Jennie
"Bobby?" It was too hard to shift gears between being unreasonably turned on and being blindsided by an unexpected brother. That's when I remembered that my brother dearest's absence was the reason I'd been forced to attend tonight's event. "What are you doing here? I thought you were putting together some music festival?"
"Musicians are fickle bitches. It's a cluster. Have you met Theolonia? She's famous on the 'gram." Bobby pushed a large breasted beauty at me. She was chewing gum and texting. Mom would love her.
"I haven't had the pleasure," I said.
"'Sup?" Theolonia said with a surprising baby-soft squeak. She hadn't looked up from her phone yet. Though, to be fair, her phone case was an eye-catching glittery pink disco ball design with frolicking unicorns.
Behind me, Lisa covered a soft laugh with a cough.
"Bobby, this is Lisa Manoban," I said, dragging her up to face off against the cleavage that was considering an explosive escape from Theolonia's candy pink gown.
"Ah, right. The fixer. This is probably an easy job for you since Jen's so squeaky clean," my brother said, flashing his not-found-in-nature white teeth.
"Your sister is proving to be a fascinating challenge," Lisa said, eyeing me.
Bobby threw his arm around his date's shoulders. "Yeah, right," he laughed.
My lifestyle of working hard, working out, and then going home and working some more was as abhorrent to Bobby as his lifestyle was to me. We were baffled by each other.
Even now, both dressed to the nines, our differences were as pronounced as ever. He was cabana boy tan. His bow tie was unknotted and hanging loosely against the open collar of his shirt. His hair, a sun-kissed dirty blond, was long at the collar. He had our father's jaw and our mother's obsession with image. As far as I knew, he had never held down a job. His paycheck came in the form of regular payouts from the trust fund that he'd already "accidentally" drained twice. He was wearing the Rolex I'd given him for his twenty-fifth birthday.
Instead of the thank you I'd expected, he'd winced. "This isn't the one I wanted." Every time I saw that watch on his wrist, I wanted to punch something.
"Has Mom seen you yet?" I asked.
"Nope. Surprising all of you just like those soldier homecoming vids," he chirped. My brother really did believe him popping into the country, a big-breasted social media model on his arm, was exactly the same.
Sometimes I wondered why I loved him.
But again, I supposed it was something that had been bred into me. Trying to fight it was futile.
I made a mental note to be in the ladies room when Bobby surprised my parents.
"Hey, listen, do you have a sec?" Bobby asked, suddenly serious.
I knew exactly what was coming. "Sure," I sighed. "I'll be back shortly," I told Lisa.
"I'll get you a drink," she said, eyes skimming to the still-full champagne flute in my hand. "Perhaps something stronger?"
The woman was good. Intuitive. Sneaky. Smart. Sexy. Would it be the worst thing in the world to let the "for the cameras" flirtation transition to behind closed doors?
Bobby led me out of the ballroom and into a hallway. Here the floors were covered in thick, luxurious rugs. The paintings were hung on gold, textured walls and highlighted under brass lamps.
"I need to talk to you about a job." The man's resilient hope, his ability to ignore reality in favor of the pretty picture he painted himself, reminded me of a golden retriever who expected his food dish to be magically refilled every hour on the hour.
"You're getting a job?" I asked, feigning enthusiasm.
"I want to work with you," he said, shooting me that Instagram-worthy smile. "I'm ready to settle down and join the family business."
I set my glass down with a hard clink on the marble sideboard under a painting of a bare-breasted woman being wooed by a man with a harp.
"The family business," I repeated, hoping I'd misheard him.
"Yeah. Flawless. I wasn't ready before. But I am now. I want to work with you and Dad."
My throat burned with the need to let loose a battle cry. But I tamped it down. Like I always did.
"Bobby, Flawless is mine. It's not a family business."
"Yeah, but Dad—"
"Is on the board of directors. Yes. But I own the company. Flawless is mine, and no family connections will guarantee anyone a job there." I still needed to scream.
Bobby smirked. "Bet Irene wouldn't like to hear you say that."
The thing about brothers is they always knew exactly which buttons to push.
"This isn't about Irene. This is about you."
"It's about us, Jen," he said, slinging an arm around my shoulder. He pointed off down the hallway at some far-off vision only he could see. "Come on, the two Kim brats working together. Making the world more beautiful one wrinkled-ass face at a time."
Bobby was buying what he was selling.
"And that right there is exactly why I'm not giving you a job," I said, shrugging out from under his arm. "You have no idea what I do. What my company does. Go work for Dad if you're so ready and willing to be gainfully employed."
"Oh, come on, Jen," he groaned. He kicked at the leg of the side table, nicking the wood with his velour loafer. "I can't work for Dad."
"Why not?" I had an idea exactly why not.
"Because I asked him already, and he said no. Then he got all high and mighty about earning my way and blah blah blah. What good is having a family fortune and a billionaire sister and not being able to get in on the action?"
I wanted to grab him by his too-long hair and bounce his forehead off the wall. Wouldn't the cameras and the glittery people inside love that? Instead, I defaulted to my trademark frost.
"Oh, don't go all 'Lady Kim' on me." He smirked.
I was going to need to squeeze in another kickboxing class this weekend or find some other way to blow off steam.
I thought of Lisa, naked and hard. My sheets tangled around her legs. Whoops.
"Look, Bobby," I said, shifting gears. The man was my brother, after all. We were destined to spend Thanksgivings together forever. That didn't entitle him to a job, but it did avail him of my vast business knowledge. "I'm not giving you a job. But if you're serious, I'll help you find something that suits you. If you're serious," I repeated.
"Yeah, I don't know. Maybe." He gave a jerky shrug. A gesture I knew meant he was already over the conversation. He wasn't serious. He never was. And I'd just given him the one thing he couldn't stand: the word "no."
"Are you out of money?" I asked.
"Not everything's about money," he said scornfully. "Anyway, whatever. I'm going to go talk to Mom."
He left me standing there next to an artful arrangement of pink roses dripping with crystals and mossy greenery. I still felt like screaming.
Back in the ballroom, I avoided the family table and made a beeline for Lisa. Somehow, in a ballroom of a few hundred of the glitziest people Miami had to offer, she still managed to stand out.
"How was your conversation?" Lisa asked, handing me a martini.
"Riveting. Life-altering," I muttered. "Where did our curvy friend go?"
"I babysat her until she said, and I quote, 'Hashtag do you even 'gram?'" Lisa said, in a spot-on impression of the breathy Theolonia. "And then I had to leave before I slapped the phone out of her hand and taught her how to make eye contact with people."
We laughed until I had to grip her arm to stay upright.
"God, that felt good," I said, swiping at the corners of my eyes.
"Allow me." She fished a handkerchief out of her pocket and gently dabbed around my eye makeup. We were close again. Surrounded by people yet somehow all alone in the center of everything.
I felt light. Esther's text. Meeting a jelly-swilling kindred spirit. Sticking to my guns against my brother. And now watching Lisa Manoban laugh.
The orchestra played a little trill announcing the beginning of the dinner service, and—with a hint of reluctance—we returned to the family table. My mother was swooning over Bobby's surprise appearance. My father was having trouble looking away from Theolonia's chest. Fortunately, she had yet to raise her eyes from her phone and hadn't noticed.
"You're so terrible! Surprising your mother like this," Mom crooned. Two more chairs were produced. Because of course Bobby had neglected to RSVP. I wondered who would cough up the $40,000 for his and his date's dinners. We all squeezed in together. It would have been cozy had it been any other family than our own. We were seated with the hospital dean of medicine and her wife as well as Bethenny and her boyfriend, Ed, a country music producer who wore cowboy boots with his tux.
My mother wiggled a finger at a passing waiter and pointed at her empty glass.
My knee was pressed up against Lisa's under the table, and damn if it didn't feel like an anchor.
"You would not believe what those ridiculous society blogs are saying now," Mom announced breathily. "Our Jennie is quite the news item," she explained in an aside to the dean.
"Yeah, so popular with her most recent arrest," Bobby said. He tapped his shot glass to Theolonia's. "Cheers, babe."
"Wait! Let me boomerang it," Theolonia whined.
Lisa leaned back in her chair and caught the arm of one of the waitstaff. "We're going to need a very large bottle of tequila and several glasses," she whispered. "It's an emergency."
The waiter glanced over Lisa in the direction of where Bobby and his date were making out while taking selfies. "Right away," he promised.
"We're not getting shit-faced," I hissed at Lisa.
"It's not for us," she said. "It's for the rest of the table."
"As I was saying, it seems the reporters think our Jennie and Lisa are scandalously dating," my mother piped up, disappointed that attention had waned. "Have you ever heard of anything so ridiculous?"
Lisa's hand moved from the table to the back of my chair. Possessively, as if a challenge had been issued.
"What's so ridiculous about it?" still-pissed Bobby asked. "She had to pay off the cops to get out of a drug bust. You think nailing the help is beneath her?"
"Dean Winters," Lisa said, addressing the dean of medicine. "What will the funds raised tonight be used for?"
Dean Winters, a statuesque woman in a glittery blue pantsuit, looked relieved. Her wife twisted in the seat to block out the rest of the table.
The waiter returned with a bottle of tequila on a silver platter and a ring of glasses.
While the polite conversation was taken care of, I leaned in. "Both of your opinions are unwelcome and entirely unnecessary," I said. My tone was so cold I swore the flowers in the centerpiece wilted at the edges.
"Oh, darling. Don't be so dramatic," my mother said, waving her hand dismissively. "I was only saying that these tabloids are just desperate to link you to anyone at all."
That was not at all what she'd been saying.
"Why you refuse to find a respectable man and settle down is simply beyond me." My mother was airing dirty family laundry in front of Bethenny while what was definitely not her second vodka tonic arrived.
Oh, she would have many, many regrets tomorrow.
"Venice, she's running an empire. You can't be serious that you want Jennie to just shift her focus to finding a man," Bethenny scoffed.
I could always count on my father's ex-wife to get me in a way that my own mother couldn't.
The first course arrived and was ignored by everyone.
"Why can't she do both?" Mom demanded, accepting the refilled shot glass that Lisa slid in her direction. "Weigh in here, dear." She elbowed my father in the gut. He dropped his phone on the table and tucked his reading glasses back in his pocket.
"What are we talking about?" he grumbled.
"The new pediatric ICU wing," Lisa said.
"Your daughter getting married and starting a family," Mom insisted with an inelegant snort. She was used to Dad not listening to her.
"Why the hell would she do that?" he harrumphed. "She's got billions on the line, and you want her to what? Start internet dating?"
The barely touched salads were cleared efficiently and replaced with bowls of clear broth.
"Exactly," Bethenny said, grinning at me. "Jennie has more important things to do."
"Don't be ridiculous," Mom tittered. "What's more important than love?"
By love, my mother meant financial security. And by financial security, she meant a man with money. It didn't matter that I had my own. In Venice Kim's mind, a woman was one step away from destitution without a husband with a club membership and deep pockets.
Lisa pushed more tequila shots at the dean and Mrs. Winters with a charming smile. Just ignore the drunken elephant at the table, it seemed to say.
"So, sis," Bobby began, "How many ounces did you have on you when you got busted?"
My brother had never matured much past fourth grade. And while I admittedly could still enjoy a well-timed fart joke, I had long ago learned the art of not throwing temper tantrums.
I'd told him no, and he was pushing back, completely unconscious of the fact that he was reinforcing my decision.
"Whoa, bro," Theolonia said, her heavy fake lashes fluttering. "Why are you hashtag hating?"
"Excuse me, Pedialyte," my father rumbled in her direction. "What the hell did you just say to your sister?" he asked my brother.
My father had no mob connections. I'd checked, hiring a PI when I was a teenager. But he still gave off that scary vibe, and I took the smallest bit of pleasure watching my brother shrivel miserably under his glare.
"Nothing, Dad," he mumbled. He reached for the tequila.
"You're damn right nothing. You haven't earned the right to insult anybody. You're a fucking sponge, my boy. So until you go out and earn a damn dollar the old-fashioned way, I don't want to hear you snivel a single word about your sister."
"Hashtag harsh," Theolonia said, stroking a hand through her hair.
"Are those extensions?" Mom asked her.
Theolonia blew a bubble and nodded, staring down at her phone.
"When are you going to grow the hell up?" Dad leaned in aggressively. "When are you going to make something out of yourself?"
"He's just a boy!" My mother argued. "He doesn't need to rush into a job… or a relationship." She gave Theolonia a pointed look.
"He's Twenty Eight fucking years old, Venice!" my father announced loud enough for the hard of hearing.
The soups vanished, and in their places appeared small plates of chicken and greens. Bethenny and Ed commented loudly about how perfectly wilted the endive was.
The room lighting cast a purple glow, making everyone look a little ill, a little alien.
"Just so you know," Lisa said, her lips brushing my ear. "I'll now require a burger in addition to that milkshake."