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Well, she always prided herself on not being afraid of anything And that was her own bullshit defense: insisting she wasn’t vulnerable It was dishonest, he thought But when it caht he was a little bit better than even he thought he was

He picked up the pages again but found he wasn’t the least bit interested Bridesmaids Revisited was exactly what it seemed—a story about what had happened in the lives of four women who’d met as bridesmaids at twenty-two And what the hell did he know about twenty-two-year-old girls? His last girlfriend, Sondra, wasn’t nearly as young as Enid had i executive at an independent movie company But after nine —correctly—that he was not ready to get married and have children anyti to Sondra and her friends This reminded Philip that he hadn’t had sex since their breakup two reat anyway Sondra had perfor, and he’d found hih the motions with a kind of weariness that had ht led him to ht, staring blankly at the pages of his screenplay, had been good sex

At the tip of Manhattan, the white van containing Schiffer Diae to the Steiner Studios in Brooklyn Schiffer was also atte to study a script—the pilot episode for Lady Superior—for which she had a table read that ood: A forty-five-year-old nun radically changes her life and discovers what itthe character asthe fact that forty-five wasnot to act surprised to see her in the elevator No doubt he, too, was having a hard tied

And then, like Philip, she also recalled their sex life But for her, the memory of sex with Philip was laced with frustration There were rules about sex: If the sex wasn’t good the first tireat the first tireat, the best sex you’d had in your life, it ether The rules were juvenile, of course, constructs concocted by young women in order to make sense of reat the first tireat every tiether This was one of the disappointreat sex didn’t er ireat sex

She looked out theat the East River The water was brown but sorand old lady on’t give up her jewels Why did she bother with Philip at all? He was a fool When great sex wasn’t enough for a man, he was hopeless

This led her back to her only conclusion: Maybe the sex hadn’t been as special for hireat sex, anyway? There were all the things one could do to stientle touches, hands wrapped around the shaft of the penis and fingers exploring the inside of the vagina For the wo the penis not as a foreign object but as a reat sex—when the penis ina She could still remember that first moment of intercourse with Philip: their ood it felt, then the sensation that their bodies were no longer relevant; then the world fell away and it seemed all of life itself was concentrated in this friction of molecules that led to an explosion The sensation of co, right?

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There were ti in her job, when she couldn’t see the point of her job, or even exactly what her job was Ten years ago, Mindy, who had been a cultural coluazine, who at thirty-three had been ambitious, smart, full of beans and fire, and even (she liked to think) ruthless, had ed to ratchet herself up to the head of the Internet division (which no one had really understood back then) to the tuneful salary of half a million dollars a year At first she had flourished in this position (indeed, how could she not, as no one knehat she was doing or what she was supposed to do), and Mindy was considered one of the cohted bob and her plain but attractive face, Mindy was trotted out at corporate events, she was honored by woe students about her “recipe” for getting ahead (“hard work, no job too s person really wanted to hear, though they were true) Then there were ruer position, an exe

cutive position with dominion overht in the sixteenth century At that ti of her career, Mindy was full of a ical hubris that allowed her to take on any aspect of life and succeed She found the apartot herself on the board, got her son, Saarten, made Toll House cookies and decorated puer paints, had sex with her husband once a week, and even took a class with her girlfriends on how to give a blow job (using bananas) She’d thought about where she ht be in five years, in ten years, in fifteen She did have fantasies of flying around the world in the corporate jet, of heading up n countries She would be a noble star while being silently and secretly beleaguered by the pressure

But the years had passed, and Mindy had not fulfilled her pros in which to make her dreams come true Sam had had a brief bout with “socialization issues”; the experts at the school thought he’d benefit by spending more ti of a single child and two adults—requiring subsequent layers of organization and the forcing of Sam into afterschool sports, playdates (the aparta), and the pricey ski weekends in Ver one such jaunt, Mindy sprained her ankle and was on a crutch for a azine Award in 1992, had decided to write fiction; after three years of what felt to hied to publish a novel that sold seventy-five hundred copies His depression and resentment permeated their lives, so in the end, Mindy saw that everyday life with its everyday disappointments had simply worn her down

And yet she often thought, all this she could have overcome if it weren’t for her personality Anxious and awake in the ht, Mindy often examined the details of her interactions with “corporate” and saw they were lacking Back then, corporate had consisted of people like Derek Bruer who see quest to find hie of seventies rock and roll, tolerated her in ment It was silently understood that in order to become corporate, in order to be one of the out together, had dinner at each other’s aparthts of black-tie charity events, and all went to the sas And Mindy and James most decidedly did not fit in Mindy wasn’t “fun” It wasn’t in her nature to be sassy or witty or flirtatious; instead, she was s, a bit of a downer And while much of corporate waskind of Deed Dees were unseemly, practically oxy which Jaer countered that perhaps Jaain And that was that Mindy’s future was established: She was in her place and would go no further Each subsequent yearly revieas the sareat job, and they were happy with her perforive her more stock options Mindy understood her position She was trapped in a very glaet the o In the meantime, she had a family to support

On thewhen Philip Oakland ondering about his career and Schiffer Dia about sex—Mindy Gooch went to her office and, as she didblack desk in her cushy black leather swivel chair, one ankle resting on the other knee Her shoes were black and pointy, with a practical one-and-a-half-inch heel Her eleven o’clockconsisted of four women who sat on the nubby plaid couch and the two sly nubby plaid fabric They drank coffee or bottled water They talked about the article in The New York Ti of the Internet They talked about advertisers Were the suits who controlled the advertising dollars finally co around to the fact that the most important consumers omen like themselves, over thirty-five, with their own aame on their website for women? What would it be? “Shoes,” one of the wo,” said another “But it already exists In online catalogs” “Why not put the best all in one place?” “And have high-end jewelry” “And baby clothes”

This was depressing, Mindy thought “Is that all we’re really interested in? Shopping?”

“We can’t help ourselves,” one woenes Men are the hunters and wo” All the wohed

“I e could do so provocative,” Mindy said “We should be as provocative as those gossip websites Like Perez Hilton Or Snarker”