The Infidelity Pact

by Carrie Karasyov

  “It’s because you’re finally showing off your boobs,” she said, taking a sip from the blue plastic beer cup she held.

  Leelee immediately hunched over and dropped to the sand, and pulled Hilary down with her. “What are you talking about?” she whispered, embarrassed. God, she was so self-conscious now in this sweater!

  “You know, you always wear those loose T-shirts, no one can tell that you’ve got a wicked rack under there.”

  “Easy for you to say! You’re like a board!” snapped Leelee. She was mortified. Had Jack noticed her breasts?

  “Hey, don’t get defensive, loser—it’s a good thing! I don’t know why you hide those puppies,” said Hilary.

  Leelee glanced across the bonfire and watched Jack manning the keg. He was bending over, filling up two plastic cups with the hose, when he looked up and caught Leelee’s glance. Through the flames she could see his face brighten, and he gave her a big wide grin. Leelee’s heart melted.

  “Really? Do you think that’s why?” asked Leelee.

  “Yes. You look awesome tonight. You really should wear tighter-fitting clothes. You gotta flaunt what you got,” advised Hilary.

  “Okay,” said Leelee, taking a gulp of her beer. It felt strange, almost pornographic, to suddenly be showing off her boobs, but if that’s what it took to get Jack to sit up and notice, that’s what she would do. And Hilary was right: she should flaunt what she had. She was aware that she didn’t have very good legs, and cursed her mother, whose sturdy, muscular trunks she had inherited. Unfortunately, legs were something you could do nothing about, no matter how much you exercised, and Leelee did an awful lot of exercising, being a star member of the Varsity field hockey, ice hockey, and lacrosse teams. Better to hide her legs under pants and long skirts and show off those newfound knockers that just might be her ticket to love.

  The rest of the night took on a long-awaited surreal tone. Hilary got word from one of Jack’s best friends that he was digging Leelee tonight and even considering fooling around with her. Leelee couldn’t believe it. The moment she was waiting for had arrived. It was so odd, because they had been together day in and day out all summer. Leelee was so nervous with anticipation and euphoric that this instant had finally arrived that she found herself drinking more than usual, which was a lot. She refilled her cup every half hour and gulped down the ice-cold brew (that tasted like cat piss) as if it were water. She hadn’t really interacted with Jack at the beginning of the night, but by the end he was putting his arm around her and rubbing her back, acting very flirty.

  Some couples had disappeared off into the dunes, while others were making out in their cars in the parking lot. Leelee wondered if Jack would suggest that they do the same. And how would he suggest it? Would he grab her hand and lead her off into darkness? Most of the stars were covered by a dense layer of haze, so the only light came from the bonfire. She imagined herself tucked away in a dune or under the empty lifeguard’s chair, nestled in Jack’s arms…it was too sweet to think about.

  “Can you believe that you and Jack will finally get together tonight? It’s so awesome!” said Hilary.

  “I know, I know,” said Leelee, holding her skewered marshmallow over the flame. It was getting brown, just toasty enough to smush it between two graham crackers and a piece of Hershey’s chocolate bar to make the most delicious s’more. “I just feel…well, I feel so calm now, knowing everything’s going to happen. Usually I just plant myself by Jack, but tonight, now that it’s a done deal, I can relax and hang around and let him mingle, and just enjoy myself.”

  “You guys make a great couple,” said Hilary, rising. “Want another beer?”

  “Sure,” said Leelee. Why not? She had everything to celebrate.

  Finally, after almost everyone had taken off, Jack came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. Hilary, who she had been talking with, gave her a big supportive grin, and Leelee leaned back into Jack’s chest.

  “Shall we take off?” he asked.

  “Sure,” she said. “See ya,” she said to Hilary.

  “Be good, you two!” said Hilary, wagging her finger at them in a motherly way.

  Jack took Leelee by the hand and started leading her up the dune to the parking lot. “We will,” he shouted over his shoulder.

  “Promise,” Leelee said, laughing.

  Jack was moving quickly, and it wasn’t until she was trudging through the sand that she realized just how drunk she was. Wow, she had head spins. If only she could have something to eat, to sober her up a little. But what did it matter? She was going to finally kiss Jack!

  Jack opened the door for her and she immediately turned on the radio. “I love this song!” she yelled, when Yas’s “Mr. Blue” came on. She began to sing along. She looked over at Jack, who gave her a small smile.

  “Leelee,” he began. He called her Leelee, not Swifty! This was major.

  “Oh my God, I left my shoes!” she said, interrupting him and slapping her forehead. “They’re by the fire!”

  “Do you want me to go get them?” he asked.

  Yes, they were her new Jack Rogers sandals. But no, then he would leave. She wasn’t sure. “It’s okay,” she said, finally. She felt strange. She was excited that she knew that tonight would end differently. All those nights of Jack dropping her off, and her thanking him and shutting the door and going into her house and up the stairs and into her room and going to sleep alone, with sand in her bed from her feet and the smell of fire still in her hair and beer on her breath and no one to cuddle with…That was done! She would get a good night kiss!

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. I mean no. I mean yes.” She giggled. It was too much! Jack and Leelee sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G, she sang in her head.

  “Are you okay?” asked Jack, concerned.

  “What do you mean? I’m okay, you’re okay,” she said, bursting out laughing. She couldn’t stop. It was all too funny.

  Jack stared at her, and then started the car. “You’ve had a lot to drink. I should get you home,” he said, backing up.

  So he would kiss her at her house, not here. Fine! Leelee rolled down the window all the way and let the breeze blow in her face. It felt good. Suddenly, Jack jerked to a stop at a stop sign.

  “Sorry, I didn’t see that,” said Jack.

  “It’s all right,” said Leelee, who had been propelled forward. Luckily she was wearing her seat belt. But unluckily, the jerk had made her feel sick. Really sick. She now fully comprehended how much alcohol she had digested. Too much. She put her head back against the seat.

  “Are you okay?” asked Jack.

  “My head is spinning…” she said. Oh God, she felt so sick. “I’m going to hurl…” she said finally, lurching forward.

  Jack swerved the car to the shoulder and Leelee got out. She ran into the bushes, and just as Jack made it over to her, she began barfing. Over and over again.

  “Shh, it’s okay,” said Jack, rubbing her back.

  She couldn’t speak. She was too sick to be embarrassed. She tasted vomit in her mouth, in her nose, everywhere. She had never felt so sick. After she lost her entire dinner, Jack helped her back into the car.

  “Don’t worry,” he said soothingly.

  She was so dizzy and ill that all she could do was nod. She started to doze off, and later she remembered only Jack helping her to the door and up the stairs before she collapsed in her bed.

  The next day she woke up mortified and furious at herself, with a large hangover to boot. Jack called to check up on her, and laughed when she told him how embarrassed she was.

  “Don’t worry, Swifty,” he said.

  “Okay, but can I make it up to you? Let’s go out tonight and get some fried shrimp and I promise not to vomit,” she said.

  Jack laughed his adorable laugh. “I’d love to, but I’m leaving tonight. It’s Henry Walsh’s birthday bash in the Hamptons and I’m heading out there before I go back to D.C.”

  What? He was g
oing? Summer was over? What about their kiss? “I didn’t know you were leaving,” accused Leelee.

  “I thought I told you. Sorry.”

  No matter what kind of teasing or cajoling Leelee tried on Jack for the next twenty minutes, he still insisted that he was going. And so when Leelee hung up the phone, she realized that that was it: she had missed her chance. She was tortured over the next few months, especially when she had to return to school and hear about everyone else’s hookups. How could she have gotten so drunk?

  But then one night, after too much eggnog at Christmas break, Leelee confessed everything to her mother, who in turn gave her the best possible advice.

  “Honey, you don’t want to play around with Jack Porter now! He’s marriage material. Let him have his fun and you have yours, and then one day he’ll be ready to get married and he’ll look over and realize it’s you he’s wanted all along,” advised her mom.

  “You think so?” she asked, hopeful.

  “Sure. Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?” asked her mother.

  And Leelee felt her mother was right. Let Jack have all his wild adventures, foolish hookups, and irrelevant dalliances. When the time was right, she would make her move. Because the only thing she wanted in life was to be Mrs. Jack Porter. Actually, make that First Lady Leslie Porter.

  But that wasn’t what happened. There had been a terrible error. But errors could be fixed, couldn’t they? Leelee got out of the shower and dried herself off with a fluffy monogrammed towel. Yes, her life was all wrong. It had to be fixed. Now was the time.

  •• 13 ••

  Victoria had come home late from tennis clinic and was rushing to shower and change before she had to meet some of the mothers from the boys’ school at Terry’s to have a “working lunch” coordinating the silent auction items for the winter benefit. When the phone rang she forgot to let voice mail pick it up, and, not thinking, she threw her sneaker across the room and leapt toward the extension next to her bed.

  “Hello?” she asked.

  “You little sneak—you didn’t tell me you were Justin Coleman’s wife,” said the voice on the other end.

  Victoria felt the sweat beads from her scalp drip onto her forehead. It was Wayne Mercer. She’d know that slick voice anywhere.

  “You didn’t ask,” she said calmly. So he had tracked her down. Impressive. She had only ever given him her first and maiden names and vague details, but he had made the effort to find her. Why was she surprised? He was cunning.

  “I knew I recognized you. I told you all along,” he said, boastful.

  “Yes, you did.”

  “But do you know who I am?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “No, I mean, do you know who I am?” he asked.

  “You’re my husband’s nemesis,” she replied calmly. This was her favorite part of the game: the cat and mouse. It couldn’t be called a courtship because she never liked the fairy-tale endings. She was all about the pursuit.

  Wayne started laughing. She didn’t like his laugh—it was too smirky, oily. “You are one cold bitch, you know that? What kind of woman would go to bed with the man her husband most wanted to be like?”

  For some reason she felt protective of Justin. “He doesn’t want to be like you, Wayne. He loathes you.”

  “Come on, he wants my life. He wants my clients, my job, everything. And even his bitch wants me, so you can’t blame him,” he said, laughing again.

  Wayne was cruel. Victoria had wanted to keep him out of everything and had erroneously thought she could handle him. “You’re evil,” she said.

  “Not as evil as you,” he said, almost languidly. Then his tone changed. “Meet me tomorrow at our place and wear what I like.”

  “I can’t tomorrow,” Victoria began to protest.

  “You can and you will,” he said, and hung up the phone.

  Why did she always go for jerks? Her friends had always been confounded by her choice of men. They insisted she could have anyone but she always went for the ones that treated her horribly, the druggies or the assholes. What kind of sickness did she have? But she knew the truth: somehow, deep down, being a victim in a relationship was a cozy place for her. Because for all of Victoria’s success, there weren’t many other cozy places in her inner life. She glanced across the room at the framed photograph of her and Justin on their wedding day and sighed. Her friends had told her not to marry him. So had her father, but he was an asshole who cheated on her mother, so she didn’t listen to him. His advice had maybe even sealed the deal. It was a great big fuck-you to Daddy. And now she was stuck with this nightmare. She had wanted Justin so badly, she thought, shuddering slightly at the memory. He was a god to her. What had she been thinking?

  It was because he hadn’t wanted her. On the first day of her summer internship at International Artists Association, Justin Coleman was the only agent who hadn’t given Victoria a second look. He shook her hand, curtly said “Nice to meet you,” and was immediately distracted by something else. That had never happened to Victoria before, and certainly not in Hollywood. Everyone, without fail, had given her the once-over, or done a double take when they saw her walk down the hall. Her hair was blown dry stick straight to perfection. She was wearing a new Prada suit that was short enough to show off her tanned legs. She had on her two-inch Jimmy Choos. She knew she looked amazing. If Justin were gay, he would have looked at her appraisingly, for every inch of her was accessorized and decked out with precision and class. She couldn’t figure out why he had blown her off, but she was determined to get to the bottom of it.

  It didn’t take long to get the scoop on Justin. He was engaged to Marcy Ostroff, the daughter of legendary producer Arthur Ostroff, who for the past three decades had twelve hit shows on television and who was also one of IAA’s biggest clients, natch. It was clearly a career move, Victoria decided. Justin wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous, but he was handsome, with dark hair, eyes, and eyebrows. He wasn’t very tall or muscular, but he exuded confidence and attitude, and it was his cockiness that made him more magnetic. Marcy, on the other hand, was nothing to write home about. Sure, she was skinny with pert breasts (probably not real, but done by a very good plastic surgeon) and wavy, honey-colored hair. But she’d had a bad nose job (probably done by a different plastic surgeon), her eyes were very far apart, and, frankly, there was nothing special or interesting about her appearance. Had she not been Arthur Ostroff’s daughter, she would have been answering phones in a dental office. Instead, she was his right hand, “associate producing” her way through all of his projects, much to the ire of the legitimate professionals who had toiled for him for years. The wedding was in August, two months away, and set to be the wedding of the summer, maybe even the year. Victoria vowed to herself that there would be no wedding.

  Much to Victoria’s surprise, Justin was immune to her overtures. She’d attempted to make casual conversation with him, never alone, but when there were several people in an elevator or in the kitchen, asking for restaurant advice or where to play tennis, always reminding everyone that she was new in town. But Justin never offered up anything. Instead, she had about thirteen other colleagues calling her and offering to take her to Spago or for a round at the Bel Air Golf Club. Justin stubbornly refused to take the bait. And to make matters worse, because she was an intern and lower than he was on the food chain, he made a point of dumping all sorts of work on her. He’d even gone so far as to make her run out and get McDonald’s for a young up-and-coming movie star client who had a hankering for McNuggets. It was demeaning. Here Victoria was getting her MBA at Stanford, and she was on fast food runs for an idiot who’d dropped out of high school. But she didn’t complain; she just bided her time. She wore her short skirts and flirted with all of Justin’s friends, and she waited for him to notice her.

  Victoria laughed bitterly now at the thought. If only she had let it go, just forgotten Justin. But no, she’d had to be headstrong. She’d plotted and planne
d and then finally her moment came. She was at Fred Segal on Melrose, trying on outfits for a friend’s wedding in the dressing room, when all of a sudden she heard the unmistakable nasal, whiny voice with the sibilant s’s come drifting out of the dressing room next to hers, ordering the salesperson to get more jeans for her to try on. She had heard that voice before. In Justin’s office, when she had to cover Justin’s phone, and even once on Entertainment Tonight. It was Marcy Ostroff’s. Victoria waited a minute and then went out of her dressing room. Marcy was standing in front of the full-length mirror, twisting a lock of hair with her finger and turning backward and forward to check out her appearance. She was wearing the tightest jeans Victoria had ever seen, and a shimmery sequined tank top. She looked repulsive.

  “That looks so cute on you,” lied Victoria.

  “You think so?” said Marcy, twirling around in front of the mirror.

  “Darling. You have a great figure.”

  “Thanks,” said Marcy, in a tone that indicated she agreed. Then she turned and looked at Victoria, who was positively glowing in a white eyelet dress. “You look cute also!” she said, as if surprised.

  “You think so?” said Victoria with false modesty. “I have to go to a wedding…”

  “Oh my God—I’m getting married!”

  “You are?”

  “Yes, August thirty-first at the Hotel Bel Air.”

  “That’s bizarre,” said Victoria. “I think a guy I work with is getting married that day…”

  “Who?” asked Marcy, annoyed.

  “Justin Coleman?” fake-asked Victoria.