the age of five has increased more than twenty-five percent.” I took this fact straight out of The New York Times. “With all the competition, it wouldn’t be fair to Dash to put forth anything less than our best effort.”

  “In that case, I’m getting out my checkbook right now and making a there’s-more-where-this-came-from contribution to the school.”

  “What?” He was getting way ahead of me “You can’t do that!”

  “Other people do.”

  “But it’s such obvious …” I searched for a civilized term. “Pandering.”

  “Let’s see if the school returns the check. And now, Chloe, I really do have to go.”

  He clicked off, and I stared at the phone in my hand as if it were a grenade. As long as I had cell service, I decided to make one last call. “May I have the business listing for a June Rittenhouse? In Manhattan, please.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Jules

  Despite the fact that Quincy was shadowing me like a CIA operative, for nearly three days I managed to dodge any one-on-one. I knew she wanted more than a modest apology. She wanted blood and guts, marrow and bone. Quincy wouldn’t be happy until I’d prostrated myself and denounced Arthur as swine. She particularly wanted me to admit that I’d gone with Arthur to scope out the apartment she thought was already hers.

  It wasn’t happening. I have my self-respect—as well as another niggling worry that was starting to move front and center. But on Saturday morning at the Wellses’ dump, I couldn’t avoid her. I hadn’t been able to sleep, and at six-thirty in the morning I started rooting out the ingredients for waffles. Talia had gotten up early, too. Out of respect for the ungodly hour, we weren’t saying a word. That’s when Quincy trotted into the kitchen, a centerfold in orange spandex. She sat down and began lacing her blindingly white sneakers.

  “If it isn’t Sunny D,” I said, amiably enough. She ignored me. “Excuse me, Quincy, but I bid you good morning.” Perhaps it was my rolling eyes that pissed her off.

  “That’s it!” She threw a sneaker across the room. It bounced off the screen door.

  “Down, woman.”

  “Hey, you two.” Talia sighed like my nonna. “Shall we talk about it?”

  “About what?” Perhaps I was coy.

  Quincy leaned back in the chair. I swear she flexed her biceps, simply because she could. “Let’s clear the air,” she said.

  “I’m sorry you’re upset.” I admit that the sincerity of my statement was to an apology like Target is to Tiffany’s.

  “That’s not the point,” Quincy countered.

  “Jules apologized,” Talia insisted, which is how I realized that Quincy had felt the need to unburden her side of our rift to her.

  “No, she didn’t.” Quincy scrunched her reddening face. Cords stood out in her neck.

  Talia eyeballed Quincy, then me. “Quincy has a point. You haven’t admitted you’re wrong.”

  “Since when are you so perfect?” I directed the question to our hostess.

  “This isn’t about me,” Talia said, stoked with righteous indignation.

  “Which is why you should butt out.”

  “Bully,” she snarled.

  “Precisely,” Quincy said.

  “Make your own goddamn waffles.” I marched out of the kitchen and down to the lake for a sulk. Within the hour, Chloe arrived at the beach, sent as an emissary at Talia’s behest. In the name of team spirit, she tried to appeal to my better nature, but my better nature was in exile. Chloe went on—and on. I didn’t change my mind or my lawn chair, and strongly suggested that she go off with the others to bond on another wholesome bike ride while I managed to pass the day alone without a glimmer of guilt.

  In the late afternoon, after the three of them had returned, I migrated to the patio. Talia held the charcoal bag upside down and shook it. Like petrified dung, out plopped two briquettes. “No more? Damn,” she said. “I’ll have to make another run.”

  “Allow me.” I hopped up from the deck chair, its peeling paint rubbing against my smoothly waxed thigh.

  “You’re sure?” Talia asked.

  I walked seven steps and grabbed my car keys. “My pleasure—this book is boring me silly.” Although I’d spent the day with a novel fetchingly titled Peony in Love, whether it was about heaving bosoms or fertilizing bulbs, I wouldn’t have known. My mind kept slowly looping over every numbing detail of the last few weeks of my life.

  “Do we need milk for the morning?” I asked. “Ice cream? Anything?” New carpeting, perhaps?

  “Nope, we’re good,” Talia said. “Don’t be long, okay? I have to start the fire soon if we want to make the movies.”

  The plan was to go to a double feature at the art-house theater on a college campus twenty miles away. Yesterday we’d had a heated debate on whether each of us was a Garbo girl or a Dietrich dame. That one was easy. I’d love to be all Garbo, glower to garters, but I’m Dietrich to the core, tough with a heart of gold.

  “I’ll be fast,” I promised. I peeled out of the driveway and drove to the village store, where the canned peas and powdered detergent looked dangerously quaint. I made my way through stacks of lobster pajamas, boxers, and bibs obscuring rows of fishing lures, which I briefly considered purchasing in multiples and turning into earrings. I grabbed a sack of marshmallows, eight chocolate bars, and plenty of graham crackers and perused the rest of the shelves.

  “Help you out back there?” croaked the humpbacked whale manning the register.

  “I’m fine,” I yelled. Next to the Fleet enemas I spotted what I needed and headed for the front. The shopkeeper gave me a knowing sneer while I reached for a bag of charcoal, one of many that sat in the front like ventriloquists’ dummies. I threw forty dollars on the counter and left.

  It was only after steaks, corn on the cob, Mata Hari, The Blue Angel, hot fudge sundaes, a hootenanny, s’mores at midnight, and a few hours of fitful sleep that, finally, I prayed to the Virgin Mother and went to the bathroom. I ripped open the box. Its directions suggested seconds would be sufficient, but to be sure, I tinkled for as long as possible. I flushed and waited, breathing heavily as I watched the minutes tick like the nine-month time bomb they were.

  Not soon enough, a line appeared. It was faint, a sign from a God that chose to whisper. I reread the fine print. The product claimed 99 percent accuracy, and “even if the marker is light, the result is positive.”

  I stared at the knotty pine wall, considering what the future might bring, but the future, that bitch, was mum. I heard a knock at the door. “Be out in a second,” I said. I ran water in the sink to mute the sound, tore the box to bits, and
dropped it in my bag.

  It wasn’t early menopause, like I’d hoped. It was me, Jules, pregnant.

  CHAPTER 16

  Quincy

  “Let’s go over this again.” Horton was reviewing his checklist as we sat in a diner, eating toast and scrambled eggs. “I’ve got your tax returns from the last three years, Jake’s pay stubs, and copies of your royalty and bank statements, but how about your monthly financials—stocks, bonds, mutual funds, other assets?”

  I pushed the eggs around on the plate. They looked too runny, too pale. “How far back do we have to go?” Perhaps my mother had saved receipts from my Girl Scout cookie sales.

  “Three months. Landlord letters—how you doing on those?”

  “You have one from our current landlord, but the woman we sublet from in Brooklyn is missing in action.” The e-mail I’d sent to her had bounced back, her phone number reassigned to an Albanian restaurant. “I checked Zabasearch, like you suggested. I found a phone number for Priscilla Presley, but nothing for Pinky LaPook.” Maybe she’d changed her name. Who could blame her?

  “How do you spell that?” Horton asked, jotting down my response. “I’ll get my people on it. And I forgot to ask, do you have any pets?”

  “A kitten,” I said suspiciously. When I got back from Maine, Jake had surprised me with a Tonkinese. I, a dedicated dog lover, had shocked myself by falling in love with an aqua-eyed comet in a downy mink coat. One minute Fanny would be nuzzling like a puppy, the next flying from lamp to lamp. Watching her was my own private nature show. “Don’t tell me pets are forbidden,” I said, my voice rising. “I remember seeing a cat in the apartment.”

  “Please calm down,” Horton whispered. “All I need is a picture.”

  “Is this to determine my pet’s race?” Given the spadework for our board interview, I’d decided that my potential neighbors must be hopeless bigots.

  “To make sure your cat isn’t a coyote. Pets can’t weight more than thirty pounds.”

  “I will enroll Fanny in Weight Watchers immediately.”

  “I didn’t make the rule,” Horton said. “The better the building, the more persnickety.”

  “Sorry.” I knew I shouldn’t pick on Horton.

  “If it’s any consolation, every buyer despises this part of the process. Focus on the beautiful home you’ll have in the end.”

  “What if my friend’s boyfriend finds a way to block us?” Should the ruling powers ever deem to see Jake and me, I pictured Arthur leaping into the air like a stingray, impaling us with his barb.

  Horton waved his hand. “He’s a mere annoyance.” He’d finished his breakfast and looked down at his notes. “Where are we with letters of recommendation?”

  This was the worst, asking for favors. “We have Jake’s boss and my editor.”

  “What about someone in the building? Those are gold.”

  I shook my head. The only insider we knew was Arthur.

  “That Hollywood hotshot whose book you’re writing?”

  “Maizie is twenty. I doubt any of the board members play her music on their nonexistent iPods.”

  “Their children would know her. These people have powerful kids.”

  “Okay, I’m on it.” Let Maizie find out I had a life beyond transforming her breakups, cosmetic meltdowns, and white-girl ghetto talk into compelling prose.

  “Your minister or doctor?”

  I hadn’t been in a church for years, not even for my wedding, which took place on a Wisconsin beach. My internist wouldn’t know me from the fake ficus in her waiting room. “I’ll ask my ob-gyn.” With my nonstop pregnancies, miscarriages, and exploratory tests, I had Dr. Frumkes on speed dial.

  “We also need one or two from friends.” Horton didn’t mean any random pal who could catch a dangling participle and knew her way around a thesaurus. “Do you have a buddy or two who heads up a foundation or a nonprofit? Chairs a department at Columbia or NYU? How about a pal who works at a major lending institution or consulting firm?” he suggested. “If the name isn’t recognizable, at least the letterhead should be.”

  Jake’s college roommate had been a high roller at an investment bank. Sadly, due to a Wall Street tsunami, he now managed a Tuscaloosa Taco Bell. But I had another idea. “I’ll get on that,” I said as the waiter delivered the tab, which Horton grabbed.

  “Mine,” he said gallantly as his BlackBerry beeped. “It’s Fran,” he stage-whispered.

  I thanked him and left the restaurant. I started to call Chloe at the office—it was her first week back—but when her line rang, I clicked off. I needed to consider how to frame the request. As I walked up Broadway, everywhere I turned I was taunted either by babies or by stores selling their parents must-have infant Shakespeare tapes, Diaper Genies, and three-inch-long Converse All-Stars.

  While I ruminated on what to say to Chloe, she called back. “What’s going on, Quince?” The phone line crackled with curiosity.

  We’d spoken only yesterday, parsing Maine at its most benign while failing to mention that Jules and I had successfully avoided ever being alone together. Nor did we speak of the tension that prickled among us like poison ivy none of us dared to scratch—or remark on how of all the vacations the four of us had taken, this was the only one that had terminated early amid sudden eruptions of “deadline,” “babysitter hassles,” “stomach flu,” and “audition.”

  In yesterday’s conversation, Chloe had kept returning to Jules and me. Obviously, when I wasn’t around, Talia had explained the apartment situation. Chloe had fished zealously for information. I refused to take the bait, worried that her loyalty would be with Jules. Among the four of us, she and Jules were the most unlikely friends, but I knew Chloe adored Jules, and saw in her a splashy, street-smart older sister through whom she could live vicariously, without fear of being blackballed from the Junior League.

  “Actually, I was wondering if you could do me a favor, please,” I finally said.

  “All you have to do is ask.” Chloe was chipper. I wasn’t in the mood for chipper.

  “I need a letter of reference.”

  “For what?”

  “The co-op board.”

  “That’s a pain, isn’t it, getting together the paperwork? It’s one reason Xander and I decided to buy a brownstone.”

  Does Chloe realize how she comes off to those among us who can’t drop megamillions on a four-story city house? “You’re right. It’s a pain. Now we need a few additional letters.”

  “Of course I’ll write one.”

  This was even more awkward than I’d anticipated. “Actually, I was hoping Xander would write it—that is, if he has the time.” I hemmed and hawed. “I’m only following my broker’s directions, but … do you think Xander could give us a short—it can be very brief—vote of confidence?” I paused. “On business stationery?”

  Why hadn’t I waited and let Jake make this request? He and Xander got along well enough, while whenever Xander and I were left alone, I felt unglued, afraid he was going to hit on me as he had a few New Year’s Eves ago. He’d followed me into the kitchen and pressed his body against my back while I reached into my refrigerator. “You’re hot, Quincy,” he’d breathed into my ear. “There’s something between us. Can’t you feel it?”

  In the most literal sense I could—and hadn’t been able to escape before Chloe had walked in and seen body language that was its own porn movie. We never discussed the incident, neither Xander and I nor Chloe and I. And it never happened again. I hope Xander was too drunk to even remember the incident, but it’s there, soiling my permanent record.

  Silence hung between the Upper West Side and Brooklyn Heights. “I’ll ask Xander,” Chloe said eventually.

  Her voice had no discernible affect, while mine went straight to stilted. “Jake and I would be extremely grateful.” I wanted to get off the phone, but Chloe kept going. “Talia told me about the Jules and Arthur apartment mess,” she said.

  “Oh?”

  “I’m sure
Jules didn’t mean to hurt you.” She’d upgraded to earnest.

  Can you prove that? “Jules had no business blabbing to Arthur. Let her boyfriend find his own apartment.”

  “But he lives in that building.”

  “So what? And if Jules didn’t mean to hurt me, why doesn’t she apologize?”

  “She has a hard time admitting she’s wrong. But she means well.”

  “Why are you defending her?” My real question: Why are you taking her side?

  “I’m not defending. I’m explaining.”

  “Jules is a big girl. She should explain herself.”

  “Can’t we all just get along?” Chloe sounded exasperated, close to whiny.

  “What are we, four?” If we’d been in the same room, my phone would have landed on her empty blond head. “I can’t talk about this now. I have to get home and prep for an important appointment. Goodbye.” And goodbye reference letter.

  The preparation I spoke of was nothing more than changing clothes. If I didn’t look like a creature from the black lagoon, crazy Maizie wouldn’t take me seriously as a New York writer. I got home and exchanged my sneakers, baggy khakis, and pale blue sweater for a black shirt that I tucked into narrow black jeans. They hung even lower on my hips than the last time I’d worn them. I dabbed on two minutes of makeup, grabbed my leather jacket, switched to witch boots, and hobbled to the street.

  The Four Seasons is the only place Maizie May will stay in Manhattan, not that you’d find her nibbling on their lemon-ricotta pancakes in the café or that she’d know the hotel’s architect, I. M. Pei, from a bale of hay. I paused in the lobby and paid homage to its marble splendor. A minute later, one of Maizie’s security guards stood in front of me like a tank and escorted me by private elevator to her customary nine-room suite, the whole top floor of the hotel.

  I’d been here before. My eyes no longer bugged out when faced with the mother-of-pearl-encrusted walls or the floor-to-ceiling bay windows blessing the city. Maizie—née Mary Margaret—was seated at the grand piano. “Quincy! Jesus, you got no ass. How’d ya do it? I could lose a few. Juice fast, right?”