Dumping Billy by Olivia Goldsmith Page A

me, Katie?”
    “I just found out. I got the invitation yesterday.”
    “Oh, this is it! I’m glad I didn’t see my mail. But this proves I’m a loser,” Bina wailed. “Bunny! She just broke up with a guy. That one I showed you on the way to getting a pedicure.”
    “The guy was getting a pedicure?” Elliot asked. Kate gave him a look.
    “Bunny is going to be a bride, and Jack is off to become the Marco Polo of singleness. Why don’t I just open my veins?”
    “Well, it’s very messy, for one thing,” Brice told her. “And it’s almost impossible to get blood out of clothes. Very cold water and hydrogen peroxide—”
    Bina put the pillow over her face and wailed into it. It wasn’t that she was competitive with Bunny, Kate knew. It was just that Bunny had been the last to join their group, hadn’t had a date to the prom, had never been pinned. Bunny didn’t do well with men, picking a string of bad boys and scoundrels. One she had lived with had stolen everything—even her sofa and kitchen table—when she went away for the weekend. “How can Bunny be getting married? She just got dumped by that guy we saw in SoHo. She’s only just met Barney or whatever.” Bina squinted at the card. “And how did they get invitations so quickly? They must be Xerox copies.”
    How had Bunny met someone? Kate wondered why it was so much more complicated for her than for Barbie and Bev and Bunny. When Kate found a warm man, he was often devoted to her, but just a little . . . dull. Or second-rate. And when she found a man with a first-rate mind and an engrossing career, a man like Michael, he lacked emotional heat. Of course, she reflected, Bina’s father, a successful chiropractor, had doted on her. So in spite of her current troubles, it seemed only natural that she would eventually find a successful accountant who doted on her. Kate sighed. It didn’t bode well for her. “Bina, everything is going to be okay,” Kate promised.
    “Fine for you to say. You’ve got that doctor Michael to go with. What am I going to do? Go with my brother?”
    “Oh, I don’t think Katie will want to bring Michael all the way across the Brooklyn Bridge,” Elliot began. He turned to Kate and gave her a little smirk. “Unless you want to prep him for his journey to Austin, you know, a little bit at a time.”
    Kate grimaced at him. Elliot turned back to Bina.
    “Anyway, if my calculations are correct—and they always are—we have here two women who need dates,” he announced, “and two men with an insatiable curiosity for the customs and rituals of deepest, darkest Brooklyn.”
    “Really?” asked Bina.
    “Not only that, but I have fabulous formal wear. I’ll definitely be better dressed than the bride,” Brice said.
    “In a dress?” Bina asked, her voice about to rise into hysteria again.
    “No. A great tux. Armani. And I’ll do your makeup. You’ll look absofuckinglutely great, and all your friends will want to know who the great-looking guy you’re with is. You can tell them whatever you like. I once passed as the prince of Norway.” Brice turned to Elliot, gave him a loving but exasperated look, and then stared at Kate. “I know what he looks like in a rented tux,” Brice told her. “You’re on your own.”
    “Thanks,” Elliot said. “No offense meant, I’m sure, and none taken. So it’s set. Brice and I will take you two girls, and we will all have a wonderful time.”
    “Maybe that’s a good idea,” Bina said. “But right now I think I have to take a little nap.”
    Kate watched as Bina’s eyes fluttered shut. “You guys must be joking,” she said. “No way.”

 
    Chapter Eleven
    K ate and Bina, both carrying presents, were waiting for Elliot and Brice three blocks south of St. Veronica’s Roman Catholic Church, the place where Kate had made her First Communion in the dress Mrs. Horowitz had sewed for her. Kate, all grown up now, was unaware that in the simple calf-length navy blue dress