Men at Work: Through the Roof / Taking His Measure / Watching It Go Up

“Nothing. Drinking a glass of wine. Through a hot pink crazy-straw.”

“At two o’clock in the afternoon. Uh-oh. I take it things did not go well with Ben. Tell me you’re not scheduling forty weird-ass cosmetic procedures, or obsessing over whether one of your kneecaps is rounder than the other.”

“I—”

“Oh, God. You are. Listen to me, Marina—this is a psychotic condition of yours. You do this every time you get depressed. And you don’t need anything done!”

Marina gathered the shreds of her dignity around her—she’d left most of it back at the construction site with Ben. “I am not,” she stated, “mentally ill. And we can all use a little improvement here and there.”

“Uh-huh. How many appointments have you made this afternoon?”

Time for a subject change. “Did you see that there’s a sale at Saks?”

Chloe didn’t bite. “How many?”

Damn. Marina sighed. “Five.”

“Oh, my God!” Chloe bellowed into her ear. “No. I am coming over and we are going to cancel them.”

“Chloe, leave me alone—”

“I’m bringing ice cream. Normal women eat a quart of ice cream when they’re depressed. They don’t have their entire bodies resurfaced, like some kind of molting reptile. Are you going to dye your hair blond, too? Get a third breast?”

Marina jumped up from her mink-covered stool. “I can’t eat ice cream. Are you crazy? It will go straight to my hips and Ben will never look at me again.”

“Not only am I bringing ice cream—four different flavors—but you and I are going to have a serious talk about what Ben really loves about you, and it’s not your bony hips!” Chloe hung up on her, and Marina stared at the receiver.

“Jeez. No need to get hostile.”

Thirty minutes later, her friend was knocking on her door with an entire grocery sack full of pints of Ben & Jerry’s and Häagen-Dazs. Marina squinted at her. “You’re the devil.”

“It’s great to see you, too. Now, either invite me in or get out of my way so I can barge in,” said Chloe. “By the way, Ben would love the way you look right now.”

Marina looked down in horror. She wore a ratty gray T-shirt of his with the arms ripped out and a pair of panties. That was it. “Are you high?”

Chloe shook her head, shoved past her and made her way to the granite-topped kitchen island, where she started unloading the ice cream and pulling off various lids. Then she got a fork for each one and stabbed it into the center of every container.

Marina shook her head. “Don’t you realize how demented it is to eat ice cream with a fork?”

“Not any more demented than drinking good wine through a crazy-straw. Besides, it’s practical. Ice cream is usually too hard to eat with a spoon. With a fork, you can jab into it and dig out the good stuff.”

Marina shook her head and tried to psych herself out of attacking the ice cream. “There is no good stuff. It’s just fat, sugar and liquid squeezed out of a cow, which is a disgusting, smelly, filthy animal with four stomachs and no brain power. Plus, there are so many preservatives in that container that your butt will look like a sea sponge after one spoonful.”

Chloe pulled one of the forks out and threatened her with it. “There is something really, really wrong with you, honey. And there are no preservatives in Ben & Jerry’s or Häagen-Dazs. They’re chemical free, unlike—” she scanned Marina’s body “—your hair, your face, your boobs and your nails.”

Marina gasped. “My boobs are natural!”

“Yeah, just like my tiny waist. Save it,” said Chloe, around a huge forkful of Marsha Marsha Marshmallow. “I’ve seen the scars under your arms, remember?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Marina sucked at least three ounces of cabernet through the pink straw.

“Ice cream,” said Chloe, “doesn’t make you drunk.”

But Marina was determined to think of the stuff in the grossest possible way so she wouldn’t want it and it would not go straight to her thighs. “Why not just crawl under a cow, suck on its hairy udder and then squirt chocolate syrup into your mouth?”

Chloe set down her pint and eyed her with distaste. “Just because you won’t eat any does not give you the right to ruin my enjoyment of Ben & Jerry’s forever. Now, be quiet.”

“Yes, ma’am. Wait—isn’t this my house? My kitchen? My cow-free domain?” She yelped as Chloe came at her with the fork.

“Be nice. Be a good hostess. You invited me over—”

“Actually, I didn’t.”

“So tell me what happened with Ben and we’ll figure out how to fix it.”

Marina hunched her shoulders and stuck out her lower lip. She twisted the hem of her ratty T-shirt as she walked into the living room, dominated by white leather furniture and a breathtaking view of Biscayne Bay. “Ben says he loves me, but he hates my money.”

Chloe nodded as Marina kicked an ottoman with her bare foot and set down her wine.

“After all the guys who have been thrilled to date a rich woman with her own jet, I have to fall for the one guy who is uncomfortable with my filthy lucre!”

Chloe curled up in a big armchair with her ice cream and fork. “I have the perfect solution—give it to me.” She grinned.

“I should. I’d be a happier person and I wouldn’t have to keep on firing employees who steal from me.”

“Not another one.”

Marina nodded. “But this one’s a single mom, and I just can’t make myself pull the trigger. I know her daughter since she’s in school with my cousin’s daughter.”

“Okay, one problem at a time. We cannot solve them all in a day. What happened with Ben?”

Marina crawled onto the couch. “I tracked him down at one of Mathew Tremaine’s construction sites and we, um, had a chat.”

“A chat,” Chloe repeated, in disbelieving tones.

“It was all very civilized—”

“Yeah, right.” Her friend smirked. “How many times did you hit him? What names did you call him?”

“But he won’t change his mind. And I don’t know what to do.” She looked sadly down at her engagement ring, which Ben must have saved for two years to buy. It was a two-carat, pearshaped diamond that she’d simply forgotten to throw at him earlier in the day. She’d have to remedy that, but the thought depressed her even more.

The wine had made her emotional, because when she looked up again at Chloe her eyes streamed. “What can I do, Chlo?”

Her friend jumped up, set down her ice cream and gathered her into her arms. “Oh, honey. Is it really the money that’s bothering him? Or is it…” She paused and, uncharacteristically, stepped delicately. “Is it maybe your lifestyle that intimidates him?”

“What do you mean? I’m just a normal person.”

Chloe took a deep breath. “No, Marina, you’re not. I hate to break it to you, but most women can’t afford three-hundreddollar monthly highlights, six-hundred-dollar shoes or cute little custom-painted jets that take them to Paris at a moment’s notice.”