“Yes, but he’s only interested because I’m taken. Was taken. As soon as he senses I’m available, he’ll go running.”
“If by ‘available’ you mean ‘open to another relationship,’ then yes, you’re probably right. But if you mean ‘open to the idea of no-commitment sex purely for pleasure,’ I think you’ll find him willing.”
“Why don’t we get out of here?” Andy, desperate to change the topic, scrolled through the e-mails on her BlackBerry. “Travelzoo is offering four days and three nights in Jamaica, flight, hotel, and meals included, for three ninety-nine over Presidents’ Day weekend. Not bad.”
Lily was silent.
“Come on, it’ll be fun. We’ll get some sun, drink some margaritas—well, not you, but I will—maybe meet some guys? It’s been a tough winter all around. We deserve a break.”
Andy knew something was wrong when Lily continued her silence, staring at the carpet.
“What? Bring your books. You can read on the beach. It’s exactly what we both need.”
“I’m moving,” Lily said, her voice almost a whisper.
“You’re what?”
“Moving.”
“Apartments? You found somewhere? I thought the plan was to finish out the school year here since you only have class twice a week and then start to look for a place in the summer.”
“I’m moving to Colorado.”
Andy stared at her, but she couldn’t bring herself to say anything. Lily broke off a microscopic corner of a cinnamon rugelach but left it on the plate. They didn’t speak for almost a minute, which to Andy felt like an hour.
Finally Lily took a deep breath. “I just really need a change, I think. The drinking, the accident, the month in rehab . . . I just associate so many things with the city, so many negative connotations. I haven’t even told my grandmother yet.”
“Colorado?” Andy had so many questions, but she was too shocked to say much else.
“UC Boulder is making it really easy for me to transfer my credits, and they’ll give me a full ride for only teaching one undergraduate class each semester. They have fresh air and a great program and a whole lot of people who don’t know my whole story already.” When Lily looked up, her eyes were filled with tears. “They don’t have you; that’s the only part of the whole thing making me sad. I’m going to miss you so much.”
Blubbering ensued. Both girls were sobbing and hugging and wiping mascara from their cheeks, unable to imagine a situation where an entire country separated them. Andy tried to be supportive by asking Lily a million questions and paying close attention to the answers, but all she could think about was the obvious: in a few weeks’ time, she was going to be all alone in New York City. No Alex. No Lily. No life.
A few days after Lily’s departure, Andy retreated back to her parents’ house in Avon. She’d just finished scarfing down three servings of her mother’s butter-and-heavy-cream-laden mashed potatoes, washed down with two glasses of Pinot, and was considering unbuttoning her jeans when her mother reached across the table to take Andy’s hand and announced that she and Andy’s father were getting divorced.
“I can’t stress enough how much we love both you and Jill, and how of course this has nothing to do with either of you,” Mrs. Sachs said, talking a mile a minute.
“She’s not a child, Roberta. She certainly doesn’t think she’s the reason her parents’ marriage is ending.” Her father’s tone was sharper than normal, and if she were being honest with herself, she’d have admitted she’d noticed it had been that way for some time.
“It’s completely mutual and amicable. No one is . . . seeing anyone else, nothing like that. We’ve just grown apart after so many years.”
“We want different things,” her father added unhelpfully.
Andy nodded.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Mrs. Sachs’s brow furrowed in parental concern.
“What’s there to say?” Andy downed the rest of her wine. “Does Jill know?”
Her father nodded and Mrs. Sachs cleared her throat.
“Well, just if you . . . have any . . . questions or anything?” Her mother looked worried. A quick glance at her father confirmed he was about to launch into full shrink mode, start interrogating her about her feelings and making irritating comments like Whatever you’re feeling right now is understandable and I know this will take some getting used to, and she wasn’t in the mood for it.
Andy shrugged. “Look, it’s your deal. So long as you’re both happy, it’s none of my business.” She wiped her mouth with her napkin, thanked her mother for dinner, and left the kitchen. No doubt she was reverting back to teenage brattiness, but she couldn’t help herself. She also knew that the demise of her parents’ thirty-four-year marriage had nothing to do with her, but she couldn’t help thinking, First Alex, then Lily, now this. It was too much.
As far as distractions went, logging in the hours researching, interviewing, and writing Happily Ever After articles worked for a little while, but Andy still couldn’t fill that interminable stretch of time between finishing work and going to sleep. She’d gotten drinks a couple of times with her editor, a tiger of a woman who mostly looked over Andy’s shoulder at the recent college graduates milling around the happy-hour bars they frequented, and occasionally she’d see a Brown acquaintance for dinner or a friend visiting New York on business, but mostly Andy was alone. Alex had dropped off the face of the planet. He hadn’t called a single time, and the only contact had been a curt “Thanks so much for remembering, hope you’re well” e-mail in response to a long, emotional, and in hindsight, humiliating voice mail Andy left for his twenty-fourth birthday. Lily was happily settled in Boulder and babbling excitedly about her apartment, her new office, and some yoga class she’d tried and loved. She couldn’t even fake being miserable for Andy’s sake. And Andy’s parents officially separated after agreeing that Mrs. Sachs would keep the house and Andy’s father would move to a new condo closer to town. Apparently the papers were filed, they were both in therapy—although separately this time—and each was “at peace” with the decision.
It was a long, cold winter. A long, cold, lonely winter. And so she did what every young New Yorker before her had done at some point during their first decade in the city and signed up for a “How to Boil Water” cooking class.
It had seemed like a good idea, considering she only used her oven for storing catalogs and magazines. The only “cooking” she ever did was with a coffeepot or a jar of peanut butter, and ordering in—regardless of how frugal she tried to be—was way too expensive. It would have been a good idea, if New York wasn’t the smallest city in the world at the exact times you needed anonymity: sitting across the test kitchen from Andy on her very first day of class, looking supremely hassled and a lot intimidating, was none other than Runway first assistant extraordinaire Emily Charlton.
Eight million people in New York City and Andy couldn’t avoid her only known enemy? She desperately wished for a baseball cap, oversize sunglasses, anything at all that could shield her from the imminent blaze-eyed glare that still haunted Andy’s nightmares. Should she leave? Withdraw? See about attending another night? As she debated her options, the instructor read the class roster; at the sound of Andy’s name, Emily jolted a bit but recovered well. They managed to avoid eye contact and came to an unspoken agreement to pretend they didn’t recognize each other. Emily was absent the second class, and Andy was hopeful she had bailed on the course altogether; Andy missed the third one because of work. Each was displeased to see the other at the fourth class, but there was some subtle shift making it too difficult for them to ignore each other entirely, and the girls nodded an icy acknowledgment. By the end of the fifth class, Andy grunted a barely discernible “Hey” in Emily’s general direction and Emily grunted back. Only one more session to go! It was conceivable, even likely, that they could each finish out the course with nothing more than guttural sounds exchanged, and Andy was relieved. But then the unthinkable
happened. One minute the instructor was reading the ingredient list for that night’s meal, and the next he was pairing the two sworn enemies together as “kitchen partners,” putting Emily in charge of prep work and instructing Andy to oversee the sautéing. Their eyes met for the first time, but each looked quickly away. One glance and Andy could tell: Emily was dreading this as much as she was.
They moved wordlessly into position side by side, and when Emily settled into a rhythm of slicing zucchini into matchsticks, Andy forced herself to say, “So, how is everything?”
“Everything? It’s fine.” Emily still excelled at conveying that she found every word Andy uttered extremely distasteful. It was almost comforting to see nothing had changed. Although Andy could tell Emily didn’t want to ask and couldn’t have cared less about the answer, Emily managed to ask, “How about you?”
“Oh, me? Fine, everything’s fine. I can’t believe it’s already been a year, can you?”
Silence.
“You remember Alex, right? Well, he ended up moving to Mississippi, for a teaching job.” Andy still couldn’t bring herself to admit that he’d broken up with her. She willed herself to stop talking but she couldn’t. “And Lily, that friend of mine who was always stopping by the office late at night, after Miranda left, the one who had the accident while I was in Paris? She moved too! To Boulder. I never thought she had it in her, but she’s become a yoga fanatic and a rock climber in, like, under six months. I’m actually writing now for a wedding blog, Happily Ever After. Have you heard of it?”
Emily smiled, not meanly but not nicely either. “Is Happily Ever After affiliated with The New Yorker? Because I remember there was a lot of talk about writing for them . . .”
Andy felt her face grow hot. How naïve she’d been! So young and foolish. A couple of years hitting the pavement, interviewing subjects and writing dozens of pieces that would never get published, cold-calling editors and relentlessly pitching story ideas, had set her straight: it was an enormous accomplishment to be published anywhere, writing about anything, in this city.
“Yeah, that was pretty stupid of me,” Andy said quietly. She stole a quick glance at Emily’s thigh-high boots and buttery leather motorcycle jacket and asked, “What about you? Are you still at Runway?”
She’d inquired merely to be polite since there was no doubt Emily had been promoted to something glamorous, where she would happily remain until she married a billionaire or died, whichever came first.
Emily doubled down on her zucchini slicing, and Andy prayed she wouldn’t nick off a fingertip. “No.”
The tension was palpable as Andy accepted Emily’s matchsticks and sprinkled them with chopped garlic, salt, and pepper before adding them to the sizzling pan. Immediately it began spitting olive oil.
“Turn down that heat!” the instructor called from his perch at the front of the kitchen. “We’re browning zucchini here, not having a bonfire.”
Emily adjusted the stovetop flame and rolled her eyes, and with that barely perceptible movement, Andy was transported directly to their anteroom offices at Runway, where Emily had rolled those same, slightly brighter eyes a thousand times each day. Miranda would call out a request for a milkshake or a new SUV or a python tote bag or a pediatrician or a flight to the Dominican Republic; Andy would flounder about, trying to decode what she was saying; Emily would roll her eyes and loudly sigh at Andy’s incompetence. Then they’d rinse and repeat, over and over again.
“Em, look, I—” She stopped short when Emily’s head whipped around to stare at her.
“It’s Emily,” she said tightly.
“Emily, sorry. How could I forget? Miranda called me that for a year of my life.”
Surprisingly, this made Emily snort, and Andy thought she might have even detected a small smile. “Yeah, she did, didn’t she?”
“Emily, I . . .” Andy, unsure how to proceed, stirred the zucchini despite the instructor’s command to “let them stand and brown without bothering them too often.” “I know it’s been a really long time since that, uh, that year, but I feel badly about how we left things.”
“What, you mean how you weaseled your way onto the Paris trip despite it being my lifelong dream—and despite my working way longer and harder than you ever did—and then you having the nerve to up and quit in the middle of it? Never taking a second to consider what a very bad mood that might put Miranda in, or how long it would take for me to hire and train someone new—nearly three weeks, by the way, which meant I was at her beck and call twenty-four/seven, totally solo?” Emily stared down at her zucchini. “You never so much as e-mailed to say good-bye or thanks for the help or go to hell or anything. So that’s how we left it.”
Andy peered at her cooking partner. Was Emily actually hurt? Andy wouldn’t have believed it if she didn’t see it herself, but it seemed like Emily was actually upset Andy hadn’t gotten in touch.
“I’m sorry, Emily. I figured I was the last person you’d want to hear from. It’s no secret I didn’t love working for Miranda. But I recognize now that it wasn’t so easy for you either, and I probably could’ve been a little less difficult.”
Emily snorted again. “Difficult? You were a first-class bitch.”
Andy took a deep breath in through the nose and out through the mouth. She wanted to take it all back, call Emily the brown-nosing sycophant she really was, and kiss Runway and everyone associated with it good-bye forever. Merely talking about the place for the last sixty seconds had brought back all the old pain and anxieties: the sleepless nights, the endless requests, the forever-ringing phone, the constant belittling and insulting and passive-aggressive comments. Feeling fat, stupid, and inadequate every morning and exhausted, beaten down, and depressed every night.
But what was the point of engaging now? In an hour and a half the class would be over for good, and Andy would be able to leave, pick up a pint of Tasti D-Lite on her walk home, and hopefully never see her nasty ex-colleague again.
“Here, these zucchini are finished. What’s next?” Andy asked, moving the pan to the back burner and coating a clean one with fresh olive oil.
Emily dropped two handfuls of halved Brussels sprouts into the pan and then poured a Dijon, wine, and vinegar mix over it. “She fired me, you know.”
Andy’s wooden spoon clattered to the floor. “She what?”
“Fired me. About four months after you quit. I’d just finished training the fourth new girl; it was probably eight in the morning on a totally average day, and she waltzed in, barely glanced at me, and told me she didn’t need me to come back the next day—or ever.”
Andy couldn’t keep her mouth from dropping open. “Are you serious? And you have no idea why?”
Emily’s hand was shaking slightly as she stirred the sprouts. “None. I worked for her for almost three years—I fucking learned French so I could tutor Caroline and Cassidy in all my free time—and she threw me out like garbage. I was weeks away from a promised promotion to associate fashion editor and bam! Good-bye. No explanation, no apology, no thank-you, nothing.”
“I’m so sorry, that’s horrible—”
Emily held up her left hand. “That was last year. I’m over it. Well, maybe not over it exactly—I still wake up every morning and pray she gets run over by a bus—but after that I can get on with my day.”
Had it not been for the expression of pain on Emily’s face, Andy would have rejoiced. How often had she wondered why Emily didn’t recognize all the hideous ways Miranda humiliated and terrorized the people who worked for her? How many times had she wished she had a friend in the office? How much more bearable would it have been if she’d had a partner in crime with whom to commiserate? No one had worked harder or with more dedication than Emily, and Miranda had reneged on all her promises to her anyway. It was so fundamentally unfair.
Andy wiped her hands on her apron. “I wrote her obit once. Is that weird?”
Emily put down her tongs and stared. It was the first time the entire
class they’d made direct eye contact. “You what?”
“Just as, like, an exercise, you know? I think it’s fair to say I didn’t exactly dwell on her accomplishments, either. It was surprisingly cathartic. You’re not the only one who hopes she meets an untimely death.”
Finally Emily smiled. “So does that mean you worked at a newspaper? I Googled you for a while after you left, but I never found much.”
Andy didn’t know where to start with that one. There was a weird feeling of satisfaction in knowing that Emily tried to keep track of her, too. In the weeks after she left Runway, she’d often thought of calling Emily to apologize for quitting so suddenly and putting the first assistant in such a lousy situation, but in the end she always chickened out. You didn’t scream fuck you at Miranda Priestly and not pay the price with Emily Charlton. So Andy avoided the certain curse-outs and insults and phone slamming and kept her guilt to herself.
“Yeah, that’s probably because there wasn’t much to find. I lived at home with Lily for a little while she recovered. Helped drive her to physical therapy appointments and twelve-step meetings, that kind of thing. I did a little pitching and writing for my local paper, covering engagements and weddings. When I finally moved back to the city, I sent my résumé to pretty much every listing on Mediabistro and ended up with Happily Ever After. So far, it’s been pretty okay. I get to write a lot. What are you up to?”
“What do you do for them? It’s a wedding website, right? I’ve read their partner site, the one about home design. It’s not bad.”
That was easily the most enthusiastic compliment Andy had ever heard Emily offer, and she ran with it.
“Thanks! Yes, it’s anything and everything weddings, from the engagement rings to flowers, dresses, registries, guest lists, venues, honeymoons, accessories, planners, first-dance inspirations . . . you get the drill.” It wasn’t earth-shattering, but Andy had carved out a pleasant niche for herself at the website and wasn’t altogether unhappy. “What are you up to?”
“Ladies in the corner!” the instructor bellowed, pointing a silicone scraper in their direction. “Less talking, more cooking. Despite the name, you actually should learn how to do more than boil water.”