Free The Late, Lamented Molly Marx by Sally Koslow Page A

vegetable, and a complex carbohydrate. My life felt balanced and whole.
    Then Luke got a girlfriend. She wasn’t just any girlfriend. Luke started seeing Treena, my assistant, a recent present the publisher wouldn’t let me exchange because she was his stepdaughter.
    Treena was as fuckable as she was tall, with a jingly laugh you could hear down the hall. She had the kind of innate confidence that beauty breeds and money shines. Her wardrobe, which bore no relationship to her salary, was so ahead of the curve that the week after she broke out something new, which was often, all the other assistants copied her, generally with profoundly painful results. A rumor floated that Treena had a boyfriend, a hedge fund manager. This explains why I paid no heed to the giggly chitchat on her end of the phone whenever Luke called my office.
    One night Barry and I were having dinner in the Village with another doctor and his doctor wife. It was a Friday in late June, when outdoor tables fill up first and New Yorkers try to pretend they aren’t living in the middle of a malodorous communal steam bath. After dinner, the four of us strolled by Da Silvano, and there was Luke, wound around Treena like a bandage.
    “Molly!” Treena called, putting down her glass of prosecco so she could wave an artfully sculpted arm. On her wrist, at least twenty skinny Indian bracelets jangled and didn’t even look cheap. “Barry! Hello!” She may as well have been a hunter with a duck call and Barry a brain-damaged mallard. He walked straight toward her, while I lagged behind. Luke froze, or maybe he was simply comatose on account of being skunk drunk. I’ll never know, since my first impulse was to feel silly, as if everyone at a party had allowed me to walk around with a price tag hanging off my shirt.
    “C’mon—have a drink!” Treena trilled. Luke didn’t say a word. I could see that Barry was ready to accept, although there was obviously no room for all of us around their table for two, under which I noticed Luke and Treena’s knees touching. But fortunately, our dinner companions had a babysitter at home who was charging more per hour than a plumber, and they weren’t eager to drag out the evening. After an exchange of glances with them—not me—Barry shrugged and said, “Another time.” There was then so much cheek kissing you’d have thought someone had won a Grammy.
    After the goodnights, Barry and I walked to our car. “You never mentioned that your photographer buddy had hooked up with your assistant,” he said as we were driving home. His tone drifted in my direction with an edge of condescension overshadowed by curiosity.
    “News to me,” I admitted. I tried to sound neutral, not furious, which I was slowly realizing I was.
    “Lucky schmuck,” he said. “Could have sworn he was a
fagele
, though—what do you suppose she sees in him?”
    While I tried to parse which part of Barry’s question was most offensive, I was asking it in reverse. I didn’t have to think hard. Treenas rule the earth.
    In the middle of the night I woke from a dream, my teeth clenched so hard my jaw ached. I reached for Barry, and we made love with uncharacteristic roughness and abandon. I stared into his eyes. The face I was seeing was Luke’s.
    “More, Molly, more!” Barry grunted with each thrust. “Yes, yes!”
    No! I was thinking as I arched my back and rotated my hips.
No!
    The next morning Barry brought me breakfast in bed—iced coffee and a chocolate croissant on our wedding china, its blue border perfectly matching a hyacinth in a bud vase.
    I didn’t respond to Luke’s calls, text messages, or IMs on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday. But on Thursday we had a meeting, where I acted so excruciatingly polite you’d have thought I was having tea with the First Lady. Afterward, Luke pointed this out. “Do you want to talk?” he asked.
    “What’s there to say? You’re going out with my pea-brained assistant and, speaking of peas,