I gaze out the window as Violetta faithfully spins out her lost melodies one floor above me in the ballroom. I haven’t taken a first sip of champagne. I’m too preoccupied, still searching the blue where suddenly—are my eyes playing tricks on me?—I’m sure I can spot a faint red dot somewhere far up in the atmosphere, pushing higher and higher. I lean forward and stare harder. That dot could be anything, really. I pull out my postcard from my pocket and hold its array of balloons up to the window to compare. I tell myself the red dot must be Jeremy, ballooning by, ballooning up, and sending me his very best. In his last card, he told me he’d be thinking of me on my wedding day—and it’d be just like him to fly by and wish me all the happiness in life. My mother walks over to the window, peering over my shoulder and squinting upward, one hand over her eyes to shield the glare.
“Is that one of those tacky zeppelins, pawning insurance products and that sort of thing?” For a moment, she looks panicked. “Promise me you’re not getting sucked back into that again!”
“No, Mom,” I assure her. “I’m done with all of that.”
“Well, thank heavens.” She collapses in an exaggerated sigh of relief. “Now come away from the window, darling. We don’t want to deal with all of the bad luck if Scott manages to see you.” I’m fairly certain Scott has no plans to enter the office building facing us on the other side of Vanderbilt Avenue, ascend eighteen stories, and stare into my bridal suite through a pair of binoculars. So I stay still, staring up at the sky.
“It’s not a zeppelin, you know,” I correct her, dreamily. “It’s a hot air balloon. If you really look at them, you’ll see they’re actually quite lovely. Someone once told me you can see a whole other world from up there.”
“Who is this imposter and what have you done with my daughter?” She laughs, circling an arm around my waist. “Is there a Romantic in you yet, my sweet girl?”
I know that it is true. For better and for worse, there is a Romantic lurking somewhere in all of us, ready to surprise us, to overturn everything when we are least suspecting it. Jeremy taught me that—and that I can be happy wearing my signet ring alongside my diamond.
“You know, Mom”—I turn back and smile at her—“I think maybe there is. Life is nothing but a Great Love Story, isn’t it?”
My question renders her speechless.
A bus interrupts the moment, sighing messily on the street far below us. I stash Jeremy’s card back in my pocket and sweep my eyes from the red-dotted blue down to a string of a dozen or so children gathered on the sidewalk, playing dress-up in their parents’ charcoal and pin-striped suits. I can see them lined up to board a collegiate coach that will shuttle them back—safe and north—to Hanover, New Hampshire, my old campus. Their eyes are giant, glassy circles and their pink mouths are slightly agape as their necks crane upward at the glistening Midtown towers on the brink of engulfing them. I know the towers are inhabited primarily by investment banks, lesser Midtown peers of Bartholomew Brothers. Several of the most convincing boys don smart tortoiseshell glasses and carry shiny, square-edged briefcases. There is such a softness about their awe and excitement at the prospect of becoming new players in a real-life pantomime. A dark thought dawns upon me: these aren’t children in a stage play—they’re college students caught in some stage of corporate recruiting making their way back to campus on a Saturday afternoon. They board one by one and the coach hisses and sighs again as its door closes, lurching them forward alongside Grand Central. My departure for the church is only minutes away now and I can see our wedding car pulling up to take the spot the bus just emptied. It’s my silver-haired father driving a 1972 Mercedes convertible, the very same model of car he motored my mother away in for their honeymoon that year. There is hardly any time but still I want to do whatever it takes to signal Jeremy in the sky—to burst out of the bridal suite, fling myself down the eighteen flights, pink coupes flying hither and thither, and race past my father, arms waving in wild protest.
“Don’t do it!” I want to cry at the vanishing bus. I’m suddenly frantic, all too aware of the red dot drifting away from me, getting smaller and smaller with every length of blue it traverses. “You don’t have to do it!”
Teacher, carpenter, scientist, editor, engineer, entrepreneur, hot air balloonist—there is so much else to do, to create, to see—so much else that is out there in this world. I couldn’t see it then and I can see plain as day these children are oblivious to it, too. When I was still a student, when I was just like them and the choices available to me were so obscenely dense they blurred into an expanding mass that was so large it somehow became invisible, when there were a billion interesting things I could have done instead of going to work at an investment bank, no one ever sat me down and forced me to answer the toughest question of them all: You will be a grand total of what you spend your time doing in your life—so what do you want to add up to? Maybe I wouldn’t have had a clue. But at least I could have started thinking. I could have started connecting a series of heartfelt dots that might have led me somewhere different. It’s hard to tell.
The bus trundles away down Vanderbilt Avenue. As it turns left to battle through the grit of Forty-Second Street, I can pick out the forehead of one of those children, one with sandy hair standing slightly on end and a sentimental look floating in his brown eyes. With the world and all of life and the pureness of possibility a giant starfish spread out ahead of him, he presses his forehead against the window to stare in the general direction of one of the looming, steely towers. Maybe the boy can see the red speck of the hot air balloon pushing determinedly above the skyline but it doesn’t capture his fascination amidst all of that glass and steel. The red dot vanishes from the blue. The boy gazes up at the shining tower that seems to wink at him in the sun. I know that look all too well—I know what the shining tower must look like to him, the majestic promises it tosses down at him from above. The bus disappears around the corner and, though I’ll never see the sandy-haired boy again, I know with all certainty that one day very soon he will be back for it.
My mother’s voice calls out to me, shattering my daydream into a million shimmering pieces.
“Come along now, Mildred. It’s time.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There is a Romantic in all of us, I’m sure of it.
To everyone who believes the world needs more Romance with a capital R—dreaming, cinematic, sometimes over-the-top, inherently complicated, and always a source of hope, however foolhardy.
To all the sentimental capitalists out there proving that enterprise, achievement, and profitability can and should always be driven by and filled with heart.
To all those who channel the spirit of Jeremy Kirby and will never stop bothering and believing and sticking—no matter how hard it is to gain traction, no matter how outlandish they may feel in the fast-moving flash of our new millennium.
To my earliest readers who gave me confidence to keep writing and keep believing, especially my eternally optimistic dad, Barry “It’s Going to Happen, Sweetheart” Tait, and my dear friend Andrew Ross, a pinkie-swearing poet disguised as an investment banker.
To Caroline Bleeke, my amazingly gifted editor and one of the loveliest people I know. From the first time we talked hot air balloons and Wes Anderson, your intelligence and thoughtfulness and care ushered my manuscript into a whole new stratosphere. Working with you has been such a privilege and joy—at times, I think you might actually be a hologram.
And to the entire Flatiron Books team, including Tricia Cave and Molly Fonseca: I continue to pinch myself that I somehow got to join this remarkable family.
To my literary agent, Monika Woods, for your smart advice and all of your instrumental early feedback on the manuscript, which turned it into the millennial tale it was meant to be.
To William Callahan, for finding and picking my needle out of the vast haystack in 2010. Receiving your e-mail—it’s like a costume ball, old-fashioned and time-traveled to 2000—as I left my offic
e past midnight after one of the bleakest workdays remains one of the most enchanting moments of my life. Lady Liberty Lives.
To my fellow corporate foot soldiers over the years—some of the most intelligent, hilarious, and inspiring people I know who are able to unearth miraculous grains of humor in the most dire settings and circumstances, especially: Amy White Meadows, Lisa Sheehy, Shana Brodnax, Shoma Chatterjee, Ani Panchmatia, Tony Calianese, Jenny Farrelly, Kyle McCoy, and Paris Wallace.
The impossible yet inevitable theme of staging life threaded through this story was inspired by my honors thesis at Dartmouth College in 2001: “Beyond the Glitter and Glare: Life as a Staged Performance in the Novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald.” Professor Louis Renza was my thesis adviser and a sage voice in my early twenties, who reminded me to keep writing and, above all, to keep thinking—to keep connecting dots that ultimately led me down the road less traveled that made all the difference.
I am indebted to the other great teachers and writers who have taught me so much in my life, including: Helen Dillon, Catherine Pfaff, Professor Donald Pease, Professor William Duggan, Lord Griffiths, and Jim Gould.
To dearest old Dartmouth—my undying dream. I can’t seem to get over your magic.
To Ted, my heart and soul—I wouldn’t be anywhere without you, quite literally.
To my extraordinary brother Kevin Tait, our real-life time-traveling Doctor Who, whose encouragement and impersonations hand me essential comic relief and inspiration on a regular basis. (To Mr. Suisse, from Michael’s parents, in the name of Michael.)
To my husband, Mungo Lowe, my teammate on our very special international mix team, whose honesty and humor and clever suggestions were integral to the writing of this book. Thank you for letting M., Belle, Jeremy, and Chase become our often-intrusive roommates on that curious tropical island.
And last, but forever first in my heart, my parents—Barry and Didy Tait—the people I will never stop trying to make proud, who taught me everything I know about fighting the good fight and never, ever, ever giving up.
Recommend Fake Plastic Love for your next book club!
Reading Group Guide available at
www.readinggroupgold.com
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kimberley Tait was born and raised in Toronto, Canada, and moved to the United States to attend Dartmouth College, where she wrote an honors thesis on life as a staged performance in the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Kimberley earned an MBA from Columbia Business School and has worked at investment banks in New York and London, continuing to work with financial services and investment firms as a writer and marketing strategist. A Canadian, American, and Swiss citizen, Kimberley lives in London with her husband. Fake Plastic Love is her debut novel. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraphs
In the Bridal Suite
College
The City
Handle with Great Care
Watch Yourself with the Yak-Yak
The Last True Romantic
Blue Moons and Red Velvets
Breakfast at Piggelo’s
Get Saving, Little Guy
Sabers and Holograms
Adieu, New York
The Lost Girl
Marry a Dartmouth Boy
Be True
The Time-Traveling Belle
It’s a Barnum and Bailey World
The Quest
Back in the Bridal Suite
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Contents
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
FAKE PLASTIC LOVE. Copyright © 2017 by Kimberley Tait. All rights reserved. For information, address Flatiron Books, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.flatironbooks.com
Cover design by Kelly Blair
Cover photography © Mary Evans Picture Library
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-09389-9 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-15496-5 (international, sold outside the U.S., subject to rights availability)
ISBN 978-1-250-09388-2 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781250093882
Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at [email protected].
First U.S. Edition: May 2017
First International Edition: May 2017
Fake Plastic Love Page 39
