Rumaan Alam - Rich and Pretty

Sarah had been so mad. It didn’t disappear, but it no longer seemed fair to be mad at her, or as mad. “Thank you.” She meant it. “Thank you.”

This is Lauren’s way: disappointing, and then far exceeding, expectations. Even now, Sarah still doesn’t get it — why she’d fuck someone, not just someone, a stranger (and, as she’d admit only to herself, as she’d never say out loud: a waiter, it’s worse that he’s a waiter), and turn what was supposed to be a trip about the five of them, together, having stupid, harmless fun, into something about herself.

“Any favorites?” Willa looks down at her, expectantly.

Sarah can’t remember how any of them tasted, particularly. She chooses the vanilla. She likes that pretty little slash of red in it.

She’s taken on more shifts at the store, lately.One of the longtime employees has left and they’ve frozen hiring. Sarah doesn’t mind, in fact enjoys having more demands on her time, since she’s shifted so many of the responsibilities — finding the tent, ordering the cake, checking the response cards against the invitation list, figuring out the outdoor lighting scheme — to Willa.

It’s a dead time for retail, but a boom time for their store: People deaccession once-prized possessions to make room for their holiday loot. Paper bags full of books in particular, but also: vases, unwanted pillows, lamps, picture frames, the occasional painting or sculptural oddity. The pink sale was her brainchild, and it’s proven a success in the two years past: The store transformed into a sea of pinks and reds, a nod to Valentine’s Day. She poured pink foil-wrapped chocolate kisses into a Blenko bowl ($400) and stationed it by the cash register. The first day of the sale, an interior designer came in and swooped up two thousand dollars’ worth of stuff, destined, she told Sarah, for the bedroom of a teenage girl whose parents are renovating their five-bedroom in the Apthorp.

Sarah still needs to find a tuxedo for Dan. She needs to coordinate with her future mother-in-law the details for the postwedding brunch on Sunday afternoon, which she’d like to have in this bistro on Park Avenue South that has a lovely, sky-lit garden room. She’s bought a small weight, ten pounds, and curls it up toward her head, sixty times on each side in the mornings, before her shower, hoping to tame the subtle wiggle of her upper arms. And there’s honeymoon research: She’s trying to figure out the best time of year to go to Botswana. She’s reading Norman Rush in preparation.

Understaffed as they are, she knows they need her, but today something more important has come up. She telephones the store, tells Jacob that she won’t be in that afternoon. Jacob is flustered but she is impatient and thinks, for the first time ever, Oh for Christ’s sake, it’s only a shop . She’s so overwhelmed, she doesn’t pause for more than a second to feel satisfied by the fact that they do need her there, after all.

Then she calls Dan, pacing nervously on a stretch of Thirty-Ninth Street, making a circuit from the free newspaper kiosk to the fire hydrant. A Sikh shopkeeper studies her suspiciously, and she stares him down icily. Dan is in the middle of prepping the big presentation, which is due to go off to The Hague next week. Their conversations when he is at work are never that fulfilling — monosyllables, nodding — so when she hangs up, she calls Lauren.

Years, what, more than a decade ago, a long-ago January night, drunken, because what else was there to do in the dead of the upstate winter, after some party in some person’s house, she and Lauren had been making their way across that well-lit campus, the reassuring blue glow of those security telephones, the pools of light meant to discourage attackers. They walked with too much confidence: The snow had melted, the water had frozen, and ice was everywhere, and they were too drunk to care. It was Lauren who fell, all of a sudden, that’s how these things happen, about to step and then prone, not hurt, because it was the heel of the foot behind her that had foundered, so she landed with a graceless thud on her ass.

“Ouch,” she said, first, then started to laugh, tears mixing in, not from pain, or shame, but from the cold, the preposterousness of the situation.

“Promise me,” Lauren had said later, “if you are my friend, if we are friends, let’s make a deal. From now on, when one of us slips and falls on the ice, the other one will, too.”

“Why?” Sarah had asked.

“We’re in this together” was Lauren’s answer, and it somehow made sense.

“Lolo,” Sarah says, when Lauren picks up, efficiently, after one brief ring, answering with her name—“Lauren Brooks”—so terse, so professional. “Lolo, I fell on the ice.”

The first place Sarah could think of isthis strange hotel near Bryant Park. It’s in Midtown, and it seems furtive, the place you’d go for an extramarital martini. She’s forgotten that the old hotel has undergone a modern renovation. It’s a ghost of its former self, a suggestion of columns and grandeur, the patina of slick woods and velvet. It’s a pastiche. It’s ugly, but classy. It’s not yet quitting time and well past lunchtime; the place is deserted. The host has olive skin and beautiful features. His hair has a subtle wave to it, and some kind of product to hold that wave in place. She’s seized by a desire to touch it. He shows her to a booth, delivers a glass of ice water, which she drains, and a menu.

Lauren arrives after only a few minutes; true to her word, she must have left as soon as she received the call. She is there, as Sarah has asked her to be.

“Hey!” A jocular tone, concealing an edge of worry. Confusion.

“Hey yourself,” Sarah says.

Lauren slides into the banquette opposite, pushing off her coat and scarf and bag in one graceless motion, shoving the bulk onto the bench beside her. “What’s going on?” She pauses. “You fell on the ice.”

“Our distress call.” Sarah nods at the menu. “Drink?”

“Drink, why not.” Lauren smiles. “It took me a second there, the ice thing. But I remembered.”

“Of course you remembered, Lolo.”

“So you want to tell me what’s going on? Why we’re drinking?”

“You’re drinking.” Sarah hesitates. She’s grateful. “I’m pregnant.”

“Oh. Oh!” Lauren stares at her. “Congratulations?” She looks down at the closed menu on the table in front of her. “Jesus. Who’s the father?”

“You know, I tried to guess what joke you were going to make.” Sarah smiles, crazily. She feels like laughing. “I had Who’s the father? on my list. I also had Again? ”

“That’s pretty good, actually.” Lauren laughs. “So I guess wearing white is out?”

“That was on my list, too.”

They order drinks.

“I’ll take two sips,” Sarah explains, defensively, as the waiter disappears in search of their drinks.

Lauren holds her hands up in protest. “I didn’t say anything.”

“I’m fucking pregnant.” She stares at Lauren. She wants something from this exchange but has no idea what. She’s looking to Lauren to tell her how to react.

“That’s amazing.” This time, no joking. Lauren smiles.

“The miracle of life.” Sarah frowns. “I don’t even know what to say.”

“I take it this is a surprise?”

She’s only been off the pill a few months, the doctor’s advice. If they were going to start trying, the doctor suggested, it was time. They’d been sure it would take a while. “This is a surprise,” Sarah says. “I mean, it’s good, generally speaking, though the timing is a little. .”