insecurity, depending on how you looked at it.
‘Pardon?’
‘I mean, when you wouldn’t let me in before, even though it’s my best friend’s engagement party.’
He shook his head and half-smiled to himself. ‘Look, it’s nothing personal. They hand me a list and tell me to follow it and do crowd control. If you’re not on the list or you show up when a hundred other people do, I have to keep you outside for a little while. There’s really nothing more to it.’
‘Sure.’ I’d all but missed my best friend’s big night because of his door policy. I teetered a bit and then hissed, ‘Nothing personal. Right.’
‘You think I need your attitude tonight? I’ve got plenty of people who are far more expert at giving me a really fucking hard time, so why don’t we just stop talking and I’ll put you in a cab?’
Perhaps it was the fourth cosmo – liquid courage – but I wasn’t in the mood to deal with his condescending attitude, so I turned on my too-chunky heels and yanked the door open. ‘I hardly need your charity. Thanks for nothing,’ I snapped and marched back inside the club as soberly as I could manage.
I hugged Penelope, air-kissed Avery, and then beelined to the door before anyone else could initiate any more small talk. I saw a girl crouched in a corner, sobbing quietly but with a pleased awareness that others were watching, and sidestepped a strikingly stylish foreign couple who were making out furiously, and with much hip grinding. I then made a big show of ignoring the meathead bouncer who, incidentally, was reading from a tattered paperback version of Lady Chatterley’s Lover (sex fiend!) and threw my arm in the air to hail a cab. Only the street was completely empty, and a cold drizzle had just begun, practically guaranteeing that a taxi was nowhere in my immediate future.
‘Hey, you need some help?’ he asked after opening the velvet rope to admit three squealing, tottering girls. ‘This is a tough street for cabs when it rains.’
‘No thanks, I’m just fine.’
‘Suit yourself.’
Minutes were starting to feel like hours, and the warm summer sprinkles had rapidly become a cold, persistent rain. What, exactly, was I proving here? The bouncer had pressed himself against the door to get some protection from the overhang and was still reading calmly, as though unaware of the hurricane that now whipped around us. I continued to stare at him until he looked up, grinned, and said, ‘Yeah, you seem to be doing just fine on your own. You’re definitely teaching me a lesson by not taking one of these huge umbrellas and walking a couple blocks over to Eighth, where you’ll have no trouble getting a cab at all. Great call on your part.’
‘You have umbrellas?’ I asked before I could stop myself. The water had soaked entirely through my shirt and I could feel my blanket-thick hair sticking to my neck in wet, cold clumps.
‘Sure do. Keep ’em right here for situations just like this. But I’m sure you wouldn’t be interested in taking one of them, right?’
‘Right. I’m just fine.’ To think I’d almost begun warming up to him. Just then a livery cab drove by, and I had the brilliant idea to call UBS’s car service for a ride home.
‘Hi, this is Bette Robinson with account number six-three-three-eight. I need a car to pick me up at—’
‘All booked!’ barked back an angry-sounding female dispatcher.
‘No, I don’t think you understand. I have an account with your company and—’
Click.
I stood there soaking wet, anger boiling inside me.
‘No cars, huh? Tough,’ he said, clucking sympathetically without looking up from the book. I’d managed to skim Lady Chatterley’s Lover when I was twelve and had already gleaned as much about sex as possible from the combination of Forever, Wifey and What’s Happening to My Body? Book for Girls, but I didn’t remember anything about it. Perhaps that had to do with a poor memory, or maybe it was the fact that sex hadn’t even been a part of my consciousness for the last two years. Or maybe it was that the plots of my beloved romance novels crowded my thoughts at all times. Whatever it was, I couldn’t even recall something snide to say about it, never mind clever. ‘No cars.’ I sighed. ‘Just not my night.’
He took a few steps out in the rain and handed me a long executive’s umbrella, already unfurled, with the club’s logo emblazoned on both sides. ‘Take it. Walk to Eighth, and if you still can’t get a cab, talk to the doorman at Serena, Twenty-third between Seventh and Eighth. Tell him I sent you, and he’ll work it out.’
I considered walking right past him and getting on the subway, but the idea of riding around in a train car at one in the morning was hardly appealing. ‘Thanks,’ I mumbled, refusing to meet what would surely be his gloating eyes. I took the umbrella and started walking east, feeling him watch me from behind.
Five minutes later, I was tucked in the backseat of a big yellow taxi, wet but finally warm.
I gave the driver my address and slumped back, exhausted. At this hour, cabs were good for two things and two things only: making out with someone on your way home from a good night out or catching up with multiple people in three-minute-or-less cell-phone conversations. Since neither was an option, I rested my wet hair on the patch of filthy vinyl where so many greasy, unwashed, oiled, lice-ridden, and generally unkempt heads had rested before mine, closed my eyes, and anticipated the sniffling, hysterical welcome I would soon receive from Millington. Who needed a man – or even a newly engaged best friend – when you had a dog?
The week following Penelope’s engagement party was nearly unbearable. It was my fault, of course: there are many ways to piss off your parents and rebel against your entire upbringing without enslaving yourself in the process, but I was clearly too stupid to find them. So instead I sat inside my shower-sized cubicle at UBS Warburg – as I had every day for the past fifty-six months – and death-gripped the phone, which was currently discolored by a layer of Maybelline Fresh Look foundation (in Tawny Blush) and a few splotches of L’Oreal Wet Shine lip gloss (in Rhinestone Pink). I wiped it off as best I could while pressing the receiver to my ear and rubbed my grubby fingers clean underneath the desk chair. I was being berated by a ‘minimum,’ someone who only invests the million-dollar minimum with my division and is therefore excruciatingly demanding and detail-oriented in a way that forty-million-dollar clients never are.
‘Mrs Kaufman, I truly understand your concern over the market’s slight decline, but let me assure you that we have everything under control. I realize your nephew the interior decorator thinks your portfolio is top-heavy with corporate bonds, but I assure you our traders are excellent, and always looking out for your best interests. I don’t know if a thirty-two percent annual gain is realistic in this economic environment, but I’ll have Aaron give you a call as soon as he gets back to his desk. Yes. Of course. Yes. Yes. Yes, I will absolutely have him call you the moment he returns from the meeting. Yes. Certainly. Of course. Yes. Naturally. Yes. A pleasure hearing from you, as always. All right, then. Bye-bye.’ I waited until I heard the click on her end and then slammed down the phone.
Nearly five years and I’d yet to utter the word no, as apparently you need to have at least seventy-two months’ experience before being qualified to go there. I went to send Aaron a
