Five(8)

What Anne and Phoebe don’t know is that Emma is already working on it. Having dominated the world of men in her career, far surpassing every woman she knows in her ambition, and having earned more money than any sad, little flaccid husband of every woman she knows, Emma is bored. She is looking for another way to win and so has now turned her attention to finding the best-looking, richest man she can, someone whose very presence shrivels lesser penises and causes marital discord when he walks into the room, so that wives will never see their husbands the same way again.

She finds a selective dating website that caters to high-achieving, wealthy narcissists. She meets the first man but quickly realizes that this may not be as easy as she thinks.

“Oh, nothing,” he says. “It’s just I’m surprised, you don’t really look like your profile.”

“Um, in a good way, I mean,” he corrects himself, after a pause, a slight question mark in his voice.

Emma gives him a long, deliberate appraisal, from his shoes to his hairline. “Well, you look poor,” she says, downing her drink, “and like a wanker.” Then she pays the bill and leaves.

“I don’t usually date older women,” says the second man.

“We’re both thirty-seven,” she says.

“You know what I mean,” he says.

“You mean you fuck little girls?!” she says, standing up, throwing her napkin down dramatically, and marching away, faux-crying, making sure everyone in the restaurant has turned to stop and stare. She pays the bill and leaves.

“My cat needs hydrotherapy, you know, for feline arthritis. I’m so stressed,” says the last. “You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find a good alternative veterinarian.”

She downs her drink in one, says, “Actually, I hate pussies,” pays the bill, and leaves.

She decides a different strategy is necessary. She notices that a new wave of unsolicited, misplaced pity is starting to crest over her as female peers and relatives begin speaking to her with their heads tilted sympathetically to the side.

“So do you think you’ll freeze your eggs,” asks one, “just in case?”

“Your priorities change, you’ll see, things that matter to you now will seem so trivial,” says another.

“What do you do on Saturday mornings, Emma? It must be divine, I mean I can’t actually remember the last time I had a Saturday morning on my own,” says the last.

“I usually fuck until noon,” Emma says to the boring, the married, the second-or third-time pregnant, the maternal. “Then I drink margaritas in the bath for the rest of the day.” And she smiles while they burn inside with jealousy.

Emma does not pay much attention to these women or their unattractive, ordinary progeny. And it drives them crazy. Because they know their men are boring and their children are average. But they followed the rules, they got those men and children, like they were supposed to, and they desperately want her to want what they have and to not be able to have it. But Emma knows that their condescension is wrapped in envy that they can never speak aloud for the sake of self-preservation. They must convince themselves that they have made the right choices by comparing them to her choices, which, deep down, they know are the better choices, the choices they wish they’d made. The choices they would have made if they weren’t so scared of everything, if they were brave enough not to believe what they were taught about being women. If they really believed they were the equals of men.

But these wives and mothers are formidable opponents, she’ll give them that. They are not easy to knock off their pedestals of gyneco-normative righteousness. They stubbornly appear so sure of the safety of their life paths, smugly bestowing their sympathy cloaked as advice to relieve the ennui of their ordinariness, while they chomp on more than the recommended dose of antacids to help neutralize their regret and anxiety.

But then, a couple of years later, Emma discovers a weakness in one married, would-be mother, and she gets an idea. An idea that is better than a boyfriend. A much bigger prize.

“We’ve been trying for almost two years now, I mean I’ve been off the pill since we got engaged, but it’s just not happening, nothing’s happening,” Emma hears an anguished Anne say to Phoebe, this time at their grandmother’s ninety-second birthday party.

“Sausage?” Emma says, coming up behind them, holding out the platter of pigs in a blanket, noticing the fragile slimness of her sister’s figure and the fuller fullness of Phoebe’s.

“God, Emma, can’t you see we’re in the middle of a conversation?” Anne says tearfully as Phoebe places a protective, maternal arm around her.

Emma looks at one woman, then the other. And then it clicks.

“Sorry, girls, it’s just Mum put honey on these, and I didn’t want Phoebe to miss out,” Emma says. Placing the platter in front of her cousin, she adds, “I know how much you love them.” Then she grabs a glass of wine and her mobile, retreats into one of her grandmother’s guest rooms, and composes a message.

I have a proposal for you. I think you’ll like it , she texts her boss, Liam, a very handsome, very fit, very rich man with a shiny bald head. When he smiled at her with that slight gap between his teeth that first day in the office, she understood it meant that he would always be open to her ideas. Whenever she might have them. Whatever they might be. There was also something he had that the others she’d met didn’t. Drive, ambition, pulsing physicality. Something she wanted not to crack or break, not to tame like she did in other men, but to consume. Whole.