Rough Trade

emblematic of Chrissy’s place in the fast lane and when People ran a full-page photo of her showing off her four-carat engagement ring her only regret was that her parents, especially her mother, hadn’t lived long enough to see it.
    Malcolm’s attorney waited until the day before the wedding to present Chrissy with a prenuptial agreement. With no one else to turn to, she came to me for advice. I was a second-year law student at the time, every bit as idealistic about love (I’m sure some would say naive) as I was about the law. But that didn’t prevent me from speaking my mind.
    Stepping back from the sense of injury and outrage that had been my first reaction, I told Chrissy that I found not just the document but its timing troubling. Oddly enough, money wasn’t really the issue; Malcolm was actually being more than generous. The issue was control. If Chrissy I signed the prenup, she was not just agreeing to a less than I equal partnership, but ceding to her husband the power to make all the important decisions in their life.
    Throughout the entire drama Malcolm was cordial and curiously silent. No doubt he assumed that a girl like Chrissy, if just left alone with her wedding dress for long enough, would eventually come to her senses and sign. Perhaps if she’d picked another maid of honor, she would have. As it turned out, half an hour after she was supposed to descend the curved staircase of the Four Seasons Hotel, dressed in a confection of taffeta and tulle, Chrissy marched down the stairs in her going-away suit and announced to the three hundred assembled guests that there would be no wedding.
    It was an act of bravery, a victory for what was right as opposed to what was expected, but in light of the Rendells’ current predicament I couldn’t help but wonder whether it hadn’t also turned out to be a quixotic act of folly. Malcolm had gone on to marry a starlet, a leggy blonde, and together they had become a staple of the magazines that chronicle the doings of the rich and beautiful. Despite her protests to the contrary, I knew that Chrissy had to wonder how her life would have turned out if she’d chosen differently that day.
    I made my way through the team offices to the owner’s skybox that hung, suspended from the top level of the stadium, directly over the fifty-yard line. There I found my friend doing what she’d done every game day since her marriage—acting as hostess for the dozen or so invited guests in her father-in-law’s box. Waiters were cleaning up the remains of a catered lunch, and several of the VIPs had already taken their drinks out onto the balcony overlooking the field.
    Sensing a new arrival, Chrissy turned toward the door with an automatic smile of welcome on her face, a smile that was instantly transformed into something much more genuine when she saw that it was me. As always, I was immediately struck by how beautiful she was. Dressed simply in black pants and a cashmere sweater of Monarchs purple she easily eclipsed every other woman in the room. It wasn’t just that she was tall, thin, and blond. Chrissy carried herself like a duchess and her features possessed a sly asymmetry that drew you in and held your interest.
    She would have been beautiful no matter what: dressed in rags, soaking wet, after an entire day of weeping... though no one would ever see her that way, not even me. Chrissy had long ago discovered that her face could serve not only as a magnet but a shield. No doubt some people saw her devotion to the mirror as vanity, but I knew better—her wardrobe was her armor and her flawlessly applied make-up often the only buffer between herself and an increasingly intrusive world.
    As she crossed the room to meet me I caught Jack McWhorter following her progress from beneath veiled lids. I immediately thought of Jeff and found myself wondering what it must be like to be married to a woman so beautiful that men couldn’t help but watch her greedily with their eyes. But then again, perhaps the inevitable envy was part of the appeal.
    We hugged like sisters. Her body felt thinner to me than last time I saw her and I found myself worrying about how all the team’s troubles must be affecting her.
    “I’m so glad you’re here,” she whispered under her breath as she took me by the elbow and steered me toward the door. “That way you can keep me from killing him.”
    “Killing whom?” I demanded, craning my neck to look back over my shoulder at the other