Rich and Pretty(32)
“Temp is fine. Temp is the same. Temp and I are working together on something, actually.”
“Just be careful,” Sarah says. “Your promotion probably means you’re his boss. A sexy complication.” Sarah’s teasing contains her own happiness: five years Lauren’s worked there, making cookbooks; it’s about time this happened for her.
“I just think he’s cute is all,” Lauren says. “He wears shoes. I’ve barely actually spoken to him.”
“Shoes are good.”
“No, I mean, like, shoes. Man shoes. Driving shoes. Moccasins? Drivers? What are they called, the ones that have the little buckle over the top? He might be the first man I’ve ever been interested in whose dressiest shoes aren’t Chucks.”
“Oh yeah. Drivers? Wait, are those loafers? Dan has a pair of those. Horsebit. It’s called a horsebit.”
“Of course Dan has a pair of those. He probably wore those in the second grade.”
“Shut up.” Sarah laughs. “Maybe. But yes. Man shoes, for a grown man. So the temp is a grown man, only without a grown man’s job.”
“Hey, it’s competitive out there, cut him some slack.”
“So you’re working on something. Mixing business with pleasure yet?”
“Nothing like that, Sarah. I’m trying to figure it out. I think maybe it’s not a good idea. I wouldn’t want my bosses to know that I was f*cking some guy in the office, you know?”
She’s impressed. Lolo, her Lauren, making the responsible decision about a guy. “Maybe you’re right, maybe an office romance isn’t a good idea. Besides, guys, whatever, but this job thing, I mean, it’s about time this happened, really. You should enjoy it.”
Lauren is quiet. “It’s not that long coming. I mean, don’t make me sound like some kind of loser.”
“No, come on, all I meant was that it makes sense, I think, for you to be thinking about how this would look to your bosses. Versus your own wanting to date a guy who wears real shoes.”
“Okay.” Lauren is not convinced. Lauren sounds wounded. This is her way of punishing: monosyllables.
“I didn’t mean anything.” Sarah is quiet. “I shouldn’t have said it like that. If it’s real shoes you like in a man, we can find you real shoes. Let’s start looking. You’ll need a date for the wedding!” This last—a way to change the subject, to make herself the butt of the joke, to make herself seem the pathetic one.
“Yeah. Fine. So, okay, wedding dress. Let’s make a plan.”
They make a plan—next Wednesday, at Bergdorf’s—then they talk, more, almost an hour longer, and later, falling asleep, Sarah realizes she has no idea what it is the two of them talked about for so long.
Chapter 11
The water looks the way Lauren expects it to: unreal. Seen from above, unfolding all around them, the color of toothpaste. There’s an impossibility to it, but also that disappointment she’s thought, until this point, specific to the experience of encountering a famous, much-reproduced work of art in its original form. Come face-to-face with the Pietà and feel nothing profound. Gaze upon those Bacon triptychs and feel no more disturbed than any other day. So now, leaning forward in her seat to peer out of the window that is, for some reason, set a couple of inches in front of the seat rather than comfortably abutting it, she takes in the expanse of the sea and thinks the things you’re supposed to think (like jewels, like silk, so blue, etc.) but feels unmoved nonetheless. Not that she isn’t looking forward to getting into that water. She’s not insane.
It’s the day before Thanksgiving, and the airport is crowded, but so, too, more surprisingly, is the plane. She did not know about this, before; that a significant subset of our fellow Americans say f*ck all to grace and grub with their racist great-uncles, get onto planes, and fly off to resorts where the only concession to the holiday is a turkey and cranberry sandwich on the lunch menu. Lauren’s parents were unthrilled when she bailed on what’s one of the family’s last remaining rites.
“Oh, a bachelorette trip, that’s nice,” her mother said, meaning the same thing every mother says when she uses the word nice.
It’s the latest way she’s found to disappoint her mother: denying her the pleasure Lauren knows she derives from seeing all three of her children, arrayed around the table, just like old times. Lauren feels sorry for her mother, a terrible truth. She’d gone to college, married a sweetheart, and taken a job at the doctor’s office thinking of a future of three or four children, vaccinated and checked up, gratis, by the Doctors Khan. That had all come to pass. Why the pity, then, if everything had gone swimmingly? Because it wasn’t enough. Even with the scholarship, there was scrimping related to Lauren’s schooling. Her parents consider Macy’s a splurge.
They had singled her out for this not because she was smart, though she was not dumb, but because she was theirs, and therefore special. Plus her mother had in her, deep somewhere, a feminist feeling about the thing. Lauren suspected that her mother harbored fantasies of being a doctor herself, and that filing insurance claims for the Doctors Khan was the closest she had come to it. Bella wanted more for Lauren. She still did, needled her about things like a title change, and flextime, and business cards, things she must have studied up on, having no personal experience with them. At least, then, there was some concession, some good news.