Jack With a Twist

discovered this hot spot, I’m already engaged. Life can be so unfair sometimes.

I wonder if Stephanie ever dates her hot clients after their divorces are final and they are free and single again. What? I mean once they aren’t her clients anymore, I’m not trying to insinuate she’d do anything unethical. Geez!

As I stir my coffee, I notice the tray of mini cupcakes sitting next to the coffee set-up. Now, I know that I should be on a wedding diet, but now that Monique’s not designing my dress, maybe it would be okay to have just one cupcake. It suddenly dawns on me that now that Monique isn’t designing my dress anymore, I don’t have a dress. I’m back at square one. And I don’t even know where to go and look for a dress, since my mother made me have a nervous breakdown at nearly every bridal designer’s showroom in town!

Don’t panic, you will find another dress. I take the napkin wrapped around my cup of coffee and tear it into halves. After all, finding a wedding dress is easy! People find wedding dresses every day of the week—how hard could it possibly be? Why, I’ll probably find one in the next store that I go to!

Okay, I didn’t even convince myself on that one.

I have no wedding dress! I’ve got the guy, but no dress. What am I going to wear down the aisle? Okay, be cool, be confident. You’ll find another dress. Maybe I should just take a tiny peek at a bridal magazine to start getting some ideas. Get those creative juices flowing again.

The New York Law Journal, the National Law Journal, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal…. Nary a Vogue or a Glamour or a Marie Claire to be found. Which is really odd, seeing as Stephanie is so put together and well-dressed. Just because it’s a lawyer’s office, that doesn’t mean that they can’t have any fun magazines? Don’t they know that there are people here who need wedding dresses? Would it kill them to have a Bride magazine?

Okay, maybe that’s pushing it, since I’m at a divorce attorney’s office. Must focus my energy on more important things. Like mini cupcakes.

“Brooke, is that you?” a voice from behind me asks just as I’ve popped an entire mini-cupcake into my mouth. I turn around to see Monique deVouvray standing right behind me.

“Oh,” I say, trying to swallow quickly, “Monique.”

“What are you doing here?” she asks in her thick French accent. She’s dressed impeccably, just as she was on the other occasions when I’d seen her, but I notice that she’s got a large scarf wrapped around her head like she’s Bridget Bardot and is wearing enormous Chanel sunglasses that hide half of her face.

“I’m just here with a friend,” I say, stirring my coffee. I don’t want to tell her that it’s Vanessa, since the last thing Vanessa needs right now is for her mother’s acquaintances to know about her divorce and how quickly it’s moving forward.

“Well, I’m just here to talk to a lawyer so that I know my rights,” she says in a hushed voice. “Just talk. I’m not filing for divorce or anything.” She looks around the room furtively before looking back to me.

“I won’t tell a soul,” I say as Monique pours herself a coffee—black. I marvel at the fact that she doesn’t even give a second look at the mini cupcakes. Or the hot guy with the hazel-green eyes. French women have so much self-control.

“My prenuptial agreement is very complicated,” she says. “As a lawyer, I’m sure you understand that.”

“Of course,” I say, my voice barely a whisper.

“Robin Kaplan is supposed to be very discreet,” she says, evoking the name of the most famous divorce attorney to the stars in New York City. “And I’ll count on you to be the same.”

“Of course,” I say as an assistant comes over to us and tells Monique in a whisper that Robin Kaplan is ready to see her. Monique bows her head as she follows the assistant back to Ms. Kaplan’s office.

First the dissolution of partnership and now a divorce. The tabloids will have a field day with this. Monique and her husband are a New York City institution, and have been since they first got together back in the seventies. I consider, for a moment, telling Vanessa about seeing Monique. Maybe it would make her feel better. After all, if a couple like Monique and Jean Luc can’t make it, who can? But then I consider that perhaps this conversation would fall under the attorney-client privilege that Monique enjoys with me, since I am representing her in her dissolution of partnership from said perfect husband. Who, after all these years, can’t seem to make it work. What if Jack and I can’t make it work?

I begin stuffing mini cupcakes into my mouth.

Vanessa and Stephanie walk out of Stephanie’s office just as I’m licking some frosting from my fingers.

“Thank you for everything,” Vanessa says, giving Stephanie a hug. I wipe my hands on a napkin just in time for Vanessa to introduce me to Stephanie.

“Did that guy hit on you?” Stephanie whispers as she shakes my hand, nodding her head in the direction of the tall, dark and handsome stranger who spoke to me earlier. “My assistant said that he came over and hit on you.”

My goodness, I am so on fire that even Vanessa’s divorce attorney’s assistant noticed! My hotness simply cannot be concealed. Even a trained eye like that of a divorce attorney can tell that I am so fab that I get hit on left and right even with my engagement ring on!

“Well, I might be taken,” I say as I flip my hair off my shoulders, “but I’ve still got it.”

“That guy hits on everyone,” she whispers, “that’s why he’s getting a divorce.”

Or not.

I immediately reach for another mini cupcake.

5

I half expect to hear the theme song to Dynasty ring out every time I pull up to Jack’s parents’ house. Just twenty minutes outside of Philly, it is an enormous home that sits on seven acres of immaculately maintained landscaping, complete with its own double tennis court, Olympic-sized swimming pool and accompanying pool house that is larger than the house I grew up in.

Seeing it tonight, now through my parents’ eyes, it’s like I’m here for the first time again. I remember when Jack took me home to meet his parents, how that ever-growing feeling of surprise grew like a pit in my tummy as we drove down the tree-lined block, houses getting bigger and grander by the second.

I knew the house would be elegant—after all, Jack’s father is a federal judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and his mother is a socialite, so, of course their home would look like something out of an Aaron Spelling nighttime soap. It’s just that I hadn’t expected it to be quite so, well, large. Jack is totally down to earth, and on the few occasions when I’d met his parents, they seemed very unassuming as well. Although maybe I should have known that the house would look something like this from the places we’d have dinner whenever Jack’s parents met us in the city. It’s a veritable Zagat’s Top Ten whenever Jack and I dine with the Solomons: Le Bernadin, Per Se, Danube…the more extensive the wine list, the better. Usually, when my parents come into the city to take Jack and me for dinner they drive us out to Don Peppe’s in Queens, an amazing Italian joint just a stone’s throw away from JFK airport where the owner’s grandmother is the head chef and they only serve homemade red wine.

We stop at the tiny guardhouse at the foot of the driveway to announce ourselves, and as the tremendous wrought-iron gates open for us and we drive up the winding driveway, my father announces, “Your tax dollars at work.” I say a little “thank you” to the gods above that Jack decided to head up earlier in the day to spend a little time with his parents before the big meeting-of-the-families dinner and isn’t in the car to hear the play by play of the first reactions to the house. On the car ride up, I’d tried to subtly warn my parents about the size of the Solomons’ house, since I didn’t want their mouths to drop to the floor in front of Jack. But, as it turns out, there’s really no easy way to warn your parents about your in-laws-to-be’s house without making your parents feel totally and completely inferior. Which is why I ended up not saying anything to them at all.

As we pull up to the front door, I see Jack standing outside, waiting for us. Even though he’s over six feet tall, he looks like a little boy against the massive fourteen foot double doors. They’re carved out of a rich