All You Could Ask For A Novel

All You Could Ask For A Novel - By Mike Greenberg

PART I



BROOKE

WHOSE ASS IS THIS?

It certainly isn’t mine.

That’s what I was thinking as I looked. I mean really looked.

I have a great ass. I’ve always had a great ass. I’ve known that since my freshman year at Colgate, when I pledged Tri-Delt and my first night I drank two plastic cupfuls of cherry punch with grain alcohol and allowed a cute Sigma Chi to kiss me while we danced. His name was Paul Didier and he had close-cropped auburn hair and blue eyes, and a general goofiness about him that didn’t seem quite as annoying drunk as it did sober the next day when he showed up at my dorm with a dozen roses. That was the end of him. Cute and goofy is fine for dancing and slightly sloppy kisses but no more, and certainly not for roses.

When he saw the lack of excitement on my face for the flowers, I actually felt sorry for him. He looked like a puppy who’d peed in the house and wanted—really wanted—to go back in time and undo it. But, you know, dogs can’t clean up pee, just like goofy boys can’t pretend not to have bought you roses after one night of drunken smooching.

“You know, I’m a freshman too,” he stumbled, looking more like the puppy every second, “and I don’t know anyone here. I’m from the Midwest, and you seemed like the coolest girl ever.”

“Thank you,” I said, in the same tone you might use to chasten the puppy. “It just seems a little soon.”

“I know,” he said, and started for the door, still holding the roses as he stepped outside. Then he turned back to me, squinting in the bright sunshine of a clear September morning. “You’ve got a great ass, Brooke. I really wanted to tell you that. I’m glad I did.”

That appealed to me, as corny as it was. I waited an appropriate amount of time before I chased him into the courtyard and ripped the flowers away from behind him.

“Where do you think you’re going with those?” I asked.

The goofy grin reappeared, and he moved toward me tentatively. “Can I call you later?” he asked.

“Yes, you may,” I said, and spun on my heel and marched away, knowing full well he was staring. I didn’t turn to see him though, no way. My mother raised me better than that.

Back in my room, with the flowers tossed thoughtlessly on the bed, I lifted my Benetton sweater and stared behind me into the full-length mirror my druggy roommate had glued to the back of our door.

He was right. I had a great ass.

That was twenty years ago, and I’m not sure how closely I’ve checked out my ass since. I think through the rest of college I always thought of that cute puppy dog of a boy (whom I let kiss me two more times before I sent him on his way) and just knew my ass looked great. And then I met Scott, and from the first night we were together he has made me feel beautiful. He still does, too, even after the twins and the C-section, and all the dog poop and cat litter and stomach viruses and coffee breath and eye gunk and accidental farts that threaten to drain the romance from a marriage. He still always manages to wink at me at just the right moments.

I love when he winks at me. When he winks, I’m his girlfriend again, the supercute debutante he fell so hard for that after our first date he, too, bought me a gift. Not a dozen roses but even cheesier: a calendar with photos of exotic locations on it, on which he had used a pale blue marker to write suggested plans for us on randomly selected dates.

“Well, I guess this boy is finished,” my friend Charlotte said when I showed her the calendar.

“I don’t know,” I said, and I guess I smiled more than I realized, because Charlotte smiled back and just like that, we both knew I was going to marry this one. And I did. And it was the best decision I ever made. And now he is turning forty years old and I’ve made another decision, only this one may be the worst of my life.

I got the idea from my girlfriend Ingrid, who is Swedish and beautiful and used to model. We were having coffee after tennis about a month ago when she slapped herself on the forehead.

“Oh shits!” she said, in the Swedish accent that takes her from simply beautiful to out-of-control, even-I-can’t-stand-it-and-I’m-a-woman gorgeous. (Hers is the only house at which every dad in Greenwich insists on picking up his children after playdates. But she’s also very sweet and real, and less judgmental than any of the city-girls-turned-wealthy-housewives who mostly populate this town.)

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“I told Stefan I would leave a check for him in the mailbox this morning,” she said. “I am completely forgot!” She started rustling through her bag. “I’m sorry, Brooke, I have to go right now.”

“I’ll go with you,” I said, and I did, in part because I had no choice—she had driven me and needed to take me home—and also because Stefan is my contractor, too, and I notice he spends a lot more time at Ingrid’s house than he does at mine. I have generally found that the best place to find a man who works with his hands is at the house of the prettiest blonde in the neighborhood.

So we raced back to Ingrid’s, and she was adorably frazzled as she rushed to her sunny office over the garage and ransacked two drawers in search of her checkbook. That’s one of the reasons I like Ingrid: that builder would have waited patiently in her driveway until a week from Thursday if it meant he’d get one more smile from her in that perfect little tennis dress, but she was rushing about because she’s the only one who doesn’t realize that.

“I’m be right back,” she said, and rushed past me out of the office and out the front door. I turned to follow, but something caught my eye before I did, a blur that raced past on the screen of Ingrid’s desktop. At first I wasn’t even sure what it was. Then I took a step closer and saw my dear friend fully naked. Just a flash, and then she was gone. And then she was back, and then gone again. It was a series of photos—nudes, tasteful and beautiful—running as a slideshow on the desktop. It was breathtaking, really, and only she could pull it off. No other woman I know could have a series of naked pictures of herself as her screen saver without coming off as pathetic, or at least narcissistic and sad. But with Ingrid, it just seemed beautiful, perhaps because she looked so beautiful. And, sitting there, I made the decision I am seriously questioning right now. For my beloved, romantic, successful husband’s fortieth birthday, I am giving him what every man wants. Naked pictures of his wife.

SAMANTHA

WHAT THE HELL IS this naked woman doing there?

That was the first thought that went through my mind. But the strange part is how long it took any emotion to hit me. At first I was just puzzled, innocently so, as though finding nude photos in my husband’s e-mail was no different from finding a pair of socks in the refrigerator: What on earth could THOSE be doing there? It was several minutes before the significance struck me. This wasn’t like socks in the fridge. This was like lipstick on a collar, or an unrecognizable bra beneath the comforter. This was serious trouble.

Maybe it didn’t dawn on me quite so fast because I hadn’t had my coffee yet. Or because I was so surprised that I’d found my way into his mailbox at all. Or maybe it was simply because I was still very much in the warmth and glow that new brides feel; I had only been married for two days.

When the urgency of the matter began to sink in, it settled slowly, the way you feel a fever coming on: first as just a dizzy spell, then gradually spreading as a tiny tingle beginning in my stomach, and then my legs, and ultimately all the way to my fingers and toes. And then I was freezing, which really sucked because I didn’t have anything at all warm to put on.

I didn’t think I’d need it in Kauai.

I went to the gorgeous master bath in our suite, this luxurious paradise we had checked into just the night before. The carpet was soft beneath my toes. It had felt so good when I kicked off my shoes after dinner, after the champagne, after the swans that swam past our perfect, candlelit table, and after the perfect little toast Robert had made: It’s finally just us.

Ours was the textbook disaster wedding, for two reasons. One was my father’s money. The other was the election. Taken in order: (1) My dad didn’t approve of Robert because he’s fourteen years older than me, and (2) Robert’s career required that, at the time of our whirlwind courtship and wedding, we spend every waking moment talking to people we have never met and feigning interest in every word they said. That seemed all right to me, even if it wasn’t so exciting, because at least it suggested Robert believed in something. My father didn’t believe in anything aside from money, and thus he wasn’t going to allow me to marry an older man, whom I’d met on an elevator three months before, without a prenuptial agreement. And the thing about that was Robert had no problem with it at all; he was understanding and mature. “If I were your father I would feel exactly the same way,” he told me.

That’s why I married him. Because he says things that grown men say.

It was me that got angry with my father, who has never approved of my lifestyle, my love of sports, of being outside, camping, hiking. He’s never understood why I don’t care about the only thing that matters to him in the world, which is his money.

“One time, when I was eleven years old,” he told me, “I lost my baseball glove. I left it in the park and when I went back to look for it, it was gone. I was afraid to go home, I was afraid to tell my father I lost my glove. Because I had an appreciation for the value of the glove, but my actions seemed to demonstrate that I did not, and I knew how disappointed my father would be in me.”

I couldn’t resist. “It’s hard going through life with your father disappointed in you, isn’t it?” I said.

“Don’t be fresh.”

“So what happened?” I asked.

“What happened with what?”

“With the baseball glove,” I said. “What happened when you eventually told your father?”

My dad waved his hand in the dismissive way that only he can. “Nothing, really.”

“Nothing happened?” I asked.

“Not really, no.”

I shook my head. “Then what is the point of the story?”

“Every story does not have to have a point, young lady,” my father said. “I only want for you to be happy. But as your father it’s my job to keep you from making the biggest mistake of your life.”

Just what every girl dreams of hearing on her wedding day.

The thing is, it wasn’t a mistake. Robert is different from any boy I’ve ever known, beginning with the fact that he isn’t a boy. He’s a man. He’s the district attorney of Los Angeles County, California. He puts bad guys in jail; how could you have more of a man’s job than that?

We met in Sacramento, when I was in town for a friend’s wedding. I was stepping toward the elevator in my hotel when I noticed an attractive older man staring at me. He was wearing a blue, pinstriped suit and a navy tie, something a leading man would have worn in a movie in the forties. But there was something soft about his eyes, no matter how hard his clothes were. I let the elevator go and just stood there, without pressing the button for another.

It didn’t take him long. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to stare.”

I waited. I think I smiled.

“Listen,” he said, moving slowly toward me, “I don’t mean to bother you, but I have had a great day. I mean a really great day. And I just can’t fathom going up to my room right now by myself and sitting there and watching television. I know you don’t know me, but I’m a nice person and you look like a nice person too. I would love to buy you a drink and just sit and talk. We can talk about anything you want, anything in the world you’re interested in. You have my word of honor as a gentleman, which I am, and a Boy Scout, which I never was but that’s only because I couldn’t rub two sticks together and make a fire, that I won’t try anything. We can go anywhere you want and talk about anything you want.”

He paused a moment to catch his breath, then finished: “I suppose this is a very long way of saying: Hello, my name is Robert, can I buy you a drink?”

Three months later I had left my job, given up my apartment in New York, moved into his house in the Valley, and we were engaged. And we were preparing for an election.

The reason he had had a really great day that night by the elevator was that the state leaders of his party wanted him to run for lieutenant governor. (I have to admit, I didn’t even know that was something you ran for, I just thought the governor chose a running mate, like a vice president. You learn something new every day.) The next two months were a blur, an endless whirl of cocktail parties and handshakes and conversations behind closed doors. When it was over and we’d won, neither of us had the energy to plan a wedding.

“Let’s just do it this weekend,” Robert said, in a giant, empty hotel ballroom, hours after the cheering and the music had faded and the only sound was the industrial brooms sweeping away the confetti. “We’ll do it quietly, at the house. We’ll throw a party in a few weeks if you want but let’s just do it now. I want so badly to be married to you.”

He has an amazing ability to be sensible and romantic in the same conversation. I’d never met a man who could be either one of those, much less both. How could I not marry him?

So I did.

My father insisted on flying out, so he did.

And his girlfriend insisted on serving lunch, so a caterer did.

And Robert’s office sent flowers and the governor sent champagne and two local television stations sent reporters and cameras. I guess it was not the way most girls envision their wedding day, but to tell the truth I never really envisioned mine at all. In fact, this was probably the best way for me to get married. I think if there were three hundred people in a church and I was wearing a colossal white dress with a veil and a train and flowers and attendants and trumpets and all the other things, I would just burst out hysterically laughing. It’s just so not me.

Anyway, that is what Robert meant when he said, “It’s finally just us,” over dinner last night. Then he carried me over the threshold into this sumptuous suite, and he took my clothes off slowly in the pitch blackness with the sound of waves breaking on the beach just outside, and we made love standing up and then again lying down, and when it was done we snuggled in the soft carpeting and I could feel his heart beating against my chest, and as it slowed and his breathing steadied I thought to myself: For the first time in my life, everything seems as though it is the way it is supposed to be.

Then it was eight o’clock this morning and Robert was wide-awake. He wakes up filled with energy; this morning I felt his energy pressing against my thigh, so we made love again, quickly this time, and then he was off to a massage while I lounged for a while before calling room service and asking for coffee and granola and yogurt. I had my own spa appointment to look forward to, and then we were taking our first scuba lesson in the afternoon. I wasn’t even thinking about my little game when I sat down at the desk and opened Robert’s laptop; it was just by force of habit that I typed those three words.

You see, Robert’s laptop has two separate means of entry. The first offers access to only the standard functions: Internet Explorer, Microsoft Outlook, a variety of games. Then there is a portal that requires special clearance, and Robert has told me for as long as I’ve known him that among the documents he signed upon being appointed to his office was one affirming that he will never, under any circumstances, allow unauthorized access to persons without clearance, regardless of his relationship to them. I laughed when he first told me about it, and said, “Reminds me of Al Pacino telling Diane Keaton not to ask about his business.” But Robert didn’t laugh. I left it alone.

So, every morning since I moved to L.A., the first thing I do is take one shot at accessing the portal. I’ve seen him do it, from across a room, and I’m almost certain I’ve counted thirteen keystrokes. It’s hard to be certain because he flies through so quickly, but I’m pretty sure it’s thirteen. So, every morning, before breakfast, I take that one try at cracking the code. (I need to explain that I really, truly was not suspicious, nor did I doubt Robert’s character in any way. This was just a game I began as a lark and then became accustomed to playing every morning. Once I typed in the wrong password, the computer blocked access to the portal for thirty minutes and automatically opened the screen saver, which was a picture of Magic Johnson shooting a hook shot against the Celtics. Robert loves the Lakers. He was born and raised in Los Angeles and doesn’t care much about football or baseball or any sport except basketball and, specifically, the subset of basketball that is the Lakers. So, every morning I pour myself coffee and toss a handful of granola into a bowl, cover it with yogurt and some berries, and then I sit at the desk and say good morning to Magic. It’s fun. And it’s harmless. Or it was, until this morning in Hawaii.)

I long ago decided his password had to be related to the Lakers, so every morning I try some combination of Lakers names that require thirteen letters: KobeMagicWest; MagicJohnson1; Worthy&Jabaar; PhilIsAGenius; LakersForever. None of them worked and I never expected them to. That’s the thing: I really never cared what might be behind that locked door. Until this morning in my bridal suite in Kauai, with the palm trees swaying and the parrots chatting, and the surf and sea and a masseuse awaiting, when in the midst of all my bliss a funny thought entered my mind. I counted the letters in my head; four, then five, then four. It added up to thirteen, and it was just too funny not to try. So, with the innocence only possible in the soul of a newlywed, I took a sip of my coffee and entered the password that unlocked my husband’s secrets.

F*ckLarryBird.

And there I was, behind the locked electronic door, inside a passageway leading to god knows where. It was probably completely illegal, what I had done. Like seriously illegal. My husband might actually have to arrest me, prosecute me, and send me to jail. A little smile crossed my lips at that thought and I knew I had to figure out how best to leave no evidence I had been in the portal.

Then I started to laugh. F*ck Larry Bird? Seriously? I don’t even know where I came up with that. Robert’s stock joke is that he doesn’t hate criminals; he merely seeks justice, so the only people he hates are the Boston Celtics. But I’ve never heard him specifically say, “F*ck Larry Bird.” In fact, he rarely swears at all.

Then I noticed the Microsoft Outlook icon. It was blinking, in an unusual way. If such a thing is possible, the icon was blinking at me suggestively. I had to click on it. I had to. So I did. And that’s where I found the photo that seemed so out of place. And that’s when the thought went through my mind: Who the hell is this naked woman? And what is she doing in my husband’s inbox?

KATHERINE

F*ck HIM.

Those were the first words out of my mouth this morning. Which should come as no surprise since they’re the first words out of my mouth every morning. They have been for nineteen years, since the last time I saw Phillip alive.

I love saying it that way. Phillip is still very much alive, and he’s better-looking than ever and insanely wealthy, too. Not that I’m bitter, much. But when I say “the last time I saw Phillip alive,” what I mean is the last time I saw him before he became dead to me.

Anyway, still in bed, and after I say “f*ck him”—with the emphasis on him—I think of Dr. Gray and Thich Nhat Hanh, and I take three long, deep, cleansing breaths. I count to five on the first inhale, and curl my lips into a half-smile. Then I count to five on the exhale. Then I inhale for six, and exhale for six. Then in for seven, out for seven. And the half-smile on my lips puts my head in a peaceful place. Then I sit up tall and let my feet slide off the bed and rest firmly on the hardwood floor, and I place my palms together firmly in front of my chest. Then I take four more deep breaths, and on each exhalation I repeat The Meditation.

May I be filled with loving-kindness

May I be well

May I be peaceful and at ease

May I be happy

Only then do I open my eyes. My breathing is long and deliberate as I cross my bedroom and sit gently before the mirror in my vanity. The breathing is my connection to the now, to the present. Dr. Gray says I worry too much about my past. Thich Nhat Hanh says I shouldn’t worry so much about my future. The one thing they seem to agree upon is that I need to spend more time in the moment, and it seems to me that since one of them is an Upper East Side shrink and the other is a Buddhist monk, if there is anything about my life that they fully agree upon it is probably worthy of consideration.

I force myself to move slowly through the apartment. Moving slowly does not come naturally for me, neither does the meditation or the breathing or the yoga, but it helps.

In the refrigerator, I find the plastic bag marked TUESDAY. I empty its contents into the blender, add a half-cup of almond milk, and flick the switch. Thirty seconds later I am drinking a shake as I flip on CNBC. It is five minutes past six.

Ten minutes later I am on the treadmill with buds in my ears, squinting as the sun rises above the towering skyscrapers. The stock ticker is scrolling beneath the silent faces on my television. Nothing exciting there, nothing I didn’t know last night. Up and down the channels I ride, never once raising the volume. There isn’t any reason to listen to the television in the morning. All you need to do is read. On the business channels they scroll the S&P futures and results from the trading in the Asian markets, on the news channels they scroll the headlines of the day, on the sports channels they scroll the scores, on the network channels they scroll the weather. I am fully informed by merely reading the bottom three inches of my television. The people talking are a complete waste of time.

I strap my heart-rate monitor in place beneath my sports bra and start to walk. After a five-minute warm-up it is time to get serious. I crank the treadmill to seven miles per hour and the incline to three degrees. It is totally silent in my apartment; the only sounds in any of the fourteen rooms come from my running shoes squeaking on the band. I don’t have the music on yet. I save that for about twenty minutes in, when I need a little encouragement. Today I feel great, and I crank up the treadmill early in my run. Eight miles per hour. Four degrees of incline. That’s a lot. But I can handle it. I click on my iPod and scroll through the list of artists. Who should we listen to today? Dr. Dre? Snoop Dogg? Eminem? It feels like a day to go new-school. I click on Jay-Z.

After a shower I am in the dressing room, where I have laid out my wardrobe the night before. A double stretch wool anatomical jacket and matching skirt by Brioni, covered by a waterproof silk parka trimmed with Mongolian fur—it’s supposed to rain—and Prada ankle boots. Then back to my vanity, where I breathe a deep sigh at the sight of my reflection; not such a pretty picture at this hour of the morning, especially not with the bright sunlight streaming through the windows directly behind me. Still, it’s nothing that can’t be salvaged. A few strokes and pats and brushes and dabs and I am as good as new, or as new as I can be.

Then I bow my head slowly and close my eyes. I know the car is waiting downstairs. I know the day is waiting outside the window. I know the vultures are waiting around every turn, but now is not the time for those. I reconnect with my breathing. Inhale deeply, exhale deeply. In, out. In. Out.

May I be filled with loving-kindness

May I be well

May I be peaceful and at ease

May I be happy

I raise my chin and allow my eyelids to peel gently apart. “F*ck him,” I say, looking myself square in the eyes, “and all the others out there like him.”

In the lobby I find Maurice waiting. He tips his cap as I approach and hands me a grande skim latte with no foam. “Good morning, Katherine,” he says in his usual familiar tone.

“Back at ya,” I say, my customary response.

“Cold out there today,” he says, and hands me my Wall Street Journal. “You’d best bundle that thing up.” He motions disapprovingly at my parka. “We need to get you some warmer clothes.”

I smile. “Maurice, my friend, you do not want to know how much this parka cost. It damn well better keep me warm.”

As though on cue, a gust of wind rises as we exit the revolving door, making it quite hard to revolve, even with both of us pushing. Maurice is wearing an “I told you so” expression as he opens the rear door for me. He is too adorable. I wouldn’t put up with such bullshit if he were not.

The true bustle of a New York morning has not yet begun: the only signs of life on Park Avenue are a few hearty joggers making their way toward Central Park and an old man sweeping away debris in front of the French bakery across the street. This is my favorite time of day in the city. Sometimes I ask Maurice to drive down Fifth Avenue, just so I can look out the car windows and see the peacefulness. There is nothing in the world more serene than an empty thoroughfare.

“Any stops before the office?” Maurice asks as he slides into the driver’s seat.

“Not today, thanks.”

The television in the rear console of the limousine is tuned to CNN and I am staring at the crawl when my bag begins to vibrate. I realize I am receiving a call, which is strange, because no one ever calls before eight in the morning. I dig out my BlackBerry and the moment I see the number I know immediately who it is and why she is calling. I do not answer the phone.

“Anything special going on?” Maurice asks from the front.

“Nothing at all,” I reply.

Only now I am not telling the truth. That phone call was from my mother, with whom I have not spoken in over a month. But I know why she is calling. I glance at the date in the banner across the top of the Wall Street Journal and realize I am right. I hadn’t even thought of it all morning long.

“Hey, Maurice, you’d better be nice to me today,” I say.

“Why would I start that now?” he asks.

“Because today is my birthday,” I tell him. “And it’s a big one. Believe it or not, today I am forty years old.”

BROOKE

SO, SCOTT IS TURNING forty next month.

It’s hard for me to believe.

He is still so much the boy who took me to Van Halen concerts, and did Jell-O shots at McSorley’s, and knew where to get excellent cocaine at a time when that was useful information. He is still very much that boy, only now that boy is a man. A man who held our babies so delicately in his strong hands. A man who rises before five every morning and travels all over the country and often sleeps in airport lounges but never misses a recital or a baseball game and, best of all, never behaves as though he is a hero for any of it. He is a man who can discipline his children without yelling, run a marathon to commemorate a birthday, and still seduce his wife with a well-timed wink.

Don’t get me wrong; he isn’t perfect. I don’t mean to suggest he is. Like all men he is still a boy and boys are always trouble—especially the dreamy ones. The first time he met Mother, she pulled me aside and said: “I’d be worried about this one.” And I asked why, and she said: “The really handsome ones are always dangerous.” And he is. He makes me swoon. He still has those dancing blue eyes and wavy hair; his face looks hardly at all different from the way it did fifteen years ago. Maybe younger, in fact, since having his eyes fixed—sometimes it takes me a moment to recognize him in old photos with those Coke-bottle lenses he used to wear. So he isn’t perfect, but he still makes me laugh and he still makes me quiver after seventeen years together; I think that’s pretty good.

And if he, in fact, does look younger than he did when we were in our twenties, I haven’t done so badly either. I may not look just as I did—mostly I see it in the lines in my face, especially around the mouth—but the way I look at those crevices is they were dug slowly and surely from all the smiles I have smiled in my life, and so I wouldn’t give any of them back for anything. Not a chance.

However, there is now the issue of my ass, which I suddenly find myself staring at in a way I haven’t ever before. It is still shapely, plump perhaps but not in a bad way, more round than large. Sort of like Beyoncé. I have always been curvy, which is fine so long as you are not lumpy, which I have certainly never been, nor am I now, but as I look closely at my ass, it seems to be headed if not for lumpiness then at least toward bumpiness, and I’m not sure I would be any happier to be bumpy than lumpy in these photos I am taking.

My husband travels all over the world nearly every week, and if I don’t want him to look at pornography, or younger, pretty girls, it only seems fair that I hold up my end of the bargain. Ours is that sort of a marriage, has been since our first Valentine’s Day, when he bought me the slinkiest negligee ever from Victoria’s Secret. It was two sizes (at least) too small, so I sneakily exchanged it before I wore it for him and when I did, it drove him absolutely mad with desire, and I loved that. Scott is a brilliant man, and powerful, but I can turn him into a trembling boy, the one he was in business school, before the bonuses and stock options and Range Rovers and speedboats. In short, we both know who wears the pants in our house: My husband does. But there is equally little doubt which of us really has the power.

So he will love this gift and he will love that I thought to give it to him. Now I just need the courage to go through with it. Which brings us back, once again, to my ass, which I am staring at now in the cramped little room off to the side of the nail salon where they do my waxing. The salon is owned by Sarah, a lovely Korean woman who almost met my twins before I did; she was giving me a pedicure when my water broke. That sort of experience creates a bond, and on top of that I occasionally bring Megan in for manicures—I started when she was only three—so Sarah has watched my family grow and I, too, have watched hers; her grown children are always in and out of the salon, and I adore how proudly she speaks of the daughter who is a nurse and the son studying to be a lawyer. I feel Sarah and I have shared quite a lot over the years, and yet I cannot imagine exactly how I am going to tell her why I am here today.

Because if I’m going to do this, I’m going to do it right. The photos will be tasteful and, hopefully, beautiful. But let’s face it—they are going to be more about sex than art, and if I want my husband to choose them over smut then we need to smut them up, at least a little. There will be nothing splayed, nothing gaping, nothing vulgar, nothing of that sort, but there will be full frontal nudity and with that NC-17 rating comes an obligation.

Bring on the wax.

I’ve never done this before, but I have friends who have, and they have told me to just remove my pants and underwear, that no one bats an eye at the nudity. So I did, and then I sat on the cushioned table that was covered with a long sheet of paper, and I waited.

Sarah entered the room with a huge smile on her face and a thirteen-year-old girl by her side.

“Hello, Brooke!” she exclaimed, apparently oblivious to my state of undress. “This is my niece! She wrote a paper on the origin of the steak knife and I knew you’d love to read it!”

There is obviously no chance that is what she actually said, but sometimes her English is a bit of an adventure.

“How lovely,” I said, nodding and frantically tugging down my tank top. I didn’t offer a hand because I didn’t have one to spare. “Do you live around here?”

The girl nodded. She did not speak at all. Neither did Sarah—she just stood beaming at her niece. But the trouble was that pretty soon it had been too long since anyone had spoken, so I did again.

“Well, Sarah, we’re going to try something a little different today,” I said.

“Oh yeah? What?” Sarah asked.

I was staring right at the girl. I couldn’t see myself explaining what I was here to do—much less actually doing it—with a tween standing close enough to me that I could brush her hair if I wanted to. The girl was just standing silently and politely, as though she were awaiting instructions from me, but those were clearly not forthcoming as I was so uncomfortable in my state of undress I could hardly speak.

And then finally, thankfully, Sarah clued in, picking up either on my nerves or my balled-up thong on the table, or perhaps the three-quarters of my butt sticking out beneath my top.

“Ooooohhhhh,” she said, and leaned toward me. “You having an affair?”

That made me laugh hard enough that I forgot for a moment about my circumstances and put both hands over my mouth, and just like that I was all out there. I covered up quickly and glanced right at the girl, who did not bat an eye.

“Come on, lie down,” Sarah said, and then she turned and said something to the girl, who turned to me and nodded politely and then she was gone, and I was on the table, flat on my back, as Sarah began to heat the wax.

“You know,” she said ominously, “this is going to hurt.”

SAMANTHA

ALL OF A SUDDEN I felt pain unlike any I can ever remember.

The numbness that at first spread about my body like gushing water was replaced by a searing agony. Suddenly I couldn’t keep up with the number of emotional hammers pounding away at me: stunned disbelief, murderous rage, agonized sadness. And, worst of all: pity. I have never before felt as sorry for anyone as I suddenly felt for myself.

I dove into the bed and buried my head beneath as many pillows as I could stack. I wanted total pitch-black darkness. I wanted never to see again. The pity threatened to consume me completely, and it occurred to me that self-pity is the most devastating of all emotions. Anger can be motivational, sadness can be galvanizing, but pity is crippling. I couldn’t even cry, because I didn’t have the strength. I could hardly take a breath, my chest felt heavy and constricted. I tried to breathe deeply, to gather my thoughts. How had I gotten here? I was twenty-eight years old. I had joined the Peace Corps out of college. Then I was a television producer in New York. Now I was a cheated-on newlywed.

That was when I smelled him. One of the pillows piled atop my head must have been his, and all at once he was all over me. I tried to get away but accidentally I rolled to his side of the bed and found myself in the slight indentation he’d made when he slept, and then my hip touched a wet spot and I shot out of the bed as though it was a cannon. That was his wetness on the mattress—we’d made that wetness together—how long ago? It felt like days had passed, but how long had it been really? An hour? Less? I could feel him on me, on my flesh, inside me, and without thinking I stripped off everything and dashed to the shower. I turned the water as hot as I could stand and scrubbed. Once my skin was as pink and clean as I could get it I turned off the water, put on a sports bra and running shorts and sneakers, and then I was outside, steps from the beach. And then I started to run.

I didn’t know where I was going. I didn’t even really know where I was, I just knew I needed to run, to recapture myself. The self-pity threatened to stop me, threatened to knock me to the ground, but I pushed on. I am not someone who feels sorry for herself, I told myself. I am not.

I really am not. I feel sorry for so many people but never for myself. I feel sorry for all the same people you do: orphans, circus freaks, single mothers, homeless children, widower fathers, crack babies, drug addicts, blind peddlers, deaf beggars, and anyone missing an arm, a leg, or any other valuable appendage. But for you it likely ends there, while for me it is just the beginning.

I feel terribly sorry for the woman who worked at the drive-thru window at the Dunkin’ Donuts near my father’s house in Connecticut. It could be twenty below zero and there she would be, leaning out that window with no coat, no gloves, making change, handing out coffee, always with a smile on her face. I would marvel at her contentedness, even envy it at times. Once I asked her why she always seemed so happy, and she launched into a life story too horrendous to be believed. It was the story of a husband who beat her and a daughter who died in a car crash and a month of sleeping in the mudroom of her church, and she concluded by saying: “This is the happiest time of my day, being around all these nice people.” I looked around and saw the typical groups of folks you’d expect in a Dunkin’ Donuts; they didn’t all seem so nice to me. But this was the best part of her day, serving inexpensive snacks to ungrateful masses of people. This was her life. And then one day she was gone. I don’t know what happened, she just disappeared. I tried asking everyone I could in the store, but no one knew what happened to her. She just stopped showing up. The manager told me: “Often our people find better jobs and they don’t bother coming back to quit.” But I knew that wasn’t the case; she would never have left that job unless something awful happened to her. And I’ll never know what it was. When I went home that night I realized I didn’t even know her name. And that made me so sad I cried myself to sleep.

I also often feel sorry for people I’ve never met.

For instance, just the other day there was this woman who wept uncontrollably when she was called to “Come on down!” on The Price Is Right. It was clearly the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her, and it was completely ruined by some jerk who bid one dollar more than she did on the cost of a lawn mower, and he wound up on stage playing a game with dice while she stood there hoping for another chance. But I could see on my watch it was going to be time for the showcase showdown next, so there would be no more chances for her. And that hopeful look on her face made me cry. That poor woman had waited her whole life to come on down, and that was all she got.

There was another woman on that same episode I also felt sorry for. She did make it up on stage and played a game where she would win a car if she could guess how much it cost. The car was a little Mazda. I don’t know that you could have fit two people and two bags of groceries in it, but this woman guessed the price was $78,000. Drew Carey was so taken aback by her guess I thought he was going to have to be carried away. But, bless her heart, this woman felt really good about her answer, and for that one minute she was just as sure as she could be that she was going to win a brand-new car. Of course, everyone in the studio and everyone watching on television knew before she did that she had absolutely no chance, and for those few seconds when she was the only one in the world who still believed, my heart ached for her.

So, there are those moments in my life practically every day. And when you combine them with all the regular ones that get to you as well, like the starving children with distended stomachs, it is basically a full-time job. I think the only person I’ve never felt sorry for in my whole life is me.

Why would I? I was born with every advantage imaginable. My family is wealthy, I am healthy, I’ve always been able to choose whatever path I like. Yes, my father can be petulant and insensitive, and yes, he is now dating a woman only four years older than I am, but that isn’t really my issue. I feel sorry for my mother, who died so young, and my younger brother, who always idolized our father and has felt personally betrayed and disillusioned by Dad’s failings, but none of that has kept me from pursuing my interests or living my life. I have never imagined anyone would feel sorry for me, much less me feel it myself, until I typed “F*ckLarryBird” into my husband’s laptop on the first morning of our honeymoon and found myself staring at a nude photo of a woman it took me a moment to recognize.

The woman was attractive but by no means perfect, nothing you would ever see in Playboy, or whatever online site men use for their porn these days. She wasn’t airbrushed or artificially tanned, she wasn’t waxed and enhanced in all the most important places, but she was pretty, and about twenty years older than me. Or nineteen years, actually, to the day, now that I think of it. When I first met her on the campaign, I recalled, we laughed when we figured out we shared a birthday. I remember she said: “Funny, I could have been your babysitter.” It didn’t seem so funny at the time, and even less funny now was the note she’d attached to the photo.

Something to remember me by while you’re in Hawaii with your daughter.

So now I was just running, as hard and as fast as I could. I didn’t know where I was going, but that really didn’t matter. Because when you’re running away from something rather than running toward it, it doesn’t make much difference which way you go.

KATHERINE

THEY SAY IT’S BETTER to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

Well, how f*cking stupid are they?

That expression, or the sentiment behind it, is one of those things we’ve made up to make ourselves feel better. Like when we say it’s good luck if it rains on your wedding day. Of course that isn’t good luck; it is, in fact, the very definition of bad luck. But we announce that it is good luck so we don’t have to feel bad about being wet at our own wedding. I remember when my friend Heidi was married, right here in Manhattan, she and her fiancé arranged for a double-decker bus with an open top to transport the guests from the church on the Upper West Side to a social club by Gramercy Park. The trouble was that it poured. I mean, poured. My lasting recollections are of Heidi with a garbage bag over her dress and a shower cap over her hair to keep the rain from spoiling all her photos, and all the guests crammed into the lower level of the double-decker bus. I ask you, was that good luck?

Of course it doesn’t mean the marriage is doomed. In fact, Heidi remains happily married and has three little boys whose names currently escape me, but the point remains there was nothing lucky about the rain on her wedding day, and neither is there anything better about loving and losing than never loving at all.

“Oh, f*ck him,” I said.

“What’s that, Katherine?”

I had forgotten about Maurice. “Nothing.”

“You keep talking to yourself, I’m gonna need to take you somewhere other than that office,” he said cheerily. “You may need to see a doctor.”

I do love Maurice. He is a genuinely nice man, and in my experience those are not so easy to find. I think if there is such a thing as reincarnation—and if there is any justice in the universe—Maurice should come back as a supermodel, or a basketball star, or George Clooney. If Maurice were to be reincarnated as Heidi Klum, I would not for one second begrudge him the legs that never end or the perfect skin or the hair that always returns to the right place in the wind. It would make me happy, in fact, to know that the winners of the genetic lottery actually earned their good fortune through good deeds. Otherwise it’s all just random, luck of the draw, and some people get to be gorgeous and thin and the rest of us don’t, with no rhyme or reason.

If Phillip gets reincarnated, on the other hand, I want justice. And I have found just the perfect sentence, an appropriate comeuppance for a lifetime spent with looks and wealth and no appreciation whatsoever for his good fortune. I came across it just the other night, watching Dirty Jobs. (I love that show.) The episode began with scenic shots of what appeared to be a ranch, the sun rising on a picture-perfect morning, and then Mike Rowe came on and said something like “What a perfect day to collect some horse semen!” And that’s what he spent an hour doing. When the episode was over, I went online and read all about the collection of stallion semen, and it was fascinating. Turns out the most common method for collection is with an artificial vagina, but in some cases that doesn’t work, so someone needs to manually extract the specimen from the stallion. That’s right, manually. And as I was reading all about it, one thought kept ringing in my mind: If there is such a thing as reincarnation, I hope Phillip comes back as the guy who jerks off the horses.

Does that sound bitchy? I don’t mean it to. It’s just that he was the second man in my life to let me down so dramatically that I was unable to cope. The first was my father and let’s face it, no matter how bitterly disappointed you may be in your father you still never wish upon him a lifetime of giving hand jobs to horses.

But the days when Phillip and I were together do not seem real to me anymore, which is to say I recall a lot of events but I have no recollection of how they felt or tasted or smelled. I remember meeting a shy, brilliant boy in the registration office on our first day at the Harvard Business School. He was older than I, by seven years. He’d been on Wall Street and his firm was paying his tuition in Cambridge. He was a genius, and they all saw it even then, as anybody would have. I remember his bushy black hair, unkempt and curly in the back, which did not suit his face at all. I remember we were both outcasts, to a degree; me because of my father, Phillip because he came from the wrong side of the tracks. Phillip was from Brooklyn, the very definition of self-made. His father, a sweet and charming man, delivered milk. Phillip, on his way to graduating first in our class at HBS, always told me, “They don’t teach us anything in these schools more valuable than what I learned on the streets in Brooklyn.” Phillip was a fighter, and he fought dirty when he had to.

I also saw a different side of him, though. I was the only one around with whom he would occasionally let his guard down. He could be very funny. His humor was caustic and sarcastic, which I thought betrayed his insecurity at being the only Brooklyn boy in the most prestigious class in American education. And he loved old movies, as I do. That was where we really bonded. He especially loved Humphrey Bogart; in fact, the only time he was ever goofy was when boarding an airplane. No matter where we were, he would always break into the famous lines from Casablanca.

“You’re getting on that plane,” he would say, baring his teeth like Bogart, in a vocal impression that was dead-on. “If you don’t you’ll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.”

I have always loved that movie, and I loved Phillip madly. It was an Ingrid Bergman kind of love, only I was much too selfish to ever consider sending him away for the good of the Resistance. Let Paris fall and the Germans come marching up Fifth Avenue, I wasn’t letting that man get away. Which is why the way it ended hurt me so, and why to this day I hope to someday see him whacking off a stallion.

They say the best revenge is living well, and I’m not buying that, either. Nobody is living better than I am; I have a duplex on Park Avenue, a driver, a chef, an assistant, and a killer house in South Hampton, and I did it all on my own. But I still haven’t gotten past what happened with Phillip and I doubt I ever will, and I wish to god he was ten times more miserable than I am.

If that sounds bitchy, I guess I don’t really care.

SAMANTHA

F*ck HIM.

With every step I ran, those words were in my head. And they were liberating; those two words freed me from my self-pity. Anger is inspirational. Anger has launched wars, cured diseases, conquered civilizations; it’s not always the most beneficent of emotions but damned if it doesn’t help get things done. And now it was helping me. The anger surged through me and propelled me with each step I took. It helped. And as I ran, I started to remember who I am.

F*ck him.

I’m not a politician’s wife. I’m a jock. I was the captain of the soccer and lacrosse teams in high school. I ran three marathons my senior year of college. When I lived in New York I played ultimate frisbee in Central Park every day. I climb rocks and mountains, I ski, I surf. I don’t stand on a makeshift stage in hotel ballrooms, smile blankly, and wave.

F*ck him.

I got a job at MTV Sports after I got out of the Peace Corps and I loved it. I produced shows about extreme athletes, shows that took me all over the country, all over the world. I filmed motocross racers and skydivers and cliff divers and skateboarders. I trekked across an Arizona desert for three weeks, shooting a guy who runs forty miles a day barefoot for fun. I filmed guys climbing mountains on bicycles and fighting crocodiles with their bare hands. And along the way I participated in most of it. I jumped out of an airplane with a parachute, off a mountaintop with a bungee cord, and over a Volkswagen on a motorcycle. I walked on hot coals, collected honey from a swarming hive of bees, and swam with a great white shark. It all seems like it was so long ago, a different lifetime, but it wasn’t. Come to think of it, the swim with the shark was this year on this island. I’m still that girl, I just took a little break from myself.

F*ck him.

The sky was impossibly blue and there was no sign of a cloud anywhere. It was one of those perfect days you only get in Hawaii, that wonderful kind of hot only the islands can provide. As I broke a sweat, my legs settled into a very comfortable gait. I don’t remember ever feeling so loose or so strong. Every step was freeing, every breath invigorating. There was no strain, no fatigue, no pain, just the rhythmic beating of my heart accompanied by the crashing waves on the beach. Overhead, gulls were singing and in the distance a Polynesian song was playing. It was the most peaceful, perfect, beautiful, Zen experience I have ever had. I was fully one with the sky and the sea and the earth. And with every step I took and every beat of my heart, I heard the same words in my head, again and again.

F*ck him.

I haven’t any idea how much time passed as I ran; I would have run forever, but eventually my body needed fuel. I could feel it begin to cry out for water, for food, and I remembered I hadn’t eaten any breakfast at all. The timing was perfect, as I was approaching what appeared to be a gorgeous hotel, so I just ran straight in through the front doors, through the lobby, and found a restaurant out by the swimming pool. I wasn’t even breathing heavily as I asked for a menu. I wanted the healthiest food they had, the healthiest food imaginable. I felt as though I wanted to eat the earth.

“May I have fresh fruit, please,” I asked a very pleasant waiter who came to take my order, “and nuts if you have them, and granola, and lots of cold water.”

“Will this be a room charge?” he asked.

“No, I’m not staying in this hotel.”

He asked where I was staying and I told him, and then I asked how far apart the hotels were.

“I’m not sure exactly, miss,” he said. “I can get the exact distance if you’d like.”

“If it isn’t too much trouble.”

A moment later he was back with the most beautiful plate I’ve ever seen, a huge platter piled high with ripe grapefruit, pineapple, berries, and assorted other explosively colorful treats.

“I asked at the desk,” he told me as I sank my teeth into a mango. “They say it is about eighteen miles from your hotel.”

I finished chewing and looked up at him.

“Excuse me?” I said.

“Eighteen miles,” he repeated. “That’s what they said. How long did it take you to drive here?”

“I didn’t drive,” I said, “I ran.”

“Wow, pretty long run,” he said, “nice way to start the day. Enjoy your lunch.”

Lunch? I thought.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“Almost noon, miss.”

I had been running for three hours.

“Thank you very much,” I said.

I devoured everything on that platter and loved every bite of it. I ate berries and figs and raisins, almonds and walnuts and macadamia nuts, mango and pineapple and coconut, and I drank a pitcher of ice water, then asked for another and finished that one as well. When I was done, I leaned back in my chair and let the sun bathe my face. I wanted to run some more, or maybe swim. I just needed to digest for a few minutes first. Then the pleasant waiter was back, humming amiably as he cleared the table.

“Would you care for anything else?” he asked.

The sun felt so good on my cheeks.

“Yes,” I said, without opening my eyes. “Are there any rooms available in this hotel?”

BROOKE

I GUESS I DON’T say a lot of things that surprise people.

I’m a mom, and as a mom I guess I mostly say things that people are expecting to hear.

No, Megan, you may not sleep over at Parker’s on a school night.

Yes, Jared, you must finish the asparagus if you want to have a fudgesicle.

I’m also a wife, and I don’t suppose Scott is very often surprised with most of what he hears me say.

Sweetheart, we are having dinner with the Ronsons on Friday. Don’t forget she’s pregnant but you’re not supposed to know.

If we’re going to do it, lock the door, the kids are probably awake.

I also play tennis with a group of girls three times a week, and our conversations aren’t that shocking either, I would say.

I’m seconds away from getting my period.

I swear if she makes one more comment about my colorist I am going to serve the ball directly into the back of her head.

So, I almost never get to see a look of complete surprise on anyone’s face. And, really, there’s something a bit awful about that. I don’t suppose anyone wants to be known as “predictable.” I pride myself on being dependable, but I never want to be predictable, because that feels about a half step away from boring.

Thus, I can honestly say there was something thrilling about the look on Pamela’s face when I said to her: “Next week, I want you to photograph me naked.”

At first she didn’t speak. Then she blushed, and shook her head a bit as if to clear her ears.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “What?”

“I want you to shoot me naked.”

She paused again. “Wait a minute, darling,” she said, “which of us do you mean would be naked?”

And then we were both giggling, in a way I don’t get to giggle very often anymore. We giggled the way Megan and her girlfriends do when I accuse them of having crushes on one of the Jonas Brothers, or on the supercute boy a grade ahead of them, with the curly hair. We giggled like lifelong girlfriends, which actually we are not: I have only known Pamela for four years, since the night I had to keep Scott from punching a woman in the face.

Pamela is a generation older than I, and one of the core friends every woman needs to have. You know what I mean. First, every woman needs a sister, and if she does not have one then she needs a friend who is like a sister: one who cares for your children as though they are her own, and will tell you in the car if you have too much blush on. Then there is the friend who knows everything that is going on, who keeps you up on all the gossip, whether it’s by telling you Brad and Angelina are really split up this time and she’s engaged to her astrologist, or Susan came home and found Richard in the hot tub with Anna Demetrio; apparently, they had bathing suits on but, please, that is beyond inappropriate. Every woman needs that friend, too. And then, most important, every woman also needs a friend who is like a mother, but one she’ll actually listen to. When my mother tries to tell me I am making a mistake, half the time I go ahead because she has questioned me. But every woman needs a friend who will tell you when you are about to go wrong: Don’t feed your children tilapia, it has too much of the bad Omega-6s and not enough of the good Omega-3s. Don’t stay in that hotel: there is nothing for the kids to do and it’s a twenty-minute walk to the nearest decent restaurant. Don’t try the Metamucil wafers, they don’t make you regular, they make you stuffed and bloated. That’s a core friend every woman needs.

Pamela is that friend to me. She is older and worldly and provides the perfect sounding-board; I can’t recall ever needing advice and failing to get it from her. She’s also the best photographer in Greenwich, which doesn’t hurt, either. That’s how we came to meet her. We bought her, or we tried to. And then she felt bad that we didn’t and let us have her anyway. I should explain.

It was a fund-raiser at the school, and I told Scott we had to pick one silent-auction item and make sure we won it. He selected a session with Pamela, a renowned photographer, so we’d finally have professional photos of the kids and, as he put it, “a decent-looking holiday card.” All evening long he was staked out at the auction table, quickly raising any bid that topped ours. When there were about thirty minutes remaining, it became clear it was down to Scott and one other man, a pleasant-looking fellow with older kids. I watched Scott and this man go back and forth, raising each other and staring each other down as though they were playing high-stakes poker. (Men can be so funny; they were only raising it $20 each time, but the drama was such that I thought one might eventually slap the other across the face with a white glove.) The final blow was delivered by my husband when it was announced that there was one minute remaining. With a flourish, he took the pen and raised the total by $200. The other fellow looked at the bid, looked at my husband, and nodded his head in a respectful concession. It was over. Scott had won.

Then the announcer began the countdown. “Ladies and gentlemen, the auction will be closed in ten seconds. Nine, eight, seven, six, five . . .”

To my horror, a garish-looking bottle blonde with enormous boobs sauntered up to the bid sheet. She scooped up the pen and wrote something down, just as the announcer reached “one.” Then she walked quickly away, her ass swaying tauntingly in too-tight white jeans.

I looked at Scott and saw he was stunned. He literally couldn’t move. So I went to the sheet and saw she had raised him by $5. No previous bid had been raised by any less than twenty, but here she had sloppily written “$605” and her name and that was it. When I went back to Scott’s side, he was shaking.

“Did she top it?” he asked.

I nodded. I really hoped he wouldn’t ask the next question.

“By how much?”

I told him, because I couldn’t get around it, and he turned beet red. “Brooke,” he said, “you’re the debutante, so you know about these things. What’s the etiquette here? Because if that was a guy I would punch him in the face.”

“I think that would be a bit much,” I said.

“Do you mean in this case? Or with a guy? Because if it was a guy I would punch him in the face.”

“Sweetheart,” I said, “you do realize we can hire this photographer for three hundred dollars less than this, don’t you?”

“That isn’t the point,” he said, and he was right. It wasn’t the point.

In the end, it turned out Pamela was at the party and saw what happened and she agreed to accept our bid as well and couldn’t have been sweeter about it. We had a drink with her that night and began a friendship that has meant everything to me. And now here I am, giggling with my friend as I explain to her that because she has shot my children and my husband and me so wonderfully, and produced four sensational holiday cards for us, now I want her to come to my house and take pictures of me naked.

We planned it for a Tuesday—as it turned out, we had to wait a few days after my waxing to allow the redness to fade. (Nothing has ever hurt like that did, by the way. I would rather deliver triplets drug-free in the back of a taxi than go through that again.) Once the children were on the bus, I set about trying to create the proper atmosphere in the house. The first decision to be made was selecting a room. The bedroom seemed the obvious choice, but ours is not the sexiest bedroom. Our bedroom is comfy and very cozy, and I love lying in bed talking with Scott with a fire going, but the bedroom is the place where we have most of our sex, and most of it isn’t fabulously romantic. Mostly it consists of quickies on weekend mornings before the children wake up, and it can never be especially spontaneous, as I have become obsessed with locking the door first because I simply cannot handle the idea of being caught in the act.

“Sweetheart,” he breathed heavily into my ear one time, “the kids aren’t at home.”

“What if Lucy comes in?” I said.

“Lucy is a golden retriever.”

“I am aware of that but she does barge in here all the time.”

“But she’s a dog.”

“I cannot have sex with the dog watching,” I said, sitting up, “it’s inappropriate.”

Since then he’s never balked when I demand the door be locked. Pamela laughed hysterically when I explained all this, by the way, and suggested the sexiest photo of all might just be me, nude, beside an unlocked door.

But so much for the bedroom. I next considered the kitchen, which is where we spend most of our time as a family, usually me cooking or puttering around and the kids eating or doing their homework at the table or curled up watching television on the sofa in the family room, which adjoins it. Scott has repeatedly told me he never finds me sexier than when I am cooking, but frankly I think that is just an effort to get me into the right frame of mind for a quickie after dinner. It often works, by the way—I’m not complaining—but I’m still not sure it’s the right room for the photos.

Neither, then, is Scott’s office. Aside from the desk and chair, the only things in there are a computer, a fax machine, a copier, a printer, two telephones, a small television monitor, and a Bose radio. There is nothing in the room that is not connected to a power cord.

The kids’ rooms are obviously out of the question, as are the bathrooms, even the master with the whirlpool tub, because if even a hint of a toilet is in the picture it ruins the effect completely. And I’m definitely not prepared to do this outside by the pool, because if my social-climbing, nosy, never-keeps-her-mouth-shut neighbor should get so much as a glimpse of my naked ass, it would be pretty much the equivalent of showing it on the evening news.

So, I am left with a really strange problem. It’s like being all dressed up and having no place to go, except it’s the opposite. I want to be completely undressed. But, even in my own home, I feel as though I’ve got no place to go.

SAMANTHA

WHEN I OPENED MY eyes, the waiter with the pleasant smile was still standing before me, waiting for me—I guess—to laugh, or maybe to cry. But I wasn’t going to do either. Suddenly I felt very serious, and very certain of what I needed.

“Can you please ask the hotel manager to come see me?” I asked.

“Of course, miss,” he said. “But may I ask again, will your meal be charged to your room?”

“No, I’m not a guest in this hotel,” I said, “but I’m going to be one very soon.”

“Very well,” he said amiably, “will you be paying with cash or a card?”

“Actually, I haven’t got any money,” I said, “but I know where to get some.”

His pleasant smile was wavering. I think he thought I was crazy, and considering the conversation we were having I couldn’t blame him.

“I will have no trouble paying for my lunch, don’t worry,” I said. “I just need three things, please. I need the hotel manager, I need a telephone, and I need a glass of champagne.”

He brought me the drink first and it was fabulous, so different from the glass I’d had last night when I was drinking a toast to the rest of my life. Now, in the light of day, especially in the brilliant sunshine, it was clear how silly that had been. Not just because I had typed “F*ckLarryBird” into a computer and found out my husband wasn’t the man I thought he was, but for a million other reasons as well. In the sunshine, it was clear that the only plans worth making are ones for later in the day. There’s no way to know what the next week or month or year are going to bring, much less the whole rest of your life. The only permanent thing is impermanence. This was what I came to understand right then, right there, with the sun on my cheeks and the champagne on my lips. The notion that you could actually know what you want for the rest of your life is illogical and unreasonable. The best you can do is figure out what you want for lunch.

“Hello, miss.”

The voice came from behind me, a different voice this time. It wasn’t the waiter; it was a handsome, older man in a white blazer. He had the same amiable smile as the waiter but a much deeper voice and an air that suggested he was very much in charge. He seemed European, perhaps Spanish.

“My name is Eduardo Marquez. I am the hotel manager. Is there anything I can do for you?”

I didn’t say anything for a minute, largely because I loved the sound of his voice. He sounded exactly like that character in the movie The Princess Bride. I just wanted to sit silently in the warm glow of the sun and luxuriate in the sound of his baritone.

“Miss,” he said again, and I could tell he was about to lose his European cool, “I was told you wanted to see me. Now, what can I do to be of service to you?”

I sighed deeply, gathered my resolve.

“Well, Mr. Marquez, it sort of goes like this: I’m supposed to be on my honeymoon at the Four Seasons, but it turns out my husband is f*cking a woman who works for him, which is horrible in so many ways, not the least of which is that my father thought all along he was an a*shole and now it turns out my father was right, which if you knew my father you’d know is almost as bad as finding out my marriage isn’t going to last a week. But the good news is, I’m over it. Over it, and over him—it just took a little time and a little thought and I accomplished both of those on my way over here. So all I really need now is a phone so I can call my father and we’ll have my marriage annulled, and then I’ll enter the next available triathlon here on the island and stay in your hotel to train for that because you have the best fruit I have ever tasted. Then after I finish the triathlon I’ll move back to New York and go back to my job in television, and if I never meet another man that will be just fine with me.”

I wish you could have seen the look on Eduardo Marquez’s face: it was the most delightful combination of skepticism and awe I can ever recall. I’m sure he thought I was either full of it or insane, or maybe he thought I was both, and either way it made no difference to me, because I was so wonderfully certain that I was neither.

“Well, miss,” he finally said, adjusting his tie, “perhaps the first thing I could do is bring you the telephone you asked for.”

“That would be great,” I said, and I reached out to shake his hand. And when we shook, I put my other hand over his as tenderly as I could. “Thank you very much for your help.”

He bowed a little, and backed away slowly. I took the opportunity to drink my champagne, which continued to feel great going down. But now I also wanted something healthy, a smoothie or protein shake or even some green tea; I had work to do. Training would have to begin immediately. I looked at the waves breaking on the beach and suddenly I yearned to be in the water. I would have dashed into the ocean right then if I wasn’t so sure Eduardo Marquez would have a conniption if he came back to find me gone.

Then I started to think about Robert. What would he find when he got back to the suite? How exactly had I left it? I couldn’t remember. I hadn’t packed anything; my clothes, jewelry, makeup, toiletries, they were all still there. He would probably return to find me out of the room and think nothing of it, think I just went for a run or a swim or a stroll on the beach. He’d be a little surprised I hadn’t left a note, or texted him with my plans, but he certainly wouldn’t be anxious. Maybe he would get into bed and lounge, waiting for me to come back so he could pat me softly on the butt, which is his signal that he wants to have sex. I could picture him now, lying in the bed, stripped to the waist, reading a newspaper, waiting for me. How much time would pass before he became concerned? Maybe that time had already come. Maybe he was out looking for me right now. Maybe he was asking hotel staff if they’d seen the athletic-looking blonde he’d checked in with. The first thing he’d do was call my phone, and wait for the connection, which would take a little extra time on the island, and then he would hear “I Gotta Feeling” by the Black Eyed Peas somewhere in the room, and since he knows that’s my ringtone he’d know I left my iPhone behind, and that’s when he’d become concerned. Because that would be completely unlike me. He’d go through my things next, and find I’d also left behind my bag and my backpack, with my wallet and passport and driver’s license, and I think what he’d think then is that I’d been kidnapped; taken, literally, from the hotel room, because I would never venture even outside the door without any of those. That thought brought another smile to my face. F*ck him. Let him be worried. Let him contact local authorities to report a missing person. Let him call my family and ask if they’d heard from me. In fact, let me have talked to my father first; let my father be the one to tell him the marriage is over. No one would enjoy that more than Dad would and he’d do a great job of it, he’d put all the “motherf*ckers” and “cocksuckers” in the right places. He’s very good with those.

“Miss, here is a telephone, property of the hotel. Any charges you incur can be added to your bill at the end of your stay.”

It was Eduardo Marquez; he’d snuck up on me. And there was something different about him now, something softer—or at least less suspicious. His smile seemed less forced, less rehearsed. There was something very pleasant and charming about him.

“Thank you,” I said, and took the mobile from him. “I’m very much looking forward to staying here.”

Then I took several deep breaths, filling my lungs until they ached in a way they hadn’t while I was running those eighteen miles. The salt in the air was invigorating, and made my mind feel crisp and sharp. I dialed without looking at the digits, and then I took one more deep breath before I hit send.

“Hi, Dad, it’s me,” I said when he answered. “I’m having sort of an unusual day.”

KATHERINE

“HELLO, MOM, THANKS FOR calling. Yes, it’s sort of a big day.”

There is nothing more challenging for me than being chipper with my mother. She has the amazing ability to take any topic—even a birthday greeting—and give it a funereal tone. I think it’s something in the way she lowers her voice when it comes to certain words, and not the usual ones, like “cancer” or “tax evasion.” Like in this conversation, for instance, I could easily see if she whispered either the “birthday” or the “fortieth,” but she did not, she spoke both of those in a normal tone. But she lowered to where I could barely hear when she said: “I hope you know how proud of you I am.” The whole sentence was muffled, as though she covered the receiver with a sweat sock, and the word “proud” was practically indiscernible. She speaks as though she is constantly apologizing for the interruption, and has all my life, or at least since Dad went away.

In her defense, I suppose there is something vaguely funereal about a fortieth birthday. It certainly signifies the end of something. Not of life, but of something. It signifies the end of my youth, for one thing. I am not, and never will be again, a young woman. No one will ever again call me a “girl,” not that many ever did anyway, but it was comforting to at least know it was a realistic possibility. If I were picking words to whisper, I would say “getting older” and “starting to feel it in my back” so softly you’d need to read my lips.

Those were the thoughts rattling about in my head as I walked into my office. Leave it to my mother to have me thinking about the end of my youth and the increasing stiffness in my lower back first thing in the morning on my birthday.

I am the chief administrative officer of a large investment bank in Manhattan. The title was created for me. To my knowledge, there are very few—if any—other CAOs in major American companies. I began in the legal department, putting to use my dual Harvard degrees in law and business, and ultimately rose to the position of general counsel. Then they added human resources to my purview and named me executive vice president. A little more than two years ago I was recruited by another bank, a smaller one in California, with an offer of the very top position. But Phillip didn’t want to lose me, motivated at least in part by our personal history, so he created the CAO title exclusively for me. (The running joke, of which I am well aware and not overly concerned, is that I am the Chief A*shole of the Organization.) I am also currently the highest-ranking female executive on Wall Street, with oversight of our legal, HR, and corporate outreach programs, and a personal staff of eleven.

My assistant is Marie, a stunningly pretty bimbo from Brooklyn, whose title is team manager, but who, for all intents and purposes, functions as my personal confidante. I admire Marie for the exact reason I initially disliked her: she looks like a slut. She showed up her first day with an attitude—and an outfit—that seemed to make no secret of her intentions: she was here to find a man. Some women get an MRS degree from a prestigious university, but Marie was nowhere near smart enough for anything like that; she matriculated into Wall Street instead, wearing too much blush and a skirt that barely concealed her pubic hair. Within three months she had been asked out by at least a half-dozen of our bankers and by the end of the year she was engaged to one of them. I assumed that would be the last I ever saw of Marie’s stunning cleavage but, to my surprise, it was not. When she interviewed for her current position I asked her why she chose to continue working. The question clearly took her aback and hurt her feelings. “With all due respect, Ms. Emerson,” she replied, her Brooklyn accent heavy, “the way you dress I don’t figure you have to work either. So I guess I work for the same reason you do: I love my job.” The position was hers right then, and it was the only time in all my years on Wall Street that I have ever apologized to anyone.

Now, on my birthday, Marie took one look at me and followed me into my suite.

“Whatsa matter, boss?” she asked, without saying hello.

I began pointlessly shifting papers about on my desk, trying to appear busy so as to avoid the conversation. “Who says anything is the matter?”

“Is it a man?” she asked.

“What’s a man? I’ve never heard of one of those.”

“You know: a despicable creature that smells bad most of the time.”

“I thought that was a dog,” I said.

“No, dogs smell bad all of the time but they aren’t the least bit despicable.”

I smiled at her. “Marie, I’m enjoying this Neil Simon conversation, I really am, but I have a crazy day so I’m afraid I’m going to need you to exit stage left.”

She turned to her left, then back to me with a slightly confused expression. Her innocence always makes me smile. Marie is the perfect example of how life is all about your expectations. Her life is better than she had any right to imagine, thus she is the most honestly happy person I know. I, meanwhile, was raised with endless expectations, my life is a limitless menu of options, and thus I am the most honestly dissatisfied person I know. Sometimes dual master degrees from Harvard can bite you in the ass.

“All right,” I said, softening my tone. “It’s my birthday today.”

Her eyes opened like full moons. “Wow! Happy birthd—”

“Please.” I cut her off, reaching out my arm. “I don’t feel like talking about it all day.”

“I get it,” she said, whispering. “Happy birthday, boss.”

“Thank you.”

“Any big plans? What are you doing to celebrate?”

“You’re looking at it.”

“No, no,” she said, shaking her pretty head. “That’s not good enough.”

“I appreciate the thought.”

“NO!”

That took me aback, I’ll admit.

“You’ve been so nice to me,” Marie continued, more calmly. “I am not letting you spend your birthday just working and going home. You and me are doing something tonight, anything you want, my treat.”

This conversation was making me sad. And embarrassed. “That’s very sweet of you to offer,” I said, “but you really don’t have to do that.”

“I know I don’t have to,” she said. “I want to.”

I’m not sure exactly why I was fighting this. There was part of me that definitely favored the idea; it seemed it would have to be more fun to go anywhere with anyone than to go home on my fortieth birthday and watch American Idol, which I would have to watch because there was nothing left on my TiVO. Perhaps the most pathetic thing I can think of to tell you about my life is that I have nothing left on my TiVO. Everyone I know is always talking about how far behind they are on all their shows. I, on the other hand, am fully caught up. I have watched everything on television that I ever wanted to.

“What would you have in mind?” I asked, trying not to betray my interest.

“You name it,” she said. “You name the club, you name the restaurant, you name the bar, you name the Broadway show, you name the movie. Whatever it is you name, that’s what we’ll do.”

“Well, I’ve seen everything decent on Broadway, and there are no good movies playing, and I’m not really the type to go to a bar or a club,” I said, wrinkling my nose at the word as though I didn’t like the taste of it. “I can’t imagine going to a club.”

“So it’s dinner,” she said. “Anywhere you want.”

I thought about it for a minute until suddenly her eyes got huge and round again. If she were a cartoon, a lightbulb would have switched on over her head.

“I know what we need to do!” she said, with great enthusiasm.

“What?” I replied, in the same excited tone, mocking her for absolutely no reason. (Here is this sweet girl getting excited about making birthday plans for me, not even knowing which birthday it is, and I’m giving her a hard time for it. I swear, sometimes I understand why my reputation is what it is.)

“I have a terrific idea and I know you’re going to turn it down,” Marie said, undeterred by my bitchiness, “but I want you to think about it, okay? Really consider it, because I think it’s a great idea.”

I waited.

“There is a guy who lives in my building that I’m dying to fix you up with . . .”

Now this was humiliating. “Stop.”

“No, wait,” she protested. “He’s very handsome and very nice. I’ve talked with him in the elevator, he’s divorced with no kids, wears great-looking suits, looks to be about the right age—I think it’s a winner.”

I know Marie’s building. She lives on Central Park West. Her fiancé is one of the more successful bankers in our real estate development business. But there was simply no way.

“I can’t do that,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Because,” I said, “what could be more pathetic than going on a blind date on your birthday?”

She smiled. “Sitting at home on your birthday watching American Idol,” she said. “Which, I might add, has sucked for the last three years anyway.”

I’ve never in my life mentioned American Idol to Marie. She’s more insightful than I give her credit for sometimes.

“What makes you think he’s even available tonight?” I asked.

“I can find out,” she said, bubbling. She could sense I was giving in. “I have his mobile.”

I shrugged. Then I sighed. Then I rolled my eyes. And then, finally, I ran out of gestures that indicate exasperation.

“All right, call him,” I said, as though I was agreeing to a highly skeptical business deal, which, in a sense, I was.

“I will,” she said, all excited. “I’ll be right back.”

Five minutes later she was back, and beaming.

“Eight o’clock,” she said. “Gramercy Tavern, just the two of you. He says he’ll be the one in the blue suit. I think he was trying to be funny.”

I tried to muster a laugh, but couldn’t.

“The way you dress,” she continued, “I told him he’d know you the minute you walk in the door.”

“Well, thanks for the added pressure.”

“Boss, don’t be ridiculous, your clothes are too fabulous,” she said. “I may sneak by and peek in the window just to see what you’re wearing.”

BROOKE

SO, WHAT ARE YOU wearing?

It’s funny, but I could never count how many times my husband has asked me that. Sometimes jokingly, sometimes not. From wherever he is on the globe, Scott knows that he is not allowed to go to bed without calling me first to say good-night. I want mine to be the last voice he hears before he goes to sleep, and whatever he wants that voice to be I am willing to give him. He will invariably begin the conversation by asking what I’m wearing, and I can usually tell from his tone whether he wants to know that I am in flannel pajamas or if he wants the Jenna Jameson voice and the fantasy wardrobe. I will talk him through any outfit he wants—he’s fully aware I don’t own any of it, of course—and I will talk as long as it takes until he is ready for sleep. (The hilarious times come when he is in Europe or Asia; there have been occasions when I’ve had these conversations in hushed tones at soccer practice or in the parking lot at school.) As I’ve told you, I expect my husband to be completely faithful to me, and I accept that with that demand comes some obligation on my part. When he needs it I give it to him, and in return he never seeks it anywhere else. Seems fair to me.

Anyway, the point is he always asks: “So, what are you wearing?”

And I can’t count the number of times I have told him I was wearing absolutely nothing.

“Just six-inch heels and a smile, sweetie,” I’ve said breathily, time and time again.

So, it struck me as more than a little ironic that this was the first time, the very first time, that I was genuinely wearing nothing at all, but it wasn’t Scott who called me.

It was my babysitter, and that turned out to be an emergency.

Long story.

Or maybe it isn’t that long. It starts in my house, where Pamela and I could not find a single suitable place to take these pictures. Thankfully, Pamela knows me well enough to know when I am becoming discouraged. She could see the moment was going to be lost if we did not act quickly and so she did; we packed up and went to her house. It was fabulous at her house, even if her house isn’t so fabulous. Pamela is an older divorcée with exquisite taste but not a whole lot of money. The best way to describe her style would be “hippie chic”; she is, after all, a child of the sixties and still flashes peace signs every now and again. So her house is about the way you might expect an aging hippie artist’s house to look: lots of psychedelic colors, groovy lighting, tapestries on the walls, a collection of framed rock ’n’ roll album covers in the living room. It was awesome for me, because it was so not me. There was something very appropriate about doing something as unusual as taking nude photos in a place as unusual as Pamela’s house. I even asked her to fire up some tunes for us. I wanted some rock ’n’ roll, and I wanted it loud.

“I think I know just the thing,” Pamela said with a mischievous twinkle in her eye.

She practically bounced out of the room to hit the music. I started to think this must be what it is like when a model says she clicks with a particular photographer. I always assumed that was just phony Hollywood-speak, but now I could see it is very real. I just knew that Pamela understood exactly what I wanted. I trusted her enough in that moment to put my life in her hands.

Then the music started. Led Zeppelin.

Oh yeah.

I’ll tell you a little secret: I’m sort of a rocker chick. I know I don’t look it. And I know I don’t behave like it anymore. I’m a mother now, a tennis gal, a classroom mom and—hopefully—a hot suburban wife, but inside I’m also still a rocker chick. Aerosmith, Van Halen, Led Zeppelin, Cheap Trick, Pink Floyd, I love it all. And in that instant, when Robert Plant’s voice flooded my ears, the only way I can think of to describe the feeling is orgasmic.

I was rocking out and playing air guitar, and god bless Pamela, who came in banging her head around like we were at Woodstock, and I just don’t know that I’ve had that much fun in years.

“How about a drink?” I asked her loudly, above the music.

“What do you have in mind?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “White wine?”

“Hell no!” Pamela shouted. Her eyes were twinkling again. “I think I know just the thing.”

Then she was off to the kitchen and I was left to shred it in the living room. As Led Zeppelin rocked out I went right along with them, singing as loudly as I could, on my knees like Tom Cruise in Risky Business.

“Try this on for size!”

Pamela was carrying a silver tray, upon which there was a sliced lime, a shaker of salt, a shot glass, and a bottle of Patrón tequila.

“Are you serious?” I asked.

“You better believe it!”

“At ten o’clock in the morning?”

“Listen to me, sweetheart,” she said, placing the tray down on the coffee table. “I assume you don’t want these pictures to look like ten o’clock in the morning. Am I right?”

“You are so right,” I said.

“Okay then,” Pamela said, and poured a shot of tequila into the glass. Then she took my right hand and licked the inside of my wrist. She poured some salt over the spot and raised the glass to me. “Here you go, babe. Let’s do this right!” Without hesitating, I licked the salt, took the glass, and shot the tequila, then took a slice of lime and sunk my teeth into it. The whole thing was fabulous, absolutely fabulous. I haven’t done tequila shots in years. The drink was tangy on my lips and warm in my chest. It tasted good and felt even better.

“Let me do one more,” I said, and I did, and it was even better the second time.

Then Pamela was holding her camera and staring me right in the eye.

“All right, sweetheart,” she said, more gently now, reassuringly, “are you ready to do this?”

“One more thing,” I said.

“Anything.”

“Do you have Cheap Trick at Budokan?”

She smiled and left the room again. I began to unbutton my coat. Underneath was a teddy I had picked up after I saw Scott not-so-subtly admire a similar one on Jessica Biel in a movie. Seemed like a good way to ease into this. I let the coat drop to the floor and stared at myself in a mirror decorated with Grateful Dead skulls.

“Not quite Jessica Biel,” I said aloud, “but not half-bad.”

Then I heard the screaming from the Japanese audience as the drums began to play the introduction to “I Want You to Want Me.”

And then Pamela was behind me in the mirror. “No time like the present,” she said.

I’ve never been so ready to do anything in my entire life.

SAMANTHA

“SO,” MY FATHER SAID, “are you ready to admit I was right?”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I was just wondering if you had come to any conclusions about my views on this fellow you met and decided to marry fifteen minutes later.”

My first thought was that this couldn’t be happening. I don’t mean my father browbeating me, that has been happening all my life. But how could he know? I had yet to tell him anything.

“Dad, what’s going on?” I asked.

“I have a better idea,” he said. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on.”

Every once in a while I get a glimpse of how my father came to be such a successful businessman. It is not just that he is ruthless (which I suspect he is) and brilliant (to which I can attest firsthand) but he is also very cunning, and this was the perfect illustration. Obviously he knew something, but I didn’t know what, nor did I know how he knew it.

“Listen, Dad,” I said, fighting desperately to keep all the positive energy from being sucked out of me, “as I said I’m having sort of a strange day. It’s pretty clear we both have something we want to say, and I can’t tell you how much it would help my state of mind if you would just go first.”

He chuckled on the other end of the line. There was something not so malicious in his chuckle, which is unusual for him. Normally, when you’re arguing with my father and he laughs, it sounds like Vincent Price in “Thriller.” But this was different. He was going to give me a break. I could tell.

“Sweetheart,” he said, “Robert called me.”

I have no idea why that should have come as a shock to me. There were only two people on the planet who were aware anything was going on. I was one and Robert was the other, so it only stood to reason that if my father was aware of a problem it was Robert who alerted him to it. But why? I’d only been gone a few hours.

“He told me what happened,” my father said.

That’s when it hit me. I never shut the laptop off, never logged out, never yanked the power cord out of the wall, nothing. I just left it on and open for him to find the nude photo of his campaign manager splashed across the screen. I felt a little smile cross my lips. Good. No better way for him to find out.

“What did he say?” I asked. To my surprise, my voice cracked a bit. It sounded as though I might cry, which seemed odd at first but then suddenly I realized tears were streaming down my cheeks.

“To be honest, he was very forthright,” my father said. “I give him credit for that. For a lying sack of shit, he’s a pretty straightforward guy.”

I laughed a little.

“He said he had something he needed to tell me,” my father continued, “and that he wanted me to hear it from him first. He said he’s been carrying on with a woman from the campaign, I think it was that brunette with the huge tits that lectured me about smoking.”

“It was,” I said.

“He said that he had taken up with her months before he even met you and that he was confused, and he didn’t know what to do, but that he loves you and wants to make the marriage work. And that he planned to tell you about it at the appropriate time, but somehow you obviously discovered something today that sped up that process. Am I reading that correctly?”

“Yes, you are,” I said.

“He asked me to be open-minded about the situation and to please help him try to find you, as you’d disappeared without a trace. That was pretty much all he had to say.”

I took a deep breath. The air still smelled fresh and salty.

“What did you say to him?” I asked.

“Darling,” he said, “when I was in college there was a huge fellow who lived in the same house as I did. His name was Alvin. He was a mountain of a man, must have been six foot eight, and very muscular. He was a cretin, and also a thief. One day I discovered that a few hundred dollars—which was all the money I had at the time—was missing from my room. I was sure Alvin had stolen it. So do you know what I did?”

“You left it alone and let him keep the money?”

“No.”

“You confronted him?”

“No,” my father said. “Not exactly.”

“Dad, what did you do?”

“I put a note in his room that said I knew he took the money and that if he simply returned it I would leave it alone and never speak of it again.”

“And?” I asked.

“And what?”

“And so what happened with the money?”

“To be honest, darling, I don’t really remember.”

“Dad,” I said, “you are developing an alarming habit of telling stories that don’t apply in any way to the circumstances.”

He chuckled gently again.

“Maybe you’re right,” he said. “Maybe I’m getting old. But now I’ll tell you what I said to Robert when he called me earlier today.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it, whatever it was. I closed my eyes.

“I told your husband that in my life I have been lucky in many things, but that the luckiest I have been is that I never ran up against you, Samantha, in a board room. You would have scared me to death, because you, darling, are the only person in my life tougher than I am.”

I couldn’t stop the tears now, and I didn’t bother to try.

“Why did you say that?” I asked.

“For the best reason anyone ever says anything,” my father said. “Because it’s the truth.”

“I want to get my marriage annulled, Dad,” I said. “Will you help me?”

“I think that is the best idea you’ve had in a very long time. Robert is an ambitious man, Samantha. I recognize that quality in him because I used to be an ambitious man myself. Maybe I still am one, to some degree. What he saw in you was the right wife for whatever it is he thinks he’s going to be someday, governor or president or wherever he hopes his ambition will lead him. You have the right background, the right family, the right looks. I don’t blame him for wanting to marry you.”

He paused for a moment.

“The problem, darling, is that Robert is an a*shole. And that is an issue that was eventually going to be insurmountable. Your figuring it out quickly is probably the best thing that could have happened.”

I laughed a little. “Thanks, Dad,” I said. “I think I’m going to stay in Hawaii for a while.”

“Sounds nice,” he said. “It’s nighttime here, darling. First thing in the morning I’ll have lawyers on a plane, they’ll be there tomorrow to handle everything. They’ll make sure to get everything you left behind, and replace anything that may be missing.”

“I’m going to be fine, Dad,” I said. I meant it.

“I know that,” he said. “Call me tomorrow. And if Robert shows up looking for you, my advice is to kick him in the nuts as hard as you possibly can.”

“I love you, Dad,” I said.

“I love you, too.”

I’m twenty-eight years old, and I’ve never really felt close to my father. He is such a powerful man, and rather than admire that, as many little girls do, I resented it. My father never made me feel like I was the most important person in his life. He was always at a meeting or on the phone or coming home just before my bedtime, in time for me to put my arms around his enormous shoulders and give him a kiss and then scoot off to bed before I could bother him at the end of a long day. Maybe that’s what appealed to me about Robert. He’s another one who is always on the phone or at a meeting, and maybe he spent more time with me than my father did because I was of greater use to him than I was to my dad. Maybe I married him because he reminded me of my father.

None of that is too much fun to think about.

But here’s the good news. As of this moment, I am free. I am in paradise, and all I want to do is exercise and soak in the sun and the salt in the air. I don’t need a husband to do any of that, and I don’t need to be the little girl whose father didn’t want her either. Today, when I really needed him, my father was there. That counts. It doesn’t make up for everything, but it makes a difference.

And so, I waved to the manager to ask for a room and another plate of fruit. I felt wonderful. And I hadn’t stopped crying yet, but I was really sure that once I did everything was going to be all right.