Free Everyone Worth Knowing by Lauren Weisberger Page A

half-dozen training manuals that the breeder
    had thrown in "just in case," I made a big show of ignoring her, casually
    setting down my bag and tossing my coat and calmly making
    my way over to the couch, where she immediately leapt into
    my lap and stretched herself upward to begin the ritual licking of
    my face. Her little wet tongue worked its way from my forehead to
    underneath my chin, incorporating an unsuccessful attempt at getting
    inside my mouth, before the kissing stopped and the sneezing
    began. The first one sprayed across my neck, but she managed to
    collapse before the real groove got going and she sneezed a giant
    wet spot onto the front of my skirt.
    "Good girl," I muttered supportively, feeling slightly guilty that I
    was holding her in midair at arm's length while her entire body
    shook, but a Newlyweds rerun was starting and the sneezing could
    last for ten minutes. I'd just recently reached the point where I could
    look at Millington and not think of my ex-boyfriend Cameron, which
    was definitive and welcome progress.
    Penelope had introduced Cameron and me at some barbecue
    Avery had thrown when we were both two years out of school. I'm
    not sure if it was the shiny brown hair or the way his butt looked in
    his Brooks Brothers khakis, but I was smitten enough not to notice
    his tendency toward vicious name-dropping or the vile way he
    picked his teeth after each meal. For a while, at least, I fell madly in
    love with him. He spoke lovingly of bonds and trades, his prepschool
    lacrosse days, and weekend jaunts to the Hamptons and Palm
    Beach. He was like a sociological experiment—a not-so-rare but
    alien creature—and I just couldn't get enough of him. Of course, it
    was doomed from the start—his family was a permanent fixture in
    the Social Register; my parents had once been on the FBI's dangerous
    agitators list due to protest activities. But when paired with my
    job in banking, his aggressive preppiness went far in showing my
    parents that I wasn't dedicating my life to Greenpeace. We moved in
    together a year after meeting, when both our rents went up at the
    exact same time. We'd been living together for exactly six months
    when we realized that we had absolutely nothing in common beyond
    the apartment, our jobs in finance, and friends like Avery and
    Penelope. So we did what any doomed-for-failure couple would do
    and immediately went shopping for something that could bring us
    closer together, or at least give us something to talk about other than
    whose turn it was to plead with the landlord for a new toilet seat.
    We opted for a four-pound Yorkie, priced at $800 per pound, as
    Cameron calculated for me more than once. I threatened to kill him
    if he announced one more time that he had, in fact, ordered entrees
    at Peter Luger bigger than this dog, and repeatedly reminded him
    that it had all been his idea. Oh, sure, there was the small issue of my
    being allergic to anything with fur, alive or stuffed, animal or outerwear,
    but he'd thought that one through, too.
    "Cameron, you've seen me around dogs before. I don't know
    why you'd want to subject me—or yourself—to that again." I was
    thinking of the first time I'd met his family for a winter weekend in
    the Adirondacks. They'd rounded out the picture-perfect WASP
    gathering—real fire in the fireplace! no remote control! no storebought
    logs!—with tartan-plaid J. Crew pajamas, free-standing decorative
    wooden mallards, enough alcohol to warrant a liquor
    license, and two loping, oversized golden retriever puppies. I
    sneezed and watered and hacked to such an extent that his permanently
    tipsy mother ("Oh, dear, another glass of sherry should clear
    that right up!") began making passive-aggressive "jokes" about
    being contagious and his openly drunk father actually set down his
    gin and tonic long enough to offer me a ride to the ER.
    "Bette, don't worry about a thing. I've looked into all of that,
    and I've found us the perfect dog."