One Fifth Avenue - Candace Bushnell [181]
Lola had come up with a hundred responses—after the fact. In the actual moment, facing Enid, she wasn’t able to think of what to say.
“Consider this an opportunity, dear,” Enid said. “You’re only twenty-two. You have a chance to start over. I had a long conversation with your mother this afternoon, and she’s on her way to pick you up and take you back to Atlanta. She’s a lovely woman, your mother. She should be here in an hour. I’ve booked a room for you at the Four Seasons hotel so you can enjoy your last night in New York in style.”
“Oh no,” Lola said, finding her voice. She looked around in a panic, spotted her handbag next to the door, and grabbed it. “I’m not leaving New York.”
“Be sensible, dear,” Enid said.
“You can’t make me,” Lola shouted. She opened the door, knowing only that she had to get away. She frantically pressed the button for the elevator as Enid followed her into the hallway.
“Where are you going? There’s no place to go, Lola.”
Lola turned her back and pressed the button again. Where was the elevator? “You haven’t any money,” Enid said. “You don’t have an apartment. Or a job. You have no choice.”
Lola turned. “I don’t care.” The elevator came at last, and she stepped in.
“You’ll be sorry,” Enid said. As the doors were closing, Enid made one last attempt to dissuade her. “You’ll see,” she called out, adding fiercely, “You don’t belong in New York.”
Now, in the church, Lola remembered with glee how Enid’s plan had backfired. Her admonishment that Lola didn’t belong in New York had only made her more determined. In the past two weeks, she’d put up with quite a bit of hardship, returning home with her mother—who had begged Lola to stay in Windsor Pines and even tried to fix her up with the son of one of her friends who was getting a business degree—but Lola wouldn’t hear of it. She sold several pairs of shoes and two handbags on eBay, scraping together enough money to return to New York. She forced Thayer to take her in, and for the time being, she was living with Thayer and Josh in their little hellhole, sharing Thayer’s tiny bed. On the third day there, she’d broken down and actually cleaned the bathroom and the kitchen sink. And then that disgusting Josh, thinking she was free bait, had tried to kiss her, and she’d had to fight him off. She couldn’t bunk with Thayer much longer. She had to find her own place—but how?
She tried to peer around the many heads in front of her, looking for Philip and Enid. She spotted the back of Enid’s coiffed head first. What would Enid do when she found out she was back in New York? Sitting next to Enid was Philip. Seeing the back of his head, with that too familiar longish dark hair, brought back all the fresh hurts and indignities she’d suffered at his hands as well.
After rushing out of his apartment on what would turn out to be her final evening in One Fifth, she’d wandered around the West Village, weighing her options. But after two hours, her feet began to throb, and she’d realized Enid was right—she had no money and no place to go. She’d returned to One Fifth to find her mother and Philip and Enid waiting. They were calm, treating her with kid gloves as if she were a mental patient who’d had a breakdown, and Lola realized she had no choice but to comply with their plan. Then she’d had to endure the disgrace of allowing her mother to help her pack up her things. Philip was disturbingly distant throughout the process, as if he had become a completely different person. He’d behaved as if he hardly knew her and they hadn’t had sex a hundred times—and this, to Lola, was the most unfathomable of all. How could a man who had put his head between your legs and his penis inside your vagina and mouth, and kissed you and held you and tickled your stomach, suddenly act as if none of it had happened? Riding uptown in the taxi with her mother, she had burst into tears and cried and cried and cried. “Philip Oakland is a fool,” Beetelle declared