Just Friends (4 page)

“Quite right, Larry,” agreed Freya. “Everybody knows the ideal woman is four feet tall with a flat head—so you have somewhere to rest your drink.”

“That’s you disqualified.” Jack laughed. “So tell us, your majesty: What’s your ideal man?”

“Not afraid of spiders. See you five.” She dropped a stack of chips into the pot. “And raise you . . . twenty.”

Gus slapped down his cards in disgust. “Fold.”

“Me, too,” sighed Al.

“She’s bluffing!” protested Jack. “Look at her face.”

Freya arched her eyebrows at him. He was such a boy.

“Go on, Freya,” urged Larry. “Slaughter him.”

“I’m going to.”

“Bet you don’t,” challenged Jack.

“Bet I do.” Freya held his gaze. They were both grinning, enjoying this.

Jack pointed his finger at her. “If you win this hand I’ll—”

“You’ll what? Fly me to the Caribbean? Give me a signed copy of your book?”

“I’ll buy you dinner at Valhalla on your birthday.”

“But that’s months away!”

“So?”

“You’ll forget.”

“No, I won’t. November seventh, right?”

“Wrong. It’s the eighth.”

“That’s what I said.” His blue eyes danced. “The eighth at eight—who could forget that? It’ll be a special rendezvous, like that movie—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Bogart and Bacall in
Key Largo
.”

“Not
Key Largo
.” Leo was emphatic.

“Wasn’t it Cary Grant and whatsername?” offered Gus.

“Whatever,” Freya said impatiently. Her fingers tingled. She was on a roll and wanted to finish this hand. She nodded at Jack. “I accept the bet.”

“If you lose, you pay,” he warned.

“Of course.”

“Okay, everyone. I want you all to bear witness.” Jack counted out his chips and placed them ceremoniously on the table. “See you,” he told Freya.

Freya laid down her cards with an elegant ripple of the fingers. “Three of a kind. Queens.”

“Shit!” Jack threw his cards face-up on the table to reveal two pairs, Kings and Aces.

With a crow of triumph Freya stretched out her arms and gathered the lovely pile of chips to her. This was a great game. She felt marvelous. “I’m going to order lobster,” she told Jack, “and the truffle risotto. And champagne, naturally.”

Now it was her deal. “Mississippi Hi-lo,” she announced, spinning out the cards. “Deuces, aces, one-eyed faces wild.”

Leo pulled disdainfully on his cigarette. “That’s a girls’ game.”

She reached across to pull the cigarette out of his mouth, and ground it into the ashtray. “Not the way I play it.”

When they broke for coffee around midnight, Freya found she was more than a hundred dollars up. She felt great, high on adrenaline and alcohol.

“It’s not fair. I’m losing,” wailed Larry, pressing the buttons of his calculator.

“Don’t be so emotional,” Freya told him. “Have a pretzel.”

She stood up, stretching her arms wide to ease her back muscles, and went to join the others in the kitchen. Everything looked the same in here, too—chipped fifties’ cabinets, crumb-encrusted toaster, yellowing newspapers, the framed
New Yorker
cartoon Jack loved, which showed a patrician publisher addressing a cowed author: “It’s Dostoevsky, it’s Tolstoy, it’s Fitzgerald—but it doesn’t
dance
.” She couldn’t find a cup, so she washed one up from the collection of dirty dishes in the sink. Jack was over by the stove, listening intently to Leo. They made an odd pair, the one amiably sloppy, the other as watchful and contained as a cat. She wondered what they were talking about. When the coffee was ready, Jack took the pot around, pushing through the crowd with his big shoulders, joking with everyone. He was wearing a blue shirt hanging out over frayed and faded cut-off jeans and had a joint tucked behind his ear. She couldn’t help smiling. It was good to see him, though she couldn’t tell him so. He was far too bigheaded as it was.

When he reached her, she leaned back against the counter and held out her cup. “You’re a pig,” she told him, gesturing at the kitchen.

“I’m busy,” he countered. “My mind is on higher things.”

“Does that mean the novel’s going well?”

“A work of art can’t be rushed.”

“I wouldn’t call three years a rush. How many missed deadlines is it now?” She caught his eye. “Okay, I’ll shut up. Tell me about Leo. I haven’t seen him here before.”

“That’s because he hasn’t been here. I ran into him a couple weeks ago and told him to drop by if he wanted.”

Jack looked the tiniest bit shifty. Freya wondered what he was up to. “So, what does Leo do?”

“He started that magazine,
Word
, remember?—the one that published my story about the boy in the storm?”

Freya nodded. “You got fifty dollars, and bought a bicycle.”

“Yeah, well now he’s a literary agent, really into the big time, doing million-dollar deals.” Jack rubbed a hand backwards through his hair. “He thinks I have talent.”

“Of course you have talent. I’ve been telling you that for years. You also have an agent. You’re not thinking of leaving Ella after all she’s done for you?”

“No . . .” Jack said uncertainly, looking put out. He set down the coffeepot and dug his hands into his pockets. “So how’s Mark?” he asked.

“Michael.”

“Whatever. Do we gather that he’s let you come out to play tonight?”

“What kind of a question is that?”

“Only that we haven’t seen you much since you two have been together.”

Freya folded her arms defensively and looked him in the eye, saying nothing. The humiliations of the evening flooded back. What a fool she’d been! But she wasn’t about to break down and sob like a soppy girl—especially not in front of Jack.

“Everything’s just ‘super,’ is it?” he persisted, standing over her with his lazy smile.

Freya gripped her elbows. “Didn’t ‘y’all’ know that nobody in England has said
super
since about 1969?”

“You’re getting awfully snappy in your old age. Poor old Martin was probably happy to get rid of you tonight, so he could settle down with some nice, restful briefs.”

“Michael.”
Freya glared at him. “At least he does a real job. Some people have to earn their living, you know.”

Jack grinned. “Careful, you’re flaring your nostrils. You look like a very superior camel.”

“Oh, shut up.” She pushed him out of the way and returned to the card table. She wasn’t in the mood to be teased.

When they started playing again, her luck changed abruptly. Maybe it was drink or dope, or simply a brute, masculine lust to win kicking in, but the men became more raucous and aggressive. Freya began to feel excluded. Her pile of chips dwindled to nothing; she drew some more from the float and wrote an IOU. She folded early in one hand, and took her cell phone into the hallway to telephone Cat, who would surely be home by now.

“You have reached Caterina da Fillipo. Please leave your name and number, and I’ll get back to you.”

Freya groaned. “It’s me,” she announced, after the beep. “I need you. Call me on my cell the minute you hear this.
Please.
”

When she returned to the poker table, the men were all talking about someone she didn’t know, a guy who worked on Wall Street and was fabulously successful. He was called Waverley Lions.

“Daft name,” she chipped in, reminding them she was still there.

No one took any notice. They bored on regardless about Waverley’s three-bedroom apartment off Central Park, his house in East Hampton—beachfront, natch—his handmade shoes, his Lamborghini.

“I don’t know when he does any work,” said Al admiringly. “Waverley always seems to be in the Wine and Cigar bar, drinking Cristall champagne or sending couriers for designer drugs. And you know how he likes to celebrate a really big deal? He gets himself some ‘red menace.’ ” Al nodded conspiratorially at the other men. “Know what that means?”

“What? What?” Larry was getting excited.

Al flicked a cautious look at Freya and lowered his voice. “A Russian hooker. A really classy one, five hundred dollars an hour. Waverley says they have to be Russian or he can’t, you know . . .”

“Capitalist machismo crap,” muttered Freya. She had tipped her chair back on two legs, distancing herself from this trivia that they batted back and forth like tennis balls.

“Five hundred dollars an
hour
.” Gus sounded envious.

“For Waverley it’s like buying a candy bar. His annual salary’s at least one and a half mil.”

“Jeez . . .”

“And on top of everything else, his penis is gigantic.”

Freya’s chair crashed back onto four legs. These men were insufferable! “How gigantic?” she asked boldly.

“Obscene.”

“The biggest in company history, he told me.”

“It would be vulgar to bandy exact figures.”

“I’ll bet.” Freya sniggered. Men could be so childishly boastful. She turned to Al. “I mean, how do you know for sure?”

“He told me privately.”

“Oh, he
told
you, did he?” Freya gave pitying laugh. “You haven’t actually seen it for yourself?”

They all looked at her as if she were crazy. Perhaps her curiosity was on the prurient side, but now that she’d started she had to bluff it out. “Well, have you?”

“Of course, I haven’t
seen
it. Don’t be stupid.”

“Why not? And don’t call me stupid.”

“He can’t exactly show it to me.”

“Why can’t he?”

“It’s in the bank, dummy.”

“He keeps his penis in the bank?!!” Freya’s eyebrows soared.

Five seconds of silence. Five pairs of male eyes looking at her with pitying disgust.

Jack cleared his throat. “Al didn’t say
penis
, Freya, he said
bonus
.”

“Oh.”

The blush that she had kept at bay during her unseemly interrogation now lit her body like a flash fire. Suddenly she was back at junior school, a foot taller than every other girl, singing out a beat too early in the carol service. She saw Leo give Jack a look that said,
Where did you find this fluff-head?
and was mortified when Jack gave a responsive flicker of his fingers:
I know, but let it go.
Freya forced a jaunty chuckle. “Just as well I’m not Freud’s secretary, huh?”

She got them to laugh, but she felt an idiot. From now on she’d keep her mouth shut—except for drinking purposes. Freya reached for the Southern Comfort, but all it did was fuzz her brain. In a round of five card draw she misread a six for a nine and made a fuss when she lost. She found she was out of chips again, and signed another IOU. Her eyes itched from the smoke; her skin felt dry and tight.

At the end of another disastrous hand, Freya rested her head on table and closed her eyes. She felt terrible. Why had she come? She’d lost all her money and made a fool of herself. They all thought she was stupid. Nobody loved her. Nobody would ever love her. She wanted to go to bed.

Bed!

“Wait a second,” she croaked, trying to straighten up and focus. Someone was dealing the cards, floating them across the table. “I have to make a call.” She groped for her phone and started pressing buttons. Nothing happened. She banged it on the table and tried again. “Stupid thing won’t work.”

“Maybe that’s because you’re trying to make a telephone call from a pocket calculator.” Leo’s voice was as dry as the Sahara.

Everyone found this hilarious. Freya heard their donkey laughter. She saw Jack grinning openly at her from across the table, flashing his rich boy’s teeth. Aflame with alcohol and bad temper, she threw the calculator straight at him. It crashed into his glass, splashing drink all over him.

“Freya! What do you think you’re doing?”

“Fuck off, Jack. It didn’t even touch you.”

“She’s drunk.”

“Fuck off, Al. I am
not drunk
.”