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  Meredith closes The Zone, puts the book aside, and makes an effort to focus her attention on the more immediate future. She reaches for the phone to call and confirm her reservation for the night. She takes a few deep breaths as she listens to the ringing, but trying to calm herself while listening to a phone not being picked up is impossible, she stops. And then they pick up.

  “Thank you for calling Ouest. How may we help you?”

  “Hi, it’s Abby Gilbertson calling. I’d like to confirm my reservation for tonight.”

  Meredith always confirms, she doesn’t like to leave anything to chance; she’s certain she’s simply far too busy to leave anything to chance. The moment she flips her phone shut, all in one motion, Meredith looks at her watch. She needs to start getting ready. Getting into her disguises is a lot more involved than the run-of-the-mill getting ready for work, or dinner, or some other sort of outing. She will, by the way, not say the word date. Not right now.

  If she can manage it, Meredith always tries to get ready at home. It requires a lot of stuff, a lot of makeup, outfits, wigs. And while, of course, it is a necessity of her job, to make herself into someone else, to call herself by another name, she feels that holing up in the bathroom at work with wigs and makeup and outfits might seem unserious, too theatrical, and The NY is a serious place. And while she has always thought of makeup as important, for any number of reasons, she doesn’t want to spend all the time applying it at work.

  In addition to her own credit card, which she so rarely uses, she has four other credit cards with four different names: Abby Gilbertson, Emily Shea, Sarah Marin, May Williams. Meredith has found that it’s best to repeat; four names, she thinks, are enough. More than four and she might start to lose track, get tripped up, the way that it’s so much harder to remember a lie than it is to remember the truth.

  Meredith has a vanity, an antique desk with a mirror attached to it and a deceptively large drawer in which she has all the makeup, a collection matched in its vastness and impressive-ness only by the beauty products that line the shelves of the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. If asked what she liked best about being a restaurant critic, no matter who asked, Meredith would say it was, of course, the restaurants, getting to go to every last one she ever dreamed of, the inventive food, the theater of it all, the celebration. And then, on top of that, writing about it and sharing it with readers. She won’t admit to anyone how much she enjoys the makeup, and the disguises. But she actually really does.

  Before she sits down, she heads to her closet, and from the row of hatboxes lining one of the upper shelves, she selects one of her wigs. The long, blonde one with layers that has the hint of retro—possibly it’s from the seventies. She thinks that tonight she’ll wear the sparkly metallic Stila eye shadow applied with a heavy hand. As she eyes a pair of high heels that she could never wear for an entire day in real life, she thinks she’ll wear the Laura Mercier dark plum lipstick.

  Meredith pauses at the table right outside the closet, upon which her iPod is nestled securely in its Bose iPod dock. She smiles at what a clever contraption it is, and wonders what they’ll think of next. She loves that in the world of electronics, not unlike in the world of restaurants (and come to think of it, makeup, too) next is always soon. She picks up the iPod and scrolls quickly, expertly to the song she wants. She has always been a great believer in the importance of good background music, and she almost always listens to the same song, campy though it may be, when she gets ready. It’s from the soundtrack to the play Hedwig and the Angry Inch (it was also a movie, which wasn’t nearly as good as the play, they never are), and is called, appropriately, “Wig in a Box.”

  She sits down at the vanity and reaches for her foundation as Hedwig’s voice comes melodically through her speakers. I put on some makeup, turn on the tape deck, and put the wig back on my head. Hedwig has such a beautiful, alluring voice. As Meredith puts on her own makeup and secures her own wig, she sings along happily to the lyrics, “This is the best way that I’ve found, to be the best you’ve ever seen.”

  And, sure, the song is sung by, and about, a hermaphrodite transvestite lounge singer who doesn’t really belong to any world, and therefore won’t ever really belong to anyone. And yes, it’s from a play (and then a movie) that isn’t altogether cheerful. But that’s not what Meredith thinks about. Because even if underneath the surface it might not be such a happy song, it’s always been her favorite. She likes singing along, especially to the part when Hedwig puts on his wig and exclaims that suddenly he is Miss Farrah Fawcett from TV, and she can almost see his eyelashes batting.

  She doesn’t sing all the words out loud though; she kind of hums over the lines where Hedwig wakes up, and turns back into himself.

  eight

  go ouest

  Tom Valenti’s Upper West Side bistro, Ouest, is located on Broadway at Eighty-fourth Street, not on Broadway at Eighty-second Street, which is where Meredith has asked the cab to let her out. Oddly enough, she made this same mistake on her last visit, too. The driver has already pulled over, the meter has already been turned off, so Meredith decides not to bother with, “Oh, I’m sorry, I meant Eighty-fourth Street. Could you take me there?” even though, honestly, sometimes she would.

  She pays the driver and steps out, stretching her legs (and her very high heels) over a small stream of slush and onto the salted sidewalk of Broadway. She looks up at the looming Barnes & Noble on the corner, the same one that greeted her the last time she got out on this corner by mistake.

  Crossing her arms tightly in front of her and angling her head slightly inward and down to best protect her blonde wig from the wind that is whipping down the wide expanse of Broadway, she hurries the two blocks to Ouest. She tries to clear her head. She always tries to clear her head pre-reviewing. As a sorbet might be served between courses to cleanse the palate, Meredith has long thought it best to enter a restaurant with as clear a mental palate as possible. She tries conscientiously not to let her mood, her feelings on other things, the weather, her outside life, affect her reviews. She aims for complete focus. Meredith is always amazed at people who claim to be able to be completely focused, who claim to be capable of clearing their heads.

  She pulls open the heavy wood and chrome door, made even heavier by the aforementioned whipping wind, and enters the warm, dark-red tones of Ouest. Her eyes are drawn immediately to the long, regal mahogany bar curving beautifully at its corner. Sitting right at that rounded corner, regal and a bit beautiful himself, is Kevin Smith, not the writer/director/good friend of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, but the senior vice president (of something) at Merrill Lynch, and by all accounts handsome and charming enough to stand apart from the initially misleading name. Not everyone could, some people, less sure of themselves, might spend the better part of certain evenings feeling like maybe they didn’t quite measure up to a writer/director/friend of Matt and Ben.

  Standing by the hostess station, looking tall, fashionable, and perhaps slightly concerned—-she often looks slightly concerned—though less so since her first experiment with Botox—is Leslie Darden, fashion editor at The NY. Though Fashion and Food (both in capital letters, of course) might generally be considered things that are of interest to two very different types of people, in a city like New York that’s not actually true. And, at The NY, both Fashion and Food fall under the umbrella of “Living,” so Meredith and Leslie’s offices are right down the hall from each other. Leslie is always up for a night out, and that’s good, because Meredith needs to be sure she has people in her life who are up for a night out. And she likes Leslie; she’s hardworking, a trait Meredith has always been a fan of, and she writes well. She makes fashion close to interesting, even for someone like Meredith who is far less interested in fashion than she is in other things.

  Meredith smiles over at Kevin, and nods in the direction of the hostess stand. Before heading toward Leslie, she pauses for a moment to take in the room. It’s a beautiful space with great energy. Meredi
th loves discovering new restaurants and sharing them with her readers, but she’s also quite partial to writing pieces that check back on a favorite, which is what has brought her, several times over the last few weeks, back to Ouest. Smiling and feeling warmed by the restaurant, she heads to the hostess station. Out of the corner of her eye she can see Kevin, putting a few bills neatly on the bar, taking a last sip of his drink, and walking over to join them.

  Meredith isn’t sure if the conversational chemistry will work at dinner or not. Generally, she does try to give it some consideration, does try to pick people who will enjoy speaking with each other at dinner, since for the most part, Meredith will not be speaking with them. However, with all the other things that have been on her mind—good fats and protein blocks and eicosanoid levels (yes, really)—whether or not Kevin and Leslie will have anything to talk about has pretty much slipped her mind. She used to worry less about whether her dinner companions would get along, because before they moved out of the city her dinner companions were so often Stephanie and Aubrey. And of course, they get along. They, Meredith thinks, should be the poster couple for getting along, so peas-in-a-pod-like and happy they always are. And they were great dining companions. Even though Stephanie doesn’t like to cook (would much rather retile a bathroom by hand), she has always had a great sense for spices, for recognizing them, and Aubrey is always, without question, fun to be around. Meredith had never thought of three as a crowd, but rather as the perfect number for reviewing. With three, you could get two different opinions, without the social aspect taking over.

  Meredith and Kevin maneuver through the crowd and the three meet up at the hostess stand together.

  Kevin leans over and kisses Meredith hello, and both Kevin and Leslie, as they were reminded this afternoon to do, say, “Hi, Abby.” Meredith always makes an afternoon call, just to remind her dining companions not to call her by her name. “It’s Abby,” she’ll caution.

  “Hi,” Meredith says and smiles. “Kevin,” she continues, gesturing toward Leslie, “This is my friend Leslie.” Meredith, an admirer of precision, is usually more descriptive in her introductions. Generally she’d say, “Leslie is my friend from work, Leslie writes about fashion, Leslie is my colleague,” because Leslie, to be technical, is more a colleague than a friend per se, but to say “friend from work,” right here in front of the hostess, could be risky. Say the hostess is also a student at FIT and follows fashion voraciously and actually recognizes Leslie somehow, from, let’s say, fashion shows? If the hostess were quick (and for this scenario that would be very quick, an expert really at deductive skill) and interested not only in fashion shows but also in the welfare of her employers, and put two and two together, all could be lost. Really. You can’t be too careful in New York.

  Leslie smiles and tosses her perfectly coiffed hair and extends a manicured hand, bejeweled with a purple and green cocktail ring, to Kevin. Kevin takes Leslie’s hand and smiles and says something, something that Meredith doesn’t hear because suddenly she feels uncomfortable. Is that, she has to ask herself, a sparkle in Kevin’s eye?

  Leslie, in a voice a bit huskier than Meredith thinks is actually her own, says, “Well, hi, Kevin,” and then, “I’ve heard so many nice things about you.” Except, Meredith thinks, that’s not true. Meredith doesn’t think she’s said any sorts of things about Kevin to Leslie.

  Meredith turns her attention to the hostess, and says, “Abby Gilbertson, for three.”

  “Is your party all here?” asks the hostess. Meredith glances at Kevin and Leslie, just to the right of her, indicating, Yes, all here. The hostess smiles, and gathers three menus, taps them together efficiently. “Right this way then,” she says, and begins walking, past the stairs leading to the upstairs loft where Meredith sat last time, and into the main dining room.

  “Guys?” Meredith says to Kevin and Leslie, whose attention is presently a bit far away from the directive announcement of the hostess.

  She is quite sure now that Leslie might be looking a bit sparkly-eyed herself and yes, she’s pretty sure, too, that she finds this disturbing. And as bad as she is at clearing her head, she’s quite skilled at latching on to something and not letting go. Generally, this does not work out well for her. She tries very hard to focus on her work and vows to remain so focused for the remainder of the evening, as opposed to, say, retreating into a spiral of weirdness.

  Once they are seated, before a waiter has arrived to talk to them about cocktails and wine, Leslie smiles widely, all perfectly bleached teeth, and asks, “So, how do you two know each other, again?” Meredith is sure the word again doesn’t need to be there; she’s certain she never told her a first time. She does not want this. She was so busy thinking about being in the Zone, pondering if a person could ever try most of what’s on the menu at Ouest, and still in fact be in it (or is that on it?). She didn’t think about the possibility that Kevin, single and dashing, and Leslie, single and fashionable and really quite adorable, too, would not only conversationally work out, but would actually hit it off. And she hadn’t thought at all about how she wouldn’t like it.

  “It was about eight years ago. Eight years, right, Abby?” Kevin asks Meredith, all the emphasis on Abby. Without waiting for her agreement or disagreement, he turns back to Leslie and explains, “In a share house in the Hamptons. It was the one in Southampton, on Mecox Road, I think.”

  Meredith looks up from her menu and agrees, “Yes, Mecox Road,” except when Meredith looks back on her share house experience in the Hamptons, she doesn’t need to differentiate between houses and streets and locations. For her there was only one year, one street. It was not, as they say, for her. Meredith’s social skills are apparently not anywhere near honed enough for such an exercise in mass cohabitation. But she did meet Kevin in that house, and of course she liked him, everyone did, he was friendly and good-looking and had a great job, even then. Meredith has long thought that she’d like to wind up with a banker or a lawyer or some other form of junior tycoon, like Kevin. This is partly stereotype-based—she likes a strongwilled, corporate ladder-climbing type of guy. Partly it is because she has never subscribed to the belief that opposites attract, and she feels that ultimately she’d be best suited to someone as dedicated to his career as she is to hers, to someone who is striving, pushing himself, going places. And, partly, her reasoning is based on the fact that she is superficial. She is. She’s accepted this about herself, she thinks it is, if not okay, at least very understandable in a city like New York.

  “Mecox Road,” Kevin repeats again, all bright-eyed and reminiscent. Kevin had a better time that summer than Meredith did. Kevin’s good time was apparently not at all hindered by his opinion of himself in a bathing suit, his self-esteem not at all affected by having to spend the better part of the summer in one.

  “Good times,” Meredith says and wonders if it’s been quite a while, too long really, that they’ve been sitting without an invitation for a drink order, without even a visit from the busboy to fill their water glasses. Or if it just seems that way. Though there is a part of her that wants to direct the conversation between Kevin and Leslie, she forces herself to focus on the menu. She likes the menu at Ouest, it’s unusual; so many things on it that you wouldn’t normally see on a grill menu.

  The waiter arrives, water doesn’t, which Meredith thinks is too bad, not only because she’s thirsty but because at this point it’s been too long and she’ll have to mention it in her review. As they’re asked if they’d care for a cocktail, Meredith thinks one of the newer Sancerres from the well-planned, and in her opinion excellent, wine list would go very nicely with the skate with savoy cabbage and bacon potato ragout (she thinks as long as she stays, for the most part, away from the bacon potato ragout she might be in the Zone). But also, she imagines that not having any wine at all would probably be the best thing.

  After a pleasant reading of the specials, the waiter departs with Kevin and Leslie’s orders for wine and Meredith’s request for
a bottle of Pellegrino. Flat water appears next, as does a stainless steel, cylindrical breadbasket filled with crisp baguettes, accompanied by a chickpea mash and olive oil. Meredith takes a small amount of chickpea mash on her bread plate. Barry Sears, PhD, creator of the Zone, is a fan of the chickpea, and even, in moderation, of olive oil. She glares at the baguette that she can not have, and touches it to see if it is warm. It is. She keeps an eye on the menu, another on the atmosphere, the other diners, and part of her mind on the proper ratios of proteins and carbs and fats, and even though she hasn’t decided yet what she needs Kevin and Leslie to order, she keeps an ear on their conversation, anyway.

  And do you know what she hears? Do you know what she hears as she is trying so very hard to concentrate on her review, and also on controlling her eicosanoids, the heretofore unknown superhormones? She hears Kevin saying to Leslie, “I really like your necklace, it’s so brightly colored.” Meredith’s mind unwittingly kaleidoscopes back to late August, Mecox Road, eight years ago, before there was even an inkling of Josh, when she’d thought Kevin was her banker/lawyer/junior tycoon. And it might have ended less than gracefully, there might have been an incident in which she returned his gift of a Brita water pitcher to him in the dark of night and maybe he’d been confused as to why because maybe he’d never known she’d thought of him that way.