All You Could Ask For: A Novel (3 page)

In the refrigerator, I find the plastic bag marked
TUESDAY
. I empty its contents into the blender, add a half-cup of almond milk, and flick the switch. Thirty seconds later I am drinking a shake as I flip on CNBC. It is five minutes past six.

Ten minutes later I am on the treadmill with buds in my ears, squinting as the sun rises above the towering skyscrapers. The stock ticker is scrolling beneath the silent faces on my television. Nothing exciting there, nothing I didn’t know last night. Up and down the channels I ride, never once raising the volume. There isn’t any reason to listen to the television in the morning. All you need to do is read. On the business channels they scroll the S&P futures and results from the trading in the Asian markets, on the news channels they scroll the headlines of the day, on the sports channels they scroll the scores, on the network channels they scroll the weather. I am fully informed by merely reading the bottom three inches of my television. The people talking are a complete waste of time.

I strap my heart-rate monitor in place beneath my sports bra and start to walk. After a five-minute warm-up it is time to get serious. I crank the treadmill to seven miles per hour and the incline to three degrees. It is totally silent in my apartment; the only sounds in any of the fourteen rooms come from my running shoes squeaking on the band. I don’t have the music on yet. I save that for about twenty minutes in, when I need a little encouragement. Today I feel great, and I crank up the treadmill early in my run. Eight miles per hour. Four degrees of incline. That’s a lot. But I can handle it. I click on my iPod and scroll through the list of artists. Who should we listen to today? Dr. Dre? Snoop Dogg? Eminem? It feels like a day to go new-school. I click on Jay-Z.

After a shower I am in the dressing room, where I have laid out my wardrobe the night before. A double stretch wool anatomical jacket and matching skirt by Brioni, covered by a waterproof silk parka trimmed with Mongolian fur—it’s supposed to rain—and Prada ankle boots. Then back to my vanity, where I breathe a deep sigh at the sight of my reflection; not such a pretty picture at this hour of the morning, especially not with the bright sunlight streaming through the windows directly behind me. Still, it’s nothing that can’t be salvaged. A few strokes and pats and brushes and dabs and I am as good as new, or as new as I can be.

Then I bow my head slowly and close my eyes. I know the car is waiting downstairs. I know the day is waiting outside the window. I know the vultures are waiting around every turn, but now is not the time for those. I reconnect with my breathing. Inhale deeply, exhale deeply. In, out. In. Out.

I raise my chin and allow my eyelids to peel gently apart. “Fuck him,” I say, looking myself square in the eyes, “and all the others out there like him.”

In the lobby I find Maurice waiting. He tips his cap as I approach and hands me a grande skim latte with no foam. “Good morning, Katherine,” he says in his usual familiar tone.

“Back at ya,” I say, my customary response.

“Cold out there today,” he says, and hands me my
Wall Street Journal
. “You’d best bundle that thing up.” He motions disapprovingly at my parka. “We need to get you some warmer clothes.”

I smile. “Maurice, my friend, you do not want to know how much this parka cost. It damn well better keep me warm.”

As though on cue, a gust of wind rises as we exit the revolving door, making it quite hard to revolve, even with both of us pushing. Maurice is wearing an “I told you so” expression as he opens the rear door for me. He is too adorable. I wouldn’t put up with such bullshit if he were not.

The true bustle of a New York morning has not yet begun: the only signs of life on Park Avenue are a few hearty joggers making their way toward Central Park and an old man sweeping away debris in front of the French bakery across the street. This is my favorite time of day in the city. Sometimes I ask Maurice to drive down Fifth Avenue, just so I can look out the car windows and see the peacefulness. There is nothing in the world more serene than an empty thoroughfare.

“Any stops before the office?” Maurice asks as he slides into the driver’s seat.

“Not today, thanks.”

The television in the rear console of the limousine is tuned to CNN and I am staring at the crawl when my bag begins to vibrate. I realize I am receiving a call, which is strange, because no one
ever
calls before eight in the morning. I dig out my BlackBerry and the moment I see the number I know immediately who it is and why she is calling. I do not answer the phone.

“Anything special going on?” Maurice asks from the front.

“Nothing at all,” I reply.

Only now I am not telling the truth. That phone call was from my mother, with whom I have not spoken in over a month. But I know why she is calling. I glance at the date in the banner across the top of the
Wall Street Journal
and realize I am right. I hadn’t even thought of it all morning long.

“Hey, Maurice, you’d better be nice to me today,” I say.

“Why would I start that now?” he asks.

“Because today is my birthday,” I tell him. “And it’s a big one. Believe it or not, today I am forty years old.”

BROOKE

SO, SCOTT IS TURNING forty next month.

It’s hard for me to believe.

He is still so much the boy who took me to Van Halen concerts, and did Jell-O shots at McSorley’s, and knew where to get excellent cocaine at a time when that was useful information. He is still very much that boy, only now that boy is a man. A man who held our babies so delicately in his strong hands. A man who rises before five every morning and travels all over the country and often sleeps in airport lounges but never misses a recital or a baseball game and, best of all, never behaves as though he is a hero for any of it. He is a man who can discipline his children without yelling, run a marathon to commemorate a birthday, and still seduce his wife with a well-timed wink.

Don’t get me wrong; he isn’t perfect. I don’t mean to suggest he is. Like all men he is still a boy and boys are always trouble—especially the dreamy ones. The first time he met Mother, she pulled me aside and said: “I’d be worried about this one.” And I asked why, and she said: “The
really
handsome ones are always dangerous.” And he is. He makes me swoon. He still has those dancing blue eyes and wavy hair; his face looks hardly at all different from the way it did fifteen years ago. Maybe younger, in fact, since having his eyes fixed—sometimes it takes me a moment to recognize him in old photos with those Coke-bottle lenses he used to wear. So he isn’t perfect, but he still makes me laugh and he still makes me quiver after seventeen years together; I think that’s pretty good.

And if he, in fact, does look younger than he did when we were in our twenties, I haven’t done so badly either. I may not look just as I did—mostly I see it in the lines in my face, especially around the mouth—but the way I look at those crevices is they were dug slowly and surely from all the smiles I have smiled in my life, and so I wouldn’t give any of them back for anything. Not a chance.

However, there is now the issue of my ass, which I suddenly find myself staring at in a way I haven’t ever before. It is still shapely, plump perhaps but not in a bad way, more round than large. Sort of like Beyoncé. I have always been curvy, which is fine so long as you are not lumpy, which I have certainly never been, nor am I now, but as I look closely at my ass, it seems to be headed if not for lumpiness then at least toward bumpiness, and I’m not sure I would be any happier to be bumpy than lumpy in these photos I am taking.

My husband travels all over the world nearly every week, and if I don’t want him to look at pornography, or younger, pretty girls, it only seems fair that I hold up my end of the bargain. Ours is
that
sort of a marriage, has been since our first Valentine’s Day, when he bought me the slinkiest negligee ever from Victoria’s Secret. It was two sizes (at least) too small, so I sneakily exchanged it before I wore it for him and when I did, it drove him absolutely mad with desire, and I loved that. Scott is a brilliant man, and powerful, but I can turn him into a trembling boy, the one he was in business school, before the bonuses and stock options and Range Rovers and speedboats. In short, we both know who wears the pants in our house: My husband does. But there is equally little doubt which of us really has the power.

So he will love this gift and he will love that I thought to give it to him. Now I just need the courage to go through with it. Which brings us back, once again, to my ass, which I am staring at now in the cramped little room off to the side of the nail salon where they do my waxing. The salon is owned by Sarah, a lovely Korean woman who almost met my twins before I did; she was giving me a pedicure when my water broke. That sort of experience creates a bond, and on top of that I occasionally bring Megan in for manicures—I started when she was only three—so Sarah has watched my family grow and I, too, have watched hers; her grown children are always in and out of the salon, and I adore how proudly she speaks of the daughter who is a nurse and the son studying to be a lawyer. I feel Sarah and I have shared quite a lot over the years, and yet I cannot imagine exactly how I am going to tell her why I am here today.

Because if I’m going to do this, I’m going to do it right. The photos will be tasteful and, hopefully, beautiful. But let’s face it—they are going to be more about sex than art, and if I want my husband to choose them over smut then we need to smut them up, at least a little. There will be nothing splayed, nothing gaping, nothing vulgar, nothing of that sort, but there will be full frontal nudity and with that NC-17 rating comes an obligation.

Bring on the wax.

I’ve never done this before, but I have friends who have, and they have told me to just remove my pants and underwear, that no one bats an eye at the nudity. So I did, and then I sat on the cushioned table that was covered with a long sheet of paper, and I waited.

Sarah entered the room with a huge smile on her face and a thirteen-year-old girl by her side.

“Hello, Brooke!” she exclaimed, apparently oblivious to my state of undress. “This is my niece! She wrote a paper on the origin of the steak knife and I knew you’d love to read it!”

There is obviously no chance that is what she actually said, but sometimes her English is a bit of an adventure.

“How lovely,” I said, nodding and frantically tugging down my tank top. I didn’t offer a hand because I didn’t have one to spare. “Do you live around here?”

The girl nodded. She did not speak at all. Neither did Sarah—
she
just stood beaming at her niece. But the trouble was that pretty soon it had been too long since anyone had spoken, so I did again.

“Well, Sarah, we’re going to try something a little different today,” I said.

“Oh yeah? What?” Sarah asked.

I was staring right at the girl. I couldn’t see myself explaining what I was here to do—much less actually doing it—with a tween standing close enough to me that I could brush her hair if I wanted to. The girl was just standing silently and politely, as though she were awaiting instructions from me, but those were clearly not forthcoming as I was so uncomfortable in my state of undress I could hardly speak.

And then finally, thankfully, Sarah clued in, picking up either on my nerves or my balled-up thong on the table, or perhaps the three-quarters of my butt sticking out beneath my top.

“Ooooohhhhh,” she said, and leaned toward me. “You having an affair?”

That made me laugh hard enough that I forgot for a moment about my circumstances and put both hands over my mouth, and just like that I was all out there. I covered up quickly and glanced right at the girl, who did not bat an eye.

“Come on, lie down,” Sarah said, and then she turned and said something to the girl, who turned to me and nodded politely and then she was gone, and I was on the table, flat on my back, as Sarah began to heat the wax.

“You know,” she said ominously, “this is going to hurt.”

SAMANTHA