Sam and Ilsa's Last Hurrah. Rachel Cohn

am fairly certain that Ilsa’s wild card is a bit more wild than she imagined.

      Or she’s fucking with me.

      Which isn’t nice.

      She knows how I get.

      She knows.

      “What a lovely home,” Caspian tells me, looking around with his button eyes.

      “Thank you,” I say.

      Can she be fucking with me?

      No. Yes.

      If this is an act, he’s really good at it.

      “I must admit that I knew you were Ilsa’s brother. I have heard such lovely things about you.”

      No. No no no. That’s too much.

      “Did she put you up to this?” I ask Frederyk. “She did, didn’t she? This is going to end up on the Internet, isn’t it? Where’s the camera?”

      Frederyk smiles sweetly at me.

      No. This is my life choice and you must respect it.

      “You’re even cuter than she said you were,” Caspian tells me.

      Wild. Card.

      I don’t know whether to take them – him – straight to the kitchen or back to the piano room.

      “What the hell? ” a voice intones.

      Six eyes – two of them buttons – turn to the still-open front door.

      “I’ve only been here six seconds, and already I’m bored,” KK bitches.

      Hard as it is to believe, she’s wearing a French-maid outfit too.

5

       ILSA

      “ASSHOLE!” I shriek at Parker after he makes the most provocative and completely absurd request I’ve ever heard from him. I take an icy beer glass from the freezer and lob it directly toward his high-top ’fro head. He quickly ducks. The glass hits the kitchen tile behind Parker’s head and shatters, as it always does. It’s been so long since Parker and I have had this kind of fight, all the old broken beer glasses have been replaced, and I don’t remember where to buy these particular ones anymore. Hopefully Czarina won’t notice we’re down to three German beer glasses in the freezer. Hopefully this level of fight no longer heats me so hard I want to jump Parker’s bones immediately after breaking something.

      “Chill. The. Fuck. Out,” Parker tells me, but he’s completely unfazed, which agitates me even more. He walks to the pantry, pulls out the broom and pan, and begins sweeping the broken glass into the broom pan, way too comfortable with this old habit. “Do you want to do it or not?”

      “NOT!” I declare, because my pride is speaking for me.

      But my heart longs to do it. My body literally aches for it.

      “Come on, Ils,” he says, laying on his sweetest voice, which he knows I can never resist. If I was wearing a button-down blouse, the button at my boobs would pop open right now, just from hearing Parker use this particular cajoling tone, which worked so effectively on me in the past. “Once more, for old time’s sake.”

      “I don’t remember how,” I lie. It’s so long since I’ve done it. Like, since Parker and I broke up.

      There have been other boys since. I even did it with KK once. But none could do it with me like Parker could. And the KK time involved a lot of Jäger shots to get me into position.

      Parker dumps the broken glass into the trash, then steps behind me and lightly gyrates his pelvis against my rear. “Of course you remember,” he whispers in my ear. The feel of his breath scorches my neck, and the rest of my body tingles. He places his arms around my waist, so boldly, and I don’t resist. For a moment, I clasp my hands over his to tie him around me. The old rhythm of desire and familiarity returns too easily. I want to believe this is right. I want to believe so badly that this could happen.

      But I don’t trust. I remember how much I thought he loved me. I remember how much I knew I loved him.

      I pull away from him and turn around. “Why now?”

      “I think it’d be fun,” he says, turning the pleading tone up to its highest decibel of smooth sexiness.

      “Don’t you have some other girl to do it with?”

      “None who move like you. You know that.”

      I do know that.

      Light bulb! Ding ding ding! I can’t believe I’m even considering this, but I say, “It would have to involve the cats. It –”

      “No,” he interrupts. “No cats. They ruin it for me every time.”

      Got him.

      “Cats,” I say. “Or no Ilsa.”

      He exhales deeply. “Okay. Cats.”

      “I’ll think about it.”

      But I’m already imagining the new moves I’m going to amaze Parker with. Since we broke up, I’ve taken up barre classes, and snoozer yoga (mostly for the nap time at the end, which feels like the only time I ever rest), and even dabbled in some pole-dancing classes. I now have bendy moves in my repertoire that Parker’s never dared dream his partner could do, because his subconscious doesn’t yet know they’re even possible.

      “Don’t think about it. Go change now,” Parker suggests, knowing full well I stored my show dresses at Czarina’s and that once I make the change, there’s nothing to think about anymore. I’m totally in.

      I will go change. But not for a few minutes yet. I want Parker to yearn and hope and wait. I want him to remember what that feels like. I won’t give him the satisfaction too quickly. Prolonging his wait, making him unsure if he’ll achieve the conquest he so ardently desires, was always my favorite dance with him. But oh, what glorious results.

      I look down at my sad sack of a little silver, sparkly flapper dress. An hour ago it seemed so cute. But my dinner party invite was a call to arms for garish, and then the hostess herself didn’t live up to the invitation’s promise. An outfit this boring? It’s like I let Sam pick my attire. What was I thinking? I specified the party was a recess from the humdrum, and then I outfitted myself in humdrum. Obviously I needed Parker here to remind me to unlock the cats from the garment bag where they’ve been hiding in Czarina’s closet since Parker and I broke up. Of course! I get it now. GARISH. Let’s go, Ilsa! The cats are coming out of retirement. Meow for the wow.

      Czarina is a great seamstress, and she created a fabulous A-line cocktail dress for me with fabric I found at a cheap fabric-bolt store in the Garment District. The pattern on the off-white fabric is called AccessorCat, and it features pastel-colored illustrations of various cats wearing various accessories: a gray-and-tan-striped tabby cat wearing bright blue eyeglasses, an orange marble cat wearing a debonair purple scarf, a black cat wearing an emerald-green cowboy hat. “If Princess Grace Kelly was a crazy cat lady,” is how Czarina characterized the atrociously awesome dress. It was my favorite to wear when Parker and I competed in ballroom-dancing competitions, until he forbade it, saying just the sight of it had made him allergic to animals. But if he’s bold enough to request that I come out of retirement and be his dance partner once again at some mystery dance-off on the Lower East Side later tonight, surely he’s man enough to handle the cat dress again.

      So what if my initial reaction to his request was typically Ilsa knee-jerk rage. I’ll grow out of it at some point, Czarina promises. (We both secretly fear I won’t.) Now I’m seeing the potential. A midnight-hour dance-off downtown, one last spin with my once and never again true love.

      YES.

      I