One Fifth Avenue Read Online Free PDF Page A

scared.”
    Well, she always prided herself on not being afraid of anything. And that was her own bullshit defense: insisting she wasn’t vulnerable. It was dishonest, he thought. But when it came to her feelings for him, she’d always thought he was a little bit better than even he thought he was.
    He picked up the pages again but found he wasn’t the least bit interested. Bridesmaids Revisited was exactly what it seemed—a story about what had happened in the lives of four women who’d met as bridesmaids at twenty-two. And what the hell did he know about twenty-two-year-old girls? His last girlfriend, Sondra, wasn’t nearly as young as Enid had implied—she was, in fact, thirty-three—and was an 22
    Candace Bushnell
    up-and-coming executive at an independent movie company. But after nine months, she’d become fed up with him, assessing—correctly—
    that he was not ready to get married and have children anytime soon.
    A fact that was, at his age, “pathetic,” according to Sondra and her friends. This reminded Philip that he hadn’t had sex since their breakup two months ago. Not that the sex had been so great anyway.
    Sondra had performed all the standard moves, but the sex had not been inspiring, and he’d found himself going through the motions with a kind of weariness that had made him wonder if sex would ever be good again. This thought led him to memories of sex with Schiffer Diamond.
    Now, that, he thought, staring blankly at the pages of his screenplay, had been good sex.
    At the tip of Manhattan, the white van containing Schiffer Diamond was crossing the Williamsburg Bridge to the Steiner Studios in Brooklyn.
    Schiffer was also attempting to study a script—the pilot episode for Lady Superior —for which she had a table read that morning. The part was especially good: A forty-five-year-old nun radically changes her life and discovers what it means to be a contemporary woman. The producers were billing the character as middle-aged, although Schiffer still had a hard time accepting the fact that forty-five was middle-aged. This made her smile, thinking of Philip trying not to act surprised to see her in the elevator. No doubt he, too, was having a hard time accepting that forty-five was middle-aged.
    And then, like Philip, she also recalled their sex life. But for her, the memory of sex with Philip was laced with frustration. There were rules about sex: If the sex wasn’t good the first time, it would probably get better. If it was great the first time, it would go downhill. But mostly, if the sex was really great, the best sex you’d had in your life, it meant the two people should be together. The rules were juvenile, of course, constructs concocted by young women in order to make sense of men.
    But sex with Philip had broken all the rules. It was great the first time and great every time thereafter, and they hadn’t ended up together. This was one of the disappointments one learned about life—yes, men loved sex. But great sex didn’t mean they wanted to marry you. Great sex held no larger implications for them. It was only that: great sex.
    She looked out the window at the East River. The water was brown O N E F I F T H AV E N U E
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    but somehow managed to be sparkling as well, like a grand old lady who won’t give up her jewels. Why did she bother with Philip at all? He was a fool. When great sex wasn’t enough for a man, he was hopeless.
    This led her back to her only conclusion: Maybe the sex hadn’t been as special for him as it had been for her. How did one define great sex, anyway? There were all the things one could do to stimulate the geni-tals—the kissing and licking and firm yet gentle touches, hands wrapped around the shaft of the penis and fingers exploring the inside of the vagina. For the woman, it was about opening up, spreading, accepting the penis not as a foreign object but as a means to pleasure. That was the defining moment of great sex—when the penis met the