“Oops, she did it again!” Esther sings to me as she comes sailing into my office.
“Did what?” I say, barely looking up from my research on dissolution of partnership. “Who?”
“Miranda!” Esther says, clearly enjoying the delivery of this news way too much.
“What did she do?” I ask, barely able to choke the words out.
“What does she always do?” Esther says.
But, I don’t have to ask because I already know what Miranda always does.
Sleep with partners. That’s what Miranda does.
I just hope that she hasn’t slept with my partner.
“Who was it?” I say, just as the phone begins to ring.
“Come to my office when you’re off,” Esther whispers, and then disappears before I even have a chance to tell her that I’ll let the call go to voicemail.
I don’t pick the phone up anyway, and instead choose to just stare at my computer screen blankly. Out of habit, I go onto the internet and pull up the Gilson Hecht website. First, as I always do, I type in Vanessa’s name, as if that’s the real reason I’m there. From there, it’s just a few clicks over to the “S” section of the “Our Attorneys” page and I’m at Jack’s profile.
I remember the day he took the picture for the website. Even though the Gilson Hecht attorneys take photographs every year for the firm website, this was the first year he’d be taking his photo as a partner. We obsessed the whole week before over what Jack should wear in his photo. Should he wear his navy single breasted suit, so as to denote ‘serious junior partner on the fast track to becoming an equity partner?’ Or, should he instead go simply with a shirt and a tie, so as to denote ‘serious junior partner who’s just too busy working hard to worry about dressing up all fancy for a silly firm photo?’ In the end, we’d decided on the navy suit, since his shaggy brown hair was always mussed, denoting the ‘too busy working hard to worry about my appearance’ thing all on its own. He wore a pink Chanel tie that I’d bought for him as a gift when he made partner. I put my finger up to the computer screen just as my intercom begins to buzz.
“Excuse me,” my assistant says over my intercom, “Monique deVouvray is on the line for you.”
“Thank you,” I say, and pick up my phone to speak to Monique.
“We had plans to discuss settlement,” Monique says in her thick French accent. “Am I calling at the right time?”
“Yes, of course,” I say, minimizing my computer screen so that I can focus solely on Monique. “What were your thoughts?”
After speaking with Monique for almost an hour, I can barely wait to call Vanessa. At least three different times during my phone call to Monique, I was tempted to email Vanessa to ask her about Miranda. In the end, I decided to wait until my phone conference was over to call her, in case she had bad news to share. Bad news is one thing, but getting bad news over email would just be too much to bear.
“Break it to me gently,” I say to Vanessa, practically closing my eyes to prepare for the news. I had to have Vanessa’s assistant pull her out of a meeting with a new client in order to speak with her, but I simply couldn’t wait another second to hear about what happened with Miranda.
“Break what to you?” Vanessa says back quickly, sounding strangely like a kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar. She was clearly glad to have been sprung from her meeting. “What did you hear?”
“Miranda,” I whisper into my phone. I consider closing my door for a second, but then remember that since no one at SGR ever closes their door, it will actually attract more attention if it’s closed. I whisper: “Please tell me it’s not Jack. Please tell me that she didn’t sleep with Jack.”
“I thought you said that you don’t even care about Jack anymore,” Vanessa says.
“I don’t,” I say back a little too quickly.
“Haven’t your parents been canceling deposits all over town?” she asks. “First the Pierre, then Maximo Floral—”
Why is Vanessa torturing me like this? On the one hand, I’m probably in the clear, since she wouldn’t be goading me if she was about to tell me some horrible news. On the other hand, she just got divorced and maybe now she’s taking her bitterness and angriness out on me.
But, she didn’t sound bitter or angry. She actually sounded rather playful, which is odd, seeing as usually Vanessa doesn’t do playful. Maybe this new guy she’s seeing is making her soft (I never did find out who it was that day at Saks—I blame this on the fact that the café was only selling blueberry scones that day and had been sold out of the chocolate chip. If they’d had chocolate chip, I would’ve been set).
“Just tell me, already!” I say. It comes out sounding a bit crosser than I had intended.
“You’re stealing his grandmother’s ring,” Vanessa says, “Can’t you at least let the man have a few kicks with a junior associate?”
“Oh my God,” I say, practically dropping the phone into my lap. “So, then, it’s true. Jack slept with Miranda.”
“Of course it’s not true!” Vanessa says. “Are you insane!?! Why on earth would Jack sleep with Miranda? A delicate Southern Belle? You know his tastes skew more towards neurotic Jewish girls from Long Island.”
“Do you find this funny?” I say, taking a sip of water from a bottle at the end of my desk.
“Actually,” she says, “I do. I cannot believe you called me out of a meeting for this.”
“It was an emergency,” I say.
“It really would be much easier to help get you and Jack back together if you were living in my apartment like last time.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” I say. “I’m not getting back together with Jack.”
“And you said that you’d never get together with Jack in the first place,” she says, “but, you did. And then when you guys had that fight and didn’t speak for three weeks, you said you’d never talk to him again. But, you did. And then you moved in with him. And then you got engaged to him.”
“But last time was different because I was the one who’d screwed things up. This time, it wasn’t me, it was Jack.”
“Is that what your emergency was?” she asks. “To tell me all that stuff? Because all that stuff, I already knew.”
“No,” I say. “The scandal with Miranda is the emergency.”
“Oh yeah,” she says, “Well, Miranda is, in fact, in yet another scandal with a partner. But it’s not Jack. She got caught in a compromising position in the 14th floor men’s room with the head of the bankruptcy department.”
“Yup.”
“Ew.”
“Yup,” she says. “Classy. She could at least have done it in one of the bathrooms on a reception floor. Those are marble. Much nicer.”
“Ew,” I say, “you just gave me a really disgusting visual.”
Vanessa laughs. “So, can you please get back together with Jack now?”
“No, Vanessa,” I say, “I’m not getting back together with Jack.”
“Why not?” Vanessa asks, “that whole Miranda obsession was completely in your head.”
“I know, Vanessa. I know that. But that wasn’t the real problem, anyway,” I say. “The problem is that Jack isn’t the man that I thought he was.”
“Yes, he is, Brooke,” Vanessa says. “He is.”
“No, he’s not,” I say. “And I would expect you of all people to understand where I’m coming from. It’s the same thing with you and Marcus. Isn’t that what happened? You found out that he wasn’t the man you thought he was?”
“I guess so,” she says, her voice a notch softer than before.
“That’s exactly what happened,” I say. “But, now it seems like you’ve found someone even better, right?”
“Actually, yes,” Vanessa says. I can hear her voice begin to lighten at the mere mention of her mystery man.
“So,” I say slowly, as if approaching a tiny puppy that I don’t want to scare away, “do I get to hear about him?”
“You know, if you were this tenacious in the courtroom—” Vanessa begins.
“Please?” I say, still treading lightly. I’ve almost got her, I can tell. “Hearing about your mystery man will totally cheer me up.”
“Okay, okay,” she says, laughing on the other end of the phone.
“Is as handsome as—” I begin, before catching myself from finishing the thought. I shouldn’t be comparing Vanessa’s new man to Marcus. For one, most men couldn’t possibly compete with Marcus, but also, I don’t want thoughts of her ex to cast a pall on the new love she’s got brewing. “I mean, what I meant to say was, is he handsome?”
“Yes,” she says, “he’s as handsome as Marcus. Even more so, actually. In fact, he’s just like Marcus. Only much, much better.”
“Oh,” I say, unsure of what to say next. If her mystery man knew that she was comparing him to her ex, he would be very unhappy. I puzzle over how to tell that to Vanessa. More importantly, I need to remind her to be careful in bed—nothing would quash her new love affair faster than calling out her ex’s name in the heat of passion.
Not like I know about that from past experience or anything.
“It’s like he’s got everything that Marcus had that I fell in love with, but he’s also got so much more.”
“Just be careful,” I say. And then, as a self-conscious after thought: “Just don’t call him Marcus!”
“I’m fine,” she says, “this time I actually think I know what I’m doing.”
We hang up and I can’t help but smile. I’m so thrilled for Vanessa. She deserves some happiness after all that she’s gone through lately. Going through with a divorce while your best friend is planning her wedding can’t be easy. I truly am happy that she’s figured things out and knows what she’s doing.