Read Online Fashionably Late by Olivia Goldsmith - Free Book Online

pulled out a handful of black and white photos. Quickly, she fanned them out on her lap. There were two she was looking for. The first she found immediately: a picture of herself as a baby, two or perhaps a little younger. Belle must have gotten the photos from Karen’s real mother. In one Karen was lying on her back in a crib and beside her was a rubber frog. The frog she remembered. Despite the black and white photograph, she knew it was dark green, the color of lilac leaves, except for the belly, which was a chartreuse, and the tongue, which was a bright, cherry red. She remembered that frog.
    It took her longer to find the other photo. She was perhaps a little older in it, dressed in a snowsuit and standing in front of a doorway.
    It was a black and white photo, but Karen knew the snowsuit was royal blue. How old was she then? You could clearly see the brickwork of the wall and she was only six courses of brick high. On the doorţa plain, black-painted, wooden oneţ were the numbers 2881. Karen grabbed the two photos, stuffed the rest of them back in the envelope, and had just managed to slip the album into its usual place when Belle and Lisa came out, her mother brandishing a turquoise suede clutch bag as if it were the Holy Grail.
    “Look what she found!” Belle caroled, referring to herself and the bag.
    Karen tapped the photos, safely tucked in her pocket. “Look what she found!” Belle repeated, and Karen nodded, wondering what she, herself had found.
    The Lincoln Town Car pulled up to her West End Avenue apartment. Karen had called ahead from her mother’s to have the car meet her at the L.l.R.R. station. She jumped out before the driver could run around and open the door for her. It was funny: Jeffrey insisted on a limo and never would open the door himself but Karen was equally insistent on the service sending nothing more than a black sedan. And she never let the drivers help her out. Arnold’s influence? Maybe that was the difference between growing up with inherited wealth and growing up middle class: inherited wealth didn’t mind letting other people do the work for them.
    Karen knew her biggest problem was what an expensive business consultant had called “her failure to delegate.” But she just couldn’t help it. She did the job better or faster or both if she did it herself, and at least that way she was certain it would get done. So why the hell should she be imprisoned in the goddamn Lincoln while Joey or Tim or Mohammad ran around to her door?
    She stepped under the British racing green canopy of the co-op that she and Jeffrey lived in and, as always, got to the door before George the doorman opened it. Maybe, she reflected, it wasn’t her failure to delegate but it was other people’s incompetence that created her problems.
    “Good evening, Mrs. Kahn!” George called out cheerfully, turning from the magazine she knew he had secreted in the credenza drawer, though he was strictly forbidden to read while on lobby duty.
    The West Side had gentrified over the last decade, but plenty of homeless and the occasional junkie still wandered the streets. In New York City the doormen were required to be vigilant. She should report him for the clandestine magazine but she wouldn’t. “Hello, George,” Karen sighed and hit the elevator button just before he scuttled across the black and white marble tiled floor to it. She put her hand in her raincoat pocket and felt the crackle of the two old photos that were nestled there. They comforted her, a sort of psychological hand-warmer. The elevator door drew open and she stepped into the mahogany box while George pressed the seventh floor button for her with his white-gloved finger. “Thank you, George,” she sighed and, mercifully, the elevator door rolled shut.
    Karen had lived in the building since she and Jeffrey were first married. It was a huge step up from the Amsterdam Avenue walk-up she’d rented before. The down payment on the co-op had been