Then Came You - Jennifer Weiner [40]
I woke up in the recovery room, on a hospital bed, alone, with an IV needle stuck into the back of my hand, in a room with tiled floors and drab green walls that smelled of disinfectant. Tears trickled down my swollen cheeks. My forehead stung from the needles; my torso and thighs felt like an entire football team had been kicking them. The anesthesia had left me queasy. When it wore off I knew I’d be starving. I hadn’t eaten the day of the operation, and I’d been dieting for the month before; the looser my skin, the doctors had said, the easier it would be for them to suck out the most fat.
A nurse asked how I was feeling and helped me to sit up. A while later, Dr. Perez came in to see me. He touched me gently—my jaw, my nose, my cheekbones, tapping and prodding, murmuring to himself, before pulling open my gown. I’d been bandaged, bound from my breasts to just above my knees, in the stretchy bodysuit that I would wear for the next two weeks. “No mirrors yet,” he cautioned, and I smiled, even though it hurt, imagining the state my face was in. When I’d healed, I looked just the way I’d hoped: glamorous, quietly sexy, with full lips that fell naturally into a pout and a nose that seemed made to turn skyward.
I spent three months recovering. When I told my boss I was moving to New York she sighed, scratched with her capped Montblanc pen underneath the wig she’d worn since her chemo and promised me a job in the firm’s Manhattan office. After eight years in New York, years of handling actors and singers and Broadway stars who wanted you to help them pretend they were straight when they were photographed at places like the Man Hole, I went out on my own.
Six years after that, I met Marcus in the coffee shop. Less than three hours later he’d called, saying that he was on his way to Japan for a few days but would be back that weekend, and would I like to have dinner?
“Ah. Japan,” I said, leaning back in my chair, kicking off my shoes, and crossing my legs, squeezing them together to keep them from shaking. “I was just there last week.”
“Oh yeah?” he asked.
“I think,” I told him, “that it’s all about the emerging markets right now.”
“Are you free Saturday?”
“I’m afraid I have plans,” I said. I didn’t have plans, but I knew that I had to at least give the impression of being busy on a Saturday night. “But Sunday could work.” This wasn’t strictly adhering to the playbook, but Marcus was the real deal, and I couldn’t put him off long enough for some other girl who’d been waiting for her big chance to swoop in and take what could have been mine.
He took me to Eleven Madison Park, which had just gotten four stars in the Times, a fact that should have made it impossible for a civilian to get a reservation. Marcus was no civilian. “Mr. Croft! Welcome!” said the man behind the podium, sounding as if Marcus was a long-lost family member who’d come, maybe bearing good news about a dead relative’s will. I stood in the vestibule, my new dress snug around my body, and inhaled the scent of fresh flowers and buttery sauces, roasted meats and rich desserts, a fragrance that meant money. I could feel my body respond, my nipples tightening, my heartbeat speeding up. Easy, I told myself as Marcus slipped off my coat and handed it to the pretty young girl who’d materialized to whisk it away. They never hired ugly people in places like these. How they got around the civil rights laws I have no idea, but I had never seen an unattractive bartender or waitress or coat-check girl in any of the best restaurants in Manhattan. Maybe no ugly person ever applied. Maybe they all just know to stay away.
The maître d’ led us to the center of the room, past a table set with a dozen oversized glass vases, each containing a single stalk of hydrangea leaning at an angle. I ran my fingers over the creamy paper on which the day’s menu had been printed—minted