Four Blondes

“What if I don’t like any of them,” Janey said. “What if I want a Maserati.”

“I don’t want you to get too spoiled,” Harold said. “You’ll end up hating me because no other guy is ever going to treat you as nice.”

“That’s probably true,” she said, touching him affectionately on the nose with her index finger.

“Why don’t you marry him,” Allison kept hissing all summer.

“Oh no, I couldn’t,” Janey said. “I couldn’t marry a man unless I was totally in love with him.”

“I could be in love with him in two seconds,?

? Allison said.

“Yes, you probably could,” Janey said, not bothering to add that Allison wasn’t anywhere near attractive enough to interest a man like Harold.

Harold took Janey a little bit seriously. “Be smart,” he said. “Do something with your life. Let me help you.”

Janey said she’d always wanted to do something important, like be a journalist or write a novel. So one Sunday, Harold invited a lady editor in chief to brunch. Harold always served cappuccino in oversized cups, and Janey remembered the lady editor, who was wearing a blue and white jacket in a swirly design, balancing the large cup on her thigh while they were sitting outside.

“Janey wants to be a writer,” Harold said.

“Oh my,” said the lady editor. She raised the cup to her lips. “Why is it that pretty girls always want to do something else?”

“Come on, Maeve,” Harold roared. “You used to be pretty yourself. Before you got smart.”

“And before you got rich,” Maeve said. “What is it you want to do, dear?”

“I want your job,” Janey said, in that soft voice that gave no offense.

When Janey and Harold broke up at the end of September, she actually cried on the street afterward. The breakup took place in his Park Avenue apartment—they arranged to meet there for a drink before going out to dinner. Harold was in the library. He was sipping a scotch, staring up at his prized Renoir. “Hello, crazy kid,” he said. He took her hand and led her to a red silk couch. “Something’s come up. I won’t be able to make it to dinner tonight.”

“I see,” Janey said. She had an inkling of what was coming next.

“It was wonderful spending time with you this summer,” he said. “But. . . .”

“It’s over,” Janey said.

“It’s not you,” said Harold. “It’s me. I don’t want to get married, and you should know that there’s another woman I’d like to start seeing.”

“Please,” Janey said. She stood up. “I was going to break up with you tonight anyway. Isn’t that funny?”

It was chilly, and she’d worn a lightweight blue silk coat. As Harold escorted her to the door, she saw Skaaden standing in the hallway with her coat over his arm. Harold had not only planned the breakup, he had discussed it with Skaaden beforehand. As Skaaden helped her into her coat, she imagined what Harold would have told him: “The young lady will be arriving for drinks, but leaving shortly thereafter. She may be upset, so be sure to have her coat ready,” and she smiled. “Good-bye Harold,” she said. She took his hand, but allowed him to kiss her on the cheek.

She made it as far as the corner, then she leaned over a garbage can and started crying. She had a dialogue with herself: “Come on,” said one voice. “This has happened a million times before. You should be used to it.”

“But it still hurts,” said the other voice.

“Only a little. Harold was short and ugly and you never would have married him anyway. Besides, he spent an hour a day on the crapper.”

“I loved him.”

“Did not. You’re only upset because he was going to take you to Bouley for dinner and you wanted the fois gras.”

A cab stopped in front of Harold’s building and a lanky blond girl got out. She was clutching a cheap leather bag. “My replacement,” Janey thought. The cab’s yellow light came on. Janey stuck out her hand and hailed it.

Two weeks later, Harold messengered an envelope to her apartment. Inside was a note that read, “If you ever need anything, please call,” attached to a five-thousand-dollar gift certificate from Gucci.

The next summer, when Janey was with Peter, she ran into Harold at a big party in East Hampton, thrown on a beachfront estate. The summer was only half over, but she’d developed an unusual and alarming hatred for Peter. At the beach, he either talked on his cell phone to clients or criticized other women’s bodies. His pet peeve was women over forty who’d had kids. “Look at her,” he’d scream. “Look at that belly. Useless. Why doesn’t she get off the beach?”