Eligible. Curtis Sittenfeld

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       Chapter 24

      When Caroline Bingley and Fitzwilliam Darcy walked through the door of Charlotte’s downtown apartment, the sight of Darcy rattled Liz more than she wished to admit.

      “Sorry,” Jane murmured to Liz—Chip and Jane had indeed decided to start their evening at Charlotte’s—as the newest arrivals headed into the kitchen to obtain drinks. “Are you okay?”

      Liz squared her shoulders. “Of course.”

      But Darcy’s comment at the Lucases’ barbecue about Liz’s ostensibly single status—I suppose it would be unchivalrous to say I’m not surprised—had echoed unpleasantly in Liz’s head during the last week. Could it have been his spontaneous attempt at wit? Or in their brief encounter, had he taken note of some off-putting feature of her presentation—disgustingly bad breath, say—that no one, even Jane, had ever felt comfortable mentioning? In New York, Liz rarely dwelled on the contours of her romantic life, but in Cincinnati, the irregularity of her arrangement with Jasper had come into sharper focus. Depending on how long Susan’s grandmother took to die, it could be several more years before Jasper and Susan officially divorced and, Liz imagined, she and Jasper moved in together. Eventually, in some low-key ceremony, they would marry. It seemed plausible she’d be the last of her sisters to wed, but Liz didn’t share her mother’s view of matrimony as a race. After all, she already had a companion to reliably talk things over with and another body in the bed to reliably curl against, and weren’t those marriage’s truest perquisites?

      And yet, with regard to Jasper, Liz wasn’t impervious to self-doubt. At a co-worker’s wedding, when filling out a form that required her to declare her marital status or identify an emergency contact (she always wrote Jane’s name), or if otherwise confronted with evidence of choices she’d made without necessarily having recognized them as such in the moment—these circumstances all gave her pause. In recent weeks, as she’d repeatedly bumped into former classmates or old family friends, the proof was ample that other people’s choices had been different. A few days before, she had met Charlotte for a drink at Don Pablo’s, which had once been their favorite restaurant, and as Liz took a sip of her pomegranate margarita, she realized that at the adjacent table, standing up to leave, was their Seven Hills classmate Vanessa Krager, as well as a bald man who appeared to be Vanessa’s husband and four children between the ages of five and twelve who appeared to be their offspring. How was this mathematically possible? And wasn’t there, in Vanessa’s avid reproduction, something unseemly, some announcement of narcissism or aggression? It was generally less shocking to Liz that twenty years after high school she was still her essential self, the self she’d grown up as, unencumbered by spouse or child, than that nearly everyone else had changed, moved on, and multiplied. After moderately warm greetings, introductions, and updates (Vanessa was working part-time doing billing for a chiropractor, the family was soon due at the ten-year-old’s piano recital), Vanessa said, “Liz, I read your interview with Jillian Northcutt. Do you think Hudson Blaise cheated on her?”

      Five years earlier, after the dissolution of one of Hollywood’s then-most-famous marriages, Liz had been the first journalist to interview the actress Jillian Northcutt post-split. That this remained Liz’s best-known article was slightly embarrassing—the entirety of the interview, which had happened in a hotel suite, had lasted eighteen minutes and occurred in the presence of not only Jillian Northcutt’s publicist and personal assistant but also the publicist’s assistant, a silent manicurist, and an equally silent pedicurist. While the encounter had paid dividends in subsequent cocktail party conversations, and had even landed Liz on several entertainment talk shows, she actually felt sorry for Jillian Northcutt because of the degree of prurience she inspired.

      To Vanessa, Liz said, “I think the only people who really know what went wrong are the two of them.”

      Insistently, Vanessa said, “But he and Roxanne DeLorenzo were together like a month later!” At this point, Vanessa’s husband said, “V, we gotta go,” and Charlotte said, “Great to see you, Vanessa,” and then the family departed in a commotion that included spilled rice from a polystyrene take-home container, tears, and intersibling violence.

      When they were gone, Charlotte and Liz looked at each other, and at exactly the same time, Liz said, “There but for the grace of God go I,” and Charlotte said, “Should I freeze my eggs?”

      “Jinx?” Liz said.

      When Charlotte laughed—Liz hadn’t been sure she would—Liz was reminded once again of how much she liked her friend.

      But if Liz’s aversion to having children was clear to her, she was less certain about her romantic status. At times, she wondered why no one besides Jasper had ever truly captured her heart or, perhaps more to the point, why she hadn’t captured anyone else’s. Because even the half dozen men she’d dated casually—they had ended things as often as she had or had seemed less than devastated when she initiated the breakup.

      These were the unsettling thoughts swirling in Liz’s mind as the various guests at Charlotte’s apartment procured drinks and greeted one another. In addition to the Bennet sisters and the Bingley contingent, Charlotte had invited a friend of hers from Procter & Gamble whose name was Nathan; he’d brought along his boyfriend, Stephen. Initially, Liz managed to talk exclusively to Nathan and Stephen, whom she hadn’t previously met, but after a twenty-minute stretch in which she didn’t even glance in Darcy’s direction, she found herself right beside Caroline Bingley.

      Caroline was regarding Liz with what the latter woman took to be a rude scrutiny; given that Caroline was the sister of Jane’s new beau, Liz suppressed her own impulse to rudely stare back. Smiling, she said, “Liz Bennet. Jane’s sister. We met on the Fourth of July.”

      Caroline’s pretty features (blue eyes, the lightest smattering of freckles, a delicate and just barely upturned nose) contorted slightly. She said, “Did we?”

      Oh, for Christ’s sake, Liz thought. No wonder you and Darcy are friends. “Just briefly,” Liz said. “When you told me you were having trouble remembering if you’re in Cincinnati, Cleveland, or Columbus. You’re in Cincinnati, by the way.”

      In an unfriendly tone, Caroline said, “Yes, I’ve figured that out.”

      A pause ensued, and then Liz said, “I hear you’re Chip’s manager. Do you have other clients or do you just work with him?”

      “I’m really selective about who I take on,” Caroline said. “There’s an amazingly talented nineteen-year-old actress who’s been in some indie films, and now one of the networks is interested in creating a sitcom for her. That’s the kind of person I work with—not, like, whatever random dude is juggling puppies on TV this week.”

      Liz said, “So reality-TV stars, but only of the finest quality.”

      Caroline blinked, saying nothing, and Liz added, “What’s her name?”

      Caroline seemed confused.

      “The nineteen-year-old,” Liz said. “What’s her name? I sometimes write about celebrities, so I might know who she is.”

      “Oh. СКАЧАТЬ