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  She beamed and fought the urge to wrap her arms around him. “Oh, Warner, I promise! I’ll tell the doorman.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Warner was true to his word. And Elle was true to hers. He had not stepped even a foot inside the doorway to Elle’s apartment when she smothered him with kisses.

  Underdog hopped sideways to avoid being pummeled by the flurry of clothes that fell in a trail from the door to the couch. Elle had tears in her eyes as Warner’s lips traveled down her neck to her bare shoulder. Suddenly he paused, laid his head on Elle’s chest, and sighed deeply.

  “Elle,” he murmured. “Elle, what am I doing with Sarah?” He raised his head and stared into her eyes.

  Annoyed that Sarah’s name had intruded so quickly, Elle pushed his hand away from her cheek. “I don’t know, Warner. You tell me. What does she want from you?”

  “She has what she wants from me.”

  “Which is?”

  “A ring.”

  The Rock, of course. “Almost,” he said. “She has almost everything she wants. I guess she wants my name, too. Soon.”

  Huntington. Elle Huntington. How many times had she whispered it to herself, even practiced her new signature? She gazed at Warner, feeling the poison rivalry with Sarah seeping in.

  “Well? Do you love her?”

  “Yes, I love Sarah,” he responded mechanically. Elle was doubtful. After all, Warner’s credibility was a little low given where he lay cradled in her chest.

  “Sarah loves me, Elle. We’ll be happy in Greenwich or Newport. Her father wants me in his firm, of course, or I could work for my father’s firm. Until I run for office. Sarah supports anything I do. Well, I mean, either thing. I don’t know, Elle, I’m just so confused. You know I really want to direct…my documentaries, you know. She’d never understand that.”

  Warner stroked Elle’s soft hair, seeking solace from his trauma.

  “Let me get this straight, Warner.” She sat up, pulling a blanket around her shoulders and sliding away from him across the couch. “Your darling fiancée, who loves you more than anything, and is flexible about whether you work for her family or yours, doesn’t let you go out anymore because she simply adores being with you alone. Right? She will support whatever is best for you, work around your decisions, as long as they merge with the life she wants, correct? Your education and family connections have poised you for work in a white-shoe firm or a Fortune 100 corporation, either of which will pay you obscene amounts of money. But this life doesn’t fulfill your artistic ambitions.”

  “Elle, I knew you would be the one to understand.” Warner reached for her. “You’re the only one who really gets me. I—”

  Only minutes before, she had been overwhelmed with long-awaited joy. Now, Elle could barely hold back her newfound wrath and disgust.

  “Warner, I do understand!” she said emotionally. “God do I understand! How can you struggle from day to day? The jobs, the loving wife, the political career…it’s lined up for you, sure, but you deserve more out of life, don’t you? Money, prestige…that’s not enough. Oh no. You should also be a director, make movies, create. As long as you can maintain a solid reputation in Newport, Rhode Island, and stay securely in Grandmummy’s will.”

  Warner’s blonde head bent toward the floor, beaten. “Okay, okay, point well taken. Are you done yet?”

  Her voice softened. “Yes, Warner. I am.” With that she looked up at him. “Until you are true to yourself, you won’t be able to love anyone. I think you better leave.”

  He looked up into her eyes. “Can I kiss you before I leave, Elle?”

  “No,” Elle replied sadly.

  After Warner left, Elle wrapped herself in her favorite blanket and went to bed, but she didn’t sleep very well. Instead she and Underdog watched When Harry Met Sally on TV. Convinced by the movie that Warner would figure things out just like Harry did, Elle finally fell asleep dreaming of that day.

  For the first time since September Elle couldn’t wait to get to class. She backed into the curb with a thud that she didn’t even hear, her gleeful voice-over of the very un-November Bob Marley filling the world sealed inside the Range Rover. “Let’s get together and feel all…right!” she finished in her best Rasta, hopping out of the heated front cushion with first-day-of-school enthusiasm. She was actually early, ready to take on classes that now seemed a small hurdle in the path to a possible reunited bliss with Warner.

  Checking her mailbox, she found a second package, ribbon-tied by her Secret Angel. Another poem, she guessed, opening the envelope curiously.

  An exhale empties out the heart

  An inhale fills the soul

  Of all the dreams that I hold dear

  To kiss her is my goal

  A loving theft, a pilfering

  A joining of the lips

  A trade of moisture, warmth and breath

  In soft and tiny sips

  How slim my chances for this dream

  I’ll blindly roll the dice

  And if she will not have me

  Then a handshake will suffice

  One time she’ll fill her chest with air

  A trifle, just to say

  “Nice meeting you,” and with this breeze

  She’d blow my heart away.

  I belong to you, mon cherie.

  S.A.

  Elle fought a chill at her Secret Angel’s intimacy. Too bad he didn’t introduce himself today, she thought with a shrug. I feel like kissing the world!

  Elle tossed her mailbox’s week-old mélange of flyers and student notices into the “Paper Only” wastebasket. She hesitated, smiling despite herself at the painstaking swirls of her Angel’s fountain-pen ink. After a moment she folded the letter and returned it to its envelope, which she tucked into a casebook. She flipped open the outline hopefully. “Professional Responsibility, Pfisak, Fall ’01.”

  He’s gonna help me beat this place. Elle tingled with relief. Impulsively, she planted her coveted kiss on the title page, leaving a pink heart-shaped imprint on the top margin. Fate had returned to fight in her corner.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  In the bathroom, where Elle ducked to check her Chanel “Pink-Alert” lipstick between classes, she was surprised to encounter a crowd of mirror-peerers. Typically, while there were lines for the Xerox machine and the laser printers, the path to the bathroom mirror was always free of law students.

  Claire was struggling with her headband. Elle watched her tuck an errant strand of hair behind her ear, noting that the headband did nothing to disguise the fact that Claire had hair the texture of a Brillo pad. Once she conquered the headband, Claire pulled her white turtleneck snug and fixed her glasses.

  Elle tried to muscle into a space in front of the mirror to apply lip liner. Meanwhile, Claire complained to an unidentified person in the bathroom stall.

  “Today is yearbook picture day. I can’t believe I forgot! This is the picture that follows you forever,” Claire whined to the stall dweller.

  Dissatisfied with the work she had done on her headband, Claire finally announced that she “simply was not ready.” She was going to ask the registrar if she could make a special trip over to the studio and be photographed there.

  “Why don’t you just send over your portfolio?” Elle couldn’t help but inquire.

  “Portfolio?”

  “Everybody in California has a portfolio, Claire.” Elle smacked her lips and blotted her pink smile against the back of her hand.

  Claire rolled her eyes. Elle had once overheard Claire tell Sarah that it was a “constant torment” to her that while she had sat up nights amid a dozen coffee cups reworking her honors thesis “to satisfy some crusty, pedantic old adviser, Elle had been waving at the homecoming crowd from the back of a convertible with a crown on her head.”

  The way Claire saw it, Elle figured, was that it was just simply unfair that she had worked for a prestigious degree from Harvard only to wind up with the same postgrad
credentials as a fruity bimbo from The University of Spoiled Children. So every Monday, just to annoy Claire, Elle waited until halfway through class to tap Claire on the shoulder and announce: “Only seven and a half hours until Ally McBeal!”

  “Do they want a full body or a head shot?” she now asked Claire’s worried reflection. “Because if it’s full body, I’ll just send my ad series for Perfect Tan.” Elle grinned and shrugged at Claire.

  “Perfect Tan. Perfect Barbie,” Elle heard Claire mutter venomously.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Law school put a stranglehold on Elle’s social life that Jesse Ventura would have envied. Feeling as if she had no life to speak of or about, she decided that she should get out more at night and read the Angel’s outlines during the day.

  She picked up the cordless phone to call Margot. With finals approaching, her classmates had become the Typhoid Marys of stress, and she needed a break. She had pored over the outlines from her Secret Angel, and had picked up Emanuel outlines on a tip. Still she was nervous. She needed to talk to someone outside the law world.

  Elle dialed Margot, but before she could even say hello Margot was practically shrieking her good news.

  “Wedding bells are ringing, Elle! And they’re ringing in my condo!”

  Elle pictured Margot’s latest boyfriend and tried to see them growing old together. A romantic at heart, she loved the vision, funny as it was to think of Margot or Snuff mature and married.

  “So Cupid struck in Malibu?”

  Margot had moved into a Malibu condo after graduation, and had thrown a BYOK party in the fall. Bring your own karma. Elle had skipped the party. She had just started law school, and all she’d had to bring was negative energy.

  “You got it, Elle,” Margot cried. “I’ll be a bride by next year!”

  “Marg, that is absolutely fabulous.” Elle tried to disguise the note of discouragement that she felt, having expected to beat Margot to the altar. “I couldn’t be happier for you,” she added. “When’s the big day for you and Snuff?” She smiled more easily at the vision of Snuff, a twice-divorced record producer who was Margot’s whirlwind summer lover and now fiancé.

  “Well, you know Snuff’s gotten me really into Zen,” Margot chirped. “I have to figure out how they do the whole wedding thing. I was thinking we could have it at that church in Sedona that overlooks the Arizona Vortex.”

  “Funky!” Elle applauded the choice. “Barefoot like Cindy Crawford?”

  “Oh God no,” Margot protested immediately. “I mean, I want a real dress and everything. And one for you too, beautiful. Of course I insist you be my maiden of honor.”

  Elle flinched at the word “maiden.” Always the bridesmaid, never the bride. It was still a compliment. “Thanks, Marg,” she sighed.

  As if reading her mind, Margot softened. “I never thought I’d get married before you, Elle. Not in a million years.”

  Elle shrugged. “It’s not a race, silly.”

  “I hear Bebe’s divorcing already, after only six weeks!” Margot giggled, referring to the first of their sorority sisters to tie the knot. “Not Snuff and me. We’re totally in love,” she crooned.

  “I’m honored, Marg. Really. Maiden of honor in the Zen Vortex, who could ask for more?”

  “Can you come home this weekend? I know it’s a rush, but I want you and Serena to get fitted for dresses. Plus I haven’t seen you since you left for law school.”

  “Sure.” Elle knew she should probably study, but with her tapes she’d be set.

  She turned the stereo on to check out her first installment of Torts on Tape while she began to pack. “Welcome to Torts on Tape,” mumbled the professor’s voice from Elle’s stereo speakers. Underdog whined, dropping his head beneath his paws.

  “I know, Underdog.” Elle consoled her pet with a vigorous rub. “But I’ll try anything.” She dug through a heap of flashcards she had emptied on the couch, locating the stereo remote where she had used it to mark her place in a Cosmo quiz. “Somebody has to keep Emanuel outlines in business,” she laughed, gazing at two enormous shopping bags bursting with commercial study guides.

  Smoothing out a hanging bag, she tried to focus on the tort du jour, “negligent infliction of emotional distress.” The gory tale involved a man suing the hospital that had sent him an amputated leg in the mail, rather than the personal belongings of his deceased father, which he had requested.

  Elle cringed, imagining the UPS package. This tape should have a warning label.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  “Welcome…to Torts on Tape,” the now familiar voice began as Elle buzzed along the freeway on the five hour drive from Palo Alto to L.A. She had heard the story about the amputated leg so many times that she had developed a definite fear of delivery men by the time she pulled into the driveway of her parents’ house.

  Elle greeted her parents and then called Serena and Margot. They arrived as she was unpacking the books she had brought home with her. They hugged her, but quickly exchanged glances at the sight of their pale, tired friend.

  “We haven’t seen you once since you left for law school,” Margot said. She gave Elle a circumspect look. “And look! You have black rings under your eyes.”

  Serena nodded. “Elle, what are you doing to yourself?”

  “You try amusing yourself with flash cards for sixteen hours,” Elle said.

  “Tell us. You’ve been out partying with some gorgeous Stanford man, I know it. Come on, don’t keep secrets.” Obviously Serena hadn’t seen the Stanford face book.

  “I don’t believe you brought books with you,” Serena said, looking at Elle’s bedroom turned library.

  “Well, leave them here,” Margot directed. “We’ve got shopping to do.”

  Elle agreed and the three girls squeezed into Margot’s tiny Carrera parked outside.

  The valet took their keys at the Valentino boutique. “Isn’t a Valentino wedding the best?” Margot poked Elle.

  Elle laughed. “Explain to me again how this works with the Zen theme.”

  “Okay.” Margot cleared her throat. “It all makes total sense. See, the wedding’s in the Vortex, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, Vortex and Valentino both begin with V! It’s so harmonious! I had this fully positive rush the moment it hit me!”

  Serena held the door and Margot hurried inside. “She’s over the edge,” Serena whispered to Elle. “Wait till you see what she dreamed up for the bridesmaids.”

  Margot rushed to a hanging rack behind the counter and slid it across the floor. A row of black dresses swung together as Margot pulled the rack to a halt.

  “Black?” Elle looked at Margot with confusion.

  “It’s Zen, black and white…yin and yang!” Margot exclaimed, mixing her metaphors. “See, I was watching MTV, and I saw the Robert Palmer video ‘Addicted to Love.’ And since I’m addicted to love, and it’s so romantic, you know…I had this idea. You, and Serena, and all of my bridesmaids…you’re going to be the Robert Palmer girls. Skintight black dresses, red lips, and guitars.”

  “Guitars?”

  Serena mouthed the words “I told you so.”

  “Yeah, Snuff knows a zillion bands. We’ll just borrow some guitars. Anyway, it’ll be just like the video, except you guys will be all tan and blonde,” Margot piped over the shutter door where Elle was changing into her dress.

  “The rest of us will, anyway.” Serena folded her arms and stared at Elle, who hopped out of the dressing room pulling a sock off her foot.

  Margot’s animated expression disappeared instantly. “Morticia!” she shrieked, covering her face with her hands. Elle leaned against the wall, kicking her sock across the floor. She glanced at her reflection in the harsh light. “What? Is this too tight?”

  Margot started to cry. “Elle, you just can’t look like that at my wedding. Oh, no, forget it.” She shooed away the seamstress who had begun to pin the hem of Elle’s dress.

  �
��Look like what?” Elle glanced from the mirror and the reflection she had grown used to seeing to the horrified faces of her friends.

  “Your skin! Oh my God, she does look like Morticia,” Serena observed sadly.

  “If you were a plant you would die!” Margot wiped her eyes. “Elle, your skin has become so…so shallow.”

  “Shallow?” Elle didn’t bother to correct Margot.

  “Totally shallow,” Serena agreed. “It’s disgusting.”

  Serena put an arm around Margot to comfort her. “Don’t worry, we won’t let her go like that. She can fake bake or something.”

  Margot was somewhat consoled. “Maybe since you’ll be so busy with law school you could even use tan-in-a-can and look decent for my wedding.”

  “I’m sure,” Serena said, directing her words at Elle. “She’ll be studying, or whatever, but she’ll still be tan one way or another.”

  They compromised: she would sit in the tanning booth while listening to her school outlines on the MP3. It was unspoken but also decided that Serena would replace Elle as the maiden of honor. Elle’s appearance wouldn’t be so noticed if she were just another guitar-swinging bridesmaid. Hopefully she’d be able to find a Wolff tanning bed within the city limits of Palo Alto.

  Margot called her at school frequently to make sure she wasn’t skipping her appointments in the tanning room. In December Margot told Elle she was worried that she might be studying and fading into a paler tone, and came to visit her at Stanford.

  Margot approved of Elle’s living arrangement. Still, she frowned to see the books and papers that littered her condo. Elle admitted she had been working hard to catch up in school, and really hadn’t done much else since she last saw her friends in L.A.

  “So what’s going on in LA-LA land?” Elle said, joining Margot on the couch. “How’s Malibu? Still the valley of other people’s rumors?”