Lauren Weisberger: Chasing Harry Winston

“Thank you for that stellar armchair insight. Perhaps you can enlighten me as to how all of this is affecting Otis? I’m sure breakups can be devastating on parrots, too. Come to think of it, I should probably consider getting him some counseling. God, I’ve been so self-centered. The bird is suffering!” Although Izzie was now an ob/gyn resident at University of Miami Hospital, she’d briefly flirted with psychiatry and rarely refrained from analyzing anything-plant, person, or animal-in her path.

“Joke all you want, Em. You’ve always dealt with everything by making fun of it, and I’m not saying that’s the worst approach. I would just urge you to spend a little time alone. Focus on yourself-do what you want, when you want, without having to consider anyone else’s agenda.”

“If you even start on that bullshit about two halves not making a whole or something, I’m going to puke.”

“You know I’m right. Take some time just for you. Re-center your notion of self. Rediscover who you are.”

“In other words, be single.” Easy for her to advise from the arms of her loving husband , Emmy thought.

“Does it really sound so dreadful? You’ve had back-to-back relationships since you were eighteen.” What she didn’t say was obvious: And that hasn’t exactly worked out.

Emmy sighed and glanced at the clock. “I know, I know. I appreciate the advice, Izzie, really I do, but I’ve got to run. Leigh and Adriana are taking me out for the big you’re-better-off-without-him dinner tonight and I have to get ready. Talk to you tomorrow?”

“I’ll call your cell later tonight from the hospital, sometime after midnight when things slow down. Have a few drinks tonight, okay? Go clubbing. Kiss a stranger. Just please don’t meet your next boyfriend.”

“I’ll try,” Emmy promised. Just then, Otis screeched the same word four times in a row.

“What’s he saying?” Izzie asked.

“ Panties . He keeps saying panties .”

“Should I even ask?”

“No, you most definitely should not.”

For the very first time since Leigh had moved into her building, Adriana beat Leigh to the lobby. She did so out of necessity: Adriana had returned from a relaxing day at the salon-date with the hot stranger arranged for the following weekend-to discover that her parents had all but taken over her apartment. Technically speaking it was their apartment, but considering they only stopped by for a few weeks a year, she felt justified in thinking of it as exclusively her home, where they were guests. Impossible, dreaded guests. If they didn’t like the authentic African zebra skins she had selected to replace their boring Oriental rugs or the way she’d arranged for all the lights, shades, and electronic equipment to work by remote control, well, that wasn’t her problem. And no one, not even her parents, could claim they actually preferred their hand-chiseled, specially imported Italian marble shower and hot tub to the ultramodern rainfall shower, sauna, and steam room she’d replaced them with in the master bath. No sane person, at least. Which is precisely why Adriana had to dress and flee as quickly as possible: In four short hours, her sleek sanctuary had become a strife-ridden ring of hell.

Not that she didn’t love them, of course. Her papa was getting older and, at this point in his life, much more mellow than he’d been when Adriana was growing up. He seemed content to let his wife call the shots, and rarely insisted on anything beyond his nightly Cuban and the tradition that each and every one of his children-three from his first wife, three from his second, and Adriana with his current, and hopefully last, wife-reunite at the Rio de Janeiro compound for the weeks before and after Christmas. The opposite had proven true for her mother. Although Mrs. de Souza had been relaxed and accepting of Adriana’s teen years and all her sex-and-drug experimentation, her liberal attitude did not extend to unmarried twenty-nine-year-old daughters-especially those whose predilection for sex and drugs could no longer be called “experimental.” It wasn’t that she didn’t understand good living; she was Brazilian, after all. Eating (low-fat, low-cal), drinking (bottle after bottle of expensive white wine), loving (when one can’t conceivably feign yet another headache)-these were the very essences of life. To be conducted, of course, under the proper circumstances: as a carefree young girl and then not again until after one had found and claimed an appropriate husband. She had traveled and modeled and partied through her own teen years-the Gisele of her generation, people still said. But Camilla de Souza had always cautioned Adriana that men were (slightly) less fleeting than looks. By the time she was twenty-three, she had secured a (fabulously) wealthy older husband and produced a beautiful baby girl. This was how it should be.

The thought of listening to her mother’s spiel for another two weeks made Adriana feel woozy. She stretched out on the slightly sagging lobby sofa and thought through her strategy. Stay occupied during the day, come home late or not at all, and convince them at every possible opportunity that her energies-not to mention her substantial trust fund-were going toward securing a proper husband. If she was careful, they would never know about the grungy British rocker who lived in an East Village walk-up or the sexy surgeon with a practice in Manhattan and a wife and kids in Greenwich. If she was meticulous, they might not even catch on to the gorgeous Israeli who claimed he pushed papers at the Israeli embassy but who, Adriana was certain, worked for Mossad.

Leigh’s raspy voice-one of the few naturally sexy things about the girl, Adriana was always telling her, not that she ever listened-interrupted her thoughts. “Wow,” Leigh breathed, staring at Adriana with widened eyes. I love that dress.”

“Thank you, querida. My parents came to town, so I had to tell them I was going on a date with an Argentinean businessman. Mama was so happy to hear it that she lent me one of her Valentinos.” Adriana ran her palms down the length of her short black dress and twirled around. “Isn’t it fabulous?”

The dress was indeed beautiful-the silk seemed able to think, knowing where to cling to a curve and where to drape gracefully over one-but then again, Adriana could have looked lovely in a red-checked tablecloth.

“Fabulous,” Leigh said.

“Come, let’s leave before they come downstairs and see I’m with you and not some South American polo player.”

“I thought he was supposed to be a businessman?”

“Whatever.”

The cab crept across Thirteenth Street at a glacial pace, mired in the downtown Saturday-night traffic that made a few blocks feel as long as a commute from New Jersey. It would have taken the girls only ten minutes to walk from their building on University to the West Village, but neither even considered hoofing it. Adriana, especially, looked as though she would risk injury and possible paralysis if she so much as thought about walking more than a couple of carefully negotiated meters in her Christian Louboutins.

By the time they pulled up in front of the Waverly Inn, Emmy had texted each of them a half-dozen times.

“Where have you been?” Emmy hiss-whispered as the girls squeezed through the minuscule front door. She was leaning against the hostess desk and waving in their general direction. “They won’t even let me sit at the bar without you.”

“Mario, such a bad boy!” Adriana crooned, kissing a handsome man of indeterminate ethnicity on both cheeks. “Emmy is a friend of mine, and my dinner guest tonight. Emmy, meet Mario, the man behind the legend.”