With Friends Like These

by Sally Koslow

  I realized Ted’s handsome, scheming face had become a blur. Were his eyes green or was that just the color I’d turned when I found out he was cheating? “Ted’s history. I have a different man in my life now.”

  “You always do. Would this be the lucky father, assuming positive results?”

  “He would. But let’s leave lucky out of it.”

  She cast a taut, perfectly made-up eye in my direction. “Please tell me he’s not married.”

  “He’s single, perhaps terminally.”

  “Hmmm.” Sheila’s tone said, Do go on.

  “It wouldn’t matter who the father of this mythical baby is,” I said in a voice loud enough to be heard out on Park Avenue. “We both know I am completely unqualified to be anyone’s mother. I’m too old, too selfish, too bossy, and if I didn’t want a child at twenty-three or thirty-three, why would I want one now?”

  To my horror, Dr. Sheila Frumkes took my hand. “Allow me to speak as both your friend and physician. Let’s wait for the blood works, and in the meantime, I urge you to not jump to conclusions. The far side of forty is when a lot of my patients find that their attitude shifts. I’ve been practicing a long time”—to celebrate her fiftieth birthday last year she got a two-carat diamond belly-button stud to show off her abs—“and in my experience, many women who never thought they would want children turn out to be beyond delighted at a surprise pregnancy, and even more who predicted failure as a parent become outstanding mothers. It’s one of the most mysterious, rewarding aspects of my work.”

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sheila could save the rhetoric for one of the skinny thirty-eight-year-olds crowding her waiting room, women who felt if they didn’t reproduce they were as incomplete as a bra with one cup. I’m not one of those females who need kids to give themselves purpose and importance and stretch marks to bitch about—and which, in truth, they wear like medals.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I lied. “I respect your opinion”—which was, after all, gratis. “When should I call for the results?”

  “Tomorrow or the next day, depending on how asleep at the wheel the lab techs are. Now, you’ll have to excuse me—I need to break the word to the couple in the next room that it’s triplets. They’ve had two miscarriages.” Discretion is not Sheila’s finest attribute. “Don’t be surprised if you hear screaming.”

  Triplets should have put things in perspective. But they didn’t. One baby was still like one atom bomb or one sex-change operation. It would mutate everything in my life to a shape I couldn’t grasp, and I wasn’t even thinking specifically—quelle horreur—about my body. To start, I supposed I had to consider Arthur.

  My ability to fantasize is well honed, so much so that if I can’t envision someone in an imaginary role, it’s a sign that I don’t want to see them in that capacity. Arthur as a dad. Arthur as a partner. Arthur as a husband. Arthur and me as parents. One by one, I pictured … nothing.

  I decided to add to Jules’ Rules: If pregnant, keep the news to yourself until you’re sure you care what the father thinks. The truth was, just as I couldn’t conjure up Arthur in any version of commitment, I also couldn’t guess his response to having knocked me up. He was fifty. Did he want a child? Did he want me? Would he be appalled or relieved if I decided to …

  I couldn’t complete the thought. Wasn’t today already an all-you-can-eat buffet of surprises? A tear trickled down my cheek. Fucking hormones. I grabbed a tissue out of the box on Sheila’s desk and dabbed away mascara. A nurse strolled into the office with a chart in her hands, so I got up and walked to the bathroom to collect my thoughts and properly wash my face. On the way, I heard the shriek of joy or shock Sheila had predicted. Whoop-de-do.

  I closed the door and admired the décor. The bathroom was limestone with fresh calla lilies, a basket of linen towels, and a shelf discreetly labeled for urine specimens. There were six in a row, each vial like precious eau de parfum.

  I walked closer. In the golden lineup was a small glass of pee plainly labeled Q. Blue.

  Holy Jesus.

  I sat down on the closed toilet seat. Quincy: triplets. This was too huge to absorb alone. I needed to share this with someone. Despite the prohibition against using cell phones, I pulled mine out.

  Arthur answered on the first ring.

  CHAPTER 19

  Chloe

  “May I refresh that drink?”

  “Please!” I’d gulped down my first frosty mojito as if it were limeade. I didn’t dare ask the server if the blonde with the dark roots in the next cabana was Maizie May or some other star famous mostly for being famous. Around her were a group of pedicured people in flip-flops, and my eyes ricocheted between them and the evenly tanned women frolicking in the turquoise water. They, too, were playing spot-a-celebrity, and few of them were discreet about it, or anything else. But the abundant chests and Brazil-nut-sized diamond studs were all part of the grand Beverly Hills Hotel experience. I was loving it! I felt deliciously inconspicuous, even in a fuchsia one-piece, one more tropical blossom in the garden where I waited for the ghosts of Clark Gable and Carole Lombard to drift past, hand in hand.

  This was my first time in Los Angeles, my first time accompanying Xander on a business trip, my first time away from Dash, whom Jamyang was looking after, and soon, quite possibly, my first time relaxing, if I dare call it that, with Charlene “Cha-Cha” Denton, the wife of Xander’s boss.

  Charlene is only six years older than I am, but next to her I feel like a rookie. She’s one of those women with such lavish charm that she might have acquired it not through breeding or observation but via a transplant. She speaks vaguely of roots “out west,” where she and Edgar own a vast Montana ranch and raise emus and grass-fed bison, but a Vanity Fair profile suggested that Edgar had met Charlene when she’d waited on him at a cigar bar after she’d escaped from her parents’ pig farm near Turtle Lake, Minnesota, not far from where Quincy grew up.

  Xander and I had arrived yesterday evening. He had business in L.A. doing whatever it is that hedge fund managers do—I stopped requesting specifics years ago. His schedule was crammed. Mine wasn’t.

  Under normal circumstances, I would have liked to have visited Talia’s parents in Santa Monica. Talia had alerted her mother that I was coming to town, and I arrived to a message inviting me for a walk on the beach followed by tea, which Talia says her mother serves in glasses, even when it’s hot. The prospect sounded lovely. I adore Mira Fisher. Yet this morning I’d lied to the Fishers’ answering machine, saying I needed to go to an appointment with Xander. I was too furious at Talia to risk spending even a minute with her mother.

  After breakfast at the Polo Lounge, I strolled on Rodeo Drive, a disappointing stretch with the same Gucci, Armani, and Prada I’m too intimidated to enter on Madison Avenue. My window shopping took all of twenty minutes. I bought nothing and returned to the hotel.

  At that point an adventuresome woman would have asked the concierge to call her a taxi to go to, say, the Getty Museum. Not me. I bought Jamyang some ridiculously priced caviar eye essence in the hotel’s spa, left a message for Charlene inviting her to join me, and headed for the pool, where I’d been sitting for more than an hour, half hoping she wouldn’t show up. I would happily wait to see her that night, when Xander and I had a dinner scheduled with the Dentons for eight. But Xander had referred to my private time to be spent with Charlene as “sealing the deal.” Edgar had graduated from Jackson Collegiate, and both of the school’s new red clay tennis courts were named for him. Xander felt it would be brash to ask directly for his boss’s help in getting Dash admitted to Jackson. It had to be “spontaneous,” and impressing Mrs. Edgar Denton mattered most. It was she who directed Edgar’s personal foundation, she whose approval needed to be wooed and won.

  And there she was, suddenly, all six feet one inch of her. Vanity Fair had compared Charlene to a crane ready to topple, but today she looked as confidently upright as ever. Her sharply angled face was softened by the shadows from a f
lying-saucer-sized white hat of the sort I’d seen only in photographs of British ladies attending Ascot. She waved as she swanned in my direction, and even that gesture reminded me of royalty, which in certain East Coast circles Charlene was.

  “Chloe, darling,” she said in her well-modulated voice, as if there were no other person on earth she’d looked forward to camping out with on a steamy California day. She kissed each of my cheeks. “Your suit is precious.”

  I knew better than to mistake Charlene’s comment for a compliment. When she deftly removed her gauzy white caftan, Charlene herself was wearing a shiny black bikini. Her sandals, with their slender, silvery straps, made mine look like hand-me-downs from Mother Teresa. Next to her I felt like a stump covered by a rashy fungus, but I was determined—thank you, lovely, calming cocktails—not to have one of my paranoia attacks. Today I was in service to my child’s future!

  “Thanks,” I said. “When did you and Edgar arrive?” Charlene and Edgar own a jet.

  “We left Mexico a few hours ago,” she said. “We blinked and were landing in Burbank.”

  I blinked, too, and the blonde in the next cabana walked in our direction, lurching into my chaise. She scowled, as if her accident were my fault, then giggled loudly, unself-consciously, drunkenly.

  At close range there was no doubt: the woman was Maizie! Did I dare out myself as knowing Quincy? “Excuse me,” I said, “but I believe my close friend Quincy Blue is working on a project with you?” My statement came out like a question. The sun was in my eyes, which made it hard to see Maizie’s reaction, but I believe she took a slow, dismissive scan of me and turned toward Charlene, who ran away with the conversation. “Why, Miss May,” she said, leaning forward. “‘Lonesome Trucker’ is at the top of my playlist. I’m a truly devoted fan.”

  Charlene Denton liked Maizie May? I did know, this time courtesy of The New Yorker, that in order to prep for whatever encounter might be required to extend and solidify her power, Charlene reportedly reads every column in every magazine, newspaper, and major online source; apparently her daily feed includes Billboard. “You must—you absolutely must—join my dear friend Chloe Keaton and me for lunch,” she insisted.

  I expected Maizie to blow off Charlene as the lamest sort of perimenopausal groupie. Instead she said, “Costume Institute gala, the mermaid in blue fins and the sequined headdress?”

  “Good Lord, you noticed me in that crowd?” Charlene managed to make “good Lord” sound clever and original.

  After that event, photos of both Maizie and Charlene had been splashed all over the Sunday Times Style section. I’d heard rumors that Edgar was one of Maizie’s backers, and Charlene, of course, had been on the steering committee. I imagined that she had to be flattered by Maizie taking note of her latitude and longitude in the social firmament, though she acted cool. Not snotty cool, friendly cool. “Cha-Cha Denton,” she said, extending her slim hand with its substantial, but not grossly large, marquise diamond.

  She’d never asked me to call her Cha-Cha.

  “Maizie,” the singer said, giving Charlene’s hand a quick shake. “You and your friend have gotta join my group.” She glanced at her watch. To my eye, its iridescent face and chunky metal band suggested Chinatown, but it might be platinum. “We’ll be at the banquette against the wall. Two sharp.” She walked away without ever having looked at me again.

  “Don’t you think Maizie is bewitching?” Charlene asked.

  Bewitching hadn’t been an adjective Quincy used in describing Maizie, though I’d heard narcissistic, unreliable, and juvenile. But Charlene’s question didn’t need an answer. By barely tilting her head, she prompted several cabana boys to zoom in our direction and furnish us with extra towels; mojitos, easy on the ice; a second umbrella; and an enormous basket of crudités sculpted like flowers. Charlene signed the tab and, with that, reached down into her Chanel tote, pulled out The Economist, and turned away to read.

  I wished I’d brought reading material other than the 833-page novel I’d started in Maine. The Crimson Petal and the White was stuffed with historical details, like how many bundles of holly an English family ordered for Christmas in 1875. Still, its cover, with its rumpled bed behind red draperies, looked like trash, and I guessed that little escaped the scrutiny of Charlene’s eyes, which matched the sapphire baguettes of her ring. I’m fairly certain that if she were quizzed, she could accurately report Xander’s last bonus and the number of square feet we own back in Brooklyn.

  Thinking about Brooklyn made me want to call home. By now it was past four in New York, and Dash might be back from Henry Fisher-Wells’ birthday party. I’d dodged a bullet on that one, with the trip giving me an unquestionable excuse to send Dash to the party accompanied by Jamyang and a set of blocks that promised to develop sequential and organizational thinking, math concepts, and structural design skills. I was angry—furious!—at Talia, but I didn’t want to take it out on Henry. In the last three weeks I’d not seen Talia once. At work we were communicating strictly by phone, e-mail, and succinct notes. If Talia suspected anything was amiss, she’d kept it to herself. With both of our lives generally hectic, our behavior was, I told myself, within the boundaries of normal.

  Feeling woozy, though, was not. Between the mojitos and the temperature, tiny, evil charros were stamping on my temples, their partners in my tummy shouting Olé! as they picked up the pace. I put down my book, willed myself not to be ill, and closed my eyes, pulling my canvas hat over my forehead and hoping the buzzing I heard was from insects.

  The next thing I knew, Charlene was nudging my arm. “Chloe,” she said. “It’s almost two. Want to have lunch?”

  I quickly opened my eyes. A slight trickle of drool had dripped down the side of my face. I prayed that Charlene would think it was perspiration, although she herself looked fresh as dew.

  “Of course. Let’s eat!” I said in that too-fast way people speak when they’re embarrassed at being caught snoozing. In truth, the idea of lunching with Maizie May and her girl group sounded like persecution: the Beverly Hills Hotel—come for the glamour, stay for the humiliation. But what I said—thank you, marvelous mojitos—was “It will be fun!”

  Charlene precisely folded her copy of the Sunday Times, the one from London. She removed her hat without disturbing her brilliantly blond chignon, slipped into her caftan, and replaced her hat at exactly the most flattering angle. We walked back to the horseshoe-shaped banquette where Maizie was already sitting. The sycophant to her right got up and let Charlene slide into the seat of honor. This friend-of-Maizie then sat down to Charlene’s left, and several other young women followed her. That left either end seat for me, though if I’d gone across to the other side of the restaurant I doubt anyone would have noticed.

  “Tell me how a girl from Ocala gets to the top of the pop charts,” Charlene asked, as if she were genuinely interested. For the next ten minutes, Maizie explained how she’d been discovered in a Piggly-Wiggly where she was a cashier known to sing about her customers’ purchases and how a record producer was in her line buying Okefenokee BBQ Sauce while he was home visiting his parents. Maizie told the tale with considerable animation, though she was repeating the story not, I guessed, for the first time. Every one of her dedicated followers hooted loudly or yelled “No shit, girl” at regular intervals.

  As we nibbled shrimp cocktail and chopped salads, Charlene continued to steer the conversation. The two headliners discovered that both of them owned homes not far from Mazatlán and compared notes about a party given by a gentleman named El Gigante. The more they chatted, the more it became clear that Señor Gigante’s nickname was inspired by an appendage that Maizie seemed proud to know intimately. I wanted to break into the conversation but had as much social currency as a beggar at Bergdorf’s. My only card to play, I decided after twenty minutes, was to once again bring up Quincy. “How’s the book going?” I asked during what I thought was either a lull or Charlene taking a deep, cleansing breath.

  M
aizie looked at me and laughed—at me, not with me, I guessed. Yet I added, “With my friend Quincy Blue. Your ghostwriter.”

  “I know who you mean. I’m pissed at that skinny twat, if you want to know the truth.”

  I could feel my face reddening, and it wasn’t because the café’s fans had lost their battle against the heat. “Really?” I said, with alcohol-fueled boldness. “What’s the problem, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “She got knocked up. Just when I’ve decided I’m really into the book and have some face time to finish, she goes off and disappears because”—Maizie switched to a flat midwestern accent to mimic Quincy’s—“her doctor won’t let her git on a plane. She was supposed to meet me last week after my show in Seattle.”

  “Quincy’s p-p-pregnant?” I sputtered.

  “Not just p-p-pregnant. She’s having a litter.”

  “Quincy’s having twins?”

  “If only. No, triplets.”

  My mouth hung open. Hot tears began dribbling down my cheeks. Triplets!

  “You seem surprised. I thought she was your best friend, woman,” Maizie roared.

  Through my mojito haze, I reminded myself that I shouldn’t be angry at Quincy for not having told me. Given her medical history, she probably was afraid to say anything until she was further along, and she’d informed Maizie only because she was forced to. But I felt like a fraud all the same, especially when Charlene added, “Yes, that is odd that you don’t know. Curious indeed.”

  Where did that come from? I wanted to throw my drink in Charlene’s sweat-free face. Cha-Cha Denton was … disloyal. She cared only about impressing Maizie May. No, that wasn’t all. Charlene Denton could pretend all she wanted that she was refined, but the real Cha-Cha was a nasty, overly ambitious, despicable she-devil. This insight occurred with another: the mere thought of calling upon Charlene to help Dash get into school seemed, in a flash, ugly, wrong, and dirty. I didn’t care what Xander would say. I couldn’t let our innocent child’s future be tainted by such a nasty conniver.