this silliness once and for all.
“Oh, no? How unfortunate,” her voice oozed with insincerity. “Well, I do appreciate your calling to-”
“Adriana! Just shut up for a second and listen. It’s true that Elaine isn’t interested in the Web site articles, but that’s only because-are you ready for this?-she wants to make you a regularly featured columnist! Can you believe it?”
“A what?”
“A regularly featured columnist.”
“Columnist?” Adriana asked again. Her brain was refusing to process the word.
“Yes! In the print magazine.”
“Which one did she choose?”
“Adriana, I’m not sure you’re understanding me. She chose all of them! I think she wants to start with ‘I Was Just Being Friendly,’ but we’re going to run them all eventually.”
“All of them?”
“One a month. Every month. Depending on reader reaction, which she and I both think will be fantastic, we’re going to make it a regular feature each and every month. We’re going to call it ‘The Brazilian Girl’s Guide to Man Handling.’”
“Ohmigod. Oh. My. God.” Adriana had completely abandoned all attempts at coolness, but she didn’t care.
“I know! It’s phenomenal. Listen, I’ve got to run to a meeting, but I’m going to have my assistant call you to make all the arrangements for your photo shoot. We’re closing the March issue in two weeks, so it’s going to be a rush, but timing-wise it’s nothing we haven’t done before. Sound good?”
“Perfect,” Adriana murmured.
“Oh, and Adriana? Jack called last night to ask me out for this weekend, and-”
This snapped Adriana out of her reverie. “Last night? A Thursday? Who does he think you are? Some loser who just sits around and waits for him to call? You absolutely cannot-”
Mackenzie laughed. “Can you just shut up for a minute? I told him I was completely booked all weekend even though the only thing on my entire schedule is lunch with my mother on Saturday, and”-she paused here and took a breath-“he said he wasn’t hanging up until I gave him a night next week that worked. We’re going out Tuesday. He already made reservations.”
“
Mackenzie laughed, sounding so happy and excited that Adriana was almost a teensy bit jealous. She remembered what it was like to get that excited over a new guy.
“No, I’ll still leave that up to the professional. But it might make a good introduction for your first column: a little true-story vignette about how your magic works on even the most embittered, stubbornly single magazine editor in all of Manhattan.”
“Previously embittered, soon-to-be-not-single magazine editor,” Adriana reminded her.
“Fair enough. Okay, I’m running. Talk later?”
“Sounds good. Thank you soooo much,
Adriana collapsed into the couch and motioned for Otis to join her. He gave an obliging little chirp and hopped to Adriana’s lap. He nudged her hand for a grape, but Adriana was already dialing again.
“Leigh Eisner’s office,” her bored-sounding assistant said.
“Hi, Annette, it’s Adriana. Can you put Leigh on for me, please?”
“I don’t have her right now. Can I have her return?”
Adriana was not in the mood to deal with the assistant’s lingo.
“Well, my dear, you’ll have to get her. It’s an emergency.”
“Hold, please,” Annette said curtly.
Leigh’s exasperated voice came on the line a moment later. “An emergency?” she asked. “Please don’t tell me you’re calling because everywhere is sold out of your favorite Molton Brown body wash again. Wasn’t that last week’s ‘emergency’?”
“You are not going to believe this,” Adriana sang, ignoring Leigh entirely. “You are really not going to believe this.”
“Ohmigod! Are they all out of their scented candles, too? What’s a girl to do?” she squealed.
“Would you please shut up? I am calling you as a friend, not a frustrated shopper. Silly me figured you might be interested to hear that I might be featured in the March issue of
Leigh yawned audibly on the other end. “Mmm, really? Congratulations. This will make it, what, like the eleven hundredth time they pick up one of your modeling shots? Or do you mean the party pages? In that case, it must be the eleven thousandth time.”
“You’re being a bitch,” Adriana stated. “If you would just stop talking, I’d tell you that it has nothing to do with headshots or party pictures. I’m going to be a columnist.”
Leigh stopped giving whispered instructions to her assistant midsentence and was absolutely quiet for a full twenty seconds. “You’re what?” she finally asked.
“You heard me. I’m going to be a columnist. A regularly featured columnist, in the print edition. It’s going to be called ‘The Brazilian Girl’s Guide to Man Handling,’ and it’s going to give advice on how to deal with men.”
“You mean seduce them.”
“Yes, of course I mean seduce them! What else do women want to know? It’s not going to be easy, and I, for one, don’t think they could’ve found a better person for the job.”
“Me, neither,” Leigh murmured. She sounded not just sincere but impressed, and Adriana couldn’t keep from smiling. “Adriana, honey, I don’t think it’s too soon to say it, and I’ve never been more certain of anything in my entire life: A star has been born.”
Emmy sighed deeply as she turned the faucet off with her foot and closed her eyes, allowing her chest and legs to submerge completely. She’d been in the hotel tub for thirty minutes already, alternately dozing and reading under a relaxing stream of hot water that she drained and refreshed every few minutes. She didn’t care that her hands were pruning, or that the sheen of sweat on her forehead had begun to run down the sides of her face, or that she was being quite irresponsible, environmentally speaking. What did any of that matter when she could lie there on New Year’s Day after a long, wonderful night of drinking and lovemaking, and feel this peaceful and relaxed?
His name was Rafi something or other, and he was a dream. Emmy had been shocked to see how many things had changed in the fifteen years since she’d been to Israel, but thankfully the magnificence of their men wasn’t one of them. If anything, they were even more adorable now, all the young strapping soldiers in uniform and their handsome older brothers who seemed in far better shape at thirty or even forty than their American counterparts. Everywhere she turned, she was met with olive-skinned, dark-haired, beautifully muscled specimens, and among this embarrassment of riches, Rafi was one of the finest.
They’d met two days earlier, a Thursday, at a Tel Aviv restaurant called Yotvata. It was an institution in Israel, a casual, happy place right on the city’s beachfront promenade that specialized in massive, creative salads and delicious fruit-and-yogurt smoothies. All of the restaurant’s ingredients came directly from its namesake kibbutz on the Jordan-Israel border in the Aravah Valley.
Emmy hadn’t needed to think twice when Chef Massey requested she submit a list of lesser-known areas and cuisines that might serve as inspiration for the new upscale lunch place he was opening in London. She hadn’t eaten at Yotvata since the last time she’d been in Israel-at age thirteen for her own bat mitzvah, and then two years later for Izzie’s-but she still remembered it as some of the freshest, tastiest food she’d ever had. She outlined the restaurant’s dairy focus and the chef’s insistence on using only those fruits and vegetables grown organically.
Chef Massey loved it and asked her to accompany him on a scouting trip to Israel, where they would concentrate on expanding all of his current salad menu selections beyond the usual Caesar/Greek/ mixed green in balsamic vinaigrette trifecta, and also explore different kinds of Middle Eastern cuisine. As far as Emmy was concerned, anything that got her out of New York City on New Year’s Eve was fine, and if her destination was Israel, it was a huge bonus. What she hadn’t counted on was Chef Massey bailing on their trip at the last moment, claiming he needed to be with his family when everyone really knew he was meeting his Pakistani model girlfriend in St. Barths. Emmy had feared her own trip was in jeopardy, but he’d sent her anyway.
