Celia looked at me. She appeared to neither pity me nor feel uncomfortable for all that she’d had growing up that I didn’t have. “All the more reason for me to admire you the way I do,” she said. “Everything you have you went out and got for yourself.” Celia leaned her glass into mine and clinked. “To you,” she said. “For being absolutely unstoppable.”
I laughed and then drank with her. “Come,” I said, leading her out of the kitchen and into the living room. I put my drink down on the hairpin-leg coffee table and walked over to the record player. I pulled out Billie Holiday’s Lady in Satin from the bottom of the stack. Don hated Billie Holiday. But Don wasn’t there.
“Do you know her real name is Eleanora Fagan?” I said to Celia. “Billie Holiday is just so much prettier.”
I sat down on one of our blue tufted sofas. Celia sat on the one opposite me. She folded her legs underneath her, her spare hand on her feet.
“What’s yours?” she asked. “Is it really Evelyn Hugo?”
I grabbed my wineglass and confessed the truth. “Herrera. Evelyn Herrera.”
Celia didn’t react really. She didn’t say, “So you are Latin.” Or “I knew you were faking it,” as I feared she might be thinking. She didn’t say that it explained why my skin was darker than hers or Don’s. In fact, she said nothing at all until she said, “That’s beautiful.”
“And yours?” I asked. I stood up and moved over to the couch where she was sitting, to close the gap between us. “Celia St. James . . .”
“Jamison.”
“What?”
“Cecelia Jamison. That’s my real name.”
“That’s a great name. Why did they change it?”
“I changed it.”
“Why?”
“Because it sounds like a girl who might live next door to you. And I’ve always wanted to be the kind of girl you feel lucky just to lay your eyes on.” She tilted her head back and finished her wine. “Like you.”
“Oh, stop.”
“You stop. You know damn well what you are. How you affect the people around you. I’d kill for a chest like that and full lips like yours. You make people think of undressing you just by showing up in a room fully clothed.”
I felt flushed hearing her talk about me like that. Having her talk about the way men saw me. I’d never heard a woman talk about me that way before.
Celia took m
y glass out of my hand. She threw the wine back into her own throat. “We need more,” she said, waving the glass in the air.
I smiled and took both glasses into the kitchen. Celia followed me. She leaned against my Formica counter as I poured.
“The first time I saw Father and Daughter, do you know what I thought?” she said. Billie Holiday was now faintly playing in the background.
“What?” I said, handing her her glass. She took it and put it down for a moment, then hopped up onto the counter and picked it up. She was wearing dark blue capri pants and a white sleeveless turtleneck.
“I thought you were the most gorgeous woman who had ever been created and we should all stop trying.” She inhaled half the contents of her glass.
“No, you did not,” I said.
“Yes, I did.”
I took a sip of my wine. “It makes no sense,” I told her. “You admiring me like you’re any different. You’re a knockout, plain and simple. With your big blue eyes and your hourglass figure . . . I think together we really give the guys a wild sight.”
Celia smiled. “Thank you.”
I finished my glass and put it down on the counter. Celia took it as a challenge to do the same with hers. She wiped her mouth with her fingertips when she was done. I poured us more.
“How did you learn all the underhanded, sneaky stuff you know?” Celia asked.
