eared to be more interesting narratives than her own. But as occasionally happens, some friends from Miami came to visit her in the Village and naturally they wanted to go out. Which meant that Marilyn was going to have to go out, too.

This was a bummer. Marilyn, used to having all her time to herself, hadn’t bathed for three days. Hadn’t washed her hair for a week. Hadn’t bought new clothes for at least a year.

But she had to make the effort.

The friends from Miami wanted to hit all the famous Village hot spots. At first Marilyn felt bored and out of place and kind of self-conscious. But then her friends were doing shots of tequila and she did, too. They started playing darts. Marilyn went back to the bar for another round and struck up a conversation with the bartender. Mike was no older than twenty-five, but it turned out that he and Marilyn were actually from the same city in Australia. Then he asked her if she wanted to go out back.

No one else was paying attention to her so Marilyn figured: Why not?

The Australian then proceeded to kiss her next to the Dumpsters.

Back inside, he gave her a free shot of tequila. Then he asked if she wanted to go to his house to smoke weed.

At this point, Marilyn was drunk enough to agree that this sounded like a good idea.

* * *

The cub’s “house” turned out to be a seriously dilapidated Airstream trailer.

Marilyn did her best to admire the patched linoleum floor, the depressing late-1970s design. There was a table set between built-in plastic benches covered with young-man detritus: a bong, a speaker, a cactus, various small tins, dirty coffee cups. Mike sat down and started rolling a spliff, pasting two papers together and expertly twirling them into a cone into which he shoveled a mixture of tobacco and weed.

“What do you think of my crib?” he asked. “Cool, huh?”

“Yes, very cool,” Marilyn said, wondering if she hung out with him if she’d have to start saying words like “crib,” too. “Where do you sleep?”

“Over there,” Mike said, indicating a stained mattress leaning against the wall. As he licked the paper and made a nice twist at the tip, Marilyn realized she couldn’t do this. She could not have sex with a guy on a bare mattress in a dilapidated Airstream trailer from the 1970s.

She had to draw the line.

Mike, however, wasn’t happy about this. “Why?” he asked. “Is it because you don’t like me?”

“I think you’re a really terrific guy. But”—she paused and then played the cub trump card—“I’m old enough to be your mother.”

“You’re older than my mother,” Mike said.

And with that, Marilyn walked back to town, thanking her lucky stars for getting out of there before she really had something to feel bad about.

A Cautionary Tale: Always Check a Cub’s Credentials

If you’re going to cub, you want to be smart about it. Because you’re older and wiser, you know that sometimes cubs do really dumb things.

And sometimes, you can be the victim of a dumb cub. Or even worse: a cub con.

This is what happened to Mia.

Mia’s husband, Brian, was a multimillionaire hedge fund guy and Mia was his third wife. On her fiftieth birthday, Brian threw Mia a huge party under a tent with pink lights and a dance floor and a performance by a pop star. Then he gifted her with a diamond necklace and said he wouldn’t be the man he was today without her.

A month later, he went to Vegas, met a twenty-one-year-old dancer and fell “in love.” Two months later, he set his dancer up in an apartment on the Upper East Side not far from where he and Mia lived. Four months later, his new love was pregnant.

Mia and Brian had an airtight prenup: In case of sectionorce, Mia would get a lump sum of thirty million dollars. She would also get the house in the Hamptons and could keep all her jewelry, which was estimated to be worth at least five million dollars on its own.

And because Brian was well-known in the financial world and had behaved in a manner that was, according to those who knew him, completely out of character, the sectionorce ended up in the gossip columns. Along with the particulars of the settlement.

Mia escaped to the house in the Hamptons. Two sisters and a handful of friends rushed to her side. They came and went for the next few weeks, but then there was a lull and Mia was on her own.

But not quite. Because Mia’s house had all the fixings—heated swimming pool, extensive gardens, and a tennis court—there were always people around.

* * *

Tags: Candace Bushnell Fiction
Source: readsnovelonline.net