Upper East Side #7

by Ashley Valentine

  Considering that Manhattan is an island, then yes, probably a bridge would be involved.

  Yasmine decided to humor her. Not that Porsha Sinclaire really wanted to live in her dodgy, graffitied Brooklyn apartment building with its view of other dodgy, graffitied Brooklyn apartment buildings. “The L train goes to Union Square and then I change to the 6.”

  Huh? Porsha frowned. Was she talking about the subway?

  “If the weather's really bad or I'm really late, I call an Uber,” Yasmine admitted.

  Aha!

  “And do you mind…you know, visitors?” Porsha asked.

  As in male visitors?

  Yasmine laughed. “As long as they don't smell and they bring food.”

  Porsha nodded seriously. She'd have her very own apartment in which to have wild and crazy sex with Stan or any other boy she chose, and she would turn herself into the sexiest, most pierced and tattooed girl in Williamsburg. Kaliq would go absolutely crazy with regret. “I think this could work out, don't you?”

  Yasmine's hazel eyes had ceased blinking. “But we hate each other,” she said matter-of-factly.

  Porsha rolled her eyes and knocked her bony knee against Yasmine's round one. “Oh, don't be such a snob,” she huffed, really getting into her new role as Yasmine's long-lost hipster sister. “Now, about your boyfriend problem,” she continued, as if the matter was already closed. “The thing is, and no offense, but I bet you're only attracted to guys who are kind of ‘alternative,’ like you—” Porsha clamped her mouth shut, as her brain underwent a lightbulb moment.

  Why she'd never thought of it before she didn't know, but her dreadhead so-called alternative stepbrother Tahj and the shaven-headed, black-wearing Yasmine were absolutely the perfect couple! They could paint each other's toenails black, cook vegan sushi, film each other's hair or lack thereof, and otherwise entertain themselves while she was busy seducing the boy who was going to get her into Yale.

  See, maybe Williamsburg really is for lovers.

  31

  A nice-sized trust fund from his great grandfather, who was involved in the invention of Velcro, and the money from the Raves' bestselling first album, Jimmy and Jane, had bought twenty-three-year-old Kash Polk a cute four-story white townhouse with red shutters on quaint Bedford Street in the West Village. Bedford Street was only three blocks long, dotted with intimate restaurants, cozy cafes, historic houses, a famous speakeasy, and gorgeous gay men walking their toy dogs. Outside, the house looked like an antique dollhouse, but inside it was a showplace for modern, minimalist white furniture. Rumor had it that although Kash wore all sorts of colors onstage, he never wore anything but white inside his house, and never allowed his guests to wear anything but white either, not even blue jeans.

  Too bad he forgot to tell certain people that particular rule.

  The front door was standing open, and Chanel climbed the white marble steps to the second floor, wearing her favorite pair of jeans, a cropped pink T-shirt, and a crazy pair of pink platform heels that were a challenge to walk in. She could hear some sort of psychedelic jazz music playing, the clink of glasses, and the murmur of voices.

  Bree Hargrove was sitting cross-legged on the white countertop of the island in Kash's white open kitchen, drinking a glass of milk. Her hair was in pigtails and she was wearing a white cotton undershirt and white cotton boxers.

  “Hey!” she cried, bouncing off the counter to greet Chanel. “Kash said you were coming. He's in the shower.” She tiptoed over in her bare feet and tilted her chin up to kiss Chanel's cheek. “I'm so glad you're here.”

  Well, hello, little hostess to the mostest! What a change from the Bree who only last week was completely gaga at the opportunity to be invited into Chanel's home. And wasn't she like banned from hanging out with the Raves ever again?

  As if that made any difference.

  “I snuck out,” Bree whispered. “Dad was watching some boring documentary. He thinks I'm in my room, like, painting or something.”

  Ah, painting. It used to be her only pastime, back when she was young and innocent.

  Chanel smiled down at her petite, curly-haired protégé, feeling oddly out of place. The other party-goers lounged on the white suede sectional sofa in the living room adjoining the kitchen, dressed head-to-toe in white, drinking giant gin martinis. One wall of the living room was decorated with white paper snowflake cut-outs like the kind you make in kindergarten, and another wall was painted to look like bookshelves filled with white books.

  Because real books are too colorful?

  A tall skinny guy was sitting on a wooly white polar bear rug, wearing only a white terrycloth bathrobe. A huge brown-and-black dog lay beside him, its enormous head buried in his lap—the only bit of color in an entirely white room.

  “Ooh la la!” Bree chirped giddily as Kash appeared, still damp from the shower and wearing nothing but a pair of white cashmere sweatpants. His reddish blond hair was still damp, and drops of water had collected in the indentations of his collarbone. His arms and chest were covered with tiny freckles and big muscles, and yes, he was even more good-looking in person than on his album covers.

  “Hello,” Chanel greeted him, feeling uncharacteristically starstruck. And how come no one had told her about the all white dress code? Was she just supposed to know?

  “Now I know why everyone said I had to meet you,” he said automatically when he saw Chanel.

  Chanel blushed at the compliment, but she couldn't think of anything to say. A rare occasion for her—the Crenshaws were bred to say the right thing at the right time at all times.

  Bree took Chanel's hand and then Kash's, standing between them like a buxom flower girl at an arranged marriage. “You have to show Chanel your bedroom,” she told Kash. She turned to Chanel. “His bedroom is so cool.”

  Yeah? How would she know?

  Kash shrugged and starting walking into the living room, pulling Bree and Chanel along with him. “Come, sit down. Kelly and Ping should be here any minute.”

  “Cool,” Chanel responded, although she had no idea who he was talking about. Kelly and Ping—were they another band? A clown act? DJs?

  “Yum. They have the best pad Thai ever,” Bree said, like she'd been ordering from the SoHo Asian eatery all her life.

  “Yum,” Chanel agreed. What was wrong with her? She wasn't even hungry.

  Bree broke away from them and perched on some guy's knee. He had dark hair and dimpled cheeks and was wearing white painter's overalls, looking every bit like the Raves' drummer, Lloyd Collins.

  Cuz that's exactly who he was.

  “Hi Chanel,” Lloyd greeted her in that taunting, cocky way of his.

  “Kash just made a recording of me singing ‘Happy Birthday to Me.’ He's going to sample it on the band's next track,” Bree announced gaily to anyone who was listening. “I can't wait for Mekhi to hear it.”

  “Isn't he here?” Chanel asked, looking around for the cloud of cigarette smoke that usually engulfed Mekhi Hargrove's head.

  “Not yet,” Kash replied, and Chanel thought she detected a note of malice in his voice.

  Mekhi and Chanel had gotten together that fall, but it had been short-lived—just like all of her relationships—and they hadn't exactly stayed in touch. But there were no hard feelings, and it might be nice to hang out and be friends now that they were both graduating. She wondered where he was going to college next year, or if he was going to take some time off to tour with the band.

  “Cigar?” Kash asked, holding a box out to her. “They came in from Cuba last night.”

  “Breadstick?” Lloyd asked, flipping a breadstick up in the air like one of his drumsticks and catching it in his teeth. “They're Italian and super crisp.”

  “No, thanks,” Chanel responded quietly to both offers. Here she was, a notorious party girl at what was bound to become a notorious party, yet she felt completely uninspired. Maybe the fact that everyone thought she and Kash were already together was ruining it for h
er. Or maybe seeing Bree, the image of herself two or three years ago, was making her realize that she was ready to try something new. Or maybe it was because these were the very last weeks of her senior year, before the summer, and before Yale. She didn't care so much about meeting famous people; she just wanted to hang out with her friends. Porsha was at Yasmine's apartment in Williamsburg right now—probably wallpapering the bathroom with little pink rosebuds or something—and there was no place Chanel would rather be.

  “Mind if I use your bathroom?” she asked.

  Kash directed her through a set of white velvet drapes and down a long white corridor to a white-tiled, mirror-ceilinged bathroom. Chanel closed the door, yanked her tube of MAC lip gloss from her back pocket, and smeared some on.

  Down the corridor, on the other side of the velvet drapes, came the sounds of the doorbell ringing and Kelly and Ping delivering their Asian delicacies. Chanel pushed opened the bathroom door again and hurried down the corridor, slipping past the cluster of arriving caterers and out onto the steamy sidewalk once more.

  This from a girl known for dancing on tables in bars throughout France? This from the girl who'd had an unmentionable part of her body photographed and plastered on the sides of buses and in subways all over the city? Ditching a party before it even got started?

  Then again, it didn't really matter whether she stayed at the party or not. Whatever Chanel did was bound to make headlines.

  32

  “So, this drawer is where we'll keep all our cleansers, moisturizers, toners, exfoliators, masks, and makeup removers. All the bath gel is in the bottom drawer, closest to the tub. And see? That's an Egyptian cotton bath rug to cover that icky gray linoleum tile.” Porsha pointed to the new peach-colored rug that she'd just installed in Yasmine's bathroom.

  Yasmine pulled open the drawers in the cracked, cream-colored vanity beneath the bathroom sink. Everything had been alphabetized and color-coded to Porsha's control freak specifications. Not that Yasmine owned any beauty products herself. It was all Porsha's stuff anyway.

  “You can borrow whatever you want,” Porsha offered generously. She pulled out a tiny porcelain jar of La Mer eye cream and started dabbing some under her eyes. “This stuff is amazing,” she declared, “I just wish it didn't smell like cold cream.” She reached out and dabbed some under Yasmine's eyes. One application wouldn't do much, but if she could get Yasmine to use it once a day, in a week those puffs would be totally gone. Maybe Yasmine would even let her do a total makeover on her. They could go jeans shopping together at Bloomingdale's SoHo, and even buy Yasmine a nice wig!

  Nice try.

  “Where's my shaver?” Yasmine grumbled, twisting her face away from Porsha like a kid who hates to have her face cleaned. “I have to reshave my head like once a week, you know.”

  “Shavers?” Porsha repeated cluelessly. She pointed to a bag of trash slumped against the door outside the bathroom. “I think they might be in there.” She grabbed an eyebrow brush from out of a freshly organized drawer and ran it over Yasmine's prickly head stubble. “Have you ever thought about maybe growing it—?”

  “No!” Yasmine told her adamantly, swiping the eyebrow brush away. She dumped the bag of trash out onto the peach-colored carpet and rescued her electric shaver, placing it in the top vanity drawer next to Porsha's eyelash curlers.

  “Sorry,” Porsha allowed. “I should have asked first.”

  “That's okay.” Yasmine fingered the eyelash curlers curiously. “What the fuck are these anyway?”

  Porsha snatched them up eagerly and sat Yasmine down on top of the toilet seat. “Don't close your eyes. And don't worry, this doesn't hurt.” She held the curlers an inch away from Yasmine's lashes, squinting. Then she put them down again. “You know what?” she told her new roommate. “You don't need these. Your lashes are thick and curly.” She squinted again, as if she couldn't quite believe it. “In fact, they're completely perfect.”

  Yasmine stood up and examined her eyelashes in the bathroom mirror, feeling extremely flattered, although she'd never have admitted it. “Can we get something to eat now, goddammit? We've been redecorating all goddamned day.”

  For once Porsha had been so preoccupied, she hadn't even thought about food. Tonight would be her first night in the apartment, and she'd spent the whole afternoon unpacking and organizing. What did Yasmine usually do for dinner, she wondered. Cook?

  The two girls wandered out of the bathroom and into the open kitchen, surveying the apartment with their hands on their hips. Porsha's mother's nursery decorator had sent her team of painters over on Wednesday and Thursday while Yasmine was at school, and the whole apartment had been redone in shades of celery green and dove gray—nothing too girly, so as not to offend Yasmine. After school on Thursday, Yasmine had discovered a set of used curtains that she could actually tolerate, even though they were covered in an exotic bird-and-palm-leaf-print. And this morning the decorator had scheduled a delivery of six twentieth-century modern wooden chairs, a small oval dining table, a cool kidney bean-shaped glass coffee table, and two suede beanbag chairs, which Porsha and Yasmine kept moving around the living room just because it was fun.

  “I can't believe I'm saying this, but I like it,” Yasmine admitted.

  “Really?” Porsha asked cautiously. It was kind of a major transformation, and she wouldn't have been surprised if Yasmine had kicked her out before she'd even unpacked her Louis Vuitton suitcases.

  Who would've thunk it? A girl married to her eight-hundred-dollar Manolos had tentatively moved in with a classmate who had never worn anything on her feet but steel-toed Doc Marten boots and black kneesocks. One thing was for sure, they wouldn't be sharing clothes.

  “We could have a dinner party,” Yasmine mused. She walked over to the dining table and readjusted the six funky swivel chairs surrounding it. “Except I don't have anyone to invite.”

  Nobody did a party better than Porsha Sinclaire. Even if it was just a chic little bohemian Brooklyn dinner party.

  Porsha whipped her cell phone out of her jeans pocket and speed-dialed Chanel's number. “Unless you and that rock star dude are, like, in bed already, wanna come to dinner at my new place?”

  “I'm already on my way over,” Chanel told her. “Sorry to disappoint you, though—I'm on my own.”

  Then Porsha called Stan 5. “What took you so long?” he wanted to know.

  And she called her stepbrother, Tahj. “What are you cooking?” he asked suspiciously. “Should I bring over some tempeh?”

  Porsha hadn't exactly worked out the food part. “We can order from Nobu.” She put her hand over the mouthpiece. “Do they even have Nobu in Brooklyn?”

  Yasmine waved a pizza menu in her face, and Porsha saw that there was something called the Cheeseless Paradise Pie under vegetarian selections. “Don't worry,” she told her stepbrother. “I've got you covered.”

  “So what's Yasmine like exactly?” Tahj asked curiously.

  Porsha grinned devilishly. “That's for me to know and you to find out.”

  33

  “Allo?” Lexie's distinct French-accented English rang out over Kaliq's intercom. “Mayee I pleeze come up?”

  Locked in his room all week with a bong, playing Grand Theft Auto on his Xbox, Kaliq hadn't received any visitors except Jeremy, Anthony, and Charlie, who stopped by every now and then to replenish his stash and fill him in on what was going on at school. His wing of the house smelled like half-eaten burritos, spilled bong water, and pizza-flavored Hot Pockets—not that there was anyone around to smell it. After grounding him, his parents had taken the Charlotte up the Hudson to visit friends in Kingston and to ensure that Kaliq didn't steal the boat again before their benefit cruise. If only he hadn't messed things up with Porsha, they'd have had the whole house to themselves and could have had sex on top of the grand piano in the living room if they'd wanted.

  Oh, well.

  “I'm sick,” he lied into the intercom. “It's really contagious. I've missed
the whole week of school.”

  “It's okay, I'm sick too!” Lexie responded brightly. She coughed to demonstrate just how sick she really was. “We can share our germs!”

  What fun!

  Kaliq had just heisted a Lamborghini, but when Lexie buzzed he'd gotten distracted and the cops had gone right up his ass. He kicked the Xbox controls across the room and licked his bong-chapped lips. His mouth felt like it was coated with weed flavored tar, and he hadn't changed his shirt in who knew how many days. Plus, word had it that Lexie had told the entire world that she and Kaliq weren't just seeing eachother—they were in love.

  Uh-oh.

  “I smell,” he confided into the speaker. “Seriously. It's bad.”

  “We'll 'av a bath,” Lexie told him gaily. “Buzz me in. I'll give you a mah-ssage, bay-bee,” she added, sounding even more French than she'd sounded only a moment ago.

  Kaliq could tell she wasn't going to give up, and it wasn't like Porsha wasn't cheating on him right then too. Besides, Lexie was cute and obviously desperate for it, and he was seriously bored.

  “Okay,” he replied slowly, about to press the buzzer to let her in.

  “Oh, I love you!” Lexie cried into the intercom.

  Kaliq blinked slowly. Did she say love? He let his hand drop. Girls—all they ever seemed to do was fall in love with him and get him into trouble. Porsha, Chanel, Brianna, Mercedes, and now this horny, hippie French chick, Lexie.

  Wait, is this, like, another epiphany?

  The thing was, he was about to graduate and go off to Yale. He wanted to hang out with the girls he'd grown up with and always known and loved. Not some new chick, especially not one who didn't even speak the same language.

  “Look, I'm grounded,” he said firmly. “Go home.”