Даниэла Стил - All That Glitters

“No, they lure you into the back of their car, and you get knocked up at sixteen,” she said, and he laughed.

“Well, not quite.” Despite her strong religious convictions, he had finally managed to have sex with Tamar on a night that her parents were in New Jersey with relatives, sitting shiva for a great-aunt who had died. She lived at home too, which gave them few opportunities, so they took what they could. He said he loved her, but was in no rush to do anything about it. Unlike Coco, whom he didn’t trust not to do something extreme now that her parents were gone and not there to reason with her and hold her back. Her father would have kept a close eye on her. And without them, she was desperate for stability in her life. Sam wasn’t convinced she was looking for it in the right places. Certainly not Ed, a married man in his fifties, cheating on his wife. And Nigel was a dark horse in the race. She didn’t know him well enough to judge him objectively after a month. Sam was sure her parents would have agreed, even though they had married young, but they had known each other for several years before they eloped. “I just want you to take it slow and be sure.”

“I am taking it slow. At least be happy for me that I’ve met a nice guy.”

“I am happy for you, if he turns out to be everything he appears to be. Right now, he’s a dazzler. That can be blinding. Like Ed.”

“This is nothing like Ed. He’s not married, and he’s not a liar.”

“That’s a good place to start,” he said, but Sam wasn’t convinced.

“How’s Tamar?” she asked to get the spotlight off her for a minute.

“Great. She got a promotion at the bank. She wants six kids, and a kosher home. I introduced her to my mother, now my mother thinks I should marry her immediately.” It sounded like a death sentence to Coco, and an end to his freedom. She was just as worried about him as he was about her. “I think I need to come over and meet this guy. I want to see him for myself,” Sam said seriously.

“Any excuse is good. I would love you to come over. Do you think your father will let you?”

“I’ll tell him I have to.” As her self-appointed guardian and big brother, he wanted to meet this guy and make his own decision about him. He could tell that Coco had stars in her eyes, and he didn’t blame her. “I’ll let you know if I can do it.”

True to his word, a week later Sam texted her that he’d be there in a week, for a four-day weekend. They would be closed for a holiday in New York, and he was stealing an extra day, and had gotten a cheap ticket. She couldn’t wait to see him, and told Nigel how much Sam meant to her. Nigel was spending every night at her house now, since Paris, and they were both loving it. They made love as soon as they got home from work. She made breakfast for him in the morning, and they cooked dinner together, or went out. As people met Coco, invitations for both of them began flooding in. He introduced her to so many people that she was suddenly sharing in his booming social life. She had to convince him to pick and choose. They couldn’t go to everything, although he would have liked to. She realized that he liked going out more than she did, but she never had a bad time when she was with him. He was easygoing and kind, and the people he knew were wonderful to her, and thrilled for him. They all told him how lucky he was to have found her. They made a perfect couple and he agreed. He was in heaven, and so was she.

—

When Sam came, Coco picked him up at the airport. She was taking two days off from work. She wanted to spend as much time with him as she could. Whatever the excuse, even his suspicions about Nigel, she was thrilled to see him. He had taken a late flight on Wednesday and arrived on Thursday morning. He had slept on the plane, so he wasn’t tired. After she picked him up at Heathrow, they went out, had lunch at a small Indian restaurant, and walked around the neighborhood. When Nigel came home from work, Sam was eager to meet him. Nigel had brought home a bottle of good malt whiskey, and a bottle of French wine. They were going to cook dinner at the house.

Coco could see that the two men were taking each other’s measure, and she left them alone to figure each other out. She loved both of them, and she knew Nigel could hold his own. She wasn’t worried, as she busied herself in the kitchen. They had opened the bottle of whiskey by the time she served dinner, and both men looked pleased and relaxed.

She had bought steaks, which she knew they would like. They were both hearty eaters. She had made string beans and mashed potatoes, and miraculously, it had all come out just right. With the French wine at dinner, it was the perfect meal.

Nigel talked about his job in answer to Sam’s questions, and Sam admitted that it was challenging working for his father and doing everything his way. He wasn’t enjoying it, but felt it was his duty to work in the family business with him, and his father’s distrust of any kind of technology made everything more complicated. Sam was trying to modernize the business, with tremendous resistance from his father. He said they argued about it every day. Looking at him, Coco realized that he looked stressed and not very happy. And his sister had finally just gotten engaged to her Irish Catholic boyfriend, and his mother was irate, so things were tense for him on the home front. He said his parents were pushing him about Tamar.

“You’re ten years younger than I am,” Nigel commented, as they ate Coco’s delicious dinner that she had prepared with the utmost care to get it right for the two men she loved. “Why are they pushing you to get married? At twenty-three, I was still raising hell, chasing barmaids and cocktail waitresses,” he said, and Sam laughed.

“It’s Orthodox tradition to get married young and have a lot of children, like Catholics. My father is more relaxed about it, but my mother is very religious, and definite about her point of view. My sister marrying a Catholic isn’t helping, and my other sister says she won’t get married until she’s thirty, if then. Knowing her, maybe never. My brother is the family scholar, so they think he’s a saint. Which leaves me, as the standard-bearer of all their hopes. I believe in doing things slowly, so I’m in no rush to get married.” He looked pointedly at Nigel, to get his message across, even if subliminally.

“At your age, I wasn’t either. At mine, you start to think about it, if you want kids.”

“Coco is younger than I am,” Sam said directly, and she looked mildly embarrassed. Sam was definitely acting like her big brother, even though he was only a year older. But she had no one else to look out for her interests, and she knew he meant well. “At twenty-two, she’s too young to have children.”

“I think when you meet the right person, it’s the right time,” Nigel said quietly. “The right one doesn’t come along ten times in a lifetime. It never has for me until now.”

“That might be true. But good things don’t happen in a hurry,” Sam said firmly. Nigel nodded and didn’t comment. “I think if it’s right, it can wait, for a while anyway.” There was a moment of silence after that, and then the conversation moved on to other things. On the whole, the two men in her life liked each other. Nigel insisted on brandy after dinner. By the time they all went to bed that night, Sam and Nigel had had a lot to drink.

Nigel had already left for work the next morning when Sam got up. Coco had taken that Friday off too, so she was waiting for him when Sam appeared in the kitchen squinting in the sunlight and she laughed.

“Oh God, I’m so hungover,” he said with a pained expression. “I forgot the way the Brits can drink. There was an English kid in my econ class at NYU who could drink anyone under the table. I think Nigel must be related to him. Coffee, quick, this is an emergency.” He looked better after he’d drunk it, had a piece of toast, and taken an aspirin. He still had a headache, but it was tolerable.