She held the jacket up to her face and inhaled. Kelsey had claimed she never wore it, yet it reeked of her fragrance, a cloying rose-vanilla olfactory assault. It was dizzying; it was disgusting; it was intoxicating; it was intolerable.
She briskly zipped up the garment bag, ferried it out the back door and into the detached garage that had been converted into what the landlord referred to as an Accessory Dwelling Unit. Teddy deemed it a guest cottage and had suggested they Airbnb it, an idea that horrified Jane. Now the space belonged to her; she called it her workshop. Technically it was a workshop, because she used it to experiment with different organizational rubrics, but really, it was her sanctum. She turned on the lights, admiring her carefully curated collection of clothes and shoes, all rigorously sorted: by season, by formality, by color. The room was filled, floor to ceiling, with shelves, closets, drawers, everything was meticulously labeled even though Jane knew by heart the placementof every object. The garments were at peace, hanging gracefully in neat rows or folded into happy geometry, organized by hue into a series of rainbows, or securely nestled in the appropriate boxes or bins. While all of this may not have sparked joy—that was a ludicrously high bar—it sparked calm and contentment.
The next morning, Jane sat in the kitchen nook sipping coffee while reviewing emails on her laptop. These emails were as relentless as the LA summer sun—persistent, demanding, blinding. Most of her friends texted, but nothing stopped the barrage of emails, some business-related, some from people she actually wanted to hear from, but most were spam, scams, solicitations. The virtual world was scaling a nauseatingly steep exponential growth curve, and viral inanities were proliferating even faster. Another manifestation of the disease of indiscriminate abundance that was infecting everything.
She had already been up for over an hour when Teddy, in baggy boxers and a tattered T-shirt, shuffled into the kitchen. He poured himself coffee, then sat down next to her. Quite close to her, actually.
“Morning, babe.”
Jane needed to clear her email inbox before heading out for the day. More than twenty emails made her anxious.
“Heya. Listen, sorry, but I have tons to do and I’m running late.”
She remained intent on her laptop, and it didn’t register that Teddy was leaning into her until he brushed back her hair and kissed her tenderly on the neck. Jane felt a frisson of pleasure. She was tingling. Part of her needed this, craved this.
“You smell so good.”
“What?”
“You smell so good.”
She should not have worn the Chanel before having it dry-cleaned! Even worse, now the fragrance was starting to grow on her.
“Thanks, Teddy. Sorry, rushing!” Her lips grazed his scruffy cheek, then she snapped her laptop shut and stood up.
Teddy, smiling mirthfully, admired her. “Is that a new dress?”
“Well, it’s a suit, actually, but yes, it’s new. New, but vintage.”
“You always find the coolest stuff. I like it, it’s very business-y, but you make it so sexy, too.”
As Jane felt herself actually blush, she looked at her watch. “Got to run.”
“Go get ’em, Jay! If you need anything, you know where to find me.”
Indeed she did. Teddy worked from home on all his gigs—video game development, day-trading, cryptocurrency. He was very into the gig economy because it meant “freedom.” She knew it also meant unpredictability, fear of commitment, and arrested development. She once found out that Teddy was driving for Uber, something he had never even mentioned. Really, she never knew what he was doing.
Did she truly love Teddy? She hated thinking in these terms, but once she’d turned thirty, she and most of her girlfriends who weren’t already inextricably committed had begun asking themselves similar questions: Is the guy I am with “the one”? Can I see myself starting a family with him? Can I rely on him? Because their answers to a least one of these questions was “no,” three of her friends had recently dumped their long-term boyfriends. Moreover, some of her recently thirty friends had already frozen eggs, and Jane was beginning to wonder if she should, too. Jane wasn’t sure she wanted kids, and she hated the idea of relying on anyone, but nevertheless, to her chagrin, these questions were haunting her.
Teddy was so sweet to her. Why couldn’t she go all in, love him unconditionally?
Sometimes she pined for a sense of openness, of abandon. She did not want to succumb to perpetual misanthropy; she did not want to go on living only in her head; she did not want to be unhappy. She would have to somehow assimilate the part of her that was longing to let go, to unfurl. She should let herself be a little messy, even if it terrified her. And she would. As soon as she got a few things sorted out.
Chapter Two
Curt
Jane had decided to wear her new Chanel suit because she was heading to a job at the mansion of a bachelor tech-bro in Bel Air and wanted to look businesslike to forfend against any flirtation or passes. Generally speaking, men were easier clients, but they did have some liabilities. Occasionally, Jane worked solo, but usually she was assigned a partner, which she didn’t necessarily mind: a partner could serve as an empathetic punching bag if a client became belligerent while desperately trying to cling to useless stuff. Today she was paired with Lindsey, who would inevitably be in jeans and a T-shirt. The contrast between their attire would speak volumes; also, the Chanel was a good reason to ask Lindsey to do anything that might involve getting dirty.
It was uncanny how well Kelsey’s Chanel fit her. It was what used to be called a power suit, and Jane was indeed feeling empowered—yet just thinking of this self-help-y word, even in the privacy of her own car, made her blush. She reassured herself that both the scent and the shadow of Kelsey would dissipate soon enough.
Jane pressed the Ring doorbell on the gate to Curt Sperling’s Bel Air mansion, unsure if this hulking mash-up of Spanish colonial and neoclassical Italian looming incongruously close to the curb really qualified as a mansion. Clearly, it desperately wanted to be one.
As anticipated, Lindsey wore jeans and a T-shirt, attire that essentially proclaimed,I am here to work for you, I am not afraid to get my hands dirty.Lindsey was petite—just over five feet tall—and voluptuous. With her wedge of short hair, dyed an unnatural white-blond, and enormous saucer eyes, she reminded Jane of a cartoon character, and her affect accentuated this: not only did Lindsey’s voice sound like she was constantly quaffing helium, she was consistently, relentlessly cheerful. Sometimes this irked Jane; other times she wished it would rub off on her. Lindsey was adept at offering profuse exclamations of pleasure and/or adoration, usually by deploying different inflections of the word “cute”: one cooed, one squealed, one breathless, one breathy. It reminded Jane of her brief study of Chinese, in which a single syllable could have myriad meanings depending on the tone.
Right now, Lindsey was admiring Jane’s outfit.
“Oh my god, that’s sooooo cuuuuute! Is it new? Is it real Chanel?”
