Femme Fatale and other stories

which somehow mutated into their first date, upending her professional life when she failed to reveal this fact to her bosses before her article ran. “Not because I’m egotistical but because I can use it.”
    “Oh, you use your powers for good,” she said, laughing.
    “Yes,” he said, laughing yet earnest. On the first night they spent together—which happened to be the next night—they watched a movie on cable, a wonderfully campy affair in which a doctor, asked during a deposition if he had a god complex, replied: “I am God.” Oh, how they laughed.
    Oh, how true it was.
    Karl is a surgeon. Karl is handsome. Karl goes to third world countries on his “vacations” and makes miracles. Five years ago, as the subject of immigration heated up, Karl revealed that he had entered the country illegally as a child, obtaining citizenship status under the Reagan-sanctioned amnesty of 1986. He testified before Congress. He wrote op-eds for the
New York Times,
although with considerable help from Gwen, who made his language less pedantic and high-handed. Karl may not have a god complex, exactly, but he has a touch of Zeus in him, flinging his words like thunderbolts. He wrote a memoir, this time with the help of a not-so-ghostly ghost. The memoir led to a cable television show, and while it wasn’t a huge hit, it scored solidly in the ratings, renewed year after year. Every journalist who wrote about the show seemed obligated to include the detail that it was the rare case where a Hollywood actor wasn’t quite as good-looking as the real person he portrayed.
    Seven years ago, when they started the process that would bring Annabelle into their household, Gwen thought, hoped, prayed that a child would change the balance in their lives, that their professional selves would recede somewhat. She was right, and yet she was wrong. Karl adores Annabelle, despite initially resisting Gwen’s choice of China. Why not his native Guatemala? (Gwen claimed she feared that country’s bureaucracy, but the truth was she couldn’t bear to have a daughter who would be like Karl, but not her.) What about Zimbabwe, where he had performed yet another surgery? He wanted to find the child that needed them most, he wanted to save someone. But Gwen understood that a child would save her. If they had a child, at least one person would find her essential.
    “How was the freel?” Annabelle asks, mouth full of toast.
    “The what?”
    “You said you were going”—she swallows—“to a funeral yesterday. For your friend.”
    “Oh. It was very sad. It’s always sad when people die. But I saw some old friends.”
    “Your best friends?” Annabelle is entranced with the idea of best friends. Since entering kindergarten this year, she has had no fewer than five. She tries them on like hats. She has a heartless quality. Nature or nuture? Gwen or Karl?
    “Yes, I guess so.” Does Gwen really want to affirm Annabelle’s belief that best friends are interchangeable, disposable, that they come and go like trends? “We were best friends until high school, when we went to different schools.” True, but a lie. She was suggesting to Annabelle that the different schools changed the nature of their relationship. But Gwen and Mickey had never attended the same school, and their friendship was irrevocably broken before they started high school.
    “Who’s your best friend now?” Annabelle asks her mother.
    “Miss Margery, I suppose,” Gwen says, although she considers all her female friends equally close. Which is to say—not very. But Margery is the one she would call if there were major trouble. She’s the one she called the night she decided she wanted a trial separation from Karl.
    “Did he cheat on you?” Margery asked. Everyone starts there. Everyone expects it. He’s too damn handsome. Gwen’s looks are holding up well, and Karl is ten years older, yet it’s clear that everyone thinks she’s competing above her weight class.
    “No, not really.”
    “Not really?”
    “A woman’s after him, but he really doesn’t get it. I mean, he has no clue. He’s pretty naive that way.”
    “How do you know, then?”
    “He’s so naive that he showed me her e-mails because he thinks they’re funny. He’s, like, ‘She’s such a good writer. You should hire her, give her a column.’ I had to explain to Karl that women don’t write funny, flirtatious e-mails about being newly single to their old boyfriends in order to get the