Jack with a Twist (13 page)

“There’s only one thing I can do now,” I say, looking Vanessa straight in the eye.

“Why do I have a feeling that I’m going to be involved in this in some way?” she says, stirring her own Vanilla Coke. “Please don’t make me do anything that would get me disbarred.”

“You need to start spying on Jack and Miranda,” I say, “just to make sure that there isn’t any hanky-panky going on.”

“Hanky-panky?”

“You know what I mean,” I say. “Just make sure that everything’s on the up and up. But don’t let them know you’re spying.”

Why is it that we nice girls must constantly be on the lookout for man stealers? That’s what destroyed my last serious relationship, and you can be sure that I’m not going to let that happen again. Maybe if Jennifer Aniston had asked Courtney Cox to spy on Brad, they’d still be happily married right now.

“That doesn’t sound very ethical,” she says, narrowing her eyes as she takes a sip of her Vanilla Coke.

“Do you want to maintain your post as matron of honor or not?” I ask.

“Maid,” she says, as the waiter dumps our bill on our table.

“Whatever,” I say. “Do you?”

“I’ve been in a lot of weddings before, Brooke,” she says, “and no bridesmaid detail ever included spying on the groom.”

“Thank you so much for agreeing to do this for me,” I say.

“But, I haven’t agreed to anything yet,” she says.

“Close enough,” I say, as I pick up the check.

“T
hat sort of thing really wouldn’t come under the umbrella of what a wedding photographer does,” Melissa says to me, putting her hand to her forehead as she sits back in her chair.

Melissa Kraut is the wedding photographer Vanessa recommended to me and we’re in her fabulous studio in Chelsea. Vanessa met Melissa when she represented her, pro bono, through Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, back when Melissa was just starting out with a camera her parents gave her and Central Park as her backyard studio. Back then, she was a starving artist who needed Vanessa’s help in protecting the intellectual property rights in her work. Now that she’s doing wedding photography, she’s hardly starving any more and she’s got her own studio and her own legal team at her beck and call. Even though Vanessa no longer represents her, they’ve stayed friends. In fact, Melissa even set Vanessa up on a date the other night. It didn’t really work out, since to hear Vanessa tell it, “he was so short he only came up to my boobs,” but I thought it was nice of Melissa to think of Vanessa nonetheless.

I have this vision of Melissa covering my wedding for me, and then being so inspired by the photos of me that I become her muse and she takes even more and more photos of me, and then eventually exhibits them in Vanessa’s mom’s art gallery and I become a big international supermodel. The first supermodel
ever
to be only five foot four and a half.

What? It could happen. They have short models on all the time on
America’s Next Top Model.

“Think of them as action photos,” I explain, “action photos of the groom.”

“Still, it’s a little out of the bounds from what a wedding photographer would normally do. Surely you understand that.” I’m suddenly very aware that I’m leaning forward, practically hanging over Melissa’s desk, and she’s leaning so far back on her chair that she’s in considerable danger of actually falling out of the window.

“Getting acquainted with your subject?” I ask, leaning back in my chair with my hand demurely on my chest so as to feign innocence. “Is getting acquainted with your subject what you consider out of bounds?”

“You want me to spy on the groom for you.”

“Spy sounds so harsh,” I whisper, sotto voce, “don’t you think?”

“I think I’d like for you to leave.”

“That sort of thing really wouldn’t come under the umbrella of what a wedding videographer really does,” Jay says to me.

Jay is a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of my father who’s based out of Queens, and he’s promised to give me a “real deal” on my wedding video. We’re meeting at a pastry shop on Lefferts Boulevard and instead of the non-fat decaf cappuccino I promised myself on the way over, I’m halfway into a regular cappuccino with a chocolate chip cannoli on the side. To be fair, though, it’s not really my fault. This meeting with Jay has been the
tiniest
bit stressful. And not just because the wedding photographer I met with kicked me out of her office. My father told me that there was a very slight chance that Jay has connections to the Mafia, so I should be careful not to say anything negative about the Mafia when I’m with him.

Now if that isn’t an elephant in the room….
Don’t say Mafia. Don’t say Mafia.

And, at any rate, my father told me, I shouldn’t really be concerned, because Jay wasn’t high-ranking in the mob—at the very most, my father surmised, he was a soldier.

Note to self: must rent first season of
The Sopranos
to find out what a “soldier” is.

“Think of it as background footage for the wedding video,” I say, making an effort not to sound desperate, “it would be great fun!”

Oh, God. I just said “great fun” to a man who may or may not be connected.

“Great fun?” he says, taking a swig of his espresso. Busted.

“Well,” I quickly say, “you know. Fun. Sort of fun. We can all get to know each other before the wedding!”

“I’ve never really taken footage before of a groom at his office,” Jay says, “but I’ve done some surveillance in my day, so if that’s what you’re looking for—”

“Surveillance?” I say, almost choking on my cannoli, “I don’t need surveillance! Who said anything about surveillance? No, it’s just that my fiancé, Jack, just loves to work and so you’ll just be getting background footage of him in his natural habitat!”

“Whatever you want to call it,” Jay says, looking at the door as someone walks in. “Where does he work?”

“He’s a lawyer,” I say, “He’s a partner at Gilson, Hecht and Trattner.”

“Fancy,” he says, taking one more swig of his espresso and finishing it. “Isn’t that the firm that represents Jean Luc Renault?” I’m momentarily taken off guard by this question, since Jay doesn’t really look like the type to cover couture fashion.

“I believe so,” I say, “Why? Do you follow fashion?”

“Are they going to be covering Monique and Jean Luc’s big divorce? I’m not a pap, don’t think I’m one of those scum-suckers, but when that whole thing goes down, details about the divorce are going to be selling for a fortune.”

“No, they’re not getting divorced,” I say, ever the protector of attorney-client privilege.

“Well, smart money’s on the rumors that say that they are,” he says.

“Well, they’re not,” I say, grabbing my Sweet-n-Low packet and tearing it in half. And then into fours.

“How do you know?” he asks.

“I just know,” I say, looking back up at him. “So, do you think you’ll want to do my wedding video?”

Jay looks at the door again as another person walks in. Even though he’s had nothing to eat, he takes out a toothpick and puts it into his mouth. He flips the toothpick to the side of his mouth with his tongue and says: “You’re on.”

“Great!” I say.

“Let’s go to your fiancé’s office first.”

“Great!” I say, taking another bite of cannoli. “Now?”

“No time like the present,” he says and I stuff the rest of the cannoli into my mouth, followed by a big swig of my cappuccino. “I’ve got my camera in the car. I’ll drive you into the city.”

Now, my mother always taught me that I shouldn’t get into a car with a stranger. But, surely a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of my father would not be considered a stranger, now, would he? Even if he may or may not have the capacity, connections and mental wherewithal to fit me for concrete shoes and then drop me into the Hudson.

Forty-five minutes later, we’ve listened to the entire side A of Frank Sinatra’s
Ring a Ding Ding
album, on tape cassette, natch, and we’re pulling into a parking garage a block away from the Gilson, Hecht offices. Normally, parking in midtown costs more than most people in America would pay for a down payment on a house, but Jay seems to know the manager of the garage.

“This is a surprise,” Jack says, as he looks up from his desk to find Jay and me at his office door.

I walk into Jack’s office first, with Jay following me with his camera on his shoulder, as if I’m Ed McMahon coming with an oversized check.

“We just thought we’d get some footage of you at work,” I say, giving him a peck on the lips. “You know, for the wedding video.”

“Great,” he says, getting up from his desk. “Have you eaten yet? I can take a break right now and we can run down to the cafeteria for something to eat.”

“Keep filming,” I say to Jay. And then, to Jack: “No, honey, I just had a quick bite. And, anyway, I want Jay to get some footage of you working for the wedding video.”

“You want footage of my office for the wedding video?” Jack asks, brushing his hand through his shaggy brown hair.

“Why, of course!” I say, as if to say: “Doesn’t
everybody
have footage of their fiancés working at their offices on their wedding videos?”

“Okay,” Jack says, reluctantly going back behind his desk.

“Just look natural,” I tell him.

“Right,” Jack says, looking around his office, no doubt, for Alan Funt to jump out from behind his potted plant. Or at the very least Ashton Kutcher.

“Anyway, I have way too much work to do today to stay here,” I tell Jack, already kissing him lightly on the lips and heading out to leave. “That you assigned to me.”

Jack laughs and tells me that he loves me as I walk out. I grab Jay and whisper to him that if he
just so happens
to see a red-headed Southern belle who looks as though she has a penchant for married men, he should feel free to tail her for a little bit. I leave out saying the more dramatic: “If you do, I’ll make it worth your while,” since that part’s really implied and I’m not
actually
an extra in an episode of
The Sopranos.
I’ll just be referring to the show later purely for research purposes.

As I hit the button for the elevator, I wonder if I have time to make a quick visit to Vanessa’s office. I turn around, about to make my way down the hallway, and see an old junior partner I used to work for.

“Hi there, Larry,” I say with a forced smile. I never liked him much when I was an associate at Gilson, Hecht, and my absence from the firm most certainly has not made my heart grow any fonder.

“Miller,” he says, “Just who I wanted to see. Are you available for a meeting right this minute? Go grab a legal pad, I need you.”

“What?” I say. What on earth is he talking about? Did this guy actually miss the fact that I left the firm almost a year ago? Did he really
not
notice? And if so, why did Jack force me to spend
days
working on a carefully worded politically correct Exit E-mail Memo that ensured that I didn’t anger anyone/piss anyone off/get me disbarred?

Make no mistake: the Exit E-mail Memo is a true art. When associates at large Manhattan law firms leave, what they
really
want to say is:

I hate you. All of you. You have truly made my life a living hell from the minute I walked in the door here, and, while I learned a lot, I would much rather have been working as a gas station attendant at some gas station in God’s Country, USA. Which, come to think of it, is really how most of you made me feel most of the time, so I guess I broke even.

I really only ever worked here because you paid me so darn much as a first year and I had massive student loans to pay. Now that I’ve dug myself out of debt, if I have to look at any of your ugly faces for another second, I might actually have to stab myself in the eye.

Signing off,

Faceless associate #536

Brooke Miller

Gilson, Hecht and Trattner

425 Park Avenue

11th Floor

New York, New York 10022

What I actually said was:

As many of you know, today is my last day at Gilson, Hecht and Trattner. It has been an amazing five years here, and in the time that I’ve been at the Firm, I have had the honor to work with some of the most outstanding attorneys practicing law in New York City today. I’ve made some of my best friends in the world here and I truly treasured my time spent here at the Firm.

It may be time for me to move on to a new adventure, but I will always look back on my time at Gilson, Hecht fondly.

Best regards,

Brooke

Brooke Miller

Gilson, Hecht and Trattner

425 Park Avenue

11th Floor

New York, New York 10022

The “Thank God I at least met my fiancé here so it wasn’t a complete, total, utter waste of time” part was implied. As was the “I hate you. All of you.” part.

“I’ve got a meeting with Janobuilder Corp. Didn’t you use to work on their matters when you were a first year?” Larry says to me, seemingly out of breath. Or at the very least out of patience.

“Yes,” I say, “but I don’t work here anymore.”

Clearly, Larry did not get my carefully worded politically correct Exit E-mail Memo. An argument for sending the “I hate you” e-mail?

Larry doesn’t respond. He merely turns on his heel and begins muttering angrily.

I turn around and begin pushing the button for the elevator furiously. My pulse begins to climb as I realize that I must get out of this building immediately before someone else tries to assign me more work. Vanessa will just have to understand. I’m sure that this sort of situation is covered by her maid of honor duties.