Free With Friends Like These: A Novel by Sally Koslow Page A

as she twirled, her white skirt billowing around long, slim legs I’ve been envying for years. “Very Marilyn.”
    “Twenty bucks at a consignment shop.”
    Like there would ever be anything for me at such a shop that didn’t look as if it belonged on my aunt Magdalena.
    When Talia stopped spinning, her eyes surveyed the room. She missed nothing. “I love those pillows,” she said. “New?”
    “If they’re purple, they follow me home.”
    “For you.” Chloe stepped forward. She offered a gift that appeared to have been wrapped in origami and tied with a chiffon bow. “Where can I park these?”
    “Hand them over, dollface,” I said, and put her present and travel brochures next to a platter of antipasto. “Help yourselves.” I pointed to the wine as I walked back to the kitchen, adding, “Quincy does remember we’re on, right?”
    “Definitely,” Talia said. “I spoke to her this morning.”
    “I offered her a ride,” Chloe shouted, “but she rented a Zipcar.”
    Oh, holy Jesus, everyone had spoken to that woman but me. I walked out with a bowl of olives. “How are the kiddies?” I asked.
    “Dash’s taking to Jamyang,” Chloe said, “who I suspect knows more English than she lets on.”
    “Yesterday I noticed it was way too quiet. Henry had climbed into the bathroom sink, opened the medicine chest, and was about to try out Tom’s razor. The books don’t tell you to childproof cabinets five feet off the ground.”
    When Chloe moved on to advanced potty training, she must have noticed me squirm. “How’s it going with Arthur?” she asked. Chloe, my matchmaker, possessed an owner’s curiosity about the relationship.
    “He gives good phone.”
    “The hands?” Talia asked. I’d drilled it into all of them that one of Jules’ Rules is that hands are second only to tongue.
    “Hands good.” But I didn’t want to discuss Arthur. I was about to ask whether either of them knew what was going on with Quincy’s apartment search when she pushed open the bottom half of the door.
    “Anybody home?” she sang out. She met me with chocolates from Manhattan’s latest Willy Wonka. I peeked in the box. Each candy was so delicately designed I wished I could tile my bathroom with them. Quincy almost gave me a kiss, leaving more than the normal amount of air between her pouty lips and my cheek, then greeted Chloe and Talia with thesort of full-tilt enthusiasm I usually receive. I doubted that Talia and Chloe would notice. It was all in the fine print: Quincy Blue, ticked off.
    This struck me as an opportune time to bring on the home cooking. “It’s getting late,” I said. “Ladies, the porch.”
    “Your meals are worth starving for,” Chloe said. “Which I’ve done, all day.” She meant well but delivered the line in the spirit of a woman who’s never said a Hail Mary before looking at a scale. Chloe had gained fifty pounds when she was pregnant, and for six months she’d looked like a teakettle, but now she was down to her prepregnancy weight plus, she said, a mere seven pounds.
    As women do in the privacy of their gender, the four of us wolfed down our food, which did not disappoint. I batted away compliments. Not that I live for the praise—feeding people is how I care, which I admit without a teaspoon of my standard cynicism.
    “Time to talk turkey,” I said after I nibbled crumbs from all four cake plates and served cappuccino. “And since it’s my house, I go first. Rome,” I began, “is the city of love.”
    “Since when?” Quincy broke in. “Paris is the city of love.”
    “Isn’t Paris the city of light?” Talia asked.
    I ignored them both and proceeded to practically warble an aria to Italian men, Michelangelo in particular, the balmy climate, the Villa Borghese, soccer—or “football,” thank you, Quincy—the colosseum, the Spanish Steps, hazelnut gelato, and all the priceless art of Vatican City, along with the thousands of seven-foot-tall Senegalese guys who