Book Excerpt: Three Bedrooms in Chelsea by Ireland

The following is an excerpt from the book Three Bedrooms in Chelsea: A Novel
by Liz Ireland.



Chapter 1

Uzbekistan or Bust

"Edie! You'll never guess -- the Times is sending me to Tashkent!"

Edie Amos stared at her boyfriend, Douglas, as he quivered with excitement
in the doorway of their apartment. It was eleven o'clock on a Friday
morning. Douglas never came home this early.

"Sending you where?" She worked late nights slinging fettuccine Alfredo at
tourists in the theater district, so she suspected she was still partially
asleep and hadn't heard him correctly.

"Tashkent, Tashkent," he said, bobbing on his heels like a little kid about
to pee his pants.

"Tashkent . . ." Geography was one of those holes in her education. She had
gone through school at the tag end of that blissful window when educators
didn't want to stuff too many facts into kids' heads. Part of that
generation of Americans condemned to blunder around Trivial Pursuit boards
in vain pursuit of the blue pie wedges. "That's in . . . ?"

"In Uzbekistan. Isn't that fantastic? It's like my life's big dream has
finally, finally come true!"

Give the guy another moment, and he would break into highlights from Man of
La Mancha.

From the rapturous glint in his green eyes, Edie was certain Douglas
expected her to receive his incredible news with grace and selflessness.
With shared joy, even. And Edie did make a valiant attempt to curve her lips
into some semblance of a smile. But she couldn't. She just couldn't. Her
lips had gone as numb as the rest of her.

Uzbekistan? Uzbekistan was Douglas's big dream?

Apparently she had missed, or maybe just forgotten, a conversation somewhere
along the way . . . the one in which her boyfriend confided that his life's
big dream was to travel to remote former Soviet bloc countries. She couldn't
remember Douglas ever mentioning big dreams, period. Or even middling ones.
She'd assumed that living here in New York in this apartment with her was
his dream.

"Can you believe it?" Douglas, flushed with happiness and so animated that
he was practically tap-dancing in front of her, was completely oblivious to
her lack of enthusiasm. "I get to leave on Sunday!"

He might as well have doused Edie with ice cold water, which wouldn't have
been a bad idea in any case. She was floored. She felt like all those
cartoons featuring a guy walking down the street who has a piano drop on
him. Emotionally she was just two legs sticking out from under a Steinway.

"This Sunday?"

"Of course!"

Of course. In his eyes she could see him mentally ticking off the list of
things he had to attend to in two short days. Laundry. Phone calls. Packing.

Girlfriend dumping.

He ruffled her hair as he skipped past her on the way to their bedroom. Her
heart sank. Their bedroom. This was the first bedroom, the first apartment,
Edie had ever permanently shared with a guy.

Well. She'd thought it was permanent.

"I bought my e-ticket before I left the office," Douglas chattered as he
scanned the closet for his bags. "Dontcha love the Internet?"

She stumbled after him, trying to process it all. Don't panic, she told
herself. Don't jump to conclusions. He hadn't said anything about breaking
up. Going to Uzbekistan wouldn't necessarily be fatal to their relationship.

"When are you coming back?"

He twisted around with a look of astonishment. "Edie, don't you get it? I'm
being transferred."

"Transferred?" That sounded fatal. Her voice rose. "Why didn't you tell me?"

His eyes dilated in surprise at her reaction. Apparently, the fact that she
wasn't sharing his Uzbek bliss was finally beginning to penetrate his
cranial matter. "Because I didn't know. How could I? This is all a big
surprise to me. The guy who was there had a heart attack, and he's flying
home for a triple bypass."

"So this is just temporary."

"They're not sure. It's sort of up in the air."

Up in the air? That made it sound as if he could be gone forever.
"Uzbekistan . . . it's so far . . ." She would have to rustle up an atlas.
And what she didn't know about the political situation there could fill an
encyclopedia. It sounded uncertain . . .

She would also have to start skipping "The E! True Hollywood Story" and flip
over to the news a little more often.

"Why are they sending you there?"

His jaw dropped. "It's just one of the hottest places in the world at the
moment, that's all."

"Dangerous, you mean," she said, hysteria rising in her throat.

"Not really. Not yet. What with the rebel groups gathering on the border
with Turkey . . ."

Her breath caught.

"There's political instability, but no real violence," Douglas said with a
shrug, already sounding like a seasoned pro. If it were possible for a voice
to swagger, his did. "A good journalist knows when the danger's serious
enough to require him to pull out."

The key word in that sentence being good. It wasn't that Edie doubted his
prowess. Douglas just didn't have that much experience . . . didn't speak
the language . . . hadn't even been out of the country as far as she knew,
except to go spend a week in the Caribbean each February. Why were they
sending him?

Why my boyfriend? she thought selfishly. For the past few months, whenever
Edie had thought of her future, Douglas had been in it. Now he was just
blithely leaving New York. Leaving her.

They hadn't been dating long, but their relationship had seemed so solid. A
month ago she had agreed -- at his invitation -- to move into his apartment,
which she'd had the sneaking suspicion he'd rented with an eye to having her
share with him. It was preposterously big for a bachelor, an argument he had
used to wheedle her out of her matchbox-sized Brooklyn efficiency. It hadn't
taken much arm-twisting, of course. She had thought it was so romantic that
he wanted to share his life with her.

"I never knew you wanted to go to Uzbekistan."

"It's not Uzbekistan particularly," he said, shifting his feet. "It's the
opportunity to be a foreign correspondent. It's what I've always wanted."

"Since when?" The question exploded out of her. "When did you decide this
was what you wanted? Last month you were talking about trying to find a job
on local TV news."

He clucked. "That was just a whim."

He always had whims. "And this isn't?"

He turned impatiently and put his hands on her shoulders, almost as if to
give her a firm shake. "Edie, this assignment is a plum -- and it just
dropped in my lap! I hate the idea of us being separated, too -- I'll miss
you like all heck -- but this is too good an opportunity to turn down."

Like all heck. Edie wanted to cry. Half the time she found his leftover Iowa
farmboy phrases irritating, but now they seemed so cute. Now he would be off
saying "like all heck" and "dollars to donuts" in a country where no one
could appreciate how sweet they were.

"I hate the idea of your leaving."

He leveled a disappointed gaze on her. "I can't believe you're being like
this. Do you think that if you got a big acting opportunity to make a movie
somewhere far away that I would try to discourage you? I wouldn't dream of
it!"

"You wouldn't?" she asked. "Not even for a second?"

"Of course not. I'd encourage you."

His eagerness to send her packing on this nonexistent movie shoot didn't
strike her as flattering. And the difference was, a movie wrapped in a few
months, tops. Whereas this new assignment of his sounded completely
open-ended.

But deep down she knew he was right. She was being ungenerous. She just felt
so resentful -- of his job . . . of Uzbeks . . . of the way he was so happy
about something that made her feel as if she were about to go into cardiac
arrest.

His hands dropped from her shoulders. "Anyway, it's not like we're married."

"No." They hadn't even gotten around to buying a couch yet. Now the odds of
them ever being joined in wedded bliss were probably even significantly
lower than the odds of them ever getting a Jennifer convertible sofa for the
living room.

It was almost too much for her to take in. They had met at a bar in the East
Village four months ago. From the first night, Douglas had pursued her with
an intensity that had overwhelmed her. It was the first time she'd actually
felt courted. The guys she had known before Douglas were more interested in
hooking up and then moving on than settling down. But they had mostly been
actors. Douglas, with his stable career, his farmboy background, Jiminy
Cricket enthusiasms, and general togetherness had bowled her over. She'd
thought she was so lucky. She'd finally thought she was getting it all
together.

Now it was all falling apart again.

"Hasn't our relationship meant anything to you?"

He stared at her with unveiled impatience. "How can you even ask that?"

"Because you acted as if it meant everything. You acted as if this was
something permanent. You even begged me to give up my apartment to move into
this place!"

"I never begged."

"Yes, you --" Okay, maybe he hadn't. "Well, you asked."

He tossed an empty, flaccid-looking canvas duffel down on the bed. "Because
we were together, and it would be more economical."

Her breath caught. "You mean it was all about economics?"

He rolled his eyes. "Edie, c'mon. You're going nuts here. Of course being
with you has been special. But we're single, and this is part of the reason
we are single -- so we can jump at opportunities like this. Both of us."

Copyright © 2004 Elizabeth Bass

(Excerpted from the book Three Bedrooms in Chelsea: A Novel by Liz Ireland;
Published by Kensington; June 2004; $12.95US/$17.95CAN; 0-7582-0543-0)

For more information, please visit Liz Ireland's Web site,
www.liz-ireland.com or www.writtenvoices.com.