Perfect Fifths_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [21]
“And Cinthia’s gallerina friends would pay any price!”
Hope made this joke because she could. Her career took off when a piece from her (Re)Collection series (Birthday Girl, 1973) was featured in a Wallpaper magazine spread devoted to the former wig factory on the East River that was gutted, renovated, and decorated at the behest of Cinthia Wallace, the twenty-five-year-old party girl turned philanthropist/patron of the arts with her finger on the arrhythmic pulse of anything worth knowing anywhere. Hope had no qualms with whatever impact Cinthia’s money and connections had on her own success as an artist. Even if it were true that the only people commissioning portraits were Z-list artfuckers who had too much money to spend—which wasn’t the case at all—Hope honestly doesn’t care. Not if they allowed her to make a decent living doing what she loves.
Similarly, without Cinthia’s vision and investments, the Do Better High School Storytellers project wouldn’t exist. The Girls—and Jessica—would be a lot worse off. Unlike her blithe-spirited friend, however, Jessica felt guilty about having her life’s work both founded and funded by Cinthia’s charity. What Hope viewed as friends helping other friends, Jessica considered a form of freeloading. Jessica knows she’s being un necessarily neurotic when she worries about what a dead-end in-debt position she’d be in right now if it weren’t for Cinthia’s big faith in her little idea. Her only comfort for this onus of unworthiness is the hope that one day she’ll be in a position to return the favor for someone she believes in.
“And if you stack the rings on top of each other,” Hope is saying on the other end of the phone, presumably paraphrasing the backup minister, “the circles come together to make a figure eight, which is the symbol for infinity, and …”
Jessica knows she should be on the phone with the Clear Sky automated customer service system right now and not on the phone with Hope. And even if it were okay for her to be on the phone with Hope right now, she shouldn’t be having a leisurely, inconsequential discussion but a hysterical heart-to-heart rant about how she just ran over Marcus Flutie. Jessica knows this. Yet she’s desperate for a diversion, and there’s no one more qualified than Hope to provide it.
“Hey, Hope,” she breaks in. “Tell me a strange-but-true story right now. One I haven’t heard before.”
Hope is used to this random request. “A strange-but-true story you haven’t heard before. Okaaaaay.” Jessica can picture Hope scrunching her sunrise-orange curls with her fingertips, a primitive way of stimulating her brain. “How about this? A twenty-five-year-old woman with gaidrophobia—”
“You’re still afraid of donkeys?” Jessica blurts, remembering her best friend’s most irrational—and therefore comical—fear.
“You would be, too, if you nearly got trampled to death at the Ocean County fair when you were three years old,” Hope retorts, dead serious. “And I’ll have you know, Jessica, that more people die every year from donkey kicks than in airplane crashes.”
“As encouraging as it is to hear that while I’m in an airport waiting to get on an airplane, I’m pretty certain that’s an urban legend. I mean, what’s your resource for death-by-donkey statistics?”
“May I continue?” Hope asks.
“Yes.”
“So a twenty-five-year-old woman with gaidrophobia, who has spent her whole life avoiding county fairs, petting zoos, farms—”
“Pin-the-tail games, the whole Shrek franchise, and the Democratic National Convention,” Jessica adds, trying her best to play along.
“… is invited to a destination wedding on St. John, the smallest and most unspoiled of the U.S. Virgin Islands. St. John may not have its own airport, but it does boast an abundance of plant and animal life, including a thriving wild donkey population!”
“Oh, no,” Jessica says.
“Oh yeah. And I’m freaking out, Jess, just like the Pickle Girl on Maury Povich. Wild donkeys are to St. John what pigeons are to the city, only they have a tendency to mount each other during beachfront wedding ceremonies. There