Part 7 (2/2)
”I'm ready if you're ready,” Magnolia said, wis.h.i.+ng she actually had been crafty enough to have planned the mishap.
Chapter 1 3.
Extra Virgin.
Waiting for their manicurists, Abbey and Magnolia huddled on a black leather love seat, heads down, hooting at movie star photographs in Dazzle's ”What Were They Thinking?” section. ”Will you promise to stage an intervention if I ever buy anything this short?” Magnolia asked. ”The statute of limitations for wearing skirts like this is just about over for me.”
”The thing about age-appropriate dressing is that the rules keep changing,” Abbey said.
Magnolia hoped she'd evolve into a wiser version of herself and that woman would want a wardrobe she couldn't even imagine right now. She closed the magazine, and focused on Abbey, who had the look she got when she wanted to spill a secret.
”What is it?” Magnolia asked.
”Tommy and I had ex-s.e.x last night,” Abbey announced, as seri ously as if she'd disclosed that she'd fornicated with a beagle.
”It's not technically s.e.x-with-an-ex,” Magnolia pointed out. ”But give me the goods.”
”We've been e-mailing and text messaging,” Abbey said, moving over to her manicurist who, today, was Lily Kim. ”Stay away from that man.” Lily had joined the conversation. ”Bad, very bad.” With her normal efficiency, Lily began to file Abbey's nails square and short, which made her hardworking jeweler's hands look even more like tiny paws.
”I couldn't turn him away. He wanted to stop by and talk.”
”Run that conversation by us,” Magnolia said, sliding into the chair next to her. She immersed her fingers in the china bowl her manicurist presented before her. As Abbey continued to speak, Mag nolia closed her eyes and let the warm, jasmine-scented water wash away the last few days.
”First we went to dinner at Balthazar, and you know how much I love it,” Abbey started. ”We'd gone there for our last anniversary.”
When you fought about the gift you received, Magnolia recalled.
”Dinner turned into coffee back at the apartment,” Abbey said.
”Did he seem mildly contrite?” Magnolia asked. ”Deeply apolo getic? Fraught with anguish?”
”No, no, and yes.” Abbey said. ” 'Disabled' was how he put it,”
”Well, we all want to embrace diversity,” Magnolia said, striving for funny and realizing she'd failed. ”How did the conversation go?”
”Quickly, with a trail of clothes to our bedroom,” Abbey reported.
”s.e.x was never the problem. It was almost like the first time.”
Magnolia thought back to her own first time, which had been fast but worth the wait. Reverend Peterson's Pontiac after the prom. She and Tyler Peterson, the preacher's son, had dated for two years. Soon she'd leave for Michigan and he to St. Olaf, where bright Lutheran boys with good baritones go. During the summer he'd be in Montana, working cattle or whatever you did with cows. The end was closing in on them- graduation, college, another life. The nightly phone calls and Sat.u.r.day movie dates would be fading to black. They both knew it and never dis cussed it. Tyler couldn't imagine he'd ever again meet a girl as full of dreams as Maggie Goldfarb and she, a sweeter guy-or better-looking.
The Norse G.o.ds had kicked in, and Tyler had shot up to well over six feet.
”Magnolia, are you with me?” Abbey asked.
”I'm listening to every word,” she said. ”Does this mean you guys are back on track?” ”Hardly. Even when we were kissing, I knew it was a mistake.
Not the kissing-he can still speak in tongues-but change is not in Tommy's vocabulary. Talk about fraught, though. I was definitely fraught. With l.u.s.t fraught. Incredible night.”
”And the morning?” Magnolia asked. She believed in the revealing powers of mornings after.
”There was no morning,” Abbey answered, shrugging. ”I asked him to leave at around four A.M.” She drew her hands away from Lily and turned toward Magnolia. ”Tommy's always going to be a baby.
Who can wait for him to grow up?”
”How do you feel?” Like backup singers in a Motown group, Lily and Magnolia begged the question in unison, giving the last word emphasis.
”Sad. Resigned. Pretty sure it's the end.”
Magnolia wished Abbey could be happier-she deserved to be hap pier-but her a.s.sessment of Tommy was dead-on accurate. ”You're tough,” Magnolia said. ”You'll get through this. I'll help you. Do some thing today that will make you smile.”
”Such as?”
”Hmm . . .” Magnolia said. ”Make dessert lunch?”
”Pecan pie and cheesecake,” Abbey said. ”And buy s.l.u.tty underwear.”
”That's a start,” Magnolia said.
”Pick different polish,” Lily insisted. ”Your nails have been Dead Red since 1999.”
The three of them deliberated over Lily's newest choices. Abbey chose Kinki in Helsinki. Magnolia considered Chocolate Moose, but decided it would make her fingers look as if she'd been digging for worms. Pink Slip? Definitely bad karma. She settled for Jewel of India, a shade the red of s.h.i.+raz. Magnolia guessed she could live with it for a week, and if things didn't work out at Bebe, perhaps she'd get a job naming cosmetics. Or erectile dysfunction drugs.
Kinki in Helsinki and Jewel of India progressed to the nail dryers.
”Give me your world news of the week,” Abbey said. Magnolia hit the high notes, compressing Bebe, the new office, and her cosmic panic to a chunk of conversation that she felt came across with minimal self-pity and admirable cheer. Magnolia wasn't up to a.n.a.lysis. She wanted only to coax herself into the right mood for tonight.
”All I'm thinking about now is Sub-Zero,” she said, knowing Abbey would see through her fiction but wouldn't press.
After lunch, Magnolia took a nap and didn't dream of Bebe, Jock, or Darlene, just a long riff involving Jude Law and chocolate.
She awoke refreshed, and dressed quickly. Magnolia had insisted to Harry-who lived in the Village, as did most ex-pat media Brits-that he didn't have to pick her up just to drive her back downtown for din ner. Women who played the high maintenance game infuriated her.
On the cab ride downtown, she ruminated on how second dates were loaded, especially when Date One lasted for eighteen hours and ended with a tasting menu of I'd-forgotten-how-this-feels s.e.x. Would the two of them fumble for conversation-the bioethics of lobster boiling, perhaps? Magnolia often wondered why couples in long rela tions.h.i.+ps didn't run out of chat but then considered her own parents.
After thirty-eight years of marriage, Fran and Eliot Goldfarb never failed to find something about which they didn't agree; conversation thus wasn't a problem.
Just this morning, when they called her-as they did every Satur day morning on the dot of ten-Magnolia's father thought he had the sure cure for her work-related problems. ”Quit and move out here to Southern California,” he said. ”I don't know why anyone in their right mind would put up with New York.”
”But, Eliot,” her mother interrupted, ”Magnolia is a magazine edi tor and New York is where all the magazines are. That's why she moved there. Am I right, Maggie, honey?”
”Right, Mom,” she said.
”Now tell me about Bebe,” she said. ”I've read that her last hus band was ten years younger and she had to pay him a fortune after they divorced? Is that true?”
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