The Rules of Love & Grammar Page 8

  “Change into what?”

  “I don’t know. Sweats?”

  “You can’t go to the party in sweats.”

  “Exactly.”

  “What? You’re not going?”

  “You’ll have to make my excuses and—”

  “No,” Cluny says. “I’m not letting you spend the night with Ben and Jerry. Come on, Peter invited us to this party. He wants to see you. And you look great.”

  I don’t move.

  Greg steps out of his Tahoe and whistles. “Whoo-ee, look at you, Miss Grace.” He’s got the kind of effervescent smile that artists doing character sketches love to exaggerate, and a big, six-foot-four frame to carry it off.

  “Greg, stop it right now,” I tell him.

  “What are you talking about?” he says. “You look great! You look sexy!”

  “Sexy good or sexy bad?”

  “Grace, you’re overthinking this,” Cluny says. “Come on.” She points to the Tahoe.

  “I’m not going.”

  “Sexy good!” she says.

  “Really?”

  “Yes. I promise.”

  “All right.” I follow her across the gravel driveway, teetering in the heels.

  Greg opens the back door and motions toward the seat like a limo driver inviting his passenger to enter. I slide into the car, the dress shinnying up my legs like a snake. I tug it back down.

  “So,” Greg says as we pull onto Salt Meadow Lane, “sounds as if this Peter Brooks is really interested in you, Grace.”

  “He was in high school, but it’s been a long time since then.” I pop a breath mint into my mouth as we round the curve.

  “Well, he sure seemed interested this morning,” Cluny says. “I could tell by the way he was looking at you. It reminded me of when Greg and I first met.” She glances at her husband. “You sat down next to me in the lecture hall. I think it was a psych class.”

  “It was,” he says. “And I pretended I needed a pen.”

  Cluny smiles. “As if I didn’t know. You just had that vibe. I could tell you were interested.”

  “Really? And I thought I was being so clever with that pen excuse.”

  “I just want a little time to talk to him alone,” I say, imagining a walk under the stars, a chance to catch up.

  “If anyone can figure out a plan,” Cluny says, “it’s you.”

  Greg glances at me in the rearview mirror. “I’m going to check him out, you know. I’m not letting some guy from Hollywood waltz into town and think he can just run off with our Grace.”

  I shake my head and laugh. They’re so good to me, Cluny and Greg, and I feel a little pang of guilt when I think about the jealousy I felt when Cluny first met him. Seniors in college at the time, Cluny and I spent hours burning up the phone lines between her apartment, in Antioch, Ohio, and mine, in Middlebury, Vermont. She would explain, in excruciating detail, their every encounter, every conversation, every everything. I thought he was going to take away my best friend, but all he wanted to do was make her happy and become part of her world. When Greg and I finally met and he told me how nervous he was that I wouldn’t approve of him, I couldn’t help but fall for him as well.

  The night glides by through the car window, and a few minutes later we’re on Mill Pond Lane, where the houses sit on two-acre parcels and old, leafy trees line the long driveways. As we go around a bend, I see lights from a line of cars, and a valet, with glowing orange sticks, directing them into a driveway. This can’t be it. Peter said a few people were coming. This looks like a hundred. How am I ever going to get him to break away for a romantic walk if he’s surrounded by an entourage? I have a sudden, sour taste in my mouth.

  “This must be the place,” Cluny says. “Wow.”

  “No kidding. This is huge. This isn’t a few people.” Maybe I should have stayed home, curled up in bed eating Chunky Monkey and watching Sleepless in Seattle on Turner Classic Movies.

  We crawl toward the valet in a tedious conga line of cars and then turn into a long gravel driveway bordered by hundreds of flickering luminaries. At the end is a circle and, behind it, a large, stone English country–style house with gabled roofs and three chimneys. The house looks vaguely familiar, and I wonder if I ever came here for a high school party or a babysitting job. Honeyed yellow light pours from the downstairs windows as clusters of people move around inside. The sounds of conversation, laughter, and music carry from the house to the car.

  “It’s showtime,” Greg says as valets open the doors for us.

  I pop another mint into my mouth, step out, and give my dress one final tug. Greg steps between Cluny and me and links his arms in ours, walking us up the path to the open front door and into a large foyer that’s scented with something sweet.

  “What’s that smell?” Greg whispers.

  “I think it’s jasmine,” I whisper back. “Probably because Sean Leeds is here.”

  “Jasmine?” Greg asks, looking confused.

  “I’ll explain later,” Cluny tells him.

  He obviously doesn’t know that in Sean’s last movie, The Only One for Me, he played a perfume-company executive who travels to South America to win back his ex-girlfriend. In the final scene he presents her with a bottle of Catch Me!, a perfume he created just for her. A perfume company recently produced a jasmine scent called Catch Me!, and now women everywhere are following Sean with their bottles, spraying the air around him.

  A server stands in the foyer, a tray of glasses in his hand. “May I offer you white wine or champagne?” he asks. I’m not sure, but I think he’s staring at the diamond cutouts in my dress. “Or, if you’d like a mixed drink, the bar is straight ahead, in the living—”

  I grab a flute of champagne before he can finish his sentence. Cluny takes one as well, and we follow Greg into the living room, where he heads to the bar. There are at least a hundred and fifty people here, standing in groups, seated on the white sofas and chairs, and perched on the oversized white ottomans. The room is packed. I don’t see Peter anywhere.

  I also don’t see anyone dressed like me. No one is wearing anything even close to this. The women are all in chiffons and silks in pastel shades; dresses with flowing ballerina skirts, dresses with layers of ruffles, dresses with jeweled necklines. I glance at my right leg and the green lace that travels down it like a wide highway. People are staring at me. I lift the flute of champagne and empty it in one motion.

  “Nice house,” Cluny says, looking around.

  I scan the room, noticing French doors in the back that open onto a patio, and a doorway on the side that leads to a library with ebony floor-to-ceiling bookcases. I can’t help but feel I’ve been here before.

  “Does this place look familiar?” I ask Cluny. “Did someone we went to school with live here?”

  She waves to Greg, who is still in line at the bar. “No, I don’t think so.”

  I look for Peter, but I’m suddenly hemmed in by a crowd of people, and they’re talking about vacations in St. Bart’s, their favorite farm-to-table restaurants, the advantages of Guatemalan over Colombian coffee, the shooting schedule for tomorrow, the rewrites and the dailies, and problems with the air-conditioning in some of the trailers. I feel out of place.

  I spot Brittany Wells, chatting with someone who looks a lot like Christian Taft, the actor who recently did a film about a man and his clairvoyant dog. I see Kip McDonald and Nancy Grohl, members of the board of selectmen, the town’s governing body, and Wade Fisher, head of the chamber of commerce. Bibi Anderson, the cheerleading-team captain when we were in high school, is in line at the bar, talking to a man who I think is the chief of police. Bibi’s gone blond, and she looks great. Dressed in a pair of flowing white, silky pants and a fitted jacket, she looks as though she should be in a movie herself. Or running a movie company.

  “Let’s find Peter,” I tell Cluny.

  We skirt a tufted, blue leather coffee table and weave through groups of people and in between couples. I hear a wo
man say she was talking to Halsey the other day, and I wonder if she means Halsey Sherman, the producer. In another group, a man in a black shirt with rhinestone buttons and a skinny black tie says, “I’m trying to get them interested in the project, but I don’t think they’ll invest. She only likes to do movies about divorced women over forty who come from dysfunctional families.” The man next to him sips his drink and says, “I heard he only likes to do movies about married men who have affairs with divorced women over forty who come from dysfunctional families.” They nod, mulling this over.

  There must be a DJ, although I don’t see him. Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” is playing from speakers hidden somewhere. A man walks by with a tray of wasabi shrimp and avocado canapés, and my stomach rumbles, but I look away, pretending not to notice. I’m afraid if I eat one bite, I’ll burst right out of this dress.

  I spot Buddy Rance pop an hors d’oeuvre into his mouth. He sees us and waves. Six feet tall and two hundred fifty pounds, Buddy still has the same round face and dimples he had in high school, making him look perennially young.

  “Oh my God, there she is,” he says, walking toward us. “Grace Hammond.” He clutches me in a bear hug. “Great to see you.”

  “How are you, Buddy?”

  “Pretty good. You know, same ole, same ole.” He gives Cluny a kiss on the cheek.

  “You look great,” I say.

  Buddy pats his stomach. “Aw, no. Too much pasta. I gotta do something about that.” He sighs. “But you…” His eyes zero in on the lace snaking down my legs, and he gives me a mischievous grin. “Nice dress.”

  I shake my head. “Stop it, Buddy.” I want to tell him, It’s all Regan’s fault, but he’d never understand.

  “No, I like it, I like it.” He motions for me to turn around. I oblige. Nobody but Buddy could get me to humiliate myself even further than I already have.

  “Okay,” I tell him. “Show’s over.”

  He leans closer to me. “Your ears must have been burning the other day. Dave Lewendowski and I were talking about the time in middle school when we took your sneakers outside and threw them on the roof of the gym.”

  “I remember that,” Cluny says.

  “Me too,” I say. “I could have killed you guys. Mrs. Jenks got so mad when I tried to play basketball in my bare feet. And then I borrowed Sandy Farley’s sneakers out of her locker and ended up with a foot fungus.”

  Greg walks toward us, holding a tumbler filled with ice and a clear liquid I’m guessing is vodka. “That took forever,” he says. “Long line at the bar.”

  “Jeff Bromley’s here,” Buddy says. “Have you seen him?”

  I shake my head. “No, not yet.”

  “And Marylou Felk—or, uh, Watson, I mean. And Krista Baroni, or whatever her last name is now.”

  “Oh, Krista’s here?” I ask. I’m surprised at this. The last time I ran into her was in Manhattan, and she told me she’d been living there for two years. We made small talk about getting together, but we never did it.

  “Krista’s married again,” Buddy says. “Living back here.”

  I try to wrap my brain around the fact that Krista’s on marriage number two when I haven’t even had marriage number one.

  Cluny sips her champagne. “We heard Peter did some filming at the marina.”

  Buddy’s face glows. “Oh man, that was fun. I got to talk to Brittany Wells. She’s here tonight, you know. She asked me where the organic juice bar was in town. I told her I’d take her there, but she said she could find it herself.”

  “Buddy, you’re happily married.” I give him a playful slap on the arm.

  “Just window shopping,” he says. “I never touch the merchandise.”

  “Speaking of marriage, where’s Jan?” I ask.

  “Home with the kids. Sitter got sick and canceled at the last minute.”

  “Well, tell her we missed her.”

  A server walks by with a tray of olive crostini, and Buddy takes three. “You know, my Rance Marina sign’s going to be in the movie,” he says. “Peter told me.”

  “A little product placement?” Greg asks.

  “Gotta get it where you can.” Buddy looks at the crostini for a second before slipping them all into his mouth at once.

  Oh God, I’m so hungry. I think about grabbing three of them myself, but this dress is so tight, there’s just no room for error. And, with my luck, somebody would see me, and by tomorrow it would be all over town. Did you see Grace Hammond at the party last night, wolfing down the canapés? No wonder she couldn’t fit into that dress. I look at my empty glass. I shouldn’t be drinking anything either, but I’ve got to get my protein somewhere.

  “Have you seen Peter?” I ask Buddy. “We can’t find him anywhere.”

  “Last time I saw him, he was outside.” Buddy points toward the open French doors at the back of the room. “Talking to Regan.”

  Regan.

  I grab another flute from a passing tray and remind myself that Regan is not Peter’s type. And that she’s the one person here whose dress is shorter and tighter than mine.

  I drink half the glass, and we head out of the air-conditioning, onto a stone patio lit by sconces and hurricane lamps. A brick walkway leads to a pool, about thirty feet away, where the turquoise water shimmers like the ocean around an exotic tropical island, the kind of place where I imagine Peter goes for vacations or maybe even has a spare home. This would be the perfect spot for the two of us to sit, look up at the stars, listen to the trill of the crickets, and talk about old times. But not tonight, because at least thirty other people are out here, chattering and laughing, and you couldn’t hear a cricket if it were sitting on your shoulder.

  I scan the crowd and finally spot him. He’s standing in a small group, with two men and three women, and he’s dressed in faded jeans and a light-blue oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He looks so handsome. In fact, he looks so much like he did in high school. He may be older, but he’s really still the same boy. He hasn’t changed a bit.

  I don’t see Regan’s silver dress in the group, and I let out a sigh of relief. “At least Regan’s not there,” I tell Cluny.

  But I’m wrong. An instant later one of the women turns her head, and it’s Regan. She’s standing right next to Peter, and there’s not a sliver of a sequin or a breath of spandex on her. She’s wearing a one-shoulder, coral-colored silk dress with a flowing skirt that almost goes to her knees. Her knees. I glance at my half-naked legs, and I want to kill her.

  “I take that back,” I say. “She’s over there, right next to Peter.” I nod in the direction of the group. “In that very conservative coral dress.” I drain the rest of my drink.

  “What?” Cluny searches the crowd. “Oh my God. What happened to the silver thing?”

  “I don’t know,” I say as Regan throws back her head and laughs at something.

  I can’t believe she did this to me again. It’s just like the time I wanted to get on the cheerleading squad and Regan told me tryouts were on Wednesday when they were really on Tuesday. I walked into the gym in a little pleated skirt and T-shirt, ready to shake some pom-poms, only to find the school band in the middle of practice, marching around in lines and doing turns. I almost got mowed down by a tuba player. And then the band director, Mr. Elkhorn, stuck a baton in my hand, thinking I was there to try out for baton twirler. The whole thing was a nightmare.

  “Ladies,” Greg says. “What’s going on? Are you going to introduce me to Peter or what?”

  “Uh, yeah,” Cluny says. She takes my arm and gives me an encouraging smile. “Come on. Let’s do it.”

  It’s when we walk across the patio that I feel the alcohol kick in. There’s a disconnect between my head and the rest of my body, as though my head is a balloon that was tethered to the ground and has now been set loose. And my legs—they’re getting out in front of me, leaving the rest of me to catch up.

  As we approach Peter’s group, I notice how close he and Regan are s
tanding. You couldn’t slide a credit card between them. And she’s so naturally tall that when she looks at him, their eyes are almost on a level playing field. She makes a comment and brushes something off his shoulder. Now she’s touching the back of his neck, bringing him closer so she can tell him something. What is she saying that’s so interesting? Why is he listening? Doesn’t he see who she really is? What she really is?

  I glance at them again. Regan is leaning in farther and whispering something. My chest tightens. What if he doesn’t remember? What if he doesn’t see through her? I have this horrible image—Regan lying on a chaise longue by a pool at a mansion in Bel Air. It’s their mansion, hers and Peter’s, and I’m her secretary. It’s the only job I can get. She’s dictating letters to me, and I’m correcting her grammar. “To whom,” Regan, not “to who.” Or would I be calling her Mrs. Brooks? I shudder.

  “Hey, you made it,” Peter says, smiling.

  I want to tell him, Don’t do it, don’t marry her, she’ll only break your heart, but the words are trapped inside me.

  Cluny introduces Greg, and then Peter gives me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. I almost lose my balance, wobbling on my heels, which seem so far away, they could be in Nepal. I feel Regan staring at me as I put my arm around Peter.

  “Long time no see,” I tell him, and I laugh—maybe a little too loudly. He feels so warm and strong—somebody who’s got it all under control. I remember that about him—how he could work a room, even as a teenager, how the teachers loved him, how he could always think on his feet and come up with an answer. Even if it was the wrong answer, he had an answer, and he could usually make it sound pretty good. It doesn’t surprise me that he can direct a movie, keep it all together, get what he needs out of everyone—the best of everyone.

  When I let go, Regan is sipping her wine, peering at me from over the rim of her glass. “That’s quite a dress, Grace.”

  I thank her, pretending to take it as a compliment, although I’m sure she didn’t mean it that way. “Isn’t it fabulous? And look at these cutouts! Très chic!”

  A server passes by, and I exchange my empty champagne glass for a full one. Regan gives me a disapproving look, but I tell myself not to worry, she’s just jealous. She probably wishes she had these curves. I’m feeling so good, I’m even reconsidering those olive crostini.