Foreign Exposure

by Lauren Mechling

I sank deeper into the cushion. “With Mom and Maurice. Mom has arranged for a sublet from some imaginary colleague she’s never met.”

  “Where does this imaginary colleague live?” Ed wanted to know.

  “Beats me,” I said. “Probably some gingerbread house overflowing with mountains of musty German books and military paraphernalia.”

  “Do you know the name of the neighborhood?” Harriet asked. “Schoneberg? Mitte? Tiergarten? Any of these ring a bell?”

  “Afraid not,” I said. “I just know that it’s near the Teichen Institute. So wherever the academic part of town is, I guess?”

  “What part of Berlin isn’t academic?” Ed asked, and Harriet obligingly guffawed.

  I shrugged, feeling left out of the joke and, perhaps, also slightly ashamed of my total ignorance of Berlin. I hadn’t opened the Culture Shock! Germany book that the Judys had given me, not even once.

  “Don’t worry,” Ed said, reading my anxious expression. “You’ll be an expert on German geography in two weeks, tops.”

  “God, I hope not,” I said. “I was sort of planning on sleeping through the whole experience.”

  I got up to go to the bathroom and returned to find Ed and Harriet standing together by the bar, sipping glasses of white wine and exchanging goofy glances. When Ed noticed me, he pulled a CD out of his breast pocket. “I made this for the party,” he said proudly. “I paid some kid a fortune to transfer my music to the computer and make me some mixes. This is the first of many.”

  “Let me guess what artists you’ve included,” Harriet said over the ringing doorbell. “Frank Sinatra, Frank Sinatra, and Frank Sinatra?”

  “I object!” Ed said. “There’s some Harry Belafonte, too.”

  As the owner of a small newspaper empire, Ed dutifully expressed curiosity about what he called “new and noteworthy trends,” but his personal tastes were stubbornly old fashioned: steak dinners, hand tennis at the New York Athletic Club, and the Rat Pack.

  The doorbell rang again. Neither Ed nor Harriet moved to answer it, so I did. I opened the door to my Barrow Street family bearing a bouquet of purple tulips.

  “Sorry to be so unfashionably early,” Quinn said as he stepped past me, “but we had to shake that Darrell kid. He wouldn’t take a hint.”

  Dad blushed. “It was fun for a while, but then it got a little strange,” he said, accepting a beer from Harriet. “I started to think he’d confused me with another more, ah, prominent photographer. But he knew all these obscure biographical details about me, like my springtime allergies and what part of the Jersey Shore I used to—”

  “Wow. Your place looks great,” Quinn broke in. “If I’d known you’d gone all out like this, I wouldn’t have bothered bringing these wilted tulips from the Korean deli downstairs.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Harriet said. She made a show of asking Carlos the ‘floral designer’ to put the tulips on the bar, “where everybody will be sure to see them.”

  For the next half-hour, Dad took pictures of the guests filing into Harriet’s loft. I found it a little odd that Harriet had invited so many people I’d never even heard of to my going-away party, but then, cross-pollination figured big in Harriet’s life philosophy.

  When the room was sufficiently full, Ed put on his CD, the first track of which was, sure enough, Old Blue Eyes’ rendition of “New York, New York.” I gave a whoop and immediately started dancing with Quinn and a few of what Harriet called her “gallery friends,” who tended to be slightly kookier than her “museum friends,” though less fun than her “studio friends.” Harriet has probably met upwards of a million people in her life, and she keeps in touch with all of them. Even if she wanted to lose touch, people wouldn’t let her. She’s that charismatic. I was among the chosen few Harriet saw regularly, and over the past few months, we’d met for tea or a movie almost every week.

  It’s funny how I’ve become so much more comfortable hanging out with adults since moving to New York. This wasn’t always the case—far from it. In middle school, I’d come home to find Mom and her friends Eileen and Wanda in the den, sipping Crystal Light raspberry lemonade and discussing inappropriate topics like varicose veins and the appeal of men with curly blond chest hair. With my fingers plugged in my ears, I’d scuttle away, and Mom would tease me for being “Little Miss Sensitivity.” But on Barrow Street, Dad and Quinn, and now Ed and Harriet, have always treated me as an equal. And compared to my peers, grownups are total softies, a much easier to please audience.

  At Harriet’s that night, I hardly noticed that most guests were a good two decades older than I, including Dad, Quinn, the Baldwin Bugle faculty adviser, Ms. Singer, the Upstairs Judys, a handful of Ed’s employees from the Tribune, and quite a few total strangers, among them a frizzy-haired woman who showed up with a greyhound as big as a horse.

  Lily was there on behalf of my other Baldwin friends, who’d all gone to the runway fashion show also known as Baldwin’s graduation ceremony. According to Viv, the senior guys decked out in three-piece suits, accessorized with monocles and jewel-encrusted walking sticks, while the girls wore outrageous nineteenth-century ball gowns. The spectacle was so phenomenal that several dozen hopefuls had shown up with counterfeit tickets.

  “You didn’t have to come, but I’m so, so, so glad you did!” I told Lily when I greeted her at the door. She was looking especially pretty in a baby blue tank top that revealed more skin than her usual hoodie sweatshirts, and though she’d pulled her long brown hair back in the usual ponytail, she was, for the first time since I’d known her, also wearing mascara and dangly earrings.

  “Please,” she said coolly. “I’ll have enough time to look at the graduation costumes in the fall. The Bugle’s doing a back-to-school issue with a graduation fashion spread. And guess who’s writing captions?”

  “Would that be my favorite editor?”

  “No, but it might be her favorite dedicated reporter.” Lily wiggled her index finger at me. “You’ll have fun with it! Hey,” she said suddenly, looking around the room, “where’s Boris?”

  “Off pretending to live in a spy movie,” I said bitterly. “He doesn’t want to be ‘too visible’ in case Sam shows up—can you believe that?”

  “I love that guy,” Lily said, shaking her head sympathetically, “but he is crazy, isn’t he? I’ll bet he writes you love letters this summer in invisible ink.”

  “Or secret messages written with lemonade and a Q-tip.”

  “Or he’ll go the ESP route,” she said. “You’ll wake up in the middle of the night and just know he’s communicating something.”

  “What’s this about Mimi waking up in the middle of the night to talk with a man!” This interruption came from Quinn, obviously—who else?

  “Actually,” I said, turning to him, “we were talking about my paranoid wannabe telepathic boyfriend, Boris.”

  “I once dated a man who claimed to be able to read the minds of pigeons,” Quinn told us. “It was intense.”

  Behind us, Harriet switched off Ed’s music, replacing it with an album she described as “absolutely essential.” The composition had no beat, no music, just loud gurgling sounds punctuated by the occasional siren. “Sounds like a ferret getting arrested while giving birth,” Quinn observed approvingly.

  The studio friends were enthusiastic, the museum friends and gallery friends somewhat less so. I wished Boris could’ve witnessed these dead serious responses; he would’ve cracked up. Reporting the highlights later just wouldn’t produce the same effect.

  While I could’ve stayed at the party all night—and wanted to, if only to spite Boris—Lily was ready to move on to our next engagement after about an hour. “I hate to bail on my own party,” I said to Ed and Harriet, “but like I told you before, we have to get to the grad party soon. They have some weird door policy.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” Harriet said. “You’re not going anywhere until Ed and I make our announcement.”

  “Your announcement?�
� I felt the color rise to my cheeks. Hadn’t they made enough of a fuss over me already? I was only going away for the summer to take language classes, as millions of overachieving American adolescents had done before me. “Really, there’s no need,” I insisted.

  “Kid, just sit tight,” Ed said as he ceremoniously tapped a cheese knife against one of the flower vases. “Can I have everybody’s attention?”

  Next to him, Harriet was wriggling impatiently. I blushed and glanced at my pontoon feet. Maybe I should cobble together an impromptu thank-you speech? Always start with a joke, my dad had once advised. But which joke would be appropriate for the occasion? I soon became so preoccupied with finding the perfect witticism that I missed the lead-up into Ed’s bombshell: “. . . which is why we’ve decided to get married.”

  I jerked my head up. So this was why so many unfamiliar people had shown up. The guests had erupted into gasps and exclamations and applause. Even Lily was clapping and pounding her Treetorns on Harriet’s finished concrete floors. Was I the only one who was shocked and unsettled by this news?

  Not that I had anything against marriage, but Harriet had always struck me as too independent to be interested in such a conventional institution. Never in a million years did I expect to see her waving her left wrist like Elizabeth Taylor, flaunting the massive diamond ring that Ed had just presented to her. It looked out of place on Harriet’s hand, mere inches from the chipped red fingernails and pink plastic bangles.

  But she looked so happy, and soon my disbelief gave way to genuine delight. On my way out, after hugging my dad and Quinn goodbye, I pulled Harriet aside to congratulate her. “That was a nice little trick you played on me,” I told her. “Thank God you made your announcement before I’d given my thank-you speech!”

  She laughed. “You had a speech? In that case, I wished we’d waited!”

  “But seriously, Harriet,” I said, “you’re going to be the best newlyweds ever.”

  Harriet beamed her appreciation as I babbled on, offering my services as their surrogate New York daughter if they ever found themselves wishing for one. “Way too late for that,” Harriet said, “but we still want you around as much as you can stand. Now have yourself an extraordinary summer, and we expect to see you out at Ed’s place in the Hamptons before school starts!”

  “All I can conclude,” Lily said afterward as we walked south on Broadway, “is that either Harriet did an awfully good job covering up her girlie side, or that everyone deep down wants to get married. Maybe it’s just that most people don’t see any need to conceal it.”

  “So by that logic,” I said, “that means you want to get married, too?” Lily is less boy-obsessed than most of my friends, so I spoke with some disappointment. Apart from a short-lived crush on Harry Feder, the notorious Lothario of Baldwin whose exploits had earned him the unfortunate nickname Blowjob Harry, she seemed pretty immune to the smellier sex.

  “Married?” Lily shook her head. “Nah. But I could stand a little boy-girl action.” She paused before asking, “Do you know who Dimitri Zarillo is?”

  “Well, yeah—who doesn’t?”

  Dimitri Zarillo was a junior with a shaved head and wild, wide-spaced black eyes. We’d only interacted once, when he handed me a flier for Burn Dinosaur, a play he’d written that was being staged in Prospect Park. I was sorry to have missed it; the Bugle review described actors in bathing suits, wielding water guns filled with ketchup and pancake batter.

  “Well, I happen to think he’s cute,” Lily said defensively. “I mean, I’m not sure why, and the worst part about it is that he’s the last person I would want to like. He seems so . . .”

  “Self-involved?”

  “Exactly!”

  “I hate to break it to you, Lils, but I think he is.” Still, I was glad to hear that Lily had gotten over Harry.

  We were now walking down the Bowery, past a row of lighting and jewelry stores. Though most were closed, their lights were blazing through the windows, so it felt earlier than it was. After passing a knot of panhandlers outside the Manhattan Jewelry Association, we arrived at the address on the invite: an off-putting black door that was bolted shut. Lily, as confused as I was, was reaching for her cell phone when the grating of an adjoining lighting store rose and a short, spiky-haired guy popped out to hustle us underneath it. He led us through a display room of chandeliers and reading lamps, then up a carpeted staircase that opened onto a massive loft with high windows overlooking the Bowery.

  “Wow,” I said. It was a beautiful space, even when crowded with hundreds of intoxicated high-schoolers. “What is this, anyway? It sure doesn’t look like a club.”

  “It’s not,” Lily told me. “It’s some guy’s loft—he lives here. He advertised it on Craigslist. You won’t believe how much the organizers are paying him—six thousand dollars for one night. Isn’t that smart of him?”

  As I gazed around the room, I couldn’t help but think that the Baldwin student body was getting its money’s worth. Students were everywhere, sprawled over windowsills, crushed against the kitchen island, spread all over the floor. Samuel Richter had fashioned a floor cushion out of a full garbage bag and was napping on it, his face tucked into the knot at the top. Nathan Milliken was sitting in the kitchen sink with a bag of ice on his lap. A circle of freshmen girls hovered by the door, clutching enormous Starbucks cups for protection.

  I followed Lily’s eyes to Dimitri Zarillo, who was leaning against a column and conducting a one-sided conversation with a girl in sunglasses and a trench coat. We edged over to him just as the girl in sunglasses decided to flee. “See you in a little bit,” Lily whispered, deftly replacing Dimitri’s conversational partner. He continued speaking, and it was doubtful he had noticed he was talking to somebody new.

  Once I was alone, I scanned the room for Boris—never a difficult task, given his towering height and powder white hair. Right away I spotted him in the kitchen area, holding a longneck and chatting with Sam and Ivan Grimalsky. I was on my way over when Pia inserted herself in my path. “Where were you?” she demanded.

  “Yeah, what took you so long?” Jess asked. “We were beginning to think you’d bailed on us for the senior citizens cruise.”

  My account of Ed’s proposal didn’t measure up to their extravagant descriptions of the Baldwin graduation ceremony—or not until I described the ginormous ring Harriet had been given. “You should have seen the rock,” I said. “We’re talking king of bling.”

  “I prefer queen of obscene,” my favorite Russian prince said from behind me. Hurrah! I turned to see Boris looking adorable in his just-woken-up way, with his white-blond hair shooting up like wild grass. I stretched out my arms and wrapped them around his burly torso, but before I could pull him toward me, he twisted out of my grasp and I tripped forward.

  The girls all exchanged uncomfortable glances. This was not the first time Boris had disowned my affection in their presence.

  “Hi, Boris,” Viv said, then coughed uneasily.

  He acknowledged her with a slight wave, then shuffled back a few steps. I felt Pia’s eyes drilling into me; she hated my tolerance for Boris’s less-than-reverential treatment.

  “I am dying of thirst,” Jess said quickly. “Anyone feel like joining me at the bar?”

  Pia and Viv hopped to the task, leaving me to glare at Boris.

  “What?” he asked, all wide-eyed innocence. “Forgive me for forgetting how uncoordinated you are. Mimi,” he added quietly, “you know we’ve got to keep a low profile.”

  “Can you remind me why again?” I shot back.

  Boris tilted his head toward the kitchen, where Sam was leaning against the counter.

  “I’m sorry if Sam’s your friend,” I said, “but in case you forgot, I’m supposed to be your girlfriend, and starting in ten hours, I’m going to be the long-distance girlfriend you don’t see for three months.”

  “Mimi, relax—I’m visiting you in Berlin in a couple of weeks!”

  “You’re
not visiting me,” I corrected him. “You’re meeting me at the airport for three hours while you have a layover. You’ll be jet-lagged and your dad will be there and—”

  I was about to really lay into him when an older man in a business suit tore into the room and flipped on all the overhead lights. “OK, kids! Party’s over, and I mean ASAP! I’m a working man, and it’s Bedtime for Bonzo!”

  He charged over to the bed and shooed away a couple that had been making out on top of his duvet. This accomplished, he loosened his tie, removed his jacket, and started to climb in. “I’m opening my eyes in five minutes!” he shouted through the covers. “That should be long enough for you to remember where the door is located.”

  “You can’t do this. You rented us the space for the night!” Jasmine Lowenstein, a member of the organizing committee, yelled. “We paid you six grand, and the party just started!”

  The man turned over and nosed his head under the pillow.

  Harry Feder, Lily’s ex-crush, walked up to the bed and tossed his Visa card on the guy’s bedside table. “Sir,” Harry oozed, “why don’t you go to the Waldorf tonight? My treat. Just go easy on the minibar, will you?”

  A pillow hit Harry smack on the forehead.

  “Let’s just get out of here,” I said to Boris. “We can go to a diner or something.”

  But Pia prevented any such getaway, edging between us to announce, “Listen, there are at least two other parties tonight, and my sources say no psychotic bedbugs.” She gestured at the owner of the loft, who’d risen from bed and was powering through the room with an industrial-size broom.

  I squeezed Boris’s wrist. “You go ahead,” he said, shaking free of my hand. I instantly saw why: Sam had lumbered over.

  Acknowledging me with a cursory nod, Sam went on to tell Boris they could still make the screening of 3-D shorts at Anthology Archives. “It’s at twelve-thirty. If we cab it, we’ll be fine.”

  “Really? Cool,” Boris said. Sensing my frustration, he looked at me pleadingly, as if I were the one behaving unreasonably. “You don’t want to join us, do you?”