Please (6 page)

She had her hand on the door and was about to go in when she spotted Sebastian inside. He was at the cash
ier, buying something. Elizabeth let go of the handle and huddled further down into her scarf. She walked past the store, glancing up momentarily as she passed Sebastian. He didn’t notice her. But Elizabeth recognized the book he was buying. It was Flaubert’s
Madame Bovary.

*

“Have you ever been in a situation where you know, intellectually, that something is wrong, that you’re going to regret it if you do it, but do it anyway?” Elizabeth was sitting across from Abbie, a steaming bowl of
pho
in front of her, its anise-infused fragrance better than aromatherapy. Because of the unseasonable cold, they had decided to pass on the sandwich place below Abbie’s office and were squeezed into a cramped noodle shop, diphthongs flying all around them as the denizens of Chinatown gobbled down their lunches.

“
Only every time I walk down 6th,” Abbie groaned, putting down her chopsticks and resting her chin in her hands. “There’s this amazing bakery. Their key-lime cupcakes are tiny, paper-wrapped bites of heaven,” she said dreamily, “And their cider doughnuts, oh ...” she gazed off into the middle distance for a moment. Then snapped her eyes back to Elizabeth. “Wait a minute. This isn’t about Sebastian Faulkner is it?” She narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

Elizabeth looked back at
Abbie with her best impersonation of wide-eyed innocence. “No,” she said, trapping a clot of noodles in her chopsticks.

“
Lizzie,” Abbie wailed. “What are you doing? After what I told you?”

“
Nothing.” Clearly, she’d have to work on that innocent look.

“
Uh-huh,” Abbie said, crossing her chubby arms and leaning back in her chair. “That’s why you just nodded and smiled at me when I showed you my edits. You didn’t hear a word I said. You were fantasizing about Mr. AWOL.” Abbie struck a manly pose, glowering in a remarkable caricature of the ad for Sebastian’s TV show.

Elizabeth laughed, nearly choking on her soup.
“No, no. I’m serious. Nothing has happened. Really. It was a strictly hypothetical question.” She ran her hand along her jaw.

“
Good,” Abbie said, returning her attention to her noodles. “Because nothing positive could come of it. You’d just be opening yourself up to a whole world of pain. And my quota of suffering artistes is already filled.” She squeezed some garlic-chili sauce into her bowl. “Besides, you’ve got it good, sweetie. A husband with a good job who lets his wife stay home and write? Two gorgeous kids? You don’t want to mess that up.”

“
Of course not,” Elizabeth said, with a pang of guilt, realizing she hadn’t thought about her kids in almost twenty-four hours. They’d just be finishing up at school for the day. She should call them when she got back to the hotel, she thought.

“
Oh, that reminds me. I got the final contract from Cullen. I wasn’t sure if he’d go for it but he signed off on giving you five percent of the profits.”

“
So, if it makes, say, a million dollars,” Elizabeth squinted, trying to visualize the numbers – she’d always been terrible at math – “that means I get ...”

“
Fifty thousand. Well, minus my twenty-five percent.” Abbie slid another contract across the table. “So, about thirty-seven five.”

Elizabeth signed them both and passed them back to
Abbie. “That’s not bad.”

Abbie
grinned back at her, a jack-o-lantern smile splitting her round face. “No, that’s not bad, considering
The Big O
made two million and
Dirty Girls
has made almost twenty-five million so far.”

“
Oh my God!” Elizabeth shrieked, grabbing Abbie’s hands.

“
I know!” Abbie squealed. “Never mind what it’s going to do for your book sales!”

*

Elizabeth started back to the Mercer with dollar signs floating in her head. Could it be that her years of hard work were actually going to pay off? She got off the subway at Spring and strolled along the busy street, looking in all the shop windows with renewed interest. In theory, she could afford to buy something in one of them. Normally, Banana Republic was as high-end as she got, even after Steve’s promotion. It just didn’t feel right, spending their money on her. But now she had some money of her own.

Elizabeth read the signs over the shops.
Lalique, Kiki de Montparnasse – even their names sounded like jewels. She stopped in front of one, a lingerie store. Faceless black velvet mannequins in translucent lace adorned the windows. On a whim, she went inside.

“
May I help you?” A woman looked up from her computer as Elizabeth entered. Middle-aged, but with a lot of help, she guessed from the sound of the woman’s voice.

“
No, I’m just looking.”

The woman gave Elizabeth a subtle once-over, concluding, Elizabeth guessed, that she wouldn
’t be dropping much cash. “Let me know if you need anything,” she said, eyes already back on the screen.

“
Uh-huh.” Elizabeth picked a bra off the rack. It was pale peach satin with black lace trim. Elizabeth thought about the plain black bra and panties she was wearing, the cotton so faded it was almost gray. She looked at the price and had to stop herself gasping. One hundred and fifteen dollars for a bra. She picked up the matching panties. Forty-nine fifty. Elizabeth had grudgingly paid seven dollars a pair for what she considered her good panties, the ones with the elastic lace she had gotten at Victoria’s Secret. Reflexively, she started to put the lingerie back, but a sudden impulse stopped her. She turned to the woman at the computer.

“
I’d like to try these,” she said.

*

Back in her room at the Mercer, she carefully pulled her purchases out of their tissue nests and laid them on the bed. She had spent a thousand dollars on lingerie, she realized, with a thrill. She stripped out of her clothes and slipped on a pair of black lace panties, cut high on the cheeks. Cheekies, the woman at the store had called them. Elizabeth examined her rear view in the mirror and smiled, remembering what her mother had jokingly said to jolly Elizabeth out of her morbid teenaged body obsession: “When they were handing out breasts, you thought they said tests and said, ‘No thanks.’ But when they were handing out bums, you thought they said plums and said, ‘Oh, yes, the more the better.’ Years of experience with men hadn’t exactly made her love her curvy butt or her small breasts, but she had at least come to accept them.

She hooked the mat
ching bra on and struck a Heidi Klum pose, looking in the mirror. It was a definite improvement, she thought, pitching her old panties at the garbage bin. Elizabeth rifled through the drawers, picking out all the disreputable undies and replacing them with her new purchases.

She had just pulled on her jeans and turtleneck when her phone trilled. She answered it as she grabbed her laptop and walked out the door. It was Emily.

“Hey, you,” she said in her deep purr. “How’s the Big Apple?”

“
Do they still call it that, Grandma Em?” Elizabeth teased, walking down the hall to the elevator.

“
Whatever. I saw Keenan and Gwen at the school with your mom.”

“
Oh, how did they look?” Elizabeth felt that guilty twinge again. She’d call them from the set.

“
Totally fine. Don’t worry. But how are you doing? Drew, Avery, would you guys stop teasing the dog? I swear one day he’s going to bite you and then we’ll spend the night at the emergency room and you’ll miss Ben Ten.”

Elizabeth stifled a laugh.

“Sorry,” Emily apologized.

“
Don’t worry about it. I’m Keenan’s mom, remember?” Elizabeth said, watching the numbers above the elevator light up. She lowered her voice. “I just spent a thousand bucks on underwear.”

Emily inhaled sharply.
“Elizabeth! I knew it. You
are
having an affair.”

“
What? No. Why would you say that?” Elizabeth tugged at the neck of her sweater, feeling too warm all of a sudden.

“
Come on,” Emily said, “a thousand bucks on underwear? Remember that show I did on cheating? I had that doctor on who wrote
Women Who Stray and the Men Who Love Them
? A man called in, suspecting his wife was having an affair. He wanted to know how he could tell. She said, oh what was her name? Dr. Berry? She told him to look in her lingerie drawer. If there were any secret sexy wisps of lace hidden under the sturdy cotton granny pants ... bingo!”

“
Oh, please, Em. I am not cheating. I bought them for me.”

“
Uh-huh,” Emily said, not convinced.

“
I haven’t felt sexy since before Keenan was born.” She ran a hand over her sweater, beneath which she knew was the delicate ribbon of a strap. “Nobody can see them, but they give me a little lift. Pun intended.” It was true, she realized. She felt the same thrill of power that she got when she wore her snakeskin stilettos. “Besides, Steve will get to see them when I get home, I guess.” The thought made Elizabeth frown.

“
Oh, I get it,” Emily said. “Trying to spice things up in the boudoir.”

“
Something like that.” Elizabeth laughed. “I’m bringing sexy back.”

“
Well, whatever works, but if I were you, I’d try a little light porn. It’s a hell of a lot more comfortable than itchy lace thongs. And cheaper.”

The elevator doors finally opened. Elizabeth stepped in.

“Elevator’s here, Em. I gotta go,” she said in a posh voice. “They need me on set.”

Emily laughed, mimicking Elizabeth
’s languorous drawl, “Okay, darling. Ciao.”

*

Back on the set, Elizabeth really wasn’t sure what she was doing there, other than taking notes for her next novel. Cullen barely glanced at her. Neither did Sebastian. In between takes, he sat off to the side, immersed in his book. This filled Elizabeth with a strange irritation that she tried to talk herself out of.

After a few hours of tapping desultorily on her laptop and nibbling on Charles
’ array of healthy snacks, Elizabeth got up. She had been waiting for Sebastian to come talk to her, she realized. Clearly, he wasn’t going to. She decided to go back to her room, call the kids and spend a few hours looking at Abbie’s edits. Tomorrow, she wouldn’t even visit the set. If Cullen wanted her, his assistant had her cell number.

Elizabeth stepped into the elevator just as Naomi was stepping out.

“Oh hi!” Naomi said, squeezing Elizabeth’s arm as she walked past her. “You leaving?”

“
Yeah. Are you just getting here?”

Naomi nodded, smiling like the cat who got the cream.
“Cullen sent me for a massage. He said I needed to be extra ‘on’ for the next scene, and I was just not looking my best. Laaate night, you know.” She winked at Elizabeth and giggled. The elevator doors closed.

Screw the edits, Elizabeth thought. She needed a treat.

She decided to stop by the Mercer’s library for a magazine to bring back to her room. She had been grazing all afternoon on Tempe rolls and vegetable sticks, so she wasn’t hungry, but she thought she’d order room service anyway, just to stick it to Cullen. She’d have a nice quiet evening in, maybe have a bath and something from the minibar. She’d dipped her toe into the world of celebrity, and that was enough. She was happy to have it wrapped in a warm terrycloth slipper instead.

Flipping through the pages of
Tattler
as she walked down the hall to her room, Elizabeth sensed someone and looked up. Sebastian was leaning against her door.

Elizabeth
’s smile widened, involuntarily. “Shouldn’t you be on set?” she asked, stopping.

“
My scenes are finished.” He walked toward her, slowly.

“
For today,” she clarified.

“
No. Forever. Cullen wants to look at the rushes tonight to see if we need to reshoot, but I doubt it. I never reshoot.” The cocky smirk.

“
So, after tomorrow ...” she said, trying to keep the disappointment out of her voice.

“
I’m back in LA.” He stood so that their toes were nearly touching. “Unless there’s something that compels me to stay.”

“
Like reshoots,” she said, feeling her pulse in her ears. He was so close.

“
Right.”

She was holding the
Tattler
open against her chest, her arms crossed over the top. Sebastian slid it out, laughing. “
Tattler
? Really?”

“
It’s my guilty pleasure,” she admitted, defensively.

He smirked, looking down at the page she had opened it to.
“Is it?” He held the magazine out to Elizabeth. It was the Calvin Klein underwear ad. The picture showed Sebastian reclining on a kitchen table in a pair of tightie-whities, looking at the camera through half-lidded eyes, one hand resting suggestively on his thigh.