Uptown Girl Read online

  ‘Hello, Elliot,’ she said. ‘Do you know that it is ten minutes to seven on a Saturday morning?’

  ‘Am I interrupting something?’ Elliot asked archly. ‘I can call right back. Or does he take longer than a few minutes?’

  ‘Elliot! You are interrupting my sleep,’ Kate said. ‘What’s the emergency?’

  ‘Look, Kate, I don’t want you to be mad.’

  ‘Mad? What have you done?’

  ‘Look, I know how you are. And I didn’t mean for it to be more than Bina, but she told Barbie, and you know how she is …’

  Yes, Kate reflected, she did know how Barbie was but she didn’t need to hear about it, and certainly not from Elliot before seven a.m. on a weekend. Anyway, Bina had gone back to Brooklyn, the wedding was over, and her old friends no longer needed to be a source of entertainment to her newer ones.

  ‘I had to do it. The mathematics and the potential for happiness here were just too big to be ignored.’

  ‘Elliot, what are you going on about?’ She wondered where Michael was.

  ‘About the brunch. I had already told Bina about the findings and she wanted to hear more, and Brice suggested a brunch but then I was going to cancel after I spoke to you. Now, though, she’s invited Bev and Barbie. And Bunny is back from her honeymoon, so Bev told her and now …’

  ‘Oh, God,’ Kate interrupted. ‘Don’t tell me you bothered Bina with this geeky idea of yours. Stop it, Elliot! And what does it have to do with the others? Or a brunch?’ Kate had hoped for a Bina-free weekend, a time to relax with Michael and refuel. She tried to focus on what Elliot was saying but she wanted to be unfocused, soft and fuzzy and feminine and infantile. ‘Elliot, don’t get Bina crazy with your nonsense.’

  ‘You don’t understand the clarity and magnitude of the numbers, Kate,’ Elliot told her. ‘Since Bina talked to the girls, they found two other cases where women married immediately after Billy broke up with them.’

  ‘So what?’ Kate heard the door to her apartment squeak open. Maybe, if she got up right now, she could negotiate a little more time in bed. She liked Michael sweaty, but he was too fastidious to comply with her wishes. Still, there was a chance …

  ‘I have to go,’ she told Elliot.

  ‘I understand,’ Elliot said meaningfully. ‘Have fun. Just close your eyes and think of England. And be here tomorrow at eleven thirty.’

  ‘I hate you,’ Kate said.

  ‘But doesn’t it feel good, in a strange and exciting way?’ Elliot asked. ‘Eleven thirty tomorrow. Be there or be … talked about.’

  On Sunday morning, Kate knocked on Elliot’s door at a quarter to eleven. She wanted to arrive before the Bitches, lay some ground rules, vent a little anger and limit the way Elliot and Brice would toy with them.

  ‘Kate!’ Brice shouted in false surprise when he opened the door. ‘You’re early! Whatever could be the reason?’

  ‘I thought perhaps I could help you get ready by putting some ground glass in the chicken salad,’ she said with an insecure smile.

  ‘My, my. Little Miss Hospitality,’ Brice said.

  She stepped past him and walked into the apartment. She had a bone – well, more like a whole skeleton – to pick with Elliot.

  Her quarry was standing at the sofa, barely visible behind an armload of charts and graphs. When he saw her he dropped everything onto the coffee table. Brice, never dumb, disappeared into the kitchen, from which delicious smells were emanating. ‘What’s all this?’ Kate asked Elliot, who had begun to sort out the charts, placing them on an easel.

  ‘This is the evidence,’ Elliot replied. ‘I thought putting the facts right in front of Bina’s eyes would convince her.’

  ‘Elliot, I absolutely forbid this. You are not allowed to interfere in people’s lives in this way.’

  Elliot gave an exaggerated blink, lowered his chin and looked over his glasses at her. ‘This from a woman who is attempting to reshape two dozen kids at Andrew Country Day.’

  Kate bristled. She thought of Brian, who seemed to have begun mourning his mother, Elizabeth – whose parents made promises they never kept – and the twins she was working with who didn’t seem to relate to anyone but each other. ‘Elliot, my work is very different. I’m professionally trained to assess and assist children, some of them in crisis, while they are developing their personalities. I am trying to prevent future problems. You’re dealing with adults, you have no training and you’re going to create future problems.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, Dr Jameson,’ Elliot said, ‘but you forget that I am a professional in my field and this data is astonishing.’ He touched the charts for emphasis. ‘And I’m dealing with adults who have free will. Bina doesn’t have to listen to me. She is not a captive audience.’

  Kate did not like the implication; her kids were not captive, but maybe she was being a little unfair to Elliot. Maybe he was only trying to be helpful, even if it would end in tears.

  ‘Just take a look, Kate,’ Elliot coaxed.

  Kate picked up the first chart. She had no idea if what she saw there was true or not, but, if it was accurate, it was fascinating. She looked at the other carefully constructed models. She sighed. Kate was impressed by the work Elliot had put in, but was not going to budge from her veto. Elliot was smart. He knew Bina and the others would be gaping and amazed by the brightly colored charts and graphs, just the way the tourists in Times Square were stunned by the lights and ads. But the tourists didn’t change their lives based on a huge Pepsi ad, did they?

  ‘Kate, it really can’t hurt. At the very least, it’s a distraction for Bina and that’s what she needs right now. She can’t keep herself in her father’s office and wait for something to change.’

  Kate sighed. She thought of the three or four long messages from Bina that were on her answering machine each night when she got home.

  ‘Okay,’ Kate said, ‘but I want you to play this down, not up. It may be Fun With Math for you, but it’s Bina’s life. Anyway, even if all of this crazy nonsense were true, a troublemaker like Billy Nolan would never be interested in dating someone as ordinary as Bina Horowitz. So don’t get her hopes up.’

  Elliot vehemently nodded his agreement. ‘No hopes up,’ he said.

  Brice came back out of the kitchen carrying two bottles of white wine. He put one down and popped the cork on the other. ‘Bottoms up,’ he said, pouring a glass and handing it to Kate. ‘How does the buffet look? Kate, those Brooklyn friends of yours are fabulous! Well, not Versace fabulous, but more like Absolutely Fabulous. But younger and with Brooklyn accents.’

  ‘Brice, my friends are not toys,’ Kate told him.

  ‘Of course not. Even if one is named for a doll and another a stuffed animal.’

  Kate had to smile. Still, she didn’t want her two worlds to collide. Elliot and Brice were getting too involved with all this. Just then the buzzer rang. ‘I’ll get it,’ Brice sang as he strode over to the door and opened it. ‘Hello, ladies!’ he greeted the group.

  And there they were, in all their splendor, the Bitches of Bushwick. Barbie came first, wearing a bright-pink halter-top with a leather jacket over it. She was followed by a nervous but hopeful-looking Bina. Next came Bev and her belly, and then in walked Bunny, who had just come back from her honeymoon and had the tan to prove it.

  ‘You’re Bunny, the bride,’ Brice said. ‘I’m Brice and that stud muffin over there is Elliot.’ The girls giggled, except for Bunny, who actually blushed. Without the ‘breaking in’ that had happened at table nine, Kate could see that the adventure wasn’t comfortable for her. She had grown up in a very strict Italian Catholic home where, Kate was sure, homosexuality was synonymous with sin, perversion, and the molestation of little boys. Brice, sensing her hesitancy but never one for subtleties, threw his arm around Bunny’s shoulders. ‘We didn’t have a chance to talk at your wedding. But it was beautiful. Absolutely beautiful!’

  He couldn’t have said anything better. ‘Wait until you see the video!
’ Bunny exclaimed, suddenly ready to bond.

  Kate winced. The ordeal of watching that video might be worse than the trauma of going to the event itself but Brice was enthusiasm itself. ‘Oh, you have to show us. And what a dress!’

  ‘Size six,’ Bunny said proudly. ‘Priscilla of Boston.’

  ‘I knew it!’

  ‘She got lucky,’ Barbie told him. ‘It was a special order but the bride was pregnant and didn’t tell. By the time the dress arrived, well, you can imagine.’

  ‘I got it at cost,’ Bunny told Brice.

  The attention seemed to ease her. Soon they were all standing around the buffet, filling their plates and – with the exception of Bev – drinking wine. Kate covertly looked around at them. Bev’s belly looked as if it had expanded since the wedding. Kate tried to avoid staring at it with horror, although she couldn’t escape the twinge of jealousy as she felt her own flat but empty stomach.

  Elliot, too, was caught by Bev’s very apparent expansion. ‘Wow,’ he said to her. ‘Are you going to go into labor right here, or are you carrying twins?’

  ‘I know, I’m huge and I’ve got months to go.’ Bev looked down at her belly and shrugged.

  ‘Remember after graduation you dieted all summer and were a size four by September?’ Bunny asked. She was the group’s weight historian, and could tell any one of them what they had weighed at any event or moment since they met.

  ‘I’m trying to cut back on eating so much,’ Bev explained to Elliot. ‘I think I’ve gained about forty pounds.’ Despite her confession, Kate watched as Bev piled her plate with nova, cream cheese, a poppy and a sesame bagel, finally adding some herring in cream sauce with a guilty final flourish. ‘Unless I give birth to a thirty-five-pound baby, I’m gonna be in big trouble,’ she laughed.

  ‘Do you know if it’s a girl or a boy yet?’ Elliot asked her.

  ‘Nah,’ Bev said, waddling to the sofa from the buffet, Bina and Bunny right behind her. ‘Johnnie says he wants to be surprised.’

  ‘He’s got a real surprise coming when he sees your ass after the baby is born,’ Barbie snickered.

  Kate never stopped being astonished by the way the women merely passed over cruel taunts without a ruffled hair. She watched as they sat down and checked out the apartment around them as if they’d just stepped into a den of unimaginable iniquity. It was a big adventure for the four girls from Bushwick to finally see the inside of a homosexual couple’s apartment – even Bina hadn’t really had a chance to look around the last time she was there. Kate could only imagine what they thought they were going to find. And she wasn’t going to point out that Bina’s Uncle Kenny and Barbie’s youngest brother were most certainly gay but hadn’t come out. Anyway, it must have been reassuring to see that there was nothing terrifying or exotic about Elliot’s home – thanks to Brice, it was all done in stylish taste (though the Beanie Babies were a little camp). The situation made Kate smile. She knew how frightening good taste could be to someone from Bushwick.

  They all sat down on various perches like colorful birds with big mouths. Toucans, maybe, Kate thought. Despite their provincialism (and some morbid curiosity) it was really moving to see that all the girls had shown up for Bina. Kate loved them for that.

  Barbie was more brazen – of course. She looked around as if she was assessing everything – and she probably was. ‘How much does a place like this cost in Manhattan?’ Barbie needed to know.

  ‘It’s a steal,’ Brice willingly obliged. ‘It’s stabilized. We’re still only paying eighteen a month.’

  ‘Eighteen dollars a month for rent?’ Bina asked in utter amazement. ‘My grandmother’s apartment on Ocean Parkway is rent-controlled but she pays sixty-six bucks a month.’

  The better-informed Bunny was not as confused. ‘Jeez,’ she spat in disgust, ‘for eighteen hundred dollars a month, you’d get three bedrooms and a balcony in Brooklyn.’

  But why would you want them? Kate thought, then felt wildly guilty.

  ‘Honey,’ Brice replied, ‘call me crazy but I’d rather have a closet in Manhattan than a palazzo in Prospect Park.’

  ‘I thought you guys were all out of the closet,’ Barbie said, obviously pleased with her heavyhanded witticism.

  ‘Sweetie, some of us were never in it,’ Brice said. There was silence for a moment.

  Kate felt obliged to break it. ‘Well, isn’t this nice?’ she chirped, turning to Elliot, as if to say ‘I told you so’. ‘Finally, all of my girlfriends together in one room.’

  Bina let out a rather nervous little giggle in response to Kate’s observation, but Bev just agreed. ‘You have a lot of girlfriends, Kate. But then you’re a Scorpio. Scorpio women always have lots of girlfriends.’

  ‘And lots of boyfriends,’ Elliot added sotto voce.

  ‘So you have some plan to kill Jack, the scumbag?’ Barbie asked.

  ‘Not exactly!’ Elliot told her.

  ‘Well, why don’t we get started?’ Brice suggested as he began collecting dirty dishes. ‘Bina, I can’t wait for you to hear all about Elliot’s plan.’

  ‘Okay,’ Bev began, ‘so, Elliot, what’s this huge discovery of yours?’

  Elliot put his fork down, stood up and self-consciously stepped up to the easel. He looked first to Bina and then to Kate. He laid one hand on the first chart, turned it over so they could all see it and said, ‘Bina, I made an incredible mathematical discovery while we were at Bunny’s wedding.’

  ‘And I thought we’d paid for all the extras,’ Bunny said.

  ‘The almonds in the net bag were lovely,’ Brice assured her. ‘But this is something no one could pay for.’

  ‘Like what?’ asked Bev.

  ‘Genius,’ Brice told them all proudly.

  ‘Probability,’ Elliot said. ‘Some events can be predicted because of constancy and reliability of past data.’

  ‘Huh!’ Bina said. Kate suppressed a giggle. Poor Elliot.

  ‘This helps us take down Jack the scumbag?’ Barbie asked.

  ‘Hey, what good would that do anyone?’ Elliot asked. ‘What if I told you that instead of revenge I’ve found a sure-fire way to get Jack to propose to Bina?’ he asked the room. ‘And marry her.’

  There was a buzz of noise, part verbal, part flatware. Bina dropped her coffee spoon, Bev choked on her last mouthful of bagel, Barbie turned to Bunny and they began to murmur appreciatively.

  Only Kate let out a snort of derision. ‘Elliot!’ she warned. Then she turned to Bina. ‘Remember, this is just a theory, a suggestion, Bina. It may not be correct. You don’t have to pay any attention to it. Personally, I think it is a lot of hocus-pocus.’

  Elliot looked down at her from his full height. ‘Kate,’ he said. ‘I think we all know your views on magic. So it’s a good thing this has nothing to do with it,’ he added. ‘This is mathematical theory put into practice.’

  ‘What’s wrong with you, Katie?’ Bev asked. ‘Such a spoilsport. I think it sounds interesting.’

  ‘What are you actually talking about?’ Barbie asked.

  Elliot nodded. ‘It is interesting, more than interesting.’ He pointed to the chart and said, ‘Bina, these statistics are … well, they are just incredible. But they are absolutely accurate. I’ve done a bit of research and worked out the probability and you’ll see that even with a differential for the …’

  ‘Is he a college teacher or something?’ Bina whispered.

  ‘He’s an obsessive neurotic gone compulsive,’ Kate snorted.

  ‘I know. Isn’t he wonderful?’ said Brice, placing his hand emphatically on his heart.

  Elliot was in his teaching mode and ignored them both. ‘Remember how Bev and Barbie both said that they had once dated that Billy guy who had just dumped Bunny?’ He turned to her. ‘No offense.’

  ‘None taken,’ Bunny said. ‘When I dated him I was a size four – and weighed one hundred and sixteen pounds. My personal best.’

  ‘Well, we both got dumped by him, too,’ Bev added. />
  ‘Which was just fine with me,’ Barbie assured everyone. ‘The guy’s a jerk.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Elliot said, nodding to Barbie, ‘and right after that you met Bobbie and got married.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t right after. It was at least three weeks.’ Barbie paused, then added, ‘And Bev got married to Johnnie, right after she got dumped.’

  ‘My Johnnie and I had our moons in Venus. It was fated,’ Bev observed. No one paid any attention to her.

  ‘So at the wedding, Elliot … well, began to snoop,’ Brice explained.

  ‘I collected data,’ Elliot corrected Brice with dignity.

  ‘Did I tell you about Gina Morelli and Nancy Limbacher, Elliot?’ Bev asked, already eager to be part of the plan. ‘Billy dated and dumped them, too.’

  ‘I found that out on my own. Both of them married right after Billy Nolan. They were at Bunny’s wedding.’

  ‘Sure. I worked with Gina, and Nancy is best friends with my cousin Marie,’ Bunny said.

  ‘Marie Genetti?’ Elliot asked. ‘Billy dated her, too.’

  ‘He dated Marie? You’re kidding. She never told me!’ Bunny exclaimed.

  ‘So now we know that Billy Nolan has dated and dumped every woman from here to Albany. Who cares?’ Kate spat out angrily. She thought of him charming her on the terrace. And to think that she’d been attracted to an idiot like him. ‘Who cares?’ she repeated.

  ‘Bina should, and as her friend, so should you,’ Elliot told her. ‘I did some digging, and I made some calls. Everyone this guy drops gets married.’

  ‘How did you find that out?’ Barbie asked. Kate smiled. As the professional gossip of the group, she must be feeling a bit defensive.

  ‘He pretended he was doing an article for Jane magazine,’ Brice told her proudly.

  ‘You’re a regular Columbo,’ Bev said admiringly. ‘What sign are you again?’

  Elliot laughed, didn’t bother to answer but acknowledged Bev’s compliment with a slight bow. Then he turned back to his first chart. ‘Look at this,’ he said, pointing to it. ‘All five of these women dated William Nolan.’ On the chart were the names of each woman and the date, time, and place of their first encounter with Billy Nolan. ‘Now here,’ Elliot said, flying to the next chart, ‘is a timeline that follows the period of each relationship. Please note that where Billy drops out there is a segment of between three point two weeks and four point seven months before each woman marries.’ The room was silent. Even Kate was momentarily impressed.