UPPER EAST SIDE

by Ashley Valentine

  Elise stood up, too, tugging on her oversized pink turtle-neck sweater as if it was too tight. “No offense, but if I don’t eat a yogurt before lunch is over, I’m going to pass out in geometry.”

  “I’ll come buy one with you,” Bree told her, using that as an excuse to leave the table.

  “I may as well walk out with you guys,” Porsha yawned, standing up, too.

  “Where are you going?” Chanel demanded innocently. Normally on Mondays after lunch the two girls spent their luxurious double free period at Jackson Hole, drinking cappuccinos and making wild and fabulous plans for the summer after graduation.

  “None of your business,” Porsha snapped. She’d been going to invite Chanel to come with her to the salon, but now that Chanel was being such a self-involved princess bitch, that was totally out of the question. She flipped her hair over her shoulder and slung her bag over her arm. “See you guys next week,” she added to Mary, Vicky, and Cassie as she followed Bree and Elise through the exit and up the back stairs to 93rd Street.

  Back in the crowded cafeteria, Vicky leaned forward across the half-empty table. “So, tell us,” she urged Chanel.

  Mary took a sip of one-percent milk and nodded eagerly. “Yes, yes. Tell.”

  Cassie tightened her ponytail. “Tell us everything.”

  2

  “So what do you want to film first?” Mekhi Hargrove asked his best friend and girlfriend of six weeks, Yasmine Richards. Mekhi attended renowned Upper West Side boys school Riverside Prep, while Yasmine attended Emma Willard, but they had gotten permission to collaborate on a special senior project called Making Poetry. Yasmine, a budding director, was going to film Mekhi, a budding poet and occasional star of Yasmine’s films, writing and revising his poems.

  Not exactly box-office-smash material, but Mekhi was so cute in a scruffy, rumpled, angst-ridden-artist sort of way that people would probably want to see it anyway.

  “Just sit down at your desk and write something in one of those black notebooks like you always do,” Yasmine instructed, peering through the lens of her digital video camera to see if the light was okay. “Can you clear some of that shit off your desk?”

  Mekhi swept his arm over the desk and sent pens, paper clips, scraps of paper, rubber bands, books, empty packs of Newports, matchbooks, and empty Coke cans crashing to the brown-carpeted floor. They were filming in Mekhi’s room because that was where he usually worked. Besides, it was a straight shot through the park from Emma Willard on East 93rd Street between Fifth and Madison to Mekhi’s apartment building on West 99th Street and West End Avenue.

  “And maybe take your shirt off, too,” Yasmine suggested. Making Poetry was going to be about the artistic process, illustrating that what doesn’t go into the work is just as important as what does. There would be lots of shots of Mekhi crumpling up paper and throwing it angrily across the room. Yasmine wanted to show that writing—or creating anything, for that matter—wasn’t just a mental exercise: it was physical. Plus, Mekhi had these great little muscles in his back that she couldn’t wait to get on film.

  Mekhi stood up and peeled off his plain black T-shirt, tossing it onto his unmade bed where the Hargroves’ fat old cat, Marx, lay asleep on his back like a furry beached whale. Everything about the apartment Mekhi shared with his father, Rufus, and his little sister, Bree, was unmade, falling apart, or at the very least completely covered with cat hair and dust bunnies. It was a large, bright, high-ceilinged apartment, but it hadn’t been properly cleaned in twenty years, and the crumbling walls were gasping for a new coat of paint. Mekhi and his father and sister rarely threw anything away, either, so the sagging furniture and scratched wooden floors were strewn with old newspapers and magazines, out-of-print books, incomplete decks of cards, used batteries, and unsharpened pencils. It was the kind of place where your coffee got cat hair in it the minute you poured it, which was a problem Mekhi dealt with constantly because he was completely addicted to caffeine.

  “Do you want me to face the camera?” he asked, sitting down on his worn wooden desk chair and swiveling it toward Yasmine. “I could hold the notebook in my lap and write like this,” he demonstrated.

  Yasmine knelt down and squinted through the camera lens. She was wearing her gray pleated Emma Willard uniform with black tights, and the brown shag carpet felt bristly against her knees. “Yes, that’s nice,” she murmured. Oh, just look how dark and smooth Mekhi’s chest was! She could see every rib, and that nice line of black fuzz that ran up his belly to his navel! She inched forward on her knees, trying to get as close as possible without ruining the frame.

  Mekhi bit the end of his pen, smiled to himself, and then wrote, She’s got a shaved head, she wears black all the time, she needs a new pair of combat boots, and she hates to wear makeup. But she’s the kind of girl who believes in you and secretly gets your best poem published in The New Yorker. I guess you could say I love her.

  It was probably the corniest thing he’d ever written, but it wasn’t like he was going to publish it in his “Greatest Works” or anything.

  Yasmine inched forward some more, trying to capture Mekhi’s knuckles as he scribbled away. “What are you writing?” She pressed the record-sound button on her camera.

  Mekhi looked up, grinning at her through his messy twist-outs, his brown eyes shining. “It’s not a poem. It’s just a little story about you.”

  Yasmine felt her whole body warm up. “Read it out loud.”

  Mekhi scratched his chin self-consciously and then cleared his throat. “Okay. ‘She’s got a shaved head...’” he began, reading what he’d written.

  Yasmine blushed as she listened and then dropped the camera on the floor. She walked on her knees over to where Mekhi was sitting, pushed his notebook out of the way, and laid her head in his lap. “You know how we’re always talking about having sex but we’ve never done it?” she whispered, her lips brushing the rough cloth of his army-green cargo pants. “Why don’t we do it right now?”

  Beneath her cheek she felt Mekhi’s thigh muscle tighten. “Now?” He looked down and traced his finger along the edge of Yasmine’s ear. She had four piercings in each ear, but none of them had earrings in them. He took a deep breath. He’d been saving sex for a moment when it seemed poetic and right. Maybe that time was right now, a spontaneous moment. It seemed especially apt and ironic when in exactly an hour he’d be back at Riverside Prep, sitting in last-period AP Latin.

  Introducing double-free-period sex—the latest offering on the spring curriculum.

  “Okay,” Mekhi agreed. “Let’s do it.”

  3

  When last-period French was finally over, Kaliq Braxton bid a hasty peace out to his St. Jude’s School classmates and hurried up Madison Avenue to the pizza place on the corner of 86th Street, the workplace of his dependable pot dealer, Mitchell. Lucky for Kaliq, St. Jude’s was the oldest boys’ school in Manhattan and had kept its tradition of ending the school day at 2 P.M. for both lower and upper-school boys, even though most of the other city schools let out at 4 P.M. The school’s reasoning was that it gave the boys extra time to play sports and do the copious amounts of homework they were sent home with every afternoon. It also gave them plenty of time to kick back and get high before, during, and after they played sports and did their homework.

  The last time Kaliq had seen Mitchell, the wisecracking Kangol hat–wearing dealer had said he’d be moving back home to Amsterdam very soon. Today was Kaliq’s last chance to score the biggest bag of sweet, Peruvian-grown weed Mitchell could provide. Porsha had always complained about Kaliq’s weed-smoking when they were together, whining about how boring it was to watch him staring at the Persian rug on her bedroom floor for ten minutes when they could have been fooling around or at a party somewhere. Kaliq had always maintained that his weed-smoking was a mere indulgence, like eating chocolate—something he could give up any time. And just to prove it—not that he needed to prove anything to Porsha anymore—he was going to go cold turk
ey after he’d smoked every last leaf of weed from the giant bag he was going to buy today. If he were careful, he could make the bag last a good eight weeks. Until then he preferred not to even think about quitting.

  “Two plain slices,” Kaliq told the gangly, balding pizza chef. He rested his elbows on the pizza joint’s red linoleum counter-top, nudging aside plastic containers filled with garlic salt, red pepper flakes, and oregano. “Where’s Mitchell?”

  Mitchell’s little side business was no secret in the pizza parlor. The pizza chef raised his bushy black eyebrows. His name might actually have been Ray, but even after years of buying pizza and weed there Kaliq still wasn’t sure. “Mitchell’s gone already. You missed him.”

  Kaliq patted the back pocket of his khakis, where he’d shoved his bulging wallet, a sour lump of panic rising in his throat. Of course he wasn’t addicted, but he didn’t like being stuck without any weed at all when he’d been planning to roll a nice big fatty to while away the afternoon. And tomorrow afternoon, and the day after that...

  “What? You mean he left for Amsterdam already?”

  Ray—or maybe it was Roy—pulled open the shiny chrome door of the pizza oven and in one expert motion slipped two hot slices onto a double layer of paper plates and slid them across the counter in Kaliq’s direction. “Sorry, buddy,” he said only half sympathetically. “But from now on we sell pizza and soda and only pizza and soda. Got it?”

  Kaliq picked up the plate of pizza and then put it down on the counter again. He couldn’t believe his bad luck. He pulled out his wallet and removed a ten-dollar bill from the fat wad inside. “Keep the change,” he muttered, dropping the bill on the counter before leaving with his pizza.

  Out on the street, he wandered aimlessly toward the park, feeling like an abandoned dog. He’d been buying weed from Mitchell ever since eighth grade. One random May afternoon, Kaliq and his buddy Jeremy Scott had gone into the pizza place to buy a slice, and Mitchell had overheard Jeremy daring Kaliq to steal the container of oregano so they could take it home and smoke it. Mitchell had proposed to sell them something even more mood-enhancing, and Kaliq and his buddies had been coming back ever since. What was he supposed to do now, buy dime bags from one of those random, shifty-looking dudes in Central Park? Most of those guys sold crappy, dry stuff anyway, not the succulent green buds Mitchell got directly from his uncle in Peru. Besides, he’d heard half the Central Park dealers were narcs just waiting to bust a kid like him.

  Dumping his half-eaten pizza slices in the nearest garbage can, Kaliq dug into the pockets of his coat, searching for a leftover roach. When he found one he crossed Fifth Avenue and crouched on a park bench to light it, ignoring the group of giggling tenth-grade girls in dark blue Emma Willard uniforms ogling him lustily as they walked by.

  With his I-know-I’m-sexy smile, his wavy hair, his emerald green eyes, his caramel skin, and his sexy expertise in building and racing sailboats, Kaliq Braxton was the most lusted-after boy on the Upper East Side. He didn’t have to go looking for girls. They just fell into his lap. Literally.

  Kaliq sucked hard on the burning roach and pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. The problem was, his other stoner St. Jude’s buddies—Jeremy Scott, Charlie Dern, and Anthony Avuldsen—all bought from Mitchell, too. Mitchell was the best. But it was worth calling just to find out if any of them had managed to score a big stash before their dealer had disappeared.

  Jeremy was in a cab on his way to an interschool squash club game at the 92nd Street Y. “Sorry, dude,” his voice crackled over the line. “I’ve been doing mom’s Zoloft all day. Why don’t you just buy a dime bag from one of those dealers in the park or something?”

  Kaliq shrugged. Something about buying a dime bag in the park seemed so...lame. “Whatever, man,” he told Jeremy. “See you tomorrow.”

  Charlie was in the Virgin megastore, buying DVDs with his little brother. “Bummer,” he said when Kaliq told him about the situation. “But you’re right near the park, right? Just buy a dime bag.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” Kaliq replied. “See you tomorrow.”

  Anthony was having a driving lesson in the new BMW his parents had given him for his eighteenth birthday last weekend. “Check your mom’s medicine cabinet,” he advised. “Parents are the ultimate resource.”

  “I’ll look into it,” Kaliq answered. “Later.” He clicked off and sucked the last drag off his puny little roach. “Damn!” he cursed, flicking the charred remnants into the dirty snow beneath his feet. This semester was supposed to have been a twenty-four-hour party. He’d had an awesome interview at Brown in November, and he was pretty sure his application was good enough to get him in. Plus he was no longer hanging out with little Bree Hargrove, who was very sweet and had a great rack, but who’d taken up a shitload of his free time. For the rest of senior year Kaliq had been planning to smoke up, kick back, and just stay mellow until graduation, but without his trusty dealer, that plan was basically moot.

  This week an annoying little group of seniors were going to find out whether or not they got early admission to the top colleges in the country. This was it. There was no more time for their parents to build another new wing on the library. No time to bribe another esteemed alum into sending the dean of admissions a letter of recommendation. No time to star in another school play. The envelopes were already in the mail.

  Kaliq sat back on the green wooden bench and gazed up at the sumptuous limestone apartment buildings lining Fifth Avenue. To his right, he could just see the corner of Porsha’s 72nd Street apartment building. Up in the penthouse, Porsha’s Russian Blue cat, Kitty Minky, was probably lying stretched out on Porsha’s rose-colored bedspread, eagerly waiting for Porsha to come home and scratch her under the chin. Impulsively, Kaliq pushed the buttons on his phone to speed-dial Porsha’s cell phone. It rang six times before she finally picked up.

  “Hello?” Porsha answered in a clipped voice. She was seated in Garren’s new East 57th Street salon, which was decorated like a Turkish harem’s lair. Gauzy pink-and-yellow silk scarves hung from the ceiling, and huge pink-and-yellow-upholstered pillows were tossed at random around the salon for clients to lounge on and sip Turkish coffee while they waited for their appointments. In front of every stylist’s station was an enormous gilt-framed mirror. Gianni, Porsha’s new hairdresser, had just finished combing out her freshly washed and conditioned locks. With her cell phone pressed against her damp ear, Porsha stared at her reflection in the mirror. The critical moment was here: Did she dare go short?

  “Hey. It’s me, Kaliq,” she heard an old familiar voice murmur in her ear.

  Porsha was too stunned to answer. They hadn’t spoken since New Year’s Eve, and even then the conversation had ended badly. What was Kaliq doing calling her now?

  “Kaliq?” Porsha replied, half-impatiently, half-curiously. “Is this really important, because I can’t really talk. It’s kind of a very bad time.”

  “Nah, it’s not important,” Kaliq responded as he tried to come up with a reasonable explanation for why he’d called her in the first place. “I just thought you’d want to know I’ve decided to quit. You know—quit smoking weed.” He kicked at a clump of frozen dirt. He wasn’t even sure if that was true. Was he really quitting? For good?

  Porsha gripped the phone in confused silence on the other end. Kaliq had always been random—especially when he was stoned—but never this random. Gianni tapped his tortoise-shell comb against the back of her chair impatiently. “Well, good for you,” she responded finally. “Look, I have to go, okay?”

  Porsha sounded distracted, and Kaliq wasn’t even sure why he’d called her in the first place. “See you,” he mumbled, tucking his phone back into his coat pocket.

  “Bye.” Porsha tossed her phone into her bag and sat up straight in the leather swivel chair. “I’m ready,” she told Gianni, trying to sound confident. “Just remember, I want it short but feminine.”

  Amused creases appeared in Gianni’s tanned, inte
ntionally stubbly cheeks. He winked a long-lashed, dark brown eye. “Jes lika Dorothy Stratten. Right?”

  Uh-oh.

  Porsha tightened the belt on her beige salon robe and glared at Gianni’s overly pomaded black hair in the mirror, praying he wasn’t as stupid and incompetent as he sounded. Maybe it was a just a language thing. “No, not Dorothy Stratten. Dorothy Dandridge. You know, like Carmen Jones? Porgy and Bess? Bright Road?” Porsha searched her brain for a more current celebrity reference, someone with a decent short haircut. “Or maybe like Rihanna,” she added desperately, even though Rihanna's haircut was more tomboyish than what she had in mind.

  Gianni didn’t respond. Instead, he ran his fingers through Porsha’s damp tresses. “Sucha bee-ootiful ’air,” he said wistfully as he picked up his scissors and gathered her hair in his fist. Then, without further ado, he lopped the entire ponytail off with one brutal snip.

  Porsha closed her eyes as the rope of hair fell to the floor. Please make me look pretty, she prayed silently, and sophisticated and poised and elegant. She opened her eyes and stared in horror at her reflection. Her wet, blunt, ear-length mop was sticking out in all directions.

  “Don’t worry,” Gianni reassured her as he exchanged his big scissors for a small pair of shears. “Now we shape.”

  Porsha took a deep breath, steeling herself. It was too late to back out of it anyway. Most of her hair was on the floor. “Okay,” she gasped. Then her cell phone rang again and she lunged at it. “Wait,” she told Gianni. “Hello?”

  “Yes, is this Porsha Sinclaire? Harold’s daughter?”

  Porsha studied herself in the mirror. She wasn’t exactly sure who she was anymore. She looked more like a new inmate getting her pre-prison crop than the daughter of notorious corporate lawyer Harold Sinclaire, who’d divorced Porsha’s mother two years ago and now lived in a château in France, where he ran a vineyard with his “life partner,” who just happened to be a man.