Free Trading Up by Candace Bushnell

always running around, making so much noise on her cell phone like a big, squeaky mouse? For that matter, you and I probably have low self-esteem. Have you ever wondered why we’re never really happy?”

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    Janey considered this. It was true. She never was really happy. She always had the slight feeling of having been cheated by life in some way, although in exactly what way she couldn’t name.
    “You see?” Patty said. “It’s because of something Mom and Dad did to us when we were kids. They never really encouraged us to do anything. Have you noticed that they never once told us that we could succeed? That we could make anything of our lives?”
    “They encouraged you, Patty,” Janey said.
    She sat back in her chair. She was beginning to get annoyed. Patty was one of those lucky people who managed to get whatever they wanted in life without trying. When they were kids, Patty had been the cosseted youngest child, adored by both her mother and father—Patty seemed to have a special way of talking to each parent, while Janey couldn’t connect with her father at all, and had only a combat-ive relationship with her mother—and on top of it, Patty had actually been considered the pretty one in the family. She’d even been a cheerleader, and although she’d never made particularly good grades, somehow she’d been accepted into Boston University. It passed through Janey’s mind that maybe Patty had slept with an admissions officer to get in (which is what, she had to admit, she would have done), but you could tell just by looking at Patty that she was one of those women who had never sacrificed her moral values to get ahead. And then she’d met Digger and fallen in love. Janey had never really been in love herself, at least not in the way that Patty was, but she still held it in the highest regard, and still believed that if you had true love, you had everything. The problem, of course, was finding it, and she said, with slight exasperation, “Patty, you have every reason to be happy.” Patty looked down at her napkin, shifting her reddish blond hair over her shoulder— It would be so much better if she would only lighten it a bit, Janey thought—
    and asked, “Have you ever been pregnant?”
    What a question! Janey thought, and took a moment to answer. “Well,” she said jokingly, “I’ve told people I was pregnant . . .”
    “But really, Janey . . .”
    “Not that I know about . . .”
    “Well, I’ve been trying to get pregnant for the last year, and I haven’t,” Patty said.
    And at this very moment, Mimi Kilroy arrived.
    Janey had been anticipating her entrance for what now seemed like hours, but instead of behaving in the usual manner, which would have been to look up and greet Mimi with a wave, she forced herself to appear as if she were completely absorbed in her conversation with Patty. “But Patty,” she said. “You know that doesn’t matter. Everyone knows that it’s normal for it to take a year . . . Have you seen a doctor?” But her thoughts were completely directed toward Mimi.

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    Driving home from Mimi’s house on Friday night, Janey had had an epiphany: She’d never had many female friends, but she suddenly saw the value of having a female friend like Mimi—and she realized that Mimi’s friendship might be more useful than most of the relationships she’d forged with powerful men. People never questioned a friendship between two women, while they were always suspicious of a friendship between a man and a woman, especially if the man was rich and the woman was beautiful. On the other hand, Mimi was as powerful and as influential as most of the men she knew (indeed, most of these men even seemed to be afraid of her); if she could turn Mimi’s interest in her into an actual relationship, she had a feeling that she could go far. With Mimi’s