Dream Girl

by Lauren Mechling

  “He’d read some articles of mine, and I guess he saw a posting for the position on the NYU Web site. His introductory e-mail was so great I offered him the job sight unseen. But when I saw him, it turned out he was really…experienced.”

  “You mean old?” Becca asked. So maybe she was paying attention after all.

  Douglas nodded. “At least sixty. And now I feel terrible asking him to do anything. I give him coffee and tell him to make himself at home in my office.”

  “Sweet deal for him,” Becca said.

  Things were going so smoothly, before I knew it we were standing outside the diner’s entrance.

  “All right, ladies,” Douglas said. “I’ll leave you to yourselves.”

  “Hey,” Becca said, glancing my way. “Why doesn’t he join us?” She turned back to Douglas. “Sounds like you could use some young company to even things out with your intern.”

  I was amazed by her blasé affect. If I ever tried to ask somebody’s family friend to join me for dinner, well…I wouldn’t. I just don’t have that kind of moxie. The totally surprising thing was, my family friend accepted. Douglas seemed happy not to have to go straight home.

  Becca made a beeline for a window booth and pulled a bulky leather organizer from her bag. It was like a portable museum, its pages stuffed with old letters and postcards and ticket stubs. As she flipped through, a pile of pictures fell onto the table.

  “Tell me the name of the animal shelter you work at, will you? My mom’s always looking for new volunteer opportunities.”

  “Sure thing,” Douglas said. “But it’s a homeless shelter.”

  “Oh, that’s fine, too,” Becca said. “She says she’ll do anything but Red Cross. She can’t handle the sight of blood. I can handle anything…except, maybe, volunteering.”

  Douglas and I exchanged “I can’t believe she just said that” looks.

  “I’m not a bad person, I swear,” Becca went on. “I had a bad experience doing community service at boarding school. I used to walk this old lady’s dog and…”

  “And what?” I pressed.

  “You’re going to think worse of me.”

  “Too late,” said Douglas. “Out with it.”

  “It peed all over my boots.”

  “Isn’t that a famous fairy tale?” I asked.

  Douglas grinned. “Piss in boots?”

  Becca laughed. “Very good. Anyway, before we get completely off topic, what’s the name of your shelter? For my mom?”

  Becca wrote it down, then tidied up the snapshots that had fallen all over the table. “Pardon my organizational skills.” She paused to look at a picture and smiled. “Andy just gave these to me. Aren’t they funny?”

  The first picture showed a young boy in a suit holding a grumpy-looking infant—presumably baby Becca. In the next picture, a toddler was laughing while her older brother blew raspberries on her stomach. And the third picture showed the two of them on a green lawn. Andy was jumping through a sprinkler while Becca, now five or so, was cutting paper dolls.

  “They’re all from my grandparents’ farm in the English countryside. I used to sit out there for hours with paper and scissors,” Becca said, taking the pictures back. “I guess I was easily amused.”

  I felt a strange jolt in my stomach. The picture looked familiar, but I didn’t know why. I stared at it and tried to figure it out. When the waiter came over, he said something to me, but all I heard was a whooshing sound.

  Becca had to nudge my leg. “Coke and cheese fries for you, too, my dear?”

  I just nodded and tried my best to act as if everything were completely normal in my world. Then I attempted to make that falsity a truth.

  I pulled myself together, and by the time our food came, it felt as though we’d known each other for longer than twenty-four hours, and our conversation moved easily from one topic to another. We touched on bad middle school fashion trends, Becca’s love of all things zombie/horror/vampire, and whether ketchup was originally made from mushrooms and anchovies, as Becca insisted it was.

  “I don’t buy it,” I said.

  “Trust me,” she said sternly. “I know my condiments.”

  “You know something, Claire?” Douglas asked, pouring a packet of sugar into his tea. “Something’s telling me not to mess with her.”

  Becca ducked under the table. She came up holding a retainer I hadn’t even noticed her wearing and balled it up in her napkin. She shrugged apologetically. “Sorry. It’s usually less gross than that.”

  “You girls are funny,” Douglas said, shaking his head.

  “No offense, but you need a girlfriend,” I told him.

  “Wow,” he said. “What a perceptive insight.”

  “Let’s help him find somebody,” Becca blurted out, turning from me to Douglas. “Do you want us to be your life coaches?”

  Douglas smiled. “I haven’t tried one of those yet.”

  “Remember when I snuck onto Mom’s computer and gave you that great horoscope about waking up in the land of love?” My favorite thing about Mom’s weirdo job was playing around with other people’s fortunes.

  “How could I not?” Douglas said.

  “Am I missing something?” Becca asked, and Douglas filled her in on Mom’s secret identity.

  “She is not!” she squealed. “I read the Planet every week. Seriously, your mom’s Priscilla Pluto—the lady in the turban?”

  “Yup. You actually saw that turban tonight. Under everyone’s dinner.” I waited to see if her face registered what I was saying. It didn’t. “We used the tablecloth for the picture.”

  Becca scrunched her eyes tight and looked as if she’d just taken a bite of a mud sandwich. “I don’t know why that’s so disgusting, but it is.”

  “Hey,” I said, “I’m not going to disagree.”

  The night only got more fun, and we ended up staying in our booth forty-five minutes after Douglas paid the bill. Even Douglas, who should have gone to sleep hours earlier, hung around until the bitter end.

  Later on, as I lay in bed staring at the glow-in-the-dark star stickers on my ceiling, something strange happened: I found myself wishing Mom and Dad would have their potluck salons more often.

  { 10 }

  Ace in the Hole

  Henry Hudson’s rebels came in the same flavors as they would at any big school—we had our goths, our graffiti artists, even a sprinkling of spandex-clad girls who, in the right light, resembled backup dancers in a low-budget hip-hop video.

  But the afternoon social hour didn’t last very long. By five o’clock, the area outside the building was deserted. Once they’d put in their mandatory after-school face time, my fellow students all ran off to the library, club meetings, or advanced placement prep.

  Becca and I didn’t have such obligations. We agreed that there was no point in studying just for the sake of grade grubbing, and besides, we were doing pretty well for ourselves without even trying. All our tests were multiple choice, which made things easy. Becca had a photographic memory, and as long as I studied for a few minutes beforehand, I could usually work out which of the four options was right.

  My intuition failed to serve me in other respects, though. I still had no idea how to get a conversation going with my classmates, and I was perpetually at a loss for the right comeback whenever a BDL would come along and say something obnoxious. There was some solace to be found in the fact that Becca was having integration problems of her own—there was only one kid at school whose name she knew. That would be me.

  In any other circumstances, it was doubtful we would have become so close. After all, Becca was tall, aloof, and oddly worldly for fifteen—everything I was not. But we were both stranded on the same island, and every day after school let out, we both wanted to get away as fast as we possibly could.

  Becca and her boyfriend had broken up for reasons she wouldn’t get into, though she didn’t seem too troubled by his disappearance. On the days when she didn’t have voice lessons, we�
��d go on little field trips, alternating who got to come up with ideas. Her picks: seeing the Audrey Hepburn movie Charade at Film Forum, going to Belvedere Castle in Central Park, and wandering around Little Tokyo scouting fancy shoelaces. My picks: walking across the Brooklyn Bridge to go to the best chocolate shop in DUMBO, visiting Partners & Crime mystery bookshop, and looking through the racks of astronomically priced dresses at Upper East Side consignment shops.

  One Wednesday, I decided we should go to Trudie’s, a knickknack store in Herald Square that boasts a real genie in a bottle, but when we showed up, the door was locked and the lights were out. The sign in the window said: GONE FISHING. BACK NEXT WEEK.

  She turned to me. “Now what?”

  We were used to having all day to plan where we wanted to go. With the pressure on like this, my brain turned to oatmeal.

  “Um, do you want to go up to the Waldorf and meet Kiki?” I asked. “I heard they’re doing the James Bond press junket.”

  “Nah. I hate action movies.” She fiddled with her white lace headband, and I could tell her mind was racing. “Wanna go see Night at the Asylum? I think it’s opening today. Lemme check.”

  She pulled her phone out of her bag and tapped a button.

  “Damn it,” she said. “Again.”

  “It’s not working?” I asked.

  “No, no, I’m just…” She looked around at the people surrounding us, then down at her phone again, and frowned. I could tell she didn’t want to talk about it.

  “What is it?” I said softly, as if talking to a cat that was figuring out whether it should be afraid of me.

  “I keep getting these weird text messages.”

  “Weird how?”

  “Somebody just decided to tell me they like my headband. And they called me Alice. Hilarious, right?”

  “Like Alice in Wonderland?” I asked. “Why are you upset? It’s a compliment—probably from someone at school or something.”

  “I guess.” She shrugged. “But why do these compliments have to come from a number that’s unrecognizable. It feels like someone’s watching me.”

  “You just have a shy admirer, that’s all.” I smiled, an attempt to bring some levity to the situation.

  “Or a creepy one.” She pressed her lips together. “Anyway, you up for the movie?”

  “Night at the Asylum?” I shook my head. I hate horror movies. “Hey—we can go watch Louis play tennis. He gets so arrogant on the court, it’s almost a horror movie. And you still have to meet each other.”

  “Some other time. I’m not really down with spectator sports…. Oh, here’s an idea.” One of her eyebrows drew up her forehead. “Let’s go shopping at Bendel’s.”

  “I don’t even have twenty dollars on me.” Not that twenty dollars would have done much good. The one time I’d set foot in Henri Bendel, I’d been with my dad, and he’d gone white as a Kleenex when he realized the pair of socks he wanted to buy my mom cost $45.00, not $4.50.

  “We don’t have to buy anything.” Becca’s enthusiasm was building; it was as if the text message moment had been wiped from history. “Trust me, it’ll be fun.”

  “I don’t know…” I looked over her shoulder and stared at a flock of tourists who were all wearing huge purple LIVE WITH REGIS AND KELLY T-shirts. “Why don’t we go see a TV taping?”

  “Sure, when you get us tickets. I think the waiting list is like six months.” She grabbed me by the arm. “Now, do you want to walk or take the bus?”

  When we entered the department store, I couldn’t remember why I’d been so reluctant to come. Urns of fresh flowers filled the lobby, and the shoppers moved about with blissful expressions on their faces, as if they’d all just had massages. Something about the subdued lighting and counter people’s easy smiles made me feel floaty, too.

  Slightly dazed, I let Becca guide me past counter after counter of cosmetics, my eyes darting from one mysterious product to another. There was an inverse relation between price and fluid ounces; the going rate for a Pink Pearl eraser–sized vial of Alphoxa Vitralift was nearly the Voyante family’s monthly rent.

  Soon we were up to the designer dress floor, which was thronged with unnervingly skinny women, all weighted down with shopping bags. “Those are what we call social X-rays,” Becca whispered as she scooped up a few gowns. “My mom once went to a chichi Halloween party dressed as one, but it didn’t pan out.”

  “The ladies found it offensive?”

  “No, the skeleton T-shirt and pearls combination was lost on everyone, and she ended up having to hold up a sign. She looked like a cabbie at the airport waiting for a social X-ray. A total bust.”

  “Sounds it…. You wanna get a bite?”

  Ignoring my question, Becca blew across the floor and asked a saleswoman with spiky red hair for a fitting room. “Big enough for two, please,” she specified in a sweet but assured voice. Almost as if she’d done it a thousand times.

  The fitting room was as big as the Hudson auditorium, and outfitted with two black leather chairs. In the corner, a purple and yellow orchid had been propped up on a waist-high glass box filled with glossy pebbles. There was even a framed print of an eggplant on the wall. Was it possible there were people who knew this place existed and didn’t make a point of spending their every free second up here?

  Barely two seconds after we’d closed the door, the saleswoman rapped on it. “Everything all right in there?” she asked in an aggressive, fake-helpful voice.

  “We’re fine!” Becca called back. She had already taken off her long navy cashmere sweater and was shimmying into a cream-colored gown with a crystal-studded cowl-neck. “Though there is one thing.”

  “Yes?” the saleswoman replied.

  Becca zipped up her dress and opened the door. “If you have anything to eat, we’re famished. Maybe a sandwich tray?”

  I glanced at the pile of ten-thousand-dollar gowns heaped on the floor and nearly burst out laughing. As if there were any chance Miss Snooty was going to bring after-school snacks to a messy, half-dressed fifteen-year-old and her slack-jawed friend.

  But what did I know?

  The saleswoman nodded timidly. “Of course.”

  “B, what did you just do?” I asked after Becca had shut the door and unzipped her dress.

  “It’s an old trick I picked up. They’ll do it for their favorite customers, but even if you’re not their favorite customer and if you ask them to do it, I guess they can’t say no. Discrimination or whatever.”

  “That’s funny. I doubt that when our founding fathers were coming up with the Bill of Rights, they had free sandwich at Bendel’s privileges in mind.”

  “Well, equality’s equality.” She stepped into another dress, with a corset bodice and a bow in the back. “Can you zip me up?” As I pulled on the slider, I suddenly felt a tingle of uneasiness. I couldn’t put my finger on why exactly, but something about this afternoon didn’t quite stack up. I wasn’t going to complain—I was having fun, and I was starving—but still, something was up.

  “What do you think?” she asked, sizing herself up in the mirror.

  “Honestly? It’s a little baggy.”

  “Yeah, and in all the wrong parts.” She cupped her hands over her boobs and sighed, then took the dress off and threw it at me. I tried not to stare at her body. It was tall and creamy, slender without any bones poking out. In other words, flawless. “Your turn.”

  “Oh, I’m not really in the mood.”

  “The mood?”

  “For you,” I said, my voice growing meeker, “to see my butt in its voluminous glory.”

  “That’s too bad. If you don’t uncover your ass, I don’t know if I’ll be in the mood to share my sandwiches with it. And the chicken salad is beyond yummy. I’m convinced it has something to do with an abuse of butter.”

  The thought set my tummy growling, and a few wheezes and hops later, I was in the dress.

  Becca was circling me. “It’s epic.”

  “Thanks a
lot,” I snapped, glancing in the mirror to see exactly how big the dress made my butt look.

  “Not your rear, dum-dum. The dress.”

  Until then, I’d forgotten about the dress’s bow, which was a perfect distraction from my gargantuan backside.

  “Wow. It is nice,” I said in shock. I twirled around and ogled this polished version of myself in the three-way mirror. It was me, but better. A lot better. “Would it be weird if I sewed a bow on the back of all my clothes?”

  “Not if you don’t mind looking like Minnie Mouse.” Her expression perked up. “Did you hear somebody knocking?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said, but she’d already disappeared into the foyer. And she returned a moment later holding the most sumptuous tray of miniature wrap sandwiches and pastries I’d ever seen outside of France.

  “Rub-a-dub-grub,” she said, pushing the orchid aside to set the tray on the table. The door sailed closed behind her.

  But before it clicked completely shut, it opened again. Standing in the doorway was a tall girl with a glamorously disheveled hairdo and numerous gauzy scarves coiled around her neck. For a second I thought she worked for the store and had come to scold us for abusing the secret VIP sandwich service. Then I noticed the two brown and white striped Bendel bags dangling from her wrists. One of the bags was ordinary sized, and the other was tiny—was it possible somebody this young needed fountain of youth potion?

  “Becca!” She stormed into the fitting room, stepping on a pile of dresses that was easily worth ten college educations. “I thought I heard your voice.”

  I looked over to my friend, hoping for an explanation, but the new girl had already hijacked her attention, holding her by the elbow and firing off meaningless snippets like “Your hair looks so cute!” and “Isn’t it mobbed here?” between air kisses.

  And just when the room was feeling as cramped as humanly possible, two other girls came charging in. They looked like slightly more sophisticated BDLs, with their hooded sweatshirts, tight black pants, and shoulder-grazing earrings. They were pretty, in an airbrushed way, and they both cut me vague smiles. Now at least I had a shot at getting introduced.