Chapter 28
NEW YORK CITY
JULY 8, 2017
AGE: 31
COLD WATER SPLASHED THE UNDERSIDES OF MY THIGHS. I WAS sitting on a heated toilet in the spacious bathroom that I recognized from my previous Memo-assisted visit to this apartment. Evidently, Alex and I had sprung for a little renovation since the last time I’d dropped in. Glazed tiles gleamed behind the his-and-hers sinks, and then there was this yacht of toilet-bidet combos on which I was now perched. When I got up to wash my hands, I noticed a note taped to the mirror.
HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND, MY SWEET DESTINY. SEE YOU ON SUNDAY. A.
My sweet destiny? I almost missed Hal’s laid-back “bruh.”
I picked up the phone charging on the counter and read my instructions for today:
Say yes to Sebastian.
It made a certain sense. I was home alone for the weekend. Everybody else seemed to have their own little secret flings going on. Why not me?
I took half a step back and studied my reflection in the mirror. I was wearing a dress made of white linen—a color and fabric I never normally trusted myself to go near. Yet the garment looked miraculously stain-free and unwrinkled. I angled my head to the side. I liked what I saw. So would Sebastian, whoever he was.
I gave a little jump when I came out of the bathroom. Geeta was in the living room, seated at a small table and puzzling over tiny slips of paper. She moved a rectangle from one end of the cluster to the other. She paused, then let her face fall into her hands. “I am never going to get this right, am I? How on earth did you survive wedding planning?”
“I’m sure that whatever it is you’re doing, you’re doing it perfectly,” I told her.
“At least Matt isn’t here to tell me why we can’t seat his Aunt Deb with anybody who is pro-fracking or who eats tree nuts. He’s even more neurotic about this crap than I am if you can believe it.”
“I can believe pretty much anything,” I said, taking a seat on the sectional couch in the middle of the room. There were two purses on the coffee table, Geeta’s Goyard tote and one I didn’t recognize, made of blue suede and gold hardware. My own, I assumed. I rummaged through the bag’s contents, examining my belongings. The Jenny Green who could be trusted to wear the color white had a quilted Chanel wallet that contained more than five hundred dollars in cash and membership cards to no fewer than four private clubs.
“I put your contraband in the fridge,” Geeta said.
“My what?”
“The iced oat-milk latte. It was starting to look sad. I know how much you hate condensation.”
“Thank you,” I said, tucking the wallet back into my bag.
“And...” she went on, “I ordered sushi. Stress makes me so fucking hungry. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Why on earth would I mind?” I asked.
“Because the operating philosophy of your business is ‘No Animals Ever’?”
“Ah whatever, nobody’ll know,” I said.
Geeta raised her eyebrow and resumed playing with the cards laid out before her. She made a little whimper. “I wish you didn’t have to be at my table. I mean, of course I want you at my table, but I feel like you could handle Aunt Deb better than pretty much anyone. I really can’t see another way out of this.”
“Do whatever you need to do,” I said. “You know I’m here for you.”
“You say that now.” Geeta pursed her mouth.
“What do you mean? Of course I am here for you, no matter what,” I said defensively.
“Sure you are,” Geeta said. “If there’s one thing we all know, it’s that Jenny Green does not take kindly to being seated in Siberia.”
Was that so? Maybe this was how this being a winner thing was done. Respect only came to those who demanded it.
“Fine,” I said. “Don’t put me in Siberia. Or Moscow, or even Pittsburgh.”
“Pittsburgh?” Geeta cackled. “How random. Where’d you pull that from?”
“It’s actually pretty nice there,” I said.
“Yeah, sure, as if you’ve ever been within a hundred miles of Pittsburgh.” Geeta squinted while she worked, as if she was playing a high-stakes poker game. “I’m almost done, promise,” she said. “And then we will watch all the rom-coms we can stand.”
Now that sounded incredible. As I moved through the room to get my iced latte, I wondered why Geeta had called the drink “contraband.” Was I against caffeine, or was Alex? Whatever the answer, I mentally thanked the Consortium for giving me this latte and this moment with Geeta, devoid of Silicon Valley cowboys and meetings about topics I wasn’t up to speed about. I was just doing the thing I was best at in any and all realms, hanging out with my best friend, planning and plotting, ordering takeout sushi, gearing up for a junky movie marathon. The Memo was my friend.
“I’m so excited for your wedding,” I called out from the kitchen. “You and Matt are my favorite couple ever.”
Better than you and Levi, I resisted adding.
“You talking about the actual wedding, or the full week of pre-wedding activities?” Geeta groaned. “I thought the whole point of having a destination wedding was that you could keep it small, not that you had to become a travel agent writing personalized itineraries for 317 people. I am so sick of worrying about hurting other people’s feelings!”
“If anyone can pull this off, it’s you,” I told her, stirring my drink.
“How did I become a bridezilla?”
“I don’t think bridezillas call themselves bridezillas,” I assured Geeta, taking the seat next to her. “Don’t fall apart over this, sweet Geet. Can’t your wedding planner help here?”
“She doesn’t know the personalities involved. When I saw her seating chart, I had to overhaul the whole thing,” Geeta explained, fluttering her lips as she exhaled. Geeta was always described in the press as an extremely hands-on manager. If you wanted anything done right the first time, you had to do it yourself, was her attitude.
“Jen, I’m losing my mind,” she said. “This is going to seem so silly, but remember that meditation retreat we went to in the Berkshires?”
“Yes, of course,” I lied.
“Let’s do that thing we learned there.”
I leaned in closer and waited for her to fill in the specifics.
“You know, the Infinity Mirror. The thing where you listen to what I say and echo it back to me?” She took my hands in hers and looked me squarely in the eyes.
“The thing where you listen to what I say and echo it back to me,” I replied.
Geeta gave me a playful kick on the shin. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
“My worries and fears are just noise in my head.”
“Your worries and fears are just noise in your head,” I told her.
“The anxiety is not me.”
“The anxiety is not you,” I whispered back.
We continued in this vein until a buzzer blasted through the apartment.
“Your delivery is here, Ms. Green,” a voice informed me from a speaker overhead. A second later, there was a knock at the door. A uniformed doorman handed me the delivery bags.
“I already feel so much better,” Geeta said when we’d tucked into lunch. “Seriously, what am I so worried about? I’m going to crush that fucking seating chart.”
“You are going to crush that fucking seating chart,” I said in a meditation-master voice.
“I don’t know how you planned your wedding without checking into a mental asylum,” she told me.
“Me neither,” I muttered, helping myself to the salted edamame. “It’s like I blacked it out.”
“You should see Matt, with his tweezer set and glue palette, building his own centerpieces. Each one is supposed to represent a different stage in our relationship.”
“You can’t say he’s not obsessed with you,” I said.
“Or just obsessive, period,” she said through bites of spicy tuna roll.
“He’s sweet,” I said. “And he knows how lucky he is. He’s never going to do wrong by you.” I stole a glance at her face and wondered if she was thinking about Levi. Then I stuffed a slab of salmon in my mouth. “This is so, so good.”
“Your secret is safe with me,” she said. “I never saw you touch the latte either.”
Just then my phone buzzed. It was an email alert. The sender: Sebastian Shapiro, editor in chief of The Manhattan Review. The subject line said “Jenny, please say yes!” My guess was that it was an offer for a discounted subscription.
Geeta glanced at my device and raised an eyebrow. “You going to open that?”
“As if Sebastian Shapiro is emailing me personally. It’s got to be spam.”
“Open it. Now.” She sounded serious.
I gasped when I saw that it was a personal note from New York’s most powerful media titan. Sebastian Shapiro was writing to Jenny Green in a groveling tone.
Jenny, how can you say no? The magazine needs you. Your fans need you.
“What the hell?” I muttered, scanning the thread below. I’d been asked to appear at The Manhattan Review Festival opposite a Basque chef who made “steak” out of beluga lentils. Hal and I had once tried, and failed, to get a reservation at his pop-up in Bushwick. The event to which I was invited was on a Saturday, set to occur after a Women of Saturday Night Live roundtable. Both panels would be held at Carnegie Hall, followed by an intimate dinner with “Amy and Tina.” I was being begged to break bread—or lentils—with my comedy heroes Amy Poehler and Tina Fey? Sebastian signed it with an xo.
Why had I been so slow on the uptake? This was Sebastian of say-yes-to-Sebastian Memo fame. It seemed like a no-brainer, saying yes to Sebastian. I wasn’t sure why this was my Memo mandate—as if anybody would ever need some coven to push them to accept this invitation. Perhaps I was so smashingly successful I could afford to blow off The Manhattan Review? Maybe I’d thought saying no to Sebastian added to my mystique or something? I wrote back to Sebastian:
Yes—if you insist. You’d better seat me next to Tina. xo, J.
“That was weird,” I muttered, tossing my phone back onto the table.
Geeta’s expression was strangely flat.
“Sebastian Shapiro signs his emails ‘xo.’”
“And what was he writing to you about today?”
“He wanted me to do a panel and then have dinner with Tina Fey,” I told her. “As if I’d need any arm twisting.”
“So you said yes?”
“As opposed to...?”
“Jenny, are you fucking kidding me? You caved?” Now I saw her expression wasn’t flat. It was her nothing face, the one that came before a storm broke out.
“You changed your mind?” Geeta shook her head. “Are you out of your mind? Just because I’m bitching about my wedding doesn’t mean you don’t have to come to it!”
I was too startled to speak. The date of The Manhattan Review Festival was the same Saturday as Geeta’s wedding. That was why I had originally declined.
Geeta pushed her chair out from the table and stood up abruptly. “I should have known you were going to do it the first time you brought it up. You didn’t care about what I thought at all. You just wanted to feel me out, and when you determined I’d kill you if you missed my wedding, you waited for our intimate one-on-one hang to spring the news on me.” Her tone was barbed but her eyes were brimming with tears. “Priceless.”
“That’s not what—” I started.
“You’re so fucked up, Jenny. I should have known when you asked me to have a ‘cozy old school day’ together that you had an ulterior motive. Though I guess ‘old school’ was correct. Putting yourself first has been your MO since forever.”
“Geeta, please believe me! I totally blanked and forgot it was the same day! Look—I’m going to write to him and say I can’t make it.”
“You already told me you wanted to go. It’s too late. Own your truth, Jenny. You are who you are.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You don’t care about anybody but yourself. Do you know what I missed to go to your wedding? Do you even remember?” She waited for me to answer. If only I had a clue. “You don’t get it.”
“I do, Geeta, I really do,” I said. She wouldn’t meet my eye.
“But I was happy to be there. And I showed up, with a big-ass smile and a Mabel Katz bowl under my arm.” She tensed her jaw and glanced into the kitchen. “At least you’ll always have a souvenir of our friendship.”
I followed her gaze and spotted the piece she was talking about. I’d been obsessed with Mabel Katz ever since I took art history class sophomore year. The bowl was a masterpiece, with its riot of orange, pink, and yellow glazes and an organic rounded triangular shape like a half of a clamshell. Shame engulfed me.
Geeta shimmied into her sandals and grabbed her bag. “I can’t believe I was looking forward to spending time with you today.”
“Geeta!” Desperation shot through my voice. “I don’t care about the stupid festival. I’m not going. I’m coming to your wedding.”
“Too late,” Geeta said, reaching for the doorknob. “You’re no longer invited.”