Free The Pursuit of Happiness (2001) by Douglas Kennedy Page A

Harrison just left his wife and kids for some account executive. Amanda Cole, I think her name was

The news detonated in front of me like a stun grenade. For several moments I really didn’t know where I was. I must have looked shell-shocked, because Cindy took my hand and said, ‘Are you all right, Kate?’

I withdrew my hand angrily and said, ‘Of course I’m okay. Why are you asking?’

‘No reason,’ she said nervously. Turning away, she scanned the restaurant, made eye contact with the waiter, and motioned for the check. I stared down at my coffee.

‘You knew, didn’t you?’ I asked.

She poured Sweet-and-Low into her coffee, then stirred it. Many times.

‘Please answer the question,’ I said.

Her spoon stopped its manic agitation.

‘Honey,’ she said, ‘ everybody knew.’

I wrote three letters to Peter - in which I called him assorted names, and accused him of upending my life. I sent none of them. I stopped myself (on several occasions) when the urge to ring him at four a.m. was overpowering. In the end I scribbled a postcard. It contained a three-word message:

Shame on you.

I tore up the postcard around two seconds before I mailed it … and then broke down - sobbing like an idiot on the southwest corner of 48th and Fifth, becoming an object of nervous, fleeting fascination for the passing lunchtime horde.

Matt knew that I was still in brittle shape when we started going out. It was eight months after Peter had moved to the coast. I’d switched agencies - moving to another big shop, Hickey, Ferguson and Shea. I met Matt when he invaded our offices one afternoon. He was accompanied by a PBS crew, filming part of a feature for the MacNeill-Lehrer News Hour on advertising agencies that were still hawking the demon weed, tobacco. I was one of the copywriters he interviewed - and we got schmoozing afterward. I was surprised when he asked me out - as there had been nothing flirtatious about our banter.

After we’d been seeing each other for around a month, I was even more surprised when he told me that he was in love with me. I was the wittiest woman he’d ever met. He adored my ‘zero tolerance for bullshit’. He respected my ‘strong sense of personal autonomy’, my ‘smarts’, my ‘canny self-assurance’ (ha!). Game, set and match - he’d collided with the woman he’d always envisaged marrying.

Naturally, I didn’t capitulate on the spot. On the contrary, I was deeply confused by this sudden confession of love. Yeah, I liked the guy. He was smart, ambitious, knowing. I was attracted to his metropolitan acumen … and to the fact that he seemed to get me - because, of course, we were both cut from the same urban cloth. A fellow native Manhattanite. A fellow preppy (Collegiate, then Wesleyan). A fellow wise-aleck - and, in true New York style, a possessor of a world-class entitlement complex.

They say that character is destiny. Perhaps - but timing plays one hell of a big role too. We were both thirty-six. He had just been evicted from a five-year relationship with an uber-ambitious CNN correspondent named Kate Brymer (she dumped him for some big network talking head) - so we both knew a thing or two about romantic car crashes. Like me, he hated that inane neurotic dance called dating. Like me, he dreaded the idea of flying solo into forty. He even wanted kids - which made his attractiveness increase one hundred fold, as I was beginning to hear predictably ominous ticking noises from my biological clock.

On paper, we must have looked great. An ideal meeting of worldly equals. The perfect New York professional couple.

There was just one problem: I wasn’t in love with him. I knew that. But I convinced myself otherwise. Part of this self-deception was brought about by Matt’s persistent entreaties to marry him. He was persuasive without being gauche - and I guess I eventually bought his flattery. Because, after the Peter business, I needed to be flattered, adulated, wanted. And