What's a Girl Gotta Do Read Online Free PDF Page A

speaking in their
own code. “That flu. I’m going to get a cab uptown.”
    “But I haven’t met Jack Jackson yet and it
isn’t even ten. Can’t you wait until I can take you?”
    “Well, I can’t wait, Burke,” she said. There
was a perceptible pause.
    It was impossible to get Burke away from a
party until he had met every single important person present who
could help his career. As Jackson rarely showed up at company
parties, this could be his only shot. I watched with interest to
see who would win this battle, as I’d been there, and I’d never
won.
    “You’re right. You stay and meet jack,” she
said after a moment, a girl who put her man’s concerns ahead of her
own. “Madri is leaving early. Maybe I can share her cab.”
    This could only make me look bad by
comparison.
    “You’re sure you don’t mind?” he said,
sounding sincere, full of empathy for his wench. This was not the
same guy I was married to.
    “I’m sure. No reason for both of us to miss
this.”
    They made like they were going to kiss and I
said, “Please. I’m standing right here.”
    After she left us, for good this time, Burke
turned to me and said, “Robin, I just want to put this behind us
and get on with our lives. I have a lot of respect for you. I’d
like us to be friends. If not, well, I don’t care what you say to
me—or what you do,” he added with less conviction. “But leave Amy
out of it. She’s an innocent bystander.”
    “Innocent, my ass! She dated a married man
while he was still married, while he was still sleeping with his
wife and telling his wife he loved her. She did it knowingly. I’m
sorry, but that’s against the rules.”
    “She can’t help it. She loves me.”
    “Gag me with an oar.”
    He took another exaggerated deep breath.
“Look, Robin, shit happens. People decide they want different
things. People fall out of love…”
    “Then you should have told me. You shouldn’t
have claimed to love me. You lied, you cheated and she encouraged
you, and for that,” I paused, “you have to die.”
    I raised the butter knife slightly for
emphasis and was gratified to see that, for a split second, Burke
took me seriously enough to put an arm in front of his face
defensively.
    “I’m joking,” I said with contempt. “You’re
such a weenie. I mean, what a cliché, leaving me for a younger
woman. Did you really think I was going to stab you? Do you think
you’re worth a crime of passion? Get real.”
    “You’ve been known to go nuts every now and
then,” he said.
    “Oh please, we’re divorcing. I’m allowed to
lose my goddamned temper. It’s one of the perks.”
    He was pissed off now. “It’s your sanity I’m
worried about, Robin, not your temper. Your sanity.”
    What a difference a few years of marriage
make. “I’ll never sign the papers,” he told me once, shortly after
we were married, when I mentioned that insanity ran in my family
(it came straight down the maternal line) and confided my deeply
held fear of ending up in asylum somewhere, muttering to myself
about the state of the world with spittle building up at the
corners of my mouth. Or wandering the streets telling strangers I’m
a member of the Royal Family, as my mother often does.
    I’d pushed him too far. Now he was using that
fear as a weapon against me, just as I use his fears against him.
On the day we split up, he told me I was a hysteric, a doomed
woman, certifiable.
    And what had I done to incite this heartless
assault? Merely tried to feed him a pie—in which I’d baked his
lucky shirt, a beloved silk Perry Ellis, cut into strips and
enclosed in a light, flaky pastry. That was the same day I learned
of his affair with Miss Congeniality, Miss “My future plans are to
find a cure for cystic fibrosis or else become a television
anchorwoman.”
    He continued to probe this sore spot. “Do you
still keep that morbid scrapbook of dead people you don’t even
know?”
    “Murdered people.”
    “Oh, murdered