next week, anyway.”
I chuckled at the dig. In the movie version of Nicky’s life, his past girlfriends would appear as a montage of beautiful women differentiated by hairstyles and clothing but always well endowed. Here’s the kicker, though—they were always smart. Not a bimbo in the bunch. Not even the rebounds or the one-night stands. Each new girlfriend was, as Nicky put it, a woman of substance.
From her résumé, I already knew that Carolyn fit that last criterion, but upon catching sight of her, I realized she also would have been heartily welcomed into the club of prior Nicky paramours based on her physical attributes alone. She was six years younger than Nicky, which was about as young as he could have gone at the time and not been a thirtysomething dating a grad student. Her figure strained against the buttons of her blouse, and the McDermott surname fit his penchant for Irish women, although Carolyn was black Irish, with dark, almost black hair and an alabaster complexion. Combined with sapphire-blue eyes, she had a certain Snow White vibe.
“Carolyn, this is Clinton,” Nicky said.
“Clint,” I corrected. “Unless you call him Nicky, in which case you can also call me what Nicky calls me.”
She laughed. “Nicky?” Apparently, she had not been briefed on that point.
“Call him Clint,” Nicky said with an eye-roll for my benefit. “It’s the third iteration of his name since we’ve met. His given name is Francis. Then he was Clinton through high school, and somewhere along the line he became Clint. I think it makes him feel like Dirty Harry.”
“To be fair, no one ever called me Francis. Not even my mother.”
“Clint it is,” Carolyn said with a smile. “Now, Nicky, can you get me a beer?”
Nicky laughed. To me he said, “I told you, right?”
Nicky got up and made his way to the bar. As soon as he left, Carolyn slid down the bench until she was against the wall, sitting directly opposite of me. The bartender was busy, which meant that I’d be alone with her for the next few minutes.
“So you’re the one and only Clinton—I mean Clint—Broden?”
“Guilty as charged.”
“I’ve been excited to meet you because . . . well, the way Nick talks about you, I didn’t think you could actually exist. He seemed to be describing . . . I don’t know, a superhero, maybe.”
“You sure he was talking about me?”
She made a face like she might have been mistaken, but I knew it was a put-on. Living with Anne had alerted me to the difference between good and bad acting.
“Let me see,” she said, in mock thought. “Are you the smartest guy he’s ever met? And have the most beautiful wife?”
It’s hard not to like someone after an introduction like that. But even if she had been less kind, I couldn’t have helped but like Carolyn. She was exactly as Nicky had described, and I thought that, despite my best friend’s seemingly impossibly high standards for women, he might have finally found the woman of his dreams.
The next day, Nicky wanted to see me again at the same bar. I assumed that he wanted to get my views about Carolyn, or to brag about how his evening had ended with her. But when we sat, he handed me a shopping bag that contained his completed manuscript.
“Hot off the presses,” he said. “I want you to be the first to read it.”
This was only the second time I’d been given the honor of reading his work, and to my knowledge, it was only the second time he’d completed a manuscript. His first effort had been an outgrowth of his senior-year college project. That book was about two childhood friends from a middle-class, outer-borough neighborhood. Although he took pains at the time to emphasize that it was a work of fiction, it wasn’t too difficult to decipher that I was Clay, best friend to the story’s protagonist, Nate. The plot revolved around a can’t-miss business deal. At first, Nate tried to entice Clay into joining the venture, but Clay saw the danger and cautioned Nate to back out. Four hundred pages later, all Clay’s concerns were proven true, but Nate prevailed on the last page, outwitting his business partners and escaping to a Caribbean island with a suitcase full of cash.
The book was good enough to capture the attention of a well-respected New York City literary agent, but they couldn’t sell it to one of the big publishing houses, although at least two