Uptown Girl (13 page)

When Kate awoke on Saturday morning, she was smiling. She stretched out, arching her back in the delicious relaxation of post-sexual doziness and in anticipation of the weekend of leisure ahead of her. She wanted to snuggle up and whisper a thank you to Michael, perhaps even entice him into an encore, but when she turned on her side, she realized he was gone. It took her a moment to remember that he always ran for an hour between six and seven. ‘No matter what', he'd told her when they'd first met and she'd admired his self-discipline. Now she was just disappointed. He'd come back wide awake, he'd shower, he'd want coffee and she'd have to do all that too if she wanted to spend the time with him.

Kate sighed, lifted herself up, saw that it was a quarter to seven and lay down again. She considered her options: she could either get up, shower, and begin to make breakfast, or go back to sleep and wait for his return. Despite wanting some
snuggle time, she knew if she waited for Michael, he would go straight to the shower, thoughtfully leaving her alone to sleep. He'd probably read the
Times
quietly until she got out of bed. Kate decided to replay last night's sex in her mind's eye and was just closing her eyes when the phone rang. No one would be calling her this early on a weekend morning except …

‘Hello, Elliot,' she said. ‘Do you know that it is ten minutes to seven on a Saturday morning?'

‘Am I interrupting something?' Elliot asked archly. ‘I can call right back. Or does he take longer than a few minutes?'

‘Elliot! You are interrupting my sleep,' Kate said. ‘What's the emergency?'

‘Look, Kate, I don't want you to be mad.'

‘Mad? What have you done?'

‘Look, I know how you are. And I didn't mean for it to be more than Bina, but she told Barbie, and you know how
she
is …'

Yes, Kate reflected, she did know how Barbie was but she didn't need to hear about it, and certainly not from Elliot before seven a.m. on a weekend. Anyway, Bina had gone back to Brooklyn, the wedding was over, and her old friends no longer needed to be a source of entertainment to her newer ones.

‘I had to do it. The mathematics and the potential for happiness here were just too big to be ignored.'

‘Elliot, what are you going on about?' She wondered where Michael was.

‘About the brunch. I had already told Bina about the findings and she wanted to hear more, and Brice suggested a brunch but then I was going to cancel after I spoke to you. Now, though, she's invited Bev and Barbie. And Bunny is back from her honeymoon, so Bev told her and now …'

‘Oh, God,' Kate interrupted. ‘Don't tell me you bothered Bina with this geeky idea of yours. Stop it, Elliot! And what does it have to do with the others? Or a brunch?' Kate had hoped for a Bina-free weekend, a time to relax with Michael and refuel. She tried to focus on what Elliot was saying but she wanted to be unfocused, soft and fuzzy and feminine and infantile. ‘Elliot, don't get Bina crazy with your nonsense.'

‘You don't understand the clarity and magnitude of the numbers, Kate,' Elliot told her. ‘Since Bina talked to the girls, they found two other cases where women married
immediately
after Billy broke up with them.'

‘So what?' Kate heard the door to her apartment squeak open. Maybe, if she got up right now, she could negotiate a little more time in bed. She liked Michael sweaty, but he was too fastidious to comply with her wishes. Still, there was a chance …

‘I have to go,' she told Elliot.

‘I understand,' Elliot said meaningfully. ‘Have fun. Just close your eyes and think of England. And be here tomorrow at eleven thirty.'

‘I hate you,' Kate said.

‘But doesn't it feel good, in a strange and exciting
way?' Elliot asked. ‘Eleven thirty tomorrow. Be there or be … talked about.'

On Sunday morning, Kate knocked on Elliot's door at a quarter to eleven. She wanted to arrive before the Bitches, lay some ground rules, vent a little anger and limit the way Elliot and Brice would toy with them.

‘Kate!' Brice shouted in false surprise when he opened the door. ‘You're early! Whatever could be the reason?'

‘I thought perhaps I could help you get ready by putting some ground glass in the chicken salad,' she said with an insecure smile.

‘My, my. Little Miss Hospitality,' Brice said.

She stepped past him and walked into the apartment. She had a bone – well, more like a whole skeleton – to pick with Elliot.

Her quarry was standing at the sofa, barely visible behind an armload of charts and graphs. When he saw her he dropped everything onto the coffee table. Brice, never dumb, disappeared into the kitchen, from which delicious smells were emanating. ‘What's all this?' Kate asked Elliot, who had begun to sort out the charts, placing them on an easel.

‘This is the evidence,' Elliot replied. ‘I thought putting the facts right in front of Bina's eyes would convince her.'

‘Elliot, I absolutely forbid this. You are not allowed to interfere in people's lives in this way.'

Elliot gave an exaggerated blink, lowered his chin and looked over his glasses at her. ‘This from a woman who is attempting to reshape two dozen kids at Andrew Country Day.'

Kate bristled. She thought of Brian, who seemed to have begun mourning his mother, Elizabeth – whose parents made promises they never kept – and the twins she was working with who didn't seem to relate to anyone but each other. ‘Elliot, my work is very different. I'm professionally trained to assess and assist children, some of them in crisis, while they are developing their personalities. I am trying to prevent future problems. You're dealing with adults, you have no training and you're going to
create
future problems.'

‘I beg your pardon, Dr Jameson,' Elliot said, ‘but you forget that I am a professional in my field and this data is astonishing.' He touched the charts for emphasis. ‘And I'm dealing with adults who have free will. Bina doesn't have to listen to me. She is not a captive audience.'

Kate did not like the implication; her kids were not captive, but maybe she was being a little unfair to Elliot. Maybe he was only trying to be helpful, even if it would end in tears.

‘Just take a look, Kate,' Elliot coaxed.

Kate picked up the first chart. She had no idea if what she saw there was true or not, but, if it was accurate, it was fascinating. She looked at the other carefully constructed models. She sighed. Kate was impressed by the work Elliot had put in, but was
not going to budge from her veto. Elliot was smart. He knew Bina and the others would be gaping and amazed by the brightly colored charts and graphs, just the way the tourists in Times Square were stunned by the lights and ads. But the tourists didn't change their lives based on a huge Pepsi ad, did they?

‘Kate, it really can't hurt. At the very least, it's a distraction for Bina and that's what she needs right now. She can't keep herself in her father's office and wait for something to change.'

Kate sighed. She thought of the three or four long messages from Bina that were on her answering machine each night when she got home.

‘Okay,' Kate said, ‘but I want you to play this down, not up. It may be Fun With Math for you, but it's Bina's life. Anyway, even if all of this crazy nonsense were true, a troublemaker like Billy Nolan would never be interested in dating someone as ordinary as Bina Horowitz. So don't get her hopes up.'

Elliot vehemently nodded his agreement. ‘No hopes up,' he said.

Brice came back out of the kitchen carrying two bottles of white wine. He put one down and popped the cork on the other. ‘Bottoms up,' he said, pouring a glass and handing it to Kate. ‘How does the buffet look? Kate, those Brooklyn friends of yours are fabulous! Well, not Versace fabulous, but more like
Absolutely Fabulous.
But younger and with Brooklyn accents.'

‘Brice, my friends are not toys,' Kate told him.

‘Of course not. Even if one is named for a doll and another a stuffed animal.'

Kate had to smile. Still, she didn't want her two worlds to collide. Elliot and Brice were getting too involved with all this. Just then the buzzer rang. ‘I'll get it,' Brice sang as he strode over to the door and opened it. ‘Hello, ladies!' he greeted the group.

And there they were, in all their splendor, the Bitches of Bushwick. Barbie came first, wearing a bright-pink halter-top with a leather jacket over it. She was followed by a nervous but hopeful-looking Bina. Next came Bev and her belly, and then in walked Bunny, who had just come back from her honeymoon and had the tan to prove it.

‘You're Bunny, the bride,' Brice said. ‘I'm Brice and that stud muffin over there is Elliot.' The girls giggled, except for Bunny, who actually blushed. Without the ‘breaking in' that had happened at table nine, Kate could see that the adventure wasn't comfortable for her. She had grown up in a very strict Italian Catholic home where, Kate was sure, homosexuality was synonymous with sin, perversion, and the molestation of little boys. Brice, sensing her hesitancy but never one for subtleties, threw his arm around Bunny's shoulders. ‘We didn't have a chance to talk at your wedding. But it was beautiful. Absolutely beautiful!'

He couldn't have said anything better. ‘Wait
until you see the video!' Bunny exclaimed, suddenly ready to bond.

Kate winced. The ordeal of watching that video might be worse than the trauma of going to the event itself but Brice was enthusiasm itself. ‘Oh, you
have
to show us. And what a dress!'

‘Size six,' Bunny said proudly. ‘Priscilla of Boston.'

‘I knew it!'

‘She got lucky,' Barbie told him. ‘It was a special order but the bride was pregnant and didn't tell. By the time the dress arrived, well, you can imagine.'

‘I got it at cost,' Bunny told Brice.

The attention seemed to ease her. Soon they were all standing around the buffet, filling their plates and – with the exception of Bev – drinking wine. Kate covertly looked around at them. Bev's belly looked as if it had expanded since the wedding. Kate tried to avoid staring at it with horror, although she couldn't escape the twinge of jealousy as she felt her own flat but empty stomach.

Elliot, too, was caught by Bev's very apparent expansion. ‘Wow,' he said to her. ‘Are you going to go into labor right here, or are you carrying twins?'

‘I know, I'm huge and I've got months to go.' Bev looked down at her belly and shrugged.

‘Remember after graduation you dieted all summer and were a size four by September?' Bunny asked. She was the group's weight historian, and could tell any one of them what they had weighed at any event or moment since they met.

‘I'm trying to cut back on eating so much,' Bev explained to Elliot. ‘I think I've gained about forty pounds.' Despite her confession, Kate watched as Bev piled her plate with nova, cream cheese, a poppy
and
a sesame bagel, finally adding some herring in cream sauce with a guilty final flourish. ‘Unless I give birth to a thirty-five-pound baby, I'm gonna be in big trouble,' she laughed.

‘Do you know if it's a girl or a boy yet?' Elliot asked her.

‘Nah,' Bev said, waddling to the sofa from the buffet, Bina and Bunny right behind her. ‘Johnnie says he wants to be surprised.'

‘He's got a real surprise coming when he sees your ass after the baby is born,' Barbie snickered.

Kate never stopped being astonished by the way the women merely passed over cruel taunts without a ruffled hair. She watched as they sat down and checked out the apartment around them as if they'd just stepped into a den of unimaginable iniquity. It was a big adventure for the four girls from Bushwick to finally see the inside of a homosexual couple's apartment – even Bina hadn't really had a chance to look around the last time she was there. Kate could only imagine what they thought they were going to find. And she wasn't going to point out that Bina's Uncle Kenny and Barbie's youngest brother were most certainly gay but hadn't come out. Anyway, it must have been reassuring to see that there was nothing terrifying or exotic about Elliot's home
– thanks to Brice, it was all done in stylish taste (though the Beanie Babies were a little camp). The situation made Kate smile. She knew how frightening good taste could be to someone from Bushwick.

They all sat down on various perches like colorful birds with big mouths. Toucans, maybe, Kate thought. Despite their provincialism (and some morbid curiosity) it was really moving to see that all the girls had shown up for Bina. Kate loved them for that.

Barbie was more brazen – of course. She looked around as if she was assessing everything – and she probably was. ‘How much does a place like this cost in Manhattan?' Barbie needed to know.

‘It's a steal,' Brice willingly obliged. ‘It's stabilized. We're still only paying eighteen a month.'

‘Eighteen dollars a month for rent?' Bina asked in utter amazement. ‘My grandmother's apartment on Ocean Parkway is rent-controlled but she pays sixty-six bucks a month.'

The better-informed Bunny was not as confused. ‘Jeez,' she spat in disgust, ‘for eighteen hundred dollars a month, you'd get three bedrooms and a balcony in Brooklyn.'

But why would you want them? Kate thought, then felt wildly guilty.

‘Honey,' Brice replied, ‘call me crazy but I'd rather have a closet in Manhattan than a palazzo in Prospect Park.'

‘I thought you guys were all out of the closet,'
Barbie said, obviously pleased with her heavyhanded witticism.

‘Sweetie, some of us were never in it,' Brice said. There was silence for a moment.

Kate felt obliged to break it. ‘Well, isn't this nice?' she chirped, turning to Elliot, as if to say ‘I told you so'. ‘Finally, all of my girlfriends together in one room.'