Time of My Life_ A Novel - Allison Winn Scotch [33]
Before I can think any further, we’re at Cipriani, and I step past the pigeon, and Jack takes my hand, and we pretend that the tiny fissures that were microscopically exposed in the cab—my mother, his ambition—aren’t part of a larger problem between two people who fail to understand the intricacies of the other.
With nothing else to do, we step forward, onward, and away we go.
A WAITER GREETS US with drinks (rum and Coke!) and pushes open the grand, gilded doors. The cavernous space, which could easily hold a thousand guests, had been overhauled to resemble a botanical garden. Hundreds upon hundreds of rose petals had been strung from each chandelier, so the room not only smells like the first rites of spring but it also looks like perhaps Dali’s interpretation of an arboretum: blossoming stems cascading down from the ceiling, jutting into themselves and over us, illuminated by twinkling white lights that glisten like polka-dotting stars through the branches. Towering statues composed entirely of fruits of the season—pine-apples, peaches, pears, and oranges—adorn each cocktail table, and the splatter of color, coupled with the crisp burnt-orange tablecloths, bounces off the stark rose petals, and truly, I feel as if I’ve stepped into the Garden of Eden.
“Who do you know here?” Jack shouts in my ear, trying to make conversation above the din of the swing band at the back of the room and the clatter of hundreds of other voices, all equally elevated in an attempt to be heard.
“No one, really,” I shout back.
We both stare blankly at the buzzing hive of partygoers until, miraculously, I spy Josie through a wall of people. I grab Jack’s hand and push my way past gesturing limbs, wafts of perfume, and hoards of jewels until we land smack in front of her.
“Oh good! Jillian! Perfect timing,” she exclaims. “The Coke team is right over there, and I want to introduce you.”
“I’ll be at the bar,” Jack says, winking and flashing a grin. He’d befriend more people there by the time he’d ordered his drink than I would at this entire party.
Josie pulls me by the crook of my arm to a group of forty-something-looking men who appear nearly interchangeable, with their navy pin-striped suits and their freshly shaven cheeks that glow with a hint of Hampton’s summer sun and their cackle of laughter that implies that someone just told an entirely inappropriate joke.
“Gentlemen, excuse us,” Josie says. “I want you to meet the brains behind your new ad campaign. Jillian, meet the men for whom you’re about to make a lot of money.”
She smiles, and I notice for the first time how pretty she looks tonight. Less washed out, with just enough blush to illuminate her cheekbones and a smattering of lipstick to fashion a pout. Her hair, normally tied back into a floppy bun, cascades below her shoulders and over her red A-line dress that’s staid enough for an executive but flashy enough for a still-under-forty woman who wants to be noticed.
I hold out my hand and grasp the bear claw grips of the senior Coke managers, regaling them with my ideas and delightful small talk and filling the silences with witty double entendres that easily outmatch their macho humor that was being batted around before Josie and I burst their boys-only bubble.
They finally beg an exit to hit the bar, and Josie and I watch them go.
“You know Bart, the one you just met with the purple tie?” she asks. “I dated him in college. We broke up when he moved to San Francisco after we graduated.”
“Oh,” I reply because I have nothing else to say. Then I add, “He’s cute.”
“He is, isn’t he?” Her voice is too wistful for a woman who doesn’t have regrets.
“Where’s Art tonight? Home with the kids?” I ask.
“No.” She shakes her head. “He got a last-minute gig in San Jose.” She half snorts but the anger behind it belies her mock amusement. “Emergency on an opera