Loe raamatut: «Jenny Lopez Saves Christmas: An I Heart Short Story»

Chapter One

‘I don’t know what your problem is,’ I said, taking a swig of my venti non-fat peppermint mocha latte. ‘What could be more Christmassy than this?’

My best friend and constant pain in the ass took a terrified look around at the animated bear diorama behind me and shuddered.

‘Don’t look now but the bear directly behind you has an axe,’ Angie said with a half-hearted point in the bear’s general direction. ‘I think he’s trying to kill you.’

‘He’s chopping down a tree!’ I yelled, arms thrown out wide in exposition. ‘And that guy is bringing in presents and those little baby bears are writing their lists to Santa. Seriously, doll, if these fuzzy motherfuckers can’t bring your Christmas spirit alive, then there’s no damn hope for you.’

It wasn’t often that I, Jenny Lopez, was prepared to admit defeat, but Angela was testing my limits. We’d spent all morning trudging around Manhattan in the freezing cold, hopping over slushy snow banks and trying to get her psyched for the most wonderful time of the year. Only nothing was happening. It was strange. For the last five years, I’d had to listen to her singing Christmas carols – badly – in her adorable British accent as soon as she’d taken the Halloween decorations down. She was a Christmas-o-holic. As an American, I didn’t even start thinking about holly jolly holidays until the agony of Thanksgiving was out of the way. There was only so much turkey a girl could pretend to be excited about at a time. But this year was different.

‘I do quite like the little one in the jumper,’ she offered, nodding towards an especially freaky-looking bear lurching back and forth and seemingly attacking a dead cat. ‘He’s cute.’

‘If you’re gonna be this much of an asshole every time Alex goes away on tour from now on, I might have to start going with him,’ I said. ‘There’s no way he can get back for the holidays?’

‘We agreed there was no point,’ she said with a rare self-pitying sniff. It wasn’t often she played the ‘poor me’ card, but when your husband takes off on a tour of Asia for three months and you’re stuck in New York, I figure you’re allowed a little leeway. ‘And I can’t go out and meet him because my bollocking bastard deputy quit.’

‘The perils of being a media mogul,’ I said, giving her a half-smile and matching eye-roll. ‘Want me to have her killed?’

‘It’s top of my Christmas list,’ she replied. ‘I can’t believe she waited until Christmas to do this.’

I shrugged. ‘I can. The vacation at your magazine sucks ass. It’s like, what, five days?’

‘Eight in your first year,’ she glowered. ‘Plus public holidays.’

I raised an eyebrow, only ever so slightly hampered by my impulsive Botox injections. If I didn’t already have a job, I’d have made a great devil’s advocate. I wondered what his benefits package looked like.

‘That’s how it works, Angie.’ I tossed my empty red cup into a nearby trash can, silently whooping as it landed. ‘Most people don’t think too much about other people’s schedules when they’re quitting a job. I guess she wanted to take a nice long break over the holidays before she starts at the new place.’

‘There is no new place,’ Angie said, her face like thunder. ‘She actually quit because she got engaged. Can you believe it?’

‘Only because I’m so jealous.’

Standing up slowly, I stretched my arms over my head. They were still aching from my workout the day before. Until someone appeared to yank me off the shelf and drown me in a life of luxury, I was stuck with the pre-dawn Soulcycle sessions. I still couldn’t work out how they had come up with the name: the only thing soul-related about spinning classes was how quickly they crushed mine.

‘Maybe I should just let Alex knock me up and go on baby vacay,’ she mused, dropping her own Starbucks cup in the trash. ‘I’ve had enough.’

‘Sure you’ve had enough of being editor-in-chief of your own magazine.’ I looked out of the huge windows that surrounded us and hoped against hope that the glass was tinted. Otherwise there was a storm on its way. ‘You could totally walk away tomorrow and spend the rest of your days hanging out in Park Slope with two little rug rats clinging to your apron strings. You wouldn’t go crazy at all.’

‘I’m already crazy,’ Angie said. She pulled two mismatched mittens out of her Marc Jacobs purse to prove her point. ‘I’m working on a Saturday and I can no longer dress myself.’

‘Honey.’ I patted her on the shoulder with love. ‘There are some people who would suggest you’ve never been great at the latter. And the former is the price of success. I’ve got to work today too, remember?’

‘You’re going to the launch of a new handbag,’ Angie retaliated. ‘And it’s not even your launch.’

‘Competitor research. I have to check out what the other PR companies are up to.’

‘And get a free handbag?’

‘I gave up my freaking Saturday afternoon for this shit,’ I replied. ‘If they aren’t tossing purses around like confetti, I’m going to kick someone’s ass.’

Even though I’d spent almost all my adult life in Manhattan, nothing readied me for the bitter sting of the winter wind. I scrunched up my face, as best as the neurotoxins in my forehead would allow, and winced. My Latin blood was not meant for this shitty weather.

‘So, Thursday, what’s the plan?’

‘Come over whenever?’ Angela shrugged and wrapped a black scarf shot through with glitter round her face. ‘I’ll get food in.’

‘Angela Clark,’ I said, stamping my foot and punching her maybe a little too hard in the arm. ‘We are not talking about getting sushi and bitching out the girls on America’s Next Top Model. It’s Christmas Day. It’s me and you. It’s champagne for breakfast and dinner with our nearest and dearest and gifts that we can’t really afford because our rents are crazy, and you getting wasted and singing that dumb carol from Sleepless in Seattle over and over and over until I get just as wasted and start crying. There are traditions to uphold.’

‘And you did a fantastic job of selling them,’ she said, rubbing her arm. Huh. Maybe those Soulcycle classes were starting to pay off after all. ‘I’m sorry, I’m just mad that I’ve got to go into work and that Alex is away and all the rest of it.’

‘Your folks couldn’t come this year?’ I asked, mustering up as much sympathy as I could in sub-zero temperatures.

‘I told them not to because I thought I was going out to Japan to meet Alex,’ she said, swiping her already runny nose. It was ball-shrinkingly cold. ‘And now they’ve booked to go to The Crown.’

‘The Crown?’

‘Local pub.’

‘They can’t cancel?’

‘Clearly not.’

I knew Angie found her parents frustrating, but I would still trade hers for mine. Mine were only upstate − hardly another country − but they might as well have been on the other side of the planet for how often we spoke. It hadn’t even crossed my mind to see what they were doing for the holidays; Christmas had never been a big deal for our family. I figured they’d be off on vacation. Vacation had been their default setting since my dad had retired.

‘Okay, since you’re clearly determined to play the Grinch this year, I’m taking over,’ I announced. ‘So you leave your holly jollies with me, and I will figure out the best damn Christmas you ever did see.’

Angela raised an entirely mobile eyebrow.

‘Or, I don’t know, I’ll buy as many bottles of champagne as I can carry and we’ll have a True Blood marathon?’ I suggested, quietly smug in the knowledge that I’d already secured the best Christmas present she would ever get in her entire adorable little life.

Angela smiled.

‘Trust me,’ I said, kissing her on the cheek and squeezing her sad little shoulders in a bear hug. ‘It’s gonna be the best Christmas yet, I promise.’

*

As much of a consumer whore as I was, it was hard to get excited about a handbag launch in the week before Christmas on a Saturday afternoon. If it weren’t for the fact that my flatmate, Sadie Nixon, was being paid an obscene amount of money to walk around the room waving said handbag under people’s noses, I totally wouldn’t have been there. But she had promised me boozing and schmoozing, and (I hadn’t wanted to rub Angie’s nose in it too much) a new designer handbag of my very own if I showed up, oohed and ahhed and waited around for her afterwards.

For a relatively famous model, Sadie had huge self-esteem problems. When we’d first met, she was one of the most in-demand models in America − in the world, really − but the last year or so she’d been way more interested in taking vacations with her super-rich boyfriend. Until he unceremoniously dumped her ass three months ago for a younger model. Literally, in this case. I’d seen photos of him tramping all over town with some 22-year-old tramp from a Pharrell video, and there was no one on earth who could spin that into a positive story, not even me. Now she was taking every job she could get and hanging onto me like a limpet. Oh, the joy.

No one could have called the room at the St Regis crowded, but given the weather and the time of year, I was pretty impressed that anyone had shown up. Unless they’d all been lured in by the promise of a free purse. Shimmying out of my fur-trimmed parka (I hadn’t bothered to ask whether it was real or faux in the store, and now I loved it so much I was scared to know the answer), I peeled off my blood-red leather gloves as the coat-check girl handed me a ticket. According to the quick glance in my powder compact in the cab, my eyeliner was still in place, my nude lipstick hadn’t smudged all over my face and my olive complexion glowed from the wind-whipping it had taken. On the whole, I was a pass. Smiling graciously, I tossed the coat-check coupon into my bag, never to be seen again, and surveyed the room.

‘Jenny, darling!’

Death and taxes may be the only certainties in life, but in PR we add the absolute certainty of running into the last person you ever want to see as soon as you walk into a launch. And you can kinda bet your house on them calling you ‘darling’. It’s PR speak for ‘I fucking hate you’.

‘Carrie Anne!’ I broadened my beam, narrowed my eyes and returned her two air kisses. ‘Darling.’

Carrie Anne Roitfeld was one of the luckiest women in New York City. Born tall and skinny, but not nearly as blonde as she appeared to be today, the story went that she was modelling in Paris when she met Michel Roitfeld and fell madly in love at just nineteen. Five years later, she divorced her husband and returned to New York with an impressive last name, a veneer of French sophistication and a sense of entitlement like you wouldn’t believe. While it would never have worked on me, she spent ten years dropping her name and forgetting to pick it up at pretty much every PR company in the city until she stacked up a big enough roster to bust out on her own. If Sadie had told me this was a CAR PR event, I wouldn’t have got my ass out of my snuggie this morning.

She could squeak out as many ‘Je ne sais pas’ as often as she liked − I’d done my research, I knew the truth. Modelling equalled waiting tables, and sure she married a guy called Michel Roitfeld, but the real reason she didn’t like to talk about her former in-laws wasn’t out of tactfulness, it was because anyone who knew how to enter a name into Google would figure out he wasn’t in any way, shape or form related to Carine Roitfeld from French Vogue. Not that she ever said he was, but she never said he wasn’t. An asshole, maybe, but she was pretty smart. And that’s what made her so dangerous.

‘I didn’t see your name on the list,’ she said, pulling away and leaving me choking in a cloud of Viktor & Rolf perfume. ‘I’m so happy you could be with us.’

‘Yeah, you know I live with Sadie, right?’ I replied, eyeing her up and down as surreptitiously as possible. Know thy enemy. ‘Nixon? The model?’

‘Oh, you’re her guest!’ Carrie Anne nodded and clasped her hands together. ‘That explains how you got in.’

I bit my lip hard.

‘After my terrible oversight in missing you off our guest list, mon dieu!’ She threw open her arms and wrapped herself around me, hand on my lower back, guiding me through the room. ‘The drinks are over here. I know that’s the first thing you’ll be looking for!’

‘Actually, I’m not that thirsty,’ I said, looking around for Sadie so I could give her a subtle kick up the ass. ‘But thanks.’

‘I guess there’s a first time for everything,’ Carrie Anne replied quickly. ‘Tell me, are you still doing something for Erin White?’

Ignoring the dig, I consoled myself with the fact that her manicure was chipped. Sometimes you need to find faith in the little things. ‘Uh, I’m the executive account director, if that’s what you mean?’

‘Darling, that’s wonderful, très bon,’ she said, looking past me as she spoke. ‘Isn’t it fantastic how they come up with all these titles these days? That must be hard to fit on a business card. You really ought to set out on your own. Like me.’

‘It’s a nice idea,’ I nodded thoughtfully. ‘But I really love working with the big brands, you know? It’s so long since I’ve organized a little event like this. I’m kind of jealous you still get to be so hands-on.’

Sensing the killing blow, Carrie Anne took a step back.

‘Jenny, tell me − ’ she waved over at someone I didn’t recognize across the room − ‘didn’t you used to date a guy called Jeff?’

Stunned, I felt every organ in my body seize up. Jeff was The One. Sure there had been others, including a very pretty but not terribly bright male model and a ridiculous on-and-off thing with one of Alex’s bandmates, but nothing that ever compared with Jeff. We had dated and then broken up and then dated and broken up, then he got engaged and somehow we still dated, but then he got married, only not to me, and so we broke up. For good that time. He was not the finest example of an emotionally healthy relationship in my back catalogue; if you were to open a dictionary and look for a definition of ‘That Guy’, you’d see a photo of Jeff Allen.

‘Sure,’ I squeaked, super casual. ‘A million years ago. We’re really good friends now.’

‘Jeff Allen?’

‘Yep,’ I confirmed, the words closely followed by the urge to vomit in my mouth.

I knew something brutal was coming because I could actually see her face move, and if ever there was anyone who could pass as a cautionary tale on how not to overdo it with filler, Carrie Anne was your gal. I rubbed my forehead, willing my baby Botox not to turn me into the same kind of walking, talking wax mannequin.

‘That’s so funny.’ Carrie Anne’s eyes burned. ‘I just hired his wife. Have the two of you met?’

Wow.

And I thought Carrie Anne was the person I wanted to bump into least in the entire world.

A tiny, bubbly, blonde proto-Carrie bounced over, brimming with enthusiasm and a desperate need to please. No kidding, she’d only just started working for Carrie Anne. We’d taken on a bunch of her former girls and they were all straight up dealing with PTSD. Not that I could have cared less at that exact moment. I would have thrown every single one of them under the bus to get out of that room, both metaphorically and literally.

I’d felt good in my Alexander McQueen black minidress when I’d left home. My Jimmy Choo over-the-knee boots were sexy yet tasteful, and even though I hated the cold, at least it didn’t make my hair frizz like the heat did and my carefully tethered messy bun had remained somewhat intact, but faced with this little bundle of blonde bounce, I felt like a haggard old witch dressed in a garbage sack and wearing Julia Roberts’ stripper boots from Pretty Woman.

‘Jenny, meet Shannon Allen.’ Carrie Anne tipped her head to one side and smiled. ‘Shannon, Jenny here used to date your husband “a million years ago”. Isn’t that funny? New York is so small.’

I watched, wondering how quickly I could burrow through the floor to China as a million thoughts went through Shannon’s pretty head. Her first thought, to remain professional, seemed to slip away as soon as Carrie Anne dropped the ‘date’ bomb. The second those words were out of her mouth, I saw her mentally flicking through the collated information about Jeff’s exes for a Jenny. I figured she’d come up trumps pretty quickly; I just didn’t know how much she knew.

‘Jen-ny,’ she said slowly. In fairness, the girl’s smile never faltered. If she weren’t married to the love of my life, I would have considered hiring her myself. ‘You dated Jeff?’

‘A million years ago,’ I repeated, trying out an experimental laugh. It didn’t really work. ‘A million trillion.’

‘You’re Jenny who he lived with?’ she asked as her expression clouded slightly. ‘Like, forever ago?’

I felt like Carrie Anne had kicked a puppy in the face and then handed it to me.

‘Forever and ever.’

The only way I could get out of this was to pretend it didn’t feel like I’d had my stomach sliced open and someone was running around the room using my intestines as streamers. What did I care if the only man I’d ever loved was married to this adorable, much younger, much blonder girl. She was wearing flats, for Christ’s sake. Who wore flats to a launch?

‘I’ll tell him you said hi … ’ Shannon’s brows started to knit together as all the stories, all the terrible his-side-of-them stories, fell into place. She wrapped her arms around herself and began to back away. ‘It was nice to meet you.’

‘You too,’ I said, hating myself for noticing that she was a little chubby and her dress clung around her belly.

Oh, holy shit. She wasn’t fat. She was pregnant.

My ex-boyfriend’s child bride was pregnant.

Jeff wasn’t just married, he was having a baby. And here I was, dressed like a very expensive stripper, waiting for my co-dependent flatmate to finish whoring herself out over a handbag so we could go home, order pizza and sob ourselves to single sleep. I pressed my hand to my forehead and stumbled back over to the coat check. Free bags and roommates be damned, I had to get out of there. Sadie would understand as long as I bought the pizza.

I might as well stop by the shelter on my way, I reasoned. Pick out a couple of unwanted cats and call it a day.