The Starter Wife Read Online Free PDF Page B

up unless someone was trying to get his child into a private school with a religious affiliation. For example, a person could say, “I’m trying to get into Wilshire Boulevard, but I have to join the Temple.” Or, “I need to be a parishioner for two years before I get into St. Stephen’s.”
    Kenny and Gracie had scrambled onto the guest list of every party for those between the ages of twenty-five and seventy five. For the last few years, they had attended, without fail, four events or dinners a week.
    Gracie calculated as the network executive jumped into the conversation guns blazing—four times fifty-two weeks equals two hundred and eight, multiplied by ten equals two thousand and eighty outings, not including this one.
    As the network executive labored through his dubiously masculine account of a recent white-water rafting trip, Gracie experienced Past Life Regression.
    Kenny wasn’t always so very Kenny. Gracie was clearheaded enough to remember when Kenny would groan about having to go out all the time, even if Gracie never quite believed that he resented the demands on his time. Gracie never really bought that he hated talking marketing with David Geffen or Barry Diller. Did Gracie wonder that he was miserable being away from her on her thirtieth birthday because he had to catch a private jet with Spielberg to see a screening in San Diego? No. Did Gracie think for a moment that he hated going back to work an hour after their daughter was born because Billy Bob Thornton was fighting with the director on his Western? Not a chance.
    Kenny was a low-man-on-the-totem-pole development executive when Gracie met him. He had phoned her out of the blue. “Kenny Pollock here,” he’d said, “Pollock like the fish.” “Not the artist?” Gracie had asked. She’d recently been toa LACMA exhibition of the artist’s most famous works. She’d stood for hours, staring at … what? Drops, lines, webs, colors, streams … And yet, she stood. Mesmerized. She’d gone back twice. The greatest emotional involvement she’d had in years—and it was with a painting.
    “Artist?” Kenny had cracked. “Don’t tell anyone in Hollywood I’ve got an artist’s name, they’ll run me out of town.” He talked her up for half an hour about optioning her first children’s book for no money for a never-to-be-made movie. Gracie was charmed by the way his voice cracked while toiling under the tenor of false bravado. Gracie had no idea what he looked like; she imagined he was small boned and fidgety and dark—just her type. He invited her for sushi in a place called Brentwood. Gracie had never had sushi and had rarely ventured west of La Cienega. When Gracie met him for this sushi lunch, she walked right past him toward another man sitting at the bar. Kenny tapped her on the shoulder, and Gracie turned around, stunned to see a tall galoot with football player shoulders and a child’s grin, and more stunned when he bear-hugged her and planted a big kiss on her cheek. Gracie wasn’t yet accustomed to the typical Hollywood greeting; she generally consigned her kisses and hugs to family members and lovers. Gracie soon learned she was a prude, that in Hollywood a kiss carries as little weight as a blow job from a call girl. Gracie learned to hand out kisses to maître d’s and studio chiefs as easily as she’d kiss her own mother. Except that she had never kissed her own mother on the lips.
    Kenny wasn’t her type. Period. Not least because he was the King of Exclamation. No person or activity was too prosaic to elude the Kenny Howl of Enthusiasm. Then there were his looks. Gracie didn’t like handsome, didn’t trust handsome, wasnever even a fan of handsome movie stars. Why would Gracie drool over Brad Pitt when Gracie would rather look like Brad Pitt? Kenny was too tall, too good-looking, and, she learned as their lunch wore on, too ambitious. Gracie had heard of five-year plans, even ten-year plans—but he had twenty-,