Lynn Hulsman - Summer at Castle Stone

“Right this way,” she said, flashing her dazzling white teeth in a smile she now decided I deserved. In a fluid motion, she whisked menus from a discreet cubby in the hostess stand, turned sharply on her heel and Olympic-walked down a wide aisle, hips keeping time like a military metronome. She landed at a “good” table. Not too near the kitchen or powder rooms, and sufficiently in the middle of the room to facilitate seeing and being seen. I would have preferred something along a wall.

But the attention made me feel dirty. Of course, I’d grown up gliding along on Dad’s notoriety, but that hadn’t been my choice. Known equally for his investigative journalism and his novels of manners featuring thinly veiled members of high society and politics, he walked straight past velvet ropes and never paid a parking fine.

I began using my mother’s maiden name the summer before college, the summer I got a job to support myself by working at Austen and Friends Booksellers. To be fair, Dad did pay my tuition. Sarah Lawrence is only the most expensive liberal arts school in the country. But I paid for the rest, except maybe some books here and there and the summer abroad in Amsterdam. Since then, though, I haven’t taken a thing from him other than letting him pick up the checks at restaurants when we see each other, which is rare. And that’s because he always chooses stupid expensive places like this one.

Finally seated, with my shoes semi-hidden under the long, white tablecloth, I relaxed a little. There was a vodka and soda in my hand. Things were looking up. I checked my phone for the time. Maggie was 15 minutes late. Another 15 and I could walk out and claim that I figured she wasn’t coming. “C’mon, 15 minutes!” I silently willed, fantasizing about warm pajamas.

I plucked a fat green olive out of a dish of herb-infused oil and popped it in my mouth. Rolling the pit on my tongue, I scanned the table for a polite place to deposit it. The napkins were cloth, of course. I couldn’t just spit in on the table under the watchful eyes of the countless waiters and bussers. I tried to catch Bruno’s eye. I had an ally in Bruno. He’d bring me a demure pit dish. Or let me spit it discreetly into his waiting palm. The saliva was getting to me. I picked up my purse, and like a horse with a feedbag, rid myself of the offending seed. No more olives for me. I made a mental note to ask for some bread instead.

Surveying the bar off to my right, my gaze landed on a guy sitting alone. A neat whiskey sat at his elbow. He was wearing dark-wash jeans, polished lace-up shoes, and a dress shirt. He wore glasses. Like his outfit, there was nothing ironic about his demeanor.

“I’m so sorry I’m late!” Maggie came barreling into the vestibule and down the wide aisle in geisha-like steps. Even in her towering heels, she managed to overtake the hostess. Smoothing her long, curve-hugging skirt, she lowered herself into the chair opposite me, and gave a satisfied sigh. “There!”

“You look amazing,” I told her. And she did. Maggie may have grown up in the middle-class beach town of Spring Lake, New Jersey, AKA “The Irish Riviera,” but she’d adapted to Manhattan flawlessly. Her chic Bumble and Bumble haircut (done by a student stylist during her lunch break — I covered her desk at work) was none the worse for wear from the rain, and she had on the exact right shade of MAC lipstick (“buy drugstore mascara and powder, Shay, but drop real money on your lips”).

In the beginning, I represented something to Maggie. You could say that my parents belonged to the intelligentsia, but that word makes me uncomfortable. Money or no money, they traveled in circles with innovators, movers, and shakers. Maggie’s parents, and their parents before, worked with their hands and functioned in the practicality of the here and now. Whereas Maggie had lived in a dormer bungalow situated in a neighborhood filled with people who only drove into the city for the Rockefeller Center Christmas show or to consult with medical specialists, I’d grown up in a high-rise surrounded by writers, editors, and those who had the money to see that magazines, newspapers, and books got printed. Even my grandparents had been schoolteachers, professors, and artists. Maggie absorbed every story about being sent to camp at the artsy Usdan Center, and the noted personalities at the cocktail parties thrown at our Upper West Side apartment when I was a kid. Rough around the edges, Maggie tried to blend in with this kind of society. So it didn’t take long before she realized I’d been trying to blend in my whole life. We kept each other’s secrets. How much we needed each other went unspoken. Maggie was reared to be tough and hard, and I was reared to keep my failures under my hat. I loved her, temper and all, and she protected me.

“Thanks,” she said to the waiter as he handed her a linen napkin. She signaled to the waiter and whispered something in his ear. “Now then, I want to hear everything about your book deal. Start from the beginning, and don’t leave anything out.” She reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “Twins in success!”

“What?” I asked.

“You go! Then, I’ll tell you my news.” She beamed at me, eyes wide open.

“Right, about that. Well, Brenda said no.” I drained my glass, and held it out to a busser.

“What?” She spat, biting off the end of the word. “Are you telling me that she didn’t pick up The New Adult’s Guide to Making it in the Big City ? That’s ridiculous!” Did she see your two articles in the Observer? How to Be an Adult at Work and How to Be an Adult at Weddings? Pure genius! Did you tell her that they’re thinking of making How to Be an Adult a regular column?” Her eyes blazed.

“Never mind,” I said. “You win some, you lose some.” I didn’t want to ruin our night out together with a pity party. Changing the subject would do me good.

“Anyway, how was your day, Mags?”

“It was, you know…” she tapered off and her eyes got really big. She was looking over my shoulder, shaking her head “no” in small, twitchy movements. I turned around in my chair, and caught the back of a waiter carrying champagne in a silver bucket, heading in the opposite direction.

“What was that?”

She shrugged.

“So what about your blog, Shay? The writing is solid and witty, and your timing couldn’t be more on the money. It’s so current.”

“To be honest, my blog hasn’t gotten much traction.”

“It still might. You’ve proven yourself with the book contracts Brenda’s given you. And for almost no money! After all those Dumbass Guides you’ve ghostwritten for her? The Dumbass Guide to Picking a College , The Dumbass Guide to Getting Him to Propose …You could write The Dumbass Guide to Writing a Dumbass Guide ! Did you offer her the alternate title? Adulting? That’s so fresh! I can see the short-haired girls starring in the HBO series now! Why would she think twice about putting your name on a cover as sole author?”

“Well, the phone call didn’t last long…

“And after you swooped in, cleaned up that mess of a green smoothie book that that idiot personal trainer slash diet guru, slash cable TV personality couldn’t write? OK, tell me this: Are you getting your name on the book as co-writer or not?” She took a greedy gulp of water. I shook my head. I hated giving Maggie the disappointing news.

“Wait, what? Brenda, your agent, told you no on the phone? She didn’t give you the courtesy of delivering the news face-to-face?”

“Well, you know how busy she is,” I said, my face heating up. “To be fair, it was a quick conversation. I shouldn’t have called on a Friday.”