Кэндес Бушнелл - One Fifth Avenue

Finally, at six P.M., she came into the bungalow. Her eyes were sad, but her skin was glowing, as if she’d been swimming. “Ah, Philip,” she said dully.

“You’re back.”

“Of course I’m back,” he said. “Where were you? I’ve been searching the island for the past three hours.”

She momentarily brightened at this information but then went back to being depressed. “I figured you probably wanted some time away from me.”

“What are you talking about?” he said. “I went to get a massage.”

“I know. But I’ve been such a downer. I don’t want to ruin your vacation as well.”

“Where were you?” Philip said.

“In a cave.”

“A cave?” he exclaimed.

“I found a little cave. In the rocks down by the water.”

“You’ve been in a cave for the past three hours?” he repeated.

She nodded. “I needed a place to think. And I realized, no matter what happens, I love you. I always will. I can’t help myself.”

Philip felt protective. She was so young. And innocent. He could shape her. What was wrong with him? He pulled her to him. She made love vigorously, sucking his cock while teasing his asshole with her finger. He exploded, gasping with pleasure. How could he give this up?

For some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to ask her to move in with him that night. But during dinner, Lola was nearly back to her old self, texting through dinner and flirting with the waiter and rubbing Philip’s foot with her toe. She didn’t bring up their relationship, her disappearance that afternoon, or her parents’ financial woes, and neither did he.

But the next morning, when he woke up, he found her packing. “What are you doing?” he said.

“Oh, Philip.” She sighed. “One of the things I realized in the cave is that I love you too much to go on like this. If we’re not going to be together, there’s no point in falling more in love with you and being hurt worse in the end. So I’m going to go. My mother needs me, and I’m not sure you do.”

She was right, he realized. He couldn’t go on like this, either. She bent over to rifle through her suitcase and he remembered the sex they’d had the night before. “Lola,” he said. “You don’t have to go.”

“Oh, but I do, Philip,” she said, not looking up.

“I mean” — he hesitated — “you can move in with me. If you want to,” he added, as if it weren’t his decision.

Now, on the beach, Philip leaned back in his lounge chair, folding his arms under his head. Of course she’d said yes. She loved him.

His reverie was broken by the chirrup of his cell phone. It was a number, probably Enid calling him to wish him a happy New Year. He felt a momentary dismay. He would have to tell Enid that Lola was moving in. Enid wouldn’t like it.

“Hello?”

The caller was a welcome surprise. “Schoolboy,” Schiffer exclaimed.

“How are you? What are you doing?”

“What are you doing?” he asked, sitting up. “I thought you were in Saint Barths.”

“Couldn’t do it,” she said. “I thought about it and changed my mind.

Why pursue a relationship with a man I’m not in love with? I don’t need the guy, do I?”

“I don’t know,” Philip said. “I thought ...”

She laughed. “You didn’t think I was serious about Brumminger?”

“Why not?” Philip said. “Everyone says he’s a great guy.”

“Get real, Oakland,” she said. Changing the subject, she asked, “Where are you, anyway? If you’re around, I thought maybe we could get together with Enid. I’ve been neglecting her.”

Philip swallowed. “I can’t,” he whispered.

“Why?” she said. “Where are you? I can hardly hear you. Speak up, schoolboy, if you want to be heard.”

“I’m in Mustique,” he said.

“What?”

“Mustique,” he shouted.

“What the hell are you doing there?”

He felt his shoulders sag. “I’m with Lola.”

“Ahhhhh,” she said, getting it.

“I thought ... you and Brumminger ... Anyway, I’ve asked her to move in with me.”

“That’s great, Oakland,” she said, not missing a beat. “It’s about time you settled down.”

“I’m not settling down. I just...”

“I get it, schoolboy,” she said. “It’s not a big deal. I was only calling you to see if you wanted to have a drink. We’ll get together when you get back.”

She hung up. Philip looked at his phone and shook his head. He would never understand women. He put the phone away and looked for Lola. She was still splashing around in the water, but in the European tradition, she had taken her top off. Everyone on the beach was staring while Lola bounced around, pretending to be oblivious to the attention.

From the other side of the short beach, two white-haired old men were making a beeline for her. “Come on, girly,” one of the men shouted in an English accent. “Let’s have some fun.”

“Lola!” Philip shouted sharply. He was about to tell her to put her top on, then realized how old it would make him sound — like her father. Instead, he smiled and stood up, making as if to join her in the water. He folded his sunglasses and placed them carefully on the table under the umbrella. He was, he thought, looking across the sand at Lola, either the luckiest man in the world or the world’s biggest fool.

“Listen to this,” Mindy said, coming into the bedroom. “ ‘Is sex really necessary?’ ”

“Huh?” James said, looking up from his sock drawer.

“ ‘Is sex really necessary?’ ” Mindy repeated, reading from the printout of her blog. “ ‘We take the importance of sex as a given. Popular culture tells us it’s as essential to survival as eating or breathing. But if you really think about it, after a certain age, sex isn’t necessary at all ...’ ”

James found two socks that matched and held them up. The only thing that wasn’t necessary, he thought, was Mindy’s blog.

“ ‘Once you’re past the age of reproduction, why bother?’ ” she continued reading. “ ‘Every day, on my way to my office, I pass at least five billboards advertising sex in the form of lacy lingerie ...’ ”

Pulling on the socks, James imagined how Lola Fabrikant would look in lacy lingerie. “ ‘As if,’ ” Mindy continued, “ ‘lacy lingerie is the answer to our dissatisfactions with life.’ ” It might not be, James thought, but it couldn’t hurt. “ ‘I say,’ ” Mindy went on, “ ‘rip down the billboards. Burn the Victoria’s Secret shops. Think about how much we could accomplish as women if we didn’t have to worry about sex.’ ” She paused triumphantly and looked at James. “What do you think?” she asked.

“Please don’t write about me again,” James said.

“I’m not writing about you,” Mindy said. “Did you hear your name mentioned?”

“Not yet, but I’m sure it will be.”

“As a matter of fact, you’re not in this particular blog.”

“Any chance we can keep it that way in the future?”

“No,” Mindy said. “I’m married to you, and you’re my husband. The blog is about my life. Am I supposed to pretend you don’t exist?”

“Yes,” James said. It was a rhetorical answer, however. For reasons unfathomable to him, Mindy’s blog had become more and more popular — so popular, in fact, that she’d even had a meeting with a producer from The View, who was considering featuring Mindy on a regular basis.

Since then there had been no stopping her. Never mind that he had a book coming out, that he’d just landed a million-dollar advance, that he was finally about to become a success. It was still all about Mindy.

“Couldn’t you at least change my name?” he asked.

“How can I do that?” she said. “It’s too late. Everyone knows you’re my husband. Besides, we’re both writers. We understand how it works.

Nothing in our lives is off-limits.”

Except, James thought, for their sex life. And that was only because they didn’t have one. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready for dinner?” he said.

“I am ready,” Mindy said, indicating her woolly gray slacks and turtleneck sweater. “It’s only dinner in the neighborhood. At Knickerbocker. It’s ten degrees out. And I’m not going to dress up for some twenty-two-year-old chippy.”

“You don’t know that Lola Fabrikant is a chippy.”

“That is such a typical male remark,” Mindy said. “Neither you nor Philip Oakland can see the truth. Because you’re both thinking with your little heads.”

“I’m not,” James said innocently.

“Is that so?” Mindy said. “In that case, why are you wearing a tie?”

“I always wear ties.”

“You never wear ties.”

“Maybe it’s a new me,” James said. He shrugged, trying to make light of it.

Luckily, Mindy didn’t seem too concerned. “If you wear a tie with that V-neck sweater, you look like a dork,” she said.

James took off the sweater. Then he gave up and removed the tie.

“Why are we having this dinner again?” she asked for the fourth or fifth time that day.

“Oakland invited us. Remember? We’ve been living in the same building for ten years, and we’ve never gotten together. I thought it would be nice.”

“You like Oakland now,” Mindy said skeptically.

“He’s okay.”

“I thought you hated him. Because he never remembered who you were.”

Marriage, James thought. It really was a ball and chain, keeping you forever tethered to the past. “I never said that,” he said.

“You did,” Mindy said. “You said it all the time.”

James went into the bathroom to try to get away from Mindy and her questions. Mindy was right — he had lied to her about the circumstances of the dinner. Philip hadn’t asked them to dinner at all; indeed, for the first two weeks of January, he seemed to be trying to avoid the possibility by rushing past James when they passed in the lobby. But James had been insistent, and finally, Philip had to give in. James couldn’t stand Philip, but he could stand Lola. Ever since he’d met her in Paul Smith with Philip, James had nursed an irrational belief that she might be interested in him.

Reminding himself that in a few minutes, he’d be seeing the lovely Lola Fabrikant in the flesh, James took off his glasses and leaned in to the mirror. His eyes had a naked quality, as if they belonged to one of Plato’s cave dwellers who had yet to see the light. In between his eyes were two deep furrows, where the seeds of his life’s discontent had been planted so often they’d become permanent. He tugged on the skin, erasing the evidence of his unhappiness. He went to the bathroom door.

“What’s that stuff?” he asked Mindy.

“What stuff?” Mindy said. She had taken off the slacks and was pulling on a pair of heavy black tights.

“That stuff that socialites use. To get rid of wrinkles.”

“Botox?” Mindy said. “What about it?”

“I was thinking I might get some.” On Mindy’s look of astonishment, he added: “Might be good for the book tour. Couldn’t hurt to look younger.

Isn’t that what everyone says?”

Lola hated the Knickerbocker restaurant, which was filled with old people and Village locals — a motley crew, she thought, and not at all glamorous, with their pilled sweaters and reading glasses. If this turned out to be her life with Philip, she would kill herself. She consoled herself with the fact that they were having dinner with James Gooch, who had a book coming out that everyone was supposedly talking about, although Philip claimed he couldn’t understand why. James Gooch was a second-rate writer, he said. Even if he was, Lola still didn’t understand why Philip didn’t like James. James was sweet, she decided, and easily manipulated.

He kept glancing over at her, catching her eye, and then looking away.

His wife, Mindy Gooch, was another story. Every time Mindy spoke, Lola felt her hackles rising. Mindy couldn’t be bothered to disguise the fact that she was deliberately behaving as if Lola were not sitting in the same booth right next to her. Mindy wouldn’t even turn her head to look at her, instead focusing all her attention on Philip. Not that Lola wanted to talk to Mindy anyway. Mindy was a little scary, with her eighties bob and her pointy nose and pale skin, and most mysterious of all, she acted as though she were pretty. It crossed Lola’s mind that perhaps a million years ago, when Mindy was eighteen, she was attractive. If so, her looks had faded quickly. Lola believed that any girl could be pretty at eighteen, but the real test of beauty came with age. Were you still pretty at twenty-two? Thirty? Even forty? This reminded her of Schiffer Diamond and how Philip claimed she was still a great beauty at forty-five. Lola had disagreed on principle. Philip claimed she was jealous. She denied this, insisting it was the reverse — other women were jealous of her. Philip didn’t buy it, and eventually, she’d had to concede that Schiffer Diamond was beautiful “for her age.”