With Friends Like These: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

who’d left her a pile of dough? I gave her a dubious look.
    “Don’t ask,” she said.
    My brain was working fast now. “I’d love to see it—you know how much I like looking at apartments.” Not that I’d ever gone with Quincy to scrutinize any of the others. I myself am happily nested in a sweet suburban townhouse.
    She paused. “I don’t know,” she said, offering me the last
frite
. “Jake hasn’t been there yet. He’s coming home early from Chicago. We have an appointment tomorrow.”
    “When?”
    “Late afternoon.”
    “I’ll join you.”
    You’d have thought I’d suggested sex with a goat. Finally, she talked. “The woman who lives there is old and sick and the brokers don’t want a lot of people around.”
    “Brokers, plural? I thought you were just working with that guy. Who’s the other broker?”
    I waited for Quincy to drop the name or change her mind about having me accompany her. All she did was finish her wine and say, rather primly, considering that I’m a friend who’s held her head when she was puking, “If Jake and I go ahead with this, I’ll be thrilled to get you in to see it, but not now.”
    “Right.” We began discussing my latest shopping client, a television producer who wanted a wardrobe worthy of her face-lift. We moved on to Quincy’s tribulations with Maizie May, the ninety-five-pound drama queen whose book she was ghostwriting. Soon enough the subject came up of where we should all go on our next girls’ getaway. Inexplicably, Chloe was lobbying for Las Vegas; I suppose she’d heard about the excellent stores there. Talia wanted to drive up to that rubbish heap her husband’s family owns in Maine. I’d proposed a quick hop to Heaven, Italy—that would be Rome. Quincy wanted Graceland.
    The check arrived. She grabbed it. “This one’s on me.”
    “Hey, I’m the one with the big payday.”
    “I forgot to even ask about that!” Quincy said.
    “True.”
    “All the more reason for me to take this,” she said. “Besides, I’m feeling lucky.”
    I thanked her and we said goodbye in a snowstorm of cheek kisses. For the next two hours I wandered in and out of shops in Soho, but I kept tripping over the four-leaf clover on steroids that Quincy had found that now gave her the chance to buy what must be an extraordinary bit of real estate.
    I realized I wanted to tell Arthur the whole implausible, inequitable story. Was that wrong? It wasn’t illegal, and all I was going to do was share the information—and maybe, for kicks, take a peek at the place.
    I began to feel like a child waiting for her birthday party, and soon enough my need became an itch I couldn’t ignore. “Hi there,” I said, catching Arthur on the first ring. We were still in that primitive state of romantic thrall when he wouldn’t have the balls to tell me I’d interrupted him at work, which I probably had. “You’re not going to believe this,” I began, using my most seductive voice, “but guess who may become your neighbor?” I retold the saga, possibly mentioning—I recall—that Quincy insinuated the apartment was a steal. But who was I kidding? The real point was that, given Quincy’s lousy track record on having bids accepted, she’d eventually lose out on this apartment and a stranger would land this deal. I couldn’t let that happen.
    “Which floor’s it on?” he asked.
    “She didn’t say.”
    “If it has a reservoir view, that narrows it down.”
    I detected excitement.
    “Who’s the broker?”
    “Howard something.”
    “Is that his first name? What company is he with?”
    I could see where this was going and felt a spasm of guilt on Quincy’s behalf. On the other hand, she was the same friend who’d forgotten to congratulate me on my starring role in a major commercial, the friend who didn’t want me to see the apartment with her. Also—and thisseemed far more compelling—I kept returning to the point that Quincy would eventually get outbid on this