in the three days since we’d seen each other last? I was astonished. (Later it emerged that he hadn’t actually bought it, he’d read the whole thing standing in the bookstore—but still.)
“Then a master’s back at UW,” he was saying, “then Theodora Liess Elementary, where our heroine presently remains, dazzling children during the school year with her charm and good looks and spending the summers constructing large, brightly colored cardboard animals.”
“Papier-mache, but that was very impressive overall.”
“Wait, there’s one more entry in the dossier.” He squinted at his palm, pretending to read. “ ‘Now being wooed by a strapping young politico. Doesn’t know it yet but is about to fall madly in love.’ ”
“Oh, really? Is that what it says?” I grabbed for his hand, and he pulled it away.
“These are classified documents, Miss Lindgren, and you don’t have clearance.” He turned and kissed me on the lips, and at first the kiss was a distraction, and then it was what both of us were paying all our attention to, the push and retreat of each other’s mouths.
Charlie was wrong, though; I did know, I knew already, that I was falling in love.
I MET DENA
at her store. I was the one who’d suggested lunch, thinking I could get my confession over with, that by the time we saw each other that evening for our belated ratatouille, this conversation would be finished and behind us, but I realized as soon as I walked into D’s that I’d made a mistake. The store was crowded with customers, and Dena was buzzing with a tense, pleased preoccupation. As we left, she said to the girl behind the counter, “If Joan Dorff doesn’t pick up the corduroy handbag by one, call her and say we can’t keep holding it.”
We walked to a nearby sandwich place, and when we opened the menus, I said, “By the way, my treat.”
“Shit, if I’d known, I’d have suggested the Gilded Rose. Are we celebrating your home ownership?”
It seemed early in the lunch to bring up the real reason. But maybe I was worrying too much, maybe it would only be a brief awkwardness.
Dena said, “Before I forget, I saw this great couch at Second Time Around that you should buy for your new living room. It’s three hundred bucks, but I know the owner, and I bet I can talk her down.”
“Dena, I went on a date with Charlie Blackwell,” I said.
Immediately, her eyes narrowed.
I pressed on. “At the party, you said you didn’t really like him.” In fact, she had said she thought he didn’t like her, but the two weren’t so far off, and this seemed the more diplomatic version. “Obviously, this wasn’t my plan, but we just—I guess we clicked. I would have thought before I got to know him that you’d be more compatible, but it turns out—” I seemed to be losing traction. “Our friendship is so important to me, Dena, and that’s why I’m being honest. I realize that—”
She cut me off. “You didn’t sleep with him, did you?”
I hesitated.
“You’ve got to be kidding.” She exhaled disgustedly. “It’s like me being interested in a guy automatically makes you interested. You’ve always been jealous.”
“That’s not true at all.”
“How do you explain it, then? Because this isn’t the first time.”
I thought.
I swallowed. “If I didn’t feel a true sense of connection with Charlie, I wouldn’t have let things progress. But when I’m with him—” It was impossible, I realized. I couldn’t justify my behavior without sounding like I was gloating.
“What, are you planning to marry him?”
“I don’t think it’s beyond the realm of possibility,” I said, and I suspect I was as surprised as Dena. Not that I wasn’t dimly, dimly aware of having considered it, but I would never have guessed I’d risk uttering the thought aloud. Quickly, I added, “We’re still getting to know each other.”
“Is it because he’s rich?”
“Of course not! I’ve never even—We haven’t talked about money. I’m not sure he
that rich.”
“He is,” Dena said. “He’s loaded.”
“His family, maybe, but—”
“No.” Her voice was flat. “Him. All of them.”
The waitress approached, and Dena held up her palm. “I’m not staying.” The waitress looked at me.
“Give us a minute?” I said, and she nodded and walked away. “Dena, don’t leave. Or leave if you feel like you need to, but please let’s not have this be some ugly thing between us. You’re my closest friend.”
She was shaking her head. “Once you’ve been divorced, you know that walking away from a marriage is a lot harder than walking away from a friendship.”
