1
Samantha Fox takes two steps at a time up the stairs of the nineteenth century Gothic building that hosts Dan’s Café. She is late. She doesn’t being late because she equates lateness with rudeness. My time is precious, and so is yours.
She flies into the seating area with its cozy tables and chairs, her shoes clacking noisily upon the black-and-white checkered linoleum. Spotting Cassie, her best friend sitting alone at a table, she almost trips over a pair of shopping bags by a chair at another table. She manages to rescue herself by grabbing onto the back of the chair.
“Hey, watch it, will you?” says the woman with the pixie hairdo seated there, clearly annoyed.
“Sorry, so sorry.” Sam picks herself up and half-clambers, half-limps to the amused Cassie. “Oh,” she groans, “I’m such a klutz.”
“You always were a klutz. It’s part of your charm.” Cassie pulls her coffee mug away discretely from Sam as the latter sits, juddering the table and sploshing coffee over the rim.
“Yeah, it’s charming when I was fourteen. And even then, not really.” Sam shudders. “Remember how we were when we were in middle grade? I wore braces and I kept getting my lunch stuck in my buck teeth.”
“I remember that awful Brian Morton. He was such a bully. Remember how he used to draw funny caricatures of you with your braces all over the lockers? He called you ‘Jaws’.”
“I’m going to expunge that dirty memory forever from my temporal lobes.” Sam runs a careless hand through her mess of hair. “I’m sorry I’m late anyway. My boss wanted me to go over the Killeney account for the seventeenth time. She’s such an anal retentive like you wouldn’t believe.”
“All work and no play makes Sammy a tight ass like she never wants to be. You’re on track for it, you know.” Cassie signals a passing waiter. “Can we have the menu, please, like yesterday?”
“I have to. I’ve got no one else but me. If I want to live the American dream and get that America dream apartment over at Soho, I’m going to have to put my nose on the grindstone for it.”
“Or you could marry someone rich and get the American dream handed to you on a china plate, that is probably made in Taiwan.” Cassie arches her eyebrows meaningfully.
“I’m never getting married.”
“You know it’s not true.”
“It’s true. I’m twenty-seven and I’ve been in three failed relationships. I’ve got majorly dumped three times, and the third is by a man who decided he was g*y after dating me for two months. That’s got to be a record. Anyway, it isn’t PC to want a man to get those things for you. The only person you can rely upon – ”
“ – is you,” they chorus together.
“Hey, you’re finishing my sentences,” Sam complains.
“Only because you’ve said it like a gazillion times.”
“I have not.”
“You have too.”
“I’m not a nag.” At that moment, the strains of Usher stream from Sam’s monogrammed Coach purse. She groans. “If it’s the office, I’m going to scream.”
“Then don’t get it.”
But Sam has already dived into her purse to fish out her Samsung Galaxy Ace. She holds the cellphone up and makes a face at the display.
“It’s Lori, would you believe? She never ever calls me unless she wants money or to crow over me for not having a guy.”
“Lori, your slutty gangbang fest of a sister?”
“Ssssssh. She does not too have gangbangs.”
Sam picks up the phone and says into it, “Don’t tell me . . . Mom’s got a new boyfriend.”
Cassie crosses her eyes. Sam shoots her an evil look.
“Uh huh. Uh huh. What? Oh? Shit, no f**king way! You mean you are really going to get married? But you’re only twenty-two!”
Cassie mouths incredulously: For real? Slut Lori is gonna get married?
“Twenty-two is not over the hill. How can you even think that? You’re barely out of college. Uh huh. Well, look at me. I’ve twenty-seven and I’m not married.” Pause. “Twenty-seven is not geriatric and prostate problems are only for men, for crying out loud.”
Cassie stifles a giggle.
Sam mouths back: If you’re gonna make fun of me, I’ll kill you.
“The engagement party is this weekend? Thanks for telling me three days in advance.” Pause. “Well, I’m your sister, I think I deserve to know a little earlier, if that’s OK with you.” Pause. “Uh huh. Don’t you think you’re rushing things a bit? You’re not pregnant, are you?”
Cassie makes a blowing sound.
Sam mouths: Shut up.
“No, for the last time, I’m not going through menopause, Lori. Why do you always have to exaggerate everything to put me down? Well, yeah, Mom always did love you best but that doesn’t give you a right . . . no, no, don’t even go there. I do too have boyfriends!”
Cassie bares her teeth.
“Well, I do have a boyfriend. We are practically getting married. Oh yes.” Sam nods to convince herself. “Bring him to your engagement party this weekend? Well, no, he can’t. He’s going to Tokyo. He’s a high-powered executive and he jet-sets to places like Tokyo every other week.”
Cassie mock-palms her own face.
“What do you mean I’m lying? I do so not lie. I don’t have to prove anything to you. So what if I come to your party alone? It doesn’t mean I’m a frigid old maid. Puh-leez. OK, OK, OK, I’m coming this weekend. Yes, alone because my rich boyfriend is in Tokyo. Yeah, text me the details and spare me the snark. Goodbye.”
Sam clicks off.
“Oooh, can you believe that witch? She’s been such a putz to me since the day she was born and dropped her dirty diaper on my head. Now all I have to do is find some hunky guy photos to put on my cellphone display by this weekend, and that’ll fend her off for another week. Or two.”
“Sam, you told Lori the guy is your f**king boyfriend. That’s huge.”
“So what if I told her that? We’ll be breaking up by next Monday. That’ll be an angle in line with my life story, seeing the way I seem to be f**king up all my relationships. Hey, where’s my coffee?”
“You didn’t order it.”
“Damn, I knew something was missing in my life.”
Cassie smiles and grasps one of Sam’s hands. “Hey, kiddo. You don’t need a man to complete your life. That’s what you’ve been saying all this time to me, remember?”