The Girlfriend Curse Read online

  Valerie Frankel

  Dedicated to the good people of Manshire, Vermont, without whom this book could not have been possible.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Peg Silver, thirty-two, could make a man come, but she

  Chapter 2

  Ordinarily, if a man described a woman as “magical,”

  Chapter 3

  “Peg, you haven’t changed a bit,” said Violet Masterson,

  Chapter 4

  “I’m thinking of leaving New York,” said Peg. She sat at her

  Chapter 5

  On her knees, Peg clipped an apple branch to the size of a

  Chapter 6

  Peg, here’s your signed contract. Keep for your records. You

  Chapter 7

  The train trip was tolerable so far, thanks to Peg’s Gatorade

  Chapter 8

  The trip ended three hours later in White River Junction,

  Chapter 9

  “You’ve got a little mouse problem,” said Chuck Plenet,

  Chapter 10

  Ten minutes later, Peg pulled into the gravel driveway of a

  Chapter 11

  “Dinner in an hour,” Wilma announced before leaving the

  Chapter 12

  Peg’s head still hurt, so she decided to go in search of Tylenol

  Chapter 13

  Dreamily, Peg’s eyes opened in the morning. She felt

  Chapter 14

  That afternoon, the women took a five-mile canoe trip, first

  Chapter 15

  Dear Nina:

  Chapter 16

  “Not dates exactly,” said Linus. “We call them

  Chapter 17

  “Pretend I’m a typical man,” said Linus Bester. “For the

  Chapter 18

  “How’s the soup?” asked Ben.

  Chapter 19

  When Ben and Peg returned to the Federal (he walked three

  Chapter 20

  “I’ve listened to the tape,” said Wilma. “I’m very

  Chapter 21

  Dear Nina,

  Chapter 22

  Peg returned to the women’s suite. Hangover starting

  Chapter 23

  The Inward Bounders were lined up by the riverbank.

  Chapter 24

  Peg opened all the car windows. She’d have to leave Ray in

  Chapter 25

  When Peg and Tracy returned to the Federal, Linus was

  Chapter 26

  “We’re moving a mountain,” said Tracy the next morning

  Chapter 27

  “I nominate myself not to be leader today,” said Peg to her

  Chapter 28

  Dear Nina:

  Chapter 29

  Peg woke up to the glorious smell of bacon.

  Chapter 30

  Peg fought. She struggled. Oliver lay on top of her in the

  Chapter 31

  “Hands behind your head, drop to your knees, plant your

  Chapter 32

  “I’m moving in,” said Jack, on the morning of his third day

  Chapter 33

  From the sound of it, Nina and Jack were making up. As

  Chapter 34

  “Taste,” said Peg Silver, thirty-three, as she filled a ladle

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books by Valerie Frankel

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  Peg Silver, thirty-two, could make a man come, but she couldn’t make him stay. She’d just spent two hours bemoaning this problem to her friend Nina at dinner, parsing to the syllable what she’d like to say to her most recent ex-boyfriend, if such an unlikely opportunity presented itself.

  The night’s chosen scenario: Bumping Into Each Other by Chance. Peg would be in a glorious gown, on her way to the Oscars, a nominee for Best Set Design in a Major Motion Picture. As she stepped out of her limousine onto the red carpet, she’d spot Paul in the crowd, looking like he’d just been attacked by dogs. He’d congratulate her, beg her to take him back. She’d be gracious. Briefly pitying. But she had to rush, since her date, Johnny Depp, was waiting, and he was a very possessive man. Besides which, having just won the lottery (“The same day I got the nomination!”), she was flying to the Bahamas for a year as soon as the awards ceremony was over.

  Peg smiled to herself as she unlocked her apartment door. She knew, rationally, that spending hours refining tone and nuance in a conversation that would never take place was a waste of time. But, she thought, a girl can dream, can’t she? Peg dropped her purse on her bed. The phone rang. She grabbed the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  “Peg?”

  She recognized his voice instantly. It was Paul. He’d Called Out of the Blue. Panicking, Peg clicked the off button, giving herself three seconds to scramble for a good opening line before he called back. Something breezy. Casual. All she could come up with was, “You bastard, you ruined my life.”

  The first time in three months she’d mindlessly answered the phone, the one time the ring hadn’t unleashed the flood of Pavlovian pretraumatic stress syndrome symptoms—tight chest, shaky hands, constricted breathing, skin flush to a capillary-popping red. She felt eerily calm, actually, now that the wait was over. The phone rang again. She took a deep breath.

  “Hello?” she said, exhaling sexily.

  “Peg, it’s Paul. Something’s wrong with your phone. I got cut off. And you sound nasal.”

  “Paul! What a surprise. How long has it been? A month?” she asked.

  “Over three, actually,” he said.

  “That long?” she asked, as if marveling at the flight of time.

  The morning of the breakup, he’d promised to call her that night. She never called him, not once, which was a show of strength that would fill her with dignity until the day she died. She had buckled a few times, sending him artfully terse and transparently neutral Just Checking In emails. Paul would respond a day later, a week later, with a few sentences—no caps or punctuation—if at all. Lazy, lying bastard. Peg should tell him to go fuck himself. She should make herself proud.

  Paul said, “I need to see you. Tonight.”

  It was eight on a Thursday in April, unseasonably hot for springtime in New York City. “Where’s the fire?” she asked, having a pretty good idea where.

  “I’ve been thinking about you constantly,” he said. “I have things to say, face-to-face. I can’t go another night without seeing you.”

  This was where she was supposed to say, “Johnny Depp is a very possessive man.” Instead, she said, “Can’t.”

  “You have plans?”

  “No.”

  “Early day tomorrow?”

  “No.”

  “Making a show of strength that will fill you with dignity until the day you die?” he asked. He paused, and then said shortly, “I hope you and your dignity will be very happy together. I’ll let you go…”

  That was it? No more pleading, spilling blood while screaming her name and tearing his shirt? She said, “Giving up so easy? You’ve got a lot to learn about groveling.”

  He said, “Please see me. I’m begging. I’m supplicating—wait, I need to find the thesaurus.”

  “Meet me at Chez Chas in twenty minutes,” she said. “And don’t be late.” She’d waited long enough for him already.

  Chez Chas was a bistro in the corner storefront of Peg’s building on Grand Street in Soho. The restaurant had six tables and a tiny bar. Once featured in New York magazine as the smallest three-star restaurant in Manhattan, Chez Chas was, if not an A-list destination, a B+. Peg had never eaten there. They didn’t take reservations, and
it was impossible to get a table before five o’clock. But the bar—cramped, poorly stocked—usually had a vacancy. Peg had spent many cocktail hours at that bar, with a friend or a Chuck Palahniuk novel. Fight Club was a guaranteed male magnet; she met the boyfriend before Paul while reading it.

  With a glance in her mirror—she hated her new bangs—Peg ran downstairs to the bistro. She wanted to get one drink in her before Paul showed up. Steady the nerves. The bar was in the rear of the bistro. She had to squeeze between tables, apologizing to diners as she jostled their chairs. She sat on a vacant stool, draping her jean jacket on the one to her left. The bartender was new; the bartender was always new. This month’s model was, most definitely, a model. Lean and young, he had a chiseled chin, speckled with stubble, and perfectly chunky bangs.

  Peg said to him, “How do you get your bangs to behave? Hours of private training? Is there a School for Bangs I should know about?”

  The bartender nodded, as if he didn’t speak English. “What can I get you?” he asked. No accent. Nor sense of humor.

  Peg had wine at dinner. “Whiskey sour,” she said.

  “Out of sour mix.”

  “White Russian.”

  “Out of milk.”

  “Vodka martini?”

  “Out of olives.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  He said, “As you wish.”

  Peg found that oddly comforting. Receiving her cocktail, she checked her watch. Five minutes more. She sipped and examined the couples at dinner. The tables were set up for two. According to Zagat, Chez Chas was “an ideal date destination.” Six couples had come for a night of French food and romantic ambience. A married couple in the corner (visible rings) talked loudly about an upcoming vacation. Another couple held hands across the table, gazing intensely at each other as if they were in a cult of two. Peg picked up her martini glass and drank her vodka.

  They will do it tonight, she thought.

  Ordinarily, a happy couple as such, in the shameless adoration of new love, would be too painful to behold. But tonight, Peg surveyed them with hope.

  I will do it tonight, she thought.

  Fuck caution. What was the point of denying herself? If Paul was sufficiently contrite, if he’d learned his lesson, mea culpaed and beat his chest, why shouldn’t she bring him up-stairs? Let him demonstrate his contrition by giving her a two-hour tongue bath?

  Peg crossed her legs, her eyes drifting from the Moonie couple and settling on another pair. On the surface, they seemed made for each other. Same stylishness quotient, age, ethnic background. Same size head. But the stiff-backed tension and fidgety handling of forks told the very short story of their relationship: a first date that would not lead to a second.

  Peg and Paul had had both the glassy-eyed attraction of the Moonies at table two as well as the superficial compatibility of the couple at table three. They’d practically lived together for a year. With centuries of time-honored tradition at her back, Peg wanted to take their relationship forward. To get married, have kids, talk excitedly in restaurants about upcoming vacations, like the couple at table one.

  She unfurled her vision of their future on New Year’s Day, the morning after their boozy crawl through Tribeca bars toasting to 2005 and each other. Despite the simplicity (the banality) of the idea, Paul was shocked by her suggestion, as if she’d asked him to commit murder for her, not commit to marriage with her. If that was what she truly wanted, he wouldn’t stand in her way. She stood in his, begging him not to desert her on New Year’s Day. Paul waited until the crack of dawn on January 2.

  His call tonight, his “I’ve got things to say, face-to-face” could mean only one thing: He’d changed his mind about marriage. Otherwise, why bother meeting at all?

  “Another round?” asked the bartender. “Same thing, or something different this time?”

  Peg was stumped for an answer.

  The door opened, street noise filtering into the room. Peg turned and saw Paul Tester framed in the doorway. He looked the same. Tall, confident, sloppy smile. Her months of loneliness, self-blame and anger instantly forgotten, Peg smiled as he made his way to her; each polished “forgive me” as he squeezed between the tables seemed directed at her, not the diners. When he finally got to the bar, he put both arms around her waist and lifted her off of her stool in an embrace that emptied her lungs.

  He said, “You look gorgeous.”

  She was still wearing her jeans and T-shirt from work. Not exactly the height of glamour. But Paul had always admired her low-key style. Little did he know that she agonized over her jeans choices, her T-shirts cost $80 apiece, her skin tone was achieved with three types of foundation and she was forever laboring to add volume in her straight, nearly black hair.

  “I like the bangs,” he said.

  Peg said, “I like the suit.” Black, three-button, brand-new.

  “Picked it out myself,” he said.

  She said, “I’d like to see it on the floor of my bedroom.”

  He frowned and said, “Can we have a drink first? Catch up?”

  He’d been in such a hurry to talk. Now he was stalling? He must be nervous, she thought. A glass of confidence would take care of that. He ordered a martini, and another for her.

  He said, “You must be working a lot.”

  Her busiest time of year. “I’m doing the atrium of the Condé Nast building.” Peg was an interior landscape designer, which was a fancy way to say indoor gardener.

  Paul said, “Bird of Paradise?”

  She cringed. “God, no. All tulips, all the time. Next week, apple branches. How about you?”

  “Can’t complain,” he said, chin out. Paul was a talent agent at CAA for animals. “Doing a licensing deal for the winner of the Westminster Dog Show.”

  “A poodle?” she asked. Wild guess.

  “Mastiff,” he said. “Stanley of Edinburgh. Oversized tartan collars, doggie coats and scarves.”

  The bartender brought their olive-free drinks. Peg sipped quickly. Two minutes had been about enough catching up for her. She was ready to put the misery of the winter behind her.

  Paul must have sensed her impatience. “I want to apologize for the way I treated you when we broke up,” he dove in. “It’s been bothering me for a while. I never wanted to hurt you.”

  “I never wanted you to hurt me either,” she said.

  He smiled feebly. “I was an idiot, Peg. You were devoted, loving, supportive. Everything I could have asked for, and more. But you blindsided me with the marriage talk. I was hungover. I couldn’t make decisions in that condition. You looked at me like you would hate me if I said no. I couldn’t give you the answer you wanted, and it didn’t seem fair to string you along.”

  She nodded vigorously. “I told Nina that your dumping me was an act of sacrificial love.”

  “What did she say?” he asked.

  Peg said, “She cursed your name and spit on the sidewalk.”

  “Oh,” he said.

  “You were saying how you broke up with me for my own good,” she prompted. “How, at the time, marriage was repellent…”

  “Right,” he said, pausing to drain his glass. “Marriage was repellent then. But now, the idea of sharing a life, making a legal partnership, having children, teaching them values and growing together as a family seems like a grand idea. Otherwise, what are we doing? Killing time? Making money? For what? What’s it all about, Peg? I’m not asking you to answer that. But I’ve been asking myself about this stuff from the moment we broke up. I really missed you that first month.”

  “Just the first month?” she asked. For Peg, the earliest days weren’t too horrific. She’d been through breakups before. Every woman in her thirties in New York had one or two dozen relationships that, in hindsight, were thought of as learning experiences. But as the weeks without Paul piled up, the loneliness grabbed Peg by the neck. The empty apartment, the zero messages on voice mail, the sexual frustration stretched taut, pushing her dangerously close
to the excruciating snap of fortitude, the deadly fusing of insecurity and bitterness. Any woman who’d had her share of learning experiences can attest, the insecure/bitterness combo could suck the soul right out of you.

  Paul said, “You were the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  She put her hand on his knee, eyes damp. She said, “Do go on.”

  “You showed me everything I know about how to be caring and supportive. It took a while for me to get it. But I have. For the first time, I’m ready to take the next step.”

  Peg said, “And the next step is?”

  He said, “Marriage, of course.”

  He was beaming. His sloppy smile spread across his cheeks like melted butter. Peg said, “I can’t believe this is happening.”

  “You’ve got magical transformative powers, Peg. I couldn’t see it up close. I had to get distance.”

  “Forest, trees, I understand completely,” said Peg. “You are so fucking hot.”

  She got off her stool and reached for him, lips ready to make up.

  He held her back and said, “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

  “Someone…okay,” she said. Was he referring to the shrink who’d helped him see the light? “I’ll meet anyone you want.”

  “I mean now,” he said.

  “Now, as in now?”

  “I’ll be right back.” He got up, maneuvered around the tables and dashed out of the restaurant.

  What the hell was going on? she wondered, rightfully confused and a bit annoyed that he’d bring another person into the privacy of their reunion. This was a party for two, and Peg had no idea who else Paul would want to invite.

  Peg watched the door, baffled. The bartender said, “Is your friend coming back?”