Autorentext

Pamela Redmond

Klappentext

"Alice is trying to return to her career in publishing after raising her only child. But the workplace is less than welcoming to a fortysomething mom whose râesumâe is covered with fifteen years of dust. If Alice were younger, she knows, she'd get hired in a New York minute. So if age is just a number, why not become younger? Or at least fake it. With help from her artist friend, Maggie, Alice transforms herself into a faux millennial and soon finds an assistant's job, a twentysomthing BFF, and a hot young boyfriend, Josh"--From back cover.

Leseprobe
Younger

Chapter 1

I almost didn’t get on the ferry.

I was scared. And nervous. And overwhelmed by how out of place I felt, in the crowd of young people surging toward the boat bound for New York.

Not just New York, but New York City on New Year’s Eve. The mere thought of it made my hands sweat and my feet tingle, the way they did the one time I rode to the top of the Empire State Building and tried to look down. In the immortal words of my daughter Diana, it made my weenie hurt.

I would have turned around and driven right back home to my safe suburban house—I can see the ball drop better on TV anyway!—except I couldn’t leave Maggie waiting for me on the freezing pier in downtown Manhattan. Maggie, my oldest and still closest friend, didn’t believe in cell phones. She also didn’t believe in computers, or cars, or staying in New Jersey on New Year’s Eve, or for that matter, staying in New Jersey ever. Maggie, who came out as a lesbian to her ultra-Catholic parents at sixteen and made her living as an artist, didn’t believe in doing anything the easy way. And so I couldn’t cancel our night out, and there was nothing for me to do but keep marching forward to my potential doom.

At least I was first in line for the next boat. It was frigid out that night, but I staked my claim to the prime spot, hanging on to the barricade to keep anybody from cutting in front of me. These kind of suburban yos who were milling around on the dock with me, I knew, majored in line-cutting in kindergarten.

Then a weird thing happened. The longer I stood there, guarding my turf, the more I began to want to go into the city—not just for Maggie, but for myself. Looking out across the dark water at the lights of Manhattan sparkling beyond, I began to think that Maggie had been right, and going into New York on New Year’s Eve was exactly what I needed. Shake things up, she said. Do something you’ve never done before. Hadn’t doing everything the way I’d always done it—the cautious way, the theoretically secure way—landed me precisely in the middle of my current mess? It had, and no one wanted that to change more than me.

And so when they opened the gate to the ferry, I sprinted ahead. I was determined to be the first one up the stairs, to beat everybody else to the front of the outside deck, where I could watch New York glide into view. I could hear them all on my heels as I ran, but I was first out the door and to the front of the boat, grabbing the metal rail and hanging on tight as I labored to catch my breath. The ferry’s engine roared to life, its diesel smell rising above the saltiness of the harbor, but still I sucked the air deep into my lungs as we chugged away from the dock. Here I am, I thought: alive and moving forward, on a night when anything can happen.

It wasn’t until then that I noticed I was the only one standing out there. Everybody else was packed into the glassed-in cabin, their collective breath fogging its windows. Apparently I was the only one who wasn’t afraid of a little cold, of a little wind, of a little icy spray—okay, make that a lot of icy spray—as the boat bucked like a mechanical bull across the waves. It was worth it, assuming I wasn’t hurled into the inky waters, for the incredible view of the glowing green Statue of Liberty and the twinkling skyscrapers up ahead.

As I gripped the rail even tighter, congratulating myself on my amazing bravery, the boat slowed and seemed to stall there in the middle of the harbor, its motor idling loudly. Just as I began to wonder whether we were about to sink, or make a break for the open seas at the hands of a renegade captain running from the law, the boat began to back up. Back up and turn around. Were we returning to New Jersey? Maybe the captain had the same misgivings about Manhattan on New Year’s Eve that I did.

But no. Once the boat swung around, it began moving toward the city again. Leaving me facing not the spectacular vista of Manhattan but the big clock and broken-down dock of Hoboken, and darkest New Jersey beyond. Frantically, I looked over my shoulder at the bright, snug cabin, which now had the prime view of New York, but it was so crowded, it would have been impossible to squeeze inside. I was stuck out in the cold facing New Jersey, all alone. The story of my life.

Half an hour later, I was hobbling through the streets of Soho arm in arm with Maggie, cursing the vanity that had led me to wear high heels and fantasizing about grabbing the comfy-looking green lace-up boots off Maggie’s feet. Maggie was very sensibly striding along beside me in boot-cut jeans, a down-filled coat as enormous as a sleeping bag, and a leopard-print hunter’s cap, with the earflaps down and a velvet bow tied under her chin.

“Are we almost there yet?” I asked, the shoes nipping at my toes.

“Come on,” she said, tugging me away from the crowded sidewalk of West Broadway toward a dark, unpopulated side street. “This’ll be faster.”

I stopped, looking with alarm down the deserted street. “We’ll get raped.”

“Don’t be such a scaredy-cat.” Maggie laughed, pulling me forward.

Easy for her to say: Maggie had moved to the Lower East Side at eighteen, back when Ratner’s was still serving blintzes and crackheads camped under her stairwell. Now she owned her building, the entire top floor turned into a studio where she lived and worked on her sculptures, larger-than-life leaping, twirling women fashioned from wire and tulle. All those years in New York on her own had made Maggie tough, while I was still the soft suburban mom, protected by my husband’s money, or should I say, my soon-to-be-ex-husband’s ex-money.

My heart hammered in my ears as Maggie dragged me down the black street, slowing only slightly when I focused on the sole beam of light on the entire block, which seemed, for some strange reason, to be pink. When we reached the storefront from which the light was emanating, we saw why: in the window was a bright pink neon sign that read “Madame Aurora.” The glow was further enhanced by a curtain of pink and orange glass beads covering the window, filtering the light from inside the shop. Beyond the beads, we could just make out a woman who could only be Madame Aurora herself, a gold turban askew on her gray hair, smoke curling from the cigarette that teetered from her lips. Suddenly, she looked straight at us and beckoned us inside. Taped to the window was a hand-lettered sign: “New Year’s Wishes, $25.”

“Let’s go in,” I said to Maggie. I’d always been a sucker for any kind of wish and any kind of fortune-telling, so the combination of the two was irresistible. Besides, I wanted to get out of the cold and off my feet, however briefly.

Maggie made a face, her “You have got to be out of your fucking mind” face.

“Come on,” I said. “It will be fun.”

“Eating a fabulous meal is fun,” Maggie said. “Kissing someone y…