High Heels in New York

A.V. SCOTT

Copyright © 2012 A.V. SCOTT

All rights reserved.

DEDICATION

To my husband for always loving the New York woman that I am and always will be.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I want to thank my dear friend and graphic artist, Cynthia Peralta, who designed the book covers, (I’ve always loved your work.) The fabulous shoe
designer Ile Miranda for letting me use
her red shoes for the cover; My husband for believing in me and my daughter Amber for helping me keep to my writing schedule.

1

The splendor of summer in New York City had come and gone. Central park was no longer filled with sunbathers, the pool barge that parked along the east river had seen its last swimmers for the season, and students were preparing to return to school while their parents were getting ready for the craziness of
the Winter Holidays that were
looming around the corner. The rest of New York settled into its usual routine of work. That was, the rest of New York that wasn’t at Bryant Park preparing for the biggest event of the year, Fashion Week.

And as far as Melissa
De La Rosa
was concerned, it was the most important event to see and be seen. However, instead of figuring out how she was going to get her hands on a ticket this year, she was curled up in the corner of her bathroom, hyperventilating.

Breathe
, she tells herself.  She had to calm down. Breathe
Mel,
this isn’t the end of the world. She thought about the
positives in her life, she had her health, good teeth, fabulous hair, the skin of a Goddess, she lives in the best city on earth and not to mention, she’s engaged to the last available and straight bachelor in all of Manhattan.

On a regular day, she would be most pleased and excited with her life.

Today was not that type of day.

For the last hour, she had ignored the fact that she had a million things to do.  Instead she devoured an entire jar of
Nutella
and anxiously waited for the fifth pregnancy test to show something different,  something that would make her want to call up her best friends and celebrate with a pitcher of Margarita and a couple of shots of Tequila.

Rubbing her sweaty palms on her New York Yankees pajamas, she struggled with her lack of patience and checked the plastic device every couple of seconds. Having no choice in the matter, she did what she wasn’t accustomed to, wait.

And wait.

Staring so intensely at the plastic device, her eyes began to water. 

No. No. No. Shit!

A baby?
Now?
No freaking way! She ran to the hallway and stood in front of the long mirror, pulling her t-shirt up to expose
her flat stomach and imagined it bigger, like a basketball or a hot air balloon. 

Your life is over, she thought.

Yeah, technically you don’t really look like a hot air balloon but once, while taking the subway, she saw a lady who she thought was overweight. But when the man standing beside her began rubbing the lady’s’ belly and smiling, Melissa knew that no person in their right mind would let anyone rub their fat in public.

And though she wasn’t exactly where she wanted to be in life, she could finally see the finish line. She was almost married and she had a job that she almost loved. She was still trying to adapt to this life and now there was a little life-sucking creature adapting to its newly claimed environment in her uterus. A uterus, by the way, that didn’t ask if she had any plans for the next nine months.

And she had plans, great plans. In three months she’d be walking down a rose-
petaled
aisle in the oldest church of Manhattan, dressed in a one-of-a-kind Vera Wang wedding gown toward the man of her dreams, Jonathan Henry, a financial planner at Finch & Howell Investment Corp. Yes, soon he would officially be off the market with the soft declaration of two powerful words. Then off to Seychelles Island for a long honeymoon, drinking, tanning and lots of sex.

But, just as if Mother Nature herself decided to throw another wrench in her life, the thought of pushing a nine-pound baby out of her vagina flashed through her mind and she almost fainted. Seriously, as if women don’t have enough to go through when compared to men. Must they also have to try and push a watermelon out of something the size of a kumquat?

She had no idea how she would tell Jonathan - and her mother! Her mother would want to move in with them and watch her like a hawk to make sure she wasn’t doing anything that would harm the baby. Of course Jonathan would be so elated to finally be a dad. He told Melissa many times that he wanted a house full of kids. Melissa however, kept waiting to want babies, too, but it hadn’t happened. Even now, with the reality of it, she wasn’t too sure she wanted to be pregnant.

Scaring her half to death, her cell phone starts playing Amazed by
Lonestar
which was the ringtone she’d chosen for Jonathans’ calls. Not knowing whether this was a sign to tell him that she was pregnant or a sign to keep the news to herself, she tried her hardest to sound as if nothing was wrong.

“Hi babe,” she said, sitting down on the wood flooring in her kitchen. If she faints or needs to throw up, at least she won’t have a far distance to go.

“Hun, I’m sorry I’m going to be late again. There’s a big shot client that needs me to redo his portfolio by Monday.” Jonathan said, sounding irritated. He had never needed to go to work during the weekends as much as he had recently. But with him wanting that promotion so desperately, he began going the extra mile. And that extra mile meant Melissa hadn’t had one single weekend with him in almost two months.

“No problem.” Melissa looked up to the ceiling and mouthed the words Thank you.

“Are you sure? I still owe you for last night.” Okay. So he was right. He’s been promising for weeks to take her to see Phantom of the Opera before production finally came to an end and she really wanted to go but she was actually happier that he was stuck at work. She needed this time alone to brainstorm about her predicament.

“No really.” She stood up, using the wall to steady herself, “
It’s
okay.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Great.” He hung up before she could tell him she loved him.

At least now she had some time to stew over her dilemma. Nervously twisting her five carat princess-cut engagement ring, she walked over to the coffee machine and refilled her cup. The
buzzing from the refrigerator engulfed the silence in the apartment. It was unsettling. Lost in thought she didn’t realize she’d begun to clean the counter again. The reasoning in her head does not stop. She knew that she wasn’t ready for children. And at twenty-nine years old, shouldn’t she be ready?

She just wasn’t in a rush to be knee deep in dirty diapers. What if the damn thing is colic? Or what if it came out sick? She couldn’t handle that. Feeling sick herself, she grabbed her cell phone and dialed her gynecologist.

“Hi, I need to make an appointment as soon as possible,” she said to the receptionist.

“The earliest appointment we have is Twelve o’clock on Thursday.”

“You don’t have anything earlier?” She asked, worried about having to wait. Thursday was four days away and that was too long of a wait.

“No.”

She tried to keep calm. “Well what if someone cancels an appointment, can you call me and bump me up on the list?”

“We don’t do that.”

“So if someone cancels you just leave an empty slot on the schedule?”  Melissa couldn’t imagine the doctor making a profit if Miss Bitch left slots open.

“We don’t have cancellations.”

This lady was beginning to irk her. “Well, okay. I’ll take it,” she said, as a gut wrenching pain in her abdomen sidelined her. She grabbed her stomach with her left hand and hung up the call.

For the want of accepting reality, she truly began to contemplate death. Just the thought of what the next nine months would be for her was unacceptable. Weight gain, ankles swelling, weird food cravings and worse of all, stretch marks! She didn’t spend an hour at the gym three times a week for the last two years so that a blood sucking baby could come along and ruin her body. How anyone would want to get pregnant on purpose was beyond her comprehension.

She’d rather die! Yes, death seemed like a much better option. Then, just as she was about to start cleaning up the mess of the pregnancy tests and empty boxes, her cell phone beckoned her again.

A frantic voice shrieked on the line, “You’re late!”

“Oh shit!” She was late - very late. The afternoon had snuck up on her while she was busy losing her mind.

“I’m sitting here at the restaurant alone, where people could see me sitting a-l-o-n-e!” The familiar life-or-death voice was that of her best friend, Angie. Their monthly lunch date was a promise they had made to each other so that no matter how
crazy their lives became, they never got lost in the bullshit.  Obviously, Melissa had begun to get lost in hers.

Looking at the pregnancy tests, Melissa struggled with telling her best friend. Just tell her. Just come right out and say it, Melissa thought.  But just like Jonathan, Melissa knew that Angie would want her to keep it. She’d start planning every detail of its life before it even developed a heartbeat. She didn’t want to get anyone’s’ hopes up if in the end, she’d end up deciding not to keep it.

“I can’t,” she said instead. “I have so much to do today. I have to pick up Jonathan’s dry cleaning, grab a few things at the grocery and …” She wiped down the kitchen counter for the third time. Cleanliness is next to Godliness; her mother’s voice resonated in her ear.

“Okay, I get it, you’re domesticated.
Whoopitie
-do.
But if you want to be a domesticated woman who’s still alive by supper time you better get your butt over here pronto.”

“I can’t.”

“Seriously Melissa, get over here or I’m going to remove you from my will.”

“Oh no, you mean I don’t get the Da Vinci painting?” Melissa teased, wiping down the counter one more time. Just in case.

“I’m not kidding,” Angie continued.

“As long as I get the sex video of you and that hot actor.
I can get top dollar from one of those gossip magazines,” she said, pouring what was left of the coffee down the kitchen sink.

Angie lowered her voice, “You promised never to bring it up.”

Angie was not only Melissa’s best friend but she was also best friends with Hollywood. She’d been a child star since the age of five after appearing in a national cereal commercial and worked steadily for the next twenty years. And thanks to Jonathan, who had invested a big chunk of her money, she hadn’t the need to work ever again.

“You should let me leak it. It’ll go viral and then you can get your own reality show.” Walking into the bathroom, Melissa gathered the evi
dence of the pregnancy and dumped
them into an empty groce
ry bag that she carefully placed
inside her oversized black Prada shoulder bag with the intention of getting rid of it in a garbage receptacle far away, like New Jersey.

“Not funny,” Angie dejected.

“Fine.
Order the usual. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” Melissa
said, as she
walked into the master bedroom and began to undress. Then she turned on the shower full blast, sending a shiver up her spine that made her nipples harden. The old water pipes rattled inside the walls. It’s a sound she’d accustomed to
by choice. Her apartment was a lovely, one of a kind gem; one bedroom loft, in a four story pre-war building, nestled at the top of Grand Street in the Lower East Side in between a 24hr pharmacy and a very popular donut shop.
(Which she frequents.)
  Three huge windows face the street so it gets an abundant amount of light all year round and there is a laundry facility in the basement.
(Which she doesn’t frequent.)