What Men Want by Deborah Blumenthal

you go?”
    An equally pregnant pause. “The art director on the account had a party,” he said. “Everybody from work went over after we’d finished at Carmine’s.” Using every molecule of restraint that I could summon, I didn’t ask for the guest list.
    â€œOh,” I said, all innocence. “Was it fun?”
    â€œYeah, it was cool,” he said. Cool was Chris’s favorite word. It drove me crazy. He was a copywriter—how could he fixate on that sophomoric expression? I suppose I should have taken some comfort in the fact that he didn’t say it was awesome. Eventually, I just ignored it.
    â€œHow are you doing?” Chris asked. “Toughing it out?”
    â€œThere are worse places to be,” I said. “But I miss you. I’m in this great room with a king-size bed and a mountain of down pillows, not to mention a view of the water, and I’m all by myself.”
    â€œI miss you too,” he said “Everybody’s getting ready to leave for Christmas by the end of the week. If I didn’t have to lay the thing out basically on my own, I’d join you.”
    â€œWhen are they shooting?”
    â€œWe’re trying to set it up for a week from Friday,” Chris said. “Bridget wants to go up to her weekend house in Connecticut though, so it all depends on her availability.”
    â€œWell, I guess she’s a superstar,” I said, hoping that I didn’t sound snotty. “They probably have to work around her.”
    â€œNo, actually, she’s really down to earth,” he said. “I was surprised. She just needs to get away a lot. I guess it’s because she’s in the limelight so much.” That’s what I loved about my guy, he was so simpatico.
    â€œWell, I hope it works out,” I said. “I know that you probably want to wrap things up.” There was a silence for a couple of seconds.
    Well?
    â€œYeah, well, we’ll see,” Chris said. “Anyway, call me when you know your sked. There’s going to be an amazing party here on New Year’s. I hope you’re back for it.”
    I immediately felt myself sinking into depression. I thought about New Year’s Eve in New York with crowds of people thronging Times Square waiting for the ball to drop. Even though I liked to hunker down, there was so much energy in the air and on the streets. It felt like the whole city was either on its way to or from a party.
    â€œI will,” I said, “but I’m just not sure yet what’s going on here…but anyway, where’s the party?”
    â€œA cool penthouse on Central Park West.”
    â€œNice.”
    â€œYeah,” Chris said. “The terrace is all glassed in like a greenhouse, with enormous palm trees everywhere. It’s decorated like a movie set with white silk lounges, and there’s a Jacuzzi done in green-and-white Moroccan tile big enough for ten people. It’s so completely cool,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
    â€œSounds amazing. Who lives there?” I said jokingly. “Paris Hilton?”
    â€œGuess again,” Chris said.
    I hesitated. Other than thinking of Donald Trump, I was coming up dry.
    â€œI give up,” I said. “Who?”
    â€œBridget.”

Chapter Nine
    I t was one of those snowstorms that hit New York with unexpected intensity. In this day and age it’s hard to imagine that with all the technology at their disposal, meteorologists can be so off the mark. At most, a light snowfall was predicted—the front was moving down from Canada, but it wasn’t supposed to make much of an impact on weather in the city. But by the time it ended, fifteen inches had fallen and another ten were predicted.
    When I got over the gleeful feeling that I would be swimming and sunning while my colleagues were trudging over mountains of snow in the Arctic-like cold with their feet