A Fortunate Age by Joanna Smith Rakoff

Author:Joanna Smith Rakoff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2009-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

“Yeah,” Dave told her. “They haven’t been together in a while. She has a boyfriend, some anarchist guy. That’s how all this started. She met this guy.” The girls looked at one another, skeptically. They were wondering, he knew, if they should go over and rescue Emily from the clutches of this Married Man. “It’s definitely over,” he told them confidently, though he wasn’t entirely sure this was true. “I mean, they were teenagers. It wasn’t a real marriage. It’s like if Beth and I had gotten married.” Immediately, he regretted this last part, though it was certainly true. All the girls looked down into their cups, stealing furtive, embarrassed glances at Beth, who had gone all red, and Meredith, who was nodding, oblivious to Dave’s gaffe.

“Hey,” came a voice across the garden, and they all turned to see Ed Slikowski making his way toward them, pushing his dark hair out of his eyes. “I put some beer in the fridge, man,” he told Dave, shaking his hand. “This is a great place.”

“Thanks, man.” Ed Slikowski flummoxed Dave. He was always just a little too nice. From Dave’s experience, someone like Ed—for whom doors seemed to open as he walked by (he was making a movie? How?)—should be a complete ass.

“Ed!” cried Lil, rising up to kiss his cheek.

“Ed!” called Tuck, putting down his tongs and striding over to them. He handed Lil a hot dog and shook Ed’s hand. Great, thought Dave, now I’ve gotta cook again. A small crowd had formed around Ed, including Will Chase—it killed Dave, the way he glanced at Beth proprietarily—and those odious Green-Golds, whom Lil had indeed brought along. Um, this is my party, he thought sullenly. Fuck it, he thought. The hot dogs can burn.

But then, across the garden, Curtis and Emily moved from the table to the grill, where they stood companionably, shoulder to shoulder, prodding the hot dogs. Emily’s breasts were rather in evidence, pooching out of the low neck of her dress, and it made Dave a little embarrassed to see it. The girls all thought Emily’s problem was that she wasn’t willing to give anyone a chance. She’d go out on one or two dates, then decide the guy was wrong for her. But Dave—who spent a lot of time at parties with Emily and who was, after all, a guy —thought that the trouble was, in fact, the exact opposite. That she tried too hard. Introduce her to some guy she might really like and suddenly she became coy and flirtatious, pouting her lips and putting on what Lil called her “stage face,” which meant that she arranged her features in such a way as to indicate “happy” and “upbeat” and “sexy.” But when she spoke to men she didn’t care about she was her sweet, cool self. And of course these men pursued her, to no avail.

Which category would Curtis fall into? It didn’t really matter, because there was no way Curtis would be interested in Emily.

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