Good Riddance(48)

Settled, napkins unfurled and practically tucked in by our waiter, I looked around. I was glad I’d worn my navy blue silk honeymoon dress, the one I’d chosen anticipating venues such as this one in married life. Did those glances from the next table with accompanying titters mean TV’s Timmy was being recognized?

“I think those women know you,” I whispered.

“You sound surprised.”

“I meant . . . I guess . . . I wouldn’t expect patrons at a place like this to be Riverdale fans.”

He rattled his tall, newly minted menu, and said from behind it, “Clearly, you don’t understand the demographic. These patrons, unlike some people I know, have an adequate channel lineup.”

“I apologize. You are 100 percent correct and I’m a snob.” I told him I’d upgraded and had been watching the show and finding him a very convincing Timmy. “Not that you’re convincing as a junior in high school. Just that you make Timmy a real person.”

He smiled. “Did you notice his pals are calling him Tim now?”

I hadn’t. “On purpose? Or is that just what slips out?”

“Some of us think he may be getting a girlfriend.”

What was that follow-up? I was quite sure he’d said, “Like in real life.” He raised his glass of the champagne that came with course number one, which were frilly greens and a lot of paper-thin raw vegetables. “To the fans,” he said, “and their prying eyes.” He meant a newly seated party of women, one of whom was wearing a cardboard crown. They were staring in a way that made me rise to the challenge. I leaned over and kissed Jeremy lightly on the lips, as if we were two self-conscious, modest celebrities mindful of smartphone cameras.



Have I mentioned that New York City is a small village? I say this after Jeremy’s attention was drawn to an approaching pin-striped stranger whose hair was slicked back like a Trump son’s.

“Daphne. How nice to see you,” Holden Phillips IV, now tableside, lied. “You’re looking well.”

Although his mother’s funeral had been only a few weeks before, I was startled and unrehearsed. Maybe I was looking well, but was I looking good? The truffle oil that was dressing the frisée had surely dissolved my lipstick.

I introduced Holden to Jeremy as the man I was married to for five seconds.

Holden wasn’t sure how to react, which gave me more nerve. “Are you here alone?” I asked, then spotted a fiftyish dreadlocked Caucasian woman at a table for two, intently studying this very interaction. “Is that Julie?”

“No! I’m here with one of my new partners. Did you hear about the buyout?”

“No. Why would I?”

Jeremy was wearing as neutral an expression as an innocent bystander caught between enemy exes could.

“But still with Julie?” I asked Holden.

“Since I saw you, like, a week ago? Of course we’re still together.”

“I forgot to ask if you were dating her while we were married?”

Was I showing off in front of Jeremy? And did Holden really have to take the high road by ignoring my rude question?

“I was just trying to do the decent thing, coming over here,” he answered, then nodded with unnecessary dignity before leaving.

“Well, well,” said Jeremy when the coast was clear. “So that’s Holdy.”

“I can’t believe he was here!”

“Isn’t this his mother’s favorite restaurant?”

Oh, that.

Jeremy was shaking his head in a way I hoped wasn’t the reevaluation of Daphne—from sexually compatible neighbor to mean girl.

I knew a cooler conversationalist would move on, but I couldn’t resist asking, “Is he back at the table? And can you tell if he’s whispering about how rude I was?”

Jeremy glanced over and back. “They’re laughing at something—”

“Laughing like one of them made a joke or laughing like My ex-wife is here. Do you believe my bad luck?”

“Hard to tell.”

I knew such blathering didn’t show me at my best. Thus, I didn’t voice my twin worry: that the first time I ran into Holden socially I’d just kissed a man young enough to wear braces. And on the back of my chair, in case I felt a chill, was a sweater that had been a gift from the coconspirator I used to call my mother-in-law.





23


Hit Play Again



“Imposter?” Jeremy asked. “Is that what you’re thinking?” We were back in his apartment, in bed, listening to The Yearbook—an inevitability after my obsessing over dinner about episode three.

“I knew all my mother’s faculty buddies,” I said for the second or third or hundredth time. “They came to dinner. They slept at our house after a bad breakup. I babysat their kids.”

“And you don’t think it’s possible that your mother had a close friend on the down low? Before you were in high school or after you graduated?”

I was forced to admit that, yes, okay, my mother surely had lots of secrets and, yes, this woman might have been a confidante.

After listening hard, diagnostically, eyes narrowed, he asked, “The woman’s voice . . . is that a New Hampshire accent?”

“No, but she could’ve come from somewhere else.”