by Jenny Lee
Steven nodded and continued, “But … she’s currently caught the attention of Count Vronsky and may be a little under his spell right now. But hang tight, ’cause no girl lasts long with him.” Steven was sorry to give his friend the bad news, but he felt he owed it to Dustin to clue him in on who he was up against.
Dustin furrowed his brow, digesting the news. “Please tell me ‘Count’ is a nickname and not his actual official title.” Steven told his pal that it was indeed a nickname, but one born from a rumor that Vronsky’s father’s lineage could be traced back to a legit Russian royalty. The second theory on why he was known as “the Count” was because it took five minutes for him to count all the girls who had dropped their panties for him, but Steven kept this part to himself, instead adding, “But, seriously, Lolls thinks the Count’s a passing fancy and you could be the slow and steady tortoise that wins Kimmie for a prize.”
“Race,” Dustin corrected. “The slow and steady tortoise wins the race, not a prize.”
“Same thing!” Steven countered back in all seriousness. “You gotta assume if you win a race you’d also win a prize, yes? Dustin, my friend, I’ve got another expression for you … ‘Lighten the fuck up, dude!’ This is some real-ass life shit we’re talkin’ about, not English lit!”
It was Dustin’s turn to laugh at Steven’s comment and at himself. It was in Dustin’s nature to be inordinately precise about details, which served him well in school, but made him seem uptight socially. Dustin asked, “Hey, why would Lolly know I have a tortoise in the race at all?”
Steven admitted he had been aware of Dustin’s interest in Kimmie for a while now. Lolly was the one who put it together after joining the two boys during their study session last week. She told Steven that Dustin had awkwardly managed to bring up Kimmie’s name three times while they worked on Steven’s calc homework, which could only mean one thing. Hearing this caused Dustin to drop his head to the table and thump his forehead a few times. Steven put a hand on Dustin’s shoulder and promised his friend he was willing to help him with his Kimmie quest in any possible way. Dustin thanked him profusely and said he’d repay the favor any way he could.
Steven, emboldened by their bonding session, decided it was now his turn to confess his own girl troubles. Dustin listened to everything Steven said without interruption, only raising an eyebrow when Steven admitted that Lolly happened to be in the very same apartment with them at this very same moment.
Dustin chose his words prudently before giving his opinion on Steven’s tale of woe, but no matter how hard he tried to find a way to side with his friend, he couldn’t do it. He strongly disapproved of Steven’s cheating on Lolly. It made no sense to Dustin that any man could make a case where it was okay to cheat on his girlfriend. The way Dustin saw it, why bother to make a commitment to someone if you had no intention of honoring it? Sure, he knew that plenty of boys cheated on their girlfriends with the reasoning that their girlfriends were holy terrors, but Lolly was no such terror. Steven tried to explain to Dustin that staying faithful was harder than it looked, but even as he said it out loud he knew his words were lost on him. He also knew that staying faithful for Dustin wouldn’t be difficult, as he was made of sturdier moral stock than himself, for sure. And Dustin, who was somewhat of a rookie when it came to kicking game, probably had fewer temptations to deal with in general.
“Dude, it’s not like I don’t have banger’s remorse, ’cause I do,” Steven admitted.
“But do you have remorse because you did it, or because you got caught?” Dustin asked.
“I’d say fifty/fifty.”
“And I’d say, thank you for your honesty,” Dustin said, and he meant it, too.
After an hour passed, Steven told Dustin he had to cut their time short so he could pick up his sister at Grand Central. Anna was coming in for damage control. Dustin, now understanding the extenuating circumstances at hand, found himself offering to edit and proof Steven’s paper on the flaws of the American prison system for him. Truth be told, Dustin welcomed the idea of a little busywork because he had nothing better to do that night except obsess over Kimmie, which was the last thing he wanted. The thought of doing yet another deep dive through her Instagram feed, where he would stare at heavily filtered “artistic” photos of nature, made him want to scream. (Kimmie’s most annoying trait so far was that she, unlike most other teen girls, rarely posted selfies.)
As Dustin gathered up his things to go, it occurred to Steven how he might help Dustin and himself with one simple idea. “You should go to Wollman Rink right now because Kimmie’s there skating. She was recently cleared by her surgeon to skate again and Lolly said ‘skating puts Kimmie in her happy place.’ And if you show up when she’s in her happy place, then maybe some of her happy place could rub off on your happy place, nome sayin’?”
Dustin shook his head vehemently at the suggestion. “No way, I can’t. Do I look like a guy who can fake his way through a staged run-in? Nope, nope, nope!”
Steven waited for Dustin to quiet down before he continued. “C’mon, you’d be doing me a solid by going to talk to her.” His rationale for this request was that he needed Kimmie to cover for Lolly’s absence to their father and stepmother. “Lolly’s going to be in no shape to see the ’rents tonight and Anna’s gonna need some time to talk her down off the crazy ledge!”
The last thing Dustin wanted was to get in the middle of Steven’s messy love life, reminding his friend that the messenger was the one who always got killed. “Text her yourself.”
Steven, now exasperated, raised his voice slightly. “C’mon dude, think about it. What am I supposed to text? ‘Yo, Kimmie, I straight-up cheated on your sis and now she’s gone all Sylvia Plath and locked herself in my mother’s walk-in’? Dustin, do it for me. I’ll pay for your Uber, hell, seize the moment and take her to Serendipity 3 for frozen hot chocolate, which I’ll also pay for. Buy her the thousand-dollar sundae with the gold leaf, for all I care. Trust me, that’s a total panty-dropping move!” Steven pulled out his phone. “What’s your Venmo again? Seriously, let me assuage my guilty conscience by helping you with Kimmie. Vocab word! I win.”
Dustin laughed and then closed his eyes for a moment and tried to picture himself sitting across from Kimmie in a cozy leather booth, watching her perfect mouth blowing on her hot chocolate. He shook the picture out of his head and waved off any more talk of money, heading out the door without agreeing one way or the other. Steven called after him, telling him he should trust him because the only subject he was smarter than Dustin in was girls.
Dustin almost reminded Steven that his current girl problem disproved his last statement but didn’t. He was positive his friend wasn’t in the right mind-set to handle the hard truth.
V
Steven was staring up at the arrivals and departures board in Grand Central when he found himself standing shoulder to shoulder next to Alexia V. (known around town by his nickname the Count, or just Vronsky), who was also scanning the board above them. “Hey man, what brings you here?”
Vronsky gave him a big grin. “Would you believe I’m here to pick up my mother? She’s recovering from a broken ankle and is still using a cane. She attended a dinner party at my uncle’s in Greenwich, gave her driver the night off, and is now taking the train back by herself. She didn’t ask me to pick her up, but why else would she have sent me her arrival time?”
Steven returned his smile and decided that on close inspection Count Vronsky was every bit as handsome as everyone said he was. As they were both newish to Collegiate and Steven was a senior, everything he knew about Vronsky was strictly based on reputation. “If I was a betting man, I’d wager there’s another reason. Gotta bank some ‘good-boy points’ for the future, perhaps? That’s what I do whenever I can. What choice do we have when blessed with formidable women for mothers?”
Vronsky roared with laughter in response, slapped Steven on the back, and then proceeded to neither confirm nor deny anything. Instead he
answered a question with his own. “And you? What brings you out on a snowy evening without a proper overcoat?” Steven looked down and realized Vronsky spoke the truth. He had been so distracted trying to get Dustin out the door and not be late himself that he had left the house in only a Loro Piana cashmere cardigan and his black Burberry cashmere beanie.
“A beautiful girl,” Steven answered, but quickly realizing this was not the right time for him to be so cavalier, added, “My sister, Anna. She’s coming in from Greenwich, too.”
Vronsky frowned. “Did I know you had a sister?”
“Anna’s a junior at Greenwich Academy. She’s the equestrian of the family and can’t bear to be too far away from her precious horses, so she mostly lives at the Greenwich house. Plus, she has two giant dogs she’s obsessed with. She’s always saying it’s her duty as a mom to give her fur babies a proper backyard to romp in.”
“Gotta love the girls who love riding,” Vronsky said with a sly grin, then quickly added, “Horses.”
Ordinarily Steven would be all over Vronsky’s statement, piling on his own vulgar jokes, but since they were talking about his sister, he kept himself in check. “Maybe you know her boyfriend, Alexander W.?”
Now it was Vronsky’s turn to straighten up, even adding the flourish of tightening an imaginary tie. “No shit? Your sister is the gf of the Greenwich OG. Interesting.”
“Not really.” Honestly, if Steven never heard another word about Anna’s umchina boyfriend it’d be fine with him. “Umchina” was one of the few Korean words Steven had learned from his Korean grandmother. There’s no English translation, but it basically means the perfect son of your mother’s friend, the one you’re constantly compared to. For Steven, the Greenwich OG was his umchina because his mother couldn’t help but list off every single one of Alexander’s many accomplishments in Steven’s presence. She once even went so far as to say, “Greenwich is so fortunate to have someone like Alexander representing it.”
Alexander W. had been his sister’s boyfriend for the last three years, earning his nickname, the Greenwich OG, for being the only privileged white male in the country to have gotten into all eight Ivy League schools his senior year. He was old-money Connecticut from a good family, had published his first op-ed piece in The New York Times at age sixteen, was valedictorian at Brunswick, and spent two weeks of every summer teaching disadvantaged youths how to sail (which Steven found moronic, as if poor kids sat around wishing they could sail). He for sure would be the Democratic presidential nominee in another twenty years if the current president didn’t decimate the American democratic system for all eternity. Alexander was presently a freshman at Harvard University but traveled back to Greenwich often to be a devoted boyfriend to Anna. Only the formidable Greenwich OG could get away with being a college guy who still had a high school girlfriend.
Anna was seventeen and two years younger than Alexander, but she had always been quite poised for her age. The perfect couple’s “meet cute” happened at the White House Easter Egg Hunt when she was thirteen. Alexander was there because his dad was a big supporter of Obama, and she was there because at thirteen she played the violin in an award-winning string quartet, otherwise comprised of high school girls. If you believed the stories, it was said that when Alexander watched Anna play, he felt an overwhelming sense of déjà vu, even though he was certain he had never seen her before in his life. What he did know was that he no longer cared about helping little kids find Easter eggs. His only goal was to meet the beautiful girl who played the violin like she was sent down from the heavens to do so.
Alexander introduced himself to Anna at the dessert buffet and was so taken with her delicate beauty up close he dropped a piece of cherry pie on her white dress. Horrified over the mishap, he quickly arranged to have Anna borrow a dress from Sasha, President Obama’s younger daughter. (To this day, Anna is still friends with Sasha.) What they later figured out was that Alexander had seen Anna play the violin for his aunt’s second wedding at the Saugatuck Harbor Yacht Club in Westport the previous summer. Utterly smitten, Alexander begged his dad and stepmother to invite Anna to fly home with them on their private plane instead of letting her take the train. His stepmother had never seen Alexander behave in such a way before, and in an effort to win favor with her husband’s only son, she called Anna’s mom and arranged the whole thing.
By the time Anna arrived home, she had the “promise” of her first boyfriend, since she wasn’t allowed to “officially” have a boyfriend until she turned fourteen. Alexander had no problem waiting and the two had been the perfect couple ever since. The long-term plan was marriage, of course, but the post–high school plan was that Anna would attend Harvard or Yale and Alexander would go to law school wherever she ended up.
Steven once asked Anna whether it was scary to have her entire life planned out at such a young age. “We live in America now, so it’s not like you gotta do the whole Korean arranged marriage for the good of the family status thing, you know?”
She just smiled at her brother’s sarcasm and told him, “Alexander is a good person. He needs me and I’m happy to be there for him.” Steven was quick to remind her that Alexander was not a dog and to ask her about her own needs, to which she simply replied that Alexander adored her, and she liked how easy their relationship was from the very start. She was relieved to not have to deal with the drama of dating, which she had little time or patience for. Alexander was everything a girl could want, plus it helped that her parents approved of their relationship. There were very few boys that their father would ever trust his precious daughter with; in fact, Alexander may be the only boy that fit the bill. In Korea, societal status was paramount, and Alexander’s father was the top of the Greenwich elite. It was this importance their parents placed on social standing that Steven disagreed with the most.
“Track twenty-seven,” Vronsky said, breaking Steven out of his thoughts.
“What did you say?” Steven asked.
“Their train, it’s arriving now.”
Steven nodded and hurried after Vronsky, for whom the crowd seemed to part, as he walked toward the escalators in his Brioni camel overcoat, his extra-long Tom Ford cashmere scarf dragging on the ground behind him.
VI
Anna K. told Mrs. Geneviève R. she’d be back to say a proper good-bye, but she needed to look and see if she could spot her brother, Steven. “Please know if your son isn’t here we’d be more than happy to give you a ride home. And, if neither one shows up for us, I’m pretty capable myself.”
It was rare for Geneviève to be impressed, but this delightful young creature was a firecracker. “Absolutely, my dear. I truly believe men need us women to show them their purpose in the world. For instance, meeting a woman’s train on time.”
Anna smiled at the socialite’s words while standing in the doorway of the train car. She looked around and finally spotted her brother. She called out to him, but he didn’t hear, so she stepped onto the platform, waving to get his attention.
What Count Vronsky first noticed about the exquisite girl were her eyes, dark deep pools that sparkled beneath incredibly long lashes. She looked like a perfect porcelain doll standing so straight and tall in her pale gray Max Mara cashmere coat. He also admired that she didn’t wear much makeup like most teenage girls. As he stood watching, Steven bear-hugged her. Ah, so this was his younger sister?
A sharp rapping noise broke his gaze, and he turned to find his mother waving at him, as she banged her cane against the window once more for good measure. Having no other choice, he hurried into the train car. “Mother, dear,” he called out, which was exactly how Geneviève preferred to be addressed by her favorite son.
“Alexia, your scarf. It’s dragging on the ground like you’re some kind of animal.” His Parisian mother, a grand dame of New York society, never had a hair out of place, let alone a rebellious scarf. He quickly flung the unruly end over his shoulder and held out his hands to help her to her feet. She no longer
had to wear a boot on her injured foot, but she still had it tightly taped and wrapped for security.
“Mother, you shouldn’t be wearing heels.”
“Darling, two-inch heels for me is the same as wearing flats,” she murmured, kissing her handsome son on both cheeks.
“Oh good, you found him.” At the sound of her voice every hair on the back of his neck stood at attention. He forced himself to turn around slowly to meet her.
“Did my mother doubt I’d show up?” he asked, his eyes twinkling.
Anna found herself blushing, not out of embarrassment but because she was so startled by Vronsky’s good looks, his dirty-blond locks falling over a face that was movie-star handsome. But it was more than his appearance: he exuded a confidence that could only be described as a king-of-the-jungle magnetism. She was sure her face registered wonderment that she would be susceptible to such a thing. “Not for one moment. I was probably projecting my own doubts about my brother showing up for me.”
“Anna, please meet my son Alexia, or Alex as he prefers to be called. Alexia, this remarkable young lady was kind enough to keep an old dame like me entertained for the entire trip. She’s quite special, this one,” Mrs. R. said.
Anna held out her hand to shake the one he was already extending. “A pleasure to meet you, Alexia, your mother has told me so much about you I feel like I know you already.”
Vronsky groaned. “Believe only the bad stuff. My mother often crowns me with a halo I don’t deserve.”
Before Anna could reply, Vronsky’s mother snapped, “Nonsense, you’re the most eligible bachelor in the city. Such a shame Anna’s already taken by the OG, or I’d insist you ask for her hand immediately.”
Anna and Alexia traded secret smiles at his mother’s use of the nickname, both certain she had no idea that OG stood for “original gangster” as opposed to “Old Greenwich” like she probably assumed. Vronsky’s mother barreled on, as was her way. “We traded stories of our children, my human ones and her four-legged ones. Anna is an accomplished rider and has two show dogs competing in Westminster next week.”