One Fifth Avenue - Candace Bushnell [88]
Sure enough, Philip came in a few minutes later, looked at her, saw what she was reading, and stiffened. “What are you doing?” he demanded.
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
“Where did you get that?” he said, standing over her.
“It was on your bookshelf,” she said innocently.
“Put it back,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because I’d like you to,” he said.
“Who are you? My father?” she asked teasingly, pleased to have gotten such a big reaction out of him.
He grabbed the magazine out of her hands. “This is off-limits,” he said.
“Are you embarrassed about it?”
“No.”
“Oh, I get it,” Lola said, narrowing her eyes. “You’re still in love with her.” She jumped up and ran into the bedroom and started pounding on a pillow.
“Lola, stop,” Philip said.
“How can you be in love with me when you’re still in love with her?” Lola shrieked.
“It was a long time ago. And I never said I was in love with you, Lola,” he said firmly, then immediately realized his mistake.
“So you’re not in love with me?” she asked, her voice rising in outrage.
“I didn’t say I wasn’t in love with you. I’m saying we’ve only known each other for two months.”
“More than that. Ten weeks. At least.”
“Okay.” Philip sighed. “Ten weeks. What’s the difference?”
“Were you in love with her?” Lola said.
“Come on, Kitty,” Philip said. “You’re being silly.” He went up to her, but she tried—not very hard, Philip noted—to push him away. “Listen,” he said. “I’m very, very fond of you. But it’s too soon to say ‘I love you.’”
She crossed her arms. “I’m going to leave.”
“Lola,” he said. “What do you want from me?”
“I want you to be in love with me. And I want to go to that Halloween party.”
He sighed. Relieved to be off the topic of his feelings for her, he said, “If you want to go to the party, we’ll go.”
This seemed to mollify her, and she put her hands in the waistband of his jeans. She unzipped his pants, and unable to object, he put his hands in her hair as she knelt in front of him. At one point, she pulled her mouth away from his penis and, looking up at him, said, “Will you dress up?”
“Huh?” he said.
“For Halloween?”
He closed his eyes. “Sure,” he said, thinking, If it means more blow jobs, why not?
In the week before Halloween, the city was hit by a cold snap. The temperature dropped to thirty degrees, causing people to remark that maybe global warming wasn’t such an issue. For Thayer Core, the weather simply put him in a bad mood. He didn’t own an overcoat, and the cold air reminded him that he was about to experience his third winter in New York, in which his lack of proper attire would make him hate the cold, hate the businessmen in their long cashmere coats and cashmere scarves and thick, leather-soled loafers. He hated everything about winter: the giant puddles of slush on the street corners and the disgusting puddles of dirty water in the subway and the puffy coat filled with acrylic batting that he was forced to wear when the temperature dropped below forty. His only protection against the icy weather was this silly ski jacket his mother had given him for his birthday the year he’d moved to New York. She’d been so excited about the gift, her flat brown eyes exuding a rarely seen sparkle of anticipation that had hurt him because his mother was pathetic, and irritated him because he was her son. Still, she loved him no matter what he did. She loved him although she had no idea who he was or what he really thought. Her assumption that he would love the gift of a ski coat for its practicality annoyed him and made him want to drink and drug away his infuriation, but when winter came to New York, he wore the coat. He had nothing else.
In the middle of the day in the middle of the week, when he imagined most people in America were wasting the company’s time at their dull and unrewarding office jobs, Thayer Core took the subway to Fifty-first Street and walked up Fifty-second to the Four Seasons, where he would eat caviar and drink champagne under the pretense of reporting on how the privileged filled up their many