Read Online Mine Are Spectacular! by Janice Kaplan - Free Book Online Page B

squarely in the eye. “I really don’t. I’ve finally given up looking for Mr. Perfect. I’ve been around long enough to know there’s more than one way to live your life. I have a great practice, great friends and now I have a great guy. How many women can say that? I’m happy.”
    â€œYou can’t be happy,” I say. “Admit it. Secretly, you want to get married. You think he’s going to leave her.”
    â€œNope,” Kate says resolutely. “I don’t expect him to leave his wife and it doesn’t matter.” She looks carefully at the glittery hair clip and uses it to pull back her perfectly cut, perfectly shiny hair. Then she comes over and rubs my arm. “Listen, I’m not against love and marriage. I think it’s great that you and Bradford found each other. But Owen and I have something terrific going. I don’t know where it’ll lead. I’m just going to enjoy.”
    I’m sure she will. At least for a while. Kate’s in that first flush of infatuation where the relationship seems inviolable, the guy can do no wrong, and rationality goes out the window. Reasoning with her at this point would be as impossible as trying to disconnect a teenager from her iPod. For now, I might as well give up and go for a more neutral topic.
    â€œSo where’s Owen taking you this weekend that you need this new bathing suit?” I ask, looking at her in her teeny-weeny halter bikini. “I hope it’s Rio, otherwise you might get arrested.”
    â€œDo you think it’s too skimpy?” she asks, looking in the mirror, and tugging at the bottom.
    â€œNo, you pull it off brilliantly,” I say honestly, realizing that Kate, at least, didn’t forfeit her right to wear a bikini when she traded in Bonne Bell Lip Smackers for Bobbi Brown concealer.
    â€œNot too young for me?” she asks, still hesitating.
    â€œYou look better in that suit than any twenty-year-old possibly could,” I confirm.
    Kate glances over at a young blonde who’s parading around in the Rubik’s cube bikini—and all the squares are in the right place. The girl has a great body—and she obviously knows how to solve algorithms.
    â€œMaybe not any twenty-year-old, but you do look pretty darn good,” I say, laughing. I peek into Kate’s dressing room and see three more suits waiting. “Want to go try on the others?”
    â€œNo, this one’s just right,” Kate says, taking one last appraising glance.
    â€œI don’t mind waiting,” I tell her.
    â€œI like this one,” Kate says, heading off to change.
    What other woman could find the right bikini so fast? And be confident enough that it
is
just right—without fussing and trying on thirty others? I’ve got to say this about Kate. She knows what she wants. Unfortunately, at the moment, she seems to want Owen.
    Â 
    I call over to the hospital three times, but by seven o’clock at night, Berni still hasn’t delivered.
    â€œDo you want me to come over?” I ask Aidan, when I reach him on the phone.
    â€œNo, that’s okay. The room’s already pretty crowded. The nurses. The doctors. The drummer.”
    â€œThe drummer?” I ask.
    â€œMood music for delivery,” Aidan explains. “Gets you back to your basic primordial rhythms.”
    â€œIs it working?” I ask.
    â€œI can’t tell. You could probably bring in the whole London Symphony Orchestra and it wouldn’t make a difference right now.”
    â€œAnd the hospital doesn’t mind having Ringo playing on the maternity ward?” I ask.
    â€œWe didn’t get Ringo,” Aidan apologizes, not realizing that I didn’t really expect the hallways to be crawling with Beatles. “The drummer came with the deluxe package. It was one of the reasons we picked this hospital. Berni showed you the brochures, didn’t she?”
    She sure did.