“I thought Charles paid for the move.”
“The firm paid for the move,” Brandi corrected. “But I bought furniture”—furniture that was the wrong damned size—“and paid first and last month’s rent on the apartment. And starting this month I’m paying Daddy back for my student loans.”
“Your daddy would want you to have a new dress.”
My God. Tiffany was like a dog with a bone. She never let go.
“Your daddy likes pretty young girls to have pretty things.”
“Only if the pretty young girl is his secretary and he’s screwing her.” Before Tiffany could object, Brandi added, “Besides, with Alan there I don’t need to worry about catching a man.”
“No, but you need to make sure his gaze is riveted to you and he never leaves your side for fear that the other men will whisk you off!”
Brandi laughed again, but wryly. “Alan’s stable. He’s professional. He knows he can depend on me. He’s just not the jealous type.”
“Given the right incentive, every man is that type.”
No use arguing. Tiffany did know her men.
“But I don’t want that type. I consider marriage a meshing of equals, a . . . a calm in the midst of the storm of modern life.” Brandi’s modern life—a life whose touchstones were good sense, moderation in all things, and a logical progression toward her goals of not being like her mother, proving her father wrong, paying back her debts, and being a model citizen.
She wanted nothing about Desperate Housewives to taint her.
“Good heavens,” Mother said blankly. “You don’t mean that you and Alan are calm in bed?”
“No, don’t be ridiculous.” Although since Alan had entered medical school he was brief and businesslike, and lately, on the infrequent weekends he managed to get time off, too tired to perform at all. “We have our moments. But there’s no shrieking fights or huge dramas.”
“You’re annoyed with him now, but you’re not going to shriek at him?”
“How often have you seen me shriek?”
“Never.” In a tone that indicated total cluelessness, Mother said, “You were almost frighteningly calm, even as a child.”
Because her parents were playing out the big dramas. “When I see Alan I’m going to explain that he needs to be more sensitive to my needs.” Brandi injected humor into her voice. “You can’t have it both ways, Tiffany. I can’t be sensible enough to know that he probably is too busy to remember that I moved this week and cherish such a huge passion for him I can’t survive without his very presence.”
“No, I . . . no, I suppose not. It’s just that those first few years when your father and I got together in bed we erupted into flames—”
Brandi pulled the phone away from her ear. “Ew, Mother, don’t tell me that!”
“It seems so early in your relationship to be so cavalier.” Tiffany’s voice brightened. “And that’s why you need a new dress!”
Brandi sighed deeply. “I’ll think about it.” For about three seconds.
“Get your hair highlighted, too, honey. You’ve gone a kind of mousy brown.”
“I’d call it dishwater blond.” Brandi fingered the split ends—Tiffany would have a spasm.
“Dishwater blond is just as attractive as it sounds. Get highlights.”
Someone beeped in. Thank God. “Tiffany, I’ve got to get this.” She cut off her mother and answered with a snap, “Hello?”
“Brandi? It’s Alan.”
“Yes, Alan, I know your voice. Let me hang up on Mother.” She switched to her cajoling tone. “Alan, promise you’ll hold on.”
“I’ll hold on.” He sounded sullen.
Great. It would be one of those conversations. But she couldn’t take the chance he’d ditch her and later say it was a medical emergency. He’d done it before and this time she really did need to talk to him.
She clicked back to her mother.
“Speak of the devil, there he is! Let me take this call, Mother. I’ll talk to you later!” When she wasn’t so tired and could control her irritation a little better.
She cut Tiffany off in the middle of her good-byes and said to Alan, “Where have you been? I’ve been worried about you!” Which sounded better than I’ve been irritated at you.
“I’m in Las Vegas.” His normally flat Massachusetts accent vibrated with some violent emotion.
“Las Vegas?” She was so dumb. She didn’t suspect a thing. “What happened? Is someone sick or something?”
“Sick? Is that your best guess?” So much for the calm in the storm. Alan was shouting.
“I—”
“My girlfriend’s pregnant. I just got married. And this is all your fault.”
3
Brandi stood with the phone held loosely in her fingers, staring at the apartment she’d rented and paid too much for so she could be close to the medical center and Alan, and tried to absorb the message.
She was a smart woman. She was a lawyer. Words were her weapons and her tools. But she couldn’t comprehend him. There was—there had to be—some kind of mistake.
“Alan, are you drunk?”
“A little bit. I needed some liquid courage before I called you. Can you blame me?”
Blame him? She didn’t even know him. “I don’t understand. Y-you’ve got a girlfriend?”
“Not anymore. Now she’s my wife. I tell you, none of this would have happened if you’d moved to Chicago when I did.” That made even less sense than anything else he’d said.
“But I got accepted to Vanderbilt Law and you got accepted to University of Chicago. How could I come with you and get my degree?”
“For shit’s sake, I’m going to be a doctor. Do you think I couldn’t support you?”
“I think it wasn’t about you supporting me. I think it was about me being fulfilled in my work. You said you understood.” The numbness was wearing off. Alan was married. Married.
“Oh, blah, blah.”
“You’ve been sleeping with someone on the side.” Married with a baby on the way. Alan. The guy who used a condom and insisted she use contraceptive foam all at the same time.
“On the side, on the back, on the front . . .” He lowered his voice like he didn’t want to be overheard. “Listen, this isn’t what I wanted either, but she’s pregnant. I have to marry her, or I’m a jerk.”
“That ship has sailed,” she said with a bite in her voice.
Obviously he didn’t like that. His voice got sharper and he dug deeper with his nasty little insinuations. “And another thing. If you’d been a little less of a cold fish, I wouldn’t have been such an easy catch.”
Yes, the numbness was wearing off, and temper was starting to stir. “This is crap. You’re not blaming me because you couldn’t keep your zipper closed!”
“I sure as hell am.”
“Let me rephrase that. I’m not accepting the blame.” She tightened her fingers around the receiver as if it were Alan’s neck.
“Alannnn.” Through the phone Brandi heard the high, satisfied tones of a woman who’d just gotten her way.
“Is that her ?” Brandi asked.
“Yeah. That’s Fawn.” Alan didn’t sound any happier than Brandi.
But Brandi took damned little comfort from that.
“Alannn, don’t forget . . .” The bitch must have covered the receiver, for all Brandi could hear was a low murmur.
Then Alan abruptly spoke into the receiver, dropping the imitation of an injured party and sounding just like he always did when he spoke to Brandi—like a doctor giving advice on how to shed excess pounds.
Why hadn’t she realized that before? Why hadn’t she realized that he wasn’t too tired to make love to her; he was uninterested . . . and getting satisfaction elsewhere?
“Brandi, I need my ring back.”
“Your ring?” Brandi was back to not understanding.
“I’m a resident. I can’t afford another diamond, so you need to give me my ring back.” When
she didn’t reply, he said impatiently, “My engagement ring.”
Brandi glanced at her finger. She’d removed it to protect the diamond while she unpacked. Because it was precious to her. Because it represented careful planning and logical life decisions and true love and all that crap.
She curled her hand into a fist. “Alannnn.” If she did say so herself, she did a pretty good imitation of Fawn. “It’s not your ring. It’s my ring. And let me give you a little legal advice. In a situation like this, possession is nine-tenths of the law.”
She hung up. She hung up softly, without a hint of the ire that roiled in her belly, but she did hang up.
Still holding the cordless, she hurried into the bathroom.
The phone started ringing. And ringing. And ringing. She had to find her answering machine and hook it up. Alan needed something to talk to.
Opening the medicine cabinet, she stared at the shelf where the diamond nestled in its black velvet box. Protected and cherished. She knew her diamonds—when you had a mother who was a trophy wife, you learned these things—and this was a good diamond. Alan had insisted on taking out a loan to get her just the right stone, just the right setting. A marquise-cut, one-carat, pure white diamond that blinked with bits of ancient blue sky and new yellow sun. The platinum setting displayed its simple grandeur.
At the time she had thought he realized how much she wanted it. Now she wondered if it had been nothing more than a symbol of his own good taste. It sure wasn’t a symbol of his good sense.
Abruptly irritated with the constant chime of the phone, she answered, then cut Alan off, then opened the line again. She hesitated, her finger over Tiffany’s number.
Telling her this, tonight, seemed like an admission that Tiffany was right. Tiffany said no man was interested in a sensible, intelligent, well-organized lawyer with the ability to support herself and be fulfilled in her work. Tiffany said every man wanted a high-maintenance wife dependent on his approval. In fact, that bastard Everyman wanted Marilyn Monroe in a red silk dress.
Brandi’s finger smashed down on the autodial. She counted the rings, then heard her sister’s voice say, “I can’t come to the phone right now. . . .”
Of course not. It was Thursday night. Kim was a coach, and there had to be some kind of game at Smith. Volleyball or softball or whatever-ball season it was.
“Please, Kim, call me as soon as you can.” Brandi hesitated, not sure what else to say. Finally, she worked up, “I sort of need you,” and hung up.
Had her voice trembled? She hoped not. Kim would think she’d been crying, and she’d never been so far from crying. All this churning in her gut was a combination of rage, humiliation and, well, humiliation.
Yanking the ring from the box, she tossed it like garbage at the toilet.
Luckily, the lid was down and it bounced off and skittered across the tile floor.
Yes, she was mad, but not so mad that she tossed a flawless diamond ring down the tubes.
Besides, even if she succeeded in hitting the bowl, she couldn’t flush. The pipes were frozen.
She chased the glittering, glorious symbol of her romantic folly into the corner by the tub. Picking it up, she cradled it in her palm . . . and smiled, a Machiavellian smile that, if he’d seen it, would have made Alan sweat.
No, it was better, so much better, if she made use of the ring—to make herself happy.
As Brandi walked along, huddling close to the buildings in an attempt to avoid Chicago’s blistering cold wind, her cell phone gave a series of sharp rings. She wanted to ignore the summons; answering would involve peeling off her glove, digging into the capacious pocket of her black London Fog, and pushing up her wool hat to put the phone to her ear—all activities guaranteed to turn her already flash-frozen flesh into a solid Popsicle.
But that was Kim’s ring tone, and after a night spent awake and fuming, Brandi needed to talk to somebody. It took her a minute of frantic fumbling before she managed to pull out her cell and flip it open.
“What is wrong?” Kim’s deep voice demanded an immediate response.
“Wait a minute; I’m going inside.” Brandi opened the door of Honest Abe’s Pawnshop, the one her landlord had recommended as the most reputable in the area.
The heat hit her cheeks and she moaned with joy.
“Why are you making that noise?” Kim sounded even more coachlike and commanding.
“It’s cold outside. It’s warm in here.” In the last twelve hours, Brandi had gone through anguish, embarrassment, and rage and now had reached the moment where she relished imparting her news just to hear Kim’s reaction. “I’m pawning my engagement ring.”
“Why?”
“Alan jilted me.”
“You’re shitting!” Kim shouted. “Alan did?”
It was a small shop, crammed with large goods against the wall and small goods inside the glass counter, and everything had a fluorescent tag on it with the price written in black Magic Marker. Brandi smiled at the Asian man behind the cash register and at the two handsome young men lounging by the gun counter.
This was almost fun.
Well, except for the fact she had to go to a major charity function tonight . . . alone. But she had a plan. Man, oh, man, did she have a plan.
“Mr. Nguyen?” she said to the man behind the counter.
“Yes.” The owner was short with black, black hair, dark eyes, and beautiful golden skin.
She placed the black velvet box on the counter. “Eric Lerner at my apartment building said you were honest and would give me a fair price.”
“I appreciate the business. Thank Eric for me,” Mr. Nguyen said.
“So how much?” She pushed the box toward the pawnshop owner. Into the phone she said, “Alan got his girlfriend pregnant and had to marry her in a quickie Vegas wedding.”
“Was Elvis involved?” Kim shot back.
“Dunno.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Kim said. “That bloodless little weenie Alan got a girl pregnant and had to get married?”
Now Kim had surprised Brandi. “Didn’t you like him?”
“You know how doctors always have this cachet, this intensity, this certainty that makes you pay attention to their every word?”
“Yeah.”
“Alan would have made a good accountant.”
Brandi gave a spurt of laughter.
The pawnshop owner wasn’t really old, maybe in his sixties, but he had that palsy that some people get. His fingers were shaking as he placed the jeweler’s glass in his eye and peered at the diamond.
“You don’t sound particularly brokenhearted.” Kim sounded cautious.
“I’m sure brokenhearted will come later. Right now I’m just furious. I guess it’s the prospect of pawning my diamond and knowing that Alan will have to pay through the nose to get it back.”
“Hmm. Well. That’s good.”
Brandi knew Kim had made some judgment, the sense of which escaped her, but she didn’t care. As long as she got her revenge. Because no matter what they taught in ethics class in law school, revenge tasted really good.
“A fabulous diamond in a popular setting,” Mr. Nguyen said.
“You can easily resell it,” Brandi agreed.
In her ear, Kim asked, “What did Tiffany say about Alan and his new wife?”
“I haven’t exactly told her.”
“You didn’t tell your mother?” Kim sounded incredulous.
“I can’t. She’s going to say, ‘I told you so. I told you you have to cater to a man. I told you you couldn’t act as if your career is as important as his. I told you to be a Stepford wife.’”
“I think you’re doing your mom a disservice.” As usual when they talked about Tiffany, Kim sounded calm and wise.
“Last night when I hadn’t heard a word from him since I moved, she was defending him.” And while that had riled Brandi last night, today it made her furious.
“Last night you intended to marry him and she wanted de
sperately to make sure your marriage worked, so she counseled you the best she knew how.”
“I suppose.” Kim could be right. Probably was right. But Brandi wasn’t in the mood to be fair.
“Have you talked to our father?” Kim used the deeply mocking tone she always used when she talked about Daddy.
“About Alan? I don’t think so.” Brandi ladled on the sarcasm.
“No, for his birthday.”
“Damn. I forgot again.” And Tiffany had reminded her.
“Don’t blame you. I girded my loins and made the call. Bastard didn’t even bother to pick up, so I left a message.”
“Aren’t you lucky?”
“That’s what I tell myself.”
Mr. Nguyen was staring at the diamond as if deep in thought and tapping his chin.
“I have the paperwork,” Brandi told him. She’d searched half the night for the sheet that rated the diamond’s clarity and flawlessness.
He barely glanced at it. “Okay, I’ll give you eight thousand.”
“Dollars?” Brandi was stunned. Alan had paid ten thousand; he’d made sure she saw the bill of sale. In fact, he’d demanded she appreciate the bill of sale.
The asshole.
As Tiffany’s jewelry had had to be sold to support them, Brandi had gained experience with pawnshop owners. They never paid more than twenty-five percent of appraised value, and then they acted as if they were doing you a favor. And they never, ever appraised the jewelry wrong.
Haggling was a fine art in a pawnshop, and Brandi had been prepared to bargain. But maybe while she’d had her head down studying in law school, diamonds had taken a hike in value. Hastily she said, “Sure. Eight thousand. It’s a deal.”
“That’s good,” Kim said appreciatively.
Mr. Nguyen slipped the diamond into a box and slid it into the case. “A pretty girl like you needs jewels to decorate your neck and ears. Yesterday I got in diamond earrings—”
“I don’t care if I never see another diamond as long as I live.” Brandi had never meant anything as much in her life.
“Who are you and what have you done with my sister?” Kim gasped in simulated dismay.