Articles liés à Was It Something I Said?
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Book by Block Valerie
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Extrait :
Chapter One
He couldn't get himself arrested
At 7:30 A.M., Barry Cantor flew up the Saw Mill River Parkway blasting Abbey Road. It was five days before Christmas. He hadn't had a second date in eight months, and he hadn't had sex in over a year. It was astounding.
Barry worked, read the Times, watched TV; he played first base for the Condiments and Retail Sauces team. At 32, he'd won a Brammy for Best Consumer Promotion. At 33 he'd renovated the twisty seven-room apartment he'd grown up in. Three months ago, he'd hired a chef to cook for him twice a week. If he behaved himself, he'd be Group Product Supervisor in a year. In all probability, he would never learn Italian; when he was honest with himself, he admitted that he didn't really speak French.
He took the second Tarrytown exit. All of Barry's old friends were married, and most of them were fathers; he saw them on the weekends, among their families, carrying things. Possibly there was something wrong with him. He'd been losing hair steadily since his junior year at Dartmouth. On the other hand, he was taller than most men he knew. Plus, there was something seriously wrong with every single woman he'd met lately. Jack Kennedy didn't get married until he was 36.
He turned into the ice-encrusted parking lot, sick of thinking about himself. It was as if Cynthia had never existed, as if he'd never had someone sleeping next to him. And why would it ever end? Nobody wanted anything anymore.
Not true: Vince Anspacher was seeing three women simultaneously. Barry had been fascinated by Vince's situation until he'd met Vince's lineup -- neurotic, abrasive, and self-involved, every single one of them, and Kiki was the kind of girl who needed a map in an elevator. Though all three of them were quite passable, visually.
Barry had met Vince at a wedding in July. Vince had seemed on his wavelength, if a little out of his league; his father was a self-made magnate whose empire was written up in the newspaper every day. In September, when Vince had asked to stay till he found a sublet, Barry instantly agreed, thinking being roommates with Vince would lead to membership to clubs he'd never heard of, and also that it might be nice to bump into someone in the hall.
Of course, all that had come of it was repeated reminders of what Barry was missing, and why. Last night, on his way to bed, he saw that Vince's door was open. Renée was probably naked on the bed. If Vince wanted a woman over -- and why shouldn't he? -- fine. But with the door open? The good news was that Vince traveled constantly.
Barry pulled into his parking space and paused as "Come Together" came on again. What was John Lennon singing about, and did it matter? Long before the murder, he'd felt deficient for not liking John more. John was too contrary; Barry always had the feeling that he was missing something, and he wasn't cool enough to know what it was. Paul, on the other hand, let Linda play in the band -- conciliatory to the point of ridiculous. Well, a gentleman. Any kind of critical discussion was of course impossible now.
Barry shut off the car and walked across the frigid Plaza to start the day. Christmas had come to the Maplewood Acres national headquarters in Tarrytown. It had started in November with the reindeer on the lawn. It would end in January with green tuna fish on red rolls in the cafeteria. The offices were trembling under the weight of all the garlands, lights, and desktop nativity scenes. Every year, it started earlier. Every year, it made Barry sick.
Maggie Fahey, an astonishingly beautiful Assistant Product Manager, came out of the deli and walked past him without a single word.
"Top o' the marnin to ya, lass," he called after her.
She raised her coffee without turning around by way of greeting.
Very nice. He couldn't get himself arrested.
Barry kibitzed a little with the coffee guy, who always had his large/light/three sugars bagged before he'd reached the counter. He loved the coffee guy. He took the holly-decked elevator to 5, strode down the hall, and nearly collided with some people who were sucking up to John Rheinecker, Senior VP for marketing and the man behind the Susie Strudel relaunch, which was widely regarded as nothing short of brilliant. Barry hated watching people grovel for Rheinecker and he hated Rheinecker for enjoying it.
"Morning, Cantor," Rheinecker said in a dry, disdainful fashion without eye contact. His face had the color and sheen of pink grapefruit skin.
"Your Grace," Barry said, and pivoted into his office.
So he had a problem with authority. So what? On his desk were the shivering remains of Friday's trauma: the Council had decided to sell Peggy's Pickles, a beautiful little brand with a loyal following in New England. No reflection on Barry's management, but still, it grated on him.
Emily King, his putative assistant, wasn't around. He flicked the lid off his coffee. The Maplewood Acres Morale Survey was still on his desk, blank. The anonymity clause at the top was bullshit -- they had everything coded. Everybody else had returned it immediately, lying robotically (the required seminar on e-mail etiquette was very important, the dental plan was very generous). If you'd told Barry ten years ago that he'd be thinking twice about voicing honest criticism, he'd have laughed out loud.
And yet: Henry Ford didn't form the Detroit Automobile Company until he was 36, didn't form the Ford Motor Company until he was 40, didn't release the Model T until he was 45. Of course, George Gershwin was dead at 39. On the other hand, he never married. Still: Gershwin had women flocking around him constantly.
Barry combed through the latest Nielsen numbers for Parson's Creek Salad Dressings. Dijon Garlic had taken a nose dive nationwide in August. Caesar With Bacon was doing a respectable business in the Rochester test market. His phone rang.
"Don't lend your father money," his mother rasped.
"But he's my father," Barry said, feeling the floor dropping away. Two years ago he'd given Ira $7,000 to tide him over till the insurance paid when his boat was shredded in Hurricane Carl. In his heart of hearts, Barry knew Ira didn't have insurance, even though he'd been kvetching about the bureaucracy, the volumes of paperwork, the mental hygiene of the inspectors.
"Fine. Go ahead," Rose said. "You'll never see it again."
His parents had been divorced for twenty-one years. Rose continued to run her coat-lining business in a dingy factory on 36th Street. His father lived on the boat in Queens with Katerina, the Albanian woman who used to clean his menswear store before his second bankruptcy. "He's got some nerve asking you," he said.
"He asked your sister. She just called me." Barry made a mental note to chew out Karen for telling Rose. "Look, I'll see you tonight," she shouted over the din. "I'm short two shipments of thread. I gotta clear it up before I get on the plane."
Barry strolled across the floor to his immediate supervisor, William Plast.
"Good weekend?" he asked at the threshold.
"Cleaned out the garage," Plast said, with morose satisfaction, motioning him inside. "Took the kids to the church auction. You?"
Barry sat in Plast's guest chair, causing a Wise Man to topple off the credenza.
"Watched the golf." Barry said, picking the figurine up and replacing him in the manger.
"Ah, the good old days," Plast said, with his harassed father look, when you could just sit and watch the golf."
They began chatting about the year in salad dressings. Barry had also attended his college roommate's second wedding alone, and was snubbed by a stout, frosted blonde who couldn't have been under 40. This was the longest period of celibacy recorded outside Franciscan cloisters. Maybe when he got home that night, he should just walk across the hall to the Divorcée's apartment and present himself. Barry Cantor: Convenience. Amusement. Discretion. But he couldn't fuck around anymore. He'd had plenty of intrigue in his life, but other than Cynthia, nothing had ever really gotten beyond preliminary hostilities.
Pointing to the Dijon Garlic visuals, Plast said, "Is there a way of enhancing the drama of the drop?"
"Why would I want to do that?"
"To draw attention to it."
"Why would I want to do that?"
Plast looked as if he'd caught Barry cheating on a math test. He was 43 and five foot four; he was shaped like a pudgy football, and had all the spontaneity and liveliness of cold oatmeal. The idea that Plast was getting laid regularly made Barry furious.
"Look, we're not gonna get more promotion money next year by dropping our pants and asking Rheinecker for a whack."
Stu Eberhart passed by and Plast knocked over his wastebasket jumping to attention. Barry was always surprised at how small the CEO was. Tiny little guy, maybe five one or two. Since becoming CEO, he'd survived a triple bypass, and Rheinecker's maneuverings for his job. Three years ago, Eberhart had traded in his wife of 28 years for a newer model of the same kind of tootsed-up, suburban ash blonde. Last year, the second Mrs. Eberhart had sprung a serious new chest.
Plast turned his attention to Barry's coupon design. "I don't like the burst behind 'Save 50 cents,'" he said sadly. He had a fat simpering wife who agreed with his every proclamation.
"Well, I'm not personally attached to it," Barry sighed. He missed John Hearne. Hearne was the best boss he'd ever had. No: the only good one. Operating as a team, without formalities, they'd pumped up Maplewood Jam by 13 percent in two years. When Barry was promoted to Product Manager, Hearne was picked to start a low-cholesterol frozen entrées division. Since Eberhart's bypass, Hearne had a virtual green light on every line extension.
"I like a circle, not a burst," Plast said finally. "And let's do it horizontal, the way we usually do it. It works."
When Barry strolled back across the floor, Emily King was batting around in her cubicle. About a month ago, a tension had blossomed when he asked her to have a drink, which she'd misinterpreted. Like he was interested in this whiny, horse-faced incompetent? The thing had blossomed when she told him her sister was training to become a midwife, and he'd said that was the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard. It turned out that she, Emily, was also training to become a midwife. Did she even have a sister? Emily: preposterous.
"Please check these numbers," Barry said, and gave her the Nielsens when she walked into his office. "I'll need them by lunch."
She glared at him in impudence, submission, and self-loathing. "How the hell am I supposed to do that by lunch?"
"Come in by 9 like everybody else?"
She suppressed whatever she was going to say, took the discs and flounced -- yes, flounced was the word -- off to her cubicle. She still had her coat on: he shouldn't see her dingy, stringy body. Lord, was she a pain in the ass.
He trotted down to John Hearne's office.
"My assistant has PMS four weeks a month," Barry began, and put his feet up on Hearne's desk, causing a flock of greeting cards to flutter to the floor. He bent down to pick up the cards. "My boss spent his weekend fiddling around with my coupon. My roommate has female guests and leaves his door open. They're selling my pickles," he added, replacing the cards one by one in a line on the desk. "Should I be taking any of this personal?"
"No," Hearne said reasonably, with a look of frank amusement. "But show a little fear with the generals, Barry. They'll love you for it," he added, like a salesman.
"Uch," Barry said, and walked.
Ever since they'd met, Hearne had been Barry's advance man in life. Hearne was one of the few people at the company who gave Barry hope. But the morale survey had been Hearne's idea, and Hearne was too deluded to see they were using it for intelligence gathering and mind control. And last week, Barry had heard the man speaking to his wife in a tone he wouldn't have used on a naughty dog. It pained him to think he'd been wrong about Hearne.
When he came back upstairs, Emily was deeply immersed in a tête-à-tête with the luscious Maggie Fahey in the tinsel-decked pantry.
"I put a big piece of quartz on my heart," Emily said, in a self-pitying tone. She was wearing a red felt Santa pin on her flat chest.
"I sing to my crystals," Maggie said proudly.
"It felt good, weighing down, because my heart was already heavy," Emily said, tragically. "And pink is a healing color."
"I hate to interrupt this beautiful moment -- " Barry began, but they took no notice of him.
"I have some that I wear," Maggie continued, "and some others that I keep by the window, so they get air."
" -- but I really need those numbers pronto if I'm going to make my plane." If he left for the airport by two, he'd miss Quality Control singing the product list to "Deck the Halls."
Emily looked up at him as if he'd torn skin off her heart, and stalked out like an insulted starlet on a nighttime soap.
"Talk about bad energy," Maggie said, in disgust.
Some days, Barry was reminded of Jeff Keeley, a PM on Raisin Bread who'd been dismissed after being observed relieving himself in the white-paper recycling bucket. And then there was the legendary Gary Tobias: fired after he exploded at a Beverage Review, calling Rheinecker an asshole for nixing his coffee soda idea. For Barry, there were your Keeley days and your Tobias days. Really, Emily had to go.
LaGuardia was swarming with harassed December travelers. Barry hated the holidays. The crowds, the forced sentiment, the retail pressure, the buildup, the letdown, the crap all over the buildings. Every year, he went to Miami Beach for the antidote, a dose of hot air and cranky Jews, and that made him sick too. In a few hours, he'd be seeing his mother's doughy legs -- spectrally pale, crisscrossed with lines of gnarled blue knots -- by the pool. He wasn't looking forward to it. The idea that he might meet someone there rather than here was laughable, but he kept his mind open just the same. Every year.
There was an exquisite woman on line in front of Barry. She had dense, sculpted black eyebrows and short straight black hair with bangs. She was in a neat black coat. She had matching, clean-looking luggage. He was falling in love with the back of her head, where her hair was shorn into an emphatic point that held his attention. Her left hand was in her pocket.
He stared at the curving point. What do you say to such a woman -- I'm Barry: Fly me? While he was debating this, inwardly cursing himself as a coward, she glided up to the counter.
She wanted to upgrade to first class with frequent flier miles and she stood with her body pressed into the chest-high partition. She was gracious yet unyielding, brisk and beautiful. Her hand was still in her pocket. She was going to Phoenix at 3:45. She turned around and gazed at him. She was vivid, she was dark. "We were married in a previous life," the look said. "Don't you feel it?"
She got what she wanted. She hoisted her bags and gave him a look that said, "I wasn't looking at you before; moreover, I'm from Park Avenue, so don't fuck with me."
She disappeared beyond a pack of misbehaving kids, but he caught sight of her again as she rose through the ceiling on an escalator. Was it too much to hope that this woman, whom he loved, yes, loved, would give him a backward glance? The airport was throbbing. His heart was simultaneously knocking in his throat and his stomach. She was looking down at him.
It was his turn on line. "I want to change this to the 3:45 Phoenix flight," he said, out of breath and sweating.
"This is a nonrefundable ticket."
"It's a free country, I'll buy a new one," he snapped -- the flight left in sixteen minu...
Présentation de l'éditeur :
He couldn't get himself arrested
At 7:30 A.M., Barry Cantor flew up the Saw Mill River Parkway blasting Abbey Road. It was five days before Christmas. He hadn't had a second date in eight months, and he hadn't had sex in over a year. It was astounding.
Barry worked, read the Times, watched TV; he played first base for the Condiments and Retail Sauces team. At 32, he'd won a Brammy for Best Consumer Promotion. At 33 he'd renovated the twisty seven-room apartment he'd grown up in. Three months ago, he'd hired a chef to cook for him twice a week. If he behaved himself, he'd be Group Product Supervisor in a year. In all probability, he would never learn Italian; when he was honest with himself, he admitted that he didn't really speak French.
He took the second Tarrytown exit. All of Barry's old friends were married, and most of them were fathers; he saw them on the weekends, among their families, carrying things. Possibly there was something wrong with him. He'd been losing hair steadily since his junior year at Dartmouth. On the other hand, he was taller than most men he knew. Plus, there was something seriously wrong with every single woman he'd met lately. Jack Kennedy didn't get married until he was 36.
He turned into the ice-encrusted parking lot, sick of thinking about himself. It was as if Cynthia had never existed, as if he'd never had someone sleeping next to him. And why would it ever end? Nobody wanted anything anymore.
Not true: Vince Anspacher was seeing three women simultaneously. Barry had been fascinated by Vince's situation until he'd met Vince's lineup -- neurotic, abrasive, and self-involved, every single one of them, and Kiki was the kind of girl who needed a map in an elevator. Though all three of them were quite passable, visually.
Barry had met Vince at a wedding in July. Vince had seemed on his wavelength, if a little out of his league; his father was a self-made magnate whose empire was written up in the newspaper every day. In September, when Vince had asked to stay till he found a sublet, Barry instantly agreed, thinking being roommates with Vince would lead to membership to clubs he'd never heard of, and also that it might be nice to bump into someone in the hall.
Of course, all that had come of it was repeated reminders of what Barry was missing, and why. Last night, on his way to bed, he saw that Vince's door was open. Renée was probably naked on the bed. If Vince wanted a woman over -- and why shouldn't he? -- fine. But with the door open? The good news was that Vince traveled constantly.
Barry pulled into his parking space and paused as "Come Together" came on again. What was John Lennon singing about, and did it matter? Long before the murder, he'd felt deficient for not liking John more. John was too contrary; Barry always had the feeling that he was missing something, and he wasn't cool enough to know what it was. Paul, on the other hand, let Linda play in the band -- conciliatory to the point of ridiculous. Well, a gentleman. Any kind of critical discussion was of course impossible now.
Barry shut off the car and walked across the frigid Plaza to start the day. Christmas had come to the Maplewood Acres national headquarters in Tarrytown. It had started in November with the reindeer on the lawn. It would end in January with green tuna fish on red rolls in the cafeteria. The offices were trembling under the weight of all the garlands, lights, and desktop nativity scenes. Every year, it started earlier. Every year, it made Barry sick.
Maggie Fahey, an astonishingly beautiful Assistant Product Manager, came out of the deli and walked past him without a single word.
"Top o' the marnin to ya, lass," he called after her.
She raised her coffee without turning around by way of greeting.
Very nice. He couldn't get himself arrested.
Barry kibitzed a little with the coffee guy, who always had his large/light/three sugars bagged before he'd reached the counter. He loved the coffee guy. He took the holly-decked elevator to 5, strode down the hall, and nearly collided with some people who were sucking up to John Rheinecker, Senior VP for marketing and the man behind the Susie Strudel relaunch, which was widely regarded as nothing short of brilliant. Barry hated watching people grovel for Rheinecker and he hated Rheinecker for enjoying it.
"Morning, Cantor," Rheinecker said in a dry, disdainful fashion without eye contact. His face had the color and sheen of pink grapefruit skin.
"Your Grace," Barry said, and pivoted into his office.
So he had a problem with authority. So what? On his desk were the shivering remains of Friday's trauma: the Council had decided to sell Peggy's Pickles, a beautiful little brand with a loyal following in New England. No reflection on Barry's management, but still, it grated on him.
Emily King, his putative assistant, wasn't around. He flicked the lid off his coffee. The Maplewood Acres Morale Survey was still on his desk, blank. The anonymity clause at the top was bullshit -- they had everything coded. Everybody else had returned it immediately, lying robotically (the required seminar on e-mail etiquette was very important, the dental plan was very generous). If you'd told Barry ten years ago that he'd be thinking twice about voicing honest criticism, he'd have laughed out loud.
And yet: Henry Ford didn't form the Detroit Automobile Company until he was 36, didn't form the Ford Motor Company until he was 40, didn't release the Model T until he was 45. Of course, George Gershwin was dead at 39. On the other hand, he never married. Still: Gershwin had women flocking around him constantly.
Barry combed through the latest Nielsen numbers for Parson's Creek Salad Dressings. Dijon Garlic had taken a nose dive nationwide in August. Caesar With Bacon was doing a respectable business in the Rochester test market. His phone rang.
"Don't lend your father money," his mother rasped.
"But he's my father," Barry said, feeling the floor dropping away. Two years ago he'd given Ira $7,000 to tide him over till the insurance paid when his boat was shredded in Hurricane Carl. In his heart of hearts, Barry knew Ira didn't have insurance, even though he'd been kvetching about the bureaucracy, the volumes of paperwork, the mental hygiene of the inspectors.
"Fine. Go ahead," Rose said. "You'll never see it again."
His parents had been divorced for twenty-one years. Rose continued to run her coat-lining business in a dingy factory on 36th Street. His father lived on the boat in Queens with Katerina, the Albanian woman who used to clean his menswear store before his second bankruptcy. "He's got some nerve asking you," he said.
"He asked your sister. She just called me." Barry made a mental note to chew out Karen for telling Rose. "Look, I'll see you tonight," she shouted over the din. "I'm short two shipments of thread. I gotta clear it up before I get on the plane."
Barry strolled across the floor to his immediate supervisor, William Plast.
"Good weekend?" he asked at the threshold.
"Cleaned out the garage," Plast said, with morose satisfaction, motioning him inside. "Took the kids to the church auction. You?"
Barry sat in Plast's guest chair, causing a Wise Man to topple off the credenza.
"Watched the golf." Barry said, picking the figurine up and replacing him in the manger.
"Ah, the good old days," Plast said, with his harassed father look, when you could just sit and watch the golf."
They began chatting about the year in salad dressings. Barry had also attended his college roommate's second wedding alone, and was snubbed by a stout, frosted blonde who couldn't have been under 40. This was the longest period of celibacy recorded outside Franciscan cloisters. Maybe when he got home that night, he should just walk across the hall to the Divorcée's apartment and present himself. Barry Cantor: Convenience. Amusement. Discretion. But he couldn't fuck around anymore. He'd had plenty of intrigue in his life, but other than Cynthia, nothing had ever really gotten beyond preliminary hostilities.
Pointing to the Dijon Garlic visuals, Plast said, "Is there a way of enhancing the drama of the drop?"
"Why would I want to do that?"
"To draw attention to it."
"Why would I want to do that?"
Plast looked as if he'd caught Barry cheating on a math test. He was 43 and five foot four; he was shaped like a pudgy football, and had all the spontaneity and liveliness of cold oatmeal. The idea that Plast was getting laid regularly made Barry furious.
"Look, we're not gonna get more promotion money next year by dropping our pants and asking Rheinecker for a whack."
Stu Eberhart passed by and Plast knocked over his wastebasket jumping to attention. Barry was always surprised at how small the CEO was. Tiny little guy, maybe five one or two. Since becoming CEO, he'd survived a triple bypass, and Rheinecker's maneuverings for his job. Three years ago, Eberhart had traded in his wife of 28 years for a newer model of the same kind of tootsed-up, suburban ash blonde. Last year, the second Mrs. Eberhart had sprung a serious new chest.
Plast turned his attention to Barry's coupon design. "I don't like the burst behind 'Save 50 cents,'" he said sadly. He had a fat simpering wife who agreed with his every proclamation.
"Well, I'm not personally attached to it," Barry sighed. He missed John Hearne. Hearne was the best boss he'd ever had. No: the only good one. Operating as a team, without formalities, they'd pumped up Maplewood Jam by 13 percent in two years. When Barry was promoted to Product Manager, Hearne was picked to start a low-cholesterol frozen entrées division. Since Eberhart's bypass, Hearne had a virtual green light on every line extension.
"I like a circle, not a burst," Plast said finally. "And let's do it horizontal, the way we usually do it. It works."
When Barry strolled back across the floor, Emily King was batting around in her cubicle. About a month ago, a tension had blossomed when he asked her to have a drink, which she'd misinterpreted. Like he was interested in this whiny, horse-faced incompetent? The thing had blossomed when she told him her sister was training to become a midwife, and he'd said that was the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard. It turned out that she, Emily, was also training to become a midwife. Did she even have a sister? Emily: preposterous.
"Please check these numbers," Barry said, and gave her the Nielsens when she walked into his office. "I'll need them by lunch."
She glared at him in impudence, submission, and self-loathing. "How the hell am I supposed to do that by lunch?"
"Come in by 9 like everybody else?"
She suppressed whatever she was going to say, took the discs and flounced -- yes, flounced was the word -- off to her cubicle. She still had her coat on: he shouldn't see her dingy, stringy body. Lord, was she a pain in the ass.
He trotted down to John Hearne's office.
"My assistant has PMS four weeks a month," Barry began, and put his feet up on Hearne's desk, causing a flock of greeting cards to flutter to the floor. He bent down to pick up the cards. "My boss spent his weekend fiddling around with my coupon. My roommate has female guests and leaves his door open. They're selling my pickles," he added, replacing the cards one by one in a line on the desk. "Should I be taking any of this personal?"
"No," Hearne said reasonably, with a look of frank amusement. "But show a little fear with the generals, Barry. They'll love you for it," he added, like a salesman.
"Uch," Barry said, and walked.
Ever since they'd met, Hearne had been Barry's advance man in life. Hearne was one of the few people at the company who gave Barry hope. But the morale survey had been Hearne's idea, and Hearne was too deluded to see they were using it for intelligence gathering and mind control. And last week, Barry had heard the man speaking to his wife in a tone he wouldn't have used on a naughty dog. It pained him to think he'd been wrong about Hearne.
When he came back upstairs, Emily was deeply immersed in a tête-à-tête with the luscious Maggie Fahey in the tinsel-decked pantry.
"I put a big piece of quartz on my heart," Emily said, in a self-pitying tone. She was wearing a red felt Santa pin on her flat chest.
"I sing to my crystals," Maggie said proudly.
"It felt good, weighing down, because my heart was already heavy," Emily said, tragically. "And pink is a healing color."
"I hate to interrupt this beautiful moment -- " Barry began, but they took no notice of him.
"I have some that I wear," Maggie continued, "and some others that I keep by the window, so they get air."
" -- but I really need those numbers pronto if I'm going to make my plane." If he left for the airport by two, he'd miss Quality Control singing the product list to "Deck the Halls."
Emily looked up at him as if he'd torn skin off her heart, and stalked out like an insulted starlet on a nighttime soap.
"Talk about bad energy," Maggie said, in disgust.
Some days, Barry was reminded of Jeff Keeley, a PM on Raisin Bread who'd been dismissed after being observed relieving himself in the white-paper recycling bucket. And then there was the legendary Gary Tobias: fired after he exploded at a Beverage Review, calling Rheinecker an asshole for nixing his coffee soda idea. For Barry, there were your Keeley days and your Tobias days. Really, Emily had to go.
LaGuardia was swarming with harassed December travelers. Barry hated the holidays. The crowds, the forced sentiment, the retail pressure, the buildup, the letdown, the crap all over the buildings. Every year, he went to Miami Beach for the antidote, a dose of hot air and cranky Jews, and that made him sick too. In a few hours, he'd be seeing his mother's doughy legs -- spectrally pale, crisscrossed with lines of gnarled blue knots -- by the pool. He wasn't looking forward to it. The idea that he might meet someone there rather than here was laughable, but he kept his mind open just the same. Every year.
There was an exquisite woman on line in front of Barry. She had dense, sculpted black eyebrows and short straight black hair with bangs. She was in a neat black coat. She had matching, clean-looking luggage. He was falling in love with the back of her head, where her hair was shorn into an emphatic point that held his attention. Her left hand was in her pocket.
He stared at the curving point. What do you say to such a woman -- I'm Barry: Fly me? While he was debating this, inwardly cursing himself as a coward, she glided up to the counter.
She wanted to upgrade to first class with frequent flier miles and she stood with her body pressed into the chest-high partition. She was gracious yet unyielding, brisk and beautiful. Her hand was still in her pocket. She was going to Phoenix at 3:45. She turned around and gazed at him. She was vivid, she was dark. "We were married in a previous life," the look said. "Don't you feel it?"
She got what she wanted. She hoisted her bags and gave him a look that said, "I wasn't looking at you before; moreover, I'm from Park Avenue, so don't fuck with me."
She disappeared beyond a pack of misbehaving kids, but he caught sight of her again as she rose through the ceiling on an escalator. Was it too much to hope that this woman, whom he loved, yes, loved, would give him a backward glance? The airport was throbbing. His heart was simultaneously knocking in his throat and his stomach. She was looking down at him.
It was his turn on line. "I want to change this to the 3:45 Phoenix flight," he said, out of breath and sweating.
"This is a nonrefundable ticket."
"It's a free country, I'll buy a new one," he snapped -- the flight left in sixteen minu...
When Justine and Barry meet during a plane crash just before the Christmas holidays, the relationship that follows is wild, turbulent, and maybe, just maybe, a keeper.
Justine is a pretty, smart, ambitious lawyer who's tired of being set up on lousy dates. Her eighteen-hour work days get in the way of finding Mr. Right, but she'd rather be home with her dog, drinking salad dressing for dinner and watching The Sound of Music on the VCR anyway. Barry is a good-looking food product manager living on the Upper West side with a rich roommate who is juggling three girlfriends at once but never has the rent. Barry seeks his soulmate, but the fact that he hasn't had a date in a year makes things a little tougher.
A comic urban romance about the possibilities and impossibilities of love. Was it Something I Said? is a classic "will they or won't they?" for the nineties that will keep readers guessing until the very end.
Justine is a pretty, smart, ambitious lawyer who's tired of being set up on lousy dates. Her eighteen-hour work days get in the way of finding Mr. Right, but she'd rather be home with her dog, drinking salad dressing for dinner and watching The Sound of Music on the VCR anyway. Barry is a good-looking food product manager living on the Upper West side with a rich roommate who is juggling three girlfriends at once but never has the rent. Barry seeks his soulmate, but the fact that he hasn't had a date in a year makes things a little tougher.
A comic urban romance about the possibilities and impossibilities of love. Was it Something I Said? is a classic "will they or won't they?" for the nineties that will keep readers guessing until the very end.
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- ÉditeurSoho Pr Inc
- Date d'édition1998
- ISBN 10 1569471096
- ISBN 13 9781569471098
- ReliureRelié
- Nombre de pages359
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WAS IT SOMETHING I SAID?
Edité par
Soho Press
(1998)
ISBN 10 : 1569471096
ISBN 13 : 9781569471098
Neuf
Couverture rigide
Quantité disponible : 1
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Evaluation vendeur
Description du livre Etat : New. New. In shrink wrap. Looks like an interesting title! 1.2. N° de réf. du vendeur Q-1569471096
Acheter neuf
EUR 56,87
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