The Seven Year Bitch Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Part One - In Bed with the Trents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Part Two - 100 Words or Less

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Part Three - Run from Your Life

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Jennifer Belle

  Praise for Little Stalker

  “An offbeat, surprisingly sweet story about voyeurism, celebrity, obsession, and writer’s block . . . Little Stalker is a treat—hilarious, richly textured, subtly insightful, and undeniably twisted.”

  —The Boston Globe

  “Compulsively readable . . . Little Stalker is an affecting meditation on the connections we make—with others and with ourselves—as we age, from a writer whose work is maturing, quite beautifully.”

  —Salon.com

  “Hilarious and poignant. Despite some serious attention-deficit problems, this protagonist is an endearing figure.”

  —The Seattle Times

  “A smart and hilarious read; you’ll fall in love with Belle’s neurotic heroine Rebekah Kettle as she struggles to make ends meet, unearth her father’s secrets, find love, and manage a bizarre obsession with a movie director.”

  —People Style Watch

  “There are only so many good novels about single women living the big-city life, and Jennifer Belle’s novels are among the best, the most human and genuine. Her first-person narrators are solitary female flanuers in continual drift through the pretty and gruesome parts of New York, and it’s always a treat to be in on their streaming monologues as they . . . generally afflict their humanity on an otherwise indifferent world.”

  —Venus

  “Deliciously sardonic . . . You have to admire a writer who can create a character who is monumentally neurotic, yet oddly appealing nevertheless. Jennifer Belle has brilliantly done so with the protagonist—no, let’s call her the heroine, because she’s earned it—of Little Stalker.”

  —The Hartford Courant

  “‘A lighthearted romp through New York’ [is] precisely what Belle delivers. That it comes with a skewering as well makes it just that much more fun.”

  —New York Daily News

  “Twisted and tender . . . Will keep you hooked to the last page.”

  —Cosmopolitan

  “Belle suffuses this story with genuine sweetness.”

  —The Indianapolis Star

  “A funny and rich plot.”

  —The Sacramento Bee

  Praise for High Maintenance

  “Hilarious.”

  —The Boston Globe

  “Razor-sharp, deadpan observations and dazzling prose—by turns utterly hilarious and heart-wrenching.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “Irresistible.”

  —Newsday

  “Looking for a good laugh? Enter the world of twenty-six-year-old Liv Kellerman. . . . Her nutty sagas will have you rolling on the floor.”

  —Cosmopolitan

  “Stylish, funny . . . Belle’s unpretentious humor and clean prose style are in an entirely different neighborhood than your average single-in-the-city author.”

  —Minneapolis Star Tribune

  “An outrageous, hilarious account of one woman’s journey to find herself, the ‘Loft of her Life,’ and a man worthy of sharing apartment space in New York City . . . wicked and twisted . . . uproariously funny.”

  —The Tampa Tribune

  “Addictive and captivating . . . The same wisecracking, fierce yet vulnerable point of view that made Going Down so special is taken even further in High Maintenance.”

  —Time Out New York

  “Satisfying. Even non–New Yorkers will be sucked in as Liv navigates her way through heartache and the city.”

  —Mademoiselle

  “Sharp, incisive, and laugh-out-loud funny.”

  —The Baltimore Sun

  “Just buy the damn book.”

  —The New York Observer

  “Belle has created another unforgettable narrator—funny, self-absorbed, a little damaged.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Hugely funny.”

  —New York Daily News

  “Liv’s wackiness gives this unruly novel moments of great humor, but in the end the book is as much about the peculiar landscape of the New York housing market—the snooty upper-class clients and the real estate agents who kowtow to them—as it is about a young woman finding her own independence.”

  —The Washington Post Book World

  “Belle deftly mines real estate as a metaphor, especially in Liv’s affair with an impulsive architect, and her clients and fellow brokers are both terrifying and hilarious by turns.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “In this latest New York romp . . . Belle draws both Liv and the idiosyncrasies of the Manhattan real estate market so well that one can’t help wondering just what is fiction (Belle did a stint as a broker herself) and what may be biography. . . . Belle’s skewed take on life in the big city keeps the smirk-per-page ratio high . . . offbeat observations . . . hilarity and pathos.”

  —The Denver Post

  “[An] amusing . . . humorous real-estate romp with Manhattan views.”

  —US Weekly

  “If you think the Hub housing market is tough, take a look at this tale of high-stakes real estate—and sexual—wheeling and dealing. Belle knows the world she depicts.”

  —Boston Herald

  “Like a hot fudge sundae . . . delicious. Gutter-mouthed, smart-ass Liv, she’s a Becky Sharp for our time.”

  —Gotham

  “You’ll feel right at home with Belle’s . . . follow-up to her racy debut, Going Down.”

  —Glamour

  “Brimming with Gotham references, weird but lovable characters and typical urban scenes, [High Maintenance] is a witty and engaging tale of love and real estate in Manhattan. . . . Belle’s tongue-in-cheek style and laugh-out-loud antics keep the pages turning . . . fresh and invigorating.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “This work continues in the same tradition of Belle’s highly praised first novel, Going Down, with equal parts hilarity and pain . . . in turns funny and poignant.”

  —Library Journal

  Praise for Going Down

  (for which Belle was named Best New Novelist of the year by Entertainment Weekly)

  “A witty, gritty, and thoroughly convincing first novel.”

  —Nick Hornby

  “A rollicking debut.”

  —The Village Voice

  “A funny, sad, nasty little gem of a novel.”

  —Jay McInerney

/>   “An exceptionally funny writer.”

  —Time

  “A kind of twisted version of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes . . . Delightfully, sickeningly, hilariously enthralling.”

  —Tama Janowitz

  “Imagine Holden Caulfield’s sister, Phoebe, growing up and turning tricks to study acting, and you have Bennington Bloom.... Alternately vulnerable and self-possessed, Bloom is the main attraction of this book, but there are others: a riveting plot with menacing undercurrents and creepy details, a cast of colorful minor characters, and a happy but not sappy ending. Going Down is loaded with comical ironies . . . a wonderful, aberrant, compulsively readable novel.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “The best thing about Jennifer Belle’s appealing first novel is Bennington Bloom, the near-tragic yet fantastically winning narrator . . . Belle has created an oddly affecting character whose self-reflexive candor and wry observations add up to an astringent, darkly comic view of New York life.”

  —Elle

  “Belle combines very funny, sharply written prose and superb grasp of narrative in her debut novel.... The arresting combination of her caustic wit and insightful observations makes for a wickedly hilarious sense of humor evoking Dorothy Parker. . . . Belle’s riotous, vivid debut has the energy and gritty appeal of New York City itself.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  Also by Jennifer Belle

  Going Down

  High Maintenance

  Little Stalker

  FOR CHILDREN

  Animal Stackers

  (illustrated by David McPhail)

  RIVERHEAD BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

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  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

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  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196,

  South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2010 by Jennifer Belle

  The author gratefully acknowledges permission to quote from “The Tongue,” from Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid. Copyright © 1990 by Jamaica Kincaid.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  RIVERHEAD is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The RIVERHEAD logo is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Belle, Jennifer, date.

  The seven year bitch / Jennifer Belle.

  p. cm.

  ISBN : 978-1-101-54836-3

  1. Motherhood—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3552.E53337S

  813’.54—dc22

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For Andrew Krents

  and our sons,

  Jasper and Shepherd

  . . . and for Carmen

  Mariah was forty years old. She kept saying it—“I am forty years old”—alternating between surprise and foreboding. I did not understand why she felt that way about her age, old and unloved; a sadness for her overcame me, and I almost started to cry—I had grown to love her so.

  —from Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid

  Part One

  In Bed with the Trents

  1

  As I walked along Waverly Place to meet my friend Joy for dinner, I saw a girl in her twenties leisurely crossing the street, and something about her brought that whole decade of my life back to me. I had never seen this girl before, but I knew her. I knew that what she was doing now was just getting through the years until she had children. She was planning, as she walked, what she was going to do that night to ward off loneliness. She wasn’t thinking of it that way, but that’s what she was doing.

  She planned a trip to Italy with her girlfriend, calming herself with the knowledge that one day she’d be going on a honeymoon there instead. And she sewed a tail onto the back of her leggings on Halloween to go to some party, sure that one day she’d be zipping her child into his dragon costume. And on dates, she looked into the eyes of the stranger across the table from her, wondering if this would be the man to give her children. Once one had asked me if I would like to go for a drive in the country to look at the “foilage.” And I knew I did not want a man who pronounced foliage “foilage” to be the father of my children.

  Of course not all girls felt this way—I knew plenty who didn’t want children—but this one did, I could tell. And until it happened, she would look in toy store windows, planning for some future Christmas, stuffing a stocking that wouldn’t be hung for ten or even twenty years.

  Watching women walk down the street, I could tell which had children and which didn’t. It wasn’t a judgment, just a fact. Women with children were always in just a little bit of a hurry and women without weren’t.

  And I, I realized right then, really loved being in a hurry.

  As I entered Pastis, I tried to shake off the fight I’d just had with my husband, Russell. He had thrown out my can of Diet Coke before I’d finished it, and I had blown up because it was always happening. The house could be a complete mess—he hadn’t cleaned anything or washed a dish in our whole marriage—but for some reason he would take it upon himself to throw out my soda. “I was enjoying that!” I had screamed like a lunatic. I tried to remind myself to be happy that I had the kind of husband who could stay home with the baby while I went out to dinner. He was the publisher at a small press he had started himself in our living room called Trent Books. He was a lawyer, and one day, right after we were married, his best friend, Ben, sent him a novel he had written. Russell read it and called me from his office.

  “Ben’s book is so fucking great,” he said. “I’m leaving the firm. I’m going to start a publishing house and publish it.”

  “What’s it called?” I said, thinking he was on track to make partner in less than three years and that his friend Ben was an idiot.

  “Shoes and Socks,” Russell said.

  “Shoes and Socks,” I had said, and something in my voice when I said it—“Shoes and Socks?” or “Shoes and Socks!”—infuriated him and put a wedge between us. He never felt I was behind his publishing venture and rightfully so, even though he loved it more than anything in the world.

  “Obviously, you’re gonna have to carry us for a bit. But I’m okay with not having my own office. I’ll work out of our apartment,” he had said, never thinking it might be a sacrifice for me to live in an apartment filled with boxes, desks, and office equipment. Plus, “carry us for a bit” was an understatement, as Russell believed for some reason that “all authors deserved to be paid for their hard work.” The truth was I had personally funded Shoes and Socks and countless other similar mast
erworks.

  I didn’t know why I got so angry at Russell all the time, but I did, and I hated myself for it. But not as much as I hated Ben and the other volatile, desperate, impoverished, needy, ungrateful authors who made up Russell’s list and called at all hours and slept on our couch when they were on their “book tours” in New York.

  This was Joy’s first time back in New York since she’d moved her perfume company to LA—she still had a small shop on Mulberry Street but her factory and flagship store were in LA—and I tried to savor the anticipation of eating steak with béarnaise sauce and complaining with her about our husbands, and that’s when I realized that I just couldn’t picture myself married to my husband in five years.