Upper East Side #10

by Ashley Valentine

  “You don’t need my permission,” she whispered. “There’s nothing I would ever forbid you to do, Kaliq. Nothing.”

  “Thanks!” He practically sprinted out of the kitchen and onto the back deck. Fumbling in the deep pocket of his cargo shorts for his iPhone, he started scrolling through his address book and quickly dialed the first entry: Anthony Avuldsen, his lacrosse teammate and the guy who’d already saved him once that summer, when he’d found himself entangled in a complicated romance with a sexy townie chick who’d turned out to be more trouble than she was worth.

  Don’t they all?

  Kaliq was on the verge of hanging up after five rings, when Anthony answered with a friendly exaggerated shout. “Whassup?”

  “Bro. Where are you?”

  “On my way to the beach,” Anthony yelled over the car stereo, blasting Future's “Wicked” so loud that his phone shook. “Can you hang out?”

  Kaliq stared out at the small, shimmering rectangular-shaped pool and the slightly overgrown lawn beyond it. The idea of mowing that grass made him want to cry; the thought of turning around and going back into that house and getting molested by Babs made him want to hurl.

  Talk about a rock and a hard place.

  “Hang out...” Kaliq repeated slowly. “Yeah, let’s do that. I’m at Coach’s place in the Bays. Pick me up?”

  “Pick you up?” screamed Anthony. “Cool, yeah, whatever. Give me ten minutes.”

  Kaliq shoved the phone back into his pocket and inhaled deeply, steeling his nerves.

  “Everything okay?” Babs opened the sliding glass porch door and trotted outside. Her purple robe had come undone and was hanging off her shoulders like a cape, revealing her lacy animal-print underthings. They reminded Kaliq of the kind of bathing suit his eccentric French grandmother had worn during a family trip to the Turks and Caicos when he was a kid.

  Oh, how alluring!

  “I’m actually not feeling that well.” He wasn’t even lying, really, since the thought of what might happen if he didn’t get out of there made him feel totally queasy. Wincing in pain—but trying not to overdo it—Kaliq let out a pathetic cough.

  “Poor baby,” she cooed, using one hand to cinch her flimsy robe closed. She placed her other palm against his furrowed brow. “You do feel a little warm.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed, backing away. “I don’t know if I can tackle the lawn today.”

  “No, of course not. We should get you out of those clothes and right into bed. I can make you some nice herbal—”

  “I should really just go,” Kaliq interrupted the disturbing quasi-porno scenario Babs was describing. He didn’t want to trade her MILF fantasies for some skanky nurse setup. “In fact, I think I hear my ride outside.”

  “You just rest and take it easy,” Babs cooed. “Don’t you worry about work. I’ll tell Coach you need a rest. He’s wearing you down.”

  “Thanks Mrs. M.” Kaliq nodded gratefully as he bounded off the porch. Forgetting that he was supposed to be sick, he whooped with delight when he heard a car horn and saw Anthony’s black BMW turn recklessly into the coach’s driveway. Saved.

  “You sure you’re just playing sick?” Anthony momentarily took his eyes off the road to study Kaliq, who was sunk low in the cream-colored reclined leather seat, shielding his eyes from the bright sunlight with his hand.

  “No, dude, I’m fine,” Kaliq assured him, fiddling with the dashboard vents so that the cool blast of AC was aimed directly at his face. “Babs was just, you know, coming on kind of strong.”

  “No shit!” Anthony laughed, turning down the stereo, which was blaring the latest Kendrick Lamar album. “This I have to fucking hear.”

  “Nothing to hear,” Kaliq mumbled, grinning despite himself. “Believe me, it’ll give you nightmares for fucking weeks.”

  Kaliq stared out the window at the landscape whizzing by. The fields of green grass, the rich blue sky, the weather-beaten enormous shingled houses, all of it blurred together, a rush of images he couldn’t separate into their various parts, almost the same way that the summer had been nothing but a stream of various moments he couldn’t separate into distinct events. He sighed. There was just something incredibly depressing about realizing that the only memorable moments of the summer had been a total bust of a party in the city where he’d been abandoned by his date, and yesterday, when he’d caught Porsha and Chanel skinny-dipping or whatever the hell they were doing.

  “I saw Porsha and Chanel naked yesterday,” Kaliq announced suddenly, reaching for the joint he had pre-rolled and stashed in somebody’s leftover pack of Marlboros that morning. He rolled down the window and lit it up.

  “Threesome?” Anthony asked, nodding at Kaliq to hand him one of the cigarettes. “You are one lucky fucker.”

  Kaliq shook one loose and passed it to his left. “Nah,” he explained, though a very intriguing mental picture was starting to take shape in his head.

  Oh, really?

  “They were, like, skinny-dipping in my neighbor’s yard,” he continued, exhaling a cloud of weed smoke out the window. “It was so weird.”

  “Skinny-dipping?” repeated Anthony, deftly lighting his cigarette and making a left turn at the same time. “No shit.”

  “Porsha, man, she’s just...” Kaliq trailed off as the image of Porsha, naked, a little sweaty, laughing at him, clouded his vision. He just wanted to hold her again.

  “I hear you, bro,” Anthony agreed, nodding vigorously. “I mean, you’ve got, like, a thing. And it’s our last summer. It’s like...fucking carpe fucking diem, right?”

  “Carpe diem....” Kaliq pondered this. Seize the day. He took another deep drag and swallowed, closing his eyes. Carpe fucking diem. What an idea. It was downright...inspiring. He turned and smiled appreciatively at Anthony. He was a genius.

  Or maybe he was just high?

  “Seriously, man,” Anthony continued, holding the roach. “I’ve been telling you, haven’t I? It’s time to get serious about having a good time.”

  Kaliq nodded. It was time for him to get serious about having a good time. Fuck Coach Michaels and his horny wife, fuck the lawn, and fuck responsibility. He was going to seize the fucking day.

  And maybe someone else, too.

  FROM: Steve N.

  TO:

  Subject: Re: Announcing Inaugural Meeting

  Date: 9 July, 16:37:07

  To whom it may concern:

  It was with great delight that I read your announcement. I desperately want to be surrounded by like-minded peers who are as passionately devoted to the power of the written word as I am.

  In the spirit of true iconoclasm, I decline to answer any of your questions. I suspect that you’re only really interested in independent spirits who aren’t willing to submit to your silly queries. Rest assured, I live by the book and I shall die by the book.

  Regards,

  Steve

  FROM: Cassady Byrd

  TO:

  Subject: Re: Announcing Inaugural Meeting

  Date: 9 July, 20:04:39

  I couldn’t believe it when I saw your posting. Right on, motherfuckers! I’m really looking forward to getting together and talking...maybe more!!!!

  My fave verb is “to love.” My least fav verb is “to hate.” You’re gonna hate how much you love me. Bloop!

  My pic is attached...

  xoxo

  CB (aka Charlotte Brontë)

  FROM: Bosie

  TO:

  Subject: Re: Announcing Inaugural Meeting

  Date: 9 July, 22:31:14

  Saw your ad. Violently intrigued.

  My favorite books: The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice

  Favorite word: Bite

  Least favorite word: Choke

  I b
it him and choked.

  As you can see from my pic, I’m a guy who likes to dress up.

  7

  “Here we are!” announced Ms. Morgan as she navigated her Mercedes into a circular, crushed-seashell driveway.

  Finally. After a grueling four hours stuck in traffic on the Long Island Expressway, they had finally arrived at the James-Morgans' gray-shingled Victorian mansion. Yasmine stepped anxiously out of the car, feeling the foreign crunch of the seashells under her feet. The sky overhead was turning a dusky sunset pink, and the air smelled like a far-off barbecue and freshly mown grass. She felt a sudden wave of relief—maybe getting out of the city really was just what she needed.

  Ms. Morgan stepped ahead of her, pushing the heavy front door open. The boys scrambled inside, jostling Yasmine, who was smiling goofily at nothing in particular. Not that Yasmine cared about these things, or usually even noticed, but she couldn’t help but gape at, well, all of it. The double-height windows framing the front entryway. The preppy blue-and-white nautical-striped bins filled with beach supplies just inside the front door. The massive living room spilling out in front of her. The inviting turquoise pool just beyond it. It was all so unlike her—but then again, everything that was like her had totally sucked lately. Maybe she should embrace the easy, sunny life that was right here, right in front of her. Maybe all that dark thinking wasn’t helping anything.

  Yasmine followed the boys into the massive kitchen, where Ms. Morgan was checking the notes the maid, gardener, and pool boy had left behind. Everything was so...taken care of. Yasmine could just see the hot summer days ahead of her: Reading The New Yorker poolside, occasionally stopping to photograph its glistening surface in black-and-white. She’d trot inside and fix herself a smoked gouda sandwich from the stocked kitchen, then eat it while wandering the perimeter of the well-manicured property, enjoying the peace and quiet.

  Home, sweet home.

  “Mommmmmeeeeee, we’re hunnnnggggrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry,” Edgar whined, snapping Yasmine out of her reverie. Oh right, them.

  “Yasmine will fix you something.” Ms. Morgan smiled and patted his head, without bothering to glance at her.

  “Right. Sure.” Yasmine set down her black duffel bag on the polished wood floor and opened the heavy, stainless-steel fridge. Inside were piles of fresh produce, containers of salad, and curried salmon filets garnished with yellow currants. Where were the cold leftover chicken nuggets, or at least the PB and J?

  Behind her, Edgar and Nils began a wrestling match in the middle of the floor. Yasmine usually let them do this, hoping they would tire themselves out like the puppies she’d once filmed at the Union Square dog run. She’d been hoping to catch a dogfight or see one of those rat-eating hawks the city had released swoop down to pick up a Chihuahua, but had been forced to settle for puggle playtime instead. She figured that eventually the boys would flop onto their backs like the dogs, their tongues hanging out to the side, panting.

  “Boys!” Ms. Morgan barked, and then smoothed her khakis. Her ivory tank top was trimmed with a thick brown satin sash. Looking at her weirdly taut face and defined cheekbones, it was hard to tell if she was thirty-two or fifty-five. “You can head upstairs to get ready for dinner.”

  She turned back to Yasmine, the wooden heels of her sandal wedges clacking on the floor. “Yasmine, we’ll be having the salmon filets, and if you could just throw together a little fresh salad, maybe a dill-yogurt sauce for the fish? That would be lovely.”

  Wait. Throw together? What did Yasmine look like, the...the...

  Help? Oh. Right. Except she’d never cooked anything but boiled ziti with jarred Ragu in her life.

  “You got it,” Yasmine told her as she started searching for dill in the produce drawer. Upstairs she could hear the boys making explosion noises and then screaming. She turned around to hold up a pile of leafy herbs—was this dill? cilantro?—when she was met with a frightening sight.

  Ms. Morgan’s skinny dimpled ass. Oh. My. God. Yasmine quickly swiveled around again. Even with the refrigerated air hitting her in the face, she could feel her cheeks burning. Loudly clearing her throat—had Ms. Morgan just forgotten she was there or what?—she turned back, holding the herbs directly in front of her face.

  She peeked out from behind the greens only to see her employer, hands on her hips, standing in only her wooden sandals, a sheer red thong, and a lacy black bra.

  “Something wrong?” she asked.

  “Um, no, of course not.” Yasmine began a sudden, uncharacteristic cuticle examination. Her hands sure were rough! But she couldn’t help sneaking a sidelong glance as Ms. Morgan, liberated woman of the twenty-first century, tugged off her bra and let it fall, oh-so-casually, onto the arm of a kitchen chair.

  Yasmine willed herself to look her boss in the face. “Um, could you excuse me for a second? I’d like to put my things in my room.” She had to get out of there.

  “Top of the third staircase.” Ms. Morgan started rooting around in her canvas tote bag, presumably for something to wear.

  Let’s hope so!

  Yasmine threw her duffel over her shoulder and took the wide wooden staircase two steps at a time. She tried to shake the image of Ms. Morgan’s thong from her mind. Who even wore thongs, besides over eager thirteen-year-olds who liked them peeking out above their low-rise jeans?

  And whatever happened to boundaries? It was as if Yasmine were the family cat, not an actual human being. She needed to be back in the real world, among people who respected her and didn’t just act like she was a piece of furniture. She’d been in the picture-perfect Hamptons for no more than fifteen minutes, and she was already ready to leave.

  Arriving at the third set of stairs, Yasmine climbed toward her attic suite. At least she’d have some privacy and maybe even a little luxury up here, right? She reached the top step, and glanced around, looking for a door she could shut. But no, the stairs went straight into the attic-room, where the pitched ceiling was so low, she had to duck to step inside. What. The. Fuck.

  Taking heaving calming breaths, she walked straight down the middle of the hot stuffy room—the only possible route she could take without ducking. She dropped her bag on the floor and tried to push the one small window open. Stuck. More than stuck. Painted shut. Shit, shit, shit.

  Yasmine stripped off her suddenly sweaty faded black T-shirt and unzipped her duffel. She pushed aside her hair trimmers and the yellow-and-black striped one-piece bathing suit that she’d swiped from Bree’s underwear drawer, looking for her black ribbed cotton tank top.

  “Great, you found it.”

  She turned to see Ms. Morgan, now thankfully wearing a white sundress, standing at the top of the attic stairs. Good, she was dressed. Yasmine, unfortunately, was not.

  This wasn’t quite the hot summer she’d had in mind.

  Air Mail - Par Avion - July 10

  Hey Mekhi!

  How’s everything going in the city? I loooooove Prague. I’ve been spending my afternoons at little outdoor cafés, pretending to sketch but really checking out all the European boys—I mean sights! (There’s no harm in looking, right?) So really the only thing I miss is you and Dad. Please write back. Don’t worry, you don’t have to send a novel, just a few lines. Knowing you, you’ll probably send a haiku.

  Love you!

  Bree

  8

  Taking the rickety Strand steps two at a time, Mekhi made it from the main floor to the basement-level employee lounge in about thirty seconds, by far a personal best. He’d been pretty down ever since last night, when he’d come home from reading the salon member e-mails with Gabriel to find a yellow Post-it note on the refrigerator addressed to both him and Rufus. It was written in Yasmine’s weirdly boyish handwriting: Off to the Hamptons for work. Will e-mail with details. Left half a turkey sandwich in fridge. –V. Mekhi had opened up the fridge to find the sandwich with another Post-it stuck to it. It said simply: Eat me. He couldn’t believe she was just...gone.

  He’d
thrown himself into work all day, trying to keep his mind off of her, which had suddenly completely paid off while he was shelving outdated biographies. The empty feeling inside of him had instantly filled with excitement. And he had to share.

  Mekhi shoved the door marked PRIVATE open with his shoulder, crying out at the top of his lungs, “Gabriel? You in here?”

  Of course it was totally unnecessary to shout, since the room was about the size of an elevator. Gabriel was inside, digging in his cruddy locker.

  “What’s up?” Gabriel looked a little startled but smiled broadly, pushing his tortoiseshell frames back up his long, slender nose. He slammed the vomit-green locker door shut. “What’s going on? I’m just knocking off for the day.”

  “You’re never going to believe what I found.” Mekhi brandished a tiny, tattered chocolate brown hardback. “The second I saw it, I grabbed it off the shelf and ran down here.” Technically, employees weren’t supposed to leave the floor when they were on a shift—there wasn’t even an only-in-an-emergency clause—but Mekhi had always lived by the rule that rules were made to be broken.

  “What is it?” Gabriel asked excitedly, stepping over the low, wooden bench that was screwed to the floor.

  “Ta-da!” Mekhi waved the book in the air above his head. “Just guess, first. Take a guess, please.”

  “I can’t!” Gabriel reached out playfully and tried to grab the book from him.

  “No you don’t.” Mekhi tucked the volume behind his back.

  Gabriel reached around him, still trying for the book. “Let me see, come on.”

  Mekhi brought the book in front of him, holding it face-up on his palms. “I hold in my hand an out-of-print masterpiece...by one of the most important midcentury American novelists... published by a seminal San Francisco publishing house...in 1952...”