Read Online The Widow's Guide to Sex and Dating by Carole Radziwill - Free Book Online Page A

coffee table, then poured out two long shots of Maker’s Mark. Claire was not a bourbon drinker; this was a ritual Ethan had shared with Charlie. But she was grateful when he handed her the glass. Here they were, the three of them again. “You didn’t tell me Charlie was coming home today.”
    “Funny, Ethan,” Claire said. “I can’t live like this.”
    “Honey, your problem’s just structure,” Ethan said.
    “Structure?”
    “Yep. You need a story arc. You need signs of climax, somewhere, even just the hint of a climb. You need a journey. You need acts.”
    “I skipped past journey to catastrophe.” Claire sipped her Maker’s Mark.
    “Think of Charlie’s demise as your plot point. Where do you go from here?”
    “I can’t even manage the menu at Starbucks. Where am I supposed to go?”
    Ethan ran a hand through his perfectly styled hair, his legs stretched out on the ottoman. “You’re too young to be mired in denouement.”
    The intercom buzzed: chicken parmigiana and Gigi salad from The Palm. Where Claire grew up, people brought casseroles to the bereaved. In New York, well-mannered friends sent high-end takeout. Claire and Ethan ate from the containers with plastic forks. Ethan continued.
    “You need divination. You need soothsayers and seers.”
    “What do you mean, like a fortune-teller?”
    “Don’t mock, Clarabelle. I’m serious. Here.” He wrote down a number.
    “Who’s this?”
    “Beatrice.”
    Claire wrinkled her nose.
    “You know, there’s barely any difference between a good psychic and your uptight shrink. Before Freud, dreams were interpreted as messages from the gods. Anyway, call her tomorrow. I’ll warn her.”
    Claire knew of Beatrice; she was famous in Manhattan. She’d predicted the affairs and subsequent divorces of a number of prominent couples and was remarkably accurate about elections. She was also almost impossible to see, but Ethan had developed an odd friendship with her. He went to her apartment once a month for chicken Kiev.
    “You’ll love her. Take a picture with you, though. She won’t read you without one.”
    *   *   *
    B EATRICE WAS NOT what Claire expected. She imagined a turbaned woman with spotted hands. Instead, she faced a long, willowy thing with delicate bones; she might have been a runway model in her youth, thirty years ago. Her face was angular, imposing.
    Claire had ignored Ethan’s directive and, instead of a photograph, brought Charlie’s socks. Out of spite, maybe—at Charlie or at the psychic, she didn’t know. Either way, she regretted it immediately. As she handed them over, she could hear the clench of Beatrice’s jaw.
    “I don’t read socks,” she said.
    “I know,” Claire replied. “I suspected you didn’t, but they belong to someone close to me. They’re the last living sense of him. A picture … the pictures don’t seem real.”
    “I won’t read a sock. Next time, bring a photograph of your husband.”
    Claire hadn’t mentioned a husband. These were the first words they’d exchanged. Ethan might have told her, but she didn’t think so. Ethan believed in oracles, he believed in divination; he’d had the same Magic 8 Ball for twenty years and still consulted it. Ethan would not have interfered.
    “He’s not my husband. He’s dead.”
    This was true, wasn’t it? How could Charlie be her husband if he was dead?
    Beatrice had sharp, judging eyes, like an owl’s. She fixed them on Claire and made a rumbling, guttural sound.
    “I need to know my arc,” Claire said. “I’m on a journey without a plot. I need a story line.”
    “Give me your hand, then.”
    Claire clutched Charlie’s sock in her right hand while Beatrice read her left. In a charmless monotone, she made her announcements.
    “There is a very refined and intellectual air about you…”
    Claire, initially anxious, perked up.
    “You create harmony wherever you go; people are calmed.”
    Claire smiled.
    “You have a cluster of healing