Frenemies(5)
Then again, Georgia lived for corporate law. Who knew what she found fun?
“I thought we had an anti-karaoke pact,” Georgia said when she appeared before me that afternoon in the wide foyer that also served as my office. “It was my first year of law school, we chose to sing that 4 Non Blondes song about sixty times, and the next morning we made vows.” She was shivering, and let the heavy door slam shut behind her, but not before a blast of frigid air rushed in from the street so I could shiver too. I wrapped the scarf I used to combat the Museum’s inevitable drafts tighter around my neck.
“Hi, Georgia,” I said from behind my desk, tucked at the foot of the stairs. On good days, that desk made me feel powerful and in control. I faced the day—and the door—with confidence. On other days, I felt lost and somewhat exposed behind it. Today I was still too embarrassed from the night before to care.
“I think that if we were breaking vows around here, I should have been consulted,” Georgia continued. “That’s all I’m saying.”
“Next time I accidentally humiliate myself in front of my ex and his new skank who happens to be my ex-friend—”
“Are you sure you were actually friends with Helen? I mean, you were, but was she? Does she even know how to be friends with someone who doesn’t want to sleep with her?”
“—I’ll be sure to interrupt your depositions so you can race to my side and, hopefully, stop it.” I slumped down in my chair. “I just can’t understand how, in the space of two and a half weeks, I went from feeling totally grown-up to feeling about seventeen. Seventeen and surly.”
Georgia clomped around the side of the desk in her knee-high court boots and collapsed into my visitor’s chair, pushing her long legs out in front of her. I took the opportunity to study her. Georgia looked grown-up because she looked corporate and hot all at the same time. Georgia was tall and had wild, curly, unprofessional hair. It was a mix of reds, auburns, and blonds—all of it completely natural. She claimed she used the hair as a weapon. It was ditz hair, so no one saw her coming. She liked to pair the hair with very austere, severe suits, which confused everyone.
The Museum was thoughtfully located within walking distance of Georgia’s firm. This triumph of coincidental geography meant that I saw Georgia more than anyone else outside her law firm. Whenever she was in town and she could sneak away from her piles of documents for a few minutes, we had coffee at the Starbucks around the corner or the occasional dinner. Sometimes I thought I was the only thing tethering Georgia to the life she was no longer living outside office hours.
She looked around, taking in the lazy afternoon stillness of the Museum, which was marred only by Minerva’s latest obsession: operatic arias. Extremely dramatic music floated down from her quarters, which took over the entire top floor of the building. Georgia raised her brow toward the staircase.
“It’s been arias for almost a month.” I shrugged. “I’m expecting a change any day now. Care to place a bet?”
“I’m still recovering from her brief flirtation with grunge rock, a decade late,” Georgia said darkly. “I’m not betting anymore.”
In case I failed to mention it—Minerva sang. Very badly. Unlike me, she had never relinquished her dreams of stardom, and were it not for her Simon Cowell phobia, I had no doubt she would audition for American Idol in a heartbeat. Tuesdays and Thursdays, she was that scary woman who nipped into the karaoke bar (alone) and belted out five or six songs over the course of the evening to the horror of the assembled birthday and going-away partiers. Don’t ask me how I knew this—I was still emotionally scarred and, as Georgia had pointed out, vows had been made.
“Court date?” I asked as Georgia glanced at her watch.
“Soon,” she said. “I just wanted to make sure I was actually back on East Coast time, in Boston. I’ve been traveling so long, I’m never really sure where I am.”
“Home sweet Beantown,” I assured her. “Do you have time for coffee?”
“Not today,” Georgia said, and stood up again. “I’ll see you at the Halloween party tomorrow. We will look fabulous, we will be intimidating, and we will make sure no one remembers any singing incidents.”
“I’m not going to the Halloween party.”
“Of course you are.”
“Georgia, please.” I glared at her. “I wasn’t going to the Halloween party as of two and a half weeks ago. If you concentrate, I bet you can remember why.”
“The Halloween party is tradition,” Georgia argued. “There’s no reason you should give up long-term traditions just because one or two things have changed recently.”
“You must be jet-lagged. Or maybe you’re just insane.” I held up a hand when she started to speak. “Even if I could somehow overlook the fact that Nate is hosting the freaking party in the very house where I discovered him sucking face with Helen—and who could overlook something like that, Georgia? Seriously?”
“But it’s not like it’s actually his—”
“Even if I could lobotomize myself so that I no longer cared about these things, the fact remains that I made a total ass of myself last night. I can’t walk in there and pretend that I don’t care that Nate’s with her of all people when forty-eight hours earlier I was belting out Janis Joplin three inches away from their faces. And it’s not like I can pretend it didn’t happen, either, because everyone we know watched me do it!”