Golden Girl(92)
She opens her door, climbs out, and somehow puts one foot in front of the other.
But oh, she’s in a mood.
Jaime (girl) is as chipper as a Girl Scout on the first day of the cookie sale. “Thank you for the gift card,” she says. “I love Lemon Press.”
Carson stares at her. “I know I should say you’re welcome, but you’re not welcome.” She steps a little closer to Jaime and notices that she has a new nose piercing, a diamond chip embedded in the side of her nostril surrounded by sore-looking pink skin. “I resent having to pay you off to ensure that you’ll help me out. Girl, do you think Gunner ever bought me so much as a freaking latte? He did not, but I still worked my ass off for him. And why? Because I’m a team player, that’s why.” Carson sniffs. “I know you think you’re taking over my job when I move on, but you’re not, Jaime.” Carson waits a beat. “Because you’re not hot enough.”
This lands hard because it happens to be kind of true, and Jaime knows it. She’s not beautiful like Carson. It isn’t fair, but if Carson can teach anyone a lesson, it’s that life isn’t fair.
A dozen Island Creeks, a dozen Wellfleets, two dozen cherrystones, and a round of kamikaze shots. Carson glances up at that—yep, the guy ordering is in his fifties. Nobody young orders kamikaze shots or even knows what they are.
“And pour one for yourself,” he says, leering at Carson. He’s suntanned and wearing a tailored shirt. Breitling watch. He’s with a bunch of other guys his age, all of them with slicked-back hair and needlepoint belts and horn-rimmed glasses, half of them staring at their phones, the other half watching him trying to flirt with Carson. The guy ordering (and paying, she assumes) isn’t wearing a ring.
She pours the shots, including the one for herself, which she throws back quickly. Technically, it’s not allowed, but every bartender in America does it.
The guy plops his neon-orange American Express down; this must be a new color to announce one’s douchebag level of wealth. Brock Sheltingham—a name straight out of a Vivian Howe novel.
“Keep it open, please,” Brock Sheltingham says.
The shot goes to Carson’s head. It doesn’t help that she made the kamikazes with tequila, her nemesis. Not only does Carson hate the taste but it reminds her of her mother. It also doesn’t help that the gentlemen want to do a second round of kamikaze shots. Fine; Carson makes them strong, thinking that when these guys leave her a ten-thousand-dollar tip, she’ll be internet-famous.
If that happens, Carson will give a thousand to Jaime to make up for the horrible thing she said.
Carson does the second kamikaze shot as well; to decline seems rude.
Two chards, a sauvignon blanc, a martini, no olives (why even bother having a martini?), two Whale’s Tales, a dozen cherrystones, and an order of calamari. Reconnect with my wife. Carson has no one but herself to blame. She was the one who canceled her Uber and sneaked onto the elevator and up to the eleventh floor of the Boston Harbor Hotel. She’s young, but she knew what she was doing was wrong. She could have left it as a onetime fling, but no, she had stayed at the Boston Harbor Hotel for the entire three-day conference, ordering up room service like Eloise at the Plaza, leaving only to attend her bartending class and then going right back to Zach’s bed. It could have ended there; it could have been a conference affair—this seemed like a thing that must happen all the time between consenting adults—but Carson gave Zach Savannah’s address and he returned to Boston the following week. For an additional two and a half days, they had lived together in Savannah’s beautiful town house. Zach had cooked for her—pasta carbonara and Caesar salad with homemade dressing and a simple chocolate mousse—and by the end of his stay, they were in love. The rest of the relationship has been texts, phone calls, surreptitious meetings at the end of Kingsley Road, the naughty, delicious buzz that arrived over the holidays when they were both seated at Willa’s dining-room table at Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve.
Jaime bumps into Carson from behind in a way that feels aggressive. Carson once told Willa she wasn’t pretty and Willa had gotten the same expression on her face that Jaime has now—shock, hurt, resignation. With Willa, it wasn’t quite as bad. Willa was pretty, just not as pretty as Carson. This, maybe, had been at the heart of their sister conflict. At one Christmas Stroll when Willa and Carson were twelve and nine, a group of women in full-length fur coats had approached them, exclaiming about how gorgeous Carson was. Exquisite. Pretty enough to model. Someone get this kid an agent! Carson had loved the compliments, but she’d been self-conscious about Willa. Why hadn’t the women said anything about Willa? Once the ladies moved on, Carson turned to Willa and said, “You’re pretty too.” Willa had slapped Carson right across the face, sending Carson’s cocoa flying out of her hand; it landed on the brick sidewalk and detonated in a hot-chocolate-and-whipped-cream explosion. Carson just picked the cup up and threw it away. She knew, somehow, that she’d deserved it.
The gentlemen order a third round of kamikaze shots—they’re on an actual kamikaze mission, it seems—and then a fourth. Although four shots is where Carson should draw the line with herself, if not with them, she throws hers back. Then Brock Sheltingham asks for the check and when she slaps it down, he says, “How about a kiss?”