Chapters (55)
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Cast of Characters
- Part One
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Part Two
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Forty-one
- Forty-two
- Forty-three
- Forty-four
- Forty-five
- Forty-six
- A note on the Author
“We’re getting divorced.” It sounded rather merry when I said it out loud. “What are you doing here?” And that sounded ruder than asking how the husband who was divorcing me was. Something about Ruby makes every response an attack. All Ruby’s questions, on the other hand, no matter how nosy or insensitive, are always retreats, unquestions that demanded nothing more than silence.
“I’m buying my Christmas presents,” offered Ruby, more than happy to chat, even if it was to the woman whose marriage she had destroyed months earlier.
“Who are you buying for? My husband?” I asked, turning away to put on my bra. Before I could stop her, Ruby had leaned forward and hooked the ends of the brassiere together for me.
I shivered as her fingers touched my back. She admired her work, then snapped out of her reverie as I asked her again. She answered, dreamy, as though she and I were lying side by side at a slumber party.
“Who am I buying for? Myself. You probably read about it in Page Six.”
“No,” I said, pulling my turtleneck over my head, “I don’t read the tabloids.”
“Oh. Well, I’m the teenage starlet spending Christmas alone because my mother killed herself, tragically, some years ago, and I don’t get along with my dad. My agent let me go just recently. I loved someone once but he went away. I had someone who loved me, but I asked him to leave. It’s so stupid. I haven’t been a teenager for two years now. And I’m fucking Jewish, for Christ’s sake.”
“Jewish, for Christ’s sake?”
“Yes. I don’t celebrate Christmas.”
“I see.”
Her pupils dilated as she brought me back into focus. “Scott and I aren’t together anymore. We were never together. Can you see us together?”
“Can you see us together?”
“No.”
Ruby waited for me while I lined up my purchases at the cash register. I wanted to shoo her away like the bedraggled sex kitten she was: “Go away, you silly little slut!” But I didn’t.
She trailed me out the door, a grubby hand at my elbow, like a child. Outside, a photographer began to snap at Ruby. And then, to my horror, I realized he was photographing both of us together.
Twenty-two
The hustle
Ruby grabbed Rachel by the arm and hustled her into a cab. Shocked, Rachel turned to her traveling companion and asked, “Do you know where you’re going to?”
“Do you like the things that life is showing you?” grinned Ruby, believing herself to be infallibly endearing. Her gums were bleeding.
Rachel gritted her teeth and asked again: “Where are you going?”
“I don’t know,” Ruby shrugged her sloping little shoulders. “With you, I guess.”