Love by the Book (31 page)

I tried out a few combinations. “High alcohol tolerance,” “open-minded” and “apparently gives great head” made me sound like I was really into underground sex clubs, while “mildly unkempt,” “sardonic” and “enjoys cheese” painted a perhaps too-realistic portrait. I finally settled on “long-legged,” “independent” and “American.” I thought it made me sound like a sexy flight attendant from the seventies, which should help cover the maximum spread when it came to possible suitors.

Personal brand solidified, I wandered into the kitchen and started rummaging around for something to eat for breakfast. I had found some peanut butter and a piece of stale malt loaf when a note tacked to the cupboard door caught my eye.

Welcome home, lovely! Hope you had a fab time in America! Tristan's meeting my parents (eek!) so we're in Surrey for the weekend. Have left you some milk and some choccies! See you soon!

Lucy xxxxxx

PS
This came for you—what a nutter! Xx

Taped to the back of her note was a postcard featuring a nearly naked man in a cowboy hat standing in the middle of Times Square. I flipped it over, though I already knew who it was from.

Dearest filthiest American (out of what is now a very large pool of experience),

Still having a marvelous time under the bright lights of this big city, though I do miss my grimy old London and my grimy little Cunningham. Hope you're thinking depraved thoughts about me, as ever.

Adrian xxxx

I stuck the postcard on the fridge next to the
NYC
firefighters and padded back to the living room with Lucy's chocolates. I curled up on the couch and fell promptly asleep.

My first day back at work was filled with deleting as many emails from my inbox as possible, excitedly discussing Lucy and Tristan's engagement, and avoiding Cathryn's questions about Dylan.

I'd told her about my ill-fated marriage before I'd left and, like Lucy, I think she'd convinced herself that my trip back home was going to end in the happy reunion of two souls instead of the return of a mildly disturbed one. She was understandably disappointed, but I didn't have time to explain the affairs of the heart to her: I had a huge backlog of emails to deal with and a tour group full of nine-year-olds to lead through the exhibition on the human genome project. Before I knew it, it was
7
p.m. Cathryn and I were the only two left in the office, so I took the opportunity to ask her opinion on the holiday cards I'd ordered.

Rachel Greenwald,
MBA
, being the marketing wiz that she claims to be, thinks the best way to find a man is by direct mail advertising. Specifically, by printing up a load of cards saying you're looking to find someone and sending them out to every person you've ever met. I decided to send out Thanksgiving cards. Not a traditional Hallmark holiday in Britain, admittedly, but Halloween and Arbor Day had already passed.

I called her over to my desk and showed her one of the cards, which involved a photo of my face superimposed onto a turkey and the words “Gobble Gobble!” written above it. Inside, a generic “Happy Thanksgiving” message was followed by a personal appeal:

This is the year I would like to find someone to have sex with and I need your help. If you know anyone suitable, please fill out the enclosed card and return it to me. Thank you!

Lauren xx

Cathryn stared at the card. “This year I would like to find someone to have sex with?” she read. She looked up at me, aghast. “Have you gone completely mad?”

“Well, according to the book I'm meant to say I'd like to find a husband, but I've already got a redundant one of those, so I figured I should be more precise.”

“You can't possibly send these out.”

“I can, too! C'mon, don't you remember from Marketing
101
? It's direct mail advertising! The most effective advertising there is.”

She rolled her eyes. “Maybe in
1983
it was, but not anymore. And anyway, you're just going to attract a bunch of mad people with these!”

“Well, that's what I attract already; at least with this I can get someone else to do the legwork for me.”

Over lunch the next day, I signed and addressed cards to every single person I knew in London—Lucy and Cathryn, obviously, but also my landlord, cleaner, local liquor store clerk, and everyone I'd ever been on a date with. I even sent one to the angry bookseller, imagining with glee the look of disgust on his face when he opened the card. I briefly considered giving one to my boss, but Cathryn talked me out of it.

I tucked a few extras in my desk in case inspiration struck and put the rest in the mailbox when I left work. I wished them luck as they slipped through the slot: surely
someone
knew a suitable man for me to sleep with.

Lucy and I took the day off in order to run around a posh part of London and spend someone else's money. It was
GREAT
. Don't ever let anyone tell you that having money is a terrible burden, because it's not. It's awesome and it makes life super easy. Rich people only pretend that it's a burden because they don't want poor people getting ideas above their station and staging a Bolshevik-style revolution.

Anyway, Tristan had given Lucy a stack of money so she could buy a fancy dress for the engagement party on Saturday, but she'd been paralyzed by the thought of going into one of those terrifying designer shops on her own, so she left it until the last minute.

When she tearfully confessed that she didn't have a dress and—worse—had been sitting on a pile of unspent cash, I bundled her on to the tube and off to Bond Street we went.

Now, I had zero experience in dealing with scary designer shops. Growing up, my mom bought all of our clothes from a store called “Slightly Irregular,” and Meghan and I spent our youth in “
GAK
” sweatshirts and “Lewi” jeans. Any item of clothing costing more than $
20
was considered a travesty, and I've carried this thrifty tradition into my adulthood. Some of my proudest moments have been when people have complimented me on an item of clothing I'm wearing and I've been able to say, “Thanks, it cost three pounds,” or “Thanks, I found it in a Dumpster.”

Still, I was determined that we wouldn't be cowed by surly shop assistants. And in order to do this, I figured it was best to pretend to be someone else.

“Okay,” I said to Lucy, pulling her toward Balmain. “Here's the plan: we're going to pretend to be rich people, so let's choose our identities now. I'm going to be Lucia, an Argentinian soybean heiress with a checkered past. Now, who are you?”

She looked at me skeptically. “Can you do an Argentinian accent?”

“
S
í
, of course!” I said, rolling my “r” with abandon. “Come on, who are you? Maybe a French countess? Or the daughter of a Neapolitan mobster?”

“Lauren, this is bonkers! I can't pretend to be some rich foreigner!”

“Okay, how about a posh Brit? Like, an aristocrat or an Ecclestone or something. Seriously, Luce, it will make it way more fun and way less scary.”

She rolled her eyes, but I could tell she was getting into the idea. “Okay,” she said, “I'll be Tara Palmer-Tomkinson's niece, Clara.”

“Nice. Give me more.”

“Um . . .”

“Okay, I'll do it for you. You were once photographed as one of
Tatler
's ‘tweens to watch' but fell from grace after you were caught selling diet pills at Channing School.”

“Love it.”

“And now you're marrying a sheikh and moving to Dubai.”

“Yes!” she said, eyes lighting up.

“And you're going to live in an exact replica of Versailles. We're ready!”

We sailed into Balmain, giving the saleswoman a frosty nod.

I made a beeline for the cocktail dresses, pulling out a little black number. “
Ay! Dios m
í
o!
Clara, you will look so beaoootiful in this dress!”

Lucy took the dress from me and inspected it with impressive disdain. “Darling,” she trilled, “this is just too
gauche
for the sheikh! He is a very elegant man, you know.” Her accent was Patsy Kensit meets the queen—I don't think she actually moved her lips once—but it seemed to work. I saw the saleswoman's sharply defined eyebrows raise slightly.

I thrust the dress back on the rack. “
Ay
, I know! He is a very—how do you say?—discerning man! And rich! Very rich!”

Suddenly, the saleswoman appeared at her side, birdlike little arms flapping in her perfectly tailored sleeves. “Can I be of any assistance, ladies?”

“
Ay! S
í
, por favor!
My friend here, she is marrying a very important man, and she needs a dress for the—how do you say?—engagement party?”

“Lovely,” she said, eyes glinting. “I'd be very happy to pull a few things for you. Please do follow me into the dressing room. Could I tempt either of you with a glass of champagne while you wait?”

“That would be divine,” Lucy said frostily.

Three hours, five shops and six free glasses of champagne later, Lucy had a gorgeous new Saint Laurent dress, a pair of Nicholas Kirkwood heels and a Prada bag to make grown women weep. We were triumphant (and very drunk) so we went home and ordered a celebratory curry, which we ate while shouting abuse at
I'm a Celebrity
in Lucia's and Clara's accents.

Eventually, the downstairs neighbor started banging on the ceiling with a broomstick, but it was good while it lasted.

Last night was Lucy's engagement party and it was one hell of an event. Let's put it like this: I'm writing this on the morning after from my bed, I'm still drunk off my tree on extremely expensive champagne, I'm completely covered in glitter and I'm currently pressing a pack of frozen peas to the welt on my ass from where a man in a gimp mask whacked me with a leather-bound table tennis paddle.

But that's not how the evening began.

The party started promptly at seven, when the great and the good of England's wealthy elite poured through the gilded doors of the Garrick. It was a nice-enough party: unending canapés, silent tuxedoed waiters topping everyone's glasses with Krug and Châteauneuf-du-Pape, and polite conversation among landed gentry. Cathryn and Michael were there, thank God, so I spent most of the evening huddled near them, prodding her for gossip about the other guests and avoiding the roaming hands of several distinguished gentlemen. You'd be surprised how handsy some of those old aristocrats can be.

I still had buckets of cards left over from my Victorian days, so I recycled them into Program cards by writing my phone number and personal brand message on the back of all of them (Rachel Greenwald,
MBA
, being a lot more direct than Mrs. Humphry). I figured I could give them out at the party in the hopes of getting some more suitable candidates. I managed to give a few cards away, mainly to some of the younger partners at Tristan's firm and a few dear old biddies keen to set me up with their grandsons (presumably they thought I was Upper East Side rather than suburban Portland).

Tristan made a very sweet speech about Lucy being the love of his life and keeping him young, and I only clocked a few raised eyebrows and disapproving clucks among the old hens.

And then, at the stroke of eleven, carriages were called and lots of wealthy dowagers and similar posh old people sailed out in a whiff of Penhaligon's and salmon vol-au-vents, and Tristan climbed on top of a table. “And now, ladies and gentlemen,” he yelled to the remaining few, “our evening can begin! If you'll please make your way outside, taxis are ready to whisk us away to Vauxhall!”

A cheer went through the crowd and I started to worry slightly. I caught Lucy by the elbow as she tottered past.

“What's going on?” I asked.

“We're going to Toppers!” she said, beaming with pleasure.

“What the hell is Toppers?”

“Uh, it's only London's premier
BDSM
club! Tristan's rented out the whole place for the night!” She caught the look of horror on my face. “See, I knew you'd go all funny and squeamish if I told you beforehand! But don't worry, love: I've brought you an outfit.” She held up a cloth shoulder bag brimming with black
PVC
. She grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the exit. “Come on, you'll be absolutely
fine
.”

And so began the second party. Lucy and I changed in the taxi, taking turns screening each other from the driver's very curious gaze (though why we felt the need to be modest considering where we were headed, I'll never know). First, Lucy peeled off her extremely expensive dress to reveal the corset I'd helped hoist her boobs into earlier and pulled on a pair of custom-made, black patent leather, lace-up, thigh-high boots that made me wince just looking at them.

“You're not going to wear any bottoms?” I asked, looking at her be-pantied ass for all to see.

“No,” she said, “and neither are you.” Out of the bag she pulled a black playsuit made almost entirely of mesh, except for a few key solid patches, and a pair of lipstick-red spike-heeled ankle boots.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I said, aghast. I tried to disentangle the various scraps of material so I could hold it up to myself, but eventually gave up and hurled it at her head. “There is no way I'm wearing that. It's not even structurally sound!”

Lucy plucked the playsuit off of her head and smoothed it out on her lap. She'd managed to make it resemble a wearable garment, though it was still a garment I had no intention of wearing.

She looked at me with her big blue eyes. “But, babe, it's my night! And this is my nicest outfit—apart from the one I'm wearing, of course—and it will totally suit you!” She shoved the playsuit at me. “C'mon, lovely. Please? For me?”