Растущий лес. Владимир Мясоедов

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      That was over a month ago.

      Hearing Jack’s key in the lock, I quickly conceal the dog-eared October issue of Modern Bride—which I purchased back on Labor Day weekend an hour after Jack’s mother spilled the beans—inside this week’s People and stick it in the center of a towering stack of freebie magazines he’ll never touch.

      Here comes the groom, I think.

      I think this with just a pinch of irony, considering that forty days and forty nights have passed since his mother told me that an engagement was imminent.

      Actually, I think it with a dollop of irony and a side of frustration.

      What’s a girl to do when the man she loves is keeping proposal plans and diamonds all to himself?

      All she can do is wait.

      Wait, and secretly plan every detail of the wedding so that when The Question—and celebratory champagne corks, and engagement-photo flashbulbs—finally pop, she won’t be waylaid by research on reception halls, caterers and honeymoon destinations.

      “Hi, honey, I’m home,” Jack quips, draping his coat over the nearest chair.

      I watch him deposit his keys, wallet, sunglasses, Metro-card, umbrella, comb, handkerchief, a handful of change and a pack of Mentos on the table.

      I swear he somehow carries more in his pockets than I do in my purse, which is bigger than this apartment.

      “How was the meeting?” I ask him, tilting my head up as he bends to kiss me from behind the couch.

      “It went great. She was happy with my plan.”

      He’s talking about the client and a media plan, of course.

      I wish he would talk about me and his proposal plan, but short of asking point-blank whether he has one, I have to be patient. As far as he knows, I still think we might be getting married in a few years and I’m just hunky-dory with that.

      If it weren’t for Wilma, I would probably be job hunting in Brookside right about now. Thank God her secret-keeping ability is directly converse to her son’s.

      “I brought you something,” he says, and I get my hopes up.

      “Here,” he says, and hands me a plastic shopping bag that I can feel contains a smallish box, and I get my hopes up even further.

      I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that nobody proposes by handing over a ring box in a plastic shopping bag.

      Here’s my thought: Jack isn’t the most traditionally romantic guy in the world. I wouldn’t put it past him to give me—

      “A Chia Pet?” I say incredulously, pulling it out of the bag.

      “I saw it and thought of you.”

      “Really.”

      It’s a small gnome. A gnome that will presumably sprout a green Afro.

      For a moment, all I can do is stare at it.

      Then, knowing I might regret it, I ask, “Why did you think of me?”

      “Because you were just talking about how gray and dreary and dead everything is now that summer is over,” he says, and I can tell by his expression that he didn’t think it was this lame a few seconds ago, before he opened his big fat unromantic mouth.

      I’m trying to think of something nice to say to bail him out, but all I can come up with is, “Um, thanks.”

      “I just figured it would be nice to see something green and growing.”

      “It will be.” A gnome with green, growing hair. How…nice.

      “Sorry,” he says. “I guess it was a stupid idea.”

      “No,” I tell him, feeling sorry for the poor clod. “It was really…sweet.”

      I pretend to admire my Chia Pet. Then, when enough time seems to have passed, I put it on the table.

      “All I want to do now,” Jack says, sitting down beside me and taking off his shoes, “is put on sweats, order take-out pizza and watch the Mets get clobbered in their playoff game.”

      “Oops,” I say.

      “What?” He looks at me suspiciously. “Don’t tell me the cable is out.”

      “No…but you’re close.”

      “How close? Is the picture fuzzy?”

      “No, Raphael is coming over to play Trivial Pursuit. We’re making paella. He’ll be here in fifteen minutes.”

      Jack has the courtesy not to groan at that news, but I can tell he wants to.

      “How is that close to the cable being out?” he wants to know.

      “You know…you can’t get more ‘out’ than Raphael,” I crack.

      Jack clearly isn’t the least bit amused.

      It isn’t that he doesn’t like my friend Raphael, because everyone likes Raphael. Well, maybe not everyone.

      Chances are, your average homophobic red-stater isn’t going to appreciate a bawdy, wisecracking male fashionista. But in this little corner of the world, everyone—including Jack—likes Raphael.

      That doesn’t mean he prefers Pursuit and Paella to Pizza and Piazza. Still…

      “You hate the Mets,” I remind him.

      “Right. And I want to witness them die.”

      Is it my imagination, or is that hint of viciousness directed at me?

      “Sorry,” I say with a shrug. “But you can still watch the game. Raphael and I will be quiet.”

      He snorts at that. “Trace, Raphael isn’t even quiet in his sleep.”

      He’s right. We shared a room with him at Kate and Billy’s Hamptons share in July and the air was fraught with deafening snores and anguished—or perhaps libidinous—shrieks. I probably should have thought to warn Jack that Raphael talks in his sleep. And that he sleeps in the nude.

      “Well, lucky you, he isn’t sleeping over tonight,” I tell Jack.

      “Yeah, lucky me. I’m going to change into my sweats.”

      “Sweats?”

      “What’s wrong with sweats?”

      “Sweats are just too…”

      “Too…what?” he asks. “Too comfortable? Too hetero? Too…?”

      “Dumpy. I mean, come on, Jack, we’re having company. СКАЧАТЬ