She finds the container of cashews in her bag, chews one thoughtfully. This trying on of dresses: hard to square with her principles, but it makes her want to eat less. She wants to look beautiful. People will remember them as they were on their wedding day, and she wants to be remembered as having looked perfect. It matters, and if it’s stupid that it matters, well, then so be it.
Sarah thinks again of that photograph, Lulu in her gown, less beatific than stunned. They’d dressed the part but in fact, they’d eloped, the two of them, visited a federal judge of Huck’s acquaintance. Was Lulu sad, Sarah wonders, marrying a man her parents had never met, thousands of miles from home? Does it matter how you get married or only that you do? She hasn’t thought yet about who will actually pronounce them husband and wife, who will represent the state, the only god she and Dan actually believe in. She’s been to those weddings where a friend of the couple did the thing, earning his credentials online, which surely illustrated something important about religion. Their love is important, but she can’t think of anything that approaches the sacred in her life, the sort of spirit that inspired great cathedrals, mass hallucinations, civil wars. Their wedding, however it will be, it feels smaller than God. A church is out of the question.
She actually shakes her head as though to dispel the thoughts of the divine. There doesn’t seem to be time for that now. It’s probably an intellectual response to the sheer stupidity of shopping, a sad state because for a long time shopping was all she ever wanted to do. She and Lauren, nosing around the boutiques near Washington Square Park, which were for college kids and therefore irresistible, considering a nose piercing, a pair of thick-soled boots, glittery nail polish, or she and Lauren, uptown at the sort of store Lulu liked, considering a miniature leather backpack, a flowery cotton dress by Betsey Johnson, that sexy unisex perfume in the smooth glass flask. The trying on of dresses, even then, was no fun, not if they were both trying the same thing, because it was clear on whom it would look better. But the Longchamp bag, the dangly earrings, the perfume—with those, it didn’t matter who looked better, and Sarah was the one with the allowance, and later, the credit card. Lauren had saved for that Kate Spade wallet, but she just had less to keep inside it.
Sarah needs that Lauren, the old Lauren. They held each other in mutual thrall. Everything was exciting. Now, so little seems to be, or at least, so little seems to be to Lauren. Sarah doesn’t want this to be true of herself; she doesn’t want to be a cynic. She fiddles with the button to open the window. A bit more breeze might be nice. Yes, the dress thing, it’s humiliating, but she’s going to have to find a way to get excited about it. She’s hungry, but the fresh, bracing air on her face might waken her, stir her, change her. She looks at her phone.
Chapter 7
The celebrity chef is crying into the telephone. These are her plaints: computer trouble, moving to a new office, the death of her dog, the firing of an embezzling assistant. This is above Lauren’s pay grade. This calls for more than she, with that “associate” lodged firmly before her title, is able to affect, to mitigate. What can she say to this but “There, there.” She’s no confessor. She cannot prescribe. She can only listen, listen as the litany turns to tirade. The celebrity chef, she is angry: disappointed by technology, dismayed by the relocation, betrayed by the pettiness of thievery and the grim fact of death itself.
“That’s terrible” is what Lauren manages. This is what it’s come to. She has ideas, chefs she’d love to work with, writers whose work she admires, themes that might be interesting books, events that might actually generate some press attention, but here she is, cooing to a stranger over the telephone.
The woman continues, her impeccable Cuban accent cracking, a coarse edge peeking through, a frayed hem, a shame. It makes Lauren like her better. It makes her remember their impolitic teasing, as kids, about Sarah’s being Latina. It’s there, lodged at the very heart of her name—Sarah Rojas Thomas, corruption or compromise of Venezuelan convention, Lulu’s maiden name as her middle name—and she and their other friends, idiots every one of them, had thought it hilarious, at certain moments, to imply that Sarah was the maid. They lacked the imagination to think of other occupations for a woman named Rojas.