That Summer by Jennifer Weiner (free e reader txt) 📗

single. It felt like betraying Michael, and she couldn’t do that. She said that she had two sisters, three nieces and two nephews. She struggled to remind herself that this woman was not a new acquaintance, or a potential friend; she tried, as subtly as she could, to keep the drinks coming and keep the conversation focused on gleaning information about Daisy, and her life, her family. Her brother and her husband.

She learned Hal had quit drinking not long before he met Daisy, that he’d paid for their wedding, brought Daisy to Pennsylvania, and given her a credit card and carte blanche to decorate his house.

“He’d bought it before he’d met me, and it was furnished in Early American Empty—”

Daisy paused, and Diana couldn’t keep herself from smiling.

“It was such a guy place! He only had furniture in three rooms. There were bookcases in the living room, and the world’s most gigantic TV, and then a bed in the bedroom—no headboard, no chairs, no dresser, just a king-sized mattress and box spring—and two barstools in the kitchen. I think those actually came with the house.”

“Wow,” said Diana, shaking her head. She had a million more questions, a million things she needed to know, but Daisy had pulled out her phone and was frowning at the time.

“Oh my goodness, my show’s going to start soon! I need to get going.”

“I’ll walk with you.” Daisy reached for her credit card, but Diana had hers ready. “Oh, no,” she said. “My treat.”

Outside, Daisy rechecked the address of the theater where she’d be seeing King Lear. Diana braced herself for the glare of the sun, the crowds and the cacophony of taxi horns, but New York delivered one of those rare, perfect autumn twilights. The air was cool and faintly fall-scented; the sky was a rich, lustrous blue, and everyone seemed to have slowed down enough to appreciate the night’s beauty.

“Oh, wow.” Daisy gave a dreamy sigh, then looked sideways at Diana and smiled. “You probably think I’m a total country bumpkin.”

“No,” said Diana, because she could see what Daisy was seeing. “Magic hour. That’s what photographers call it. That light at the very end of the day.” Out of the candlelight’s glow, Diana could see how young Daisy was. No crow’s feet, no age spots. Her hair was still lustrous, her skin still smooth as a pour of cream. She walked with a jaunty bounce, and she looked around at everything—the sky, the buildings, the people—with undisguised appreciation, even wonder.

Diana, meanwhile, was feeling increasingly desperate, scanning the street for a likely-looking building, a place to escape. There was a skyscraper at the end of the block, a silvery needle that seemed to pierce the sky. “This is me,” she said, quickening her pace. “My apartment’s in the Village, but if I’m only here for a short stay and I’m working in Midtown, I Airbnb my apartment and let the company put me up,” she said, lying glibly.

“Thank you for doing this,” Daisy said.

“My pleasure,” said Diana. She was going to offer her hand, but before she could do it, Daisy had drawn her into a hug. Diana smelled her shampoo. She felt her warmth and the strength of her arms. She stiffened as Daisy drew her close, then, without planning it, she found herself relaxing, and hugging Daisy back.

Diana waited in the lobby for ten minutes, until there was no chance that Daisy could still be anywhere nearby. She smiled at the doorman, who nodded in return, and stepped back outside, quietly blessing whoever had come up with a catchall term like “consultant,” which could have been tailor-made for the purpose of pulling the wool over suburban housewives’ eyes.

The night air was still cool, the sidewalks not too crowded, and she could feel the pavement thrum underneath her every time a train went by. She had a reservation on a ten o’clock flight from Kennedy to Boston, and a seat on the last Cape Air flight from Logan to Provincetown, but there was still plenty of time to get to the airport. Walking would give her time to think and, she hoped, to shake the discomfort that had grown with every moment of her time with Daisy Shoemaker. Think about what you learned, not how you feel, she told herself. When that didn’t work, she tried to stop thinking at all.

In the airport bathroom, she locked herself in the handicapped stall and unzipped her tote. She’d been watching drag queens for years, observing as they transformed themselves, painting their faces and putting on custom-sewn hip pads and silicone breasts that looked, and felt, almost like the real thing, until they looked completely authentic, more beautiful than most biological women. The older ones would talk about the ballroom scene in New York City in the 1980s, where it hadn’t all been about looking like a beauty queen, with sky-high wigs and mile-long lashes and six-inch platform heels. Back then, there were categories like Executive Boss Lady Realness or Butch Queen Realness, where the goal wasn’t beauty or glamour but authenticity, of being believable, looking like a real female executive or a real straight male, inhabiting the character you were playing so completely that you could walk down Fifth Avenue at noon without drawing a single sideways glance; that you could pass in the real world.

In the bathroom, Diana removed her drag carefully. She peeled off the false lashes and wiped off the makeup; she slipped out of the suit she’d borrowed from Rent the Runway and folded it, and the blouse, carefully in a garment bag. She pulled on jeans and a plain jersey top and replaced her suede kitten-heel pumps with sneakers. She removed the earrings, zircons she’d borrowed from a work friend, and slipped them in her pocket. She brushed the spray out of her hair, which she’d had done at a blowout bar that morning. When she washed her hands, she avoided her face in the mirror. She felt, for