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“You’ve barely started slurring,” Mom said. “The fun’s just starting. You want to leave already?”
“Yeth.”
“You can go home if you want to,” she said. “I’m just getting started.”
We stood up and gave each other a hug. “Thanks for keeping me company tonight, Mom.”
“No problem,” she said, squeezing me tight. “And no driving. Leave your car in the street and pick it up tomorrow. Do you need money for a cab?”
“I’m good,” I said. “Love you, Mom.”
She popped a quick kiss on my cheek. “Love you, too, princess.”
I stumbled out onto the street. My forty-nine-year-old mother’s night was “just getting started,” but at ten p.m., it was a half hour past my twenty-eight-year-old bedtime. All I wanted was to find my car, lock the doors, and sleep it off. With any luck, I’d be sobered up and driving home to Morningside Heights before sunrise.
Somewhere in New York City, a car was parked. It was blue, it was shorter than I was, and it had the letters C and Z on it somewhere, presumably the license plate.
I walked up the block, then back down again, looking for the letters C and Z, but couldn’t find them anywhere. It was as I was making my way up the block for the third time that I realized something. CZ were my initials. Clara Zapata. I was so goddammed drunk that I was confusing myself with my license plate. Thank God for sudden moments of clarity.
Ha. Clarity. Get it? Clara-ty. I had a moment of clara-ty.
Ha. Ha ha ha ha.
CHAPTER 2
Ian
“Boob job,” I said.
The topic at hand was the extremely well-endowed redhead sitting at the other side of the bar and unabashedly giving me the eye.
“And that’s a problem because...?” My dad left his question hanging. He was of the mindset that all boobs were good boobs. Big or small, real or fake—it didn’t matter. Nor did it matter to whom they were attached. Or if they were even attached. I swear to God, if my womanizing father walked into a plastic surgeon’s office and saw a D-cup saline implant in a Petri dish, he’d name it Amber and ask it out on a date.
“It’s a problem because fake boobs mean she’s shallow, Dad.”
“And that’s a problem because...?” he repeated.
“Because some of us prefer a woman with a personality to a woman stuffed with silicon.”
Dad just looked at me, his expression blank.
“A personality’s this thing where a woman says interesting things and does interesting stuff,” I explained. “It’s a byproduct of having a brain.”
“I know what a personality is,” Dad said. “I just don’t understand why it’s so important to you.”
“Did it ever occur to you that if you married a woman for her personality instead of her appearance, you might not be paying two million dollars a month in alimony?”
“In case you haven’t been counting, I’ve been married five times,” Dad said. “That makes me an expert on marriage. Trust me, no matter how intelligent or interesting a woman is, you run out of things to talk about. You get tired of doing the same old stuff over and over again. But a thing of beauty,” he continued, raising his glass in toast to titties everywhere, “is a joy forever. Especially if you know a good plastic surgeon.”
“That’s beautiful, Dad,” I said, taking a sip of my ginger ale. “You should have it engraved on your Rolex.”
Every time I got together for a drink with my father, I remembered why I did everything in my power to avoid getting together for a drink with my father. People were ornaments to him. He had a lawyer for every day of the week, not because he needed them, but because he thought reigning over a fistful of lawyers meant he was a man of stature. He had fifteen live-in servants across his six houses (including one he’d never stepped foot in), because what billionaire in his right mind didn’t want legions of servants scampering around his manifold mansions saying,Yes, sir, right away, sir?And women? They were the most prized ornament of all, the cherry atop the Daniel Dunning cupcake.
But I had no choice but to conspicuously spend time with him. I was his only son and thereby an inextricable part of the never-ending PR campaign that was his life. After several personal disgraces early in his career—including being a famously shitty father—he’d needed to reinvent himself as a decent human being. So at least once a month, his secretary arranged for us to spend “quality time” together in a public venue so the whole world could see what a loving and supportive relationship he had with his only son.
“Smile,” Dad said. “People are looking.”
I smiled. “Thanks for finding me a fabulous set of boobs to love, Pops, but I think I’ll stick to personality.”
