Fashionably Late Read Online Free PDF

thighs and camouflaged waistlines. Now, she clutched her layered cashmere sweaters and matching shawl around her as if they were armor.
    “Yes?” she asked the nurse who gave her a professionally bright smile as if it didn’t matter that this was the worst day of Karen’s life.
    The best night, followed by the worst day. Twenty-four rocky hours.
    “That will be seven hundred and forty-three dollars,” the woman said pleasantly, without shame. Karen unzipped her De Vecchi bag and pulled out her checkbook. She fumbled for her Mont Blanc but couldn’t find it.
    The nurse, still smiling brightly, slipped her a Bic. Karen noticed her own hands were shaking. She tried to write out “7” on the amount line and it looked more like a snake that had been mashed on the roadway than a number. It was hopeless. She tore the check out and into two pieces, threw the cheap pen on the desk, and chucked the pigskin checkbook back into her bag.
    “Bill me,” she said, and her anger gave her enough energy to make it through the door to the elevator and down into the lobby of the building. How could they make you pay to get this news? Her lip trembled, but she wouldn’t cry. She never cried. She walked out of the building and onto Park Avenue. The awning over the door was flapping in the wind and a fine rain had begun to spray everything the brown-gray color, like wet wood smoke, that painted New York on its bad rainy afternoons.
    Perfect, she thought. I’ll never get a cab to Penn Station in this. I should have taken a limo, just like Jeffrey had suggested. But Karen hated to keep the driver waiting. It wasn’t that she was cheapţit was simply an embarrassment to her. The idea of a bus or, worse yet, the subway, made her so dizzy she thought she might fall onto the wet concrete. New York is unlivable, she thought, and every place else is worse. I should have gotten the limo and taken it. Not just to here and the station, but all the way to Long Island. What the hell is wrong with me? I can’t give myself a break. Karen Kahn, woman of the people. That’s my father’s influence. Karen felt a wave of selfpity wash over her, and with it all her reserve of strength was gone.
    “Please,” she said aloud. “Please.”
    And her prayer was answered. A taxi pulled up to the canopy and two men stepped out, leaving it vacant for her. She got into it gratefully and took a deep breath. “Penn Station,” she told the driver, who was dressed in the native garb of some Third World country that she would not be able to identify on a map. He nodded and she hoped he had a clue how to find their destination.
    She leaned back into the impossibly uncomfortable seat. What an irony it was that her one prayer had been for a taxi. Just my luck, she thought. Major unanswered wishes in my life and rhat’s the one I make when the Wish Fairy is feeling generous. Too bad I hadn’t wished for a baby.
    She glanced at her wristwatch, a chunky antique gold man’s Rolexţthe only thing that made her big wrist look small. The cab was crawling through the usual midtown war zone. She’d never make the 4:07. She would be late.
    Well, what else was new? She habitually ran late. Fashionably late.
    Jeffrey always told her she tried to do too much. But after all these years, Belle still got in a frenzy whenever Karen was tardy. That’s what Belle called it and through pursed lips expostulated: “There is no need for tardiness.” Sometimes Belle sounded exactly like a second-grade teacher, which was exactly what she had been when she first met her husband. But once they adopted Karen, Belle had never taught again, at least not professionally. She had taught Karen how to dress, how to make hospital corners on sheets (“Fitted sheets are for lazy women”), how to properly polish good leather shoes, how to wax her legs, how to set a table, how to write a thank-you note, how to correctly sew on a button, and a million other small but unforgettable life lessons. In