twelve

Seeing that Barry was about to leave, Jules moved toward him and smiled up at him from under sooty lashes. “Barry,” she said sweetly, “I wanted to talk to you real quick. I’ve heard a rumor that you’re getting ready to cast The Deposition. If that’s true, I hope you’ll give me an audition. I really think I could nail the role of the prosecutor.”

Barry looked down at Jules, his expression unreadable. Cecelia was less circumspect. She regarded Jules as if she had just sprouted a second head. “Tonight is for celebrating,” Barry said simply. “Not business talk.”

“I know, but …” Jules began with a pretty pout.

Cecelia interrupted her by turning to Christina. “You look absolutely beautiful, Christina,” she said loudly. “Life certainly seems to be agreeing with you.”

Christina smiled as if she were holding back a laugh. “It is,” she said. “Of course, it’s been a great night.”

“The first of many, I’m sure,” predicted Cecelia. Her glance skimmed over John before she added pointedly, “God knows you’ve earned all that and more.”

Barry let out a gruff laugh. “On that note, I think we’ll say our good-byes. Nicole, Nigel,” he said to us, “it was nice meeting you.” Taking Cecelia by the hand, he said, “Come on, my little diplomat, let’s go before you start something.” As he passed Christina, he kissed her cheek. “Enjoy your night, sweetheart,” he said. “I’ll be in touch soon.”

Frank’s brow wrinkled at this exchange. “Barry,” he said, “before you go, I need to talk to you about something.”

Cecelia let out a groan of protest. “Frank! No, I want to go home.”

Frank waved away her concern. “It’ll only take a few minutes, CeCe,” he said.

Cecelia sighed and looked from Barry to Frank. With a resigned shake of her head, she linked her arm through Danielle’s. “Come on, Danny,” she said as she led her away from the table, “Let’s go make ourselves comfortable at the bar. Your father’s idea of a few minutes is an eternity.”

The two women said their good-byes and wandered off to the bar while Barry and Frank headed outside. “If you haven’t come back in half an hour,” Cecelia called over her shoulder to Barry, “I’m leaving without you!”

Barry nodded absently, his head already bent low to hear what his brother-in-law was telling him.

With their departure, the mood shifted. John and Jules now faced a table that was largely Team Christina. Sebastian regarded John with a derisive smirk. Janice pursed her lips and examined Jules as if she were something nasty on the bottom of her shoe. Mandy neatly communicated her own disapproval by simply sitting back in her chair and folding her arms across her chest. As for Christina, she stared at the bottom of her champagne glass as if it held tea leaves.

If John noticed the change in atmosphere, he didn’t react. With his eyes fixed on Christina’s bent head, he said, “Well, congratulations, again, Christina. Good to see Oscar will have another friend to talk to.”

Christina raised her head and held his gaze. Some unspoken memory seemed to pass between them. John’s mouth curved into a faint smile.

The absence of Barry and Frank made Jules bolder. She pressed her body close to John’s, her full lips curved in an over-bright smile as she regarded Christina. “Yes, congratulations, Christina,” she said. “That should certainly shut up the critics who say that Hollywood ignores older women.”

“So, how do you explain why you’re ignored?” Sebastian asked. Jules glared at him. Sebastian leaned back in his chair and smiled. “You seem tense, Jules,” he said, as he appeared to exam her face. “You’re starting to get stress lines. I think you need to find something that will help you relax. What’s that thing called with the needles?” he asked, turning to Christina.

“Acupuncture?” she offered.

“No, that’s not it,” Sebastian said with a thoughtful shake of his head. Suddenly, he snapped his fingers in remembrance. “Heroine!” he cried. “That’s it. You should try heroine, Jules.”

Jules flushed. “You’re a bastard!” she hissed.

Sebastian shook his head as if disappointed. “Now that is tacky, Jules. Have a little decency, will you? After all, my mother is sitting right here.”

What little was left of Jules’s control snapped. “I’ve had about enough of this,” she hissed at Christina. Placing her hands on the linen tablecloth, she leaned forward, shaking off John’s attempts to remove her. With her mouth pinched in anger, her lips brought to mind a mutilated cherry tomato. “No,” she said, her teeth clenched, “this ends now. I swear to God, Christina, if you ever pull another stunt like that pathetic speech you gave tonight, I will personally rip that rotten, black heart of yours right out of your pathetic excuse for a chest.”

Several of us tried—without much success—to suppress smiles. Jules’s voice had once been described as having “the breathy quality of a helium-inhaling porn star.” It was perfectly suited to deliver lines of sultry seduction. Angry threats, however, came off as absurdly comical.

“You’ve painted me to be some home-wreaking whore, and I’m not!” she continued. “It’s not my fault Johnny got sick of you and preferred someone younger, someone prettier, someone …”

“… whose IQ rises to 75 on a warm summer’s day?” offered Christina.

Jules’s face went white under her spray tan. Angry red dots appeared on her cheeks, and her blue eyes narrowed to slits. She took a deep breath and then mouthed a vulgar, two-word suggestion to Christina.

Christina smiled sweetly up at Jules. “Sweetheart,” she said, her voice sounding genuinely regretful, “how many times must we have this conversation? I’ve already told you—I simply can’t do that until you get that rash looked at.”

Jules moved to toss her drink in Christina’s face, but missed and hit Janice instead. Her ensuing rant of profanity would have made even Quentin Tarantino blush. As John dragged Jules away from the table, Nigel turned to me and playfully shoved my arm. “And you worried that life after the force would be dull,” he said.

I raised my glass and toasted his. “Never with you, Mr. Martini. Never with you.”