Happy Any Day Now Read Online Free

maybe in this case . . .”
    I stared into my wineglass.
    “Stop second-guessing yourself, Judith. If you hadn’t wanted to see him, you wouldn’t have gone to the lecture. Don’t evil eye me. A woman’s heart knows a woman’s heart. Maybe you and I don’t march to the same drummer sexually, but the heart is not the pussy. Speaking of which, I’ll bet you didn’t sleep with Geoff this weekend.”
    “I couldn’t have been less in the mood. I had my period.” For the first time in months, after I thought it had vanished forever.
    “Well, aren’t you Britney Spears. You do know Geoff’s going to be heartbroken if you run off with The Barrister.”
    I played with my knife. “If you’re so concerned about Geoff, why did you bait me with the article about Charlie? I don’t get it. I thought you liked Geoff.”
    “Me? Hell, I love Geoff. If you loved Geoff, I never would have brought it up. But you don’t seem to take him seriously and—”
    “It’s Geoff who doesn’t take
me
seriously,” I interrupted.
    “—appreciate him. Maybe there’s unresolved Charlie stuff in the way. So I figure you stop by, say hello, see what he looks like with a fat ass from sitting on the bench for thirteen years, get a whiff of the
Hah-vad
accent that can’t possibly impress you anymore, say ‘Nice meeting you again and thanks for most of the memories’ and be done with him forever. Finally flush him out of your system so there’s room for Geoff. But it didn’t work that way, did it?”
    I slugged the last of the white sangria. “Charlie wants to get together. To catch up.” Marti gave off a low hum. “Please don’t read more into it than old friends having a reunion.”
    “Oh, definitely and positively. And you won’t go, of course. When is this so-called, never-to-be-realized reunion taking place?”
    “He said he’d call.”
    “Nothing worse than waiting for a call from a once and/or future lover. Don’t you dare let me catch you mooning by the phone like some teenager.”
    “Not to worry. I haven’t been a teenager since . . . Come to think of it, I was never a teenager. Not the way you mean, with the dating and the phoning and the acting goofy. On the other hand, maybe I should make up for it now. Turn sweet sixteen instead of freakin’ fifty.”
    “Now
that
is a brilliant idea!” Marti exclaimed.
    As if on cue, a server emerged at my elbow with a slab of pine nut roll the size of a cedar shingle crowned with a single lit candle. I shot my lunch partner a poisonous arrow of a look. She’d done this dirty deed behind my back.
    “
Feliz cumpleaños, Señora
,” the handsome young waiter said, placing the pinwheel of custard and cake in front of me.
    “Señor
ita.
And she’s going to be fifty—can you believe that?” Marti drawled in her Georgia accent.
    “Oh jeez,” I said through gritted teeth. “Thanks a lot.”
    The waiter managed a reserved smile.
    “Blow, honey.” She glanced up at him. “Her, not you. Come on, Judith, make your wish.”
    I closed my eyes and fervently wished the waitstaff wouldn’t burst into the happy birthday song.
    My wish was granted, but after the server backed off, I hissed at Marti, “I can’t believe you did this. My birthday’s not until June.”
    “Big whoppin’ deal. A few months.” She extended a finger, plowed a line of pine nuts off the custard, and sucked. “Basic rule of thumb: Never turn down cake. And you can consider this your first party. Your pre-party. Didn’t your mama ever tell you there’s no such thing as too many parties?”
    Grace Raphael (née Ryang Yun Mi), the former party girl, no longer knew from parties after my father skipped town two weeks after my sixth birthday. His business as a purveyor of lox and whitefish was floundering when he went west for a national smoked-fish conference, caught a live one—a rich, older woman—and never looked back. Lorna Chippendale aka “the chippie” aka the second Mrs. Raphael