Free Fashionably Late by Olivia Goldsmith

mention Goldman now. “Elise wasn’t happy.
    Nothing is coming together for the collection. And Tangela was impossible.”
    “I don’t know why you don’t fire her.”
    “Well, for one thing, she’s Defina’s daughter. For another, when she’s good, she’s great. And she’s no worse than any other fitting model.
    Anyway, we’d been at it for six hours.”
    “No, you d been at it for six hours. She was just standing there.”
    Karen sighed again. She supposed it was better to have a husband who hated the admittedly difficult and temperamental models than one who fucked them. But it was always tiresome to listen to his complaints, and she was already bone weary. Plus, they had the rest of the evening ahead of them and this was the only real opportunity she would get to talk to him until next week, what with the presentation to NormCo, the final preparations for the Elliot wedding, and the three charity events they were scheduled to attend in the evenings. The two of them had become a very social couple lately.
    “What did Ernest leave you for dinner?”
    “What does she always leave? Chicken. Steamed vegetables. Salad.
    Diet fucking Jell-O with razor-thin sliced strawberries in it. Total calorie count of sixty-three and a half.”
    “You want to order out?”
    “Nh. Too much trouble. I’ll just eat it and bitch,” he smiled at her.
    “You want to eat again? I know how those meals of Belle’s can be.” He really had the most devastating smile. No matter what bratty behavior he was up to, he could almost always charm her out of her rancor with that adorable grin.
    Marrying your idol is a great coup for a woman, but it leaves you always at a disadvantage. Karen had adored Jeffrey from the first moment she saw him. He was everything she was not. He came from money. He had real class. He was very attractive. He was well-educated: a graduate of the Yale fine arts program, no less. They had met when he was slumming in Brooklyn, studying and teaching design at Pratt. He had glanced at the little garmento wannabe that she was and looked right through her.
    But Karen had been riveted and she still was, by his astonishing good looks and his wit and his style. She’d always feel that he was the catch and that she’d done the catching.
    “So, I’ve put together the numbers for NormCo,” Jeffrey told her.
    “With a little jiggling and a little juggling, we look pretty good. Of course, I overvalued the inventory by about two hundred percent, but I’ll let their accountants try and work that out. They can’t actually accuse us of dishonesty. All they can do is feel we’re unrealistically optimistic.” He got up and moved out toward the kitchen.
    “So, what kind of money will you ask for?”
    “The trick is not to ask. The trick is getting them to make the first offer. I just hope they’re talking Serious Money. I’d like us to be comfortable.”
    Karen smiled. She thought of the joke about the old Jewish man who gets knocked down in a car accident. People rush to help him, cover him with a blanket. and call for an ambulance. “Are you comfortable?”
    a man asks.
    “Well, I make a living,” the victim says. Wealthy Jews, she had learned, had a code about their net worth: to Karen, she and Jeffrey were already rich. To Jeffrey, it would take another few million at least before they were “comfortable.”
    Now, working together, they quickly set the table. Even when they ate alone, Jeffrey insisted on real china and damask napkins. They always used the real silver, despite Ernest’s mild grumbling over the polishing she had to constantly do. Alone, Karen would eat out of the pan standing over the sink or lying in bed. But Jeffrey was a grown-up who ate at the dining table. Karen took a deep breath. She hated to bring this up over a meal, but now was the only chance Karen would get to talk with him.
    “I saw Dr. Goldman today,” she said, biting her lip.
    Jeffrey’s smile disappeared. “What’s it