Kargman - Arm Candy

Table of Contents

Also by Jill Kargman

The Ex-Mrs. Hedgefund
Momzillas
The Right Address (Co-Authored)
Wolves in Chic Clothing (Co-Authored)

To my small band of true friends: Id always rather be quirky us than the Beautiful People.

1. You feel closer to the people in the Obits section than the Weddings section.

2. You are now in the same age bracket as people who may buy oil paintings of a dog with a monocle or attend a crafts fair.

3. You catch yourself telling young people, When I was your age, there wasnt any Internet.

4. The reason you keep a diary is to remind yourself what you did yesterday.

5. You have to skip encores at rock concerts because you want to beat the stampede and get home at a reasonable hour.

6. The president of the United States is in your age group.

7. In the newspaper, you look at the real estate section before the party pictures.

8. Two words: sensible shoes.

9. When friends book a reservation for nine thirty p.m., you want to shoot them in the head.

10. Your kid thinks your vinyl records are antiques from the olden days.

11. You realize there are smart, grown-up people born in 1990.

12. Your joints and scars are starting to forecast rain better than the Doppler 7000 meteorologist Stan Storm.

13. You can admit that when you were your kids age, you carried a Walkman instead of an iPod, used pay phones instead of cell phones, and typed term papers on a typewriter or word processor instead of a computer.

14. You keep telling yourself laugh lines are sexy but then notice that no models have laugh lines.

15. You were once a model yourself, and now the beauty that the world valued you for is starting to fade. And youre seized by the fear that youll never be able to find love again.

For Eden Clyde, there was nothing on planet Earth as nauseating as moving boxes. Starting over with new walls and an unfamiliar ceiling to stare at during sleepless nights stressed her out more than anything else. Well accustomed to cardboard paper cuts and packing-tape hell, the stunning but weary model sat, at thirty-nine years old, crying her green eyes out. It was as if she had a bungee cord harnessed around her and was about to take an emotional cliff dive. She didnt know if she could stomach it.

Despite her breathtaking looksa more severe, sexier Audrey Hepburn meets a young Demi Moore meets those Sports Illustrated bikini girls you want to strangleEden Clyde was like so many beauties before her: lottery winner in all twenty-three chromosomes but unlucky in love. But she knew deep down it wasnt so much about chanceit was also about the choices she had made, some of them at an age so tender she couldnt fathom the consequences. But now, after nineteen years livin in sin (as her small-town, rectangular-shaped Red State neighbors would have scoffed), she sat brokenhearted with a giant hole punched through her chest. It was like someone had shot a cannon through her, but she miraculously lived, forced to walk the misty Manhattan streets feeling empty and miserable. And forty. Well, almost. Isnt ones entire thirty-ninth year by nature a reckoning of sorts? A fifty-two-week shadow that is cast from the moment the candles are blown out?

Eden exhaled, her head bending down to her hands. Deep breaths, she instructed herself, eyes damp and closed against her thin, ringless fingers. You have to power through this. She had never been the religious type, but as they say, there are no atheists in the trenches. Life-changing moments will send even the least pious souls into prayer. A passenger on a turbulent flight or a mother about to give birth. For Eden, the piles of brown boxes were suddenly her unlikely steeple. Please, God, let me get through this. Please tell me that I will be happy again.

Eden was a beauty icon. Her career as a model and muse made her recognizable to the fashion and art world cognoscenti all over the globe. She received whistle blows from local construction workers and was the subject of schoolboy fantasies. But what would she do now that the one reason everyone worshipped her was slowly ebbing, day by day, from her without her control? She was hardly the crypt-keeper; it was forty looming, not eighty. But every New York minute, there were girls less than half her age hopping off the Greyhound, staring wide-eyed at the skyline outside Port Authority, just as she had, duffel bag in hand, hope in her heart. It felt like another life. And in many ways, it was.

Tom Stoppard

When Eden, ne Szciapanski, hit her teen years, she really started to notice people noticing her. People on Main Street, men, women, childreneveryone stared at her. As each pair of eyes gazed upon her, they lit a spark inside the girl from the dreary small town, making her feel special, different. Her confidence swelled as she blossomed more and more from gawky and lanky into a sexy, all-American girl, igniting an ambition deep within her soul. Maybe, just maybe, she wasnt like everyone else in Shickshinny, population 3,274. Maybe there were bigger things out there for her.

Her mom, Carol, definitely thought so, a former beauty queen turned courtroom stenographer, whose splurge was weekly French-manicured gel tips. She praised Edens perfect features and encouraged her to raid her closet and flaunt whatcha got. Carol hoped Edens good looks would help her pole-vault out of their tin-rooftop town, bidding adieu to small minds, big asses, and aluminum siding for good.

I shoulda left this goddamn town when I had the chance, Carol lamented to herself one morning as Eden filled her backpack for school. Eden looked down at her sophomore social studies homework pages one last time and zipped up her bag as Carol stared out the rain-splattered window dreamily and took another drag of her cigarette.

Lets unpack the rest of those boxes tonight, Mom. Eden and her mom had moved eight times in twelve years, all within town limits, whenever the rents would rise. Then theyd fold up their life, find a new place nearby, and unfold it again.

Yeah, I cant stand looking at em anymore, Carol said, looking back at Eden. Have a good day at school.

Thanks, Mom. You, too.

Jason picking you up?

Mm-hmm. Eden smiled with an excited hair flip.

Hold on to him, honey, Carol said between puffs. Hes got it all. The looks, the dough, and hes a good kid.

Eden smiled. She was crazy about Jason. He was romantic (long-stemmed roses in a box at each months anniversary), fun (surprise adventures like county fair opening night), had a warm smile, and gave the best bear hugs.

A honk sounded in the front yard of Edens quaint Edward Scissorhands-esque street, rows of little houses, except with no dinosaur topiaries and zero color, just white, white, white. The paint and the people.

Thats him, gotta go, Eden said while opening a beat-up umbrella to shield the perfectly groomed shiny, straight brown hair down her back.

Jason was the quarterback of the football team. He had the blond, rugged good looks of an Abercrombie kid, but with a subtle tinge of extra cheesiness. His charismatic dad owned the nearby mannequin factory, and his stay-at-home mom looked like one hot off the assembly line, thin with a platinum do and those fifties-style dresses, cinched at the waist. No stranger to hair products, Jason knew he was the shit. The stud of the town, the local hero. But as Carol had attested, he was also nice. Always the gentleman, he opened the passenger door for Eden and greeted her mom with his wide grin of white choppers that rivaled Nancy Kerrigans.