Page 7 of Just One Look
“True,” Jordan said. “But if you’re getting all that delicious buzz, you probably won’t care.”
“How does that help?” Clement said. “She told you she can have an orgasm, so she’s good in that department.”
“Yeah,” Jordan said, “but does it make her legs shake? Or is it, ‘Thank you, Kristoff, that was very nice?’”
“You know what’s inappropriate?” Elizabeth said. “This conversation. No. I need more.”
“Which I justsaid,”Jordan told her.
“I mean, more in mylife.Like a new start, somehow. Marie Kondo, or something like that. Except that I don’t really have stuff. If I looked around and thought, does this item bring me joy, I’d be throwing out my couch and dishes, and then I’d be eating off paper plates and sitting on the floor while ordering the first thing I saw online, the same way I did the first time. No, I think I have to gosomewhere.”
“Whoa,” Clement said, serious now. “As in, not Emory?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know. Maybe a vacation, because any other hospital’s just going to be another hospital, right? It’s not going to change my life.”
“No place is, unless you go someplacereallydifferent,” Jordan said. “Like where, though? Africa? Antarctica? Someplace way out of your comfort zone.”
“Out of her comfort zone means more than ten blocks away,” Clement said, “not Africa. Do you know this woman at all? She’s living two hundred fifty miles from where she grew up.”
“Anywhere but New Zealand,” she said. “I am not going to New Zealand. Not to Auckland, and not to the rest of New Zealand, either. That’s a no.” She held out her glass for a refill. It was a tiny, long-stemmed, cone-shaped thing like a mini champagne flute that was just for liqueurs. Clement and Jordan even had joyfulstemware.
Her own glasses had come in a box from Amazon. They didn’t bring her joy, but they held water, and that tended to be enough for her.
Or it had.
“Why not?” Clement asked. “New Zealand’s beautiful.”
“You’veheard,”Jordan said. “But as it requires a vacation longer than a week, you’ll never know. MaybeI’llgo to New Zealand. And hello? Stepmother living there? Stepsister?”
“Oh.” Clement looked confused. “Uh … I don’t think I know this.”
Jordan sighed. “Her stepmother was from New Zealand. Her father met her there at a conference. Or in Australia or someplace, can’t remember. She was nice, though,” he said to Elizabeth. “You told me she was nice.”
“She was,” Elizabeth said. “I still don’t want to go there. I was eighteen the only time I visited, and—ugh. It doesn’t bring up positive memories. Anyway, going to another country is ridiculous. I don’t have time. I probably just need a vacation. To one of those meditative spas, maybe. And to get my washing machine fixed, and possibly join a gym instead of just using my elliptical machine. You know. More of a …” She waved the fancy glass. “More of a real life. With more … parts.”
