Upper East Side #5

by Ashley Valentine

  Jaylen was already zipping up his coat in preparation to leave. “I'll make everyone my famous peach schnapps cocktail!” He lifted up his shirt and batted his eyelashes. “Jaylen's Fuzzy Navel.”

  Sounds delicious.

  Kaliq still hadn't figured out why Jaylen seemed to be living at Mercedes's house when he had a perfectly good hotel suite at the Christiana, the luxury hotel in town where his parents were staying.

  The piano player began to play an old Michael Jackson song, and the lights dimmed. Happy hour was over. Chanel could kind of tell by the look on Kaliq's face—and Mercedes's comment—that he and his girlfriend needed some time alone. She pushed her chair back and pulled her sweater on over her head. “It sounds tempting, but we actually have to get back. I told Mom we'd meet her and Dad for dinner at the lodge at seven-thirty. We need to take showers and stuff.”

  Mercedes's face fell. “Oh, come on. Can't you just call your parents and tell them you're busy?”

  Easy for her to say. She basically didn't have any parents.

  Chanel glanced at Cairo, and they did that wordless communication thing that only close siblings can do. “Sorry,” she said firmly.

  Kaliq didn't know how he'd wound up with a senseless girl like Mercedes when his former girlfriend and best friend-who-happened-to-be-a-girl seemed like the most sensible girls alive.

  Mercedes got up and then sat down in Kaliq's lap, letting her head fall back against his shoulder. Her dark, wavy hair smelled like beer and cigarettes. “We'll just have to party without you, then.”

  Porsha smirked. “Too bad.” Her smirk morphed into a winning smile. “Should we go then?” she asked Cairo. “I'm starving!”

  Jaylen sat down primly on Mercedes's knees, wriggling his bottom back and forth. Then six of the Dutch snowboarders got up and piled into Jaylen's lap, squashing Kaliq completely. All except Jan, who was watching Chanel get ready to go with a droopy, abandoned-puppy look on his handsome face.

  “Enjoy your dinner,” Jaylen called out. “We'll just have a manwich!”

  Porsha and Cairo hastily collected their gloves and sunglasses and headed for the door. Chanel tucked her hat under her arm, following close behind. Then she heard Mercedes let out a shriek, and she turned around. The entire group had fallen off the chair and collapsed in a giggling heap on the floor. Jan had jumped on top of them, and even Kaliq seemed to be smiling despite himself.

  Chanel looked on longingly. She had always been right there at the center of all the fun, but now she was stuck with Porsha and Cairo, who were so entranced by each other, they barely acknowledged her existence. Still, her parents would be waiting. She couldn't exactly blow them off and sabotage the rest of her vacation.

  She turned for the exit again. There were five more days of vacation left, and she was resolved to have a good time no matter what. Wasn't that what she'd always been known for?

  Well, yes, among other things.

  25

  Damien dried the last bowl and set it on the dish rack to dry. “I have to go.”

  Bree put down the brownie she'd been munching on. They'd baked twenty, and there were only twelve left. She licked the crumbs off her fingers and gazed up at Damien with her long-lashed baby-doll eyes. She was tired of guessing. She wanted to know the truth. “Where?”

  Damien leaned against the cracked kitchen counter and fiddled with the buttons on the dishwasher. Marx, the Hargroves' fat black cat, was splayed out on the grubby kitchen floor, asleep. Damien cleared his throat, and Marx flapped his tail up and down in annoyance.

  “I have errands to do,” he told her vaguely.

  “Well, can I come?”

  He kicked his feet around and blew out of the side of his mouth. “It's really not very interesting.”

  Bree wasn't convinced. “You're not, like, hiding something from me, are you?”

  He laughed. “Like what? I'm really Spider Man?”

  Bree's face turned hot. She walked over to the fridge, opened the door, then let it slam shut again. “I don't know. I just think it's weird, the way you're always busy doing stuff and you never talk about it.”

  Damien put his hands in his pockets. “If you really want to come, you can come.”

  Bree tried to keep her face calm. This was it. She was going to find out all the secrets that lay behind Damien, mystery boy and megazillionaire. “Okay.”

  They took the 96th Street bus across town and then walked down Park toward the building on 70th Street. The avenue felt deserted in the dark, with everyone away on vacation.

  “It's just a couple more blocks,” Damien told her. Bree's whole body tingled with anticipation.

  When they reached the building with the green awning, the door man tipped his hat to Damien. Then they rode the elevator straight up to the penthouse.

  “Whoa,” Bree gasped, when the elevator doors opened up onto the parlor. The room was done in black and white and gold. A round gilt table stood in the middle of the marble floor, with a giant white vase in the shape of a swan on it, filled with black roses. To the left was a sort of gold-painted railing and stairs down to a room so big, it could only be a ballroom.

  “I know. It's kind of insane,” Damien agreed. “Here, Daphne!” he called

  Immediately Bree heard the scratch of nails on the floor. The giant white mastiff she'd seen Damien walking before trotted into the parlor, wagging her tail elegantly. She went over and licked Damien's hand. “Good girl.”

  Bree watched in dumb amazement as Damien opened the coat closet door and retrieved Daphne's Burberry coat and matching collar. The dog waited carefully while he buckled them on. Then he knelt and Velcroed those horrible pink leather booties over her paws. “There. We're all set to go.”

  Bree still couldn't figure out why Damien's parents didn't just get one of their maids to walk the dog, but she wasn't about to say anything, especially not when Damien obviously loved Daphne so much.

  “We'll just take her for a little spin around the neighborhood. I have to pick up some hairspray for Madame at the drugstore. Maybe you could hold her while I go in?”

  “Okay.” Bree kept her eyes on Daphne's boots. He called his mom Madame?

  They stopped in front of Zitomer on Madison. Bree took the plaid canvas leash while Damien went in to get the hairspray. She bent down, and Daphne offered her a pink-booted paw. “I bet he lets you sleep in his bed,” she said. “I bet you're allowed on all the furniture.”

  Damien came out of the store carrying a huge shopping bag full of lots of bottles of the same kind of hairspray. He chuckled. “Madame uses this stuff a lot.” He took Daphne's leash, and they walked briskly back to the building with the green awning. “I still have to feed her and water the plants and stuff. It's really not very exciting. Do you want to get a cab home, or can we walk you to your bus stop?”

  Bree didn't know what to say. It was almost as though he didn't want her in his house. “I guess I'll just take a cab,” she answered stiffly.

  “Okay. Walter will help,” Damien said, nodding at the doorman. He kissed Bree's cheek. “Don't eat any more brownies today or you'll get sick. I'll call you later, okay?”

  Bree smiled grimly at him and walked over to the curb to catch a cab. It was a while before Walter could snag one, and as soon as he closed the door behind her and she gave the driver her address, Bree collapsed in the backseat, sobbing.

  The cab got stuck waiting for the light at the corner next to Damien's building, and she glared at it miserably through her tears. Just as the light changed and the driver turned the corner, Damien walked out of the building and headed uptown.

  “Wait,” Bree ordered the driver. “I changed my mind. I'm getting out.” She paid him quickly and leaped out, hurrying up Park Avenue after Damien.

  He kept walking uptown until he reached 81st Street. Then he turned right, crossing Park and then Lexington. She jumped behind a pile of garbage bags as Damien turned in at a three-story brownstone and walked down two steps to the below-groun
d entrance. He got out his keys and unlocked a black metal gate. When he pushed it open Bree could see two metal garbage cans with a racing bicycle leaning against them. Then he closed the gate and disappeared inside.

  She remained crouched behind the garbage for half an hour, half expecting him to come out again with another dog in tow. But he stayed inside, and she thought she could see a TV flickering behind the thick gray curtains in the windows. Finally, she gave up and went home.

  Just when you think you know someone, you find you don't know them at all.

  26

  On his second day of work, Mekhi didn't even try to find the post office. Instead, he stood on the end of the pier and one by one dropped the six letters from Sig Castle's outbox into the Hudson River. One of the letters was addressed to Mystery Craze, care of Rusty Klein, which gave Mekhi a smug sense of satisfaction. For all he knew, Mystery was so friggin' internationally famous she might even get the letter, washed up on a beach in Sicily where she would be giving a reading to a bunch of drunken fishermen.

  He stared into the brown swirling water, thinking about all the girls he'd ever had anything to do with. Chanel and Yasmine and Mystery and Elise. Not all of them had gone so well, especially that last little episode with Elise. But next year he'd be off to Brown or whatever college would take him, and he'd have four very different experiences with four bizarrely different girls to carry with him always. Wasn't that what being a writer was all about—having experiences and translating them into meaning with words? Something like that, anyway.

  He was a published writer. He knew what he wanted to do with his life. That was a hell of a lot more than most people his age could say. So what kept him feeling so…unhinged? It was like he was constantly looking for something, just looking and looking.

  Sig Castle had asked him to buy some kind of special rice paper in a store down in Chinatown once he was finished with the mail, so after finishing his fifth Newport, Mekhi walked over to West Fourth Street and took the subway downtown.

  It was raining lightly and the street vendors on Canal were hawking fake Burberry umbrellas and those disposable plastic rain ponchos only desperate tourists wore in sudden downpours. Mekhi meandered down the wide crowded street, taking his time. The air smelled of wet newspaper and fish from the Chinatown fish markets. It made him think of Yasmine. She was quintessentially perverse, a lover of bad smells and ugliness. It was what he most loved about her.

  Liked, Mekhi reminded himself. How could you claim to love something about a person you weren't even talking to anymore?

  He stopped and watched a vendor demonstrate a battery-operated plastic pink toy shaped like a UFO with three little Japanese girls sitting on top of it, spinning and revolving to a Japanese pop song that sounded sort of like SugarDaddy—Yasmine's sister's band—on speed. The toy was just the sort of device Yasmine would use to open one of her films. She'd zoom in on the toy and then cut to a girl dancing by herself in a club. Yasmine created meaning with images the same way Mekhi did with words.

  He walked down Broadway to Pearl River Mart, a huge store that carried just about everything, from plastic Buddhas to rubber boots. He found the nearest thing to Siegfried Castle's favorite ultrathin, ultrasoft, impossible-to-get-a-paper-cut-from rice paper and then headed back over to Canal to the vendor with the pink UFO.

  “I'd like to buy that, please.”

  “I have a new one here,” the guy said, ducking down to pull a mint green UFO toy out from under the table the pink one was spinning on.

  “No. That one,” Mekhi insisted, pointing at the pink toy. Pink was such an un-Yasmine color, she'd have to see the humor in it, and at least he knew it worked.

  “Two dollars,” the man said, even though the cardboard sign taped to the side of the table said, $3!! “It's on sale.”

  Mekhi handed over some of Sig Castle's change from the rice paper. His boss was such an asshole, he got a certain satisfaction from fucking him over every chance he got.

  “Have a good day,” the guy said, handing him a bright blue plastic bag with the pink toy in it. Mekhi was pretty sure there was a post office over on Bowery Street only a few blocks away. He could mail the package to Yasmine from there before taking the subway back up to work.

  Funny, he'd never thought to mail the Red Letter mail from there!

  Sig Castle had made it sound crucial that he get his rice paper before lunch, but it was even more crucial that Yasmine get her UFO, Mekhi decided. It was imperative.

  “Send it next-day,” he told the postal worker behind the counter after he'd bought a box and taped it up. “It's important.”

  27

  "Okay, I'm ready,” Chanel said after smearing a little moisturizer on her face and running a brush through her still-damp hair once or twice. Of course she looked beautiful—she couldn't help it—but she could have given the locals a real treat and at least worn a little makeup.

  “Well, I'm not.” Porsha leaned over the bathroom sink to apply some mascara. A white towel was wrapped around her head and her freshly polished nails were barely dry. “Aren't you even going to blow dry your hair?”

  “Nope.” Chanel looked at her watch. Cairo was waiting for them in the lobby, and she'd barely gotten a chance to talk to him alone since they'd arrived. “I'll meet you downstairs, okay?”

  “Fine,” Porsha answered distractedly. She didn't know why Chanel had to be in such a hurry. This was their first Sun Valley party, and she for one wanted to look good. Cairo had been so attentive and was always so completely adorable that tonight might just be the night she said, Yes, oh yes! “What's the rush, anyway?” she asked.

  Chanel blew out her breath. “What's the point of making an effort? It's not like I'm going to be flirting with somebody's brother all night!”

  Porsha screwed the top back on her mascara and glared at her friend's reflection in the bathroom mirror. “So you're mad at me because of Cairo?” She dug around in her cosmetics bag for her lipstick.

  Chanel kicked the door frame with her fuzzy sheepskin boot. “I'm not mad. I'm just…”

  Jealous?

  Chanel sighed noisily and turned around to yank her powder blue parka from the hook by the door. “I'll see you downstairs,” she mumbled, as she hurled herself out the door.

  “Don't worry,” Porsha called after her. “I'm moving back home when we get back!”

  “Aren't you cold?” Kaliq took off his well-worn, navy blue Brown sweatshirt and offered it to Mercedes. He slept in the sweatshirt for luck sometimes. As if the Brown admissions office was going to overlook the fact that he'd been busted by the cops for buying weed just because he liked to sleep in their sweatshirt.

  Mercedes was walking around in her orange panty-and-bra set while Jaylen, Josef, Sven, Ulrich, and Gan played Xbox. Maybe they are all gay, Kaliq thought hopefully. Even so, he didn't like it when Mercedes walked around in her underwear. She was too…too…naked, and her nakedness was supposed to be reserved for herself and him. After all, she was his girl. Well…wasn't she?

  “Why don't we go upstairs?” he whispered suggestively in her ear. He'd imagined that he and Mercedes would spend the majority of their time in Sun Valley in bed having lots of sex. But he'd never even taken his pants off in her presence. Not once. And it wasn't that Mercedes was actually a serious prude under all that flaunting and nakedness. She was just too busy being crazy and guzzling mood enhancers to lie still for a second and let him kiss her.

  “What's upstairs?” Mercedes asked, lighting a cigarette. Her wavy hair was pulled over one shoulder and her long legs were crossed.

  Kaliq shrugged. “I just thought we could…you know… hang out.”

  Any normal girl would have looked into his green eyes and gone all prickly and faint at such an invitation. But Mercedes was too screwed up even to notice how cute and irresistible he was.

  In other words, she was an idiot.

  She cocked a suspicious eyebrow at Kaliq. “You didn't smuggle in weed without telling me
, did you?” she asked hopefully.

  “Nah.” He reached out and touched her hair, smoothing it over her shoulder. “I just thought we could use the privacy,” he said, his body turning hot at the suggestion in his voice.

  Mercedes swung her legs over the arm of the wooden chair she was sitting on. It had been carved by Indians out of birch trees and then painted orange.

  Butt-ugly, but probably worth a fortune.

  There was a honk outside. She placed her feet on the floor and swiped Kaliq's sweatshirt out of his hand. “Guess I should put something on,” she mumbled, yanking the thing over her head as she headed for the front door. Her butt cheeks peeked out from under the navy blue sweatshirt, somehow making her look even more naked than before.

  “Thank God you're here,” Mercedes told the bemused delivery guy. She pulled a bottle of Stoli out of the crate on his dolly and cracked it open. Then she grabbed the remote control for the ten-disc CD player and clicked it on. An old Rihanna song came on—"Rude Boy."

  “You can set up the coolers out by the hot tub.” Mercedes pointed at Kaliq with the bottle of Stoli. “He'll show you where it is.”

  Down in the lobby of the Sun Valley Lodge, Cairo was talking to a bunch of ski patrol guys about the day's big rescue. Some dude had been showing his girlfriend how to ski backward and had skied right into a tree. A branch had impaled him right in the ass.

  “It was pretty gnarly,” Chanel heard one of the ski patrol guys say.

  “What was?” she asked, climbing into Cairo's lap. He draped his long arms around her, and she burrowed her cheek into his chest, hungry for attention. “Mmm. You smell nice and clean.”

  The ski patrol dudes sipped their beers and looked on enviously. If only they each had their own model-gorgeous sister to snuggle with.

  “Hey, where's your friend? The one with the cute little…haircut?” one of them asked.