Damien smiled politely. “Um…I'm not sure if I know…”
Mekhi leaned over and whispered loudly in Damien's ear, “Allen Ginsberg. ‘A Supermarket in California.’ Easy.”
Bree kicked her brother's foot under the table. Did he have to be such a wiseass?
Rufus gritted his teeth. “But I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep,” he challenged, his muddy brown eyes bulging as they stared Damien down.
He withered under Rufus's relentless gaze. “Um…”
“Dad!” Bree cried for the third time. “God.” She knew her father was only trying to do his wild-and-wonderful-dad bit, overcompensating for six other nights that week when she and Mekhi had eaten takeout in front of the TV, but didn't he get the hint that poetry was not Damien's thing?
“Well, even I know that one,” Elise piped up. “Robert Frost. ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.’ I had to memorize it in eighth grade.” She turned to Mekhi. “See, I kind of do know something about poetry.”
Rufus speared a bratwurst and slapped it onto Damien's cracked blue plate. “Where do you go to school, anyway?”
Damien wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Smale. The Smale School, sir.” His eyes darted across the table to Bree, who smiled encouragingly.
“Hmm,” Rufus responded, picking up a sausage in his fingers and biting it in half. He washed the bite down with a gulp of wine. “Never heard of it.”
“It specializes in the arts,” Mekhi said.
“And poetry isn't an art?” Rufus demanded.
Bree couldn't eat. She was too mad at her dad. Normally, he was kind of nice in a gruff and grumpy kind of way. Why did he have to go and be so mean to Damien?
“So, a job at Red Letter,” Rufus said, changing the subject and raising his glass to Mekhi. “I still can't believe it.”
Rufus had a trunk full of unread unfinished poems in his home office, and although he was an editor himself, he had never been published. Now Mekhi was having the writing career he'd never had.
“'Atta boy!” he growled. “Just don't start talking in phony accents like all those other bastards.”
Mekhi frowned, remembering Siegfried Castle's difficult-to-understand German accent. It had sounded pretty authentic to him. “What do you mean?”
Rufus chuckled as he dug into a banana. “You'll see. Anyhow, I'm proud of you, kid. You keep this up, you'll be a distinguished poet by the time you're twenty.”
All of a sudden, Damien stood up abruptly. “Excuse me. I have to go.”
“No!” Bree jumped to her feet. She'd imagined they'd eat quickly and then Elise would leave and she and Damien would go into her room and kiss for a while and maybe do their homework together. She might even paint his portrait if he let her. “Please stay.”
“Sorry, Bree.” Damien turned to Rufus and held his hand out stiffly. “It was nice to meet you, Mr. Hargrove. Thanks for the delicious dinner.”
Rufus waved his fork in the air. “Don't get too used to it, son. Most of the time we eat Chinese.”
That was true. Rufus's idea of grocery shopping was to buy wine, cigarettes, and toilet paper. Bree and Mekhi would have been malnourished if they hadn't been able to order in.
Bree escorted Damien to the door. “Are you okay?” she asked worriedly.
Damien grinned his shy, cracked-tooth grin and smiled down at her from his great height. “Yeah, I just thought we'd eat a little earlier. I need to get home and—” He stopped, frowning as he wound a brand new looking, red-and-black cashmere scarf around his neck. Burberry, the tag on the scarf read. Bree had never seen him wear it before. “I'll text you later,” he added before disappearing down the hall to catch the elevator.
Bree went back to the table, and Rufus raised his bushy eyebrows at her bemusedly. “Was it something I said?”
Bree glared back at him. She had no idea why Damien had left so suddenly, but blaming her dad was the easiest solution.
“Oh, come on, Bree,” her father continued heartlessly. “So he's not the sharpest tool in the box. He'll probably make a good boyfriend, though.”
She stood up. “I'm going to my room.”
“Do you want me to come?” Elise offered.
Bree thought Elise looked pretty happy sitting next to Mekhi and talking about poetry. She'd even helped herself to a glass of wine. “No, that's okay,” she mumbled. All she really wanted was to lie facedown on her bed and brood over Damien, alone.
Elise took a sip of her wine. “I should go in a minute, anyway.” She glanced sideways at Mekhi while still looking at Bree, as if to say, So, guess what? I really like your brother. “I'm thinking of writing a poem when I get home.”
Yeah, right…
When she got to her room, Bree stretched out on her single bed and stared sullenly across the room at her paints and empty easel. She was positive Damien wasn't dumb, even though that Robert Frost poem was pretty well known. Actually, he was probably a lot smarter than the rest of them, just in less obvious ways. She remembered the first time she'd laid eyes on him in Bendel's before they'd met on the Internet. It was in the cosmetics department, and he was poking through the Bendel's signature cosmetics bags, the only male shopper in the whole store. What had he been doing there, anyway? It was a mystery.
And what about that random observation he'd made yesterday about that woman in the fake mink coat? Or his new Burberry scarf? He seemed to know a lot about…nice things. And why hadn't he invited her home yet? His house was probably gorgeous. And he'd never once even mentioned his parents.
The mysteries of Damien just kept piling up. And there's nothing a girl likes better than decoding the secrets of a mysterious guy.
10
The second night of their visit, Yasmine's parents took her and Ruby to the gallery where their found-art sculpture exhibit was showing.
The gallery was huge and bright, with pale wood floors and white walls. In the middle of the largest room stood a brown-and-white shire horse, happily devouring a supersized Caesar salad out of an enormous wooden bowl. Beside the horse was a blue plastic bucket with a pitchfork sticking out of it. Whenever the horse pooped, the stylish girl behind the desk near the door of the gallery would jump out of her swivel chair to shovel it up with the pitchfork and dump it in the bucket.
Yasmine's twenty-two-year-old sister Ruby stroked the horse's nose and fed him peppermint Tic Tacs, the gallery lights bouncing off her purple leather pants.
“That's Buster. He's sweet, isn't he?” their mother, Gabriela, asked, admiring the horse. “We found him eating romaine in our community garden. His owner was an angel to let us borrow him.” She pulled her long gray braid over her shoulder and stroked the end of it. The guady African caftan she'd chosen to wear that evening hung from her broad shoulders like a purple, yellow, and green tablecloth with a hole cut in the top for her head. Shunning fashion altogether, Gabriela preferred “tribal costumes” and liked to think of herself as a “global fashion model.” She was even wearing Mexican moccasins made from the hides of wild pigs.
Buster was sweet, but what made him art? Yasmine wondered. She went over to something nailed to the wall, only to discover that it was a chain of metal cheese graters. Some of them even had dried bits of orange cheese stuck to them.
“You're probably thinking, ‘I could have made that,’” her father, Arlo Richards, observed.
“Not really,” Yasmine replied. Why the hell would she want to make a chain of cheese graters?
Arlo shuffled over to her wearing a dusty black wool cape, an ankle-length hemp skirt—yes, that's right, a skirt—and white canvas tennis shoes. Gabriela was responsible for dressing him, otherwise he wouldn't have bothered with clothes at all. His gray hair fanned out around his head, and, as usual, he looked gaunt and alarmed. Yasmine was pretty sure the alarmed part was from all the cocaine he'd taken when he was younger. And who knew, maybe he was still taking it.
“Close your eyes and run your hands over them,”
Arlo instructed, reaching for Yasmine's hand.
Yasmine closed her eyes, wondering if this was the moment when she would come to understand the brilliance and purpose of her parents' work. She allowed her father to run her fingers over the pointy, sharp nubs of the graters. It felt exactly like touching cheese graters, nothing more and nothing less. She opened her eyes.
“Creepy, huh?” was all Arlo said, his hazel eyes twitching.
Creepy was right.
Across the room, Ruby and Gabriela were standing over a pot of dirt—another one of their found-artworks—giggling like ten-year-olds.
“What's so funny?” Yasmine asked, thinking they were probably talking about one of Ruby's weird musician boyfriends or something. Then she noticed that even the snooty girl behind the desk had cracked a smile. “What?” Yasmine repeated.
Arlo chuckled and ran his paint-stained fingers through his gray hair, looking incredibly pleased with himself. “There are seeds in that dirt,” he whispered, his eyes popping. “You know, seeds!”
Huh?
Yasmine had always been a loner at school, with her shaved head and her penchant for wearing only black, but usually her solitude was voluntary. In this case she wanted to get the joke, she really did. But she just didn't. And if her parents thought art was a horse eating salad or some kitchen utensils tacked to a wall or a pot of dirt with seeds in it, there was just no way they'd ever understand the dark intensity of her morbid, subtle films. And there was no way she was ever going to share her work with them.
“Ready to skedaddle?” Gabriela called over from the pot of dirt. The family's hippie art-school friends, the Rosenfelds, had invited them to some sort of art benefit, and they'd decided to drag Yasmine and Ruby along.
“Where are we going, anyway?” Yasmine asked skeptically as they stood outside the gallery, waiting for a cab. She imagined spending the rest of the evening dancing barefoot around a fire in some sculpture park in Queens to beckon the spirits of spring or some equally lame hippie nonsense.
“Somewhere called the Frick. It's on Fifth Street, I think.” Gabriela started to dig around in her shapeless purse, which a friend had constructed for her out of recycled tractor tires. “I've got the address written down somewhere.”
“It's Fifth Avenue,” Yasmine corrected. “I know where it is.” And she was pretty sure there weren't going to be a whole lot of men in skirts there, either.
No, but it would be a lot more fun if there were.
11
The Frick had been the New York residence of Henry Clay Frick, the industrial-era coke and steel magnate. Mr. Frick was a great collector of European art, and after he died, the mansion was turned into a museum.
The Virtue vs. Vice benefit was in the Living Hall, a large oak-paneled room laid with a Persian carpet and displaying paintings by major sixteenth-century artists. At the middle of one wall stood one of Soldan's bronze sculptures, Virtue Triumphant over Vice. The huge round tables were set for the party with cream-colored linens and sparkling silver, and in the centers stood a ten-inch-high replica of the same bronze sculpture, surrounded by a wreath of purple tulips.
Not that anyone was paying any attention to the art.
Women in custom-made couture gowns and men in tuxedos milled around the tables or stood by the bar, nibbling on crackers and cheese and talking about everything except art.
“Did you see the Crenshaw girl in that new perfume advertisement?” Titi Edwards murmured to Misty Harrison.
“The phony tear was just too much. I thought it was rather exploitative, didn't you?” Misty declared. She nodded pointedly as Chanel and Porsha followed Chanel's parents into the room before the two girls veered off to find something to drink.
“Your boobs must stick out further than mine.” Chanel hiked up the black strapless dress she'd borrowed from Porsha. They wore the same size bra, so she'd thought the dress would stay up fine, but every time she took a step, she could feel the dress inching floorward.
“Yeah, but you're skinnier.” Porsha wasn't about to admit it, but Chanel's pink cocktail dress had been gradually ripping under her arms and in the seams in the bodice ever since she zipped it up. Every so often she'd hear another little rip as the threads gave way, but hopefully the dress would hold up until they got home.
Everyone seemed to be drinking cocktails, but the cocktail servers were nowhere to be found. “Why are we here again?” Porsha whined.
“I don't know. It's just one of those things,” Chanel answered regretfully.
It was true, everyone was getting dragged to the Virtue vs. Vice benefit with their parents tonight. Of course they all knew the only reason their parents insisted on them going was so they could compare them with one another and talk about what colleges they'd applied to and who was already in early and generally drive them out of their minds, since those were definitely their least favorite subjects at the moment. Plus, there couldn't be a stuffier venue for a party.
Like, come on, a party at the Frick is like a party at your grandmother's country house.
Porsha preferred to party sans parents. The only cool thing was that their parents would all be so busy trying to impress one another that they wouldn't bother scolding them for smoking in the powder room. Actually, if they did anything even slightly embarrassing their parents would probably just pretend that they didn't know them.
“Well, if they don't have Ketel One vodka this year, I'm leaving,” Porsha grumbled. Last year she'd had to settle for Absolut, which was so old-fashioned, it was practically prehistoric.
“Isn't it wonderful to see those two girls together again?” Porsha's mother breathed in Mrs. Crenshaw's ear. “It was no good when Chanel was away at boarding school. We girls need to keep our friends close.”
“Yes, quite,” Mrs. Crenshaw agreed coolly as she averted her eyes from Eleanor's pregnant belly. She and Eleanor had always been friendly, but a baby at nearly fifty was simply too vulgar. And that fat, loud real estate developer she was married to was a little hard to take. “Oh, look, there's Misty Harrison. Let's go and say hello.”
Misty had left Titi Edwards arguing with her daughter, Imani, about whether Imani should get a car for graduation or not, and now Misty was sitting alone with her son, Jaylen, gossiping as usual. She was a severe woman in a gold gown and vintage jewels, and he was a deceptively handsome devil in a gray Prada suit with green pinstripes.
In fact, Jaylen really was the devil, and he was always looking for new ways to express his evil. But be patient, we'll get to that.
“Pushing fifty and nearly seven months along,” Misty whispered to her son. “What does your friend Porsha make of it?”
Jaylen shrugged as if he could have cared less. At Chanel's big New Year's Eve bash, he'd sidled up to Porsha and proposed that she give up her virginity to him, since he was rather an expert at deflowering. To his irritation, Porsha had flatly refused. Lately he'd been experimenting with being gay, if only to stave off boredom. Or to have an excuse to wax his eyebrows.
“She probably made herself puke a few extra times,” Jaylen observed callously, referring to Porsha's little bulimia problem, which was hardly a secret. “She'll be out of the house soon after the kid's born, anyway.”
“I heard Porsha's going to a clinic right after graduation to take care of her problem once and for all,” Misty Harrison noted. “Isn't that right?”
But Jaylen had stopped listening. Across the room a little drama was unfolding, and he didn't want to miss it.
Kaliq hadn't even laid eyes on Porsha since she'd stalked him all the way to rehab in Greenwich, Connecticut a few weeks ago. During her one and only appearance in group therapy, the counselor had forced her to admit out loud in front of the group that she was bulimic, although Porsha had insisted on calling it “stress-induced regurgitation.” Kaliq might have been amused by Porsha's dramatic appearance at the clinic, but at the time he was just beginning to hook up with Mercedes, and two crazy girls at once were simply too much for
him to handle. Thankfully, Porsha saw right away that her plan of attack had backfired and promptly decided that rehab was beneath her.
As if she really wanted to spend Saturday afternoons talking about how she occasionally stuck her finger down her throat instead of shopping for shoes. No, thank you.
And what about Chanel? Kaliq couldn't even remember the last time he'd seen her, but as always she looked glamorous and poised, in that charming, understated way of hers. Usually Kaliq liked to hang out in one place at parties and let people come to him if they felt like talking, but he decided to go over and say hello. Why the hell not? Even if Porsha wouldn't speak to him, Chanel would.
Chanel was the first to see him coming. She flicked her cigarette, ashing on the mansion's priceless marble floor. “Kaliq Braxton,” she declared, partly to warn Porsha, but partly out of pleased surprise. “Our long-lost Kaliq.”
“Fuck.” Porsha stamped out her cigarette with the pointy heel of one of her black satin Louboutin shoes. “Shit.”
Chanel wasn't sure if Porsha was cursing because Kaliq was the last person on earth she wanted to see or because Kaliq looked so devastatingly sexy in his classic Armani tux. After all, there's nothing more breathtaking than a delicious boy in a tuxedo, even if you're supposed to be hating him.
“Hey.” Kaliq kissed Chanel quickly on the cheek and then tucked his hands into his tuxedo jacket pockets, smiling cautiously at Porsha. She was twirling her ruby ring around and around on her little finger like she always did when she was nervous. Her short haircut made her cheekbones stand out more, or maybe she'd lost some weight. Anyway, she looked sort of…fierce. Fierce and delicate at the same time. “Hey, Porsha.”
Porsha dug her fingernails into her palm. She needed another drink. “Hello. How's rehab?”
“Over. At least for me. That girl I'm seeing—Mercedes—she's still there.”
“Because she's a drug addict?” Porsha responded, tossing back the last of her vodka.
Upper East Side #5 Page 4