The Clasp by Sloane Crosley Read Free Book Online Page B

bloomed over Meredith’s face. “The roommate.”
    â€œWho’s Caroline Markson?”
    â€œLike the Markson hotels,” she explained to Michael.
    Meredith had never met Caroline, but she had heard enough stories about Kezia’s bawdy freshman roommate. Meredith knew Caroline only as a cartoon character. Which wasn’t markedly different from knowing her in real life.
    Michael patted Kezia on the shoulder. “In that case, I’m sure it will be a simple, understated affair.”
    â€œAnyway.” Meredith waved away the topic. “You have yet totell me the worst possible story you can think of about Rachel Simone. I promise to only tell no one, three people max.”
    â€œShe’s not that bad. She has her moments.”
    Moments of smacking me in the face with flora for no reason.
    â€œ Please ,” Meredith whimpered, “this is a person who makes casts of tampons and turns them into earrings. You have to spill. I’m so boring now, I have to live vicariously through you.”
    Of all the terrible things married people say to single people, this was top five.
    â€œOnly the light-flow tampons,” Kezia mumbled.
    â€œSto-ry-time,” Michael clapped, “sto-ry-time.”
    â€œShe calls me ‘Special K’ sometimes.”
    â€œThat’s not a story, that’s a sentence.”
    â€œOkay, okay. Uncle.”
    Kezia regaled them with a personal favorite. The scene: A fall fashion week party held on the roof of the Standard, dense with fancy people and accessories editors with ostrich feathers sticking out of their heads. The action: Rachel yelling at the editor of the French fashion magazine hosting the party, reaming him out for including her necklaces in the “Toss It” column of their latest issue.
    â€œDo they do columns like that?”
    â€œNope. Never have. Rachel thought he was someone else. And when he calmly pointed this out to her, there happened to be a Women’s Wear Daily reporter standing right there. So without skipping a beat, Rachel turns to me and says, you owe me twenty bucks. She explains that she and I were just having a discussion about how fashion isn’t as vicious as it used to be and everyone’s so nice and that apparently I bet her that she wouldn’t tell off the host of the party for no reason. She actually stood there with her palm out.”
    â€œWhat did you do?!”
    â€œI told her the truth. I didn’t have any cash. The reporter called it performance art and referred to me as Rachel’s assistant .”
    â€œOh my God, she’s insane.”
    â€œBut brilliant,” Michael said. “We don’t have people like that.”
    â€œYeah.” Meredith gave him an affectionate eye roll. “That’s because you have neurosurgeons.”
    â€œNeurosurgeons are infamously boring.”
    â€œNow,” said Kezia, “your turn to tell me something terrible about work so that I don’t feel bad about leaving.”
    â€œYou remember how it is. Everything I do is planning and waiting for approval to plan. I spent this morning preparing insurance forms. The grass is always eighteen-karat on the other side, Magpie.”
    She toasted Kezia’s glass. Kezia knew what she meant. It’s why she left. But she had forgotten the level of foresight applied to precious stones, the precise production of items that weren’t, say, lacquered pen caps. She missed feeling as if she were a part of something concrete and not one woman’s vanity project run amok.
    â€œWhat else can I tell you?” Meredith mused. “I got nothing. Oh, Debbie and that creepy guy from the copy center got secretly engaged. Which only made me go back through my mind and wonder if every time we sent her to get something copied, they screwed on the copy machine. Literally, I can think of nothing else.”
    Michael put his hand on her knee. “Mer, tell her about the