Janie looks around us as we sit and whispers, “I’m pretty sure your fans can still find you back here.”
“One can only hope,” I whisper back. She chuckles into her menu and I wish the big leather thing wasn’t blocking her mesmerizing face.
“So, was Nigel keeping people away from you at the bars last night?” She asks.
I grimace, sure she won’t like my answer, “It was dark.”
“And?”
“And he told the manager not to seat anyone else around us.” I quickly add, “It’s not that I’m a prick, it’s just one person one table over takes out their phone to snap a photo, then others, then my location is posted on social media, on and on.”
“Wow. That sounds awful.”
“I hardly notice it anymore. And you didn’t notice last night, right?”
She thinks. “No, I guess I didn’t.”
“Nigel, you get a raise mate!” I call to him.
“Aye, you said that last month.” He grumbles.
“Poor guy,” she says.
“Ugh, fine.” I get out my phone and type a message to Mitch, then make a point to show it to her. Nigel gets a real raise this time. She smiles wide. I fight the urge to tack on a raise for Mitch and my drivers too while she’s watching.
We order drinks and food and settle into more getting-to-know-you questions.
In few, carefully chosen words, she says she and her brother were close until their teens. I answer what it’s like to be a twin with my brother Byron.
She admits yes, she was a dancer in school.
I admit I played polo, as did my brothers. I accept the justified teasing from an American about that. Yes, it’s field hockey on horses. It is just a bittooBritish, I agree.
There’s a brief moment my brain stalls out at her groans over the food. Apparently she loves fresh sushi almost as much as napping. Her head goes back and her eyes close and I have to adjust myself under the table.
I snap myself out of it and finally we arrive at the University years. She says she went to NYU and then quickly redirects the questions back to me. I tell her a few hilarious memories from my days at Cambridge. I almost get another laugh.
“That’s it!” She cuts me off as I’m about to start a third story. “You need to think through your friends in college.”
“What?”
“For your little marriage problem.”
“Oh. That.” I’d blissfully forgotten about that the past day and a half.
She nods, “Yes, back when you had real friends, not people trying to climb you.” I choke on my drink and she corrects herself. “Socialclimbing. C’mon Mr. Threesome, get a grip.”
I pound my chest and cough before I ask, “You think the scheming and politics were better at University?”
Her face falls, “They weren’t?”
“Definitely not. The women there, as brilliant and remarkable as some of them were, many were just there because their father sent them there to get an M.R.S.”
“Still,” she tries to rally, “What about your best friends from back then. Or even your friends now, real friends, surely some of them have nice sisters? Cousins? Single friends?”
I think through my best mates… Aiden, Collin, Dennis, my two brothers. Two of the those last three ended up with Canton girls. I suppose those guys, Emerson’s brothers-in-law, are all good friends now, Skye and her husband…the others…they all have a good friend…
I lean toward her involuntarily, “And what about you, are you single?”
