Manhunting

"Planning on jumping? I wouldn't. Blood's hell to get out of silk.""I'm just checking the weather," Kate Svenson said patiently and continued to stare out her apartment window, knowing that Jessie would lose interest and go back to her newspaper if she ignored her long enough.She'd pulled back the thick drapes to let in the early-morning August sun. Even with her best friend sitting behind her, rustling her paper and slurping her coffee, Kate felt alone, mired in a despair that not even Jessie's pragmatism could dispel. This is doing you no good at all, she told herself and moved away from the window to sit at her linen-covered dining-room table. She tried to concentrate on her breakfast coffee and the business section of the Sunday paper, but her mind kept wandering to the miserable state of her life.Well, not exactly miserable, she thought. Actually, not miserable at all. I have a great career in a top management-consulting firm. Of course, I could wish that my father didn't own the firm, and sometimes it's boring, but it's a great career--Well, an okay career....With an effort, Kate pushed her career out of her mind and went on with her catalog of blessings. Her life was good. She had her health, and enough money, and terrific friends, the best of whom she was having breakfast with right now in a beautiful apartment full of exquisite French Provincial furniture that she certainly couldn't afford if she didn't have this damn job....No. Kate clamped down on her negative thoughts and peered over the top of her paper at the brunette across from her who was reading her paper and drinking her coffee with the same total absorption she gave everything else.Jessie Rogers jerked her head up, her dark curls bouncing. "What?""Nothing," Kate said. "Just counting my blessings. You're near the top.""I am the top, which is a real comment on your lousy life," Jessie said and went back to the paper.Trust Jessie to cut to the chase, Kate thought. She sits over there looking like Audrey Hepburn at twelve, and here I am looking like Grace Kelly at fifty. And we're both thirty-five. Doesn't she care that life is slipping away from us while we carve out careers we don't want?Of course, Jessie didn't care. Her life wasn't slipping away, she was living it. She wasn't carving out a career she didn't want, she was completely involved in one she loved, if you could call cake decorating a career, which of course, Jessie did, although how she lived on it, Kate would never know. Jessie just went with the flow, no plan at all. Maybe if Kate hadn't planned her career out so precisely, maybe if she was doing something else...Stop it, she told herself. She was a damn good management consultant, and she'd made a lot of money. It wasn't her career that was bothering her, it was her empty personal life. Of course, Jessie was happier than she was. She hadn't gotten herself into three horrible engagements in the past three years because she didn't care that she was thirty-five and not married. I'm the one who cares, Kate thought. She was the one who was guilty and miserable. It shouldn't matter but it did, and there was nothing she could do about it.Pathetic. Kate sighed and went back to her paper.Jessie slapped the newspaper down on the linen-covered tabletop and said loudly, "This is all your father's fault."Startled, Kate looked up from the paper. "What? The recession? The construction on 70? Calvin can't find Hobbes? What?""Don't play dumb." Jessie folded her arms and glared at her. "You're unhappy.""No, I'm not," Kate said, forcing a smile. "You read that in the paper? What are you reading? I told you not to read the personals. You get too upset about all the lonely people and you transfer it to me. I'm fine. Read the sports page." She went back to her paper, holding it like a shield in front of her.Jessie, as usual, did not give up. "You keep sighing. I can't conceCrusie, Jennifer is the author of 'Manhunting', published 2007 under ISBN 9780373772902 and ISBN 0373772904.