“Except I’m going to need this signed,” Andrea added, pulling out a folded piece of paper from the outside pocket of her camera bag. “By your mom. Before I can give them any photographs.”
Andrea unfolded the paper. At the top was written NOTICE OF PARENTAL CONSENT FOR MINORS. It was a permission slip.
“Which means you’re going to have to tell her,” Andrea warned as they started to walk up Broadway. “And if you want me to talk to them, I’d be happy to—”
“No, that’s okay,” Lizzie cut in, taking the permission slip out her hands. “I’ll tell her tonight.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, it’s time,” she said, folding the piece of paper and dropping it into her bookbag.
“I’ll be away next week—I have a shoot down in Austin—but just fax me the release and we’ll talk when I get back.” At the corner of Prince Street, Andrea leaned down and gave Lizzie a quick, piney-smelling hug. “Good work today. And tell Carina and Hudson they really missed out.”
“I will.”
“And don’t worry about your mom.” Then she gestured to the Dean & Deluca on the corner. “All right, gonna go flirt with the cute barista. He always gives me a discount, thank God. That place is a fortune.” She cracked a warm smile just before she turned away.
Lizzie rushed down the steps into the N and R subway, her head spinning. New York Style? Was Andrea serious? She needed to talk to her mom immediately. If Andrea was really going to send in her photos, then hopefully her mom would be supportive.
“Mom?” she yelled when she walked in the door. “You home?” She pushed through the swinging door and walked into the kitchen.
In her excitement about her own photo shoot, she’d forgotten about the one that Celebrity Living was doing on their apartment that day. Through the archway to the living room, Lizzie saw her mom posed on the beige suede sofa, her arms splayed out on either side of her and her chin tilted in the air, smiling expertly. Her white Grecian-style dress fluttered in the air from a fan. A photo assistant held a silk in his hands to bounce off the light from a stand. And a makeup artist hovered nearby with a tray of lip glosses and powder. A bearded photographer wearing a skullcap stood behind his tripod and snapped another picture.
“Lizzie? Where’ve you been?” Katia asked. Years of experience had given Katia an almost supernatural ability to speak through a smile.
“Um, just hanging out with C,” she said. This clearly wasn’t the time to spill the beans.
The photographer snapped another picture and Katia released her statue-like pose. “It’s six o’clock,” she said. “And what is that?” she asked, noticing the hat.
Lizzie snatched the fedora off her head. “Just something I bought after school.”
“Is that your daughter?” asked a voice, and Lizzie turned to see a redheaded woman with quick, eager eyes walk into the living room. Lizzie could tell she was the reporter.
“Fiona, this is Lizzie,” Katia said, standing up. “Lizzie, this is Fiona Carter. The writer doing the piece for Celebrity Living.”
The woman pumped Lizzie’s hand eagerly. Perhaps a little too eagerly. Lizzie wondered if she’d seen the clip.
“What about a picture with your daughter?” Fiona asked. “The both of you on the couch. It’d be adorable and her uniform is just darling—”
“No, I don’t think so,” Katia answered quickly.
“It’s okay, Mom,” Lizzie said. “I can do the photo.”
“No, really, it’s just not something we’re interested in,” Katia said firmly, giving Lizzie a confused look. “Honey,” she said, “don’t you have homework?”
“Yeah,” Lizzie said as she turned and walked out. Sometimes it felt like she and her mom would never, ever get on the same page about anything. Just as she was starting to accept the camera, her mom thought she wanted to avoid it. Now it would be even more confusing for Katia if she heard what Lizzie had been doing.
“Your father and I are going out tonight,” Katia called after her. “Want me to order something for you?”
“No, thanks,” she yelled back.
On the way to her room, she stopped in front of the enormous gold-framed mirror that leaned against the hallway floor. She looked exactly the same as she did most afternoons when she came home—kilt crooked, hair in a thick mass around her face, her nose shiny—but something was different.
It was her mind. It was quiet. The chorus of voices that usually rose up in her head whenever she looked in the mirror—the voices that said I’m so weird-looking, I have to get rid of that, I wish that was different—all of them were gone. Now it was just her and her reflection staring back at her. No chatter.
But things with her mother were clearly more tentative than she thought. Lizzie turned into her room and dropped down on the bed, burying her head in Sid Vicious’s fur. Maybe telling her about the modeling gig—and asking for her permission to take it even further—was asking for trouble. Suddenly she remembered that she had to go over to Todd’s tonight to work on that project. Two weeks ago she would have prayed for this. Now she wished there was any way she could get out of it.
“Sid… can we just trade places for a day?” she asked her cat.
Sid stood up, arched his back, yawned, and jumped off the bed. “I take that to be a no,” she said.
chapter 14
When she stepped off the elevator into Todd’s apartment a few hours later, Lizzie was surprised to see that the foyer was dark.
“Hello?” she called out.
“Up here,” a voice called out.
She looked up to see Todd standing on the second floor, leaning over the banister and looking extremely cute in a red Vampire Weekend T-shirt and faded Levis. “There’s pizza,” he said. “Pepperoni and plain. You hungry?”
“No, thanks.” She walked up the stairs, feeling her knees tremble a little with nerves. “We should just get started on this. I’ve got a lot of other homework tonight.”
At the top of the stairs he looked her up and down and smiled. Unlike the last time she’d been to his house, she was wearing her decidedly unsexy ripped jeans and an extra-large Mr. Bubbles T-shirt. “Hey, lemme take that,” he said, reaching out for her bookbag. “That looks heavy.”
“That’s okay, I got it,” she said, stepping back. She wasn’t going to let him be all charming. “So… where shall we go?”
“Uh, in here,” he said, as he led her into his room.
Lizzie looked around in awe. Todd’s old bedroom had been just big enough to fit a set of bunk beds and a built-in desk and bookshelf. But this room looked like the presidential suite at the Mercer Hotel—and was just as cool. Half of it was set up like an office, with a chocolate leather sofa along one wall, a sleek glass coffee table, and an imposing steel desk topped by a gleaming Mac Pro. The other half had a king-size bed, a flatscreen, and a large, bleak painting of an orange spot against a gray background.
“Wow,” Lizzie remarked, dropping her bookbag on the couch. “This is your room?”
“And look at this,” he said, gesturing toward a door. He led her into an adjoining room and flipped on the light. “What do you think?” he asked, grinning.
It was a room lined with books, crammed with books, hardbacks and softcovers, new and old, on shelves that rose all the way to the ceiling. Lizzie had never seen so many books in her life, not even at the Strand bookstore downtown.
“You’ll never have to go to Barnes & Noble again,” she said, turning around in circles. “This is unbelievable. It’s like Gatsby’s library.”
“It’s my little hobby,” he said.
“Hey, what are these?” she asked, walking over to a pair of glass bookcases that stood separate from the rest of the shelves.
“This is what I really wanted to show you.” Todd bent down next to her, so close that one of his arm hairs sent her skin bristling. He opened one of the cases and she saw a series of boxes with one familiar title after another stamped in gold on the spin
e. The Old Man and the Sea. Nine Stories. The Catcher in the Rye. “They’re all first editions,” he said. “I collect them. Some of them are even signed.”
“You have a first edition of Catcher in the Rye?” she asked, agape.
“Yep.” Todd slid one of the boxes out. “Here.”
He opened the box and nestled inside was a goldish-brown book. She took it out. The dust jacket felt soft and velvety, as if years of being held had ground it down into something more precious. “How’d you get this?” she stammered.
“My dad used to take me to this dealer in Camden Town. He had everything.”
Lizzie flipped the pages, breathing in the smell of old ink. She wondered if Ava was as impressed by this as she was. She doubted it.
“This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen,” she said, handing the book back to him. “But why don’t you have Gatsby? That’d be my first pick.”
“I tried,” he said, taking back the book. “It was always the one book the guy didn’t have. And I wanted a signed copy. Those are pretty hard to find.” He put the book back on the shelf with special care, as if it might disintegrate.
“This collection is amazing,” she said.
Todd smiled sheepishly as he turned back toward his room. “I guess there are some perks to my dad’s midlife crisis.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know we didn’t always live like this,” Todd confided. She followed him back into his room. He fiddled with his iPod on his desk. A soft, slow rock song began to play on the speakers on either side of his bed. “He thinks spending money’ll keep him young,” he went on. “Or dating a twenty-two-year-old model.”
Lizzie sat on the edge of his bed. His bed. Almost without thinking, her pulse began to rise. Calm yourself, she thought.
He flopped down on his back next to her. “Her name’s Chloe,” he said, grimacing. “Fake boobs, fake teeth, and she’s really into India.” Todd made a yecch sound. “My dad used to laugh about guys like that. Now he’s one of them.”
“Maybe it’s just a phase.” Without thinking about it, she leaned back on the bed so that they faced each other.
“Except I get to watch him in it day and night.” He stared past her at the painting on his wall. “It’s just depressing. Seeing him so different. Sometimes I think I shouldn’t have come back here.”
“I think you should have come back here,” she said.
Todd’s enormous blue eyes looked at her so closely she almost stopped breathing. “You do?” he asked.
“Hey, this song’s pretty,” she said abruptly. “What is this?”
“Band of Horses. I saw them in London at the Hammersmith. Wait.” He touched her arm. “Listen to this part. Right here.”
Just then the song opened up into a shimmering chorus:
When eyes… can’t look…
At you any other way…
Any other way
Any other way
“Such a good part, right?” he asked. His face was so close that she could see his white front teeth just past his parted lips.
“It’s pretty,” she murmured.
The chorus repeated:
When eyes can’t look…
At you any other way
She lay on her side, her head resting in her hand, facing him while they listened together. The music crowded around them both, enveloping them, carrying her softly away…
Until the squawk of a cell phone made her jump. It was a sped-up version of the James Bond theme. Todd’s phone on the desk was ringing.
“Hold on,” Todd said, sitting up. He reached past her for the phone. For a quick second, she saw the name on the screen. AVA.
She sat straight up. The room spun as she felt a massive head rush.
“Hey,” he said quietly into the phone. “Can I call you back in twenty minutes?”
She got up, went to the couch, and sat down next to her backpack. Of course it was Ava. He had a girlfriend. How could she have almost forgotten that?
“Okay, I’ll call you right back,” she heard him say, and he hung up.
“So do we want to do a short story, a play, a screenplay?” she asked, all business, unzipping her bookbag. “Or a television series? That might be more fun.”
Todd seemed taken aback. “Um, a screenplay might be cool,” he said, sounding a little disappointed.
“Great,” she said, taking out her notebook. “Just what I was thinking. Okay, what’s the premise?”
The music had changed into something loud and jangly. Todd got up and turned it down with his remote. The moment was definitely over. She wasn’t a girl who stole guys away from their girlfriends. She and Todd were going to be just friends if it killed her.
But as they plotted out a story for their project, she scribbled an urgent note to herself at the top of the page.
BUY THAT BAND OF HORSES SONG!!!
chapter 15
“So there’s one good thing about working for my dad,” Carina declared the following Saturday as the three of them stood in line at a Korean deli. “Remember I said I’d get back at him? Well, I think I figured out how.” She placed her toasted sesame bagel and Snapple bottle on the counter and handed the elderly woman behind the cash register a hundred-dollar bill. “Can I get change?” she asked.
Hudson and Lizzie traded a look behind her in line. “You’re gonna ‘get back’ at him?” Lizzie said, holding her turkey and Swiss wrap. “Are you serious?”
“What are you going to do? Draw on his Basquiats with Magic Marker?” Hudson asked, taking a green apple from the basket on the counter.
“This isn’t a joke, you guys,” Carina said, unwrapping her buttered bagel. “Coach Reynolds was so upset I couldn’t play this season he actually called my dad up—at home—and begged him to let me stay on the team. But he didn’t even listen. And then today I had to practically give blood so Creepy Manservant would let me leave the office and come meet you guys. And it’s Saturday!” Carina brushed her hair off her shoulders and took another buttery bite. “It’s insane. I have no leverage in this family at all!”
Hudson and Lizzie looked at each other again. Lately Carina had started to use corporate lingo, like the word leverage.
“But it’s more than that,” Carina argued. “He’s forcing me to turn my back on the stuff I love. And forcing me to live his life. And there’s nothing I can do about it. Nothing. It just makes me so angry.”
They walked out of the deli and onto Sixth Avenue. It was the first brisk day of the fall, and the city air had that autumn smell of woodsmoke and peppermint.
Lizzie pulled the black fedora closer to her head and zipped up her corduroy cropped jacket. “So what’s your big plan?” she asked.
“Okay,” Carina said, dropping her voice as if she were planning a bank heist. “I came across this file on Jurgensenland. You know, that charity thing my dad does in Montauk? Well, they supposedly raised two million bucks from it for Oxfam. But it looks like they really raked in three million.”
“So what does that mean?” Hudson asked. “What happened to the rest of the money?”
“I think he took it,” Carina said. “I mean, I’m not entirely sure yet, but it looks that way.”
“But your dad doesn’t need another million dollars,” Lizzie said. “That’s like pocket change to him.”
“Duh,” Carina said. “I know. That’s the point. But where else could it go?”
“Do you really think he would do that?” Lizzie asked. “I mean, I know the Jurg is obsessed with making money, but would he do something that unethical?”
“My dad loves money more than he loves people,” Carina assured them, tossing her bagel bag into the garbage. “He totally would.”
“So what are you gonna do?” Hudson pressed.
“Just let it slip out,” Carina said slyly. “Send in the file to the Smoking Gun. Just put it out there. No one’ll know it’s from me. And people’ll finally see who he really is.”
“But if
he finds out it’s you, he’ll kill you,” Lizzie said, pulling open her bag of chips. “Not to mention it would really suck for him.”
“I know,” Carina said, trotting along on her new suede Adidas. “But it’d be so worth it. Just for the look on his face.”
“Oh, C,” Hudson groaned, unwrapping her string cheese. “Can we talk about this when I’m done with this album? My mom’s been stressing me out about it.”
“I thought she was going to be ‘hands off,’ ” Carina said, making air quotes.
“Uh, right.” Hudson gave a rueful chuckle in between bites of apple. “She’s never been hands-off anything in her whole life. Especially me. And especially music.”
“But this is your album,” Lizzie pointed out, wrapping her new Indian scarf closer around her neck. “You’re not even on her label.”
“I don’t have to be on her label. I’m her kid. But don’t worry,” Hudson said. “I’ve talked to her. And I have the coolest producer ever. He’s a genius. And a Pisces.”
“How old is he?” Carina asked, getting right down to it.
Ever since her crush on their sixth-grade art teacher, Mr. Thurber, Hudson had always liked older guys, and even adult men. Lizzie and Carina thought it had something to do with the fact that she’d never met her father.
“Twenty-eight, and no, I don’t like him,” Hudson said, nudging Carina. “And speaking of guys,” she said, taking Lizzie’s arm, “you haven’t said a thing about your Todd Piedmont study date.”
Lizzie hadn’t stopped thinking about that moment in his room for days. But she wasn’t quite sure how to talk about it. “It was good,” she said casually. “He was really nice. I think we’re friends now.”
“Friends?” Carina looked at her skeptically. “Really?”
“Yeah. We talked. And listened to music in his room.”
“What’d you listen to?” Carina asked, tossing her empty bagel wrapper into the trash.
“That song ‘Detlef Schrempf’ by Band of Horses.”
“What?” Carina shrieked, stopping in her tracks. “Hel-lo! That’s totally a hook-up song!”
The Daughters Page 11