“But you had the opportunity. And you made it work.”
“That’s right, Philip,” she said. She looked at him, her expression vulnerable. She had yet to have her makeup done. Her face was clean, and there were little lines around her eyes. “I keep wondering why we can’t do that. Make it work.”
“I fucked up again, didn’t I?” Philip said.
“Yeah.” She nodded. “And I guess I did, too. All those years, I kept thinking, What if? What if I hadn’t gone to Europe. Or what if I’d seen you that time when you came to L.A.”
“Or what if I’d managed to break up with Lola?” Philip asked. “Would you still being seeing Brumminger?”
“You have to ask?” Schiffer said.
“Yeah,” Philip said. “I guess I’ve never managed to ask the right question.”
“Will you ever manage it, Philip? If not, we should end this right now. I need to know. I want to move on one way or another. I want it to be clean.”
Philip leaned back in the chair and put his hands in his hair. Then he started laughing.
“What’s so damn funny?” she asked.
“This,” he said. “This situation. Look,” he said, sitting next to her on the bed and taking her hand. “This is probably the worst time to ask you this, but do you really want to marry me?”
She looked down at his hand and shook her head. “What do you think, schoolboy?”
19
A couple of hours later, Schiffer Diamond, made up and wearing a long gown for the scene at the Ukrainian Institute, came out of her trailer. Philip was still holding her hand, as if he didn’t dare let go of her, and after he helped her down the steps, the photographers closed in with their cameras. Philip and Schiffer exchanged a look and began running down the sidewalk to a waiting van. The paparazzi were taken by surprise, and there was a jostling in the crowd, and two photographers were knocked down. Nevertheless, Thayer Core managed to hold up his iPhone and snap a picture of the happy couple, which he then e-mailed to Lola. “I think your BF is cheating on you,” he wrote.
Lola got the e-mail immediately and tried to call Philip. She’d suspected something like this would happen, but now that it had, she couldn’t believe it. Philip didn’t answer his phone, of course, so she texted Thayer Core to find out where he was. Then she opened the closet to get dressed, her hands trembling so violently with frustration and anger that she knocked several tops off their hangers. This gave her a wicked idea, and she went into the kitchen, found the scissors, and pulling several pairs of jeans from the shelf on Philip’s side of the closet, cut the legs off. She refolded the tops of the mangled jeans and replaced them on the shelf. Then she kicked the cutoff legs under the bed, put on her makeup, and went out.
She found Thayer standing behind a police barricade on Seventy-ninth Street. There was a carnival atmosphere, with the presence of the paparazzi drawing the attention of passersby who kept stopping to find out what was going on. “I’m going in,” Lola announced grimly, stepping around the barricade. Four beefy Teamsters were blocking the entrance. “I’m Philip Oakland’s girlfriend,” she said, attempting to explain why she must be allowed to pass.
“Sorry,” one of the Teamsters said, impassive.
“I know he’s in there. And I have to see him,” she wailed.
A young woman sidled up next to her. “Did you say you were Philip Oakland’s girlfriend?” she asked.
“That’s right,” Lola said.
“He just went in with Schiffer Diamond. We thought they were together.”
“I’m his girlfriend,” Lola said. “I live with him.”
“You’re kidding,” the girl said, and put her cell phone in Lola’s face to record her remarks. “What’s your name?”
“Lola Fabrikant. Philip and I have been together for months.”
“And Schiffer Diamond stole him from you?”
“Yes,” Lola said, realizing she had an opportunity to play a significant part in this drama. Rising to the occasion, she summoned her most confused tone of voice and said, “I woke up this morning, and everything was fine. Then two hours ago, someone texted me a photograph of the two of them holding hands.”
The girl gasped in horror. “You just found out?”
“That’s right. And I might even be pregnant with his baby.”
“What a scumbag!” the girl declared in female solidarity.
Hearing this pronouncement on Philip’s character, Lola was momentarily worried that she’d gone too far. She hadn’t meant to say she was pregnant, but she’d gotten caught up in the moment, and it had just slipped out. But she couldn’t take it back now—and besides, Philip had wronged her. And it certainly was possible that she could be pregnant.