Love and Chaos: A Brooklyn Girls Novel

by Burgess, Gemma

  “But I have to run The Dahlia over to Julianne Moore!” Philly is panicking again. “Her PA just pulled it for a movie premiere tonight!”

  “I can take care of The Angel!” I say quickly. “I know how to do that. I can do it. It’s really no problem, I, um—”

  Sarah narrows her eyes at me for a moment, thinking, then nods.

  “Okay. That would be great. Thanks, Angie.”

  I clear my throat, feeling kind of foolish. “Can I, uh, can I get something to change into once I take the dress off?”

  Sarah grins and throws me a gym bag from underneath her desk. “Hope you like spandex.”

  CHAPTER 45

  By the time the day is over, I feel like my world has shifted on its axis. Not a lot. Just a little. But enough to make me dizzy.

  First I clean, steam, and courier the dress to W.

  Then I help one of the other designers fold a particularly complicated dress for shipping to Japanese Vogue. (Say what you like about the Gap, but it sure as hell taught me how to fold.)

  After that I offer to sort out the chaotic button drawers for another of the designers; answer phones; do a coffee run and stuff a sandwich in my face while on my way back; dust the shoe shelf; refold the samples because they were in total disarray; act as a fitting model for Sarah for a jacket she was tweaking; arrange three returns for dresses Sarah loaned out to other celebrities for the Met Ball; Google, print, and clip all the Sarah Drake press from last night; and silently kneel and help as Sarah fits a couture wedding dress for a private client, a Korean heiress.

  It was, in other words, the best day of work—no, the best day, period—that I have ever, ever had. Everything just felt … right.

  Being near clothes all day, seeing Sarah Drake’s next collection taking shape, is magic. Her design style is sort of old Hollywood meets sci-fi, like if Hitchcock were directing Alien, angular and very glamorous. I adore it.

  I only make one false move all day. When the wedding dress is being fitted, I notice the fabric has pulled, very slightly, around the sleeve. I point at it, silently, so Sarah can see without the Korean heiress noticing. She gives me a total death look and ignores me.

  Apparently pointing out a flaw in the dress is a bad idea. Good to know.

  My heart kind of sinks after that misstep. I wait till the Korean heiress has left and then go over to Sarah’s desk, bobbing awkwardly, feeling a little bit sick with nervousness at what I’m about to ask.

  But I have to do it. This is the first real opportunity I’ve ever had to get the job I want. I can’t fail now.

  “Um, Sarah? Thank you for letting me help out today.”

  “No problem, you’ve been great,” she says, without looking up from her laptop.

  I take a deep breath. “I know you already have one intern, but I was wondering if you could keep me in mind if you ever need a personal assistant, or anything like that—”

  She looks up at me, a little smile on her lips. “We do. Judging by the press The Angel got last night, and the volume of e-mail I’ve received today, we’re going to need another pair of hands, effective immediately.”

  “Okay,” I reply coolly, trying not to clap my hands and jump up and down. “I mean, great! What, um—”

  “I’ll work out the money tonight and we can talk about it tomorrow morning. It won’t be great, but being a junior assistant is better than being an intern, and whenever I ask you to get me lunch or a coffee, I’ll pay for you to have the same, too. I don’t do slavery.”

  “Wonderful!” God! I feel all hot and burny inside! “That’s so amazing! Thank you!”

  “Cool. See you here tomorrow at 9:00 A.M.,” she says.

  “I won’t be late, I promise.” I am grinning so hard my face hurts a little bit. “Punctuality!”

  “Right,” she says, her face breaking into a genuine, huge smile for the first time today.

  “Oh! And I’ll wash your gym clothes tonight and bring them back in the morning.”

  “Don’t rush,” she says, waving her hand. “Gives me an excuse not to work out. Where do you live, by the way?”

  “Brooklyn,” I say. “Carroll Gardens.”

  “Oh yeah? I’m in Boerum Hill. Brooklyn’s the best, isn’t it?”

  I smile. “Without a doubt. The best.”

  I never understood what people meant when they said they floated on air, but now I do.

  Because I float home to Rookhaven.

  I feel like my body is moving without me having to think about it. I feel light and free and happy. So very, very, very happy. I want to skip and sing and punch the air and jump for joy and hug the people next to me. I have a job. Ajobajobajob.

  It’s just past seven o’clock when I get home to Union Street, still wearing Sarah’s gym clothes with my studded Converse and leather jacket, smiling joyfully at everyone I see and noting, with delight, that almost everyone smiles back.

  I run up the steps at Rookhaven, past the vases of hydrangeas blooming beautifully, into the flower-filled front hallway, and shout as loud as I can.

  “I got a joooooooooob!”

  Immediately, I hear four screams from all over Rookhaven as everyone rushes out to meet me. Coco from the kitchen, Pia and Julia from the living room, Madeleine from upstairs.

  Pia: “What? What? What happened? I’ve been trying to call you all day!”

  Julia: “Pia told us about the purse thing! In the newspaper!”

  Madeleine: “Where are you working? What are you doing?”

  Coco: “I’m so happy for you!”

  So we go into the kitchen, and I tell them everything. About stalking Cornelia, about getting the dress back, about walking across Manhattan to Sarah Drake’s design studio. And then I tell them about the job.

  “It was just the best day,” I say. “I mean, I wasn’t doing anything important, you know, but she gave me a job, a real job, and she’s going to pay me and everything. So I must have done something right!”

  “That is so awesome, ladybitch,” says Pia. “I am so proud of you.”

  “I’m proud of me, too!” I say. I take a cigarette out of the pack and try to prop it between my lips, but I’m smiling so hard it keeps falling out. I put it back in the pack. Then I remember. “Hey! Pia! Did you resign today?”

  Pia bites her lip, pausing before her answer for as long as humanly possible. “No. I couldn’t do it. My life is here. My job is here. I love New York, I love Brooklyn, and most of all I love Rookhaven. I realized it when we got back last night. Being with all of you guys is where I’m supposed to be right now.… I don’t know what will happen with Aidan, but this is my home.”

  “Damn, woman, you give a good speech,” says Julia.

  “I thought you were allergic to the word home,” says Madeleine.

  “I had a slight intolerance. But I’ve grown out of it.”

  “I decided the same thing this morning,” I say. “I realized I didn’t want to leave Rookhaven, no matter what. Right about the same time that I saw the cover of the New York Post.”

  “Cornelia is a piece of work, huh?” says Julia. “I wonder if she got papped outside Le Grenouille just like she planned.”

  “I’ll check,” I say, taking out my iPhone. I Google “Cornelia Archer” and a couple of gossip site images immediately come up from her lunch with her mother. They’re both wearing Chanel, two little peas in a pod. Well, I guess Cornelia got the job she wanted, too. She’ll be a socialite wild child for a while. Until someone else comes along to replace her.

  Then something farther down the Google results catches my eye. From Fashionista, a fashion industry news site.

  EXCLUSIVE! Met Ball scandal clutch designer revealed!

  What the hell?

  I click on it, trying frantically to read the entire thing all at once, and then force myself to slow down so I don’t miss a word.

  Mistakenly identified as Prada, then Miu Miu, then Rodarte, the gold silk clutch at the center of socialite Cornelia Archer�
�s Met Ball drug scandal is by up-and-coming designer Angie James.

  The clutch, a hand-sewn gold silk palm-strap pochette, was dropped by socialite Cornelia Archer as security questioned her about her erratic behavior. Cue: two grams of cocaine spilling onto the floor in front of fashion’s A-list, cementing Cornelia’s position as fashion’s newest bad girl, and the clutch as the most talked-about bag of the night.

  But who is Angie James? Word has it she worked as muse to Dutch food photographer Anouk Brams, quit in an epic showdown at the end of last year, and has since gone underground. Our sources—and our instincts—tell us a collection is coming.

  I read it again: once to myself, and then out loud to the girls.

  “This is amazing.… Which one of you did this?” I say, staring at them. “Ladybitch? Is this you?”

  “Nope,” says Pia. “Swear to God.”

  “Julia? Maddy? Coco?”

  “Like we would even know how to do something like that,” says Julia.

  Suddenly, a lightbulb goes on over my head. I can only think of one other person in the world knows I made that clutch.

  It was Sam.

  CHAPTER 46

  Sam’s not answering my calls.

  So I’m going to him.

  I march into Sam’s Fort Greene apartment building, feeling a mixture of excitement and apprehension. I tell the doorman my name, and he picks up the phone.

  “There’s an Angie James here?… Okay.”

  He escorts me to the elevator and inserts his key to give me access to the top floor. At least Sam wants to see me, that’s a good sign, right?

  I take a second to check myself out in the elevator mirror. I changed out of Sarah Drake’s gym gear, obviously, and quickly showered and put on what, I hope, is a perfect did-you-do-my-PR? outfit: a white silk top, my best jeans, my leather jacket, and boots. I was shaking so much, thinking about what I was about to do, that I could hardly even do my eyeliner right, and ended up wiping most of it off.

  As I wait for the elevator to reach the penthouse, feeling breathless with nerves, I try to think, yet again, about what I’ll say. I want to apologize for running away, I want to ask him why he lied to me, I want to thank him for telling the world the clutch was mine and find out how he did it, and I want … I want … I want to say something I’m too scared to even think.

  In the end, I settle on four words.

  Please, can we talk?

  The elevator gets to the top, the doors open, I take a deep breath and prepare my best smile, and …

  That’s not Sam.

  A guy who is not Sam, but who reminds me very much of him, is standing in front of me. Same blond hair as Sam, but pale blue eyes rather than gray, and slightly shorter.

  “Angie. I’m Pete. I’m Sam’s brother.” He even sounds like Sam. Just a lot less friendly.

  I step slowly into the apartment, looking around. We’re the only ones here. “Where is Sam?”

  “No idea. I just got home. All of Sam’s stuff is gone, and he’s not answering his phone. I figured you might know where he is.”

  I stare at Pete and realize he’s wearing the same perfectly cut suit that Sam wore that day in SoHo when I was handing out lattes and CVs. And the same shoes: J.M. Westons.

  So they were his roommate’s shoes, just like he said. That wasn’t a lie.

  “This is your apartment,” I say eventually.

  “Yes,” he says.

  So that wasn’t a lie either. It’s not Sam’s apartment.

  “Can I ask you a few questions?”

  “Knock yourself out,” Pete says, looking at his phone.

  “Sam’s been sleeping on your floor.”

  “He has a bedroom. But he’s been staying here, yes.”

  “Did he graduate from Dartmouth?”

  “Yes. He majored in applied math.” So that was a lie. Ha! “But he got into Dartmouth Medical School and then had to drop out before the semester started.” Ah. So it wasn’t a lie. Shit. “Why?”

  “Just … trying to figure something out. And your dad…”

  “Is coming here, now, to try to find Sam.” Pete is very terse now, clearly warning me off the topic of the history of Sam and his dad. “So let’s go find him.”

  Discovering that all of Sam’s so-called lies were, in fact, not lies at all has left me reeling. They were just secrets.

  What’s the difference between a secret and a lie, anyway?

  “I really don’t know where he might be,” I say, as we wait for the elevator. “Sam and I mostly hung out at my house, you know, we couldn’t do much.… We were broke.” Pete shoots me a funny look. Ah. He doesn’t quite get the concept of broke.

  “Where did you go most often when you did go out?”

  “Wherever had free bar food that night.”

  Pete gives me that confused look again. He’s never gone to a bar for free food.

  “Wait!” I say. “I know where he might be! He was working for my neighbor. Vic.”

  “Vic? What does he do?”

  “Uh, he’s like, eighty-something years old. He does whatever the hell he wants.”

  “So what was Sam doing for him?”

  “He fixed up his kitchen and bathroom; I think he helped knock through a bedroom wall.…”

  Again, the look. Clearly Sam’s old life didn’t include helping Brooklyn octogenarians renovate their homes.

  We get outside the building, and I glance up and down the street. “I think we can get a cab up that way, and if we can’t, we can get a bus—”

  Then a town car pulls up in front of us, and Pete opens the door for me. It’s the same town car that Sam picked me up in at the playground in the rain that night. Of course. Pete has a permanent driver. This is Roger Rutherford’s son, after all.

  “Um, so, why do you live in Brooklyn?” I ask Pete, after giving the driver directions. “You do something finance-y, I’m guessing, a banker or something, so how come—”

  “How come I don’t live in Manhattan with all the other bankers?” he says, raising an eyebrow. “Don’t judge a book by its cover, Angie.”

  “You’re a book?”

  Another death stare. Wow, Sam’s brother is an arrogant fucker. Sam isn’t exactly lacking in confidence, either, but somehow … somehow with him, it’s an open, warm self-assurance. He’s kind. And sexy. And funny and silly and gorgeous and everything I want and need and love.…

  God, I miss him. I hope we can find him. I hope he hasn’t just flown to some Caribbean island to get lost for another three years.

  I stare out the window, trying to collect myself. I feel kind of panicky and wired. I was so nervous on the way up to the apartment in the elevator, all that adrenaline is still pulsing around my body, and this situation is so bizarre.

  Then a new thought occurs to me.

  What if he doesn’t even want to see me?

  I clear my throat. “Look, I don’t know if I should come with you, okay? I don’t know if Sam wants to see me. We kind of had a fight.”

  “I know,” Pete says, flicking some fluff off his knee.

  “You know?” I’m suddenly tired of Pete’s clipped arrogance. “What the fuck do you know?”

  “I know my brother told you he was broke because he didn’t want to deal with all the inevitable Rutherford questions, and because it’s just not part of who he is right now. I know he left a job because he wanted to see you again, and I know he stuck around in New York for way longer than he wanted to, just to be near you.”

  “Oh,” I say in a small voice. “I didn’t know that.”

  Pete looks over, frowning. “He’s completely in love with you, Angie. Of course he wants to see you.”

  “Oh,” I say again.

  But inside, I’m exploding.

  “Sam called in a couple of favors earlier today with a family friend who works at some fashion website. They called our father, who called me, wanting to know why I’d been keeping Sam a secret from him for the past few months.”
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  “Why did your dad think that you’d know he was back?”

  “Sam’s my only brother, Angie. He’s my best friend. Just because we’re doing different shit doesn’t mean we’re not simpatico.”

  Simpatico. What a banker word to use. Sam would never use a word like that.

  “Anyway,” he continues. “We have to find Sam, now, before Rog does, and get him to leave the city.”

  “Leave?”

  “My dad wants to kill him, Angie.”

  “You mean like…”

  Pete looks over at me. “I mean like kill him.”

  CHAPTER 47

  “I haven’t seen him,” is the first thing Vic says when he opens his front door. If I weren’t freaking out right now, I’d laugh: Vic is a terrible liar.

  “I don’t believe you,” says Pete.

  “I don’t care.” Vic tilts his head so that the few inches of height difference between them looks like a lot more. He looks at me. “You should know better than this.”

  “Vic, it’s really important we find him,” I say. “This is Sam’s brother.”

  “You’re Pete?” Vic’s face changes, just a fraction of warmth creeping in. “Okay, come on in.”

  Pete and I walk into Vic’s apartment. It’s surreal being back in the room that was waist-deep in floodwater a few nights ago. There’s no furniture, the carpet has been ripped up, and there’s a muddy, chemical smell from whatever they are using to clean the place.

  “I was just packing up some things. I’m going to Jersey to stay with my niece until the fix-up is finished,” says Vic. He turns around and stares at Pete for a few seconds, then gives him a little nod. “So what do you want to know?”

  “Where is Sam?”

  “He got a job.”

  “Where?”

  “Some yacht he was talking about, something going to Europe,” says Vic. “One of the crew dropped out at the last minute, Sam got the call. He stopped by first to say good-bye.”

  “Why didn’t he tell me?” Pete asks.

  Vic shrugs. “Didn’t want you to have to lie to your father.”