Elizabeth the First Wife Read Online Free Page B

your home to be a showpiece, because you and your handsome husband thrive at the highest level. You create the noise of life. You’re noise creators. But this home is quieter and needs a careful touch. Listen to the silence.” He gestured again, signifying the end of his pontification, and then closed his eyes, presumably to commune with the silence.
    As commanded, we listened to the silence, but really, all I could hear was the freeway in the distance, a fact of life in Southern California. I kept my mouth shut for a moment to honor his meditation, then carried on. “Yes, I want to preserve the peacefulness, but I’d really like a dishwasher. And maybe a stove that doesn’t have to be lit by hand. And I’d love a prep sink. And if I could get a window over the sink to look out at my garden, that would be enough for me.”
    Pierce remained still with his eyes shut, and then they flew open, scaring me a tiny bit. Was he possessed?
    â€œI’ll do it.”
    Bumble squealed again and gave the Shiny One a hug. “Oh, Pierce, thank you. I know this isn’t your usual high-profile project, but I know you’re ab-so-lute-ly the only one who can do justice to this house.”
    Wait, what had just happened? I thought I got to choose the designer, not vice versa. Once again, I was reminded that my world and Bumble’s rarely coincided, even though we lived only one zip code apart. “Um, thank you?”
    Pierce DeVine reached for both my hands, “No, thank you. This is a journey we take together.”

    I never should have opened the box. Honestly, I should have thrown that box out a long time ago, finally admitting defeat, like I did with my extensive wardrobe of DKNY blazers with shoulder pads. They were never coming back in style and I had to face facts. But I’d gone ahead and opened my Big Box of FX Memories, and now no amount of Meritage was going to wash away the pain.
    Inside were flyers from dorm parties, two Eurail passes from our junior year in London, Playbills from productions we had seen together, Soundgarden ticket stubs, coasters from our favorite bars, a mixed CD of quirky love songs by quirky singer-songwriters, actual letters and love poems written by FX, a dried rose from my twenty-first birthday, and Mardi Gras beads. Nothing out of the ordinary, but everything brought back vivid images and intense feelings.
    There, too, was the hand-lettered flyer from the production of The Taming of the Shrew we performed in the Shakespeare class we took together second semester sophomore year. Elizabeth Lancaster as Kate. Francis Fahey as Petruchio. After so many months of staying up all night writing his history papers while he played Nerf basketball in the hall. After so many months of searching for him every time I walked into the library or a party. After so many months of watchinghim be the center of attention and go home with other women. All it took was one scene (I say it is the moon…) and Francis Fahey finally fell for me. The night after we performed in front of the class, he pulled a Say Anything outside my room, complete with raincoat and Peter Gabriel. (He was from Seattle, after all.) It wasn’t original, but I didn’t care. I was already in love with him.
    If I was the scrapbooking type, I might have stuck all the items in an album entitled: College Kids Fall in Love. But I’m more of the unmarked-box-in-the-closet type, and maybe that’s why the FX sighting today had me so unnerved.
    I studied the photo of us leaving the courthouse in Lower Manhattan the day we got married. Our friend Margot had captured the event in a series of Polaroids, but the other photos had long since disappeared. (Or maybe I cut them up violently the night FX told me he needed to “experience more to really be an actor.” And by “more” he meant more sex with more women who weren’t me.) But on that spectacular New York City October day in