The Smart One and the Pretty One (30 page)

“I’m hating this,” Ava said, turning, her eyes shut against the dryer’s blast. “I’ll give you two more minutes. If you’re not done by then . . .”

Lauren was using a brush now. “Okay, okay.” She finished within the allotted time. It wasn’t perfect, but at least Ava’s hair looked sleeker and more stylishly groomed than it normally did.

Ava stood up and looked in the mirror. “Nice,” she admitted. She peered more closely. “Too much eye shadow, though.”

“I hardly used any. You’re just so used to seeing yourself without anything, the smallest amount looks strange to you.”

Ava turned to her. “And
why
do I need to be all done up today? Are you planning something I should know about?”

“Nope—I’m just proving a point.” Lauren unplugged her hair dryer and wrapped the cord around the handle. “It took all of ten extra minutes—not even—to get you ready this morning and you look a thousand times better than usual.”

“It’s still ten wasted minutes. And I think ‘a thousand times’ is an exaggeration.”

“How wasted?” Lauren asked. “What would you have done with those ten minutes otherwise?”

“I could have worked,” Ava said. “I bill at three hundred dollars an hour.”

“You spend enough time writing up contracts,” Lauren said. “This is a better use of your time. Wait until the compliments come rolling in.”

“No one will even notice.” Ava walked out of the bathroom. She reached up to touch her hair, and the bracelets clinked gently against one another. “These are going to drive me nuts.”

“Oh, please. Here, put these on.” Lauren retrieved a pair of shoes from the top of the dresser where she had left them earlier that morning after discovering them stuffed way in the back of the closet.

Ava groaned. “Russell’s shoes.”

“Shut up and wear them and be grateful.”

“I’ll shut up and I’ll wear them, but I won’t be grateful,” Ava said. She slipped her feet into them. “They’re too high. I’ll never be able to walk in them.”

“Oh, stop whining. You’ll get used to them. They make your legs look like they’re a mile long. See?” Lauren closed the bathroom door so Ava could view herself in the full-length mirror. “A tiny bit of effort and you look fantastic.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Ava said and turned her back on the reflection. But she glanced at it again over her shoulder as she left.

People
did
notice. Ava wasn’t sure she liked that. When Jeremy said, “Wow! Look at you!” she wondered whether all that enthusiasm meant he usually thought she looked awful. When a senior partner passed her in the corridor and then stopped and turned around and said, “I almost didn’t recognize you, Ava. You look lovely today,” she worried that his flattery came at the cost of some professional respect, that there was something dismissive in his tone. And when a wealthy client she had never met before came in to talk about the prenuptial contract she had drawn up for him and his soon-to-be fourth wife, she didn’t like the way he gave her a real once-over look when she stood up (bracelets tinkling annoyingly) to greet him.

She knew that there were plenty of professional women—including quite a few in her own office—who were attractive and stylish and perfectly successful, that her experience and ability were what counted and that being plain had no more street value than being beautiful, and possibly even less. But the glances and comments still made her uneasy. She removed the bracelets midmorning—they just didn’t feel like they belonged in a law office to her—and she considered washing the makeup off in the bathroom. Only her fear that it would come off unevenly and leave her skin patchy and her eyes raccoony kept her from scrubbing at it.

Well, that and the fact that when she caught sight of herself in the mirror, she liked what she saw there. Every glimpse gave her an equally quick jolt of pleasure. It was like spotting an especially good photo of herself in one of her parents’ albums.

And when at lunchtime a random guy at the food court stopped to pick up the napkin that a gust of wind had blown off of her plastic container and returned it to her with a grin and a flourish, she raised her chin and smiled back at him with more confidence than she would have had on any other day.

All of which meant—

Ava had no idea what it all meant. No clear message was coming through to her, and since she liked things to be clear, she found that unsettling.

“Hey, Jeremy?” she said that afternoon after he had dropped some papers on her desk and picked up her outgoing mail. “What’s this on my calendar?” She pointed at the screen. “It says I have a family dinner at seven-thirty tonight.”

“Lauren was worried you’d forget,” Jeremy said with a slightly patronizing smile. “She called yesterday to make sure it was on your schedule. Which it wasn’t. But I put it on there for you.”

“I don’t remember anyone even telling me about it,” Ava said, a little glumly: she had felt out of the family loop lately, since she couldn’t spend her days chatting on the phone or running over to their parents’ house the way Lauren could. When Lauren was living in New York, Ava didn’t have to do much to be the better daughter—just show up for dinner now and then and remember her parents’ anniversary and birthdays—but with Lauren back in town escorting their mother to the hospital on a regular basis, Ava’s role as number-one daughter was slipping through her fingers. “Did Lauren say if it was the whole family?” If her mother was feeling up to going out on a Thursday—just two days after chemo—that would certainly be something worth celebrating. “What’s the occasion?”

“I have no idea,” Jeremy said. “Want me to get Lauren on the phone for you?”

“No, that’s okay. Whatever.” She had a lot of work to get through if she was going out that night, and Lauren had trouble keeping phone conversations brief.

A partner unexpectedly called her into a meeting at six-thirty and kept her in his office for over an hour, and there was an urgent phone message from a client waiting for her when she emerged, which she returned in the car on her way to the restaurant, blessing the invention of Bluetooth as she did so. She talked fast and wrapped up the conversation as she was pulling up to the restaurant, then snatched the valet ticket right out of the guy’s hand and dashed inside. Her family had made comments in the past about her putting work ahead of them, and while she thought the accusations were unwarranted, she had to admit that at times like this—when she was half an hour late for a family dinner and hadn’t had a chance to call ahead and apologize—circumstances conspired to make them
appear
well-founded.

As she entered the dark restaurant, the first thing she saw was Lauren walking toward her. She must have been waiting right by the door for Ava to arrive. An apology already forming on her lips, Ava raised her hand in guilty greeting at the exact same moment that Lauren saluted her.

And that was when Ava realized she was waving at
herself
—at her reflection in the mirror behind the bar. In the dim light, wearing the clothes Lauren had picked out for her, her face made up the way Lauren made up
her
face, she had fooled herself into thinking she was her own little sister.

She dropped her hand, embarrassed, and looked around quickly, hoping no one else had noticed.

But had she always looked so much like Lauren? And why did she think Lauren was so much prettier and thinner and sexier than she was, when her own quick glance couldn’t tell them apart?

She postponed the question for later analysis, since the hostess was approaching her. She gave her last name and the hostess said, “I’ll take you to your table,” and led her toward the back of the restaurant. She looked for her parents and Lauren but didn’t see them, thought maybe she was the first to get there—but that didn’t make sense since she was late—and anyway the tables they were heading toward seemed too small for a big group—was turning to the hostess to question her—but the woman was already gesturing toward a table for two with an empty seat—and someone there was rising to his feet in recognition and greeting.

“There you are,” Russell Markowitz said. “I almost gave up.” He stepped forward and kissed her on both cheeks. He was wearing another well-tailored suit with his usual crisply ironed white cotton dress shirt and a dark blue paisley tie.

Confused, Ava accepted his kiss as she tried to figure out what was going on. Lauren must have invited Russell to join them. But where was the rest of the family? Had they been seated somewhere else? Or was it just a coincidence that Russell was at the restaurant, and the hostess was still going to lead her to her actual table? Except, no, that couldn’t be it, because he seemed to have been expecting her. She turned to the hostess for elucidation. “Is this my table?”

“Is that all right?” the hostess said. “People usually like to sit back here, but if you prefer to be up front—”

“No, it’s fine. It’s just—”

The hostess pulled out the chair. “Let me know if you want to change,” she said with a slightly impatient shake of the chair, and, obedient as always to authority, Ava sank into it.

Russell also settled back into his seat. “I don’t get an apology?” He cocked his head at her. “You’re almost half an hour late. I was ready to give up. I tried your cell but no answer.”

“Sorry,” she said. “Work went late and then I got stuck on a phone call with a client.” She looked around. “Where is everybody?”

“It’s a weeknight,” he said with a shrug.

“What?” She realized he, like the waitress, had misunderstood her. “I mean my family. Where are they?”

“Did you invite your family to come?” Now
he
seemed confused. “We’ll need a bigger table.”

“It’s a family dinner, isn’t it?”

He gave her a funny look. “That’s not how it was described to me.”

It felt like the two of them were speaking different languages. “How
was
it described to you?” she said. “And by whom?”

Russell continued to stare at her for a moment. Then he put his hands flat on the table. “Okay,” he said carefully. “Did you or did you not call me two nights ago and ask if you could take me out to dinner as a thank-you for the shoes I gave you?”

“I never called you.”

He processed that. “You’re serious, aren’t you?” She nodded, and he said, “I got a call from someone—on
your
cell phone—who claimed to be you and who sounded like you, so either you were so drunk you don’t remember making the call or—” He stopped.

Ava said grimly, “People used to confuse our voices all the time when we were teenagers.”

“It was a quick conversation, too,” he said. “Even so, I can’t believe I fell for it. So you had nothing to do with any of this?” He gestured around them, at the restaurant’s dining room.

“My assistant told me Lauren had planned a family dinner for tonight. That’s all I knew.”

“She said it was a family dinner?” He sat back and folded his arms, sinking his chin into his chest like a petulant child. “She must have thought you wouldn’t have come just to see
me
.”

Ava said irritably, “I don’t know how her mind works. Don’t read too much into it.”

There was a pause. Then Russell said, “I was worried. At brunch the other day. You seemed kind of annoyed with me, but I couldn’t figure out why. So when you called and sounded so happy about the shoes and wanted to get together—”

“That wasn’t me.”

“I know that now,” he said icily. “I’m well aware of that.” He fingered the martini glass in front of him. “I feel like an idiot.”

“It’s not your fault,” Ava said. “Lauren and I have really similar voices, and if she was
trying
to sound like me—”

“Not just about that.” He ran his fingers through his hair, made it stand up. “Everything I do with or for you seems to go wrong. You didn’t actually like the shoes, did you?”

“They’re pretty,” she said. “Look—I’m wearing them.”

He leaned over sideways, peering under the table, and she twisted her foot from side to side for him. “They look great on you,” he said, and she could see the relief and satisfaction on his face. “So you do actually like them?”

“I do.” It was true; at some point during the day of wearing them, she had come to like looking down and seeing the pretty tips of the shoes peeking up at her. The extra height they gave her was also kind of nice. She had felt more imposing all day.

“Those are the pants I gave you, too, right?” She nodded, and he smiled. “I’m glad you like them. You look fantastic. You know that, don’t you?”

Of course she looked good to him. It was his taste she was showing off, not her own. “It was nice of you to give me all this,” she said dully.

“I’m glad you think so. And glad to see you’re making use of it all. Because, for better or worse, I brought you another present.” He reached down to the floor and came back up with a flat box. “See? It’s not so bad going out with me. You always go home with a party favor.”

Ava raised her eyebrows. “
Another
gift?”

“Why not?” he said and handed it to her.

“I feel guilty. You keep showering me with stuff.” But guilt wasn’t actually the emotion she was feeling as she turned the package around in her hands. Did he think if he threw enough tinsel at her, some of it would stick?

He was oblivious to her discomfort. “I got inspired when you sounded so happy about the shoes on the phone. I mean, when Lauren did.” He waved it off. “The point is, I
thought
it was you, and it got me excited about picking something else out for you. Open it.”

She untied the ribbon and uncovered the box to find a pool of blue and orange silk shimmering in a familiar pattern. She hooked her finger into the shining fabric and lifted it a bit. “It’s the scarf I liked.”

“I remembered.”

“But you said I wasn’t a scarf person. That you had to be old or French to wear a scarf.”

“I left out a category.” He leaned forward over the table. “Stylish. Stylish American women can carry off a scarf, even at a young age.”

“I’m not stylish.”

“Ah, come on. Look at yourself right now.”

She let the scarf slip back into the box. “This is all Lauren,” she said. “She dressed me. She did my hair. She made up my face. She even set up this
date
. I mean, you’re basically out with Lauren right now.”