UPPER EAST SIDE

by Ashley Valentine

  Bree sat down cross-legged on the floor opposite her and wetted her brush.“Whatever,” she remarked, frowning at her eager, voluptuous subject. Maybe her new friend was less insecure than she’d first thought.

  And a lot crazier, too.

  21

  Porsha sat at a corner table in the downstairs bar of Red, the new cozily romantic Perry Street boutique hotel, drinking Absolut and tonic and trying not to watch the coverage of Fashion Week on the Metro Channel. It seemed like every time she looked up they were showing the same clip of Chanel prancing around the runway at the Les Best show wearing her school uniform and that stupid I LOVE TAHJ T-shirt. Even in the bar, she could hear people murmuring, “Who is she?” and “Who’s Tahj?” It was enough to drive Porsha right up the red velvet–covered wall.

  “I wore my Yale tie this time,” Owen announced with a sly grin as he strode through the door wearing a tan Burberry trench coat and a black wool fedora hat that made him look even more manly and dashing than when she’d first met him. He slid into the bench next to Porsha and kissed her on the cheek. His face was damp and cold from the storm, and the feel of it against her face made her whole body tingle. “Hello, gorgeous.”

  Instantly Porsha forgot all about Chanel. She was with a sexy older man who called her “gorgeous.” So there.

  “Hi.” She twisted her ruby ring around and around on her ring finger. “I’m sorry I dragged you out on a night like this. I was just so...bored.”

  The cocktail waitress came over and Owen ordered a Bombay Sapphire martini straight up. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, put two cigarettes in his mouth, lit them both and passed one to Porsha. His eyebrows furrowed with brooding concern as he gazed at her with his piercingly bright eyes. “You’re not in any trouble, are you?”

  Trouble? Porsha took a drag off her cigarette and considered her answer. If you could call having a crush on your older, married Yale alum interviewer trouble, then yes, she was in terrible trouble. “Maybe,” she replied coyly. “Are you?”

  The waitress brought Owen his martini. He ate the green olive floating inside it and then wiped his mouth with a cocktail napkin. A trace of dark five o’clock shadow cloaked his sharply defined chin. “I was in a breakfast meeting this morning, eating Cheerios with five other lawyers, and I was thinking about you,” he admitted.

  Porsha ran her fingernail over her fishnet-stockinged knee. “Really?” she asked, immediately wishing her voice didn’t sound quite so eager and hopeful.

  Owen raised his glass to his lips, his eyes smoldering. “Yeah. I’ve been so crazy busy this week, but I promise I’ll get that report over to the guys at Yale ASAP.”

  “Oh,” Porsha responded disappointedly. She twirled her little brown cocktail straw around in her drink. For once she hadn’t even been thinking about Yale. Being with Owen made her feel like she was beyond Yale. She was his “gorgeous,” the star of his show. Or maybe she was only deluding herself.

  Glancing through the paned glass window behind them, Porsha could barely see the cars parked out on the street. They were just masses of white, like big, dumb sleeping elephants.

  She could feel Owen watching her as she puffed on her cigarette and blew a stream of gray smoke into the air above their heads. He’d asked to see her again, hadn’t he? And he wouldn’t have done that if he wasn’t attracted to her. He was just nervous, that was all. Inside Porsha’s head, the cameras were starting to roll. She was the femme fatale seducing the handsome, good, older lawyer. Yale was the last thing she wanted to talk about right now.

  She took one last puff on her cigarette and then stubbed it out in the chrome ashtray in the center of the table. “I almost went to jail once,” she announced, trying to sound intriguing.

  This wasn’t exactly true. A few months ago she’d stolen a pair of cashmere pajamas from Barneys’ men’s department to give to Kaliq as a surprise gift when they were having problems. But when they’d broken up for real, Chanel had convinced Porsha to put the pajamas back. She’d never even gotten caught.

  Owen chuckled and picked up his drink. He was wearing gold cuff links with a blue Y stamped on them to match his blue-and-gold Yale tie. “See, you’re just the kind of girl Yale needs,” he joked.

  “And I’m a virgin,” Porsha blurted out, fluttering her eyelashes at the randomness of her remark. It was strange. Even though Owen was extremely dashing and she really wanted to see what it felt like to kiss him, she was a little afraid of what she was doing.

  “I’m sure Yale needs more of those, too,” Owen laughed. He crossed and then uncrossed his legs and Porsha could see she was making him nervous, which wasn’t what she’d intended.

  She reached under the table and slipped her small, trembling fingers over his warm, tanned hand. “I don’t mind if you kiss me,” she murmured in a low, breathy voice, that sounded exactly like Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot.

  Owen put down his drink. “Come here,” he said gruffly, wrapping his free arm around her and pulling her toward him.

  His chin was rough and scratched Porsha’s face as they kissed, but she’d never been kissed so expertly and powerfully in all her life. Plus he smelled faintly of Hermès, which was her all-time favorite men’s cologne.

  Porsha had thought she’d be plagued by guilt the moment their lips met. He’s a friend of Dad’s, she reminded herself. He’s old. But Owen was such a good kisser, now that he’d started, she wasn’t about to make him stop.

  22

  “I told her she has a better backside than any girl in the business,” one of Les Best’s stylists told a photographer for W magazine. “That slim-hipped, tomboy butt. Like she could just slip on her boyfriend’s dirty old jeans and make them look fresh and sexy.”

  Chanel shook her lovely silky head in good-natured protest and puffed on an cigarette. “My boyfriend never wears jeans. He thinks they’re overrated. He wears those green canvas army pants. You know, the real ones from the army surplus store?” She glanced around the crowded, smoky after-party which was in full force at Crème, a new go-go club on 43rd Street, but she didn’t see Tahj anywhere. He’d never come backstage at the show, so she’d figured she’d just meet him here.

  “And is your boyfriend named Tahj, by any chance?” the stylist asked. He giggled and pointed at her T-shirt. “You should get Les to make a whole line of those. Everyone would totally go for it—it would be so wild!”

  “Would you mind stepping back for a moment so I could get her picture?” the photographer asked the stylist.

  “And could you autograph this Polaroid for my collection, Chanel?” a tiny leather-pants-wearing older man with a white buzz cut asked.

  “Me too!” another voice chimed in.

  Chanel hitched up the baby blue hip-hugging Les Best jeans she’d acquired compliments of the house and pointed to the I LOVE TAHJ logo emblazoned on the front of her shirt as she grinned cheesily for the camera.

  There were fourteen inches on the ground so far and here she was, snowed in at the hottest, most exclusive Fashion Week after-party ever, with her all-time favorite fashion designer, hundreds of gorgeous models and hunk-o-licious actors, the most discerning fashion magazine editors in the business, and five of fashion’s most avant-garde photographers. She honestly didn't care if the whole city shut down because of the snow. She never wanted to leave!

  “I bet if you held an auction for that shirt right now, you could sell it for a thousand dollars,” the photographer quipped as he snapped away. “But of course you’d never part with it.”

  Chanel took another puff on her cigarette as the group around her waited for her to respond. The T-shirt was cute, but it was really just a spur of the moment thing she’d done because she’d thought Tahj would think it was funny and to make it up to him for appearing in a fashion show on a Friday night, their night. She was a spur-of-the-moment kind of gal, which was exactly why this auction idea sounded so appealing. She could give the money to a good cause like Little Hearts, th
at children’s charity the Valentine’s Day ball money was supposed to go to.

  “Let’s do it,” she giggled giddily.

  The group of admirers whooped with delight and followed her over to the bar like adoring little mice following the Pied Piper.

  “Who wants to buy a T-shirt?” Chanel crowed, jumping up on top of the bar, and parading up and down like she was on the runway again.

  Of course only someone as gorgeous as she was could actually get away with this.

  The DJ joined in the fun, putting on Madonna’s old classic, “Vogue,” and turning the volume all the way up. Chanel shook her booty and stuck out her chest—it was all in good fun—as every pair of eyes in the club tuned in to watch.

  “Five hundred dollars!” someone shouted.

  “Anyone else?” Chanel taunted the dazzled crowd. “It’s for a good cause.”

  “Seven hundred!”

  “Eight!”

  Chanel stopped dancing, rolled her eyes and whipped her cigarettes out of her pocket, as if to say, “Your stinginess bores me.” The crowd laughed and fifteen or so lighters were offered her way. She bent down to grab a light from a lucky dude wearing a fur vest, and then pranced away again, shaking her hips to the music and puffing away as she waited for the bidding to go up.

  “A thousand dollars!” the dude wearing the fur vest shouted. He’d gotten close enough to Chanel to know that it was worth it.

  Chanel threw her arms in the air and whooped loudly, daring someone to take the bidding to new heights. As much as she hated to admit it, she didn’t even mind that Tahj hadn’t turned up. She might have loved him, but she was having a good ass time without him.

  23

  “We can ask the butler to take his clothes off and play the piano for us,” Gia told Kaliq. “He does whatever I tell him to.”

  When group therapy had been over and it was time for the outpatients to go home, the storm had already been so bad, Kaliq couldn’t get a car to take him to the station, so Gia had offered to give him a ride. Then when they’d gotten to the station the trains had stopped running, so the ever-accommodating Gia had taken Kaliq home to her house in her bodyguard-driven black Range Rover. Now they were sitting on the floor of her enormous, luxurious bedroom, getting high as they watched the snow pile up on the skylight overhead.

  The Upper East Side town house Kaliq had grown up in was four stories high and had its own elevator and a twenty-four-hour cook. But Gia’s Greenwich, Connecticut, mansion had something his family’s town house didn’t—vast amounts of space inside, and acres of land around the house. It was like a city unto itself, and Gia had her own private borough where she could do absolutely whatever she pleased while her ancient English nanny was in bed watching TV and the other servants were doing their jobs in the other boroughs. Gia’s bathroom even had a Roman daybed in it for lounging on while she waited for her twelve-foot-wide marble Jacuzzi to fill up.

  “Or we could have crazy loud sex on the stairs,” Gia added. “That would really drive the staff nuts.”

  Kaliq leaned his head back against the footboard of Gia’s four-poster king-sized bed and put the joint they were sharing to his lips. “Let’s just watch the snow fall for a while.”

  Gia rolled over on her back, resting her head on the leg of Kaliq’s jeans. “God, you’re mellow. I’m not used to hanging out with someone so mellow.”

  “What are your friends like?” Kaliq asked, sucking hard on the joint. Weed seemed to taste and feel better now that he’d gone without it for a while.

  “I don’t have any friends anymore,” Gia answered. “They all kind of gave up on me because I’m so crazy.”

  Kaliq put his hand on her head and began stroking her hair. She had incredibly soft, luxurious hair. He was sure she had to be mixed with something. “I hang out a lot with these three guys in my class at school,” he said, referring to Jeremy, Anthony, and Charlie. “But I went for a few days without getting high and I didn’t really want to hang out with them, you know?”

  “That’s what Jackie calls a ‘negative friendship.’ A ‘positive friendship’ is when you do fun, constructive things with your friends like baking cookies, making collages, and climbing mountains.”

  “I’m your friend,” Kaliq offered quietly.

  Gia rubbed the back of her head against his leg. “I know.” She laughed, her not-too-small chest jiggling up and down inside her tight white T-shirt. “Want to bake some cookies?”

  Kaliq combed a lock of her hair up into the air with his fingers and then let it fall, strand by strand, back into his lap. Porsha had long hair, too, but it wasn’t as wavy or as soft as Gia’s. It was funny how girls could all be so different. “Can I kiss you?” he asked, not really having intended to sound so formal.

  “Okay,” Gia whispered.

  Kaliq bent over and brushed his lips against the bridge of her nose, her chin, and finally her lips. She kissed him back hungrily and then pulled away and sat up on her elbows. “This is what Jackie calls ‘feeding your craving.’ You’re doing something that feels good temporarily instead of ‘healing the wounds.’

  Kaliq shrugged. “Why is it temporary?” He pointed up at the skylight, which was completely smothered in snow. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Gia scooched her feet up under her and stood up. She disappeared into the bathroom and Kaliq could hear a cabinet door open and the sounds of pill bottles rattling and water running. Then she came out, brushing her teeth, her light brown eyes all lit up like she’d just had an epiphany, or at the very least a good idea. “There’s an old carriage up in the attic. We can go up and sit in it,” she announced with her mouth full of toothpaste. She went back into the bathroom to spit and then came out again, holding a hand out to Kaliq. “Are you coming?”

  Kaliq stood up and took her hand. His body was humming from the weed and the intense smoothness of Gia’s skin. All he really wanted to do was to kiss her some more. “Can I ‘feed my craving’ when we get up there?” he asked, feeling very high indeed.

  Gia cocked a thin eyebrow at him and licked her dark red lips. “I might even let you ‘heal my wounds.’”

  Kaliq grinned his lopsided stoner grin. Who’d known rehab psychobabble could be such a turn-on!

  24

  “My hand is getting tired,” Bree complained to Elise after she’d painted Elise’s head and neck. “I’ll do the rest tomorrow.”

  “Let’s see,” Elise said, sitting up. Her chest was so small Bree couldn’t help but stare at it. Her breasts were like the little new potatoes her dad had grown when they’d rented a house in Pennsylvania one summer. Small, hard, and beigey pink. “It looks good,” Elise said, squinting at the canvas. “But how come you made my face green?”

  Bree hated when people asked her questions about her art. She didn’t know why she did what she did, she just did it. And her dad always said, “The artist doesn’t have to answer to anyone but himself.” Or herself, in her case. “Because I was in a green mood,” she answered, annoyed.

  “Well, green is my favorite color,” Elise responded happily. She pulled on her turtleneck and underwear but left her jeans and bra on the floor. “Oh my God. I have that book, too!” she squealed, pointing at a thick, heavy paperback on the bookshelf behind the TV. She walked over to the shelf and pulled the book out. “But yours is so new. Don’t you ever read it?”

  Bree bit off the top of an Oreo and read the title on the spine of book. The New This Is My Body for Women. “My dad bought me that last year. I think he probably thought that if I read it, he wouldn’t have to explain anything to me about sex—I could just look up the embarrassing stuff.”

  “But have you ever actually looked at it? Some of it is really graphic.”

  Bree had no idea. She’d immediately shelved the book behind the TV along with the other random books her father had given her that she never intended to read, like Breathing Room: A Buddhist’s Guide to Living Creatively, Mao’s Secret Seven: The Women Behind Chairman M
ao, and Finding the Dragon Within: What Is Your Art?

  “Like, graphic in what way?” Bree asked, intrigued.

  Elise carried the book over to the worn leather sofa and sat down, crossing her long bare legs dramatically. “I’ll show you.” She opened the book and Bree sat down next to her and leaned in close to see.

  The first thing Elise turned to was a detailed diagram of a woman on her hands and knees bent over a man lying on his back. The book had been written in the 1970s and the text had since been updated, but the diagrams hadn’t. The man had hair down to his shoulders, a full beard, and was wearing beads. His penis was sticking straight up and it appeared to be in the woman’s mouth. The two girls erupted into giggles.

  Ew!

  “I told you,” said Elise, pleased with herself for opening right up to such a gem.

  “I can’t believe I never saw any of this,” Bree exclaimed. She grabbed the book away from Elise and rifled through the pages. “Oh my God!” she gasped when she saw a diagram of the same couple in another position. The woman still had the long-haired guy’s penis in her mouth, except this time she was lying alongside him with her feet up around his head and her legs splayed so that he could do the same thing to her. Bree didn’t even know the name for that. “I thought this was just a boring book about getting your period and all that stuff. But this is, like, a real sex book for women.”

  “I think there’s a teen one, too, that’s totally boring, but my mom got me this one by mistake. I couldn’t believe it when I started reading it!”

  The two girls pored over the pages until they stumbled upon a section called Same-Sex Relationships.

  “Like Ms. Crumb,” Bree observed, reading. The introduction was long and started with the line, “Your feelings are genuine and not to be ignored...” Outside she could hear the grating sound of a snowplow driving by. She looked up to watch the snow falling steadily through the grimy living room window.