All You Could Ask For A Novel - By Mike Greenberg Page 0,91

my best friend.”

“You’re not doing this for me,” I warned her. “I don’t need a party.”

“I’m not doing it for you,” she replied. “I’m asking you to do it for me.”

So, I’m going. Samantha and I are going shopping later this week, since none of my couture is going to fit properly right now. I have lost eleven pounds since I began the chemotherapy, and while my hair has hung in better than I expected, I have taken to wearing a flowing brunette wig anyway, a shade darker than my usual, at my colorist’s recommendation. He said the shade works better with my pallid complexion.

Marie buzzed my ear off about the arrangements all through my chemo, and then she walked me home and we sat and chatted for a bit, and she hadn’t been gone for more than ten minutes when the doorman’s station buzzed my phone. That made me smile nostalgically. In all the time she worked for me, Marie never managed to leave the office without forgetting something: a pair of sunglasses, a set of keys, the book she was reading. It was nice to know some things never changed.

I pressed down the intercom button. “Ask her what she left behind, I’ll send it down in the elevator.”

There was a brief pause before my doorman spoke. “No, ma’am, actually, your visitor is a gentleman. He says to tell you his name is Phillip, and that you’d remember him from school.”

BROOKE

I SENT SAMANTHA AN e-mail because I wanted to meet her.

Running into a man I know she once loved gave me the perfect opportunity, but I would have found another reason anyway. I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to see her. I wanted to see what she looked like, hear how she sounded. It’s a strange world we live in now where we can have relationships with people without ever seeing their faces and hearing their voices: it’s as though they aren’t real, just characters in a book and you can envision them any way you like. But Samantha was real and I knew that and I always knew I would reach out to her. It would have been unfair not to.

Besides, Dr. Marks is a total babe and he’s smart and seems to be sensitive. He’s a pediatrician, for crying out loud; how can you be that without being sensitive? He is exactly the sort of man I might have fallen in love with, even though he is so different from the man I married. Scott is all swagger, Dr. Marks is all sweet. And I love the swagger, but every now and again I think we could all use a little bit of the sweet, too.

He was loading up a latte with sugar and cinnamon when I saw him.

“Is everything all right with you?” he asked.

It took me a moment to realize what he was referring to. I had forgotten it was he who had initially made me promise to get my first mammogram, who had unwittingly begun what amounted to the worst experience of my life. I had forgotten, but apparently he had not, and as much as I didn’t like to be reminded, his remembering made me crush on him just a little bit more.

“I am fine,” I said, “thank you.”

“I’m glad,” he said, and he smiled. “You can’t be too careful.”

“I totally agree,” I said, and then I changed the subject.

I could see from the look on his face at the mention of her name that he had feelings for Samantha. I told him I’d come into contact (“a friend of a friend of a friend”) with a girl who mentioned she had known him growing up. His right eye narrowed when I said her name, and he smiled using half his face. That’s the way some memories work, I think. Some make you laugh, others make you cry, and the really good ones make half your face smile.

Now, after a handful of disasters, I have mostly given up on fix-ups, but this was too easy and it gave me the entrée I needed to invite Samantha to lunch, which I’d wanted to do for some time.

I’ll meet you in the city, I wrote to her. You name the spot.

I couldn’t have her to Greenwich. There isn’t anyone in this town I don’t know, and I wasn’t interested in answering questions about how Samantha and I had come to meet.

You see, I haven’t told anyone about my problem. Not my husband or