“I have neighbors.”
“PAHHHHH-HHHHH-HHHHH-HHHHH-HHHHH-HHHHH-H!”
“Someone might call nine one one.”
“PAHHHHH-HHHHH-HHHHH-HHHHH-HHHHH-HHHHH-H!”
“Fine. Fine. Fine. I’ll do it if you’ll stop. PAHHHHH-HHHHH-HHHHH-H!”
With the primal scream lingering in the air, the doorbell buzzed.
“Who’s here?” CJ looked miffed to have her shouting session interrupted.
“Ivy, I think.”
CJ made a face in defiance of her Botox. “Is she as hot and young and perky as ever?”
“She’s not that perky anymore, to be honest,” Janey whispered as she walked to the door. “Young and hot, yes. Perky, no. In fact, she’s completely different now. I think you might like the new Ivy.”
Ivy was Janey’s gorgeous younger cousin by way of marriage. Just twenty-six, Ivy had been a ballerina with the New York City Ballet until she was hit by the M34 bus riding her bike to Lincoln Center and put into traction, her hip shattered, shoulder dislocated, ankle crushed, and her dream of being the next Misty Copeland kaput. One day another ex-ballerina visited her in the hospital to tell Ivy how she’d reinvented herself doing PR for a place called SoarBarre, “a radical new spin studio for strong women looking to co-create their future selves.” Through a mixture of charisma, charm, and a fuck-all perfect body, Ivy became the star SoarBarre instructor of NYC. She was the poster girl for radical change after Today did a segment on her recounting her terrible accident, expulsion from the ballet world, and subsequent reinvention.
Ivy used to be polite and perky. As a teenager she was one of those girls who peppered each sentence with an affirmation. She was crazy with approval.
Wow, you look amazing, Grandma! Can I borrow those earrings?
You have the best taste ever! What number Benjamin Moore is this absolutely perfect white paint?
Can I ask you a huge, huge favor…would you mind awfully passing the milk? I love your eyebrows.
Isn’t the sky the best ever shade of blue today?
Ivy had been an exceptionally good child and a particularly wonderful niece to Lorna—always offering to help Lorna with her DIY projects when Janey was away, things like constructing an air plant garden on the sun deck or adding banana leaf wallpaper to the downstairs guest bathroom. Lorna Sweet was Pinterest before Pinterest existed.
Ivy’s classes now had a wait list, and she was on the cover of New York magazine’s “Fit New York” issue two months ago—a teensy GI Jane flexing her biceps in a sports bra and microscopic SoarBarre boy shorts under the headline “No Pain, No Gain…Bitches.” Self magazine had her writing a column called Hurt Yourself to Love Yourself. Her bosses at SoarBarre encouraged her to be mean, even abusive to the clientele. They loved it when she shot water guns in their faces as they pedaled up pretend hills. The nastier Ivy behaved, the longer the wait list for her classes. No one in New York City wanted a positive life-affirming spin instructor. Her clients, the ones paying fifty-five dollars for an hour-long class, wanted to be abused. They wanted to be screamed at and tortured, and it went against every sweet cell in her body. Being a bitch at work took a toll on the formerly kind ballerina. She’d allowed it to bleed into her personal life, and made her hate herself.
“Today sucks,” Ivy announced as she walked through Janey’s door. The words sounded incongruous coming out of the mouth of the little blond fairy. “Everything about today sucks.” Janey’s cousin gave her a hug as Boo Radley, the half-blind wirehaired dachshund Janey inherited from her mother, moved between her feet, causing her to stumble.
“Boo Radley is still alive?” Ivy asked incredulously. The dachshund with the incredibly unfortunate name (Janey constantly told Lorna that she must not have fully understood what To Kill a Mockingbird was actually about) was now eighteen years old. Despite losing his eyesight, most of his hearing, and his ability to walk down stairs, Boo remained in good spirits.
“He’s like a roving shag footstool.” Ivy looked down at the dog and finally nudged him aside with her toe to give Janey a hug.
Ivy was skinny, but not in the way Beau’s runway models were skinny. Her muscles were tight and taut, her triceps like hard little peaches, and her butt a perfectly round melon. She had these unbelievably long eyelashes and corn silk white hair, always pulled into a high ponytail. She wore the perfect amount of smudge-free makeup to work out, eyeliner and sweat-proof mascara.
“So what happened? He told you that you weren’t allowed to work because you’re fat? You’re not fat. That’s fucking stupid.” Ivy drummed her turquoise fingernails on Janey’s countertop. “What do you weigh? You look great. Much tighter than some of those obese bitches in my classes.” Ivy clasped her hands over her mouth and collapsed into a chair, a heap of despair wrapped in six hundred dollars’ worth of moisture-wicking performance fabrics. “Listen to me. I’m a gross asshole. That word, ‘bitches,’ was never even in my vocabulary before I started working at SoarBarre. When did I get to be so mean?”
Janey couldn’t help but smile at this new Ivy. Her cousin was a whole different person now. Just a few weeks ago she’d given Ivy the number for her longtime shrink, Ron, to try to help her with her anger.
“I hate Beau,” Ivy spat. “He’s a shady little troll. I’ve always thought he was a shady little troll. I don’t even feel bad saying that.” Ivy pulled a large bottled water out of her purse and began to unscrew the top. A stalk of broccoli was suspended in the container.
Janey sighed. She wouldn’t let Beau force her out of the company she’d built from nothing. Right after she’d left their ill-fated breakfast at the Horse Feather she called the B general counsel, a birdlike woman named Natasha, a disciple at the Temple of Beau. Beau won Natasha’s heart when he paid for her honeymoon to Malta. After Janey reached out, Natasha immediately sent her a memorandum explaining that “in light of her publicly disgracing the brand, the founder and president of the company, Beau Von B., believed it in the best interest of B for her to take a leave of absence of three months’ time.” She could almost hear the polite restraint in Natasha’s legalese.
“I ATE A GODDAMNED BRUFFIN!” Janey screamed into Natasha’s voicemail, since Natasha was the kind of lawyer who knew better than to ever answer her phone when she could bill twice as much for having to listen to a voicemail and then draft an email response.
She consulted her family’s attorney, Ronald Applebaum, who read through the memo, left Natasha his own voicemail, and went back and forth several times with her disembodied messaging system at his steep cost of five hundred dollars per hour, all to come to the conclusion that Beau, with his 51 percent stake in the company, could indeed ask his CEO to take a leave of absence if he felt she was “disgracing” the brand.