Love the one you're with

eleven

Monday morning comes in a hurry as is always the case when you're not quite sure how to play your hand. Since Saturday night, I have been all over the map with my Leo-Drake strategy-everywhere from never calling Leo back, to telling Andy everything and making him decide about the shoot, to meeting Leo face to face to hear all the exciting details of the biggest assignment of my life to date.

But now, as I pause at the door of our apartment after kissing Andy good-bye for the day, with Drake's mesmerizing voice in my head, singing "Crossroads," a song about the disastrous aftermath of one unfaithful evening, I know what I must do. I turn and run across the family room, sliding over to the window in my fluffy purple socks for a final glimpse of my husband descending the stairs of our building and striding along the sidewalk in his handsome three-quarter-length navy overcoat and cashmere, red-plaid scarf. As he disappears toward Park Avenue, I can make out his profile and see that he is cheerfully swinging his briefcase at his side. It is this fleeting visual that solidifies my final decision.

I walk slowly back to the kitchen and check the clock on the stove. Nine-forty-two-plenty late enough to phone anyone. But I stall anyway, deciding I need coffee first. Our coffee maker broke a few weeks ago, and we don't own a kettle, so I bring a mug of tap water to a boil in the microwave and rifle through the cabinet for a jar of instant coffee, the kind I watched my mother make every morning. I gaze back at the familiar gentleman on the Taster's Choice label, marveling that he used to seem so old to me. Now he seems on the young side-early forties at most. One of time's many sleights of hand.

I unscrew the cap and stir in two heaping teaspoons, watching the brown crystals dissolve. I take a sip and am overcome with a wave of my mother. It really is the little things, like instant coffee, that make me miss her the most. I consider calling Suzanne-who can sometimes ease these pangs by simple virtue of the fact that she is the only one in the world who knows how I feel. For although we had very different relationships with our mother-hers was often turbulent as she inherited my mother's stubborn gene-we are still sisters who prematurely lost our mother and that is a powerfully strong, permanent bond. I decide against calling her, though, because sometimes it works the other way, too, and I can end up feeling even sadder. I can't afford to go down that road right now.

Instead, I distract myself with the Style section of the Times, leisurely reading about the new leggings trend that Margot predicted last year, while I sip my stale-tasting coffee, wondering how my mother stood it for all those years. I then make the bed, finish unpacking our duffel bag, organize my sock drawer, then Andy's, brush my teeth, shower, and dress. Still not feeling quite ready, I alphabetize the novels on my bookshelf by author's last name, a project I've been meaning to undertake for ages. I run my fingers over the neatly aligned spines, feeling a rush of satisfaction, relishing the underlying order despite the chaos in my head.

At eleven-twenty-five, I finally bite the bullet and make the call. To my simultaneous relief and frustration, Leo doesn't answer, and I go straight to his voicemail. In a rush of adrenaline, I give the speech that I've pieced together over the past thirty-six hours, while at church and brunch with the Grahams, then afterward as we casually drove around Buckhead looking at more homes for sale, then on our uneventful flight home.

The gist of my spiel is that a) I'm impressed that he has a Drake Watters connection (why not throw him a harmless bone?), and b) very appreciative that he thought of me for the job, and c) would be positively thrilled to take the assignment, but d) don't feel "entirely comfortable with the notion of a renewed friendship and think it's best if we not go there." At the last second, I excise e) "out of respect to my husband," as I don't want Leo to think he is in the Brad "You're so fine you bug my husband" Turner category, rather than the Ty "You're so harmless that it's fine to yuck it up with you in my backyard" Portera category.

I hang up, feeling relieved, and for the first time since seeing Leo weeks ago, nearly lighthearted. The call might not be closure in the classic sense of the word, but it is still closure of some sort, and more important, it is closure on my terms. I called the final shot. Which is even more meaningful given that I had the perfect excuse-Drake Watters for goodness' sake-to meet Leo, jollily chat him up, and even segue into a more somber conversation about "what really happened between us, anyway?" But I turned down the opportunity. Slammed the door on it, in fact. Not because I can't handle a friendship with Leo, but because I simply don't want one. End of story.

I imagine Leo listening to the message, wondering if he'll be crestfallen, a tad disappointed, or largely indifferent. No matter what, though, I know he'll be surprised that his power, once so all-encompassing, has dried up completely. He will surely take the hint-and his photo lead-elsewhere. And I will just have to live with the fact that I could have photographed Drake Watters. I smile to myself, feeling strong and happy and righteous, and then belt out the only uplifting line from "Crossroads" in my dreadful, tone-deaf singing voice: When the light breaks, baby, I'll be gone for good.

Several unmemorable days later, after I've almost completely purged Leo from my system, I am working in my lab on the fifth floor of an industrial warehouse on Twenty-fourth and Tenth Avenue. Sharing the space, along with the rent, are Julian and Sabina, photographers who work as a team, and Oscar, a solo printer, paper conservationist, and fine-art publisher. The four of us have been together in the bare-bones workroom for over two years now, and as such, have become very close friends.

Sabina, a pale, wispy woman whose anemic looks don't match her brash personality, does most of the talking, rivaling only Oscar's BBC radio that he keeps at a frustrating volume, one that I can't quite hear and yet can't quite tune out. She is now regaling us with a story of her three-year-old triplets' latest stunt: flushing her husband's entire vintage cufflink collection down the toilet, causing a flood in her fourth-floor walk-up and extensive water damage to the apartment below. She laughs as she tells the gory details because in her words, "What else can you do but laugh?" I happen to think she secretly delights in the tale, as she often accuses her husband of being materialistic and uptight. I enjoy Sabina's stories, particularly during mindless retouching projects, which I'm in the middle of now. Specifically, I'm removing a constellation of acne from the face of a skateboarding teen for a print ad for a small record label.

"What do you think, guys? Should I give this kid a slight chin implant?" I ask.

Oscar, a somber Brit with a streak of dry humor, barely glances up from one of his many small drawers filled with lead, antimony, and wooden typefaces. I know from standing over his shoulder when I arrived that he is working on an artist's book using Etrurian, his favorite Victorian font. I love watching Oscar work, perhaps because his craft is so different from mine, but more likely because of his graceful, almost old-fashioned manner.

"Leave the poor kid be," he says as he dampens paper and then mutters something about "digital-plastic-surgery malarkey."

"Yeah, Ellen. Quit being so shallow, would ya?" Julian, who just returned from his umpteenth smoking break of the day, chimes in, as if he, himself, hasn't shaved down the thighs on many a size-zero woman.

I smile and say, "I'll try."

Of my three workspace colleagues, I probably like Julian the best of all-at the very least, we have the most in common. He is about my age, and is also married to a lawyer-a lively, cool girl named Hillary.

Sabina tells Julian to hush as she scurries toward me in tight blue jeans, ripped at the knee, her long, sixties-style hair swishing behind her. She apologizes in advance for the garlic on her breath, mumbling something about going overboard on an herbal supplement, and then peers down at the print in question.

"Great movement there," she says, pointing to a blurred-out board in mid-air.

I consider movement my single greatest weakness as a photographer so I really appreciate this comment. "Thanks," I say. "But what about his chin?"

She holds the print to the light and says, "I see what you mean, but I almost think his chin makes him look more surly… Does surly work for the ad?"

I nod, "Yeah. They're called Badass Records. So I think surly will do just fine."

Sabina takes one last look and says, "But I might make his nose a bit smaller. That's more distracting than his weak chin… Have you ever noticed how often weak chins and big honkers go hand in hand? Why is that, anyway?"

My cell phone interrupts Sabina in mid-thought.

"One sec," I say, expecting it to be Margot who has called twice in the last hour. Yet when I glance down, I see that it's Cynthia, my agent.

I answer, and as usual, she shouts into the phone. "Sit down. You're not going to believe this one!"

Leo streaks across my mind, but I am still dumbfounded as I listen to her gush the rest of the news.

"Platform magazine called," she says. "And get this, girlfriend, they want you to shoot Drake Watters for their April cover story!"

"That's fantastic," I say, feeling a mix of emotions wash over me. For starters, I simply can't believe Leo went ahead with his lead, although in hindsight, I can see clearly that I left a huge, rather convenient back door open for him to orchestrate everything through my agent. Still, I honestly didn't think he'd be so selfless. I thought-and perhaps even hoped-that the Drake bone was more of a power play, a design to lure me back in and force my hand in a borderline inappropriate friendship. Now I'm forced to see the gesture, if not Leo, in a new light. And of course, overshadowing all of this is the simple, giddy, unmitigated thrill of photographing an icon.

"Fantastic?" Cynthia says. "Fantastic is an understatement."

"Incredibly fantastic," I say, now grinning.

Sabina, always nosy but never in an offensive way, whispers, "What? What?"

I scribble the words Platform and Drake Watters on a notepad. Her eyes widen as she does a comical exotic dance around a pole connecting raw ceiling to cement floor and then rushes over to give Julian the news. He looks up and flips me off with a smile. We're not competitive, but definitely keep a friendly score. Before this, he and Sabina had the solid lead with a Katie Couric shoot for Redbook out in the Hamptons where Julian used to do all his work before he married Hillary and she lured him into the city full time.

"Did they say how they got my name?" I calmly ask Cynthia after she runs through a few details of the shoot-namely that it will take place in L.A.; the magazine will pay three thousand dollars, plus airfare, equipment rental, expenses, and a stay at the Beverly Wilshire.

"No," she says. "And who really cares? You should be celebrating right now, not asking questions!"

"Right," I say, wanting so much to believe this very thing. After all, I think, as I thank her, hang up, and field a round of congratulations, there is principle, and then there is stubborn, prideful foolishness. Malarkey, as Oscar would say. And surely anyone, even Andy, would have to agree that Drake Watters isn't worth sacrificing for a bunch of ex-boyfriend malarkey.