“Black Russian,” Blair told her, looking her straight in the eye, daring her to card them.
But Missy would rather slit her own wrists than hassle Serena van der Woodsen for being underage.
Hotels are havens for heathens. Which is why we love them so.
“And for you, sweetie?” Missy asked Serena.
“Oh, I’ll have a Dark and Stormy,” Serena said. “With extra lemons.”
Missy hurried away to fetch the drinks, eager to tell the bartender that the girl in the Remi brothers’ photo that was all over town was sitting in their bar, and they were pals!
“Sorry I’m late,” Serena told Blair, looking around. “I thought everyone else would be here with you.”
Blair shrugged her shoulders. “I thought we could hang out by ourselves for a while. No one really comes out until later, anyway.”
“Okay,” Serena said. Talking alone was a good start. She smoothed out her dress and dug around in her little red purse for a pack of cigarettes. Gauloises, from France. She tapped one out and stuck it in her mouth. “Want one?” she offered Blair.
Blair shook her head no. “You can’t smoke in restaurants in this country, remember?” She rolled her eyes. Serena was worse than the girls from L’Ecole.
“Oh, I don’t care.” Serena laughed. She was about to light up with a match when the bartender swooped in with a lighter.
“Thanks,” Serena said, taking a puff. The bartender winked and swiftly stepped back behind the bar. Blair wanted to grab his lighter, pour vodka on the floor, and set the whole place on fire, but before she could move Missy brought them their drinks.
“To old times,” Serena said, clinking her glass against Blair’s and taking a long sip. She sat back on her stool and sighed with pleasure. “Don’t you just love hotels?” she said. “They’re so full of secrets.”
Blair raised her eyebrows at Serena in silent response, sure that Serena was about to tell her all the wild and crazy things that had happened to her in hotels while she was in Europe last summer. All the boys she’d had sex with and then decapitated or scalped. Whatever. As if Blair cared.
“I mean, don’t you always think about what everyone’s doing upstairs in their rooms? Like, they could be watching pornos and eating cheese puffs, or they could be stabbing each other in the shower. Or maybe they’re ODing on baby aspirin.”
Sounds like she’s speaking from experience.
“Uh-huh,” Blair murmured, gulping her drink. She would have to get pretty drunk if she was going to make it through the night, especially the body paint part. “So what’s this about your picture being all over buses and stuff?” she said. “I haven’t seen it.”
Serena giggled and leaned toward Blair confidentially. “Even if you saw it, you probably wouldn’t recognize me. It has my name on it, but it’s not a picture of my face.”
Blair frowned. “I don’t get it,” she said.
“It’s art,” Serena said mysteriously, and giggled again. She took a sip of her drink.
The two girls’ faces were only inches apart, and Blair could smell the musky essential oil mixture Serena had started wearing. It smelled like the stuff the exterminator sprayed into the corners of her penthouse.
“I still don’t get it. Is it something dirty?” Blair demanded, annoyed.
“Not really,” Serena answered with a sly smile. “Lots of people have had theirs done too. You know—celebrities.”
“Like who?” Blair said.
“Like Lady Gaga and Justin Timberlake.”
“Oh,” Blair said, sounding unimpressed.
Serena’s eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded.
Blair lifted her chin and tucked her straight brown hair behind her ears. “I don’t know, it’s like you’re willing to do anything just to shock people. Don’t you have any pride?”
“Um, last time I checked it wasn’t illegal to have your picture taken,” Serena replied. “Besides, I’ve done worse. And I’m pretty sure you have too.” A sick, gory, fast-motion film of every person she’d ever murdered flashed before Serena’s eyes. It happened when she drank sometimes. It was sort of disturbing.
“Did you ever think about the fact that these are like, the most important years of our lives? Like, for getting into college and everything?” Blair said. “You can’t just go around doing what you want when you want. You have to think about the future.”
Missy brought them another round. This time Serena only nodded her thanks. She looked down at the floor, her jagged, bloody pinky nail between her teeth. “Yeah, I’m just realizing that now,” she admitted. “I hadn’t thought about it before—how I should have been joining teams and clubs. You know, getting really into the school thing. But that’s why I want you to help me make a movie. Just think how great a team we’d be….” Serena’s voice trailed off. Like the bitch that she was, Blair was shaking her head.
“I feel sorry for your parents,” Blair said quietly. “You don’t know how lucky you are to have parents who are still together. Who still read the paper together on Sunday morning and tuck you in at night. Look at you.” She shook her head again. Even the way Serena was biting her nails disgusted her. “You don’t deserve them.”
Serena’s eyes grew big, and her lip began to tremble, but she was determined not to have a tantrum—at least, not yet. Maybe Blair was just getting her period. That always turned her into a monster.
Serena took a huge gulp of her drink and wiped her mouth with her cocktail napkin. “So, I never heard what you and Nate did all last summer. Did you go up to Maine? See that boat he built?”
Blair shook her head. The topic of Nate was completely off limits. “I had tennis camp. I hated it.”
They drank their drinks in awkward silence.
“And what about this party next week,” Serena demanded, her irritation mounting. “The one you didn’t invite me to. What’s it for again?”
Blair knew the cause sounded lame and unsexy. That’s why she’d named the party Kiss Me or Die. To give it an edge.
“It’s for those birds of prey that live in Central Park. They’re endangered, and everyone’s worried that they’re going to die or starve or the squirrels will raid their nests or whatever. So they set up a foundation for them,” she explained. “Shut up. I know it’s stupid.”
Serena blew out a puff of smoke. “I didn’t say anything. But it’s not like there aren’t people that need saving. I mean, what about the… I don’t know… orphans?”
Or the paraplegic, scalpless survivors of her infamous temper tantrums?
“Well, it’s as good a cause as any. We wanted something that wasn’t too heavy to start off the season,” Blair huffed, annoyed. It was fine for her to laugh at the cause she’d chosen for the party, but Serena had no right.
“So is the party like, just for us, or is it for parents, too?” Serena asked.
Blair hesitated. “Just… us,” she said finally. She downed the rest of her drink and looked at her watch. “Um, I kind of have to take off.” She slid the handle of her Mulberry bag over her arm.
Serena frowned. She had taken her time getting dressed, psyching herself up for a wild night out with her friends. She’d expected a big group—Blair and the remaining girls, Nate and his gang, Chuck and his boys—all the people they always used to hang out with. What was left of them anyway. And once Blair got drunk enough, Serena would just blurt it all out, confess to sleeping with Nate that one time—oops, those two times—and then they could start over as best friends and make a movie together. Serena might even start taking an SAT prep course so they could take practice SAT tests together. It would be fun.
That was the story she kept trying to tell herself. Deep down she knew she was just toying with Blair, like a cat toys with a rodent, until she grew tired of the game and was finally ready for Blair to die.
“Where are you going, anyway?” she asked suspiciously.
“I have a tennis match in the morning,”
Blair said, feeling extremely superior, even though she was lying her ass off. “I need to sleep.”
“Oh.” Serena crossed her arms and sat back on her stool. “I was hoping we’d all wind up partying in the Basses’ suite upstairs. They still have it, don’t they?”
Back in tenth grade, Serena and Blair used to drink themselves silly in Chuck’s hot tub and do all sorts of crazy, masochistic things.
Like beat each other with sticks?
When their bodies had turned into prunes they’d climb out of the tub and pass out on the king-sized bed, sleeping there until their heads cleared and the wounds had healed, or the maids kicked them out to sterilize the room.
“The Basses still have the suite,” Blair said, standing up. “But they really don’t appreciate people using it. This isn’t tenth grade anymore,” she added coldly.
“Okay,” Serena said. She couldn’t say anything right, could she? At least, not to Blair. She ought to kill her now, just to shut her up, but she’d come to the bar unarmed.
Not that that ever stopped her.
She surveyed the table, taking an inventory of everything she could use to do it. The candle holder. Their drinks glasses. The panda bear rug. The heels of her boots. She could whack Blair in the head, suffocate her with a rug, and gouge her eyes out with the boots.
Serena’s lower lip was trembling. Red spots appeared on her eyelids beneath the powdery blue eye shadow. “I really have to go,” Blair said, eager to get the fuck out of there before Serena went ballistic.
“Wait!” Serena cried, her blue eyes huge and crazed-looking. Blood from her bitten cuticles was smeared on her teeth.
Blair looked at her watch and sighed impatiently. “What now?” she demanded, tapping her foot.
Serena downed the last dregs of her second Dark and Stormy. Again, a bloody fast-motion film of every one of her kills streaked through her mind’s eye.
“Don’t you get it?” she demanded, her voice quavering. “Jude and Milos and Soren and Jeremy. Kati and Is and Ms. Glos and Anna.” She squeezed her eyes shut in an attempt to stop the film and then opened them again. “I did it all for you, Blair,” she said in a monotone. “It’s always been for you.”
Blair stood over her, hands on her hips, shaking her head. She was about to have sex. She didn’t have time for another pathetic, corny speech about how much Serena missed her.
“Save it,” she snapped, but then she faltered as Serena rose to her feet, her empty glass clutched in her white-knuckled hand, her fine nostrils quivering. She was nearly six feet tall, and the look in her cobalt blue eyes as she stared Blair down was one of pure rage.
Blair swallowed, her throat dry. She was fine with Serena killing other people; it had never occurred to her that Serena might try to kill her.
“Well, have a great weekend,” she said with a final stiff smile. Sex with Nate was so much more important than any of this bullshit. She dropped a hundred dollars on the table for their drinks. “Excuse me?” she asked the three tall boys who were blocking her path. “Do you mind getting the fuck out of my way?”
Shaking, Serena collapsed onto the black velvet ottoman and swallowed an ice cube, whole, as she watched Blair leave. It burned her throat and tasted like lemons.
Blair kept pushing her way through the crowd and out the door to the street. Gasping for air, she walked over to Sixth Avenue to catch a cab uptown. It started to rain and her hair frizzed. A bus roared by with Serena’s picture on the side of it. Was it her belly button? It looked like the dark pit at the center of a peach. Blair turned her back on it and waved her hand in the air to flag down the next taxi. She couldn’t get away fast enough. But the first taxi that stopped for her had the same poster in the lighted advertising box on its roof. Blair got in and slammed the door. She could never get completely away—Serena was fucking everywhere.
And she wanted her dead.
friday the thirteenth: the nutcracker suite
Serena reached for another cigarette and stuck it in her mouth with trembling fingers. Suddenly a pinky-ringed hand proffered a Zippo and lit the cigarette for her. The lighter was gold, with the monogram C.B. So was the ring.
“Hey Serena. You look seriously hot,” Chuck Bass said. “What are you doing sitting here all by yourself?”
Serena inhaled deeply, licked the blood from her cuticles off of her teeth, and smiled. “Hey Chuck. I’m glad you’re here. Blair ditched me and now I’m all alone. Anyone else coming?”
Chuck clicked his lighter shut and put it in his pocket. He glanced around the room. “Who knows?” he said casually. “They could come, or they could not come.”
He sat down in the armchair where Blair had been sitting.
“You really do look hot,” he said again, staring at Serena’s legs like he wanted to eat them, with a side of garlicky fava beans and a nice glass of Chianti.
“Thanks,” Serena said and laughed. It was kind of a relief to know that Chuck was still exactly the same, even if everyone else was acting like freaks. She had to love him for that.
Before she ripped his head off.
“Hey Missy,” Chuck called to the waitress. “Bring us two rounds of my special shots. And put everything on my tab.” He handed Serena the hundred-dollar bill Blair had left on the table. “You keep that,” he said.
“But it’s Blair’s.” Serena took the bill and examined it. The bland, ugly face of Benjamin Franklin stared back at her, challenging her to a duel. She stuffed the bill into her red velvet handbag.
Missy brought over four brimming-over shot glasses full of nondescript clear liquid.
Chuck pushed two of them toward Serena. “I call this Sunday Bloody Sunday, because you drink it and the next thing you know it’s Sunday and there’s blood all over your shoes and you can’t remember how it got there.” He clinked glasses with Serena. “Bottoms up!”
The shot tasted like pickle juice. It was delicious. Serena reached for the second one and tipsily poured it half into her mouth and half down her front.
“Oops,” she said, as the shot sloshed all over her. “Damn.”
Chuck dove for the spill and sucked it right off her chest. “There. Got it,” he said, licking his lips. “You can’t even tell.”
Serena giggled and pushed him away. “Thanks, Chuck. You should come out with me more often. I’m always making messes.” Again the bloody film flashed before her eyes. She shook her long blond ponytail, trying to make the images go away.
Chuck leered at her and grunted before downing his second shot. “I bet you are.” He signaled to Missy to bring another round.
Serena closed her eyes and opened them again, giggling drunkenly to herself. Chuck’s pageboy haircut swam before her, looking even more ridiculous now that she was drunk.
“Why don’t we take this next round up to my suite?” he offered smoothly, his face all teeth.
Serena hesitated, thinking about what Blair had said about the Basses not liking people in their suite anymore. “Are you sure it’s okay with your parents?” she asked.
Chuck snorted and held out his hand. “Them?” he said disparagingly. “They’re in Caracas. Come on. It’s Friday the thirteenth, I’m sure the TV’s got good movies to watch. The hot tub’s nice and hot. We can order room service. I’ll put on your underwear, you can put on mine. Anything you want.”
Even though it was raining out and he was freezing his ass off, Nate was in no hurry to get to Blair’s house. It was pretty ironic, really. Here he was, a seventeen-year-old guy, about to have sex with his girlfriend for the first time (hers, anyway). He should have been running.
She must know by now, he kept telling himself, over and over and over. How could she not? The whole city had to know by now that he’d had sex with Serena. But if Blair knew, then why hadn’t she said anything?
Thinking about it was driving Nate insane, literally. First the freakout at the pizzeria. And then last night he saw a paunchy black and white–feathered, pink-beaked vulture standing in
his open window, staring at him and looking… hungry.
He ducked into a liquor store on Madison Avenue and bought a half pint of Jack Daniel’s. He’d already smoked a little joint at home, but he’d need a few shots of courage before he saw Blair. His hands were shaking so badly he wasn’t sure he could even take her clothes off.
That’s okay. She won’t be wearing any. And she comes with instructions.
Nate walked the rest of the way as slowly as he could, taking surreptitious sips from the bottle. He turned down Seventy-second Street only yards from Blair’s building. A young vulture flapped down to the sidewalk. It waddled along beside Nate, glancing up at him with its beady eyes as if it wanted to make friends.
Nate hurled his bottle at it and broke into a run. The bottle smashed and the vulture squawked. It hopped away, beat its heavy wings once, twice. Then, airborne, it flew away into the night.
Staggering, Serena followed Chuck into the elevator and up to the Basses’ ninth-floor suite. It looked exactly the same as it always had: living room with entertainment center and bar; huge bedroom with king-sized bed and another entertainment center, as if they needed two; huge marble bathroom with a sunken round hot tub and two fluffy white terrycloth bathrobes hanging on horseshoe-shaped chrome hooks. That was another thing Serena loved about hotels—the bathrobes. Nothing felt better after a particularly brutal bloodbath than a steaming hot shower and a clean white bathrobe.
Doesn’t everyone agree?
On the coffee table in the living room was a pile of old photographs. Serena recognized Nate’s face in the top one. She picked them up and shuffled through them.
Chuck glanced at the pictures over her shoulder. “Last year,” he said, shaking his head. “We were pretty wild.”
Blair, Nate, Chuck, Isabel, Kati, Rain—everyone was in them, naked in the hot tub, their bodies red from the heat, dancing and drinking champagne on the big bed, ghoulish makeup streaking down their sweaty faces. They were all party shots from last year—the date was in the corner of each one—and they were all taken in the suite.
Gossip Girl, Psycho Killer Page 17
