Kitabı oku: «Window Dressing», sayfa 3
“Lauren! I haven’t seen you shopping here in ages!”
I grimaced. Amy Westcott. The biggest gossip in the Cove. I made myself smile before I turned around.
“Amy! What a surprise!”
Amy lived across the street from me in a huge Colonial that was decorated within an inch of its life. She had parlayed a fondness for painting vines, flowers and birds on assorted surfaces into a business. Amy’s Ambience, her little gift shop in the village, was stocked with the overflow from her house as well as hand-dipped candles, homemade soaps and a selection of useless, overpriced gifts. Moira and I had often speculated on how she managed to keep her shop open since there never seemed to be any customers.
“Is it true what I’ve heard?” she asked with that overly concerned air that people affect when they’re hoping that whatever horrible thing they’ve heard really is true.
My stomach clenched. Had Amy somehow heard that I was soon to be homeless? “I don’t know,” I answered pleasantly. “That depends on what you’ve heard.”
“That you’re selling your little house!” she exclaimed, her fresh-scrubbed face looking the picture of innocence. Amy never wore makeup. She didn’t have to. This was a woman who’d sailed through high school without a zit or a blackhead to slow her down. And she was sailing into middle age with barely a crow’s foot to her name. “I mean, I saw Sondra Hawk over there this morning, so I just thought—”
“Oh, that,” I said as I turned my attention back to the rosemary. “I was just having the house—um—appraised.”
“Appraised?”
I didn’t have to look at her to know that she was skeptical.
“Yes. I’m thinking of having another bathroom put in,” I said, a little astounded that I’d grabbed this idea out of thin air.
“But, didn’t Gordy just leave for college? I would think the last thing you’d need is another bathroom at this point.”
I looked at her in her white button down and sixteen inch strand of pearls and wanted to tell her that it was none of her business but it’s like I was programmed to be nice. So instead I gave her a bright smile and said, “Well, you never know what the future will hold, do you?”
I could see that this response had whetted her appetite for more information. I decided to counterattack. “So how is Chuck doing? The stock market is so unpredictable these days.” Chuck was a stockbroker who liked to brag that his clients were the only ones who hadn’t lost money in the ’90s.
“Oh—well—Chuck is fine. And, as always, he just has a knack for picking the right stocks,” she said with a brief laugh, then opened her mouth to pounce again.
I beat her to it.
“And the girls? How are Annabelle, Belinda and Camille doing?”
“Oh, the ABCs are doing terrifically,” she gushed. “I’m sure you heard about our Belinda coming in first at her twirling contest and—”
I nodded, smiled, oohed and aahed in all the right places as Amy talked batons and gymnastics and swim meets. The ABCs, as Amy and Chuck liked to refer to their girls of eight, ten and twelve, were, as Moira liked to put it, “nauseatingly talented.” Not to mention Amy’s favorite subject. She could go on for hours. And that’s exactly what it felt like she was doing.
I looked at my watch. I didn’t have any more time to be nice. “Oh, gosh, look at the time!” I interrupted. “Gotta rush. Nice to see you.” I tossed a bundle of rosemary onto my other groceries and took off, rattling my cart down the aisle and leaving her standing there in her Eddie Bauer khakis with a dumbfounded look on her face.
Shameful, maybe, but I fully admit that I enjoyed every minute of preparing that meal, even though I was going to be feeding it to Roger.
The plan was to fill the house with the scents of home cooking so he wouldn’t be able to resist accepting my invitation to stay for dinner. Then I’d whet his appetite with baby spinach and fresh pears tossed with his favorite vinaigrette and a sprinkling of blue cheese and walnuts and wow him with my honey mustard pork loin and my pan grilled vegetable medley. I’d lull him with freshly baked yeast rolls then move in for the kill with warm apple crisp.
First I’d have him eating off our wedding china, then I’d have him eating out of my hand.
One thing in life I was sure about. I was a damned good cook. It was one of the reasons Roger had married me.
It was just past noon and I was kneading the dough for the rolls when I heard the front door open and close, followed by the tap-tapping of high heels on my liability floors. I thought at first that it might be the Hawk again, back to insult the backyard or something. No such luck.
“Hello, Mother,” I said when I looked up to find her standing in the kitchen doorway. “What brings you out to the Cove?”
But I didn’t really need to ask. She had a shopping bag from the upscale boutique she managed dangling from her arm. The only time my mother made a visit was when she’d plucked something tasteful from a clearance rack that she was certain would be perfect for me. Luckily, with her discount, she got the stuff for next to nothing so I didn’t really feel guilty that I never wore any of it. I was totally honest with her about this, but Bernice, who’d done some modeling in the fifties and sixties and still dressed, groomed and moved like she was camera-ready at all times, just could not seem to give up trying to dress me. It’d been a battle between us since I was about ten and decided I’d rather be comfortable than look “pretty.”
My mother, even at sixty-two, was still what I thought of as a Hitchcockian beauty. Tall and blond and sophisticated with a very chilly edge. She was wearing a pencil-thin camel skirt and a cream cashmere twinset. Her skillfully colored champagne hair was drawn back in a perfect French twist. Her earrings were small swirls of gold surrounding pearls. I looked down at my flour-dusted denim coveralls and sneakered feet.
Like I said, my mother and I are nothing alike.
“I brought lunch,” she said as she held up a little shopping bag from the café near her boutique, “but it looks like I needn’t have bothered.”
“Actually,” I said, “I could use some lunch. This is for dinner.”
“Are you having a party?” she asked skeptically.
“No,” I answered as I went back to kneading the dough.
“Surely you don’t bake this kind of thing for yourself?” Her voice held the kind of horror mothers usually reserved for something worse than the possible consumption of carbohydrates.
“No, Mother, I don’t.”
She reached into the refrigerator and brought out a pitcher of iced tea.
“Is that your honey mustard pork loin marinating in there?” she asked.
“It is.”
She poured herself a glass of tea, then sat down in the breakfast nook and started to lay out what she’d brought for lunch. Salads sans dressing. My mother carried her own fat-free concoction in a handsome little bottle she kept in her huge, tote-size purse.
“Well, it can’t be that you’re seeing someone,” she said.
Although she was right, her tone still pissed me off. “Why can’t it?” I asked with the petulance that only she can bring out in me. “Just because I haven’t dated anyone since that excruciating blind date back in nineteen ninety-eight—” I sprinkled more flour on the ball of dough “—doesn’t mean that I couldn’t date if I wanted to.”
“Well, are you seeing someone?” my mother asked, her voice icily amused.
“As it happens, no,” I answered curtly.
“Then what’s with all this mess?”
To Bernice, a mess in the kitchen was anything that eventually led to washing dishes. My mother’s idea of preparing dinner is to stop at the deli or pick up the phone. I probably teethed on biscotti and I was pretty sure my first solid food had been something with olives and feta cheese.
“Actually,” I said, despite my reservations, “I’m expecting Roger for dinner.”
“Oh, my God,” Bernice exclaimed, a forkful of arugula halfway to her mouth, her beautifully made-up green eyes wide, “don’t tell me you’re so afraid of the empty nest that you’re going to try to win that asshole back.”
I stared at her, wondering if her latest Botox treatments had somehow affected her mind but she didn’t seem to be drooling or anything.
“Get serious, Mother. I would prefer,” I said, picking up the dough and giving it a good bashing, “to never be in the same room with him again if I could help it. It’s the nest I’m after—empty or not.”
Okay, I’d said it. And I knew it would bring on the questions. And I knew what her reactions to my answers would be. My mother was not going to be pleased to find out that I was willing to flatter and feed my ex-husband just to keep from getting my ass tossed into the street. But what the hell, might as well get it over with.
I took a deep breath. “Mother, there’s something I have to tell you,” I began, preparing to spill my guts while my mother sipped her tea.
“This has too much sugar in it,” she said before I managed to get one word out. “I don’t see why you don’t leave it unsweetened and offer your guests the option of artificial sweetener.”
I rolled my eyes like a teenager. “Well, Mother, it’s not like I have crowds coming through here every day asking for iced tea.”
She eyed my hips. “Then do it for yourself,” she said.
Maybe I’m too sensitive, but I’m not fond of pouring my heart out to someone while they’re insulting me. The fact that it was my own mother just added to the fun.
I slapped the dough against the breadboard, sending up a little puff of flour. And then I told her my story.
And what did she say?
“Of course, it would never occur to you to just go out and get a job.”
I had to force myself to stop kneading the dough. It was long past time to shape it. Face it, the last five minutes had been overkill, but I’d needed to keep my hands busy while I told my mother what a mess I’d made of my life. “Of course, I’m going to get a job,” I said as I opened a cupboard door and searched for a baking sheet. “But I need time to find one, Mother.”
“Right. You’ve only had ten years,” she answered.
That my mother disapproves of my choices in life is no secret to anyone who has ever seen us together. But, just in case I might have forgotten, she was kind enough to take this opportunity to remind me.
“I honestly have never understood why you didn’t finish college. You weren’t raised to be dependent on anyone, Lauren. Certainly not a man. I’ve been taking care of myself since I turned sixteen. I’ve—”
I found the pan I needed and slammed it onto the counter top. “Just because you programmed yourself to be the woman you wanted to become when you were twelve years old and first discovered that you had cheekbones doesn’t mean—”
She didn’t let me finish. “Oh, you think that isn’t exactly what you’ve done?” she asked.
I gasped. “That’s nothing like what I’ve done!”
She shrugged. “Keep your little delusions, Lauren, if it makes you feel noble. At least I have the consolation of knowing you aren’t trying to win back that jerk you married.” She stood. “That said, I hope you intend to do some grooming before Roger gets here. It wouldn’t hurt to have him feel sorry that he screwed up for a change.” She picked up her enormous purse. “Take a look at what’s in the shopping bag,” she said. “And don’t be stubborn about it.” She came over and kissed my forehead—easy since she was about five foot eleven, even without the mules, and I was five foot six—murmured disapprovingly over my hair for a few moments, then clicked her way back to the front door. “Good luck with Roger,” she yelled before the door slammed.
“That woman drives me nuts,” I muttered to the dough as I started to shape it into dinner rolls. Face it, we drove each other nuts.
I’d always suspected that my mother had “career girl” stamped on her birth certificate. It wasn’t that she didn’t like men—there had been no shortage of men over the years to take her to dinner, the theater, New York—she just didn’t want to be married to one. She certainly hadn’t wanted all the things that came with marriage in the fifties and early sixties. I was obviously an accident. She’d stayed married to my father just long enough to give birth to me. Gorgeous and irresponsible, Daddy had set out for the Florida Keys before I’d learned to talk, but I still heard from him every Christmas and on my birthday. And I still kept a picture of him, wearing swim trunks and a tan George Hamilton would envy, on my bedroom dresser.
I finished shaping the rolls, covered them with a gingham linen towel and went to the sink to wash my hands. I kept glancing over my shoulder at the shopping bag Bernice had left in the breakfast nook. Curiosity finally got the better of me and I wiped my hands on a towel and went to investigate.
Another little black dress. I drew it out of the bag and held it in front of me. Not bad. Maybe I’d wear it tonight. If it fit. I looked at the tag and was surprised to see that it was actually my size. Maybe Bernice had finally gotten it into her head that I was never going to be a size eight. I grinned. If that was the case, then anything was possible.
CHAPTER 3
For a few minutes I almost forgot.
As I started down the stairs, wearing the dress my mother had delivered earlier, the scents from the kitchen took me back to evenings when the sound of music had come from Gordy’s room upstairs and the house had felt cozy and safe. That’s how I’d felt in this life I had built for Gordy and me. Home safe—like a kid who’d been playing kick the can and had rushed out madly from the shadows of dusk to hit goal. But I’d forgotten something about how the game was played. The win was always only temporary. You never knew what was going to happen in the next round.
I was bending over the open oven door, basting what I’d hoped was going to help me win the next round, when I heard the front door open and Moira’s voice loudly purr, “Yum-mee—something smells good enough to eat. And look at that table,” she said as she came through the dining room. “And look at you, girlfriend!”
I shut the oven door while Moira stood in the kitchen doorway and studied the dress I was wearing.
“Donna Karan?” she asked.
“Right,” I answered.
“Bernice was here,” Moira said.
“Right again.”
She grimaced. “How did it go?”
“It was typical Bernice. First she cut me down at the ankles and then she wished me good luck.”
“Good luck? Don’t tell me you’re expecting a man for dinner!” Moira put her hand to her chest and slumped dramatically against the wall. “Oh my god, you’re dating and you didn’t tell me!”
“I am expecting a man for dinner. But it’s not a date. It’s strictly business.”
Suspicion brought her upright again. “Business with whom?” she asked.
“Roger,” I answered as I walked past her to check on the table one last time.
Moira scurried after me, her arms outstretched. In the fringed peacock-blue cashmere shawl she was wearing over a matching V-neck sweater, she looked like a horrified exotic bird. “Cloth napkins and a Donna Karan dress! I had no idea you were this desperate.” She swept me into her arms. “Sweetie, don’t you know Stan and I would never let you starve? You don’t have to resort to this!”
It took me a moment to disentangle myself from her shawl.
“Resort to what?” I demanded once I’d spit fringe out of my mouth.
“To trying to woo the shirt back into your life,” Moira stated like the answer was obvious.
“Damn it, does the entire world see me as that pathetic? Bad enough that my mother jumped to the same conclusion. I expected more from you, Moira. Give me a little credit, will you?”
Moira flapped a hand at me. “Simmer down, hon. I mean, it’s a gigantic whew that I was wrong, but why the big production if there’s gonna be no seduction?”
“Well, I didn’t exactly say there wasn’t going to be any seduction,” I said demurely as I fluffed the giant mums in the short amber color vase in the middle of the dining room table. “But not,” I added before Moira could erupt again, “sexual seduction. I’m using food to have my way with the man, true,” I admitted, “but only so I can convince him to let me stay in the house for a few more months.”
Moira digested this information for a few seconds. “Hmm, shrewd,” she said, nodding sagely. “Very shrewd.”
“I’m glad you approve.”
She pulled a pout. “Well, I am a little hurt that I wasn’t consulted since you know how I love mischief, but it’s a solid idea, sister. Roger was always a sucker for your cooking. That dress isn’t going to hurt, either.”
I looked down at myself. For once, my mother had gotten it right. The dress fit like it was tailored for me. Made of something black and soft, it had a wide V neckline and hugged my body to the waist where the skirt flared gently to just above my ankles. It made the most of my flat midriff and decent waist-line while it hid my slightly generous hips and backside. I looked good and I knew it.
“Thank you,” I said.
Moira followed me back into the kitchen and plucked a crumb of topping from the apple crisp cooling on the counter. “I could easily be bribed into something for a dish of this stuff.”
“Come over for leftovers later. You can dry the dishes.”
“I’ll dry the dishes as long as you dish the dish. I want to hear every little crumb of what goes on between you and the shirt,” she said.
I assured her that I would spill like a toddler trying to pour a glass of grape juice, then steered her toward the door. The last thing I needed was Moira hanging around when Roger arrived. But as she was leaving, I suddenly wanted to grab onto her fringe and make her stay. “I wish you could hide under the table and feed me lines if Roger gets difficult.”
She pulled me into a quick hug. “Hey, you can pull this off. Just let your inner diva meet your inner bitch queen.” She did a little shimmy, fringe flying and breasts bouncing. “Mix ’em up a little. After all, God wouldn’t have given us multiple personalities if he hadn’t wanted us to use them.”
Moira could always make me laugh.
And Roger could always drive me crazy.
“If this is some sort of attempt to win me back, Lauren,” he said as he surveyed the table twenty minutes later, “I can tell you that you’re only embarrassing yourself. I’m with Tiffany now. You remember—the twenty-eight-year-old aerobics instructor?”
I resisted the urge to lunge at his neck. For just a moment it flashed through my mind that no jury with at least one female member would convict me. After all, it was the third time that day that I’d been accused of trying to lure Roger Campbell back into my life. Surely I was expected to have limits.
I managed to keep from curling my fingers into weapons and tried for a reasonable tone. “I don’t know what your fantasies are, Roger. But I assure you, winning you back isn’t one of mine. I was just trying to make our discussion more pleasant. I mean, you gotta eat, right?” I said, with a shrug. “But if you’d rather not join me, that’s not a problem. I’ll go turn the oven off and then we can go into the living room and talk.”
He followed me into the kitchen. I’d been pretty sure he would.
“What’s in the oven?” he asked, then, “No, don’t tell me. Your honey mustard pork loin.”
“Well, that’s just amazing, Roger,” I said with what I thought was just the right amount of awe. “After all these years your senses still recognize it.”
He opened the refrigerator door without asking, a territorial infraction that ordinarily would have driven me nuts. This time it was just part of the plan.
“You’re marinating vegetables,” he said as he breathed in deeply.
For all his faults, Roger knew a decent balsamic vinegar when he sniffed one. When he shut the refrigerator and saw the apple crisp on the counter, I knew I had him.
He looked at his watch. “I have to be out of here by eight,” he said. “Tiffany’s car is in the garage again and I have to pick her up after her last class.”
“No problem. Go fix yourself a drink while I start grilling those veggies.”
To keep him out of my hair while I cooked, I’d set up drinks on the coffee table in the living room, complete with a silver ice bucket and tongs. This was the kind of thing Roger had wanted me to do when we were married but usually by the time he got home from work the coffee table was full of puzzles pieces or finger paints or homework assignments.
Once we were seated in the dining room with our salads, I could see that he appreciated the vinaigrette. But I decided to wait until he had some protein and carbs in him to make my pitch. I did, however, point out the list Sondra had given me, folded like a napkin next to his water goblet. He shoveled in salad while he started to read. But the longer he perused the list, the less eating he did until finally he threw down his fork where it clattered against the salad plate. The noise didn’t even make me flinch. Pleasure spread through me like the warmth of good wine. I no longer felt responsible for Roger’s anger.
“There’s nothing wrong with that kitchen,” he fumed while I enjoyed my salad. “It’s—well, it’s quaint. And as for the living room ceiling, who doesn’t expect an old house to—”
“Roger, that’s exactly what I told Sondra,” I said. “People expect some—um—quaintness when they buy a house this old.”
“Right,” Roger agreed as I got up to clear away the salad plates and bring in the entrée.
“Did you explain to her that the floors are original to the house?” he asked as I served him slices of perfectly roasted pork loin from a platter we’d gotten for our wedding.
I nodded. “Yes, I did, Roger. But she still suggested wall to wall carpeting.”
Roger was offended at the notion, but not so much that he wasn’t able to cut into his meat and seize a hunk between his teeth.
“Mmm—you always could cook,” he said as he chewed.
I sat down across from him and handed him the basket of rolls.
He slathered butter on a warm roll and took a bite.
“You know, I was thinking—” I began. Then I went into my spiel about how Sondra the Hawk said the house probably wouldn’t sell until after the holidays if we didn’t get it on the market soon.
“So, it occurred to me that since the house will be empty anyway, maybe I could have just a tiny little extension before I have to get out.”
“Lauren—” he began warningly.
I plowed on. “It would really help you out, too, Roger. I could be here to supervise the work on the house, which would free you from having to deal with workmen. Besides, just think what it would mean to Gordy to have one last Christmas in his childhood home.”
He raised his brows and I wondered if he had started having them shaped. I could tell that he was definitely using some sort of skin products on his face. Probably frantic to keep up with the twenty-eight-year-old aerobics instructor, Tiffany.
“Are you sure you aren’t talking about yourself?” he asked while he cut into his third helping of the other white meat.
“Well, of course, I’d love it too, Roger. I mean, I know that soon Gordy may not even want to come home for the holidays—”
He raised his knife in triumph. “Didn’t I warn you not to make Gordon your whole life?”
I knew right away I was going to go for humble agreement, even though it made the grilled asparagus in my mouth hard to swallow.
“You were right, Roger,” I said, shaking my head like I was really too bewildered to fathom why I hadn’t listened to him in the first place. I was beginning to wish that Moira were under the table. I was giving the performance of my life and I had no audience.
“But putting all that aside,” I went on, “the main thing is, it would be a shame if the house just sat here empty all winter when your son could be having the stability of coming home—I mean really coming home—for the holidays.”
He gave in before he even tasted the apple crisp.
“But you’re on your own financially this time, Lauren,” he said. “I’ll give you a month to find a job and then the maintenance stops for good. I’ll agree to have the work done on the kitchen, but there’s nothing wrong with the rest of the house. If Preferred Properties doesn’t want to handle it, there are plenty of other companies out there who would jump at the listing. Meanwhile, it’ll be your responsibility to find someone to do the work. And stay away from those national companies. They charge a fortune. Better to find some local man. Just make sure he has references.”
“Of course,” I said, proud of hiding my panic at the idea of finding a job in a month.
“So,” he asked as I served him another helping of apple crisp, “how is our son doing?”
I filled him in on what I knew about Gordy’s new life, then pointed out that it was time for him to leave. “You’ve got to pick up Tiffany, remember?”
At the door he lingered, giving me that little smile of his that I used to find sexy and now just seemed arrogant.
“Come on,” he said, leaning in a little closer and cocking his head like he thought he was Robert Redford, “tell the truth. Even if you weren’t trying to get me back, you were kind of hoping this whole sexy Martha Stewart scene would at least get you a roll in the sack for old times’ sake, weren’t you?”
“No,” I said sweetly. “Were you?”
I saw by the look on his face that my mother had, indeed, been right about the dress.
An hour later the dishes were done and Moira and I were sitting in the breakfast nook, eating the rest of the apple crisp right from the baking dish while perusing the employment section of last Sunday’s newspaper. It was a warm enough evening to have the back door open. The faint neighborhood sounds drifted in and I felt safe again. But I had to keep reminding myself it was only temporary.
“Here’s one,” Moira said. “Dog grooming assistant. Says they’re willing to train anyone who can demonstrate a love for dogs.”
“I wonder what that means?” I asked suspiciously.
“It probably means you have to not mind getting your leg humped by a German Shepherd with performance anxiety.”
I laughed.
“Or getting pissed on by a poodle. Or lapped by a—”
Sometimes it didn’t do to encourage Moira. “Stop it,” I said nearly choking on my apple crisp. I tossed a pen at her. “Circle it.”
The circle looked pretty lonely on that big page, even though it was the miscellaneous employment section—the last hope of the unskilled.
I sighed. “Face it, I’m not qualified for much.”
“I still think this one about dancing at the Leopard Lounge is your best bet.”
“I’m not seeing me wearing an animal print thong and wrapping myself around a pole anytime soon. Not with my thighs.”
“It’d be the best thing for your thighs, sweetie. It’s become very chi-chi to use stripping moves as a workout, you know.”
Hoping Moira wasn’t going to tell me that she’d had a stripper pole installed in her bedroom, I picked up the page where we’d circled an ad for a day care aide. The pay was paltry and I could no longer see myself wiping noses and helping with snow boots.
“Wait!” Moira yelled as she circled an item in red ink. “I think I just found the solution to your employment problems!”
I grabbed the section of the paper out of Moira’s hand. “A temp agency?” I asked dubiously when I saw what she’d circled.
“Why not? Look,” she said, poking the newsprint with her finger, “it says they have a variety of jobs for inexperienced people and that they offer free refresher courses in computer and clerical skills.”
“I don’t have anything to refresh,” I muttered.
“You’ve done a lot of volunteer work. That shows you’ve got people and organizational skills. The rest,” she said with a flap of her hand like it was the easiest thing in the world, “you can fake.”
Temporary Solutions had a suite of offices downtown in a glassy building that had a shiny marble lobby and a wall of elevators. I was glad I’d borrowed one of Moira’s more conservative suits for the occasion. When I caught my reflection in the mirrored wall of the elevator I was convinced I looked like employee material.
Unfortunately, the first thing they did at Temporary Solutions was test my skills. As far as I could see, there was absolutely no way to fake it. Excel? QuickBooks? PowerPoint? Lotus Notes? The only lotus I knew was a yoga position—about as unobtainable by me as a position at Temporary Solutions was beginning to look.
“You never have worked in an office, have you?” Christy Sands asked.
Christy, who had the harsh hair of a woman who’d been bleaching it for most of the twenty-something years of her life and the slightly red tan of a tanning bed addict, was what Temporary Solutions called my personal career counselor. She was supposed to help me find the job with a perfect fit. What good would it do to lie?
“No,” I admitted. “I’ve never worked in an office. But I’m a fast learner and I really, really—”
“Please,” she said. “I’ve heard it all before. There’s nothing worse than a premenopausal woman begging for a job because her husband just dumped her for a younger woman.”
I gasped. We’d barely met and my existence had already been reduced to a one-line cliché. It was degrading. And, in my case, not exactly the truth. I considered setting her straight but the truth wasn’t going to make me look any better, was it? I was still a premenopausal woman looking for a job because her husband dumped her. I’d just managed to avoid it for ten years.
Having waited so long to take the plunge, I decided I wasn’t going to be deterred by someone who looked like she could be a future candidate for Roger’s harem. (“You remember Christy—my twenty-six-year-old-career-counselor girlfriend?”)
“It says right here,” I said, thrusting the ad I’d clipped from the newspaper in her face, “that you have jobs that require no—”
