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  ‘Was the bastard going out with Gina Morelli the same time he was dating me?’ Bunny asked.

  ‘From the data I’ve collected, he only goes out with one woman at a time. Anyway, that doesn’t matter,’ Elliot said to silence her. ‘The point is,’ and he indicated the first chart, ‘soon after each woman got dumped by Mr Nolan, each met or returned to another man – and sometimes, as in Bunny’s case, she was introduced to that man by Billy himself. In all cases, that very next man was the man that they married.’ Elliot stopped and looked at Kate and the Bitches with a broad smile as if his message was perfectly clear.

  ‘Wow, congratulations, Elliot – it’s quite an achievement,’ Bev said, more serious than necessary.

  ‘Right. Now you qualify as the biggest gossip in all five boroughs,’ Kate said coldly.

  ‘Yeah. What’s the big deal?’ Bunny asked. ‘We all know that Billy Nolan is the biggest player that has ever lived.’

  ‘But you didn’t know this,’ Elliot said, and flipped over a third chart. There was a list of fourteen names with a column listing the time they dated Billy and another column with wedding dates beside each name – except two. ‘It isn’t most of the women Billy Nolan dates. It’s all of the women Billy Nolan dates.’

  The friends examined the list.

  ‘Don’t you get it?’ Elliot asked. ‘Do you know the statistical likelihood of this phenomenon?’ He flipped to his next chart. ‘I’ve worked it out with and without the standard deviation, the probability ranges from one in six million three hundred and forty-seven to one in eighty-two million six hundred and forty-three.’

  Kate wondered about the two out of the fourteen but figured she’d get her chance to debunk all this later.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Bunny admitted. ‘I don’t think even Billy Nolan could date and dump eighty-two million women. It’s just not humanly possible. Are there even that many women in New York?’

  ‘He doesn’t have to date eighty-two million women,’ Barbie told Bunny dismissively. ‘He just has to date Bina. Right, Elliot?’

  ‘Really? Really, Elliot?’ Bina asked, her voice filled with more hope and animation than it had been since the afternoon of the manicure.

  ‘Oh, Jesus H. Christ,’ Kate said, no longer able to control her disgust. She stood up and started to pace around the room. ‘Elliot, you know I don’t approve of this whole scheme. It is just ridiculous.’

  ‘Be quiet, Kate,’ Bev said. ‘I’m trying to understand this.’ She narrowed her eyes and looked at Elliot. ‘You’re saying that anyone who dates Billy gets married right afterwards?’ she asked.

  ‘Everyone?’ Bina asked.

  Kate felt she couldn’t let this go on. Instead of spending the morning in bed with Michael, then reading the Times together and having a nice meal before they parted, she was stuck with this burgeoning bunch of maniacs with a berserk plan. She never thought any of them would buy it. ‘It’s a pile of superstitious crap,’ Kate told Bina and the rest of them.

  ‘This isn’t about superstition,’ Elliot insisted, his voice showing his hurt. ‘These are the facts.’

  Bunny kept staring at the charts, and now tried to sound smart. She used to do it in sixth grade to about the same effect. ‘Are you saying that the odds against Bina ever getting married are about eighty-two million to one unless she dates Billy Nolan?’ she asked Elliot.

  ‘Well,’ Elliot said, pretending to give the ridiculous question some thought, ‘that’s not exactly what I’m saying. I can’t compute the odds of Bina getting married. I don’t have enough data. But the odds are eighty-two million to one in her favor if she does date Billy.’

  Kate saw Bina pale and felt her own face grow warm with anger and agitation. This was all madness. She’d just stop it, send them all back to Brooklyn and never talk to Elliot again – or at least not for a week. She was about to speak when Barbie stood up and brushed off her skirt.

  ‘Then it’s settled,’ Barbie said. ‘Bina has to go out with Dumping Billy. That’s all there is to it. After all, what has she got to lose?’

  Bina stood up too, but she hesitated before she spoke. ‘Elliot, I appreciate all the time you must have put into this, but I’m not interested in dating anyone except Jack.’ Kate watched as tears rose in her eyes. ‘I just want Jack back.’

  ‘This is a way to get Jack, Bina,’ Elliot said. ‘You date Billy, then get dumped, then see Jack and … voilà!’

  Kate turned to Bina. ‘This is all ridiculous. I didn’t know it was quite as insane as it is, but I promised him I’d let him show you …’

  ‘Why is it insane?’ Bev asked.

  ‘Well, it’s a long shot that we could get Billy to go out with Bina in her current state …’ Barbie said and then narrowed her eyes speculatively. ‘But if we did some work on her …’

  ‘Just look at the numbers, sweetheart. The numbers don’t lie,’ Brice said to Bina. He took her hand in his, but was watching Elliot with the look of a proud mother on his face.

  Kate was sure that Bina, monogamous for so long, wouldn’t consider this nonsense.

  ‘They all got married?’ Bina asked Elliot in disbelief.

  ‘Yes. Well, to be totally accurate, one joined a convent and one came out as a lesbian,’ Elliot confessed, ‘but both are hooked up, one to God and one to her girlfriend. So that makes fourteen for fourteen.’

  ‘Isn’t he wonderful?’ Brice asked no one in particular.

  ‘He’s absolutely nuts,’ Kate snapped. ‘Bina, don’t even consider it.’

  ‘We’d have to time it so that Jack was back at the strategic moment – just after the break-up,’ Bev said.

  ‘And to be safe, we have to make sure he drops her,’ Elliot cautioned. ‘I have no indication of what happens to his partner if she dumps him.’

  Bev and Barbie laughed. ‘No one dumps him,’ Barbie said.

  ‘Of course he’s gorgeous,’ Bev said (it sounded like ‘ov cous he’s gowjus’). ‘But that doesn’t explain it. That only explains why he gets women.’

  ‘And probably why he dumps them,’ Elliot said.

  ‘No,’ Bunny told him. ‘To be fair, he is always nice and he seems … well, I don’t know.’ She thought for a minute. ‘Like really disappointed when things don’t work out.’

  Elliot took a deep breath. ‘I don’t really care about his psychology,’ he told them. ‘The key question is why women marry right after he leaves them.’

  Kate wondered too.

  But Bina wasn’t listening. She was staring at the charts before her. Kate knew how desperate she was. Elliot, seeing that he had Bina hooked, asked, ‘Do you want a detailed cross section?’

  Kate could see Bina’s love for Jack and the longing for him written all over her face. ‘I don’t need one, I’ll do it!’ Bina exclaimed.

  ‘Bina!’ Kate was shocked at her friend’s declaration.

  ‘Then it’s all settled,’ Bunny said and stood up. ‘I’ve gotta go back to Arnie.’

  ‘Well, we’re not exactly finished,’ Barbie said in the tone that had driven fear into many pre-teen girls in their junior high days. ‘He doesn’t just go out with anyone. He looks for a certain … style.’ She preened for a moment. ‘Do you think Billy would go out with Bina?’

  ‘Barbie!’ Despite the usual cruelty of the girls to one another, that went too far.

  ‘The boy is certainly hot,’ Brice said to himself, pulling out the Polaroid from the wedding. He put it down on the table.

  ‘Very hot,’ Bev said, also looking at the photo while pretending to fan herself.

  ‘Good point,’ Bunny agreed. ‘Maybe Bina would be out of her league.’

  Before Kate could jump to Bina’s defence, her friend took control. ‘I’m still in the room!’ Bina suddenly exploded. ‘Why are you talking about me like I’m not here?’

  Kate couldn’t help but feel bad for Bina. Here she was, alone and reduced to believing in ridiculous statistics. Kate knew her friend and knew that all she really wan
ted was to be with Jack. ‘We’re sorry, Bina,’ she apologized for the group. She tried to be diplomatic while she sided with the Bitches so this whole idea could be plugged up.

  ‘We didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, honey,’ Bev said and put her arms around her friend as far as she could manage.

  ‘Look, no one said you couldn’t become Billy’s type,’ Barbie said by way of an apology.

  ‘Right. We only wanted to help, not to hurt,’ Elliot added.

  ‘And to make it up to you …’ Brice began to a mimed drum roll. ‘A makeover!!’

  Once the magic word had been spoken, Kate knew there was no going back.

  18

  Kate sat in her office and tried to put Bina, Jack, Billy and – what for a moment she was thinking of as – ‘the rest of that nonsense’ out of her mind. Bina’s makeover, the problem of getting Billy to date her and the idiocy of the same was not as important as the problem in front of her. Jennifer Whalen, a pretty and neatly dressed nine-year-old, was sitting in front of her doing what she seemed to do best. ‘So my father opens the door to the limousine and Britney Spears steps out. And she came into our building and right up to our apartment. She even had dinner with us. We had meatloaf. And if you don’t believe me, she gave me this bracelet.’ Jennifer pulled the elastic of the bead bracelet she had around her wrist. ‘See? I have proof.’

  Kate withheld a sigh. She knew there was no point in discussing this particular lie or any of the other whoppers that Jennifer had told not only her classmates but also her teachers. The question was why Jennifer needed to lie. Did she crave attention? She was a middle child, with an older sister at Andrew Country Day and a year-old brother at home. Had the baby usurped her position in the family constellation?

  Or was it feelings of inferiority? Kate knew that both Jennifer and her sister were receiving financial aid because their family, though well-off by Kate’s childhood standards, were only middle-class and could not afford full tuition for both girls. Maybe Jennifer felt inferior to her friends simply because their homes were bigger, their school vacations were often spent in Aspen, the Hamptons, or even Europe, and Jennifer couldn’t compete.

  The worst-case scenario, of course, was that Jennifer was showing early signs of bipolar disorder. However, as Kate looked at her, she felt that she was studying a healthy, outgoing little girl who doubtless knew the difference between fantasy and reality.

  Kate didn’t want Jennifer’s lies to continue, nor to argue with her. She had listened quietly without showing much reaction. She could, of course, recommend a therapist for Jennifer, but Kate felt that she and Jennifer had a good rapport. This business was always tricky, but Kate thought of a quote from A.S. Neal: ‘Sometimes you simply have to trust your instinct with children. Analysis with them is an art, not a science’, and decided to take a chance.

  ‘Want to know a secret?’ she asked. Jennifer nodded her head. ‘I’m going to get married. And I’m going to have a really big wedding. It’s going to be in a castle and Justin Timberlake is coming.’ Jennifer’s eyes opened wide. ‘He’s going to bring the Backstreet Boys but my sister is really angry because she invited the boys from ‘Nsync and you can just imagine what would happen if they came, too.’ Jennifer’s eyes were popping and she nodded her head.

  ‘I bet they hate each other,’ she said.

  ‘They do. And they all hate my husband-to-be. Do you know who I’m marrying?’

  Jennifer shook her head back and forth, her mouth slightly open.

  ‘Mr McKay,’ Kate said.

  Jennifer’s face froze. Then Kate watched as doubt, then disbelief, then relief and even – perhaps – understanding bloomed on it like one of those flowers opening in time-lapse photography. ‘No way!’ Jennifer said.

  ‘Way,’ Kate insisted and nodded. ‘Know what else? We’re both going to ride white horses down the aisle of the church.’

  ‘No way!’ Jennifer repeated more vehemently. Then she started to giggle. ‘Mr McKay on a horse!’

  Kate laughed too. Then she paused. ‘I really like you, Jennifer. You know why?’ Jennifer shook her head. ‘Because you are smart, and cute, and funny. And you have a great imagination. You have a gift for fiction.’

  Jennifer’s brows went down. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means that I think you could write really good stories. Or maybe books. Or maybe movies.’

  ‘I could write down a movie?’

  ‘Sure.’ Kate nodded. ‘Movies all start from someone writing down a story.’ She didn’t want to set off another round of lying. ‘Not every story is good enough to be a movie, but once you write one down you never know what could happen.’ She paused, letting the compliments and the idea settle in. ‘Of course, it isn’t easy. Do you think you would like to have some special time with Mrs Reese?’ Joyce Reese was the creative writing teacher for the sixth grade, and a friend of Kate’s.

  ‘I’m only in fourth,’ Jennifer said, but that, of course, added to her enthusiasm.

  ‘That’s true,’ Kate agreed, ‘but I would say that you could probably write sixth-grade stories. Maybe even eighth-grade stories. If one was in the school magazine everyone would read it.’

  Jennifer stared at her. The two of them sat like that for a few moments in silence. Kate could virtually see the child’s mind working behind her gray eyes. ‘Britney Spears didn’t come to my house,’ Jennifer said.

  ‘But it was a good story,’ Kate told her, keeping her tone neutral. ‘If you tell it like a story or write it down like one, people would want to hear the next part. They’ll think you’re special because you can make up really good stories.’

  ‘But then they get mad,’ Jennifer said. ‘They get mad when it isn’t true.’

  ‘Did you feel angry at me when I told you about my wedding?’

  Jennifer sat for a moment, looking down at her nails. ‘First I liked it. I thought it was a secret. But then when I knew you were…lying…I got a little mad,’ she admitted.

  Kate nodded. ‘That happens when you fool people. They get mad.’

  Out in the hall, the bell rang. In a moment, they could hear the sound of doors being thrown open and the noise of classes getting out.

  ‘Why don’t you come in and visit with me next week? And in the meantime I’ll talk to Mrs Reese.’

  Jennifer nodded her head.

  ‘But now, I’m sorry, you’ll have to go or you’ll be late for the bus.’

  Reluctantly Jennifer stood up. ‘You told a lie,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t tell anyone,’ Kate whispered. ‘And especially don’t tell Mr McKay.’

  Jennifer laughed. ‘Nobody would want to marry him,’ she said and marched out of Kate’s office.

  Kate had just gotten home, thrown her purse onto the sofa and kicked off her shoes. She hadn’t even had a chance to sit down before there was a knock at the door. God, she wasn’t in the mood for a visitor! She turned around and opened it. Max stood there, still dressed in his suit and tie, clearly just back from work, though he was not usually home until after dark. He was leaning against her doorway, one arm raised, his head resting on his inner elbow. He must have been away during the last weekend because he had a bit of a tan. It made his blue eyes bluer. ‘Hi,’ she said.

  ‘Hi,’ he returned. ‘Is Bina here?’ he asked, his voice lowered.

  Kate felt a stab of irritation. Since Jack had flown the coop, she felt like Bina Central. ‘No,’ she answered, not as hospitable as she might be. ‘You can call her at home,’ she added shortly and began to close the door.

  ‘No, that’s a good thing,’ Max told her in a normal tone. ‘See, I want to show you something and, well, I don’t know if she should see it or not.’ Kate rolled her eyes, but she let Max take her hand to lead her up the stairs.

  His apartment door was open. Inside was the usual requisite bachelor setup: the black leather couch, workout equipment, an expensive stereo and the pile of newspapers that seemed a requirement for all male apartments. Max
also, of course, had the latest titanium laptop, and it was that to which he brought her over.

  ‘I want you to look at this and tell me what to do,’ he said. He loosened his tie before he punched in a few keystrokes. For one crazy moment, Kate thought he might be asking her opinion about some stock melt-down, but Kate had never had a share of anything in her life except a dorm room. But instead of charts, graphs, or analysis, Kate watched as the screen filled with a photo. It was Jack, bare-chested, standing on a balcony with a view of a beautiful harbor behind him and an equally beautiful woman next to him.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Kate said. ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘He e-mailed it to me today,’ Max said. ‘Do you think I should show it to Bina?’

  ‘Do you think I should set fire to your hair gel?’ Kate asked. The thought of Bina seeing this grinning ass literally made Kate sick to her stomach. When she’d found out Steven had been cheating on her she’d been so distraught that she couldn’t get out of bed for three days. Bina would just collapse.

  Unconsciously Max smoothed down his wavy hair. ‘I didn’t think so either,’ he said. ‘But, you know, I feel responsible for this. I introduced them and all…’ Kate felt her irritation melt away, replaced with growing respect for Max Cepek. She had always thought of him as a stereotype; a kind of Wall Street/jock/yuppie clone. When he’d had girlfriends for any length of time he didn’t seem particularly committed or passionate. In fact, if pushed to describe him, Kate would have used adjectives like ‘shallow’ and ‘self-absorbed’.