Uptown Girl

‘That’s why you’re meeting Michael.’

‘Ever since Steven, I get to meet your new boyfriends. I’d like you to just find the right one and make him an old boyfriend.’

‘He’s thirty-four. Old enough?’

Elliot rolled his eyes. ‘I worry about you.’ Kate looked directly at Elliot. ‘This one is different. He’s got his doctorate in anthropology and he’s very promising.’

‘Promising what? You always think they’re different and you always think they’re promising, until they bore you and then …’

‘Oh, stop,’ Kate interrupted. ‘I know: I won’t pick losers on account of my father and I won’t pick winners on account of my father. Yadda, yadda, yadda.’

‘Don’t leave out your fear of commitment, yadda.’ ‘I’ll have you committed if you bring that up one more time. How come for thirty-one years you’re allowed to be a gay bachelor – in both respects of the phrase – and then one day you hook up with Brice. Bingo! But since then I’m neurotic for not doing the same.’

‘Hey, I don’t want you to hook up with Brice,’ Elliot mock-protested. ‘We’re both strictly monogamous.’

‘I can’t tell you how relieved I am to hear that,’ Kate retorted. ‘But don’t project your fears onto me. It isn’t easy to find a kind-hearted, dependable, intelligent, sensual single man in Manhattan.’

‘Tell me about it!’ Elliot exclaimed. ‘I had to try almost every guy on the island before I met Brice.’

‘Try not to be bitter, Elliot. I try so hard not to be.’ She reached up and wiped off a remaining bit of banana from his mouth with her thumb, then gave him a little peck on the lips. ‘Do you really have to be gay?’ It wasn’t the first time she had asked him that. Ever since their college years – when the two of them became instant friends during a calculus class that bored him and that Kate had barely managed to pass – Kate had depended on Elliot to be her friend, sometimes her brother, more often her sister, and occasionally even her father. Elliot was family. Still, like family, he could be a pain in the ass. Then she smiled. Elliot was everything to her, except her lover. And sometimes she thought that’s what made her love him the most. Elliot was safe. Unlike the other men in her life, Elliot would always be there.

‘What makes you think I’m gay?’ Elliot asked with wide-eyed innocence. ‘Is that your professional opinion, Doctor, or just a guess? Is it my spectator pumps?’

In fact, Elliot was not a flamboyant homosexual. He didn’t look or act like what Kate’s old Brooklyn crowd might have called ‘a fag’ and, like most of the young gay men in New York, he didn’t go in for the high-maintenance GQ look. Elliot looked and acted like a grade school math teacher – no, what he looked like, she thought affectionately, was a classic nerd: the only thing missing was the broken glasses held together with a paper clip.

‘How did a little queer kid from Indiana get to be so well adjusted?’ Kate asked him, also not for the first time.

Elliot reached over, took one of Kate’s hands and held it in both of his. ‘Listen closely,’ he told her, ‘because I am going to tell you something from Indiana about getting in touch with your true feelings.’ He looked at her intently and asked, ‘Are you listening, because I am not going to repeat this.’ Kate nodded, and Elliot continued. ‘I got in touch with my true feelings by learning how to mask them very early in life. When you realize that your true feelings are most likely going to get the shit kicked out of you, you learn how to hide them for as long as you have to. You wait for a safe place to express them.’ He smiled and gave Kate’s hand a gentle squeeze. ‘Like I do with you and Brice. But I wouldn’t tell a kid to try and find a best friend and a lover here at Andrew Country Day.’

‘I hear you,’ Kate agreed, and thought of poor Brian again.

‘So, what are you doing before dinner? Feel like making the trip to Dean & Deluca with me first?’

Kate noticed the time – she’d have to hurry now – and gathered up her backpack and cotton sweater. ‘No can do. I must run. I have a date.’

‘You’re meeting this early with Michael?’ Elliot asked, surprised. ‘You have a date with him before he’s coming to dinner with us?’

‘It’s not with Michael.’

‘You have another date with someone else before Michael? And I don’t know about it?’ Elliot’s voice rose with shock and offense. ‘How could that happen? On average we speak six point four times a day in person and two point nine times by phone. A date I don’t know everything about is a statistical improbability.’

Kate rolled her eyes and decided to put him out of his misery. ‘It’s just a date with Bina. Barbie’s told her Jack is finally popping the question tonight – they’re going to Nobu because Jack wants to make it really special – and to help prepare her I’m taking her out for a manicure.’ She wriggled her fingers in the air. ‘They should look good for the ring,’ she said in an accent similar to Bina’s Brooklynese.

‘You’re kidding! And you didn’t tell me?’ Elliot asked.

She shrugged, slipped on her jacket, shouldered her bag and started toward the door. ‘I guess not.’

Elliot followed her to the school door. ‘The fabled Bina and the much-sought-after Jack. Together at last.’

‘Yep, wedding bells have broken up that old gang of mine,’ Kate said. ‘Bye-bye Bitches of Bushwick. It’s only Bunny and me left unmarried.’ She looked down at her Swatch, refusing to engage with the depression this thought gave her. ‘Gotta go.’

‘Where are you and Bina getting together?’ Elliot demanded.

‘In SoHo,’ Kate answered, as she pushed against the bar of the school safety door.

‘Oh, good. I’m going that way. Just let me pick up my stuff.’

‘Forget it,’ Kate told him sternly.

‘No. No. Wait for me!’ he begged. ‘We can take the subway together and I can finally meet Bina.’

Kate tried to keep her face still. Elliot had waged a year’s-long campaign to meet her old Brooklyn gang. But Kate didn’t need it. In fact, as she’d made clear more times than she could count, she loathed the idea. She’d tried in the dozen years since she’d left home to erase most of the dark memories of her troubled background and though she was still close friends with Bina Horowitz and occasionally saw her other pals, she didn’t need Elliot’s jaundiced eye appraising them.

Kate gave him a look. She disappeared out of the door, then called back, ‘You need to meet Bina like I need another unemployed boyfriend.’

She thought she was safely away and down the steps of the school when she heard Elliot behind her. He had a madras hat on and was clutching his backpack with one hand while he ran in a crouch that was a cross between Groucho’s walk and a begging position. ‘Oh, come on,’ he pleaded. ‘It’s not fair.’

‘Tragic. Absolutely tragic. Just like so many things in life,’ Kate told him and kept on walking while he flapped at his other backpack strap.

‘How come I never get to meet any of your Brooklyn friends? They sound so fascinating,’ he demanded.

Kate stopped in the schoolyard and turned back to Elliot. ‘Bina may be a lot of things, but fascinating is not one of them.’ The girl had been her best friend since third grade and was still, in some ways, the most dependable. Kate had spent every holiday and most summer vacations at Bina’s, partly because the Horowitz house was so clean and orderly and Bina’s mom was so kind, but mostly because it allowed Kate to avoid the empty apartment that was her home or, worse, her father who was too often drunk.

If Kate had perhaps outgrown Bina, who’d dropped out of Brooklyn College and worked at her father’s chiropractic office, it didn’t stop her from loving her. It was just that they had different interests and none of Bina’s would appeal to Elliot or any other of her Manhattan friends.

‘Elliot,’ Kate said sternly, as they made their way down the street. ‘You know your interest in Bina is only idle curiosity.’

‘Come on,’ Elliot coaxed. ‘Let me come. Anyway, it’s a free country. The Constitution says so.’

Kate snorted. ‘Like the US Constitution, I believe in the separation of church and state.’

‘No,’ retorted Elliot, ‘you believe in the separation of gay and straight.’

‘That’s not fair. I let you have dinner with Rita and me only a week ago.’ She wasn’t going to let him manipulate her with his politically correct blackmail. ‘You’re not meeting Bina because even though she’s my oldest friend, you have nothing, absolutely nothing, in common with her.’

‘I like people I have nothing in common with,’ Elliot argued. ‘That’s why I like you and live with Brice.’

‘Don’t be greedy, you’re getting to meet Michael tonight,’ said Kate. ‘Isn’t that enough for two yentas like you and Brice?’

‘Yeah,’ said Elliot, giving in. ‘It will have to do.’

Kate laughed and said, ‘Come on, I’m going to be late for my girly date. Let me give you some advice I gave Jennifer Whalen just a couple of hours ago. “Try to make your own friends dear.”’

They were at the IRT subway entrance. She gave Elliot a big smile and then hugged him goodbye. He shrugged, admitting his defeat. As she descended into the shadow of the subway, Elliot shouted after her, ‘Don’t forget; dinner’s at eight!’

‘See ya there!’ she yelled back and ran to get the train.

3

Kate and Bina walked down Lafayette Street, gazing in the windows of the fashion boutiques and art galleries that lined the SoHo strip. Kate looked and felt at home in SoHo. She would have liked to live in the neighborhood, but it was far too pricey for a school psychologist’s salary. Her apartment was on the West Side, in Chelsea, but Kate could pass as a downtown hipster. Bina Horowitz, on the other hand, was still all Brooklyn: her dark hair too done, her clothes all ‘matchy-matchy’, as Barbie used to say back in high school. Short, a little dumpy, and wearing too much gold, the truth was that Bina stuck out like a sore thumb among the modelesque shoppers converging in one of the coolest sections of downtown Manhattan. That didn’t stop Kate from loving her friend dearly but she was grateful for all she herself had learned about style from Brice, college, Manhattan boutiques and her current New York friends. She’d left her Brooklyn look far behind, thank goodness.

‘My God, Katie, I don’t know how you live here,’ Bina said. ‘These people in Manhattan are the reason girls all over the country go anorexic.’ Kate just laughed, though Bina was far from wrong. Bina continued to crane her head around at every opportunity, slowing them down to look at a pedestrian painting of a nude at which she raised her brows, a dress shop window where the clothes were torn into strips, and to marvel at the boutique called Center for the Dull. Kate had to explain it was just a clothing store like Yellow Rat Bastard – a store that Kate didn’t shop in though she did have a shopping bag of theirs.

‘Why all the confusing names?’ Bina asked. ‘And isn’t it hot?’ she added, fanning herself frantically with a flyer for a failing off-off-Broadway show that some guy had just shoved into her hand as they walked by. He hadn’t tried to palm one off on Kate, but then she didn’t look like the kind of person who accepted garbage.

‘Well, it is nearly summer,’ Kate observed. She tried to quicken their pace – the salon was notorious for demanding promptness – but Bina was Bina and she simply couldn’t be rushed or silenced. The Horowitz family had taken Kate in when she was eleven and Kate knew practically everything about Bina. Kate had once done the math and realized Mrs Horowitz had fed her more than five hundred meals (most of them made with chicken fat). Dr Horowitz had taught her to ride a two-wheeler bike when Kate’s own father was too drunk or too lazy (or both) to bother to do it. Bina’s brother Dave had taught the two of them to swim in the municipal pool, and Kate still swam laps three times a week. Kate was grateful and loved Bina, but she had to admit that Bina was the Mistress of the Obvious in most of her observations.

‘It’s really hot,’ Bina said, as if Kate needed proof of her belief.

Back in Brooklyn, when Kate had had no other outlet and longed for more sophisticated friends – like Elliot and Brice and Rita – with whom she could banter or talk about books, Bina had sometimes annoyed her. But now that she had a circle of intellectual, cosmopolitan pals, she could give up the frustration over Bina’s provincial interests and conversation and simply love her good heart.

‘It’s really hot,’ Bina repeated – a habit she had when Kate didn’t respond to her.

‘Is it hotter in Manhattan than it is in Brooklyn?’ Kate asked her, teasing.

‘It’s always hotter in Manhattan than it is in Brooklyn,’ Bina confirmed, completely missing Kate’s mild irony. Bina definitely had an irony deficiency. ‘It’s all these damned sidewalks and all this traffic.’ Bina looked up and down Lafayette Street and shook her head in disgust. ‘I couldn’t live here,’ she muttered, as if the choice was hers and million-dollar lofts were an option she and Jack could consider. ‘I just couldn’t do it.’

‘And you don’t,’ Kate reminded her, ‘so what’s the problem?’

Bina stopped fanning herself abruptly, looked at Kate with wide-eyed appeal and meekly asked the question that she always asked midway through one of her anti-Manhattan tirades. ‘Am I being horrible?’

Kate felt a rush of affection overcome her annoyance and, as always, remembered why she loved Bina. Then she gave her the answer that she always did: ‘Same old Bina.’

‘Same old Kate,’ Bina responded, in the litany they’d used to make peace and settle differences for two decades.

Kate grinned. The two of them were right back on track. Kate could neither imagine introducing Bina to her Manhattan friends nor imagine life without Bina – although she sometimes tried. Bina absolutely refused to grow and that was both irritating and comforting to Kate – and sometimes downright embarrassing.

Just as they crossed Spring Street, Bina, as if reading Kate’s thoughts, virtually shouted, ‘God, look at him!’

Kate turned her head, expecting, at least, to see a mugging in progress. Instead, across the street a pierced and tattooed guy of about their own age was going about his business.

Not the slightest bit fazed by the local wildlife, Kate didn’t even comment and merely looked down at her watch. ‘We can’t be late,’ she warned Bina. ‘I have something special reserved.’ And, to change the subject – ‘So have you picked out a manicure color?’

Bina dragged her eyes away from the local sideshow with obvious difficulty and focused instead on Kate. ‘I was thinking of a French manicure,’ she admitted.

Kate felt distinctly unenthusiastic and it must have shown. Bina had been having the tips of her nails painted white with the rest a natural pink since high school.

‘What’s wrong with a French manicure?’ Bina asked defensively.

‘Nothing, if you’re French,’ Kate retorted, having conveniently forgotten her teenage days when she, too, thought a French manicure the height of sophistication. Bina looked puzzled by Kate’s remark. Kate had also forgotten Bina’s irony deficiency. ‘Hey. Why don’t you go for something a little more up-to-date?’

Bina held out her hands and studied them. Kate noticed she was still wearing the Claddagh friendship ring Kate had given her for her sweet sixteen. ‘Go for something … daring,’ Kate suggested.

‘Like what?’ Bina asked defensively. ‘A tattoo on my fingernails?’

‘Oooh, sarcasm. The devil’s weapon,’ Kate said.

‘Jack likes French manicures,’ Bina whined, still looking at her left hand. ‘Don’t push me around like you always try to.’ Then she dropped her hands to her sides. They were both silent for a moment. ‘I’m sorry,’ Bina said. ‘I’m just a little nervous. You know, I’ve been waiting for Jack to propose for over …’

‘… Six years?’ Kate asked, forgiving her friend. She had to stop giving unwanted advice, which was difficult for a woman with her temperament in her profession. She smiled at Bina as they continued down the street. ‘I think on your first date with Jack you started designing the monograms for your towels.’

Jack and Bina had been seeing each other for so many years. He had been her first and only real love. He’d made her wait while he finished college, got his degree and became a CPA.

Bina giggled. ‘Well, I knew right away he was the one. Such a hottie.’

Kate reflected on the wide variation of people’s tastes. To her Jack was so far from a hottie that he left her ice-cold. Of course she’d never, ever, in all the six years of their courtship revealed that to Bina. And Bina had thought Steven was sour and gaunt, while to Kate he’d been … Her thoughts were interrupted by Bina’s continued chatter. ‘I just can’t believe now that he’s leaving for Hong Kong for five months tomorrow, and tonight’s the night …’ Bina trailed off, her voice unsteady.

There were few secrets among Kate’s old Brooklyn posse, so when Jack had consulted with Barbie’s jeweler father to get ‘a good deal’ on an engagement ring, the news had traveled faster than e-mail among them. The day Bina had waited for for so long had finally arrived but when Kate glanced at her friend, Bina looked anything but happy. Surely she couldn’t be having second thoughts. But Kate knew Bina well enough to see that something wasn’t right.

Oh my God, thought Kate. Bina has changed her mind and she’s afraid to tell anyone. Her parents – especially Mrs Horowitz – would be beside themselves if … ‘You’re starting to have doubts?’ she asked, as gently as she could, stopping to look at her friend. ‘You know, Bina, you don’t have to marry Jack.’

‘Are you crazy? Of course I do! I want to. I’m just nervous that … well, I’m just nervous. Normal, right? Hey, where is this place anyway?’

‘Just to the left on Broome,’ Kate said. And if Bina didn’t want to talk about her nerves it was fine, she told herself. Give the girl a little space. ‘This is the Police Building,’ she said as a diversion while they passed the domed monument that Teddy Roosevelt had built when he was chief of police. ‘It’s condos now,’ she went on, ‘and they found a secret tunnel from here to the speakeasy across the street so …’

‘… So the Irish cops wouldn’t be caught getting drunk,’ Bina said, then stopped in embarrassment. Kate just smiled. Her father, a retired Irish cop, had died three years ago from cirrhosis of the liver and she couldn’t help but consider it a release for both of them. It was the Horowitzes who couldn’t get over it.

‘No harm, no foul,’ Kate told her. ‘We’re almost there, and we’re only four minutes late. You’re going to like this place. They have great nail colors, but just in case I bought a few alternatives for you.’ Kate scrabbled around in her Prada bag – the only purse she owned, and she carried it everywhere. It had cost her an entire paycheck but every time she opened it, it gave her pleasure. Now she pulled out a little bag. It contained three nail polishes, each one a wildly different seductive shade.

Bina took the bag and peeked into it. ‘Ooooh! They look like the magic beans from Jack and the Beanstalk,’ she said. Then she started to giggle. ‘Get it? Jack and his Beanstalk?’ she asked, suggestively raising her eyebrows.

Kate gave Bina her ‘I’m-not-in-the-mood’ look. Clearly her moment of nervousness had passed. ‘Hey, spare me the details of Jack’s beanstalk or any other part of his anatomy,’ she begged. ‘Consider that your bridesmaid’s gift to me.’ Kate took Bina’s arm to get her around the guy selling used magazines on the sidewalk and across to their destination.

Just then, as they crossed the street, Bina stopped – as if the Manhattan traffic would wait for her – and pointed to the corner. ‘Ohmigod! That’s Bunny’s ex.’ Kate looked in the right direction as she simultaneously pulled Bina’s arm down. She was about to tell her not to point when she caught sight of one of the best-looking men she had ever seen. He was tall and slim, and his jeans and jacket had the perfect casual slouch. The sun reflected off his hair as if he had a halo around his head. He had stopped for the light, and before he began to cross the street he fished in his inside pocket.

‘He went out with Bunny?’ Kate asked. Of her posse, Bunny was probably the most garish and certainly the dimmest bulb.

Bina nodded. Kate could only see the movement in her peripheral vision because she couldn’t tear her eyes off the man just twenty feet away.

‘Are you sure that’s him?’

Just then a taxi honked, the driver deciding he would warn them before he ran them over. With a shriek from Bina the two of them scampered across the street. By the time they had walked single file between parked cars and got to the sidewalk, the Adonis had put on sunglasses and strode away.

‘What color do you think I should do for bridesmaids?’ Bina asked.

Kate repressed a groan. Bev had them all in silver and Barbie had picked a pistachio green that not even a blonde could wear without looking sallow. ‘How about basic black?’ Kate asked, but she knew there wasn’t a hope in hell. She sighed. She and Bunny would be the last of their high school crowd not to be married – at least there was still Bunny. Kate would try not to mind, but everyone else would. No one at Bina’s wedding would leave the naked state of her left finger unnoted. ‘Please, Bina! Don’t make me walk down that aisle again. Why not just make me wear a sign that says “unmarriageable”?’

‘Kate, you have to be my maid of honor. Barbie was always closer to Bunny and Bev … well, Bev never really liked me.’

‘Bev has never liked anyone,’ Kate informed Bina, not for the first time, and took her arm. ‘Hey, I’m really touched.’

The pair came up to the door of the salon. Kate held the door open for Bina, who nervously stepped inside.

4

Kate knew the spa was unlike any place Bina had ever seen in her life – a sort of post-industrial French boudoir with Moorish touches. That was exactly why she had chosen it. Not to show off, but to make it very special for her friend. ‘This is,’ she informed Bina in a dramatic stage whisper, ‘the most expensive spa in the city of New York.’ She studied Bina’s face to make sure what she was telling her was sinking in. ‘And I mean the entire city,’ Kate continued.

‘Wow,’ was all Bina could manage, looking around at the sheer curtains, the concrete floor and the Louis XVI bergère armchair.

Kate smiled and walked up to the counter. A chic young Asian woman smiled back and, without speaking, raised her perfectly shaped eyebrows. They did a good brow wax here. ‘Kate Jameson,’ Kate announced. ‘There are the two of us here,’ she added, because Bina had disappeared shyly behind Kate. ‘For manicures, pedicures, and toe waxing.’

From behind, Bina whispered, ‘Toe waxing?’ but Kate ignored her. ‘We have a reservation. I have the confirmation number.’

‘It will be just a moment,’ said the beautiful receptionist. ‘Please, have a seat.’

Of course, that was difficult with just the one antique armchair, but Kate motioned for Bina to sit and she did, albeit gingerly.

Then she looked up at Kate and grabbed her hands. ‘Oh, Kate. I’m nervous. What happens if I go through all this and it jinxes me. What if Jack doesn’t …’

‘Bina, don’t be silly. You can’t “jinx” things.’ Kate sighed. ‘I just spent an hour trying to convince an eight-year-old that magic won’t work. Don’t make me repeat myself.’

‘Look, I know all about you. Little Miss Logic. But I’m superstitious, okay? No black cats, no hats on the bed, no shoes to friends.’

‘Shoes to friends?’

‘Yeah. You give shoes to a friend and she walks away from you,’ Bina said. ‘Don’t you know that?’

‘Bina, you are truly crazy,’ Kate said. ‘Anyway, this is your big day and I want to be a part of it. So relax and enjoy. Everything will be fine, and tonight with Jack will be wonderful.’

Bina still looked doubtful. She craned her neck and looked around again. ‘It just must be so expensive,’ she said. ‘You know, I can have all of the same thing done in Brooklyn at Kim’s Korean place for about one quarter the price. And I bet it’s every bit as good, too.’