Uptown Girl
Olivia Goldsmith

Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Permissions

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Acknowledgements

About the Author

Acclaim for Olivia Goldsmith

Also by Olivia Goldsmith

Copyright

About the Publisher

Dedication

To Nina and to Ethel Esther Brandsfronbrener Schutz A lover of books, mangos, oranges and me

Permissions

‘The Hokey Pokey’ ©1950 Sony/ATV Songs LLC.

Used by permission. All rights administered by

Sony/ATV Music Publishing.

1

Katherine Sean Jameson sat behind her desk and looked at her client. Although she was a published psychologist with a doctorate and had even completed some post-doc work, her office was simply furnished. It didn’t feature Freud’s classic psychiatric couch. That was because Kate Jameson wasn’t a Freudian, and certainly didn’t need an office full of relics and pottery shards to look at. To look at her what you’d see was rather a mildly pretty twenty-four-year-old (though she was actually thirty-one) with long curls of wild red hair. Now, as she looked at Brian Conroy, she unconsciously twisted those curls into an impromptu bun at the nape of her neck and pushed a pencil through it to hold it in place, a practiced motion.

It was warm. Her office was not air-conditioned and the breeze from the open window felt good on the back of her neck. Brian, looking intently at her, was sweating, but it could just as easily have been from nerves as from the unseasonable April heat.

Kate sat silently. Silence was an important part of her work, though not something that came naturally. But she had learned that at times stillness and space were all that were needed.

Not today apparently. Brian pulled his eyes guiltily away from hers and looked around the office. Instead of the usual museum reproductions, all of the wall space not covered by bookshelves displayed pictures done by children – some of them very disturbing. Kate watched, waiting to see if Brian’s attention focused on one. Like Rorschach’s ink blot test, artistic expression often helped to open doors. She withheld a sigh. She was trying to wait Brian out but was conscious of their time ticking away and for his sake she needed immediate results. Brian was obviously in crisis. His teacher said he was showing signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder or even schizophrenia and was disrupting the class. And disruption simply wasn’t allowed at Andrew Country Day School. A private school in a smart neighborhood in Manhattan, it accepted only the best and the brightest – of students and staff. Every amenity was provided, from an indoor swimming pool to a state-of-the-art computer center, to language lessons that included Japanese and French for six-year-olds. That’s why there was a school psychologist. Kate had only gotten the plum job recently, and Brian, like other kids who showed the slightest ‘difficult’ behavior, seemed to be immediately remanded to her office. Nothing was to disrupt the smooth daily ingestion of information by the children of the elite.

‘Do you know why you’ve come here, Brian?’ she asked, her voice gentle. Brian shook his head. Kate rose from her desk, moved around it and sat down in one of the small chairs beside her eight-year-old ‘client’. ‘Can you guess?’ He shook his head. ‘Well, do you think it’s for eating gummy elephants in school?’

He looked at her for a moment then shook his head again. ‘There’s no such thing as gummy elephants.’

‘Gummy rhinos?’ Kate asked. Brian shook his head again. ‘Eating peanut butter and raccoon sandwiches at your desk?’

‘It wasn’t for eating anything,’ he said. Then he lowered his voice to barely a whisper. ‘It was for talking. Talking in class.’

Kate nodded, the pencil fell out of her bun and her hair cascaded down over her face while the pencil clattered to the floor. Brian smiled and actually let a giggle escape before he covered his mouth. Good, Kate thought. She leaned closer to her little patient. ‘You’re not just here for talking in class, Brian. If you were just talking in class, then you’d be sent to the principal’s office, right?’

Brian’s adorable face gazed up at Kate with terrified eyes. ‘Are you worse than the principal?’ he whispered.

Kate felt such empathy for the boy at that moment that she was tempted to take his hand in hers, but he was so very anxious that he might shy away. This kind of work was so delicate – like dealing with Venetian spun glass where the slightest jolt could shatter it – and she often felt so clumsy.

‘Nobody is worse than the principal,’ Kate said. Then she smiled and winked at Brian. None of the kids at Andrew Country Day liked Mr McKay and – as so often – their instincts were good. ‘Do I look as bad as Mr McKay?’ Kate asked, feigning shock.

Brian shook his head vigorously.

‘Well. Thank goodness. Anyway I do something different. You aren’t here to be punished because you didn’t do anything wrong. But everybody hears you talking – even though you’re not talking to anybody.’ She watched as Brian’s eyes filled with tears.

‘I’ll be quieter,’ he promised. Kate wanted to scoop him up onto her lap and let him cry as long as he needed to. After all, his mother had just died of cancer and he was still so very young. Kate’s own mother had passed away when she was eleven, and that had been almost unbearable.

She dared to take one of the boy’s hands in hers and said, ‘I don’t want you to be quiet, Brian. You do what you need to. But I’d like to know what you’re saying.’

Brian shook his head again. His eyes changed from tearful to frightened. ‘I can’t tell,’ he whispered. Then he averted his face. He mumbled something else and Kate only managed to hear one word but it was enough.

Go slow, she told herself. Go very, very slowly and casually. ‘You’re doing magic?’ she asked. Brian, face still turned away, nodded his head, but didn’t speak. Kate was already afraid she had gone too far. She held her breath. Then, after a long moment, she lowered her own voice to a whisper and asked, ‘Why can’t you tell?’

‘Because …’ Brian started, then it burst out of him ‘… because it’s magic and you can’t tell magic or your wish won’t come true. Like birthday candles. Everybody knows that!’ He got up and walked to the corner of the room.

Kate actually felt relieved. The boy wasn’t schizophrenic. He was caught in a typical childhood trap: total powerlessness combined with hopeless longing and guilt. A toxic cocktail. Kate gave Brian a moment. She didn’t want him to feel trapped. Yet he shouldn’t be alone with this pain. She approached him slowly, the way you might move toward a strange puppy. She put her hand on the little boy’s shoulder. ‘Your wish is about your mother, isn’t it?’ she asked, her voice as neutral as she could manage to keep it. Brian didn’t need any of her emotions – he needed space for his own. ‘Isn’t that right?’

Brian looked up at her and nodded. His face registered a cautious relief. The dreadful burdens of childhood secrets always touched Kate. Though she was a long-lapsed Catholic, she still remembered the power and release of the confessional. She had to serve this child well. ‘What are you wishing for?’ she asked, her voice as gentle as she could make it.

Brian began to cry. His face, usually so pale, flushed deep rose. Speaking through his tears, he said, ‘I thought if I just said “Mommy, come back” a million times that she would be back.’ He sobbed and put his face against Kate’s skirt. ‘But it isn’t working. I think I’ve said it two million times.’

Kate’s own eyes filled with tears. She took a deep breath. She could feel the heat of Brian’s face through the thin fabric of her skirt. The hell with professional detachment. She scooped Brian into her arms and over to one of the chairs. He was as small and light as a crushed sparrow. The boy nestled against her. After a time he stopped crying, but his silent neediness was even sadder. They sat for a few moments, but Kate knew their session was nearly over and she had to speak. ‘Oh, Brian, I am so sorry,’ she told him. ‘But magic doesn’t work. I wish it did. The doctors did everything they could to help your mommy. They couldn’t fix her and magic can’t fix that. It’s not your fault that the doctors couldn’t save her.’ She paused. ‘And it’s not your fault your mommy can’t come back.’ Kate sighed. Breaking children’s hearts, even to help them, had not been in her job description. ‘But she can’t and your magic can’t work.’

Brian suddenly pushed against her, wriggling his way out of her embrace. He stood up and looked angrily at her. ‘Why not?’ he demanded. ‘Why can’t my magic work?’ He glared at Kate for another moment then pushed her hard and barreled out of the room, nearly knocking over the dollhouse. The office door crashed and rebounded open. From down the hall, she heard a voice – Elliot Winston’s – try to stop Brian. ‘Shut up, you stinky dick!’ Brian shouted. Kate winced and listened to the little boy’s footsteps recede.

A moment later, Elliot stuck his head around Kate’s door. ‘Another satisfied customer?’ he asked, his eyebrows raised nearly to his receding hairline. ‘Perhaps you should have stuck with French.’

Kate had majored in French as an undergraduate. For a while she had even considered continuing her language studies in graduate school. She had never regretted not doing so, because her work with the children was so satisfying, but, occasionally, particularly at moments like this one, Elliot – one of the math teachers, and her best friend – teased her about her choice.

‘As I recall, the German for “stinky dick” would be reichende Steine. What would you say in French?’

‘I would say you are very annoying,’ Kate told him. ‘That’s good enough. And that Brian and I are making some progress. He expressed some of his true feelings today.’

‘Brian also expressed his feelings about me and my genital odor. Congratulations on your progress.’ Elliot stepped into the room and sat beside the dollhouse in an overstuffed chair – the only piece of adult-size furniture in Kate’s office aside from her own desk and chair. Elliot was dark-haired, average in height, slightly over-average in weight and possessed a much, much higher than average IQ. As usual he was wearing wrinkled chinos, a baggy T-shirt and a clashing open-necked shirt on top. Putting his feet up on the toy box, he opened his lunch sack.

Kate sighed. She and Elliot usually had lunch together. But, today, Elliot had had the dreaded cafeteria duty and was just now, at nearly two thirty, getting a chance to eat. She delighted in his company but she was melancholy from her session with Brian. Elliot, fresh from the horror of the lunchroom, was blithely unaware of her mood as he pulled out several items and tore into a sandwich that smelled suspiciously like corned beef.

‘Brian is in Sharon’s class, isn’t he?’ Elliot asked too casually.

Kate nodded. ‘Poor kid. His mother dies and his teacher is the Wicked Witch of the Upper West Side.’ Kate had to smile. Neither she nor Elliot had much use for Sharon Jones, a truly lazy teacher and a deeply annoying woman.

‘So aside from a recently deceased mom, what’s bugging Brian?’ Elliot asked.

Kate felt too brittle for their usual badinage. ‘You have mustard on your chin,’ she told him, but as Elliot reached up to wipe it, the glob fell onto his shirt.

‘Oops,’ he said and dabbed ineffectually at his shirtfront with one of the hard paper towels from the school’s bathrooms. The yellow splotch looked particularly hideous on the green of his shirt. Watching Elliot eat, Kate often thought, was a spectator sport.

‘He believes that magic can bring his mother back,’ she sighed wistfully.

‘See? See what I mean? They’re all obsessed with witches and wizards. Damn that Harry Potter!’ Elliot said, then took another huge bite of the sandwich. ‘So what’s your prescription?’

‘I want him to give up the magic and get in touch with his anger and pain,’ Kate answered.

‘Oi vey!’ Elliot said with the best Yiddish accent a gay man from Indiana could ever manage. ‘When will you give up on this quest to get every little boy at Andrew Country Day in touch with his true feelings? And why discourage magic in his case? What else does the kid have?’

‘Oh, come on, Elliot! Because magic won’t work and he mustn’t think it’s his fault when it fails.’ She shook her head. ‘You of all people. A trained statistician. A man who could trade this job in, triple your salary and become chief actuary at any pension fund. You’re telling me to encourage magic?’

Elliot shrugged. ‘Haven’t you ever had magical things happen?’

Kate refused the bait. Elliot, raised in the Midwest and stoic to the bone, had told her ‘the unexamined life is the only one livable’. He often challenged her about the efficacy of psychology. Now, just to annoy her, he was going to take a perverse stand on magic. ‘If you think you’re going to start an argument today, Elliot,’ she warned him, ‘you’re out of your mind.’ Then, to annoy him – as well as for his own good – she added, ‘I didn’t think corned beef was good for your cholesterol.’

‘Oh, what’s a few hundred points one way or the other?’ he asked cheerfully, swallowing another mouthful.

‘You’ve got a death wish,’ Kate said.

‘Ooooh. Harsh words from a shrink.’ Elliot winced mockingly as he opened a Snapple.

‘Look, I’m leaving,’ she told him, gathering some notes from her desk and putting them into her file cabinet. If she left now she’d be able to do a bit of shopping before meeting her friend Bina. She took a lipstick and mirror out of her purse, dabbed the color over her mouth and smiled wide to make sure she didn’t have lipstick on her teeth. ‘I’ll see you for dinner.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘None of your bee’s wax.’

‘A secret? Come on. Tell! What if I threw a tantrum like Brian did?’ Elliot reached into the toy box at his feet. Then he hurled a stuffed bear in Kate’s direction. ‘Would you tell me then?’ The plush missile hit her squarely in the face. Elliot curled up in the chair, held his hands in front of his own face and started to beg rapidly. ‘It was an accident. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’

‘I’ll show you sorry,’ Kate warned as she threw the bear back at Elliot, but missed.

‘You throw like a girl,’ Elliot taunted. Then he picked up another animal and threw it at Kate. ‘Duck!’ he called as he reached for yet another toy to throw. It was indeed a duck, yellow and fluffy.

‘Duck this, you math nerd,’ Kate almost shouted as she grabbed a fuzzy rabbit and pummeled Elliot’s head. It felt good to blow off some steam.

‘Abuse! Abuse!’ Elliot screamed in delight as he rolled off the chair to protect himself. ‘Teacher abuse! Teacher abuse!’

‘Shut up, you idiot!’ Kate told him and rushed to close the office door. She turned from it just in time to get a stuffed elephant right in the face. Stunned for only a moment, Kate grabbed the pachyderm and lunged at Elliot. ‘I’ll show you abuse, you sniveling cholesterol warehouse,’ she threatened as she fell on top of Elliot and beat him repeatedly with the toy.

Elliot fought back with both an inflatable flamingo and a stuffed dog. He might be gay, but he was no wussy. When he and Kate were both exhausted (and – sadly – the flamingo’s leg was punctured), they sat panting and laughing together in the big chair, Kate on top. The door opened.

‘Excuse me?’ Mr McKay asked, but despite his words he wasn’t the type to excuse anything. ‘I thought I heard a ruckus in here.’

Mr McKay, the principal of Andrew Country Day lower school, was a hypocrite, a social climber, a control freak and a very bad dresser. He also had a knack of using words no one else had used for several decades.

‘A ruckus?’ Elliot asked.

‘We were just testing out a new therapy,’ Kate extemporized. ‘Did it disturb you?’ she asked innocently.

‘Well, it was certainly loud,’ George McKay complained.

‘From the little I know of it, AAT – Airborne Animal Therapy – can frequently be noisy,’ Elliot said, po-faced, ‘although it’s having significant measurable success in schools for the gifted where it’s being pioneered. Of course,’ he added, ‘it might not be right for this setting.’ He nodded at Kate. ‘I’m not the expert,’ he said as if he were deferring to Kate’s professional judgment. She smothered a laugh with a cough.

‘We’ll put this off until after three o’clock, Mr McKay,’ she promised.

‘All right then,’ he said primly. He left as suddenly as he had arrived, shutting the door with a firm but controlled click. Kate and Elliot looked at one another, waited for a count of ten, then burst into giggles that they had to stifle.

‘AAT?’ Kate gurgled.

‘Hey, straight men love acronyms. Think of the army. He’ll be on the internet in less than ten minutes searching for Airborne Animal Therapy,’ Elliot predicted. He stood up and began collecting the stuffed animals. Kate got up to help him. The irony of the situation was that Elliot had helped Kate get hired and since then George McKay had told several teachers that he suspected them of having an affair. Ridiculous as that idea was, the sight of the two of them in the chair was not one to instill confidence in George McKay, who had frequently announced at teachers’ meetings that he ‘discouraged fraternizing among professional educational co-workers’.

When Kate and her ‘professional educational co-worker’ finished laughing she smoothed her skirt and put her hair back up, this time with a barrette she found in her drawer. Elliot was standing still, looking down at the chair. He heaved a dramatic sigh.

‘Oh shit!’ he told her. ‘You crushed my banana.’ He held up the mangled fruit from his lunch bag which had slipped under them during the battle.

Kate turned, struck the pose of a femme fatale and rasped, ‘How times have changed. You used to like it when I did that.’

Elliot laughed. ‘I’ll leave all banana handling to you and Michael.’

Kate’s new boyfriend, Dr Michael Atwood, was going with her to dinner at Elliot’s place. Kate felt a little flurry in her stomach at the thought. She hoped they’d like each other.

‘If I don’t leave now, I’ll be late tonight,’ Kate told him.

‘Okay, okay.’

She picked up her purse to prepare for leaving.

‘So you like your work so far,’ Elliot said. Kate nodded. She loved it. ‘But even though I helped you get the job, you’re still not going to let me know where you’re going.’

Kate didn’t bother to answer. Elliot was what people in Brooklyn called ‘a noodge’.

2

In all the years Kate had known Elliot – over ten now – he’d always managed to cheer her up when she was sad and support her in her successes. Now, as they walked down the corridor to his classroom, she glanced at him affectionately. The stretched-out orange T-shirt, the ugly green over-shirt decorated with mustard, the slight love handles and the wrinkled chinos didn’t make him look like much but he had a keen mind and was a loving and generous friend. She felt a swell of gratitude toward him. As always, he had cheered her up and helped her make the break from school. Kate was proud of the work she did with the kids. She had learned a lot from them, too. For one thing, the school catered to the children of the rich and successful but Kate saw that money, privilege, and education brought as much misery as had her own deprived childhood. She had lost her resentment of those with money and she was grateful for that. She had not picked her calling for the money it earned; in fact, she regarded her work as a kind of vocation. It was one thing she never made light of, and she often found it hard to leave it behind at the end of the day. But tonight she had to, to help Bina prepare for her big night, and then, later, to introduce Michael to Elliot and his partner Brice at dinner.

She waited just inside Elliot’s classroom as he chucked the offending lunch sack in a bin and started messing about in his untidy desk.

‘You know, it’s very hard not to keep thinking about Brian. He’s so adorable, and has had a really difficult time. And I think the disappointment when his magic doesn’t work, which of course it won’t, could cause real problems later.’ Kate sighed. ‘Boys are just so much more fragile than girls.’

‘Tell me about it.’ Elliot sighed deeply too. ‘I’m still getting over the time Phyllis Bellusico told me I smelled.’

‘Did you?’ Kate asked, ready to be either his straight man or his audience. She was used to Elliot’s shticks. Since college they had been amusing one another with dark humor from their childhoods.

‘Well, yes,’ Elliot admitted reluctantly, ‘but I smelled good. I should have. I’d dumped an entire bottle of my mother’s White Shoulders into my underpants.’

‘Pee-yuw.’ Kate imitated any one of her lower school ‘clients’. ‘Maybe Brian has a point. I’d have to agree with Phyllis,’ she said. ‘And this happened …?’

‘… In third grade, but with a little more therapy and Brice’s love and support I expect to get over it in the next decade.’

Kate loved it when Elliot got going. She had to laugh.

Elliot had been tormented by kids in school. After a moment he said, ‘I have to go to Dean & Deluca to get rice for our dinner tonight. Brice is making his world-famous risotto. You can tell Michael it’s your recipe. The way to a man’s heart …’

Kate looked up with a suspicious glance. ‘Yeah, and please be on your best behavior. Elliot,’ she began, ‘can’t you just …’

‘No,’ Elliot retorted, ‘I can’t just anything.’ He walked over to her and gave her a quick hug. ‘I don’t want to discourage or criticize you. I just want to make sure you know what you’re doing.’

‘Oh, God, Elliot! Who knows what they’re doing when they try to find a soul mate?’

‘Well, you have a point there. But I don’t want you to be hurt again, Kate.’ He paused. Kate knew where he was going and she didn’t want him to. Her last entanglement had ended so badly that she didn’t know how she would have gotten through it without Elliot. She had invested a lot of time and emotion in Steven Kaplan, all of it worse than wasted. It had left her more suspicious and distrusting of men than she liked to admit. One of the good things about Michael was that she could trust him completely. He might not have Steven’s banter and easy charm but he had substance and achievement and sincerity. At least she thought so.

‘That’s why you’re meeting Michael.’

‘Ever since Steven, I get to meet your new boyfriends. I’d like you to just find the right one and make him an old boyfriend.’

‘He’s thirty-four. Old enough?’

Elliot rolled his eyes. ‘I worry about you.’ Kate looked directly at Elliot. ‘This one is different. He’s got his doctorate in anthropology and he’s very promising.’

‘Promising what? You always think they’re different and you always think they’re promising, until they bore you and then …’

‘Oh, stop,’ Kate interrupted. ‘I know: I won’t pick losers on account of my father and I won’t pick winners on account of my father. Yadda, yadda, yadda.’

‘Don’t leave out your fear of commitment, yadda.’ ‘I’ll have you committed if you bring that up one more time. How come for thirty-one years you’re allowed to be a gay bachelor – in both respects of the phrase – and then one day you hook up with Brice. Bingo! But since then I’m neurotic for not doing the same.’

‘Hey, I don’t want you to hook up with Brice,’ Elliot mock-protested. ‘We’re both strictly monogamous.’

‘I can’t tell you how relieved I am to hear that,’ Kate retorted. ‘But don’t project your fears onto me. It isn’t easy to find a kind-hearted, dependable, intelligent, sensual single man in Manhattan.’

‘Tell me about it!’ Elliot exclaimed. ‘I had to try almost every guy on the island before I met Brice.’

‘Try not to be bitter, Elliot. I try so hard not to be.’ She reached up and wiped off a remaining bit of banana from his mouth with her thumb, then gave him a little peck on the lips. ‘Do you really have to be gay?’ It wasn’t the first time she had asked him that. Ever since their college years – when the two of them became instant friends during a calculus class that bored him and that Kate had barely managed to pass – Kate had depended on Elliot to be her friend, sometimes her brother, more often her sister, and occasionally even her father. Elliot was family. Still, like family, he could be a pain in the ass. Then she smiled. Elliot was everything to her, except her lover. And sometimes she thought that’s what made her love him the most. Elliot was safe. Unlike the other men in her life, Elliot would always be there.

‘What makes you think I’m gay?’ Elliot asked with wide-eyed innocence. ‘Is that your professional opinion, Doctor, or just a guess? Is it my spectator pumps?’

In fact, Elliot was not a flamboyant homosexual. He didn’t look or act like what Kate’s old Brooklyn crowd might have called ‘a fag’ and, like most of the young gay men in New York, he didn’t go in for the high-maintenance GQ look. Elliot looked and acted like a grade school math teacher – no, what he looked like, she thought affectionately, was a classic nerd: the only thing missing was the broken glasses held together with a paper clip.

‘How did a little queer kid from Indiana get to be so well adjusted?’ Kate asked him, also not for the first time.

Elliot reached over, took one of Kate’s hands and held it in both of his. ‘Listen closely,’ he told her, ‘because I am going to tell you something from Indiana about getting in touch with your true feelings.’ He looked at her intently and asked, ‘Are you listening, because I am not going to repeat this.’ Kate nodded, and Elliot continued. ‘I got in touch with my true feelings by learning how to mask them very early in life. When you realize that your true feelings are most likely going to get the shit kicked out of you, you learn how to hide them for as long as you have to. You wait for a safe place to express them.’ He smiled and gave Kate’s hand a gentle squeeze. ‘Like I do with you and Brice. But I wouldn’t tell a kid to try and find a best friend and a lover here at Andrew Country Day.’

‘I hear you,’ Kate agreed, and thought of poor Brian again.

‘So, what are you doing before dinner? Feel like making the trip to Dean & Deluca with me first?’

Kate noticed the time – she’d have to hurry now – and gathered up her backpack and cotton sweater. ‘No can do. I must run. I have a date.’

‘You’re meeting this early with Michael?’ Elliot asked, surprised. ‘You have a date with him before he’s coming to dinner with us?’

‘It’s not with Michael.’

‘You have another date with someone else before Michael? And I don’t know about it?’ Elliot’s voice rose with shock and offense. ‘How could that happen? On average we speak six point four times a day in person and two point nine times by phone. A date I don’t know everything about is a statistical improbability.’

Kate rolled her eyes and decided to put him out of his misery. ‘It’s just a date with Bina. Barbie’s told her Jack is finally popping the question tonight – they’re going to Nobu because Jack wants to make it really special – and to help prepare her I’m taking her out for a manicure.’ She wriggled her fingers in the air. ‘They should look good for the ring,’ she said in an accent similar to Bina’s Brooklynese.

‘You’re kidding! And you didn’t tell me?’ Elliot asked.

She shrugged, slipped on her jacket, shouldered her bag and started toward the door. ‘I guess not.’

Elliot followed her to the school door. ‘The fabled Bina and the much-sought-after Jack. Together at last.’

‘Yep, wedding bells have broken up that old gang of mine,’ Kate said. ‘Bye-bye Bitches of Bushwick. It’s only Bunny and me left unmarried.’ She looked down at her Swatch, refusing to engage with the depression this thought gave her. ‘Gotta go.’

‘Where are you and Bina getting together?’ Elliot demanded.

‘In SoHo,’ Kate answered, as she pushed against the bar of the school safety door.

‘Oh, good. I’m going that way. Just let me pick up my stuff.’

‘Forget it,’ Kate told him sternly.

‘No. No. Wait for me!’ he begged. ‘We can take the subway together and I can finally meet Bina.’

Kate tried to keep her face still. Elliot had waged a year’s-long campaign to meet her old Brooklyn gang. But Kate didn’t need it. In fact, as she’d made clear more times than she could count, she loathed the idea. She’d tried in the dozen years since she’d left home to erase most of the dark memories of her troubled background and though she was still close friends with Bina Horowitz and occasionally saw her other pals, she didn’t need Elliot’s jaundiced eye appraising them.

Kate gave him a look. She disappeared out of the door, then called back, ‘You need to meet Bina like I need another unemployed boyfriend.’

She thought she was safely away and down the steps of the school when she heard Elliot behind her. He had a madras hat on and was clutching his backpack with one hand while he ran in a crouch that was a cross between Groucho’s walk and a begging position. ‘Oh, come on,’ he pleaded. ‘It’s not fair.’

‘Tragic. Absolutely tragic. Just like so many things in life,’ Kate told him and kept on walking while he flapped at his other backpack strap.

‘How come I never get to meet any of your Brooklyn friends? They sound so fascinating,’ he demanded.

Kate stopped in the schoolyard and turned back to Elliot. ‘Bina may be a lot of things, but fascinating is not one of them.’ The girl had been her best friend since third grade and was still, in some ways, the most dependable. Kate had spent every holiday and most summer vacations at Bina’s, partly because the Horowitz house was so clean and orderly and Bina’s mom was so kind, but mostly because it allowed Kate to avoid the empty apartment that was her home or, worse, her father who was too often drunk.

If Kate had perhaps outgrown Bina, who’d dropped out of Brooklyn College and worked at her father’s chiropractic office, it didn’t stop her from loving her. It was just that they had different interests and none of Bina’s would appeal to Elliot or any other of her Manhattan friends.

‘Elliot,’ Kate said sternly, as they made their way down the street. ‘You know your interest in Bina is only idle curiosity.’

‘Come on,’ Elliot coaxed. ‘Let me come. Anyway, it’s a free country. The Constitution says so.’

Kate snorted. ‘Like the US Constitution, I believe in the separation of church and state.’

‘No,’ retorted Elliot, ‘you believe in the separation of gay and straight.’

‘That’s not fair. I let you have dinner with Rita and me only a week ago.’ She wasn’t going to let him manipulate her with his politically correct blackmail. ‘You’re not meeting Bina because even though she’s my oldest friend, you have nothing, absolutely nothing, in common with her.’

‘I like people I have nothing in common with,’ Elliot argued. ‘That’s why I like you and live with Brice.’

‘Don’t be greedy, you’re getting to meet Michael tonight,’ said Kate. ‘Isn’t that enough for two yentas like you and Brice?’

‘Yeah,’ said Elliot, giving in. ‘It will have to do.’

Kate laughed and said, ‘Come on, I’m going to be late for my girly date. Let me give you some advice I gave Jennifer Whalen just a couple of hours ago. “Try to make your own friends dear.”’

They were at the IRT subway entrance. She gave Elliot a big smile and then hugged him goodbye. He shrugged, admitting his defeat. As she descended into the shadow of the subway, Elliot shouted after her, ‘Don’t forget; dinner’s at eight!’

‘See ya there!’ she yelled back and ran to get the train.

3

Kate and Bina walked down Lafayette Street, gazing in the windows of the fashion boutiques and art galleries that lined the SoHo strip. Kate looked and felt at home in SoHo. She would have liked to live in the neighborhood, but it was far too pricey for a school psychologist’s salary. Her apartment was on the West Side, in Chelsea, but Kate could pass as a downtown hipster. Bina Horowitz, on the other hand, was still all Brooklyn: her dark hair too done, her clothes all ‘matchy-matchy’, as Barbie used to say back in high school. Short, a little dumpy, and wearing too much gold, the truth was that Bina stuck out like a sore thumb among the modelesque shoppers converging in one of the coolest sections of downtown Manhattan. That didn’t stop Kate from loving her friend dearly but she was grateful for all she herself had learned about style from Brice, college, Manhattan boutiques and her current New York friends. She’d left her Brooklyn look far behind, thank goodness.

‘My God, Katie, I don’t know how you live here,’ Bina said. ‘These people in Manhattan are the reason girls all over the country go anorexic.’ Kate just laughed, though Bina was far from wrong. Bina continued to crane her head around at every opportunity, slowing them down to look at a pedestrian painting of a nude at which she raised her brows, a dress shop window where the clothes were torn into strips, and to marvel at the boutique called Center for the Dull. Kate had to explain it was just a clothing store like Yellow Rat Bastard – a store that Kate didn’t shop in though she did have a shopping bag of theirs.

‘Why all the confusing names?’ Bina asked. ‘And isn’t it hot?’ she added, fanning herself frantically with a flyer for a failing off-off-Broadway show that some guy had just shoved into her hand as they walked by. He hadn’t tried to palm one off on Kate, but then she didn’t look like the kind of person who accepted garbage.

‘Well, it is nearly summer,’ Kate observed. She tried to quicken their pace – the salon was notorious for demanding promptness – but Bina was Bina and she simply couldn’t be rushed or silenced. The Horowitz family had taken Kate in when she was eleven and Kate knew practically everything about Bina. Kate had once done the math and realized Mrs Horowitz had fed her more than five hundred meals (most of them made with chicken fat). Dr Horowitz had taught her to ride a two-wheeler bike when Kate’s own father was too drunk or too lazy (or both) to bother to do it. Bina’s brother Dave had taught the two of them to swim in the municipal pool, and Kate still swam laps three times a week. Kate was grateful and loved Bina, but she had to admit that Bina was the Mistress of the Obvious in most of her observations.

‘It’s really hot,’ Bina said, as if Kate needed proof of her belief.

Back in Brooklyn, when Kate had had no other outlet and longed for more sophisticated friends – like Elliot and Brice and Rita – with whom she could banter or talk about books, Bina had sometimes annoyed her. But now that she had a circle of intellectual, cosmopolitan pals, she could give up the frustration over Bina’s provincial interests and conversation and simply love her good heart.

‘It’s really hot,’ Bina repeated – a habit she had when Kate didn’t respond to her.

‘Is it hotter in Manhattan than it is in Brooklyn?’ Kate asked her, teasing.

‘It’s always hotter in Manhattan than it is in Brooklyn,’ Bina confirmed, completely missing Kate’s mild irony. Bina definitely had an irony deficiency. ‘It’s all these damned sidewalks and all this traffic.’ Bina looked up and down Lafayette Street and shook her head in disgust. ‘I couldn’t live here,’ she muttered, as if the choice was hers and million-dollar lofts were an option she and Jack could consider. ‘I just couldn’t do it.’

‘And you don’t,’ Kate reminded her, ‘so what’s the problem?’

Bina stopped fanning herself abruptly, looked at Kate with wide-eyed appeal and meekly asked the question that she always asked midway through one of her anti-Manhattan tirades. ‘Am I being horrible?’

Kate felt a rush of affection overcome her annoyance and, as always, remembered why she loved Bina. Then she gave her the answer that she always did: ‘Same old Bina.’

‘Same old Kate,’ Bina responded, in the litany they’d used to make peace and settle differences for two decades.

Kate grinned. The two of them were right back on track. Kate could neither imagine introducing Bina to her Manhattan friends nor imagine life without Bina – although she sometimes tried. Bina absolutely refused to grow and that was both irritating and comforting to Kate – and sometimes downright embarrassing.

Just as they crossed Spring Street, Bina, as if reading Kate’s thoughts, virtually shouted, ‘God, look at him!’

Kate turned her head, expecting, at least, to see a mugging in progress. Instead, across the street a pierced and tattooed guy of about their own age was going about his business.

Not the slightest bit fazed by the local wildlife, Kate didn’t even comment and merely looked down at her watch. ‘We can’t be late,’ she warned Bina. ‘I have something special reserved.’ And, to change the subject – ‘So have you picked out a manicure color?’

Bina dragged her eyes away from the local sideshow with obvious difficulty and focused instead on Kate. ‘I was thinking of a French manicure,’ she admitted.

Kate felt distinctly unenthusiastic and it must have shown. Bina had been having the tips of her nails painted white with the rest a natural pink since high school.

‘What’s wrong with a French manicure?’ Bina asked defensively.

‘Nothing, if you’re French,’ Kate retorted, having conveniently forgotten her teenage days when she, too, thought a French manicure the height of sophistication. Bina looked puzzled by Kate’s remark. Kate had also forgotten Bina’s irony deficiency. ‘Hey. Why don’t you go for something a little more up-to-date?’

Bina held out her hands and studied them. Kate noticed she was still wearing the Claddagh friendship ring Kate had given her for her sweet sixteen. ‘Go for something … daring,’ Kate suggested.

‘Like what?’ Bina asked defensively. ‘A tattoo on my fingernails?’

‘Oooh, sarcasm. The devil’s weapon,’ Kate said.

‘Jack likes French manicures,’ Bina whined, still looking at her left hand. ‘Don’t push me around like you always try to.’ Then she dropped her hands to her sides. They were both silent for a moment. ‘I’m sorry,’ Bina said. ‘I’m just a little nervous. You know, I’ve been waiting for Jack to propose for over …’

‘… Six years?’ Kate asked, forgiving her friend. She had to stop giving unwanted advice, which was difficult for a woman with her temperament in her profession. She smiled at Bina as they continued down the street. ‘I think on your first date with Jack you started designing the monograms for your towels.’

Jack and Bina had been seeing each other for so many years. He had been her first and only real love. He’d made her wait while he finished college, got his degree and became a CPA.

Bina giggled. ‘Well, I knew right away he was the one. Such a hottie.’

Kate reflected on the wide variation of people’s tastes. To her Jack was so far from a hottie that he left her ice-cold. Of course she’d never, ever, in all the six years of their courtship revealed that to Bina. And Bina had thought Steven was sour and gaunt, while to Kate he’d been … Her thoughts were interrupted by Bina’s continued chatter. ‘I just can’t believe now that he’s leaving for Hong Kong for five months tomorrow, and tonight’s the night …’ Bina trailed off, her voice unsteady.

There were few secrets among Kate’s old Brooklyn posse, so when Jack had consulted with Barbie’s jeweler father to get ‘a good deal’ on an engagement ring, the news had traveled faster than e-mail among them. The day Bina had waited for for so long had finally arrived but when Kate glanced at her friend, Bina looked anything but happy. Surely she couldn’t be having second thoughts. But Kate knew Bina well enough to see that something wasn’t right.

Oh my God, thought Kate. Bina has changed her mind and she’s afraid to tell anyone. Her parents – especially Mrs Horowitz – would be beside themselves if … ‘You’re starting to have doubts?’ she asked, as gently as she could, stopping to look at her friend. ‘You know, Bina, you don’t have to marry Jack.’

‘Are you crazy? Of course I do! I want to. I’m just nervous that … well, I’m just nervous. Normal, right? Hey, where is this place anyway?’

‘Just to the left on Broome,’ Kate said. And if Bina didn’t want to talk about her nerves it was fine, she told herself. Give the girl a little space. ‘This is the Police Building,’ she said as a diversion while they passed the domed monument that Teddy Roosevelt had built when he was chief of police. ‘It’s condos now,’ she went on, ‘and they found a secret tunnel from here to the speakeasy across the street so …’

‘… So the Irish cops wouldn’t be caught getting drunk,’ Bina said, then stopped in embarrassment. Kate just smiled. Her father, a retired Irish cop, had died three years ago from cirrhosis of the liver and she couldn’t help but consider it a release for both of them. It was the Horowitzes who couldn’t get over it.

‘No harm, no foul,’ Kate told her. ‘We’re almost there, and we’re only four minutes late. You’re going to like this place. They have great nail colors, but just in case I bought a few alternatives for you.’ Kate scrabbled around in her Prada bag – the only purse she owned, and she carried it everywhere. It had cost her an entire paycheck but every time she opened it, it gave her pleasure. Now she pulled out a little bag. It contained three nail polishes, each one a wildly different seductive shade.

Bina took the bag and peeked into it. ‘Ooooh! They look like the magic beans from Jack and the Beanstalk,’ she said. Then she started to giggle. ‘Get it? Jack and his Beanstalk?’ she asked, suggestively raising her eyebrows.

Kate gave Bina her ‘I’m-not-in-the-mood’ look. Clearly her moment of nervousness had passed. ‘Hey, spare me the details of Jack’s beanstalk or any other part of his anatomy,’ she begged. ‘Consider that your bridesmaid’s gift to me.’ Kate took Bina’s arm to get her around the guy selling used magazines on the sidewalk and across to their destination.

Just then, as they crossed the street, Bina stopped – as if the Manhattan traffic would wait for her – and pointed to the corner. ‘Ohmigod! That’s Bunny’s ex.’ Kate looked in the right direction as she simultaneously pulled Bina’s arm down. She was about to tell her not to point when she caught sight of one of the best-looking men she had ever seen. He was tall and slim, and his jeans and jacket had the perfect casual slouch. The sun reflected off his hair as if he had a halo around his head. He had stopped for the light, and before he began to cross the street he fished in his inside pocket.

‘He went out with Bunny?’ Kate asked. Of her posse, Bunny was probably the most garish and certainly the dimmest bulb.

Bina nodded. Kate could only see the movement in her peripheral vision because she couldn’t tear her eyes off the man just twenty feet away.

‘Are you sure that’s him?’

Just then a taxi honked, the driver deciding he would warn them before he ran them over. With a shriek from Bina the two of them scampered across the street. By the time they had walked single file between parked cars and got to the sidewalk, the Adonis had put on sunglasses and strode away.

‘What color do you think I should do for bridesmaids?’ Bina asked.

Kate repressed a groan. Bev had them all in silver and Barbie had picked a pistachio green that not even a blonde could wear without looking sallow. ‘How about basic black?’ Kate asked, but she knew there wasn’t a hope in hell. She sighed. She and Bunny would be the last of their high school crowd not to be married – at least there was still Bunny. Kate would try not to mind, but everyone else would. No one at Bina’s wedding would leave the naked state of her left finger unnoted. ‘Please, Bina! Don’t make me walk down that aisle again. Why not just make me wear a sign that says “unmarriageable”?’

‘Kate, you have to be my maid of honor. Barbie was always closer to Bunny and Bev … well, Bev never really liked me.’

‘Bev has never liked anyone,’ Kate informed Bina, not for the first time, and took her arm. ‘Hey, I’m really touched.’

The pair came up to the door of the salon. Kate held the door open for Bina, who nervously stepped inside.

4

Kate knew the spa was unlike any place Bina had ever seen in her life – a sort of post-industrial French boudoir with Moorish touches. That was exactly why she had chosen it. Not to show off, but to make it very special for her friend. ‘This is,’ she informed Bina in a dramatic stage whisper, ‘the most expensive spa in the city of New York.’ She studied Bina’s face to make sure what she was telling her was sinking in. ‘And I mean the entire city,’ Kate continued.

‘Wow,’ was all Bina could manage, looking around at the sheer curtains, the concrete floor and the Louis XVI bergère armchair.

Kate smiled and walked up to the counter. A chic young Asian woman smiled back and, without speaking, raised her perfectly shaped eyebrows. They did a good brow wax here. ‘Kate Jameson,’ Kate announced. ‘There are the two of us here,’ she added, because Bina had disappeared shyly behind Kate. ‘For manicures, pedicures, and toe waxing.’

From behind, Bina whispered, ‘Toe waxing?’ but Kate ignored her. ‘We have a reservation. I have the confirmation number.’

‘It will be just a moment,’ said the beautiful receptionist. ‘Please, have a seat.’

Of course, that was difficult with just the one antique armchair, but Kate motioned for Bina to sit and she did, albeit gingerly.

Then she looked up at Kate and grabbed her hands. ‘Oh, Kate. I’m nervous. What happens if I go through all this and it jinxes me. What if Jack doesn’t …’

‘Bina, don’t be silly. You can’t “jinx” things.’ Kate sighed. ‘I just spent an hour trying to convince an eight-year-old that magic won’t work. Don’t make me repeat myself.’

‘Look, I know all about you. Little Miss Logic. But I’m superstitious, okay? No black cats, no hats on the bed, no shoes to friends.’

‘Shoes to friends?’

‘Yeah. You give shoes to a friend and she walks away from you,’ Bina said. ‘Don’t you know that?’

‘Bina, you are truly crazy,’ Kate said. ‘Anyway, this is your big day and I want to be a part of it. So relax and enjoy. Everything will be fine, and tonight with Jack will be wonderful.’

Bina still looked doubtful. She craned her neck and looked around again. ‘It just must be so expensive,’ she said. ‘You know, I can have all of the same thing done in Brooklyn at Kim’s Korean place for about one quarter the price. And I bet it’s every bit as good, too.’

Kate smiled. ‘Maybe – maybe not. But here you have ambience.’

‘Well, my mother would say “ambience, schmambience, paint my nails”.’

‘You know I love your mother, but sometimes she’s not up-to-date. And by the way, how do you spell schmambience?’ Kate asked with a smile.

‘You don’t,’ Bina told her. ‘It’s Yiddish. It’s a spoken language.’

Kate laughed. This was typical of the verbal exchanges Kate and Bina had been having since Kate first entered the Horowitz household, and Mrs Horowitz pronounced that Kate’s father knew ‘bupkis’ about raising a ‘shana maidela’.

Kate, at the time, didn’t know that ‘bupkis’ meant virtually nothing or that ‘shana maidela’ meant pretty little girl, but she figured it out from context. She learned what ‘putz’ and ‘shnorrer’ and ‘goniff’ meant, all words that sounded better, more accurate, than their English equivalent. And from that time on she had been asking Bina for Yiddish spellings and translations.

Kate had celebrated every holiday at Bina’s house – even if they weren’t Kate’s holidays. And the cultural expansion wasn’t just limited to Jewish events. When Christmas and Easter rolled around, Mrs Horowitz made sure Kate got a Christmas tree and an Easter basket, complete with a chocolate bunny, and just for extra, sweet noodle kugel (which had nothing to do with Easter but was a dish Kate loved). When the time came for Kate’s first Holy Communion, Mrs Horowitz sewed up Kate’s white dress and bought a headpiece. (When Bina wanted a white dress and headpiece too, she got one, though Mrs and Dr Horowitz drew the line at allowing Bina to get on line with the little Catholic girls for the ceremony.) And, though Kate didn’t take the weekly ballet lessons Bina did, she did get a pink tutu just like Bina’s. Not to mention a dozen Halloween outfits over the years. Kate sometimes thought of it as the Costume School of Child-rearing but she was always grateful.

Kate, told by a priest in her catechism class that trick or treating on Halloween was a mortal sin, felt tremendous disappointment. When she shared this with Bina’s mother, the reassurance Kate got was, ‘Sin – schmin! Do your best with that meshugana in a dress and go out to get your candy. Don’t worry about it.’

‘But I don’t want to go to hell after I die,’ Kate told her tearfully.

‘Hell – schmell,’ Mrs Horowitz had responded. ‘Trust me, there’s no such place except here on Earth before you die.’ She raised her voice. ‘Norm, can you believe the chutzpah of these priests and what they say to children.’ She drew Kate onto her lap and held her close. ‘There’s only heaven, honey,’ she whispered. ‘And that’s where your mama is.’

Somehow, Mrs Horowitz’s complete conviction sank in. A few months later, after catechism, when Vicky Brown told Kate and Bina that Bina’s Jewish mother was going to hell after she died, Kate turned to Vicky and declared, ‘Hell – schmell! What do you know?’ Then she pushed Vicky into a pile of garbage cans and made a very satisfying mess of her. ‘Yeah!’ Bina had declared. ‘And if you say that again, we’ll turn you into a toad. And I mean it.’ After that, Kate and Bina made a pact to stick up for one another.

Maybe it was from that day they became known as the ‘Witches of Bushwick’. As teenagers, their posse grew, with Bev and Barbie and, later on, Bunny, but they stayed the same, though in the neighborhood their nickname changed to ‘Bitches’.

Bina was still holding onto Kate’s hand. ‘Oh, Kate,’ she said and squeezed it hard. ‘I’m so excited! Tonight’s the night I get proposed to by the man I love.’

‘Don’t forget to act surprised,’ Kate warned her. ‘You don’t want Jack to know you already knew.’

‘I wish Barbie hadn’t told me that he bought the ring,’ Bina sighed. ‘I’m so nervous. Why couldn’t she just let it be a surprise for me?’

‘Oh, honey,’ Kate laughed. ‘You don’t want surprises. You want to look your best.’

Just then another Asian woman, even more beautiful than the receptionist, walked into the waiting area. ‘Kate Jameson?’ she asked. Kate nodded. ‘We have your room all ready. Follow me, please.’

‘A room?’ Bina repeated, sticking behind Kate as they followed the woman down the pristine hall.

‘Highest luxury,’ Kate told her and led her into their own private boudoir. Bina looked around her, clearly in a state of confusion.

‘Take a seat,’ Kate told her. ‘And just relax.’

Kate sat down in one of two facing chairs. Each was throne-like, with a built-in foot Jacuzzi already filled with delightful-smelling bubbling water. The softly lit room, all in soothing sea blue, also had two glass tables on wheels prepared for hand pampering. Two young Asian women knelt on blue silk pillows on the floor beside the foot baths. They helped their clients out of their shoes and indicated that they should plunge their feet into the fragrant Jacuzzis, in preparation for the pedicure. Bina looked across at Kate in amazement. Kate merely smiled at her. Her plan was working. This would be something Bina never forgot.

The air smelled of freesias and Kate took a deep, appreciative breath. If she had to pay half her salary check for the ‘ambience-schmambience’, it was so worth it.

Bina, still a little dazed, turned to the shelf beside her left elbow and stared at the almost endless rack of nail polishes. The second beautiful Asian woman came back into their blue heaven and asked the pair, ‘Would you like bottled water, coffee, tea, juice or champagne?’

‘You’re kidding!’ Bina almost squealed.

‘Champagne, I think.’ Kate replied as if Bina hadn’t reacted. Bina didn’t usually drink but, ‘This is a big celebration,’ Kate told her.

The woman nodded, smiled, and walked out of the room.

‘Kate, this is so nice of you,’ Bina began. Kate was pleased to see she was beginning to relax. ‘But how come a pedicure? Jack isn’t going to put the ring on one of my toes.’

‘No, Jack would never think of a toe ring,’ Kate agreed. Jack was nothing if not conservative. ‘I just thought it would be a nice treat.’

One of the two pedicurists began to massage Bina’s feet. She giggled, pulled them away, and giggled again.

‘Oh, just relax, Bina,’ Kate told her. ‘Breathe.’ For a moment the two were silent. Kate closed her eyes and let herself feel the strong hands work her heels and instep. It was delicious.

‘This is great!’ Bina leaned forward to whisper across the small room. ‘It’s better than when we both earned the Brownie badge for First Aid on the same day!’ Kate looked at Bina in disbelief. ‘Is this really where Sandra Bullock, Giselle and Gwen Stefanni get their manicures?’ Bina continued.

‘Yup,’ Kate said. ‘And it’s where Kate Jameson and Bina Horowitz have their manicures, too.’

‘Soon to be Bina Horowitz Weintraub,’ Bina reminded her. She was silent for a moment, but Kate was nice enough not to shut her eyes. For, as she expected, in another moment, Bina spoke again.

‘Kate, you know I love Jack so much. I’m just so … so happy today and so glad I’m spending part of it with you.’

Kate smiled at her friend, who was, at that moment, having her cuticles cut.

‘I just want you to find your Jack and be as happy as I am.’

Kate laughed. ‘As your mother would say, “From your lips to God’s ears”.’ Before Bina could speak, the door opened and the woman entered with a tray holding two flutes of champagne. She offered one to Kate and one to Bina. ‘Enjoy!’ she said as she glided from the room.

Kate felt a slight change in her emotional landscape. There was a time when she thought she might be drinking champagne to celebrate something with Steven but she had been very wrong. She wondered if the time would come when she and Michael … She pulled her thoughts away and focused on the moment.

Bina looked at her glass. ‘I don’t think I should start drinking this early in the afternoon.’

Kate rolled her eyes. Bina never wanted to drink. ‘Oh, come on, Bina,’ she said. ‘Live a little.’ She lifted her own flute. ‘May your engagement be as happy as your dating and your marriage even happier than that.’

‘Oh, Kate!’ Bina was clearly touched. Tears softened her brown button eyes. Both girls took a sip of their champagne. Then Kate started looking through the polishes. She narrowed her selection to two but couldn’t decide between them. ‘Boy, I bet Bunny wishes she was in my chair,’ Bina said, leaning back.

‘How is Bunny?’ Kate asked. Bunny was a dental hygienist with a poor record with men. Kate thought of the delicious-looking man they had seen outside. It was hard to imagine Bunny with him.

‘You don’t want to know,’ replied Bina.

Bina was right. Kate didn’t want to know. Bunny was really more Bina’s friend. She’d entered Kate’s life in junior high, taking the Bitches to five, and changing her name to begin with ‘B’ so she’d fit in with the gang. Kate had already drifted a little from the group by then, and though she still went to the movies, dances, and hangouts with all of her crew, she also spent more time studying and reading. While the others were worrying almost exclusively about hair, makeup and boys, Kate was worrying about SAT scores and college scholarships. And when graduation day came, the other Bitches set their sights on non-demanding jobs, good marriages and babies, while Kate declared that she was not just going to ‘sleep away’ college but also intended to graduate to become a doctor of psychology.

As Bev put it, ‘She thinks she’s who the fuck she is.’ If it hadn’t been for Bina, that would’ve been the end of Kate’s association with the Bitches and everyone else in Brooklyn. When Kate left for Brown she truly believed she had left her loneliness, her father’s alcoholism, and her grammar school friends behind. Of course she was wrong on all three counts. Bina made friends for life. At first Kate had resented what she had considered Bina’s ‘clinging’. Then she realized that there was no one who knew her the way that Bina did. And while some of Kate’s other ‘backlash’ from Brooklyn were incidents and memories she’d prefer to drop, for Bina’s undemanding friendship Kate was grateful.

She finished her glass of champagne and was immediately brought another. She realized she was feeling more than a little sentimental as she watched Bina slowly sipping her champagne and trying to repress a giggle every time the pedicurist touched her foot. She was still talking about Bunny.

‘… So the guy drops her like a rock. You saw him. I mean Bunny should have known he wasn’t for her, but she took it hard. And now she’s on the rebound. She’s going out with another guy – Arnie, or Barney, or something – and she’s already telling Barbie they’re getting serious.’

Big news flash. Bunny picked inappropriate man after inappropriate man, always thought they were ‘serious’, and was always wrong. Classic repetition compulsion, Kate thought, but what she said was, ‘Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.’

‘What?’ Bina paused for a minute. ‘Oh! I get it!’ She paused again, then made her voice falsely casual. ‘How are things going with this Michael?’

‘All right,’ Kate said noncommittally and shrugged. She liked to keep a low profile on her dating life with Bina and the others or else the Horowitz family would be sending out engraved announcements. ‘He’s very smart and seems promising. We’re going over to Elliot and Brice’s tonight for dinner.’

‘Who’s Brice?’ Bina asked.

Kate sighed. When it came to Brooklyn, Bina remembered what day of the month each of her friends had their periods, but outside Brooklyn …

‘Elliot’s partner.’

‘Elliot who?’

‘You remember, Elliot Winston. My friend from Brown. The guy I teach with.’

‘Oh yeah. So if he’s a teacher, how does he have a partner?’

‘His life partner, Bina,’ Kate said, exasperated. Bina might live in a small world but she watched television and saw movies.

Bina paused then dropped her voice. ‘Are those guys gay?’

Yeah, and so is your unmarried Uncle Kenny, Kate thought, but all she did was smile tolerantly. So what if Bina’s gender politics were way behind the times. She’d change the subject. ‘So what color are you going to go with? Remember, every shade goes with a diamond!’

‘I don’t know. What have you picked?’

Of course the question was completely irrelevant but Bina was like that. Before she selected anything from a menu she had to know what you were having. Kate shrugged, picked up her selection and tossed it over to Bina. ‘Just for my toes, I think.’

‘God, Kate,’ Bina said as she looked down at the bottle of nail polish that had landed in her lap. ‘That looks like black. You aren’t going Goth, are you?’

Kate shook her head. ‘It is not black, it’s a very deep aubergine.’

‘Is that what it’s called?’ asked Bina.

‘No,’ said Kate. ‘Actually, it’s called Chanel’s Despair.’

‘Well, no wonder,’ replied Bina. ‘If my toes were that color I’d despair, too.’

‘There’s no excuse for you,’ Kate admitted aloud.

‘That is so funny I forgot to laugh,’ Bina responded. ‘But not as funny as your face.’

‘Okay, Bina,’ Kate began. ‘You’re …’

‘I’m rubber. You’re glue. Whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you,’ Bina taunted.

Kate took a sip of her champagne. ‘Why do I feel like I am back in a session with a very troubled eight-year-old?’ she asked.

Bina didn’t say a thing. Kate looked at her and realized her face had changed. It looked … hurt or self-protective.

‘I’m sorry,’ Kate apologized. ‘It’s just I am around kids all day and … well, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.’

‘Oh, no. I’m not hurt,’ Bina assured her. ‘I’m just a little scared. And I can’t think of any more old insults,’ she admitted. ‘Wasn’t there something about a screen door on a submarine?’

‘Same old Bina,’ Kate said, smiling at her irrepressible friend.

‘Same old Katie,’ Bina slurred. The champagne was clearly starting to get to Bina, and, looking at her friend, ready to take such a big yet inevitable step, Kate shivered, though the salon air conditioning was just pleasantly cool rather than cold. Jack had never been her cup of tea – and he certainly was no glass of champagne – but he seemed loving to Bina, her family liked him and … well, looking across at Bina, sweet pedestrian Bina, Kate had to admit that Jack was probably a good match. Kate was torn between bursting into tears and laughing out loud. Bina smiled at her, slightly cross-eyed. ‘I love you, Katie,’ she said.

‘I love you, too, Bina,’ Kate assured her, and it was true. ‘But no more drinks for you. You’ve got a big night ahead of you.’

Bina took a last sip of champagne. Then she leaned over, close to her friend. ‘Kate,’ she whispered. ‘There’s something I’m dying to ask you.’

Kate steeled herself. ‘Yes?’

‘What’s a toe waxing?’ Bina inquired.

Bina’s tone made it sound obscene. Kate laughed. ‘You know how sometimes there is a little bit of hair on the knuckle of your big toe?’ she asked.

Bina pulled her foot out of the Jacuzzi and studied it. ‘Wow,’ she said. ‘Look at it. Eeuuyew.’ One of the Asian women turned to look at the other and both started to giggle. Bina’s face turned a bright pink. ‘It’s kind of icky,’ she admitted. ‘Like Big Foot. God, Katie, you’re making me feel like a freak. But I never noticed it before.’

‘Well,’ Kate continued, ‘after it’s waxed off, Jack won’t either. You can let him kiss all your little piggies with pride.’

For a while they chatted about Bina’s plans for the wedding, places to go on the honeymoon and a little bit about Michael. Then, after cuticle cutting, more foot massage, filing and the mysterious toe waxing, they were painted and prepared for their manicures. ‘Get your ring finger ready,’ Kate told Bina. ‘So, what color have you decided on?’

Bina turned her attention to the gift bottles from Kate, and the others arranged beautifully along the wall shelf at her elbow. ‘They don’t have most of these colors in Brooklyn,’ she admitted.

‘Just one more reason why I live in Manhattan,’ Kate declared. ‘Step up to the plate. What’s it going to be?’

Bina looked down at the Asian girl already working her left hand. ‘Do you do French manicures?’ she asked her.

5

Kate’s Manhattan apartment was undeniably small, but a delightful haven. She had been lucky to find it: it was in a brownstone on West 19th Street, on a tree-lined block close to the seminary, a very desirable location. The apartment was on the first floor, above street level, and consisted of a large room that had once been a parlor, a small bathroom and smaller kitchen behind it, and then a cozy bedroom.

Because it was on the first floor of the brownstone, Kate had all the advantages of beautiful moldings, mahogany pocket doors, a parquet floor and a marble fireplace which, though it had been bricked up years ago, still looked lovely even if it no longer served any functional purpose. Kate, with her neighbor Max’s help and Brice’s input, had painted the room a color that could almost be called yellow, but was just a little bit lighter than that. Benjamin Moore had called it ‘sunlight’ and the name on the paint chip may have affected her selection as much as the color itself. But it was a happy choice, and even on overcast days like today, the room had a cheery brightness.

The main room faced the back garden – which, unfortunately, belonged to the apartment below – so she had quiet and a green view in summer and a chance to watch the snow in winter. She hadn’t had much money to spend on furniture, but she had splurged on a blue-and-white Chinese rug. Elliot, always alert for bargains, had helped her find and carry home the sofa – a small one with down cushions that she had slip-covered in a blue-and-white awning stripe. Someday she would buy an armchair but in the meantime an old wicker rocker which she had bought in a thrift store and sprayed blue made a comfortable, if slightly rickety, seat. And the yellow cushion on it made a cheerful spot of color.

Max, who lived upstairs, had also helped her put up bookshelves that filled in the recesses on either side of the fireplace. Max was a friend of Bina’s brother and, it turned out, a cousin of Jack’s from Brooklyn and worked on Wall Street. When Kate had heard about the apartment through him they hadn’t known each other well. Kate had rushed over on the day the old tenants moved out and had signed a lease the next afternoon. Max, to whom she would forever be grateful, had been interested in her, but Kate wasn’t that grateful. He was nice and good-looking but they had nothing to talk about, although Max didn’t seem to mind that. And though her father had given her precious little advice about life, he had expressed his philosophy to ‘never crap where you eat’. Kate had interpreted that to mean it was best not to sleep with anyone you worked with, but to paraphrase and extend her father’s concept, she also knew it was best not to crap where you slept, either. While Max was attractive, he didn’t attract her, and she couldn’t be less interested in his Wall Street work. She had managed to handle it all diplomatically, though, and they were good friends as well as good neighbors. Though Max would never need to stop by to borrow a cup of sugar, he might well ask for a cup of coffee, a shot of vodka or, less frequently, a fix-up with some girl Kate knew.

Kate opened the curtains. It looked like rain. She threw her purse down on the sofa and hurried across to her bedroom. The beauty treatment with Bina had taken more time than she expected and she only had a half-hour before Michael came over. Although she had been cavalier about it with Elliot earlier in the day, Kate was actually a little nervous about bringing Michael over. Introducing a boyfriend to Elliot was like taking him home to meet her family, and she wanted everything to go smoothly.

Kate’s bedroom was really just a part of the larger room that had been partitioned off. Its biggest disadvantage was the smallness of its closet. Each spring and fall Kate had to pack up the previous season’s clothes and store them in boxes under the bed to make room for the next.

Kate decided she didn’t have the time to shower, so she selected the Madonna blue sleeveless dress she’d just bought and ran into the bathroom. She had enough time to wash her face, take her hair down, brush the cascades of wavy red that fell below her shoulders and pull out her makeup bag for a quick fix.

She never wore much makeup. Her skin was pale and she’d finally outgrown the tiny freckles, no bigger than pinpoints, that used to dance across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose – a sort of Irish trail. Now, her face was simply creamy, and most of the time she only bothered with lipstick so that her hair didn’t overpower her oval countenance.

Admittedly, as a kid, she had hated her freckles and the shape of her head – when her hair was pulled into pigtails, the kids called her egg-head – but with maturity her cheekbones showed, setting off her eyes, and the frame of her hair around her face pleased her. Because she was seeing Michael, she took out her mascara. She couldn’t wear black because it made her blue eyes stand out like marbles in a plate of milk, so she applied the brown wand carefully to her upper and lower lashes. She blinked in the mirror to make sure she wouldn’t smudge and, because it was a special night, she added a little lip gloss.

She now had only ten minutes before Michael was supposed to arrive, though he was often a little late. That, she’d come to understand, wasn’t because he was disrespectful – Kate hated lateness as a pattern and thought it was a narcissistic trait – but Michael was often so wrapped up in his work and thoughts of his research that he occasionally forgot to get off the subway or overshot the bus stop.

She smiled at the thought of him. He had a good mind, good hands, and a strong jaw. She liked his silver-rimmed glasses, his earnest peering through them and his dedication to his work.

She had only just recently slept with him: she wasn’t usually so prim but her affair with Steven had left her more cautious than she had been before. They had met at her friend Tina’s; Tina and Michael worked at the same university. Tina hadn’t ‘fixed them up’ because she hadn’t thought that Michael was Kate’s type, but since Steven Kate wasn’t sure what her ‘type’ ought to be. Michael’s courtship had been slow but steady and when they had finally taken the plunge, she’d been delighted to find he was caring and generous in bed. It seemed as if he was just as taken with her. But this was the point of the relationship where things could go on for a long time without actually moving forward. Kate had spent two years with Steven, a writer, before they’d broken up eight months ago. She’d been shocked and hurt when she realized that he would never want to marry her or possibly anyone else. She had gone slowly with Michael because she didn’t want to spend another year only to let that happen again.

She sat down on her bed and looked down at her painted toes. For a moment she could even imagine herself envious of Bina, who had her life settled. But she reminded herself that Bina had put in her time with Jack. Kate couldn’t imagine waiting six years for anyone. She knew she wanted children, and would marry just for that. Her life was focused on kids and making their lives better. The work she did with Brian, Clara, Jennifer and the others at Andrew Country Day was satisfying, but, growing up, she’d been denied a normal family of her own and she wanted one. At thirty-one, she wasn’t so old that she had to be frightened of the biological clock, but she had made the decision that she couldn’t afford any more two-year dalliances that merely left her feeling bereft, disappointed and foolish.

Michael seemed solid. They had not yet discussed exclusivity, but as he called her almost every night and since they saw each other regularly, Kate thought the talk would only be a formality. She wasn’t in a rush and wouldn’t make ultimatums. Still, deep down, she wanted to know her goals were shared.

Kate slipped into the silk dress and scrambled under the bed for her high-heeled sandals. Black and strappy, they would show off her newly painted toenails. They were killers to walk in, but she didn’t have to walk far to Elliot’s.

When there was a knock at the door a couple of moments later, Kate was ready. She clicked across the floor and opened the door. But it wasn’t Michael. Max was there holding a bouquet of snapdragons and statice. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘You look great.’

Max’s smile was adorable, as one of his incisors showed because it had moved up on the tooth next to it. Max was a bit like his incisor: he often tried to push in where he didn’t belong. There was no harm in him, though.

‘Thanks.’ Kate smiled briefly, trying to show she didn’t have the time to chat. Max held the flowers without moving.

‘Are those for me?’ Kate asked.

‘You betcha,’ Max said. ‘The Green Market was open when I walked by. The snapdragons reminded me of your hair. You can’t say no.’

Kate didn’t and took the bouquet. But sometimes she worried that Max still had a crush on her. She didn’t want to encourage him, nor did she want to be rude. She tapped across the living-room floor to the tiny excuse for a kitchen and fumbled for a vase. Max followed her and stood in the doorway. Kate filled the vase and couldn’t help but smile when she saw the red snaps with the orange centers. ‘I wish I could wear two of these as earrings,’ she joked.

‘You don’t need any earrings,’ Max said. ‘You look perfect. And as cool as a cucumber.’

Kate took the flowers and set them on her small dining table. They did make a pretty spot of color. ‘Thanks, Max,’ she said and kissed him on the cheek, leaving a small imprint of lip gloss.

Before she could tell him, he asked, ‘Where you off to?’

‘Oh, just dinner at Elliot’s.’ Max, an accountant and actuary, occasionally enjoyed talking higher math with Elliot. She hadn’t yet told Max about Michael.

‘Well, that dress is wasted on him,’ Max said and, to Kate’s dismay, he sat down. It wasn’t that she had any reason to feel guilty, but she didn’t want Michael to arrive and find another man in her apartment, and to have to introduce them to one another. Michael didn’t seem overly possessive. On the contrary, he seemed a little nervous. But Kate wanted him to feel secure so she also wanted Max to get up and go, although she didn’t want to have to ask him. Michael was already five minutes late but he was sure to be there soon.

Max shifted position on the striped sofa and pulled some envelopes and a rolled-up magazine from his back pocket.

‘Oh, here. I picked up your mail.’

Kate sighed. There were no separate mailboxes for the four tenants of their brownstone and mail was left on a radiator in the vestibule. She had been in such a hurry she had forgotten to check for hers, and punishment for this tiny sin was a New Yorker Magazine completely ruined and the requirement to show fake gratitude to Max. ‘Thanks again,’ Kate said. ‘Are you being so nice to me because you wanted to borrow a bottle of Absolut?’

‘No, I try not to rustle booze until it’s Absolut necessary.’

Kate gave him an obligatory smile. ‘Well, hey, I’ve got to go. Elliot and Brice won’t wait.’ Max shrugged, got up and ambled over to the door. Perhaps he had only been fishing for an invite to join them. Brice’s cooking was legendary. Whatever. At last she saw his back and closed the door. She took the mail he had brought over to the wastepaper basket beside her desk. She tried to smooth out the New Yorker, picked up a catalogue from Sak’s, tore it in half and threw it into the basket before it could tempt her, filed a bill from Con Ed next to her checkbook and threw away junk mail that informed her that Ket Jemson had just won One Million Dollars! More junk mail into the basket. Then, at the bottom of the small pile, she found an almost square envelope addressed to her in gold calligraphy. Oh my God, she thought, has Bina jumped the gun and sent out wedding invitations before the proposal?

She turned the ominous communiqué over and saw Mr and Mrs Tromboli’s address written across the back. Kate’s hands began to tremble. She tore open the envelope and accidentally tore off the corner of the enclosed pasteboard. She pulled out the inevitable: an invitation to the wedding of Patricia (Bunny) Marie Tromboli to Arnold S. Beckmen. For a moment, Kate felt dizzy. How could this have happened? What had Bina been saying earlier about that Brooklyn bartender who had broken Bunny’s heart? Now Kate felt her own heart quiver. With Bina engaged and Bunny about to get married, she would be the very last of her old friends to be single. When they started having children, she would really be alone. And Bev was already pregnant. Inevitably, young mothers got involved with playground, preschools, play-dates, and pregnancies – the four ‘P’s. Four peas in a pod, the ‘B’s would be busy reproducing and Kate would finally be completely closed out of the circle.

Kate put the invitation down, feeling a little dizzy. Then the buzzer rang. She and Michael had no time for a drink now and she had no desire for one either. She hit the intercom as hard as the wedding invitation had hit her and when he said ‘hello’, instead of inviting him upstairs she told him she’d be down in a minute. Stuffing the stiff square of card into her purse, she told herself she wouldn’t think about the Bunny situation, but on her way down the stairs, careful not to trip in the sandals, the idea of Bunny reproducing like a rabbit came to her. As much as she loved the children at school, and as dedicated as she was to them, Kate felt mournful. She knew she always would do if she didn’t have a child of her own to raise and love.

Michael was standing in the vestibule. He was wearing pressed chinos, a white Oxford shirt and a tweed sports coat. It was a little heavy for the season, but Kate had noticed that he was always careful to dress conservatively and just a little ‘scholarly’. He was both a good-looking and nice-looking man, just slightly taller than Kate was in her heels, and she liked his abundant curly brown hair.

‘Hi,’ she greeted him, trying to put away her concerns the way she had stuffed Bunny’s wedding invitation into her bag. They kissed, just a peck on the lips. ‘You’ve had a haircut,’ she said.

‘Nope, just had my ears lowered,’ he replied. Kate wished he hadn’t cut his hair, especially just before meeting Elliot and Brice. It made him the tiniest bit geeky-looking, but she put that thought out of her mind as well. Michael looked fine and was a fine person. He had put himself through undergrad and graduate school on scholarships and his own work. He’d already published papers in important journals and was poised for a brilliant career in academia. He was well read, well informed, and well intentioned, as far as she could tell. The fact that he’d been married – but only for one year, when he was too young to know any better – made him even more attractive in her eyes. He knew how to commit, even if it had been to the wrong woman.

Now Michael looked at Kate and his deep brown eyes sparkled behind his glasses. ‘You are breathtaking,’ he said and Kate smiled. The cost of the dress was well worth it.

‘We better go,’ she said. ‘Brice hates late guests when he’s cooking.’ Despite her words, Michael gently pushed her against the doorway and kissed her. He was a good kisser and Kate let her tongue and mind wander. Then Max, clothed for the gym, came bounding down the stairs. They pulled apart, but Max, of course, had seen them. He raised his eyebrows as he walked past them, Kate’s lip gloss still on his cheek.

‘Dinner at Elliot’s?’ he asked as he walked by and down the stoop. Kate felt a twinge of guilt. Of course, she was going to dinner at Elliot’s, but by withholding the information that she was going with an escort she now looked like a liar. Michael, unaware, took her hand and they walked outside and down the steps.

Kate couldn’t help but think of her two years in Catholic school. Sins of omission and sins of commission: she thought she remembered they were equal. She promised herself she would find some way to apologize to Max later.

Now she took Michael’s arm as they walked down the shady street. Chelsea was very pretty west of Eighth Avenue. ‘Let’s walk through the seminary garden,’ Michael suggested. Kate smiled her agreement. At this time of day the block-sized park enclosed by the church and seminary buildings was at its most lovely. They walked arm in arm. The tulips made swathes of color against the deep green grass and the gray weathered stone rising from it.

‘Kate, stop for a minute,’ Michael said. ‘I have something for you.’

Kate stood beside him. He fumbled around with his briefcase straps for a moment. He had given Kate a gift before – an out-of-print English psychology book by Winnecott. It had been very thoughtful, and just now she expected another book. But instead he took out a small, oblong box wrapped in silver paper. Unmistakably a jewelry box. ‘Do you know today is our three-month anniversary?’ he asked. Kate actually hadn’t and she was really moved that he had. ‘I saw this and thought of you,’ he said. He handed Kate the box, which she unwrapped. Once she opened it, a thin silver bracelet with a tiny ‘K’ hanging from it was revealed. She looked from it to the expectant expression on Michael’s face. It wasn’t anything she would have chosen for herself, but it was very sweet nonetheless.

‘Oh, Michael. Thank you.’ They kissed again and this time there was no interruption.

‘Do you like it?’ he asked.

For a moment, Kate thought of sins of omission again, but even Sister Vincent couldn’t believe they would extend to this. ‘Yes. It’s lovely. Would you fasten it for me?’

Michael leaned forward and fiddled with the tiny clasp. It took a moment, but at last he had it around her wrist. She stretched out her arm. ‘It looks nice,’ she said.

‘It looks great!’ Michael said and tucked her arm in his.

Kate felt better than she had all day.

6

Brice and Elliot had met three years ago, and had only moved in together in September. Brice’s stylish retro furniture in orange and lime green had taken precedence over Elliot’s collection of thrift shop purchases and off-the-street finds. Their two-bedroom apartment in a Chelsea brownstone near Kate’s had large windows in the living room overlooking a tiny backyard. An old refectory table was set before the windows and, despite their protests, Michael and Kate were given the chairs that faced the garden view.

‘The tulips are just over and the roses haven’t started so it’s not at its best,’ Brice apologized as he seated them, then excused himself to bring dinner in from the kitchen. Kate noticed they were using Brice’s good glassware and Havilland china and she was really touched. Elliot brought in a wine cooler and set it on the oak credenza. ‘A coaster! A coaster,’ Brice exclaimed, and slipped one under the crystal cooler. Kate repressed a smile.

In a few moments dishes were being passed around. Elliot, standing, began to pour wine in the waiting goblets. Michael picked up his glass and almost ostentatiously set it upside down.

‘None for me,’ he said.

Kate winced. She should have seen this one coming. Michael didn’t drink at all. He just said he didn’t like it. Given her father’s bad habits, it seemed a good trait to Kate but she knew it wouldn’t go down well with Elliot. He prided himself on his wine cellar – even though it was actually in the linen closet – and must have taken pains selecting this Pinot Grigio. Elliot raised his eyebrows.

‘Don’t you drink?’ Brice asked, his voice, rather than his eyebrows, slightly raised. Kate could imagine the talk afterward – ‘Is he an alcoholic, is he in AA? No? Then he’s a control freak or a born-again Christian.’ Oh, it would be endless.

‘I prefer to keep a clear head,’ Michael answered.

‘Yeah. You never know when someone might need to see through it,’ Elliot muttered beside Kate’s ear as he filled her glass.

Once they all had their plates and the drinking crisis was past, they began on Brice’s famous appetizer: a beautiful, multicolored vegetable terrine. There was some cursory conversation but the tension seemed thick in the air, especially between Elliot and Michael. Of course Elliot was always very protective of Kate. And he had already made his dislike of this accomplished and nice-looking new boyfriend clear. The fact that Michael was a bit priggish and overly fastidious wasn’t lost on Kate, but he did have other, compensatory traits. He was clever, he was generous in bed, and he seemed very, very stable.

‘There’s a good chance I’m going to get that Sagerman grant,’ Michael said to Kate as they finished the first course. ‘I saw Professor Hopkins and Charles told me that the committee discussions seemed to be very, well, promising.’ Kate saw Elliot and Brice exchange a look. It was rude of Michael to ignore them, even briefly, but he was a single-minded academic.

Kate held back a sigh. Even when she and Michael were alone it was sometimes difficult to remember all the cards in his academic deck. Now, to make the conversation general, it would be necessary to explain to the others about the Sagerman Foundation, Michael’s interest in a postdoctorate appointment, and his complicated relationship with his mentor Charles Hopkins. It was the kind of thing that made a difference to a couple, but didn’t make for good dinner talk.

‘Great,’ Kate said. No one else spoke. Elliot refilled their glasses and Brice passed around the second course. Kate looked at it and knew that her friends had spared no expense to impress Michael. This was Brice’s risotto with truffles and she knew what the price of truffles was. They all took a bite of the steaming rice. As the awkward silence stretched out, Kate turned to Brice in an attempt at light conversation. ‘Brice. This risotto is really delicious.’

‘Very good,’ Michael agreed.

Brice beamed at the compliments. He was proud of his cooking, his design sense, and his extensive collection of pristine Beanie Babies. Those were arranged meticulously on a series of long floating shelves over the credenza. Kate had watched Michael notice them and avert his eyes. He was not, she had to admit, very playful in his attitude to décor or dining chat.

‘So, what happened at the salon this afternoon?’ Elliot inquired of Kate. She smiled. She knew him so well: he was taking pity on her and trying to make the dinner less painful. And because he figured she’d spill her guts more readily just to keep the conversation going. Nice try, she thought, but it wouldn’t work.

‘Oh, I just had my nails painted,’ she said. She showed ten gleaming fingertips and still managed to hold the fork. ‘Do you think Mr McKay will feel they’re subversive?’ The previous semester the principal had declared toe rings subversive and all the kids had to remove their socks and shoes to have contraband foot jewelry confiscated.

‘That and cock rings,’ Elliot said.

‘Elliot, please!’ Brice reprimanded. ‘Not in front of the Havilland.’ He flashed a smile at Kate and Michael. Their conversation continued in fits and starts but Kate knew Michael was not a hit. Of course Elliot had really liked Steven and that hadn’t worked out, so … perhaps Elliot’s first impression was not as important as she had thought it was.

‘Salad or cheese and fruit before dessert? I have lovely Bosc pears,’ Brice asked.

‘No thanks, Brice,’ said Kate.

‘None for me,’ Michael agreed. Across the table, Elliot stood up and began to clear away the dishes. ‘It was very good,’ Michael added.

Even to Kate it seemed a bland thank you. ‘Wasn’t the terrine terrific?’ Kate prompted. She looked at Michael who in turn looked at the empty serving plates with an expression of confusion.

‘Which was the terrine?’ he asked.

Kate’s face flushed pink. She knew how much effort Brice had put into the dish. ‘The vegetable pâté,’ she explained to Michael.

Elliot, still picking up plates, circled around behind Michael. ‘With your head so clear you probably just call that “thick dip”, huh?’ he asked.

Kate winced. From behind Michael’s back, Elliot held his nose and gave Kate a thumbs-down sign, almost dumping the plates he had gathered.

‘Watch out for the Havilland!’ Brice warned again.

‘Elliot, you don’t have to do that,’ Kate said, referring both to his comment and the clearing.

‘Oh, but I do, I do,’ Elliot replied, his double entendre obvious.

She gave him a look. Clearly they needed some private time in the kitchen. ‘I’ll help you clear,’ she offered, noticing Michael didn’t even attempt to help.

Brice began to protest and rise as well, but Elliot shook his head and looked pointedly at Michael. Brice gave him a pleading look, but Elliot leaned close and whispered, ‘Somebody has to talk to him.’

Brice gave Michael a weak smile. ‘So, what’s new in anthropology?’ he asked Michael in a bright voice. ‘Is the Sugerman grant a sure thing?’

‘Sagerman,’ Michael corrected. ‘From the Sagerman Foundation for the Studies of Primitive Peoples.’

Kate sighed, picked up some glasses and followed Elliot into the kitchen. It was small but efficient, with black and white floor tiles, red walls and cabinets, and the latest stainless steel appliances. Kate tried to steel herself. Elliot was silent as he put the dishes in the sink. Then, as she knew he would, he turned to face Kate, his hands on his hips like an accusatory nun. ‘Where did you dig him up?’ he demanded. ‘This guy’s the worst of the lot.’

‘Oh, Elliot! He is not,’ Kate protested. ‘And keep your voice down.’

‘Come on, Kate. Wake up and smell the primitive peoples. He’s dull, he’s pompous, he lacks humor and, aside from his haircut, I don’t see anything superior about him,’ Elliot said.

Elliot would like that haircut, Kate thought. She whispered, ‘Oh, come on, Elliot. You never like any of my boyfriends.’

‘Neither do you,’ Elliot retorted. ‘Not since Steven. And this one is not only boring, but also self-involved, pompous and a homophobe.’

‘Oh, Elliot! He is not!’ Kate exclaimed. ‘You blame everything on that.’

‘Kate, the guy didn’t address a single word to either of us through the whole meal.’

‘That doesn’t make him a homophobe. Maybe he’s just shy. Or doesn’t like you personally,’ she added. ‘It could happen.’ She put the wine goblets – one of them clean, on the counter.

‘Doubtful. And he’s probably an alcoholic. That’s why he doesn’t drink. Anyway, coming here to dinner is like meeting your family,’ Elliot explained as he rinsed a plate. ‘He should at least pretend to like us, since we’re in loco parentis.’

‘Well, loco, anyway,’ Kate agreed. Elliot made a face. She opened the dishwasher and started to put in the china.

‘Oh, no,’ Elliot sighed. ‘Not the Havilland. It’s a hand-wash job. Brice wants gold leaf Brice washes it.’ He rinsed his hands. ‘We better get back in there. The coffee ought to wake up Brice. Would you fill the creamer?’ Kate nodded. Elliot popped the chocolate sauce for the profiteroles into the microwave to heat.

Kate opened the refrigerator and stuck her head in. ‘Hey, Elliot, I’ve told you before. It isn’t easy to find a good, interesting, educated stable man who doesn’t want to date a supermodel.’

‘You may be right, Kate,’ Elliot agreed. ‘I certainly don’t think you’ll find him in the Sub-Zero. But you could take out the profiteroles.’

‘Very funny.’ Kate pulled a quart of milk and a pint of half-and-half out of the fridge and placed them on the counter. ‘I admit you didn’t see him at his best. Trust me. Michael is much better one on one.’

‘I bet.’ Elliot smirked.

Kate ignored his innuendo. ‘No. Honestly. Evidence. He can be funny. And he’s really smart. He got his doctorate at twenty-one, was teaching at Barnard when he was twenty-four and is considering his post-doc. I think he’s going to get tenure at Columbia.’

‘I didn’t ask for his curriculum vitae,’ Elliot snapped. ‘He’s just dull. Your father was an alcoholic and you never knew what to expect when he came home. Your mother died before you hit puberty. I know you want a responsible male, someone you can depend on. But this guy isn’t just stable, he’s inert. Where’s the magic between you? And he’s not nearly good enough for you. Don’t let your snobbishness over academic achievement blind you.’

‘I don’t,’ she assured him, but a nagging voice in the back of her consciousness wondered about that. Despite all her professional training and the analysis she herself had been required to undergo, she still sometimes felt that much of what she did was a reaction to the desperate childhood she’d had.

Elliot shrugged, turned around quickly in order to pick up the tray of coffee cups, and knocked over Kate’s purse which had been sitting on the counter.

‘There goes my cell phone,’ Kate said.

‘Is it the Havilland?’ Brice called.

‘No. It’s the Melmac,’ Elliot yelled. ‘He’s obsessed with the damn stuff,’ he told her. ‘Be right in, sweetheart.’

Then he knelt down to pick up Kate’s handbag and all the objects that had scattered over the floor. ‘I’m so sorry. I think I broke your makeup mirror.’

‘Uh oh. It was a magnifying one. So do I have fourteen years of bad luck, or just seven years of more intense bad luck?’

‘Stop it, Kate. I’m a statistician, a mathematician, not a superstitious bumpkin.’

‘But you talk about magic …’

‘Not Harry Potter magic. Not superstitious nonsense. I’m talking about magic between two people.’

‘Need any help?’ Brice called. ‘We’re waiting out here.’

‘No, dear,’ Elliot responded. He handed Kate her purse. Kate, kneeling beside him, picked up the remainder of the detritus and threw it in.

‘Hey, what’s this?’ Elliot asked. Kate looked up. He was waving an envelope in the air.

‘It’s an invite to Bunny’s wedding.’ Kate sighed.

‘Bunny of the Bitches of Bushwick is getting married?’ Elliot asked. ‘When did this happen? You never tell me anything.’

‘Hey, I got it today. And you’re on a need-to-know basis.’ Kate stood up. ‘Can you believe it? She was just dumped by a guy a month ago. I don’t know where this came from.’

‘Brooklyn. And on the rebound,’ Elliot said. ‘Can I go? Please, can I go?’

‘No,’ Kate replied. ‘See, this is another valid reason why I shouldn’t break up with Michael. With Bina getting engaged and now this, I have to go with someone viable.’

‘But Michael is so …’ Elliot didn’t get a chance to finish his critique because, suddenly, a loud and frantic pounding came from the front door of the apartment. ‘What in the world?’

The two of them hurried into the living room where Brice was standing at the door. He looked at Elliot and Elliot shrugged. Brice opened the door. A woman, her hair wild, her face covered by her hands, threw herself into the room, sobbing uncontrollably. Everyone stood in silent amazement and Brice actually took two steps back. It was only after a moment or two that Kate saw the woman’s fingernails and realized, with a horrible shudder, that she had a French manicure.

‘Bina!’ Kate gasped. ‘Oh, Bina! What’s happened to you?’

7

Bina looked around her wildly. ‘Katie! Ohmigod. Oh, Katie!’ Then she threw herself onto the sofa and heaved with sobs. Kate, paralyzed for a moment, stepped forward and put her hand gently on Bina’s shoulder. Could she have been raped? Had someone mugged her? Her clothes were such a mess and her hair so disheveled that, at first, Kate only thought of physical tragedies.

Elliot stood looking down at the weeping woman on his couch. ‘It’s Bina?’ he whispered. ‘This is the famous Bina?’

Kate ignored him. ‘Bina? Bina dear, what’s happened?’

Bina shook her head violently. Kate actually felt one of Bina’s tears hit her own cheek and put her arms around her sobbing friend. ‘Shhh,’ she crooned and stroked Bina’s hair. Somehow all the times Kate had witnessed Bina’s hysterical outbursts over the years, at sleepovers and parties, flashed in a visceral way through her consciousness. Kneeling, with her arms around Bina, was familiar. Then she looked up and remembered the audience of three men surrounding this drama. And that the drama was happening in Manhattan on a borrowed sofa. She hoped the whole thing wasn’t as bad as it seemed. Then a new thought occurred to her. ‘Bina, how did you find me here?’

‘Max,’ Bina said, struggling with her tears. ‘He heard me crying in the hall and told me where you were.’ She took a gulping breath and burst into tears again. Elliot and Brice drew closer to the couch, like rubberneckers, while Michael had withdrawn to a spot behind the dining table. Kate couldn’t help but think that she was watching the epitomes of men: the straight ones retreating in the face of emotional turmoil and the gay ones jumping right in.

She looked back down at her friend. ‘Bina, what’s happened?’ Kate asked again.

‘Choked,’ Bina wailed as fresh tears poured from her eyes.

‘Are you choking?’ Kate asked, confused.

‘I can do the Heimlich. Does she need the Heimlich?’ Brice asked, a bit too hopefully.

Bina, still sobbing, violently shook her head no.

‘I never get to do the Heimlich,’ Brice sighed. ‘Do you?’ he asked, turning to Michael, who was now folding and unfolding a napkin, obviously completely unnerved by the situation.

It was unnerving to anyone who didn’t know Bina, but Kate had witnessed many a hysterical outburst like this before, once over the dress Bina’s mother had selected for the prom. Now Kate took Bina’s hands in her own and spoke to her firmly but gently. ‘Who choked? Who’s choking, Bina?’ She turned to Elliot. ‘Would you please get her a glass of water?’

Elliot, turning to Brice, repeated the request. ‘Brice, get her a glass of water. This is better than One Life to Live.’

Brice didn’t budge. ‘One Life to Live? This is better than The Young and the Restless.’ He turned to Michael, still in the corner behind the table. ‘Put down the linen,’ Brice told him. ‘You get the water.’

Michael seemed all too happy to leave the scene and disappeared into the kitchen. Bina gave another wail.

‘Bina, you have to calm down,’ Kate said, turning her attention back to her. ‘You have to. And you have to tell us what’s wrong.’ Bina took some trembling breaths and got the sobbing under control. It occurred to Kate that Bina might have had an accident or be sick. ‘Does something hurt?’ she asked.

Bina nodded her head.

‘Do you need a doctor?’ Kate continued.

Bina nodded more vigorously. ‘Yes. Jewish and unmarried. The kind who likes my type and who’s looking for serious commitment.’ She broke out into sobs again.

Elliot and Brice moved even closer to the circle. ‘Uh oh,’ Elliot said. ‘Kate, check out her hand.’ He and Brice exchanged meaningful looks.

Kate, not quite understanding, thought of their manicure that afternoon. Had Bina had some allergic reaction? ‘Bina, have you hurt your hands?’ She looked down at Bina’s hands but didn’t see anything more alarming than the French manicure.

‘Not her right hand, Kate,’ said Brice. ‘Her left hand. Second finger from the pinkie.’

Kate finally understood. She wrapped her arms around Bina and said, ‘Oh, my God. Jack …’

‘… Jack choked,’ Bina told her. ‘He had the ring in his breast pocket. I could see the bulge the box made.’ She began to cry again. ‘Oh, Katie! Instead of asking me to marry him, he asked if we could spend this time apart … exploring our singleness.’

‘That son-of-a-bitch!’ Kate, who thought that she understood enough about people and their motivations to no longer be surprised, was shocked. While Jack had finished school and entered corporate life, Bina had waited, worked and collected every issue of Bride. She watched as all her other friends became engaged, she’d relentlessly thrown shower after bridal shower, a virtual pre-connubial fountain. And now, when at last it was her turn, Jack had choked? Bina didn’t deserve this. ‘That goddamn son-of-a-bitch!’ Kate was ready to spit.

She looked up to see that Michael had returned from the kitchen just in time to hear her undeleted expletives and recoil at the outburst. Lucky that she hadn’t called Jack a motherfucker, she thought, as she watched him approach the sofa and gingerly hold out the glass of water to Bina. Bina ignored the gift.

‘I can’t believe it!’ Bina said, wiping ineffectually at her face and only making the raccoon eyes worse. ‘He got the ring from Barbie’s father. Mr Leventhal gave him a break. It was princess cut, Barbie said – just under a karat and a half.’ She paused for breath while Michael gaped and Elliot and Brice shook their heads in sympathy – and almost in unison.

‘Everyone will know,’ Bina said, and began sobbing again. ‘I can’t believe he’d do this to me. Just drop me. And shame me in front of everyone.’

Kate took the napkin from Michael’s hand, dipped it into the water and held it up to her friend’s face. ‘Bina, honey,’ she said with all the assurance she could muster. ‘You’ve been going out with Jack for six years. He loves you.’ She wiped mascara from under Bina’s eyes. ‘Blow your nose,’ she said, and Bina did. ‘Look, this is just a temporary thing. Sometimes it happens. Picking a life mate is a serious decision. It isn’t that Jack doesn’t want to marry you. It’s a lot more probable that he just got frightened. I’m sure he’ll call you tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow he’ll be in Hong Kong. With my ring! I’ll be dumped in Bensonhurst and he’ll be the Christopher Columbus of singleness,’ cried Bina, who had a penchant for wildly inappropriate metaphor when under pressure.

‘Maybe you should drink the water,’ Michael said awkwardly, and pressed the glass into her hand.

Bina looked down at the glass. ‘Is there strychnine in it?’ she asked without lifting her eyes.

‘Uh … no,’ Michael replied.

In a single smooth motion Bina dumped the water out over her shoulder and down the back of the sofa. ‘Then what good is it to me?’ she said to no one in particular. She fell back onto the sofa and burst into a fresh batch of tears.

‘That was a gesture,’ Elliot said, grabbing a napkin.

‘On Fortuny fabric,’ Brice added. ‘This is so Brooklyn.’

‘I knew I’d love Brooklyn,’ Elliot said.

Kate looked up over Bina’s head at the two of them and gave them a warning squint, her blue eyes narrowed to lizard slits. She wondered if she could get the girl home to her own apartment and calm her and put her to bed there, but either getting a cab or walking back with Michael seemed impossible. Better to deal with it here and then go home. But first she needed to free the frightened Michael and stare off the spectating twosome, though, to be fair, it was their own home. ‘I’m sorry, guys,’ Kate started, looking up at the three men. ‘It looks like we might have to put off dessert.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Brice said. ‘In times of pain nothing works better than drowning your problems in profiteroles.’

Elliot nodded, but Michael began backing toward the door. ‘I think you’re right, Kate,’ he agreed, relief shining from every pore. ‘I’ll just see myself out,’ he added, picking up his briefcase and heading out of the door into the foyer. ‘Have a nice evening,’ he said as he closed the door behind him.

Kate jumped up. ‘Just a minute, Bina,’ she said, giving another narrow-eyed glance at the guys as a deterrent, and ran to the hallway. She was just in time to see Michael step into the elevator. ‘Hold it!’ she called, got to the button and pressed it. Michael stood in the fake mahogany cab like an insect suspended in amber. ‘You’re leaving like that?’ she demanded.

‘Like what?’ he asked, looking down at himself as if it was an unzipped fly she was commenting on.

‘My friend just had her life shattered and you go out the door saying, “Have a nice evening”?’ Kate had learned not to expect too much of a date in the early stages of their mating dance, but Michael was way out of tempo. ‘Have a nice evening?’ she repeated, mirroring him.

‘Kate,’ Michael began. ‘Bina is your friend, not mine. I don’t really think it’s my place …’

‘… To be what? Nice, kind, caring? Can’t you just pretend to be sensitive?’ Kate realized she was holding him hostage and took her finger off the button. The door closed slowly across his miserable face. Kate turned away, hoping he would press the door-open button and return, at least to give her a kiss and a moment of sympathy, but the elevator door remained as smoothly closed as Michael’s emotions had been. She shook her head to clear it. She had to return to Bina.

She entered the apartment and found to her surprise that Bina had stopped crying. She was sitting up on the sofa beside Elliot, who was holding her hand and sharing his own heartbreaks. ‘… And then he said, “I’m going back to my place to get my things and move in.” I was thrilled, just thrilled, so I said, “Can I come and help” and he kissed me and said, “No, sweetie. It won’t take but a few hours,” and I never saw or heard from him again.’

Bina shook her head in mute sympathy.

‘Just as well,’ Brice said. ‘Street trash. It’s all worked out for the best.’ He kissed the top of Elliot’s head. Kate saw Bina blink.

‘Well, let me bring out the profiteroles and actually nuke the chocolate sauce,’ Brice said and headed for the kitchen.

‘Meanwhile I’ll get a blanket,’ Elliot offered and disappeared into the bedroom. Bina nodded gratefully to Kate.

Kate, with nothing else left to do, sat beside her. ‘I’m sorry,’ Kate said, comforting her friend now they were alone. ‘You must be devastated.’

‘Oh, Katie, how could he do this? Who does he think he is? The Magellan of certified public accountants?’ Bina asked. ‘How could he?’

Kate looked into her imploring eyes. But she had no easy answers. ‘Even if he leaves for Hong Kong he’ll have that long flight alone, he’ll miss you, he’ll remember the good times and how much he loves you …’ Kate paused, hoping that all she conjectured was true. She wanted to comfort Bina but not lie to her. If an eight-year-old like Brian had to face the reality of the death of his mother, Kate believed it would be best for Bina to face the death of her relationship with Jack, if that was what it was. But she was sure it couldn’t have suffered a mortal wound. Bina was lovable and Jack, slow-moving as he was, had always seemed to adore her. ‘I’m sure he’ll call. Even if he leaves for Hong Kong I bet he sends you a ticket to join him and proposes there,’ Kate ventured hopefully.

‘Men are just funny …’

‘Not homosexual ones,’ Elliot said as he walked back into the room carrying a knitted afghan throw. ‘We’re fucking hysterical.’ He knelt down beside Bina and wrapped her up in it. Brice came out of the kitchen carrying a full tray which he put down gracefully on the coffee table. Arrayed before them were four dessert plates, the plate of profiteroles, a silver server of piping-hot dark chocolate sauce, lace-trimmed napkins, a crystal shot glass and a frosted bottle of Finlandia. ‘All for you,’ Brice said.

Bina looked at the tray. ‘I’d love some dessert but I don’t drink,’ she told him.

‘You do tonight, honey,’ Brice said and poured her a shot. ‘Chocolate and alcohol together beat shit out of Prozac.’

Bina looked at him, at the brimming shot glass, and, to Kate’s utter surprise, took it from him and knocked it back.

‘Good girl!’ Elliot said.

‘And here’s your chaser,’ Brice added and handed Bina the pastries. ‘You know what they say: just a spoonful of sugar …’

Bina picked up the plate to dig in.

‘Wait just a minute,’ Brice said. ‘The doctor is in.’ He picked up the silver pitcher, raised it theatrically and poured out the bitter chocolate over the ice cream pastry.

Kate looked at the three of them entranced, not sure if she was experiencing pleasure or discomfort. Her two worlds had merged here on the Fortuny-upholstered sofa and all one could have said was that it seemed quiet on the western front. Then Brice filled the shot glass again and handed it to Bina who, docile as a kosher lamb, drank it down. That broke Kate’s trance. ‘Guys, this is more serious than something a drink and an overdose of carbohydrates will cure,’ she told them.

‘Honey, there’s nothing that will cure this. But alcohol and sugar will temporarily dull the pain,’ Brice replied. ‘Trust me. I know.’

Bina, back at her dessert, looked up from her plate with a dazed expression on her face. Elliot wiped the chocolate from around her mouth with the lace napkin.

‘Who are these guys, Katie?’ Bina asked, looking at Elliot and Brice with some confusion. ‘Are they therapists, too? They’re very good.’

‘No, dear. This is my friend Elliot, who works with me at school, and his partner Brice,’ Kate told her. Bina smiled, but it was obvious that Kate’s words were merely washing over her. She suddenly realized just how drunk Bina was.

‘Why am I here?’ Bina asked. ‘And why are they roommates?’ She slurred her words, and only God knew how slurred her mind was. Again Kate wished that she hadn’t mixed Brooklyn with Manhattan. They were parallel universes, and, like parallel lines, should never ever touch.

Despite her concern, Kate was just slightly amused watching surprise mixed with curiosity and a soupçon of horror cross Bina’s face as she looked from Elliot to Brice and back. Her amusement dissolved, however, as Bina opened her mouth. ‘Oh, so you’re the …’ she started, and Kate winced, afraid of what word she might hear next.

‘… the mathematical one,’ Elliot finished for her.

‘And I’m the emotional one,’ Brice said with an exaggerated sigh. ‘Somebody’s got to do it.’

Kate had to get Bina home and onto her own couch before it became necessary to carry her. She knew once Bina was forced to stay here, Brice and Elliot would dig themselves in deeper. They were kind, but they couldn’t help Bina now and Kate knew she had a big job to do. ‘I know the floor show traditionally precedes dinner, but I did the best I could without hiring tap dancers,’ she said.

‘Ooooh, I love tap dancers,’ Brice crooned and Elliot gave him a look. It didn’t stop Brice from pouring out the next drink for Bina.

‘Put that down,’ Kate said, her voice as stern as the one she had to use in the Andrew Country Day School cafeteria. Here, just like there, it worked. ‘I’m taking Bina home,’ Kate said.

‘Nooooo. I can’t go home. I can never go home again,’ Bina said. ‘Not until I’m engaged anyway.’

‘You’re coming to my apartment,’ Kate said. ‘It isn’t far and you could use the fresh air.’

‘She’s welcome to stay here,’ Elliot offered, and Kate knew his kindness was mixed with an equal part of curiosity.

‘Show’s over,’ Kate said. ‘Say good night, Gracie.’ She pulled the dazed Bina up from the couch and began to walk her to the door.

‘Good night, Gracie,’ Elliot and Brice chorused.

8

Later, Kate could not remember much about the nightmare of getting Bina back to her place that night. It was called ‘selective memory’ in her textbooks – some things were just too gruesome to keep in your consciousness. In the four long blocks from Elliot’s to Kate’s own apartment, Bina alternately wept, sang, tripped, wailed, and sat down at one point on the sidewalk, refusing to move. Kate didn’t think Bina had tried to throw herself in front of a bus or wet herself but she couldn’t be absolutely sure of either. It was lucky that Max had been home and heard her trying to get Bina up the stairs. Asking no questions, he took over. Kate didn’t remember if he carried Bina up the stairs in his arms or over his shoulder. She did remember holding Bina’s head as she vomited violently, and washing her up. Max had left her to that thankless task. Kate made an executive decision not to put Bina in her bedroom but instead to tuck her up on the sofa. Made in haste, it was a decision that Kate would not regret.

The next morning Kate was up early brewing coffee, laying out the Tylenol, and waiting to call in sick to work. One look at the bedraggled, unconscious Bina gave Kate a pretty good idea of how she was going to spend her next twenty-four hours. She took down her favorite coffee mug. It was the only gift she could remember her father giving her. A molded, ceramic one, the handle was shaped like Cinderella bending over the top of the mug and looking into whatever liquid would be put there, as if it were a wishing well. Then she added another, plain cup to wait until Bina woke. She thought of calling Mrs Horowitz or even trying Jack before he left, then thought better of it. Kate didn’t mind being involved, but she didn’t want to become the puppeteer pulling strings. Bina – despite her many childlike qualities – would have to decide on her own what actions to take and Kate would support her as best she could. She retied her cotton bathrobe tighter around her waist. The radio alarm, when it went off in her bedroom, hadn’t made a ripple on the dark pool of Bina’s unconsciousness, but it had informed Kate that the day was going to be a scorcher for April.

When the phone rang Kate glanced at the caller ID, picked up the receiver and without preamble said, ‘Yes, she’s still sleeping. No, I’m not going into school today and no, you can’t come over.’

‘Good morning to you, too,’ Elliot’s voice said briskly. ‘Can I at least drop off a couple of bagels on my way up to Andrew?’

‘Forget it. I don’t think Bina is going to want to eat anything, and if she does I have plenty of Saltines.’ Kate poured the hot coffee into her Cinderella mug. She was careful, as always, to avoid the little blond head peeking over the rim.

‘God, Brice and I feel so bad for her.’

‘At least you’re not feeling as bad as her … I mean, she is. Bina doesn’t have the genetics to handle a hangover,’ Kate told him. ‘You shouldn’t have let Brice pour all that booze down her throat.’

‘Well, he’s not apologizing for getting her drunk and I think it was the best thing for her …’ Elliot began.

‘Well, it wasn’t the best thing for me,’ Kate interrupted, peeking at Bina. It wasn’t a pretty picture. ‘I’ve had quite a mess – literally and figuratively – to clean up.’

‘Oh, the poor girl,’ Elliot said, his sympathy real. ‘How can I help?’

‘Short of teaching Michael to deal with human feelings and finding Jack and slapping some sense into him, I don’t think there’s much you can do,’ Kate said.

‘Yeah, I told you Michael was a dud. What went on between you two in the hall? I’ll bet he got a pounding.’

Kate thought of Michael’s face before the elevator door closed and chose to change the subject. She spilled some coffee as she moved her mug to the counter beside the refrigerator. ‘I don’t think there’s much anyone can do, but I’m taking a sick day.’

‘Maybe you should call it a mental health day,’ Elliot said. ‘Except this one isn’t about your mental health.’

‘Don’t worry, it will be mine soon enough,’ Kate predicted and poured some milk into her coffee. She preferred half-and-half, but she hated skim so she had compromised on regular milk. The coffee took on the exact shade that Bina’s skin used to tan to back on the beach when they were kids. Kate had always envied that beautiful color, but now her friend’s complexion had a distinct green tinge. Kate just hoped she didn’t wake up and throw up again. She liked her rug. ‘I’ve got to go,’ she told Elliot.

‘Do you want me to take the day off, too? The kids have standardized testing most of the day. I can keep you company and help with Bina.’

‘Forget it,’ Kate told him. ‘I know you’re just afraid you’re going to get my cafeteria duty,’ she joked. ‘Anyway, you had your first and last dose of the Bitches of Bushwick. It ought to be enough Brooklyn to last a lifetime.’ Before he could protest, she added, ‘I have to go. She’s waking up.’

‘I’ll call you later,’ she heard him say as she put the phone down.

She quickly poured a glass of club soda – her favorite remedy for the dehydration of a hangover – and walked from her kitchenette into the living room with her mug in one hand and the glass in the other. Bina groaned, put a hand to her forehead and then opened her eyes, which she closed again quickly. ‘Ohmigod,’ she said and Kate wasn’t sure if it was a reaction to the light or a remembrance of things past. She groaned again.

‘It’s okay, Bina, drink this.’ Kate held the glass in front of her friend and Bina squinted at it.

‘What is it?’ she croaked.

‘Well, it’s not vodka,’ Kate told her. ‘Come on, sit up and take your medicine.’

Bina did as she was told, took the glass, drank three or four big gulps and then began to choke. She put the glass down on Kate’s coffee table and Kate moved it onto a coaster before she went to Bina’s side.

‘Ohmigod,’ Bina repeated. And Kate knew that this time she had remembered Jack and the night before. Bina looked up at her. ‘Oh, Kate. What am I going to do?’

Kate sat down in the wicker chair and reached out and took her friend’s hand in her own. ‘Bina,’ she said, ‘what happened last night?’

‘You were right about the French manicure,’ Bina said. She shook her head and Kate could see the physical pain register on her face.

Kate went back to the kitchen and brought her three Tylenol and a couple of vitamin Cs. ‘Here,’ she said, thrusting them into Bina’s hand. ‘Take these. You’ll feel better.’ She left Bina again and returned to the kitchen where she took out her emergency stash of Saltines. Bina had just downed the last pill when Kate returned. She didn’t want them all to lie there in an empty stomach so she handed Bina a Saltine. ‘Eat it,’ she said.

‘Oh, please,’ Bina responded in a world-weary voice.

‘Eat it,’ Kate commanded, ‘and now tell me what happened last night.’ She watched as Bina made an entire meal of the Saltine taking many tiny bites and washing them down with the club soda. The moment she was finished, Kate handed her another Saltine and refilled her glass. ‘Good girl,’ she said. ‘So what happened?’

Bina lay back among the cushions and put a hand across her forehead. This time the tears were silent ones. Kate rose, went to her bedroom, and came back with a box of tissues. Wordlessly, she handed one to Bina who mopped at her eyes and began to talk in an unsteady voice. ‘You know that I was meeting him at Nobu and I was excited because it’s one of the kinds of places you go to.’ Kate almost smiled. Nobu was one of the most expensive, stylish, Asian restaurants in the city and Kate couldn’t afford to eat there even on her birthday. Sometimes Kate wondered about Bina’s vision of Kate’s reality, but she didn’t have the time to do that now. ‘Anyway, the place was beautiful and when I walked past the bar I could see that all the women looked better than I did. I don’t know why, because their clothes weren’t as good as mine – at least they didn’t look as good, but somehow they looked better, if you know what I mean.’ Kate just nodded. ‘Anyway, when I got to the dining room the hostess wasn’t there. I looked around, kind of self-conscious, then I thought I saw her. She had her back to me and was talking to some guy at a table and she was holding his hand up and laughing. When he laughed back, I realized it was Jack. I nearly plotzed.’

Kate had a vision of Bina going into hysterics and throwing a scene in the middle of the Zen of Nobu. God, she thought, that would end a romantic evening quickly. Bina did tend to overreact. ‘So did you …’

‘For a minute I didn’t do anything,’ Bina said. ‘I couldn’t believe it. Then I walked over to the table and …’

The phone rang and Kate looked at the caller ID. ‘It’s your mom,’ Kate said.

‘Don’t pick up,’ Bina nearly screeched.

Kate let the phone ring until the answering machine kicked in. Mrs Horowitz’s concerned voice came on and Kate turned the volume down. ‘You will have to tell her what happened. After you tell me, of course,’ Kate said. ‘And she must be concerned. Where does she think you are? Did she know about your plans last night?’

Bina covered her eyes again. ‘I can’t talk to her now,’ she said. ‘And I didn’t tell her anything because she would have nudged me to death. But I’m sure she knew about the ring and she knows Jack is leaving …’ Bina stopped for a moment and began to wail. It was a high-pitched keen of misery. ‘He’s leaving tonight. Ohmigod, he’s leaving tonight.’

Kate crouched at the edge of the sofa and took Bina in her arms. She felt Bina tremble against her, shaking with every sobbing breath. ‘Bina, you have to calm down and tell me what happened. We probably can fix this.’

Bina shook her head silently but lowered the volume of her crying. Just then the phone rang again. Reluctantly, Kate left Bina and went over to it. It was Michael. She had to pick it up, and wondered what people did in ‘the olden days’, as her kids would say, before there were things like caller ID. Kate looked over at Bina who had turned on her side and was quietly sobbing into a bunch of tissues. She picked up the receiver.

‘Kate, you’re home?’ Michael asked.

‘Yes.’ She didn’t need to tell him anything more. He knew that she was usually in her office by this time and as a post-doc he might have had the brains to figure out that based on what he had reluctantly witnessed the night before she might not show up at school.

‘Hey, Kate, I … I just wanted to call to apologize.’

Kate softened. She sighed, but covered the mouthpiece to be sure that Michael didn’t hear it. She had learned that there were two kinds of men: those who apologized and continued their behavior and those who apologized and stopped it. She hadn’t known Michael long enough to know which type he was.

The way she looked at things at this point in her life, most relationships were compromises and all men had to be looked at as fixer-uppers. As a therapist, she knew people did not change unless they wanted to and worked very hard at it. As a woman, she knew she had to tolerate a certain amount of what her ten-year-old patient Susan called ‘monkey clone behavior’. ‘Okay,’ she said to Michael in a voice as neutral as she could manage.

‘I’m sure I looked like an unfeeling jerk last night. You know, it’s just that … well, your friend was very dramatic.’

That pissed Kate off. ‘I suppose a little drama is warranted when your entire life is ruined.’ She purposely kept her voice low and looked over at Bina to make sure she went unheard. What good was an apology, she thought, if it was followed by a further injury?

‘I’ve done it again, haven’t I?’ Michael asked. He might not be empathetic but he wasn’t stupid, Kate reflected. ‘Look, let me take you out to dinner one night this week,’ he said. ‘Let’s talk about it. I know I can do better.’

Fair enough, Kate thought. But it couldn’t be in a restaurant. There should be a lot of talking, a lot of negotiating, and maybe some reconciliatory sex. ‘Why don’t you come over for dinner?’ she proposed. ‘But not tonight.’ She looked over at the sofa again. Bina was just raising her head. ‘Gotta go,’ she said. ‘Let’s talk later.’

‘I’ll call you this evening,’ Michael promised and Kate hung up. She returned to Bina’s side.

Bina, her eyes red, but not as red as her nose, looked up at her. ‘How can we fix it?’ she asked.

Kate sat down and the wicker creaked. ‘Well, to know that, first I have to know what happened. Exactly what happened.’

‘So I go over to the table, and Jack is laughing and the Chinese woman – who was smaller than a size two and taller than I am – looks at me like I’m the bus boy. But Jack, he jumps and pulls his hand away. “Hey, Sy Lin was just teaching me how to say hello in Mandarin. Nee-how-ma!” So I look at him and say, “Nee-how-ma, right back atcha.” Then I turn to Sy Lin and say, “How do you say goodbye?” So she just gives me this smile, does one of those look-overs – you know the way Barbie does when someone is dressed really badly – and then looks at Jack and says, “Enjoy your dinner.” Oh, and just to make it a really bad omen, she was wearing the color nail polish you picked out. I should always listen to you.’

‘Bina, don’t be silly. This isn’t about manicures. So what happened next? Did you pitch a fit?’

Bina began to cry again. ‘That’s the worst part,’ she gulped. ‘I didn’t do anything. It was Jack, Jack who …’

The phone rang again. Kate stepped over and looked at the handset and saw that it was Elliot’s cell. ‘Wait a minute,’ she told Bina, who just ignored her anyway. Kate picked up the phone.

‘Okay. Don’t worry about a thing,’ came Elliot’s voice. ‘We’ve got the situation under control. Brice and I will be there with bagels, cream cheese and lox. We also have two pints of hand-packed Häagen-Dazs,’ he added. ‘Rocky Road – Brice figured Bina was on one – and Concession Obsession. Maybe that was because this is all like a bad movie. And that’s not all. I have a couple of ten-milligram Valium that Brice “borrowed” from his mother’s medicine cabinet. We’re the rescue squad. Don’t try to get in our way.’

‘Elliot, this is serious,’ Kate admonished.

‘That’s why Brice and I took half a day off from work. Well, that and intense curiosity.’

‘The two of you are gossipmongers,’ Kate said.

‘You betcha. Don’t let Bina say another word until we get there because even though I’m a social idiot, Brice knows how to fix up anything that’s interpersonal. I hang the shelves.’

Kate found herself holding a dead phone and looking at her almost-dead friend. Maybe some food, ice cream, muscle relaxants and diversions were just what she needed. But first she had to find out the rest of the story.

‘Was that Jack?’ Bina asked.

‘No,’ Kate admitted. She sat down again. ‘Tell me what happened next.’ And then the door bell rang.

9

‘It’s Jack!’ Bina shouted and virtually levitated off the sofa. ‘Ohmigod! It’s Jack and look what I look like!’

‘It isn’t Jack,’ Kate told her and watched Bina struggle with both relief and disappointment simultaneously. ‘It’s Elliot. He’s the only one who can get into the building without me having to buzz. He has a key to the downstairs door.’

Kate went to the tiny foyer and looked through the safety peephole. There, scary in the fish-eye lens, was Elliot, smiling and gesturing to Brice, who was holding up the promised goodie bag. Reluctantly, Kate turned the knob and opened the door. If she didn’t do it, the guys would come in anyway – Elliot had a spare pair of keys for emergency purposes (like the time Kate locked her purse in the office and got halfway home before she noticed) and he wouldn’t hesitate to use it.

Elliot and Brice almost tumbled in, the three of them crowded into the tiny four-foot by four-foot entrance hall. ‘Is she okay?’ Elliot whispered.

‘No,’ Kate told him.

‘Well, is she better?’ Brice asked.

‘No,’ Kate repeated.

‘Then it’s a good thing we came,’ Elliot said.

‘I told you,’ Brice responded and then all three of them stepped into the living room, like all those clowns emerging from a tiny car at the circus. At least it felt like a circus to Kate.

‘Oh, Bina! You poor girl,’ Elliot said and flew across the living room to sit down beside her in Kate’s good chair.

‘Don’t worry about a thing,’ Brice said and began unpacking the shopping bag onto Kate’s coffee table. ‘What’s the last thing you ate? And when was it?’

Bina, a bit dazed, tried to answer him. ‘Well, I thought I was going to eat last night with Jack but then I never finished the meal. I was too upset. Then I couldn’t find Kate. I remember having some vodka …’

‘Well, you need one of these,’ Elliot said and took out a waxed paper parcel and handed it to her.

She opened it up. Kate winced at the poppy seeds that went rolling off the bagel and onto the sofa, the floor, the rug, and places that she would vacuum for months to come. ‘Oh, I can’t eat,’ Bina said.

‘You have to keep up your strength,’ Elliot told her.

Kate nodded. ‘It would be good for you to have some breakfast,’ she coaxed. ‘Just take a bite.’

Brice nodded, moved to the foot of the sofa, sat down and rearranged Bina’s feet so they were on his lap and covered with the quilt. ‘Now, just tell Uncle Brice all about it,’ he said, his voice a combination of mockery and sincerity.

‘I can’t believe yesterday was supposed to be your big night and nothing happened,’ Elliot said. ‘You must be distraught.’ At that point Kate realized she was fairly distraught herself, and taking a throw pillow from the sofa, sank down to the floor on it beside the coffee table.

‘Tell me about it! I thought Jack was nervous. Like he was making sure the ring was still safe. Jack Weintraub was finally going to propose to me and he was nervous. You know, he’s such a perfectionist – Barbie said he insisted on a perfect stone: Flawless D color.’

‘Flawless D!’ Brice said approvingly.

‘Right. See? I love him for a reason. He knows things. He wants things right. And I thought he wanted me to be happy. So I was happy and I decided to forget about Tokyo Rose.’

‘Yes, forget the hostess,’ Kate pressed. ‘Unless he asked her to marry him. You didn’t fight over her, did you?’

‘We didn’t fight at all,’ Bina protested. ‘I was a little upset about the dragon lady – it just isn’t like Jack to flirt with strange women – but I couldn’t have loved him more. Anyway, he raised his glass of champagne and I think he was about to make a toast when he realized I didn’t have a glass. So he tried to get a waiter or a waitress and they were nowhere to be seen. So Jack says he has to go to the men’s room and on the way he’ll order me a drink. But I think he might have been looking for the hostess …’

‘Her and many like her, the man-whore,’ said a heated Brice. ‘I just hate it when a man …’

‘Hey. Don’t make this personal,’ Elliot said, cutting Brice and God only knew what story off.

‘Focus, darling,’ Kate said, touching Bina’s face gently. Kate was quickly losing hope that a simple phone call before Jack got on the plane might put things right.

‘Okay. So he excused himself and headed for the men’s room. I watched him walk away from the table. I couldn’t help thinking he was so handsome.’

‘I know. Men are so cute from behind,’ said Brice.

Bina nodded her agreement. ‘I mean, people are like “Jack is just ordinary”, but that’s what I like about him,’ she continued, paying no heed to the sexual orientation of Brice’s comment nor being the slightest bit shocked. It seemed to Kate as though Bina was bonding with Brice the way she did with her girlfriends. ‘Jack reminds me of the Goldilocks story,’ Bina went on. ‘He’s not too tall or too short, he isn’t too skinny or too fat, he isn’t too handsome or too ugly. He’s just right,’ she said. ‘At least just right for me.’ Then she realized anew where she was and what had happened. ‘He was just right, but I wasn’t just right for him. Maybe it’s me that’s ordinary.’

‘Oh, Bina,’ Kate said and put her arm around the girl, squeezing tightly. ‘You’re not ordinary.’ That might not have been totally true, but that she was Jack’s equal was a sure thing. Kate had never met anyone more ordinary than Jack. ‘What happened then?’

‘Jack was gone for a little while. So finally that stupid hostess came back and asked me if I wanted a drink. I told her that my boyfriend was getting me something, and she said, “Your boyfriend? He said this was a business meeting. Otherwise I would have given him a more private table.”’

‘The bitch!’ Elliot and Brice said simultaneously.

‘Yeah. The beautiful, thin, exotic bitch,’ Bina agreed bitterly.

‘This is not productive,’ Kate said. No matter what the story was, Kate was going to be sure they didn’t criticize Jack too much, because when he and Bina patched things up – and they would – Bina would forever remember Kate’s criticism. Kate had learned that lesson the hard way with Bev, before she married Johnnie.

‘Bina, you are so beautiful. Any guy in the world would be lucky to share the same air as you,’ Kate told her friend and meant it. Every bit of Bina’s soul was generous and giving. Her heart was loyal and loving. And she had an adorable, round little face, and a curvy figure. Kate stroked Bina’s dark shiny hair. What the hell was wrong with Jack? It must have been a panic attack. Commitment was a very frightening prospect. ‘Didn’t you tell me just last week that Jack said he found you beautiful in so many ways?’

‘Honey,’ Brice said with a tilt of his head, ‘greeting cards can tell you that.’

‘No, he said I was too beautiful and too good for him,’ Bina corrected.

‘Uh oh,’ Brice and Elliot said, again in unison, and exchanged a look.

Kate gestured to them behind Bina’s head, then focused on Bina again. ‘Well anyway, Bina, you are beautiful and I am sure Jack still feels the same way.’

‘Yeah? You haven’t heard the end of the story,’ Bina said.

‘We’re trying to,’ Kate told her, attempting not to snap.

‘Go on. Get it all out,’ Elliot advised.

‘Well, of course I was hating this … woman.’ Bina paused and Kate was pleased that she didn’t stoop to any slur. ‘So I told her to go away. Jack finally came back with my drink and said – and you won’t believe this –’ Bina mimicked Jack’s deep Brooklyn baritone voice. ‘“I looked at you from across the room. You looked good from over there.” Was that a compliment or a diss?’

Kate pursed her lips but refrained from speaking. It seemed clear that her theory was right – Jack needed distance in both senses to see Bina. But up close and intimate his anxiety paralyzed him. If only he could have stayed at the bar and proposed by cell phone, Kate thought ruefully. He could have sent the waitress over with the ring and everyone would be happy. Instead, here Kate was, stuck with an immovable object on her sofa, trying to stave off an irresistible force. And uptown at Andrew Country Day there were children who wouldn’t get to see her while she practiced adult psychology in her cramped living room.

‘What did you do?’ Kate asked.

‘I just gave him a look,’ Bina said.

‘And what did he do?’

‘Well, I think Jack saw my reaction. He asked if something was wrong. He sounded so sincere, so concerned, that I felt bad and figured I had to let up on the poor guy. I thought he was a nervous wreck about proposing. Also, to tell the truth, Jack has never been … well, let’s just say he’s careful with his money.’

‘Oh hell,’ Brice said. ‘Let’s say he’s cheap.’ Bina opened her eyes wide, and for a moment Kate thought her friend was going to giggle.

‘Go on,’ Kate said.

‘Well, I just shook my head and suggested that we make a toast. And all he said was “To us”. I waited for more, you know like “and to our future as Mr and Mrs Jack Weintraub, the perfect married couple”, but there was nothing more.’ A tear slid down her cheek and Brice took her hand.

‘So?’ Kate prompted. She wondered what time Jack’s plane was actually taking off, whether Jack planned to be on it, whether he had called the Horowitz household, whether he had called his cousin Max across the hall.

‘Then he said he really wished he didn’t have to take this trip, but said some of that stuff about markets misbehaving. So I suggested that in the future maybe we’ll make the trips together.’

‘What did he say to that?’ Kate asked.

‘Well, of course, then the waitress shows up before he can answer. Just my luck. And you know it takes Jack a long time to order. And then he has to make sure none of the things on his plate are going to touch any of the others.’

Kate had forgotten about that phobia. She nodded to Bina.

‘So we had our drink and it seemed that the dinner was going fine until I told him how much I was going to miss him. I mean that’s okay to say, right? The guy is going away for months and it’s halfway around the world. Jack and I haven’t been separated by more than ten miles since we first started dating.’

‘Really?’ Brice asked. ‘That’s so romantic!’

‘It’s true, right, Kate? She was there the night Max, you know, Kate’s neighbor from across the hall, had the party where I met Jack.’ Kate rolled her eyes. Bina had the habit of playing what her friends called ‘Jewish geography’. Kate had gotten her apartment because Bina’s brother knew Max from summer camp and he had told Kate about it. Kate got the place and Max invited her to one of his parties to which Bina had also come – on one of her few sallies across the East River – and Max’s cousin Jack had … well, it could go on endlessly, between Hebrew schools, summer camps, bar mitzvahs, weddings, cousins, and on and on and on. Kate didn’t know the Yiddish word for six but there seemed to be fewer degrees of separation between the Jewish communities than the six in the John Guare play and film. Thankfully Bina didn’t overindulge. ‘The weird thing is we had both grown up in Brooklyn just six blocks from each other but we were introduced for the first time that night, and we haven’t been apart since. I mean, he took me out for a drink after the party and asked me out for the next night. And that weekend he came over for dinner with my parents and brother and … well, there we were, saying goodbye to each other for a very long time. So I thought it was appropriate to say I would miss him. And I thought it would be good to kind of, you know, get him started. I mean, we were finished with our appetizers and entrées. Did I have to wait until he popped the question?’

‘Men spook easily,’ Brice offered. ‘I remember the time when Ethan Housholder told me …’

‘Not now, Brice,’ Kate interjected.

‘Right, sorry. Continue, honey.’ Kate had to admit that Bina couldn’t have had two more sympathetic listeners than Brice and Elliot. And sometimes simply talking was the best therapy. But then, just when Kate thought they had safely gotten out of the water, Bina began to cry again. Elliot’s soft pats and Brice’s coos of sympathy only made it worse.

‘Well, it was like all the color drained out of his face. And then he said, “Bina, you know I have to be in Hong Kong for almost five months and that’s not going to be easy.” He kept touching his breast pocket and the tension was almost overwhelming. I couldn’t help but think “here it comes”. Then he just sat there. I wanted to scream, “Why don’t you just take the damn thing out of there and ask me to marry you?” But, nothing. The man just sat there and then looked down and finished eating his fucking Chicken Rangoon.’

10

‘What did you do?’ Elliot asked.

Kate was afraid that she would hear that Bina had become hysterical, attacked Jack physically, made a huge scene, or something even more dramatic. But Bina surprised her.

‘I went to the ladies’ room, of course.’

‘Of course,’ Brice agreed. ‘I can’t tell you how many times I wished I could go there myself.’

‘So, anyway …’ Bina continued. She opened her eyes wide and they glazed over as if she could see the scene replaying itself.

Kate, Elliot and Brice all held their breath, as if at last they were to find out what had actually happened. Then the phone rang. ‘Shit!’ Kate said and grabbed for the receiver, peering at the number. ‘It’s your mother again,’ Kate said. ‘I think you better talk to her.’

‘Kill me first!’ Bina pleaded. Kate froze for a moment. She couldn’t bear to explain the situation to Myra Horowitz and she didn’t have the heart to give the phone to Bina. But she couldn’t refuse the call again …

‘I’ll take it,’ Elliot said.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Kate told him, realizing he was getting deeper and deeper into her Brooklyn life. She pressed the ‘answer’ button.

‘Katie! Thank God! Listen, do you know where Bina is?’

‘She’s fine. She’s right here with me,’ Kate told Mrs Horowitz, only telling one lie, not two.

‘Well, put her on.’

Bina was wildly shaking her head, her hands in front of her face as if to ward off a blow.

Kate was grateful for every moment she had spent at the Horowitz house because even with her training it took more than therapeutic skills to talk Mrs Horowitz down. Kate said soothing words, then distracted her with questions, then reassured her, then sent her love to Dr Horowitz. All the while Elliot circled his hand, telling her to move it along, while Brice pulled his index finger across his throat, giving her the sign to cut it short. As if she wanted to be the middleman! She finally hung up.

‘At last,’ said Brice.

‘So you were in the ladies’ room,’ Elliot prompted.

‘Yeah. You know, I just wanted to be by myself for a minute; just long enough to get it all together again,’ Bina said. ‘So I fixed my makeup – and I still had to give the woman there a dollar, even though I hadn’t used the toilet – but I just looked at myself in the mirror and said, “Bina Horowitz, this is the night that’s going to change your life. Be nice and be happy.”’

‘Good for you,’ Kate said, though in the face of obvious tragedy to come.

‘So I get back to the table and Jack stands up. He always does it when we’re in a fancy restaurant. So he leans over to help me into my chair and …’ She gulped. ‘The ring box slipped out of his pocket. It was like a car accident in one of those movies. I saw it all happening in slow motion. The ring box fell over and over and over. The moment the box hits the floor, Jack lets go of my chair. The ring flies out of the box and he scrambles to retrieve it. I’m as frozen as a Swanson TV dinner, and I see the ring skid across the floor and that stupid bitch hostess bends all the way over and picks it up.’

‘Wow,’ was all Kate could say.

‘Wow, indeed,’ Brice added.

‘What did you do?’ asked Elliot.

‘I just sat there, like the turkey dinner that I am, and I realize that Jack, on the floor, can see up the woman’s skirt – well, it was so short and she bent right over. And not from the knees like you’re supposed to but from the waist. And she isn’t wearing any underwear.’

‘What?’ all three said in collective amazement.

‘None. And Jack is on the floor, looking straight up her – well, up her …’

‘We get the visual,’ Kate said.

‘So did Jack. Everyone was looking. I think that was when he lost his mind. It must have been then. So Jack manages to get off the floor and tear his eyes off that woman’s naked crotch and she turns around and hands him the ring. He stands up and puts it in his right pocket. Then he scoops up the box and puts it in his left one.’ Bina stopped for a moment and shook her head. ‘He walked back to the table.’ She turned to Kate. ‘I couldn’t stay happy anymore, Katie. I told Jack that if he was trying to make it a memorable evening, he was succeeding. I mean I could have smacked him, I was so mad. And you know what the asshole said?’

‘What now?’ Kate asked.

Bina, using her Jack voice again, said, ‘“This isn’t how I want to remember you, Bina.”’

‘Uh oh. Here it comes,’ Brice said.

‘Wait for it,’ Elliot warned him.

‘Please, you two – it’s like Tweedledee and Tweedle Very Dumb,’ Kate admonished. ‘Let the woman finish her story, which, I pray, is almost over.’

‘Almost,’ Bina said. ‘So, I was wondering which pocket my ring was in now. It made me think of that game, Kate, that my father would play with us when we were little girls. You know, when he would have surprises for us and we would have to guess which pocket they were in.’

Kate nodded, almost smiling in remembrance. Dr Horowitz had been so kind to her. He used to give his daughter her allowance every Sunday morning and since Kate’s father was usually sleeping one off on Sunday and rarely gave her money, Dr Horowitz always gave Kate the same allowance as well. A big Sunday event was going to the candy store and agonizing over Junior Mints or Bit O Honey. Not to mention the Betty and Veronica comics. Bina and her family were good people, and she hated hearing how she’d been subjected to this hurtful slapstick. But maybe the situation could be salvaged. After all, Bina and Jack had years of history and were made for each other. ‘So then what?’ she asked.

‘Well,’ Bina continued, ‘Jack then looked me in the eyes and said, “Bina, I have something I want to say to you.” And I’m thinking at least someday we’ll tell our grandchildren about all this and laugh! But then Jack says, “I have to be honest; Hong Kong is far away from here. Very far away.” Like I didn’t take geography, right? So I think maybe he’s going to want to elope. It would break my mother’s heart, and I want the dress and all, but I was like dying by now. I kept waiting for Jack to reach for the ring, but his hands are staying folded together on top of the table. He takes a deep breath, looks up to the ceiling, and says, “I think it would be unfair of me to leave and ask you to just wait for me.” I told him I agreed and I looked down at my hand to get my finger ready. But then he said, “I think this time apart might be a good chance for us to – well, for us to – I think this might be a good chance for us to explore our singleness.”’

‘I could kill him, Bina,’ Kate said.

‘Oh, me first,’ Brice added.

There was silence in the room. Kate, Elliot and Brice sat there with their mouths open wide, until Bina started sobbing again. All three snapped back into action. Kate moved closer on the sofa and held Bina. ‘Oh, honey,’ she said. Brice got up, took a cushion and put it under her feet as if she had internal bleeding. Elliot got up, went into the bathroom and returned with a wet towel, a glass of water and a blue pill. Ever neat – except in his clothes – he looked for a coaster. Before Kate could hand him one, he found a piece of cardboard.

‘Take this and drink all the water,’ he told her. Bina did as she was told without question.

‘What was that?’ Kate asked.

‘Oh, I just felt she needed a visit from cousin Valerie,’ Elliot told her. It was his code word for Valium, and Kate knew a blue one was ten milligrams.

‘She’ll sleep for a week,’ Kate said.

‘What a good time for that,’ Elliot told her.

‘Okay, Bina. Tell us what happened next.’

‘I just ran out,’ she said. ‘Well, ran as best I could in my heels. I went straight to your apartment, Katie, and when I couldn’t find you Max helped me. You can’t believe how hysterical I was.’ Kate silently disagreed with her on that. Bina blew her nose and continued. ‘Max was home. And he told me he thought you were out to dinner and where Elliot lived and I went straight there in the pouring rain and … Ohmigod!’

‘What! What is it, Bina?’ Kate asked. Had Bina had a bad reaction to the pill? ‘What is it?’

Bina reached over to the coffee table and picked up the coaster for the water. It was Bunny’s wedding invitation. ‘Bunny? Bunny is getting married?’ she asked.

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