Roulette (10 page)

We drive across town and walk through the lamppost forest to find a group of parents and children convening near the information desk. The teacher is a handsome young college professor named Mark. I think he might be sweet on me. I look down and realize I probably look like a teenager myself. Vivian’s too-small purple top and flowy long skirt make me look as if I’ve just been airlifted in from Coachella.

Something about wearing someone else’s clothes makes me feel like someone else. Like someone who flirts with a docent. I smile at cute Mark, then follow him as he directs us through several galleries, until he stops in front of the piece we are going to discuss and draw this afternoon.

Perfect. Just perfect. The Matisse.

This particular Matisse and I go way back. An ultra-wealthy family who lived near The Monstrosity commissioned this tile confection in the 1950s. They have grandchildren my age, and I used to go over there to play, not realizing that it was rather unusual to have Picassos and Giacomettis scattered around the house. What I would now call the more aggressive pieces in their collection always made me nervous. The Picasso over the piano was downright terrifying—not the image itself, but the painting sort of radiated its priceless importance to the point that none of us even liked to walk anywhere near it.

But
La Gerbe
is different. As ten-year-old Isabel would say, “Le sigh.”

I sit cross-legged on the floor next to Isabel and start sketching. Of course, all I can think of is Rome leaning into my neck and talking to me about the red painting in the Hermitage. I force myself back to the present and focus on the shapes of the leaves, the joyful explosion of color and motion.

But I also think about that woman who is arranging the fruit bowl back in Saint Petersburg, frozen in time. It is hard to believe the same artist created both pieces. This is one of the last things Matisse did before he died, and it feels entirely free—bright ceramic leaves explode across a pure white background in a carefree, joyful array. It’s as if the woman cocooned in her red and blue–vined cell has escaped. She’s flown. I worry that I will squander my life, busying myself at a table like that. This one, with all of its white openness and free-floating expression, makes me think of Rome. It makes me think of how Rome makes me feel.

My pencil slows and then stops. Isabel is really into it, drawing the outline of each leaf with precision. I feel the tears on my cheek and reach down to the silly bohemian skirt and use it to dry my eyes.

“What’s the matter, Miki?” Isabel looks genuinely worried, more on her own behalf than as a sign of concern for my potential sadness. Nothing is worse for an aspiring teenager than being mortified by an accompanying adult. She is already like her mother, I think with a smile: letting me have it. I finish drying my tears and pat Isabel’s bare knee two times to reassure her.

“Sorry about that. Nothing’s the matter. Don’t you worry.”

“I’m not worried,” she replies easily. “I just don’t want you to freak out. Landon’s not worth it.” She looks at her paper and then back up at the ceramic wall sculpture as she speaks.

What a pal. “Yeah. Well, not that you care about my tender sensibilities, but if you must know, I wasn’t crying about Landon.” That seems to get her attention. Her pencil pauses.

“Well? Then what were you crying about?”

I whisper (in what I think is a pretty cool tone of teen complicity), “I think I have a crush on someone.”

Isabel rolls her eyes. Exactly like her mother. “Oh, Miki. Crushes are so over.”

I laugh and kiss the top of her strawberry-blond head, then resume the calm, restorative motions of looking up at the wall, then back at my paper, as I do a fairly good depiction of the Matisse.

Crushes are so over.
Out of the mouths of babes.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

V
ivian calls me at work Monday morning and asks me to meet her for lunch at the Polo Lounge.

“Seeing you drunk and naked on Friday night was a treat—as always—but you and I need a proper sit-down, Mik.”

I sigh. I know she is going to ask me all the hard best-friend questions, and I am not sure I’m ready.

“Quit stalling and meet me there at one,” she presses.

“Ugh. Fine!”

She hangs up on me before I have a chance to change my mind.

Vivian is flipping through the latest copy of
Women’s Wear Daily
while she waits for me to arrive. I am not much of a lady-who-lunches type, but Vivian totally is. The nails. The hair. The impatiently kicking Louboutin.

I lean down and kiss her on both cheeks, an inside joke that we both started, mocking how phony the gesture is, but we’ve never stopped doing it. So, as often happens, we have become portraits of what we formerly ridiculed. She gives me a quick extra hug, looks deep into my eyes, and says, “I’m so sorry about your dad. In the midst of all the recent mayhem, I don’t think I’ve really said it outright.”

“Thanks, Viv,” I say as I sit down.

“But you’re good, right?”

She, of all people, knows the last thing I want is some gory emotional autopsy. I nod. “It was a drag, but it was fine. It was good, actually—I mean, that I was there when it happened.” I pull my napkin onto my lap, and she nods once to let me know she is listening but isn’t going to push.

Vivian pauses before closing the magazine. “I mean . . . would you look at this guy?”

I look across the table and down at a montage spread of fashionably dressed couples and eye-popping headlines:
P
IPPA IN
T
ROUBLE
A
GAIN!
T
HE
F
ALL OF
R
OME!

My heart feels like it is tumbling out of my chest. Right there in front of me—with Vivian’s perfectly manicured, bright-red fingernail tapping repeatedly over the image—is a picture of Jérôme Michel de Villiers with his . . . his . . . brand-new . . .
fiancée
.

“May I see that?” I ask, trying to sound casual. The waiter comes over just then, so my shock is lost on Vivian. She is launching into her very specific requirements for the preparation of her salad (basically, everything on the side, in separate containers) while I stare in stark disbelief at Rome holding another woman, his soon-to-be-wife other woman. He holds her just like he held me, close and inside, protecting her from the elements. Aziza Mahdi. She looks fantastic. She’s Somali, apparently, tall and exotic, but also youthful and adoring. The way she looks at him—
dear god
—like he’s her savior or something.

Vivian is finished with her lettuce lecture, and, without looking up, I tell the waiter I’ll have the fish of the day. After he walks away, Viv grabs the magazine back.

“I mean, seriously, could he be any hotter? He’s like a frickin’ pirate. And four graduate degrees? And speaks five languages or something. And he’s rich as anything. And just look at his wife—”

“Fiancée,” I correct, with far too much vehemence.

“Well, whatever, fiancée. She’s like Iman, for chrissake.” Vivian looks up. “You okay? Don’t you think he’s hot? In your state of drunkenness on Friday, you certainly had plenty to say about his supposed hotness.”

Vivian has always been like this. Ever since she was thirteen and I was ten, Vivian has always been boy crazy.

“Sure, he’s fine.” I take a sip of water to stall.

“Fine? I’ll say. He’s
damn fine
. What’s up with you?” She looks at Rome one more time, makes a clucking sound of appreciation, then folds up the magazine and tucks it into her way-too-expensive handbag. Then she stares at me with those laser-beam best-friend eyeballs. “What gives?”

“He’s a client.”

“Did you start an escort service while I wasn’t looking? What do you mean, he’s a
client
?” We both laugh, and I try to look out toward the piano player and set the conversation in another direction.

“How’s Isabel doing on piano?” My tween goddaughter is already showing amazing musical promise. Most parents love to bore people with their children’s soaring accomplishments. Not Vivian. Not today, at least.

“Nice try.” She takes a sip of water, then her eyes widen. “Oh my god. Have you actually met him? In real life?” Her eyes are shining as if I might be able to introduce her to Rome in time for prom.

“Yes. I met him in Saint Petersburg. His company, Cla—”

“Clairebeau. I know, I know! Go on—I don’t care about any of the CV stuff. What is he
like
?”

“You’re unbelievable.”

She rolls her eyes and takes another sip of her water. “You’re totally trying to change the subject. He’s obviously
all that
if you can’t even talk about him without blushing.”

“I’m not blushing. Cut it out.”

Vivian raises her eyebrows and shrugs. Point taken.

“Okay, okay. Yes, I met him. Turns out my father did business with him and I needed to renegotiate the terms of a three-year contract that had come up—”

Vivian is shaking her head right to left, letting me know she stopped listening sometime around
renegotiate
.

“What?” I ask, trying to be normal, which is so not possible.

“Backtrack. Are you crazy?
You met him
? What is he like? I want details! He’s like a modern-day Renaissance man. Apparently he has this huge art collection—including one of the Matisses with the palm tree in Nice—and a place in the South of France that’s to die for, and he’s a major donor to that human-rights coalition, or whatever it’s called, where his fiancée works.”

I try to look away again, because I just don’t know how to make sense of all the lofty qualifications and accomplishments that Vivian is describing and then to make them fit into the friendly, charming man I was with in Russia. Even now I can picture him with perfect clarity, laughing on the bridge, smoking a cigarette. At night, I relive the feeling of him pulling me close against him while he slept. He still feels so
real
.

And now he is engaged.

Fuck
.

Vivian stops talking, and the silence yawns between us. Usually when we get together, we fill every breath with updates and juicy bits of gossip. Her silence is unnerving.

“Oh. My. God. You slept with him,” she whispers, but it sounds so loud to my ears that my
shhhhhhh
reply is like a hiss. Several heads turn in our direction.

“You broke up with Landon for him, didn’t you? Oh my god!” Her voice is quieter but still high-pitched. She takes another sip of water, and her eyes brighten again, like I am a really good movie script and she has won the option.

“Stop it. I never . . .” Well, what can I say? She’s my best friend. I can’t outright lie to her. But I don’t want to tell her, either. Obviously, it really is nothing after all, and if I start talking about it, that will mean it is still something. And really, it is none of her business. “Oh, all right, so we fooled around. But I did not break up with Landon because of Rome.”

She represses a squeal behind her napkin, then chokes a little when she tries to talk. “
Rome
? You call him Rome? I can’t believe you finally get in touch with your wild side a week after Landon asks you to move in with him. Priceless.”

The waiter has just taken the order of the table next to us, and Vivian practically trips him to get his attention. “Two martinis.
Pronto.
”

“Yes, Ms. Steingarten. Right away.”

“Thanks.” She smiles at the waiter, then lets the courtesy evaporate from her expression as she stares back at me. “So . . . you know he’s a total snake, right? A complete player?”

I stare at my water glass.

“Holy shit. Did you fall in love with the French pirate or something? What the hell got into you? I told you you needed to slut it up more in high school! You were supposed to get it out of your system
then
, when it didn’t matter. Wild oats and all that. Not now, when you’re
thirty
and . . . well, you’re gorgeous, obviously. But you’re a responsible adult now. You can’t go around sleeping with . . .” Her eyes turn dreamy again, and she completely loses the plot. “Was he just so amazing in bed?”

My eyes must have softened, because she realizes her mistake before I have a chance to answer.

“Forget I asked that! What were you thinking?” She shakes her head and takes another sip of water, then plows ahead. “You were always so afraid of being trampy, like your mother . . .”

At least she gets a smile out of me on that one; my mother may sleep around, but she is still one of the most elegant, sophisticated women on the planet—the idea of her ever being something as pedestrian as
trampy
cheers me right up. The martinis arrive, and we both take a happy sip.

Vivian continues apace. “It’s just sex, Miki.” She looks down toward her purse as if the French pirate is curled up in there for real, then looks back at me. “I imagine it was pretty
great
sex. But seriously? That is not the stuff that dreams are made of, sister. That’s the stuff of bad gossip rags and splotchy makeup behind too-big sunglasses snapped as you’re whisked away in the back of a darkened limousine.”

“God. You are so in the right business. Listen to you. The drama.”

“What?” She takes another sip of her vodka and looks all innocent.

“It’s all a big story to you.”

“Look, it’s
always
a story. If you tell yourself the story long enough, it usually becomes true. If you are in there”—she swirls her hand toward my forehead—“telling yourself that maybe,
juuuust
maybe, it could be all unicorns and moonbeams with this guy, you
will
start to believe it. You can pussyfoot around all you want, but hear me now. Rome de Villiers is a wild man. He is the quintessential rake. He is
not
husband material. This thing with the Somali woman is just the latest in a string of engagements, I’m sure.”

“You think?” I ask hopefully, the martini making me forget that I’m supposed to be getting over the guy, not having some dreamy fantasy about him falling madly in love with me after our one night in Russia.

Vivian scowls at me like I am the stupidest ingenue on the planet.

“Right,” I say with renewed confidence. “He is totally ridiculous. Not even worth talking about. It was nothing.”

I’m a bit shifty-eyed as I take a healthy slug of liquor to strengthen my resolve. I have the conviction (albeit fleeting) that Rome is my good, good friend and he needs my protection. Am I not allowed to feel slightly protective about my new, good friend?

“Oh. My. God.” Vivian is the picture of sisterly despair. “This is ten times worse than wild monkey sex in Saint Petersburg. You’re actually thinking this could
mean
something?” Viv drains her martini and nearly kicks the poor waiter in the shin as he passes. “Again,” she says, without looking up.

He nods quickly and scurries off.

“I’m a big girl. It was just a fling, nothing life-altering.” Okay. That’s probably a lie.

Now she has her arms crossed and is kicking her pointy high heel in an impatient motion again. “Stop,” she orders.

“What?”

“Just stop. I won’t bring it up again. I can tell that talking about it just puts it back into the realm of possibility for you.”

I take a big sip to finish the first martini just as the second round arrives. I feel better already. Warm and safe. With my best friend. My real best friend. Not my imaginary new best sex friend who is engaged to someone else. My real friend who will be logical and talk me out of these tiny, incipient fragments of hope that—she is right—I have been harboring since he drove away from me on that cool morning on Nevsky Prospect after typing his number in my phone.