Sarah arrives, is perched on a bench in front of the restaurant. She wears a simple white button-down, but the buttons all hit in just the right place, the top one undone, so she looks like Katharine Hepburn instead of a woman trying to appear sexy. She stands, and Sarah is surprised again at how tall she is, how lovely.
Fiona somehow looks English, which she is. âSarah,â she says. Her accent is wonderful.
âHi!â Sarah reaches up, deposits a kiss on each cheek.
Lunch is a departureânormally, when she sees Fiona, itâs at a party. Fiona is a woman whoâs reliably invited to a certain kind of party and remembers to extend that invitation to Sarah, at least a few times a year. A postâfashion show celebration for a mutual friend, also from college, now well known enough that her initials are embroidered on the tags inside asymmetrical dresses sold at Barneys; a genteel fund-raiser for an organization that plants trees in Costa Rica. Sarah relishes these invitations. Sometimes itâs fun to do something so frivolous, so glamorous, and Fiona movesthrough such parties with an ease that makes Sarah, too, feel at home. With Fiona, she feels like a different version of herself. She knows itâs silly, and knows itâs pretend, but she enjoys it.
Thereâs small talk about the men in their lives, about the rigors of work, but the clock is tickingâthat hour, Fiona was clear about that hourâso Sarah broaches the subject of the wedding bands with her usual forthrightness.
No sooner are the words out of her mouth than Fiona claps, actually claps, once, twice, three times. âOf course, my God, what an honor, I canât believe youâd ask,â she says.
âReally?â Relief. âI was worried youâd be insulted.â
âInsulted, donât be silly.â
âObviously, Iâll pay you, for your time, for the materials, for everything. I would just love to have something special, something unique.â
Fiona waves this away. âI know just what to do. Rose gold for you, a simple silver for Dan. Or platinum? Maybe platinum.â Fiona produces a small tape measure from her bag, wraps it around Sarahâs finger.
âI canât tell you what this means to me,â Sarah says.
âWeâre going to make you something beautiful,â Fiona says.
Because Fionaâs office is not far from her parentsâ place Sarah decides to stop there. Papaâs gone but her mother is sure to be there, and thereâs a lot they need to talk about, not to mention that if she hears that Sarah had lunch nearby and didnât come over there will be a whole discussion, one thatâs easier to avoid. She walks Fiona back to the office, they kiss their good-byes and say their letâs do it again soons.
Downstairs from her office is an outpost of the chain for which Fiona works. Sarah goes in, browses. The music is just the right volume, the salesgirls just the right amount of pushy. Thereâs a table of simple cashmere sweaters in several colors that feel like fallâburnt orange, saffron, chocolate, moss. She chooses two; theyâre the perfect, simple weight, and theyâre cheaper if you buy two, actually. She hates taking a big paper shopping bag. She always carries a little cotton tote, folded up into nothing, in her bag, so she takes this out and the salesgirl deposits her sweaters, wrapped in tissue paper, sealed with a sticker, into it. The bag weighs nothing because the sweaters weigh nothing.
Itâs warm now but she can tell it wonât be all day, that in a couple of hours, wherever she is, probably walking back to the apartment, sheâll be glad she has the blazer on. At the moment, though, she feels damp. Sheâs heard about people injecting something into the armpits, that this can control your perspiration. Her legs are a bit sore from the morningâs class. She doesnât get to class as often
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