Having only two weeks to go before the wedding in which to win Douglas back, I got to work immediately the following morning. Douglas hadn’t emailed me back yet from the other day, but that didn’t matter. First order of business—call him at work, tell him I forgive him and I am ready to move on. A phone call would be much better than sending an email I didn’t even know if he ever received. For all I know, that email could be lost somewhere in cyberspace.
I picked up the phone and, as it began to ring, a smile came to my face. This was easy. Now, why hadn’t I thought of this sooner? It felt good to be proactive. Peace and order would be restored to the universe, at this pace, by lunchtime—1 p.m., the latest. God, I'm good.
“This is Brooke calling,” I said to Douglas’s secretary. Dead silence on the line. “Brooke Miller,” I explained, “his girlfriend.” Close enough, right? “What’s that?” I asked, “He’s in a meeting? All right then. When do you expect him to be back? . . . . Oh, you’re not sure. . . . Okay.”
So, he was in a meeting. A minor glitch. That was all right, though, Rome wasn’t built in a day. And it most certainly wasn’t built in two hours. I could wait.
When I hadn’t heard back by 11, I decided to give him a call again. After all, how long could his meeting really take? In the course of the two years that I’d been with Douglas, I never really figured out precisely what it was that he did for a living. I just knew that it was something financial that entailed the wearing of expensive custom made Italian suits.
“Oh, he’ll be back at 1?” I said, tapping my pen on the tip of my desk, “I’ll call him then.”
Back at 1? That was okay. It would be a good opportunity to get some work done. What with the stress of the whole break-up and all, my billables really had been quite low. Time for the big time lawyer to earn her big time salary. First order of business, some computer research for the Healthy Foods case. I was such a woman of the millennium—multi-tasking at its best. I would get back my man, and get some quality billable hours in. All in one morning. God, I’m good.
Two hours later, I hadn’t done an ounce of billable work, but I did manage to pick up some killer boots on sale at Saks. What? If I was going to get back my man, I’d have to look good!
“Oh, he’s out to lunch now?” I said to Douglas’s secretary at 1 p.m., “Got it. And, when do you expect him back exactly?” Tap, tap, tap.
“What has that pen ever done to you?” Jack asked, appearing in my doorway just as I slammed the phone down. “Let’s go pick up something for lunch.”
“Okay,” I said, “But only if it’s quick. I have a lot of work to do. Which you should know, since you assigned it to me.”
“And who do we bill shopping at Saks to these days?” he asked. Note to self: must seriously consider moving computer screen so that it is out of the eyeshot of office visitors. Have been meaning to do so ever since a partner caught me reading a forwarded email entitled: “Ladies, learn to love your fat rolls,” but I forgot. Now, moving the computer screen was definitely in order.
“I wasn’t shopping at Saks,” I informed Jack, minimizing the screen as I did, “I was at Saks dot com. Big difference. In fact, sometimes there is entirely different merchandise on the website. You really need to be more precise if you want to be a good litigator, you know.”
“Duly noted,” he said as he motioned for me to come with him with a flick of his wrist.
“And anyway,” I said, grabbing my pocketbook from underneath my desk, “I suppose that it would be the same billing code that you and your friends use for your fantasy football league.” (Because I already was a good litigator.)
“Clever,” Jack said, opening the door to my office for me and following me out, “But, the relationships I foster with my colleagues will pay off later tenfold. A fantasy football league is the equivalent of playing golf with your business contacts. You see, all of those lawyers at various large firms throughout the city will someday be CEOs, CFOs and in-house counsel to some of the country’s largest and most important corporations. And when the time comes, I won’t even need to go out looking for business—the business will simply come to me. All because of my fantasy football league. So, I should really be billing that to client development.”
“Wow,” I said as Jack stuck his arm out to hold the elevator door open for me.
“You see, Brooke, I already am an excellent litigator,” he said, and pressed the button for ‘Lobby.’ Touche. “So, what do you feel like eating?”
“I’ll have whatever you want,” I replied. “I’m easy.”
“I was going to get a chicken parm sub at the pub around the corner. You feel like a sub?”
We walked in to the sushi place around the corner and I promptly informed Jack that I did not have time to eat there—we would have to get our orders to go—because I had so much work to do. That he had assigned me. (Read: go back to the office and call Douglas again.) But then Jack pointed out that sushi really is best when it’s fresh. Which is totally true. So, we got a table near the window and sat down to eat. But, I ate very, very quickly because, as I told Jack, I really, truly, deeply wanted to get back to the office to get my work done. That he had assigned me. Because really, I can be very conscientious when I want to be.
After a much needed lunch break with Jack (What? Getting back your man can be hard work!), I got back to my desk at 2 p.m., and Douglas’s secretary’s story had not changed. I was perplexed. If Douglas had so many meetings, how did the man find the time to meet another woman, start dating said other woman, fall in love and get engaged? That guy really knew how to manage his time.
As I plotted out my next move, the phone rang. I checked the caller ID and it came up as “anonymous.” I normally don’t pick up the telephone at work unless I recognize the number, preferring instead to let my secretary pick it up and announce the caller, but Douglas’s calls usually came in as “anonymous,” so I dove for the phone.
“Brooke Miller,” I said, trying to sound sweet and professional, like the kind of woman who a man would most definitely want to get back together with and take to her ex-boyfriend’s wedding.
“Hi, is this Brooke Miller?” a voice asked. I didn’t recognize the voice. I couldn’t believe I’d wasted a good ‘Brooke Miller’ on a voice I didn’t recognize.
“Yes,” I said, already flipping my computer screen back on and checking my email.
“My name is Sandy Korn and I do attorney placement. Do you have some time now to talk?”
It’s such a funny question to ask a litigator when she’s at work. Time to talk. A litigator never has time to talk unless it’s billable. Granted, I hadn’t done any billable work all day, but the point was that I did not, in fact, have time to talk to this woman. My non-billable time today was being spent on plotting ways to get back my man and shopping online for outfits that would assist me in getting back said man.
And I love the term “attorney placement.” It’s as if they think that even though you’re smart enough to graduate law school, pass the New York bar, and become an attorney, you won’t get the fact that they’re headhunters. Headhunters start calling attorneys at big firms the minute you walk in the door, offering promises of smaller firms with better hours and perfect in-house counsel positions at prestigious corporations. It’s good to know there are options, but more often than not the headhunters just want to move you to some other big firm and take their 30% cut of your vastly overblown salary.
“Sorry, I don’t have the time,” I said, picking up a nail file from my desk and fixing a crack in my thumb nail.
“Maybe some other time?” she asked. “Let me ask you, are you still happy at Gilson Hecht?”
“Yes,” I said, “for now I am. But, I suppose you can always hold on to my number. Thanks for calling.”
I hung up the phone and realized that I filed my thumb nail into a strange hexagonal shape. Figuring that I had the rest of the evening to get some really good billable work done/get back my man, I dashed out to the nail place around the corner from my office.
5 p.m.—one manicure, pedicure, and ten minute mini-massage later—and Douglas’s secretary was still standing firm. I should never have encouraged him to get her such an expensive Christmas gift last year. If I’d let him give her the $10 Godiva truffles he wanted to give instead of insisting on the $100 facial gift certificate at Elizabeth Arden, I’d be talking to Douglas right now.
Tap, tap, tap.
Tap, tap, tap, splat! All over my best going out/getting back your man pants. Ugh. No wonder my dry cleaner wears a fur coat in the winter. It’s not what you’re thinking, though. It was one of those fancy desk pens. I think that they are, by their very nature, much more delicate than those regular pens.
6 p.m. and at last, I got a different story from the gatekeeper. Douglas was (finally!) not in another meeting. He had left for the day. I threw a Bic across my office, hitting the door. (It didn’t break. I told you so.)
One more non-billable hour later, at 7 p.m., I decided to call him at home. That was it! I would leave him a sweet, sexy message saying that I forgave him, and suggest that to celebrate, we should go to California for Trip’s wedding. Perfect. I shut the door to my office and practiced what I would say to the answering machine.
I dialed the number—my old phone number—and waited for the answering machine to pick up. I knew that he wouldn’t be home since he usually met up with clients for drinks after work. He didn’t have a cell phone that I could call because he didn’t own one. Douglas considered using cell phones rude. Now, I can’t help but laugh—apparently for Douglas, speaking on a cell phone in public is rude, but sleeping with another woman when you’re living with someone else is, on the other hand, perfectly acceptable in polite society.
“Hello?” a female voice answered. Who the hell was picking up our telephone? Someone had broken into our apartment. I had to call the police! “Police, a cat burglar has broken into my old apartment, and is answering the phone!”
“Gilson Hecht?” the cat burglar asked into the phone. How did she know where I was calling from? My goodness, the burglar was psychic! “Police, a psychic cat burglar has broken into my old apartment!”
Using my super-litigator powers of deduction, I soon realized that the firm’s name and number must have come up on caller ID. I quickly hung up the phone as Beryl was still saying “Hello? Hello?” (Yes, my super litigator skills told me that, too.)
Beryl. Is that woman using my phone? The very phone I bought for Douglas? Well, didn’t exactly buy for him, but the phone I totally used when I lived there! Has she moved in already? God, that man moves fast! He and I at least waited a month!
By 7:30 p.m., I had Plan B in effect: I would reconvene a special court session at our local watering hole to discuss the matter further and figure out a Plan C. Yes, Plan B consisted solely of gathering the troops—Vanessa and Jack—but give me a break! I was under a lot of stress here!
After picking Vanessa up at her office, we snuck down the back stairwell so as to avoid any partners who might catch us leaving before we had actually collapsed from exhaustion. We got to the gym at Public School 142 just in time to slip in for the last few minutes of the firm intramural basketball game against the lawyers from Arby Schweitzer.
The bleachers were completely empty, so Vanessa and I took front row seats. The gym floor was scattered with briefcases and redwelds full of documents with a row of Blackberries lined up perfectly on the front row bench. Jack’s Blackberry stood out in the crowd since one of his nieces had decorated it with Strawberry Shortcake stickers so that he would never lose it.
Vanessa sat down on the bleachers quietly and tucked her bag underneath her legs. I, on the other hand, sat down and knocked over the entire row of Blackberries, which fell tumbling to the gymnasium floor like a set of very expensive Dominoes. None of the Gilson Hecht associates seemed to care, since our firm pays for its unfettered 24/7 access to its associates, but judging from the looks on the Arby Schweitzer team’s faces, I got the feeling that their firm did not. As I crawled on the floor picking them up as subtly as I could, I saw Jack give me a tiny smile and a slight wave. He was wearing a Gilson Hecht tee shirt with a long sleeve tee shirt underneath and had the sleeves pushed all the way up to his elbows. Jack had a million freckles covering his arms, but barely any on his face.
The score was tied and there were just a few minutes left on the clock. I puzzled over Jack’s choice of crunch time lineup: rounding out his usual starters (the two other attorneys in our department who were over six feet tall), he had Billie Cooper, a fourth year corporate associate and Bob Frohman, a second year tax associate, on the court.
While Billie Cooper was the tallest girl in the entire corporate department standing at five foot nine, I knew that she frequented the nail place around the corner from our office almost as often as I did. Now, I’m no basketball player, but I’m pretty sure that you need to use your hands to do it. Although I did meet Michael Jordan once and he had lovely hands. But, I digress.
Bob Frohman from tax was so timid, I could swear that I’d never actually heard him speak. And I had a sneaking suspicion that half of the tax department hadn’t, either. At five foot four, even Billie was taller than him. When I would pass him in the hallways at work, he always looked as if he was terrified of his own shadow. At a large law firm, that sort of thing could be considered normal what with how stressful the work is, but Bob looked that way all the time. I once saw him at another tax associate’s birthday party and there he stood, in a corner all night, looking downright scared, speaking to no one the entire time. I imagined that if you ever did speak to him, no sound would come out of his mouth. Or, if it did, he would have nothing else to discuss but the Internal Revenue Code. I could not, for the life of me, figure out why Jack had put him in the game at such a crucial moment.
The ball was in play, and I sat forward on my seat, anxious for a Gilson Hecht victory.
Two minutes left on the clock.
I called out “Defense” and Vanessa shot me a dirty look. (Even though everyone knows that when you have courtside seats, you simply have to yell out “defense.”) Billie was holding her own on the court—paired against an Arby Scheweitzer attorney who towered over her, she managed to block a few shots. Even Vanessa was moved to lean over to quietly tell me how well she thought Billie was playing. (Vanessa never really did get into the spirit of courtside seats.) The clock was down to a minute and Billie stole the ball from the player she was defending and passed it to Jack. He practically flew up the court towards the Gilson Hecht basket, leaving the Arby Schweitzer attorneys in his wake.
Vanessa and I sat forward in our seats, ready for Jack’s big slam dunk. He got all the way down the court and paused for a moment. The breath was caught in my chest as I puzzled over just what Jack was doing. He dribbled, and then passed the ball. Passed the ball to Bob Frohman. To Bob Frohman? What on earth was he doing? Was he losing the game on purpose? Was he trying to lose a bet?
Thirty seconds left on the clock.
Bob looked just as confused as everyone else as he caught the ball (barely).
“You got it, Bob,” Jack said with a nod, as he looked on and threw his long arms out to block an opposing player.
Bob bounced the ball down once and then went for it. He threw it up towards the basket and everyone whipped their heads around to see if it would go in or not. The ball circled the rim, slowly, taking its time, like the tiny silver ball on a roulette wheel. The clock buzzer rang, signifying the end of the game, and everyone looked on, watching the ball go round and round. Everyone was frozen, heads tilted up, waiting for the final verdict.
The room stayed silent until, finally, the ball fell through the hoop with a tiny whoosh and the Gilson Hecht team erupted into a chorus of screams and yells. Everyone was screaming, jumping (myself included, and even Vanessa)—everyone except Bob. He stood frozen, still looking at the basket, not registering that it had actually gone in. The team dove into a huge group hug, and Jack grabbed Bob to get him in on it. At first tentative, Bob quickly fell into it, smiling and laughing. Jack directed the team to all put their hands into the center of the circle as he counted down from three.
“Three, two, one,” he called out as the team joined him in screaming, “Gilson Hecht!”
Jack led the team in shaking the hands of the Arby Schweitzer players and then off the court. Bob looked like a kid in a candy store as he lined up to shake the other players’ hands.
Vanessa and I rushed up to congratulate Jack.
“How did you know he would make it?” I asked Jack as he threw a towel onto his head.
“I didn’t,” he said, as he disappeared into the men’s locker room. Ten minutes later, he reemerged with a wet head and we were off to our local watering hole.
This being New York, our local watering hole was actually the bar of a fabulously trendy new midtown hotel. It boasted views of the Empire State Building and Central Park, but New Yorkers are far too cool to act as if they care about such things. After all, someone might— gasp—mistake you for a tourist.
For a mere $18, you can have a martini so fancy, it even comes with a little orchid floating on top. Unless you order the apple martini. That one comes with an apple slice. Or a chocolate martini. That one comes with a Hershey’s kiss on top. But, you get what I mean.
Only open for two weeks, already, the place was generating a huge buzz over the waitresses walking around clad only in slips. I was unsure if the fuss was about the women being nearly nude, or if it was offensive merely because slip dresses are totally out of fashion.
“Beryl moved in already,” I told them once we had secured a prime table near the window, overlooking the Empire State.
“So what?” Vanessa said, “You were too good for that piece of trash anyway. Let him have someone on his own level.” She set her enormous black Louis Vuitton work bag on the extra chair at the table.
“I agree,” Jack said, setting his redweld full of discovery requests down on the extra chair next to Vanessa’s bag and putting his navy sportsjacket on the back of his own, “Good riddance to bad garbage.”
“Yeah,” Vanessa continued, “Beryl isn’t even a name!”
“I don’t really think that we should be making judgments based on the poor girl’s name, though,” Jack said.
“No matter what her name is,” Vanessa explained, “we automatically hate her. We love Brooke, we hate Beryl. That’s just the way it is.”
The waitress came to our table. Vanessa ordered an apple martini and I ordered a French martini. Truth be told, I didn’t very much care for the taste of it, but it came adorned with that little flower, which I loved. Jack opted for a beer. A very fancy and expensive beer, but a beer nonetheless. Jack always told us that guys who went to college in the Midwest order beer as a matter of course—as if it was some sort of religious thing or a condition of keeping your diploma from the University of Michigan in good standing. Jack offered up his credit card to begin a tab, which he also always assured us was another throwback to good old fashioned Midwestern values. Even though he, himself, grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia.
“Why were you even calling him?” Jack asked, “hasn’t he done enough damage already?”
“I thought I’d try to get him back so that we could go to Trip’s wedding together and I could keep my dignity ever so slightly intact and things could be perfect again.”
“But, Brooke, they weren’t perfect before,” Jack said. I turned to him to find him looking me dead in the eye. I had to turn away from his gaze.
“And, anyway,” Vanessa said, “What is he? Cattle? Get him? How very cavewoman of you, Brooke.” She adjusted her bateau neck cashmere sweater as the waitress set our $18 martinis down on the table.
“Get back my man,” I explained, pulling my hair out of its bun and pushing it behind my ears.
“How very country Western of you,” Jack said, taking a sip of his beer.
“Look, it’s not like there is some law saying that you have to go to your ex-boyfriend’s wedding or something,” Vanessa tried to reason. “In fact, there should be a law against it. Save yourself the pain. I won’t go, either, if you want. Do you really think that his ice queen bride even wants you there?
“Actually, I’ve heard that she’s really very nice,” I said, removing the flower from my drink and setting it on the napkin.
“Yes, if I was a stunning Academy Award nominated actress with noble blood, I’m quite certain that I would be, what did you call her, nice, as well.” Way to help out my ego, there, Vanessa. “She does have a title, doesn’t she?”
“I forget,” I said, my eyes floating over to the view.
“She’s a countess,” Jack chimed in, sipping his beer. “Or an empress. Some ‘ess.’ I’m not sure exactly what.”
“Not helping,” I said under my breath. I fingered the cocktail napkin that was under my drink.
“I saw this whole special on her on ‘Entertainment Tonight’ when she was nominated for that Oscar last year,” Jack explained.
“Still not helping,” I said a little louder. I ripped my cocktail napkin into two pieces. And then into four.
“Oh my God, I totally saw that, too!” Vanessa exclaimed.
“Yeah, she’s part of the royal family of some obscure Asian country,” Jack continued. Jiaolong, to be exact. A tiny island-nation nestled between China and Taiwan, population just under fifty thousand, native language: Mandarin Chinese, main export: fish. Not like I googled her or her country or anything. Who doesn’t know Jiaolong?
“Can we get back to me, please!” I said, my napkin now in eight pieces. “What am I going to do about this goddamn wedding? I RSVP’d yes and it’s in two weekends. It is, like, totally rude to cancel now. They probably already have their count in.” I took a big swig of my martini for effect.
“Well,” Vanessa said, sipping hers, “it’s not like Trip isn’t rich enough to pay for one extra person who doesn’t come.”
I guess she was right. I could just go to the wedding by myself. I mean, who needs to have a man on your arm when you are a woman of the new millennium? In many ways, having the right pair of shoes is much more important for an ex-boyfriend’s wedding than having a man on your arm. I mean, can having a man on your arm make your feet look so cute you could die? I don’t think so. Can having a man on your arm make you look three and a half inches taller, thus making you look like a svelte 5 foot 8 supermodel as opposed to the 5 foot 4 and a half little shrimp you truly are? No. Can having a man on your arm make your butt and thighs look ten pounds thinner? I think not! So, I ask you: who needs to have a man on her arm?
Okay, I didn’t even convince myself on that one.
“Two,” I pointed out, placing the sixteen pieces of my cocktail napkin back on the table. A slip-dress clad waitress skimmed by our table, knocking my napkin bits to the floor like pieces of confetti. I grabbed for them, but they slipped through my fingers.
“Two extra people,” Vanessa continued, without missing a beat. “He’s only, like, one of the biggest agents in Hollywood.”
“Exactly,” Jack agreed, “and it’s not like his fiancé, Ava, the empress or countess or whatever she is, is hurting for cash.”
“Still not helping!” I said, lifting Jack’s beer to make a play for his cocktail napkin. “I get it. My ex is fabulously successful and wealthy and is marrying a woman who is fabulously successful and wealthy.”
“And hot,” Jack said. Hot? I suppose she was okay looking if you consider that whole petite-dancer’s-body-with-flawless-alabaster-skin-long-flowing-black-hair-and-face-of-an-angel thing attractive.
“And has a title,” Vanessa said.
“Not! Helping!”
“And here you are with no boyfriend, no ring, and no Oscar nomination,” Vanessa said, patting my head as if I were a child who had just lost her school’s Spelling Bee.
“That pretty much sums it up,” I agreed. “Can we get some more cocktail napkins here?” I asked the scantily clad waitress who was now delivering round two.
“Come on!” Jack said. “You are a brilliant attorney at one of the largest and most prestigious firms in New York City. You have a wonderful family, and, if I do say so myself, wonderful friends. In your spare time you volunteer at a nursing home. That’s our Brooke. That pretty much sums it up.”
Jack was right. I was a big time lawyer at a big time law firm. I had a wonderful family and friends. And, I volunteered at a nursing home, to boot! Sometimes I forgot how wonderful I truly was. Although, I hadn’t really had time to volunteer much, what with my caseload and all. And that sort of thing isn’t billable. But, I really think that it’s the thought that counts with those things.
“Wait!” Vanessa cried, putting both hands on the table as if she was about to yell out ‘Eureka!’ or ‘Bingo!’ or something equally as thrilling. “That’s perfect. You can tell Trip that you can’t go because of your volunteering duties at the nursing home!”
“Oh, yes,” I said. “Hi, Trip, I can’t make it to your wedding because I have to play Yahtzee with the elderly.”
Vanessa removed her hands from the table and admired the view.
“Just don’t go,” she said, head still turned out to the Empire State.
“That is not an option.”
“People get sick, don’t they?” she asked, head still turned. “Just pretend you’re sick.”
“Yes,” Jack said, “she can say that she caught something fierce spending all that time at the nursing home.”
“Okay, then,” Vanessa said, turning her head back to the table, “you should totally pay some hot escort dude to go and pretend to be Douglas. It would be hysterical. We could totally pretend that Douglas has a title, too! The wedding’s out in California, so it’s not like anyone would know! He does have an accent, after all.”
“Just because you have an accent, you think that people assume that you’re royalty?” I asked.
“Douglas certainly acted as if he thought he was royalty,” Jack said.
“No,” Vanessa explained, “an accent just makes it less of a stretch.”
“Yes,” Jack said, “and with all of those Hollywood egomaniacs there, it’s not like anyone would really notice you, anyway. You could just be the stunning, mysterious lawyer with the international man of mystery on your arm.”
“In a skirt,” I pointed out.
“In a skirt,” Vanessa said, lifting her arms to the table again.
“But, with a title,” Jack said.
“With a title,” Vanessa sang.
“This could actually work, you know,” I said, gulping down the contents of martini number two. I think I may have gulped the flower, too, in my haste.
“Yeah,” Vanessa laughed, finishing her martini, too, “except for the fact that I was totally kidding!”
“No, really,” I said, “this could totally work. This is the solution,” I said, motioning for our waitress to come over.
“No more martinis for you,” Jack said.
“He’s right. No more martinis for me,” I said to the waitress, “Three shots of Southern Comfort, please.”
“And exactly where do you think you will be able to find this hot escort dude on such short notice?” Vanessa asked.
“And, more importantly,” Jack asked, “did we learn nothing from ‘Risky Business’?”
“Well, then, I won’t use a hot escort dude,” I explained.
“You won’t do it at all because it is totally insane!” Vanessa laughed.
I looked at Jack.
“Oh, I know that look,” he said, “Don’t even think about it.”
But, I kept looking at him. With that look. You know that look. That look of seduction. That look that you use to get what you want, when you want it. The type of look you’d use at the post office when you really, really, really need to get your package out that day and they tell you that you filled out the wrong form and you have to go back and get it and you do, only, you really, really, really don’t want to wait on the line again, so you sort of smile that smile and pray that the man will take pity on you/want to sleep with you/think you’ll like him if he’ll be nice to you. That look.
“That’s the look she gives word processing when she wants her job to get done before everyone else’s,” Jack said.
“That’s the look she gives at Bergdorf’s when she wants the salesman to pull out every size 9 that’s on sale,” Vanessa said.
“What?” he asked.
“Oh, just look at her feet, man. Run while you have the chance!”
“You are a frustrated actor, Jackie....” I explained, hanging a little too long on the pronunciation of each word. The sweet talk is a quintessential part of the look. Although I wouldn’t recommend using that part at the post office. For the post office, the mere look itself usually suffices.
But it was true. Jack was one of those lawyers who started out thinking that it was a day job (never mind those silly people who actually dream of becoming a lawyer). Jack made a deal with himself (and his father) after graduating college with a joint degree in Drama and English— he would give his childhood dream of acting two years. If he wasn’t a success (read: couldn’t pay the rent on his fifth floor walk-up studio apartment), he would go to law school and become a lawyer like his father, the federal judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, wanted him to be. Even though he spent his two years after graduation waiting tables and going on countless auditions, he never made it big, getting only enough jobs to give him hope, but not enough to actually pay his bills. To his father’s delight, Jack reluctantly made good on his end of the deal and went to law school once his two years were up.
Jack enrolled in his father’s alma mater and didn’t look back, throwing himself into the law as vehemently as he did everything else in his life. I always thought that he had to throw himself in with as much vigor as he could in order to make himself forget that it wasn’t what he truly wanted to do. He made Law Review, Moot Court, got his Student Note published, and was the President of the Student Bar Association. And he somehow still managed to be in the top ten percent of his class. Vanessa and I made Law Review at our law school, too, but it was only because we didn’t do anything else besides study. And shop for shoes, but back then, such trips were considerably less intense what with our student budgets. What? You need to release your law school stress somehow.
But, Jack still was—and I guess probably always would be beneath the navy sportsjacket—an actor at heart. In going to law school, he discovered that the natural place for any frustrated actor is in the courtroom. He became a litigator in the vain hope that someday he would be in a courtroom where he could dramatically yell: “I’m out of order? You’re out of order! This whole courtroom is out of order!” (When in reality, we litigators know that it’s much more likely that you’d exclaim: “You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth!”)
“Let me get this straight,” Jack said. “I told you that I would save the day and go with you to this wedding.”
“Yes,” I said.
“And you said no,” he said.
“Well, if you want to be technical about it,” I said. I couldn’t believe he was being so difficult. Didn’t he still feel badly about the whole dating me for twenty-seven hours and then rejecting me thing? How quickly they forget. Men can be so insensitive sometimes.
“But now, you want to go to this wedding with me, pretending to be Douglas?”
“Did we not explain the power of an accent to you? Anyway, Trip is expecting me and my skirt-wearing boyfriend, not me and some other guy.”
“No way in hell,” he said, turning away. He grabbed his shot of Southern Comfort and downed it.
“Come on! It would be a great role for you. Great practice.”
“Brooke, you have officially lost your mind,” Vanessa offered.
“And offended me,” Jack offered, but neither of us was really listening to him.
“Pleeeeease?”
“Luckily for me, I don’t act anymore,” Jack said, brushing his shaggy hair out of his eyes. Was that his strongest argument? He was going to have to try harder than that.
“Pretty pleeeeease?”
“And, even if I did, I certainly would never condescend to play Douglas of all people,” he said.
“Pretty pleeeeease with sugar on top?”
“That fact, coupled with the fact that I also hate L.A., makes it highly unlikely that you will be able, within the course of the next two weeks, to convince me to go with you to L.A. and perpetrate a fraud on the entire Scottish community.”
“So your answer is no?” I asked, eyelashes batting. For the record, I never had this much trouble at the post office.
“No,” he said, turning away from me and leaving the table for effect.
Famous last words.