The Smart One and the Pretty One (17 page)

“Whatever.” He looked around the bar. “Everyone in this whole city is so goddamned pretty, always dressed up like they have to impress someone. I don’t know how people can stand to live here.”

“I grew up here,” Lauren said. “It’s not that bad.”

“You fit in,” he said. “You like to be pretty.”

“First of all, that’s not a sin. Second of all, there are plenty of good-looking people in New York too.”

“It’s not the same. They’re not all soft and lovely and unthreatening.”

“I loved New York for a while,” she said. “But it’s a harsh place. The people are harsh, the weather’s harsh, the bartenders are harsh. L.A.’s easier.”

“Yeah,” he said with disgust. “It’s all sunshine and puppies. Everyone gives you a big smile as he stabs you in the back.”

“You definitely belong in New York.”

He gave a short laugh. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m harsh.” He shifted again—he seemed to have a habit of sitting quietly for a few minutes and then suddenly and abruptly moving his whole body like he was going to explode if he didn’t. Or like he
was
exploding. Then he’d be quiescent again. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s not all bad being here. It almost feels like a vacation. I get my work done early in the morning, then spend the day with my mother doing stuff I haven’t done in years, like just watching TV or reading books. The weather’s always beautiful. Sometimes we just sit on the deck and enjoy the sun. I could never be this—” He searched for the word. “This
lazy
, I guess, back home. In New York, there’s an energy in the air—you feel like you have to keep moving. Here, you can just do nothing for days on end.”

“Isn’t that kind of nice? Can’t you enjoy that on some level?”

“If I weren’t watching my mother die, yeah, maybe.” He picked up his glass and drank deeply. When he put it down, there was no more liquor left.

Lauren studied him quietly for a moment. Then she said, “Is she really dying?”

“I don’t know.” His tone ended the discussion. He put his glass down and did one of his explosive fidgets. “You hungry? Want to get some dinner?”

“Eventually,” Lauren said. “No rush.”

“Yeah, there is. I can’t stay out too long, remember?”

“Oh, right.” She raised her wineglass and drained what was left of it—about a third of a glass. She put it down and wiped her mouth on a cocktail napkin. “Okay. Let’s eat.”

He gestured toward her glass. “That’s a more impressive trick when it’s tequila.”

“I can do that too.”

“You’ll have to show me sometime.”

“So long as you’re prepared to deal with the consequences. Tequila”—she shook her head—“it makes you do strange things.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’ve regretted a few things I’ve done under its influence.”

“Not me,” Lauren said.

“A woman of no regrets.” Daniel stood up. “I admire that.”

She stood up too. “None that are tequila-flavored, anyway.”

They moved toward the restaurant.

Chapter 10

A
va was trying to convince herself that she wasn’t having a good time. Which was harder than she would have expected.

It had been a long time since she had gone on a date with someone who was funny and smart and charming—and Russell Markowitz was, admittedly, all those things—and she was tempted to surrender to the pleasure of his company and the hope that maybe this could lead to something. But she fought the pull, frequently reminding herself that Russell was only out with her because Lauren had backed out of the evening’s plans. Given the choice, he would have preferred to have Lauren sitting across from him: the expression on his face when he discovered they’d be going out alone said as much. And the truth was that a lot of what she was enjoying about Russell tonight—how he was less “on” than she’d seen him before, more subdued and introspective, less eager to show off—only underscored the fact that he wasn’t as stimulated by her presence as he always seemed to be by Lauren’s.

Besides, she reminded herself, the guy was hardly relationship material. His romantic history made it clear that he chose women based on a superficial appeal and then was surprised to find they lacked more worthwhile qualities. And her awareness that he tended to date model-pretty girls also meant that no matter what she thought of
him
, he wasn’t likely to fall in love with
her
.

On the other hand . . . there was no reason to make them both miserable for the entire evening. Might as well relax—in a wary kind of way—and enjoy the conversation, which definitely got easier as dinner wore on and the martinis slid down.

Since he was older, Russell remembered more about her family than she did about his, so she bombarded him with questions about his parents and brother, curious about these people who had briefly been part of their lives.

She was a little nervous about bringing up his parents’ divorce, but once the subject came up, Russell seemed comfortable discussing it. He explained that while his father
had
left his mother for another woman, it hadn’t been for the one who later became his second wife. “I’m guessing that whoever he had the affair with was a stepping-stone,” he said. “A way to get out of the marriage but not someone he ever wanted to commit to. I think my mother knows who it was but neither one of them’s ever told me.”

“Hey, maybe it was
my
mother,” said Ava, who had drunk a good deal of her huge, icy cold martini and was slightly tipsy as a result.

“Wow,” Russell said. “That would certainly make us look back on those family get-togethers with new eyes.” They were sharing a grilled artichoke appetizer, and he reached forward and plucked out a leaf. “Just so you know, if that were true, I wouldn’t blame him for a second—given the choice, I’d rather spend time with your mother than mine. She’s nicer and smarter and prettier and—”

“Stop, please,” Ava said. “Before you tell me my mother’s sexier than yours.”

“Oh, get your mind out of the gutter.” He scraped the artichoke leaf between his even white teeth. “You know, it’s actually possible. They were friends at the right time.”

She instantly regretted making the joke. “It’s not
really
possible,” she said.

He dropped the furrowed leaf in the discard bowl and wiped his fingers on his napkin. “Why not? Parents have secrets too, you know. Even yours.”

“My mother wouldn’t do something like that. I know her well enough to know she just wouldn’t.” She leaned forward. “And don’t start saying stuff about how all women are dishonest and betray men and you can’t trust any of them or anything like that. This is my
mother
we’re talking about and I know for a fact that she would never cheat on my father.”

“Whoa.” Russell put his hands up. “Back off. I was just joking. I didn’t really think it could be your mother.”

“Thank you,” she said and settled back.

“Besides, I know it’s not her, because my mother was thrilled to hear I had reconnected with your family. If your mother had been the other woman, I think I would have gotten a different reaction, don’t you?”

“And also,” she said, through exaggeratedly gritted teeth, “my mother
wouldn’t have done that
.”

He laughed. “She wants to see your family, by the way.”

“Who? My mother?”

“No,
my
mother. She’s coming to town next weekend and was hoping I could bring her by your parents’ house to say hi.”

“Just so long as Mom’s feeling up to it.”

“Of course,” he said. “Check with her first.” The waitress came to clear away the artichoke, and he ordered another martini. “How about you?” he asked Ava. “You want another?”

“God, no,” she said. “I can barely see straight as it is.”

“I’d like to see you drunk,” he said, studying her thoughtfully. “What happens when you can’t be all careful and controlled?”

“When I drink too much, I fall asleep. Nothing more exciting than that.”

“Too bad.”

The waitress brought their dinners, a Thai noodle salad for Ava, grilled fish for Russell. Ava picked up her fork and poked at the noodles. “You know this contract thing Lauren keeps bringing up?”

“What contract thing?”

“You know. When our parents ‘betrothed’ us, or whatever you want to call it.”

“Oh yeah.” He cut into his fish with the side of his fork. “What about it?”

“Do you remember them talking about it when we were kids?”

“Vaguely.”

“I don’t really remember it, either,” Ava said, “except there was one time when your father kept going on about how I was his future daughter-in-law and how lucky you were to have someone like me lined up, and I do remember just wanting to curl up and die.”

“See?” Russell speared a green bean. “You really have always hated the idea of me.”

“No, it wasn’t that. I was just a little girl, for God’s sake.
All
boys had cooties.”

“I know,” he said. “And I’m sorry about my dad. He had this sick sense of humor. You should hear some of the stuff he did to
me
when I was little.”

“Tell me.” Ava was still idly twirling her fork around in the noodles. With the martini making her sleepy and sluggish, it seemed like too much work actually to try to get it to her mouth.

Russell chewed thoughtfully for a moment. “Well, there were the gay comments, for one. Constant little witticisms about how I was his homosexual son and Jonah was the manly one. Because I liked to do things like read and cook and cared about my clothing—”

“Not very enlightened of him.”

“No kidding. I knew every gay slur by the time I was fourteen: ‘queer,’ ‘sissy,’ ‘momma’s boy,’ ‘fegolah’ . . . Heard them all from my own father.”

“Freud would say that explains the multiple wives and girlfriends. Yours, I mean. Not his.” She considered. “Maybe both.”

“Ha. Maybe. He always acted like he was joking, but I think it really bothered him that I wasn’t more butch. Even now, he hates what I do for a living. He tells his friends I’m in management but won’t say what kind of business I’m in. Anyway, the point is that that kind of thing was always passed off as a joke in our house. Never an open discussion or an honest question. Just little joking insinuations. Lord knows how I would have dealt with it if I had actually
been
gay. But he did worse things, too.” He put his fork down and settled back in his seat, resting his hand absently on his martini glass. “Like once we were running errands on a Saturday morning, and at one store he tells me to get in line and hold his place for him while he looks for more stuff. So I do, and when our turn comes, I call over to him. And he kind of glances over and says, ‘I’m sorry, little boy, but I don’t usually buy things for other people’s kids. Don’t you have a daddy who can buy that for you?’”

“That’s not very funny,” Ava said. “How old were you?”

“I don’t remember exactly. Eight or nine? Young enough to wonder whether they could arrest you for trying to make a purchase when you didn’t have any money.”

“What’d you do?”

“I just kept saying, ‘Come on, Dad!’ and he kept doing that ‘Dad? I’m not your dad’ thing. I was close to tears and all these people were waiting and the cashier was getting annoyed—in retrospect, they probably knew he was pulling my leg and were annoyed at
him
, but at the time I just thought they were all getting mad at
me
—and then finally he said, ‘Oh, well, in the spirit of the holidays, I guess I could buy you something, kid—but next time, bring some parents with you when you go shopping.’ On the way home, he kept talking about how funny it was and how I should have seen the expression on my face when he pretended not to know me.”

“Couldn’t he tell you were upset?”

He shook his head. “I had to pretend I wasn’t. It was really a test. If I didn’t shrug it off, then he’d just say I was a bad sport and didn’t have a sense of humor. Trust me, it was always better to suck it up than risk having him say, ‘What? Can’t take a joke?’ That was like the worst thing. It meant you were a crybaby
and
a loser
and
a bad sport.” He sighed. “And in my case, probably ‘queer,’ too.”

“You know, I’m starting to have a lot of sympathy for your mother.”

“Don’t.” Russell sat up straight and picked up his fork again. “She could have defended us—stood up to Dad, told him this stuff wasn’t funny, insisted that he knock it off. Instead, she’d laugh with him. Unless the joke was on her, of course, in which case she’d go apeshit on him. Which he probably got a sick kick out of.”

“You know what’s weird?” Ava said. “That you’re so anti-women. I mean, I get that your mother drove you a little nuts now and then. But your father sounds really infuriating. So why don’t you rant about men the way you do about women?”

“Well,” Russell said with a slightly weary grin, “you can’t hate
everybody
.”

“I’m serious,” she said.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. For one thing, my dad’s changed a lot. He’s been a really different father to his second set of sons than he was to me and Jonah. A much better father.”

“No more teasing?” Ava asked.

“Well,
less
teasing, anyway. He’s just more accepting of them in general. I’m always waiting for him to make fun of them. Like the younger one’s really into these Magic card things. He would have mocked me mercilessly for something like that—you know, because it’s not manly and all-American like football. But with Farley he just laughs and seems to get a kick out of it. So he’s definitely mellowed. I don’t know whether it’s because he’s getting older or whether his second wife just does a better job of telling him to cut the shit than my mother ever did.”

“Doesn’t it bother you, though? That he’s nicer to them than he was to you?”

“A little. But he’s nicer to me now too. We have an okay relationship. Better than I would have thought we could ten years ago.”

“Except he hates what you do.”

He sighed. “Except he hates what I do. And, let’s be honest—this improved relationship consists of maybe three or four days a year together.”

“And have things gotten better with your mother?”

“Well,” he said. “She lives there and I live here. So, in that sense, I’d say things have gotten better with her.”