Page 5 of The Frog Prince

“The others are waiting at reception.” Olivia taps her watch. “Drinks. Remember?”

No. I’ve obviously forgotten, and I open my mouth to beg off, but Olivia shakes her head. “I’m not letting you out of this. The city will never feel like home if you don’t give it a chance.”

She does have a point, and I could use a new home. I can’t remember the last time I really felt as if I belonged somewhere. “Give me just a second,” I say, pushing away from my desk and heading for the ladies’ room, where I do a painful inspection.

Pale. Lumpy. Frumpy. My God, I look tired.

I rummage in my purse, search for something to help revive the face, and find an old lipstick—a brownish shade that does nothing for me—and apply some. Hmmm. Brown lipstick, a black turtleneck, lavender circles beneath the eyes. Not exactly a come-hither look.

Maybe some hair would help, so I lift my limp brown ponytail, pull on the elastic, freeing hair that becomes limp brown hair with a slight kink in it from the hair elastic. I fluff the hair. Comb the fingers through it. The ends stick out. Doris Day crossed with Chewbacca.

Irritably I pull the hair back into a ponytail again before wiping off the brown lipstick.Just get the hell out of here, I think, particularly since I don’t even know why I’m doing this. I’m not in the same league with Olivia. Olivia’s friends are all city girls. Sophisticated, urban, glam. I’m one step removed from country, and it shows. I wasn’t raised on a farm, but I know my farm smells. They call Highway99 the scratch-and-sniff drive because it’s all sulfur, dairy, and manure. But the 99 leads home. Or to what used to be home.

Olivia’s waiting at the front door with Sara and a couple of other girls who work in various City Events departments. “You look great,” Sara says with a big smile.

We both know she’s lying, but that’s how we women are. Practical and impractical. Helpful and cruel.

We leave our loft office, take the elevator down, and exit from the building, and Olivia’s cell phone rings before we’ve even crossed the street.

“The Barrio,” she says into the phone, “and if we’re not there, then try Lucille’s.”

The phone rings three more times during our five-minute walk. She gives the same info each time. Try the Barrio, and if not the Barrio, then Lucille’s. Olivia always makes the decisions, but then, she is the queen, and everyone wants to know the queen and they want to keep the queen happy.

We reach the Barrio. “How many people are coming?” I ask, as the club’s salsa vibe pulses out the windows and the Laffy Taffy purple front door.

“Five, ten, fifteen.” Olivia shrugs. “Who knows?”

And twenty minutes later I wish again I’d just gone home. I feel huge. Plain. Horrendously fuddy-duddy. The salsa music is hot, sultry, sexy, and Olivia and her circle feel it, slim shoulders shaking, amazing toned bodies, in the groove.

I stand at the tall red-and-stainless counter holding my drink, feeling like a Popsicle stick. I don’t really know what to do with salsa music. Or reggae. Or rap. Where I come from, it’s country or hard rock. Jocks and goat ropers. In Visalia I was exotic, but here I’m just white and self-conscious and uncoordinated.

Olivia laughs and I glance her way. She’s sparkling, and her laugh still hangs in the. air. Despite the loud music, the raised voices, the speakers thumping, Olivia commands attention, and her dramatic beauty just plays off the crimson-and-ocher-painted walls. Here at the Barrio she looks tall and thin, and as she leans back against the bar stool, even more of her stomach shows.

I hate her.

No. I hate me.

Olivia was right. I am fat. Whenever I stop tucking my shirt in, that means I’m fat. And I’ve given up belts. Another sign of fat. The long, loose skirts—fat.

Fat, fat, fat.

Rejected, dejected. I’m beginning to scare even me.

This has got to stop.

I need my old jeans back. I need the old me. The one who was fun. The one who laughed and didn’t take herself so damn seriously. The one who didn’t spend an entire Saturday in bed reading Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club novels in which every child either drowns or gets abducted, which I read crying and sniffling into my pillow because, while I haven’t drowned or been abducted, I do feel lost. Really lost, and I’m not sure how to find where it is I’m supposed to go.

How pathetic does that sound?Snap out of it, Holly, I say, taking another sip from my icy salt-rimmed margarita.You’re not Hansel or Gretel. Not Snow White, or Belle fromBeauty and the Beast.You can’t be lost. You’re an adult. Twenty-five. College educated. There’s a way out of this, and you’re going to find it.

The thing to do is keep it simple. Take it a step at a time. Maybe Olivia is right. Start a diet. Then join a gym. Then get the legs waxed and, you know, reclaim the self.

I take a bigger sip from my hand-blown margarita glass, thinking it wasn’t so long ago that I had a decent body. Eighteen months ago I was that wide-eyed bride, and I’d worked hard to look magnificent for the wedding. Slim, toned, fit. Ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.

The wedding photos never made it into an album. I still have the photos, though, in a big brown mailing envelope, a stack of glossy photos that will never get looked at, a stack of photos of a bride and groom laughing, smiling, photos that should have been cherished but won’t be.

I wish I’d known then that it wasn’t going to last. I wish I’d known what he was thinking. Feeling.

Funny, when I look at the photos now, especially the one where we’re dancing—our first dance—Jean-Marc’s unhappiness is so obvious. If you look at his face, you can see it there in his eyes. If you know Jean-Marc, you can see the emptiness behind the smile, the distance there. He’s not actually smiling. He’s already detached himself.