I tried to imagine Ethan, with his pasty white skin and perspiring brow, weathering a tropical climate. What had I ever found attractive about him anyway?
“Do they even have accounting firms there?” Lori asked, bewildered.
“He’s, uh, he’s going private.”
“Oh,” she said, still studying me. She turned away to the coffee machine, but I could sense that the wheels were still churning in her head. Pulling the now-full coffeepot off the warmer, she filled two mugs and handed me one. Hoping to make my escape with my muffin and my sanity, I thanked her for the coffee and stepped toward my office door. But her next words stopped me.
“He didn’t ask you to go with him?”
I paused in my doorway, realizing I was getting in too deep with this story meant to keep me from getting in too deep. “He, uh, he wanted to make a clean break,” I said, realizing how much more accurately those words applied to me. “You are the queen of the pre-emptive breakup,” Claudia was fond of telling me, commenting on my knack for ending it all succinctly with my man of the moment before said man could do the deed himself.
This answer seemed to satisfy Lori, for she sat down at her desk and began thoughtfully picking a chocolate chip off the top of her muffin. Still, the sight of her concerned frown filled me with unease. I crouched down by her desk and looked up at her. “You okay?” I asked.
She nodded. “I’m fine. I just thought you and Ethan were, like, meant to be.” Then she blushed, causing a strange ache to fill my chest. “I guess I’m just a dopey romantic, huh?” She forced a smile that did not reach her eyes. Eyes in which I found myself searching for all those emotions I couldn’t somehow muster up myself about Ethan.
Thankfully, Claudia stormed in at that moment, preventing me from pursuing any dangerous thoughts. I could tell by the way Claudia blew past us with barely a glance that she was not in a good mood. Which didn’t bode well for Lori…or me.
I decided to take the bull by the horns, and after giving Lori’s hand a quick, comforting squeeze, I abandoned my breakfast on her desk and headed for Claudia’s office, which stood opposite mine.
“Hey,” I said, as I stood in the doorway. Claudia had already tossed her coat onto the low black sofa that lined one wall and was scrutinizing herself in the mirror that lined the other. The way she was studying her tall, pencil-thin, black-clad figure said she wasn’t satisfied with what she saw, although she looked like her usual well-kept self. “How did spa-ing with the bigwigs go?” I asked. Claudia had just come back from an exclusive spa in Switzerland, where, while sipping flavored waters and sitting half-naked, she attended meetings to decide the fate of Roxanne Dubrow cosmetics. Though the company prided itself on being able to attract an older, wealthier client, sales had recently begun to wane. So Dianne Dubrow, CEO and daughter of the company’s founder, had decided that a week at a Swiss spa brainstorming with all her top execs would result in a brilliant new direction for the company—or at least a well-pampered upper management.
But Claudia apparently didn’t feel very well-pampered. Smoothing a newly manicured hand over her long, dark hair with dissatisfaction, she stepped behind her desk, glared hard for a moment at the sleek black surface before looking up.
Her eyes roamed over me, taking in my blouse, my flared pants, my pointy-toed pumps, as if assessing their worthiness. It was the kind of once-over I could never get used to, despite the fact that she did it fairly regularly. It was as if Claudia were measuring me to make sure I met the high fashion standards of the illustrious firm of Roxanne Dubrow. Or at least to see if I were someone worthy of taking on as a confidante, even a friend, as Claudia was wont to do, especially when things weren’t going her way.
“There should be a four-letter word for beauty,” she said finally.
“Tell me,” I said, sitting down in the chair across from her desk and preparing to hear about whatever brave new innovations the executives at Roxanne Dubrow had decided upon.
She sighed, gazing out her window and studying the generous glimpse of skyline it afforded. “They’ve chosen the new face for Roxanne Dubrow,” she said, turning to face me once more, “and she’s sixteen.”
“What?” I asked, completely confused. Roxanne Dubrow cosmetics were devoted to the mature woman. As in: edging toward forty. In fact, Priscilla, the model who was last year’s face, was a bit too young at age twenty-five. “I don’t get it. How are they going to pull off ‘Beauty beyond thirty’ with a sixteen-year-old?”
“That’s just it,” Claudia replied. “Roxanne Dubrow is creating a new image. A new, younger image.” She sniffed. “I suppose it’s only a matter of time before they replace us with sixteen-year-olds. After all, who better to tell a woman how she should look than someone with a Ph.D. in benzyl peroxide?”
“Hmmm…” Studying Claudia’s frown, I wondered if perhaps the younger image worried her on a more personal level. With her dark eyes and the shiny brunette hair she dared, at age forty-two, to wear longer than shoulder length, Claudia was a beautiful woman. But she was incredibly age-conscious.
“So tell me what that child was sniveling about out there,” Claudia continued, confirming my suspicions. Ever since I had hired Lori fresh out of college a year and a half ago, Claudia had taken an immediate dislike to her. A dislike that seemed to have nothing to do with her work and everything to do with the fact that Lori was younger than Claudia had probably ever been.
“Oh, boy trouble,” I said vaguely.
“Poor girl,” she replied sarcastically. “Did Dennis the Menace discover someone else while playing in the sandbox?”
Knowing Claudia was about to take her anger at the top brass at Roxanne Dubrow out on Lori, I decided to sacrifice someone a bit more thick-skinned. Myself. “I broke up with Ethan.”
This got an eyebrow raise. “Pourquoi, darling? Do tell.”
“I discovered what a self-absorbed jerk he was.”
This got a laugh. “Oh, Grace, don’t tell me it took you—how long have you been with him, six months?—to figure that out?”
“Yeah, well. I must be getting soft in my old age,” I replied.
She studied me for a moment, then a savage smile creased her well-lined lips. “Alas for Ethan. Another hapless victim of Grace’s axe.”
“Stop that,” I replied, worried that she might be right. I quickly did a mental checklist of my most recent dating history. Before Ethan there was Drew, who was as utterly eligible as Ethan had appeared to be, but just as emotionally unavailable, I had discovered. Like Ethan, Drew had only lasted six months. In fact, six months might be my record since Kevin, my college boyfriend, whom I’d kept around for a solid two years before giving him the boot. I had been pretty brutal back then, too, I thought, cringing at the memory of how I had dropped every T-shirt, cassette tape and pair of boxer shorts Kevin had ever left at my place in the hall outside his dorm room, just moments before graduation. The truth was, I had an intuition for when I thought a guy would break up with me, and I never, ever let a man get the better of me. The only time that had happened was with my high school boyfriend, who had thrown me over for a cheerleader in a vain effort to win more votes for homecoming king. Still, he hadn’t gotten away without enduring a few cutting barbs from me in front of the entire football team. Because even at the tender age of sixteen, I had a knack for laying a man low.
“It’s
