Five Women Read Free

wasn’t so bad-looking. She wished she had more confidence. The only thing she knew was that she didn’t have a line on her face: her mother’s great genes. She was forty and looked twenty-five. Almost too late to have a baby, though. She wanted that more than anything.
    But Russell didn’t want her to have a baby. She was
his
baby, and he didn’t want to share her with anyone. How could she have been so stupid to have chased him all those years, to be so thrilled when she finally got him, never realizing that she didn’t know him at all? She was probably lucky she had never become pregnant. He would have been as domineering a father as he was a husband. She would have been stuck in her unhappy marriage forever.
    Who was she kidding? She was stuck in this marriage anyway. Jason, her lover, was never going to get a divorce, and she wouldn’t marry him if she could. She couldn’t trust him not to cheat on her, too. She was a fool for love, but not that big a fool. And Russell might have been a wonderful father. Babies and little kids were infinitely malleable. She, of all people, should know that. Russell could have had a child who worshipped and adored him, no matter how he behaved toward it. She certainly knew about that, too.
    She went out into the den. Russell was watching college basketball on TV. He would watch anything as long as it was a sporting event. It was a kind of meditation for him, an altered state. In the early years of their marriage she had tried to watch with him, but she got sick of it, and she had too much work from the office anyway. The pressure to churn out the firm’s mandatory individual billable hours was incredible. Russell was lucky. During the day he could deal with the hard hat guys and at night he could turn into a vegetable.
    The remains of the chicken dinner their housekeeper had prepared for him, which Felicity had heated up, was on the coffee table in front of him. “Was that good?” she asked solicitously.
    â€œGreat. Who did you say you were meeting?”
    â€œI told you. Gara and Kathryn and maybe Eve.” She hoped not Eve. Maybe she could get out of the house before Eve called.
    â€œCall me from the restaurant,” Russell said.
    â€œYou know I will.”
    She hated the way she had to check in all the time like a parolee. She had to carry around her cellular phone, which meant she could never have a decent evening bag unless she was out with her husband; the rest of the time she had to lug a big one.
    â€œYou like Yellowbird so much,” Russell said, “maybe I should go with you some time.”
    â€œI told you that you were invited,” she said, hoping she was disguising her lack of enthusiasm. But she knew he would never join them. He wasn’t interested in being with her girlfriends, of whatever color. He didn’t even like having them around, which was why she never had guests unless they were his friends. He was jealous of her friendships, of the easy laughter women had together. He felt shut out.
    â€œGood night, Slugger,” Felicity said, kissing him lightly.
    â€œGood night, Baby.”
    She was almost to the front door when the phone rang. She knew it was Eve. Damn.
    â€œWill you get that, Baby?” Russell said. “Maybe it’s for me.”
    Yeah, sure. “Hello?” she said cautiously into the receiver.
    â€œI want to go to Yellowbird tonight,” Eve Bader said, in her abrupt, demanding voice. She never said hello, considering pleasantries a waste of time. Silence. “Are you going?”
    Felicity sighed. “Yes,” she said.
    â€œWhat time?”
    â€œNow.”
    Eve Bader was only a peripheral member of their little group because she kept trying to be with them and they kept trying to get away from her. An actress somewhere in her forties (she would never tell just where), Eve was a volcano of anger and pushiness, with manic energy, a dangerous quality,