by Tucker Shaw
“As what?”
“Something I’ve never done before.”
“Speaking of which,” Trina says, looking at Bryan, “I can’t believe you’ve never been to a diner before. I thought you came to New York all the time!”
Bryan shakes his head. “Yeah, but I always come with my parents, and they always want to eat at the same places. Eleven Madison Park. Jean-Georges. Per Se. You know. Places like that.”
Trina blinks. “Huh? Eleven what? Jean who? Per what?”
“I think he means he’s rich,” I say. “The Akitos live large when they travel. First class. VIP. Four stars all the way.”
“Five,” Bryan says.
“Do your parents know you’re here?” Trina asks Bryan.
“Are you kidding?” he says. “They’d never let me come alone. They wouldn’t stop me from coming; they’d just insist on coming, too.”
“Mine don’t, either,” Trina says. “My mom is going to kill me when she finds out.”
“Mothers are like that,” Bryan says. “What about yours, Gemma?”
I freeze for a split second. Things are going way too well to start talking about mothers. I don’t want to go there. Not yet. I swallow and smile and weigh, for that split second, whether I should lie or not.
But I don’t have to decide. Trina’s too busy talking. “Fanciest place I ever go is Del Taco,” she says. I wonder if she knows she just saved me.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“Don’t they have Del Taco on the East Coast?” she asks.
“I don’t think so,” I say. “At least, I’ve never heard of it.”
“Thank God,” she says. “All the more reason to stay here indefinitely.” She smiles and changes the subject, gingerly patting her updo. “Dahling, how’s my hair? Is it holding up? You have no idea how much Aqua Net I have up there.”
“Oh, I think I do,” I say, reaching over to tuck a stray strand behind her ear.
6:55 A.M.
We slide into a vinyl booth near the back of the Empire State Royal Diner ahead of schedule, behind tables of businesspeople in pinstripes and groups of sunglasses-wearing slackers in torn T-shirts. We order coffees and pancakes, plus a plate of hash browns to share. “Extra crispy,” Trina says to the waitress, who smiles and says, “Of course.”
I stir two packets of sugar into my coffee, and then a third.
“A little coffee with your sugar?” Trina smiles.
“I know, I can’t help it,” I say as I drain the pitcher of half-and-half. The waitress replaces it immediately as she whisks by. “I love the smell, but I have to doctor it up to drink it.”
Bryan looks over at my cup. “That’s not a coffee. That’s a milk shake.” He winks. “Maybe that’s what makes you so sweet.” I fan myself in mock modesty.
“Oh, brother,” Trina says. I kick her under the table and she puts her head on my shoulder.
Bryan takes a small pad of paper and a green pencil from his jacket pocket. He starts swiping the pencil across the paper.
“What are you drawing?” Trina asks him.
“A cocktail dress. Something I’ve had in my head all morning. Remember the dress that Holly Golightly wears when her husband, Doc, first comes to her apartment?”
“Oh, totally,” I say. “The black one. With the feathers around the hem. Cocktail length.”
“That’s the one,” he says, pencil scratching the paper.
“You don’t sketch on an iPad or something?” Trina asks.
“Oh, no. The great ones never had iPads,” Bryan says. “Can you see Edith Head sketching out Bette Davis’s Bumpy Night dress from All About Eve on an iPad? No, no, I can’t draw on those things. This isn’t Project Runway. I’m old-school. I only sketch on paper. And while we’re at it, I only read real books. I only wear leather shoes. I wear a watch that needs winding.” He pulls up his cuff to show us his Rolex. “Old-school,” he says.
“Sorry,” Trina says and rolls her eyes.
Bryan picks up his coffee cup with two hands. “Why were you so late, Trina?”
“Ask my pilot, dahling. The red-eye was, like, three hours delayed.”
“Three hours?”
“And only two of those hours were because it was raining in Denver,” Trina says. “It was too gruesome.” Both Bryan and I laugh. It’s a word Holly Golightly used: gruesome.
“Why on earth did you take a red-eye?” Bryan says.
“Because it’s sixty dollars cheaper. That’s, like, a shift and a half at the Copper Corral.”
“Corral?”
“The restaurant I work at.”
“It’s called the Corral? Like, a corral where you put cows and pigs? Where you line them up at troughs and feed them corn and slop?”
“That’s the idea,” Trina says. “We fatten up our customers for market. You’d love it there.”
Bryan throws his pencil at her, like they’ve known each other for years.
“Oh, my God,” I say. “My hair hurts.” I tug the tiara out of my hair and start feeling around for bobby pins.
“What are you doing?” Bryan says.
“I’m sorry. I can’t take the updo another minute.”
“Oh, Gemma. Dear Gemma. Glamour isn’t painless, you know,” Bryan says.
“You want to try this hairstyle?” Trina says.
Bryan sighs. “If you must, though I’d suggest you cover your shoulders with your wrap. Don’t want those flakes of dried hairspray to gunk up the Givenchy. Or is it faux-venchy?”
“You’ll never know,” I say, batting my eyelashes.
“You’re so perfect, Gemma.”
“When are you two just going to make out?” Trina looks over at a customer at the next table and points at herself. “Third wheel.”
“Very funny,” I say. Obviously he was joking. My dress is anything but Givenchy, and I’m anything but perfect.
Our pancakes come. Trina takes a picture. “Instagram, dahlings,” she says, tapping at her phone.
I drown my short stack in great glugs of maple syrup. Trina runs just a few squiggles of syrup across the top of her stack. Bryan carefully pours a small puddle onto the side of his plate. “I like to dunk my bites individually,” he says.
“Is he for real?” Trina asks.
“Yep, I think so.”
“Thank heavens, dahling!”
We devour our pancakes, smiling our way through bite after bite like little kids, totally ignoring the hash browns.
Finally, Trina drops her fork on her empty plate. “I’m never eating again.”
I drain the last of my coffee.
“Subject change,” Bryan says.
“Uh-oh,” I say.
“Not you.” He turns to Trina. “What’s going on with . . . what’s his name again?”
“Who?”
“You know who.”
“Miles?”
“That’s right. Miles.”
Trina shakes her head. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“It’s OK if you don’t want to talk about it,” I say.
“Look, he dumped me, OK? Actually, he didn’t even bother with that. He just changed his Facebook status to ‘single.’”
“Are you kidding?” Bryan says. “What a wuss.”
I take Trina’s forearm. “Quel beast,” I say, quoting Holly Golightly again.
“Yeah, well, whatever,” she says. “I should have known he was a freak. He took me to a mixed martial arts competition on our first date. Mixed martial arts! Who does that?”
“Charming,” Bryan says. “And for your second date? Did he invite you over to watch monster trucks?”
“That would be funny if it weren’t so close to the truth,” Trina says. “But payback’s coming for poor Miles.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“I have pictures of him on my phone.”
“So what?” I say.
“What kind of pictures?” Bryan asks, his
eyes lighting up.
“Trust me, not the kind I wanted,” Trina says. “He sent them to me.”
“That kind?” Bryan says. “Let’s see!”
“OK, but you won’t be impressed,” Trina says, swiping her finger across her smartphone.
“You guys! No junk at the table. Please.”
Bryan winks at Trina. “Later.”
“Where are you staying?” I ask Trina.
“I don’t know yet,” Trina says.
“What? Where did you get dressed? You look divine.”
“Stop, dahling. I got dressed on the plane.”
“Like, in the bathroom?” Bryan asks.
“You should have seen the look on the guy sitting next to me when I came back to my seat in this getup. I left wearing yoga pants, came back in a gown.”
“And you did your hair in there, too? While the plane was still in the air?”
“You know it.”
“That’s the most fabulous thing I’ve ever heard,” Bryan says.
“Fabulous is my middle name, dahling.”
“You are a magician,” Bryan says. “Purrr . . .”
“OK, your turn to make out now,” I say. I look up at the passing waitress and point to myself. “Third wheel.” She drops a new pitcher of half-and-half on the table.
“I’d say this is going well,” Bryan says.
“What?” Trina says.
Bryan points at himself, then me, then Trina. “This. Us.”
“I agree,” I say.
“Ditto,” Trina says. Almost without thinking, I hold my hands out, and Bryan and Trina each take one. Just for a second.
“Anyway, I’m glad you like it,” Trina says. “My outfit, I mean. Because pretty much all you’re going to see me in is this or the yoga pants I was wearing on the plane. The airline lost my checked suitcase. You know, the one with all five costume changes I was planning.”
“No,” I say.
“Yes,” she says.
“So, what you’re saying is, you’re wearing this same outfit to the Ziegfeld tonight?” Bryan is aghast.
“I know. Quelle horreur!” Trina says. “But what else can I do?” She strung out the word do, making an O with her mouth and widening her eyes, fake-surprised, Audrey-style.
Bryan looks back and forth at us across the table. “OK, that settles it. After breakfast, we’re going shopping.”
“Shopping?” I say. “That’s not on the itinerary. I don’t know if we’ll have—”
“It’s an emergency,” Bryan says. “And you’re both staying with me in my suite at the Four Seasons.”
“But,” I say, “I’m already in a room at the Malcolm.”
“And I’m broke,” Trina says. “I spent every penny I had on my plane ticket.”
“Has either one of you ever stayed at the Four Seasons before? In the Imperial Suite?”
“Duh,” Trina says. “No.”
“Then it fits in perfectly with today’s theme. Now pipe down. I’m taking you shopping. And the Four Seasons will be happy to send over to the Malcolm for your luggage. I’ll just call them.”
“You don’t need to—”
“End of discussion,” he says. “Adjust the itinerary if you would, Ms. Social Director. If you two are going to be my arm candy tonight, you’re going to need to be smashing. Like, Givenchy smashing.”
“Bryan—”
“And, Gemma, ne worry pas. There are two bedrooms in the suite. If what’s-his-name shows up, Trina can sleep with me.”
“What’s-his-name?”
“Dusty,” he says, smiling and leaning forward. “Remember him?”
“Yeah, right,” I say. I kick Bryan under the table. “As if.”
“Dusty,” Trina says. “What’s the latest?”
“What do you mean?” I blush. I try not to, but I blush.
“Oh, give it a rest, Gemma. We know there’s something going on there.”
I look up to see the waitress standing at our booth. “Coffee?”
She pours before I can answer.
“I don’t get crushes on boys I’ve never met,” I say, stirring a packet of sugar into my cup.
8:30 A.M.
I gasp when we walk into Bryan’s suite at the Four Seasons. I put my hand against the wall to hold myself up. I’ve never seen anything like it, even in a movie. It’s huge. Five rooms. Wait, no—six rooms. Panoramic views of the city. A wraparound terrace overlooking Central Park, with trees. Trees on the terrace! Two bedrooms with huge beds piled with pillows, three and four rows deep. Three massive marble-and-glass bathrooms with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out at the city. (“Can people see in?” I ask. “Who cares?” Trina says. “When you’re this rich, screw it!”) Walk-in closets bigger than our whole apartment back in Philadelphia. A huge kitchen with an eight-burner stove—you know, for warming up the coffee that comes from room service. And a separate dining area to sit and nibble on strawberries and sip champagne while you contemplate your day.
And a grand piano.
A grand piano! It shines, glossy and black, in the bay windows overlooking the city. I sit down on the bench, hiking up my skirt daintily. I sway one hand through the air. I’m Liberace. I sweep the other hand across the keys, lowest to highest and back again.
“I’m totally getting this on Instagram,” Trina says, framing me in her iPhone. “And Vine.”
“Do you play?” Bryan asks.
“The piano? Uh, no,” I answer, taking my hands off the keys.
“I can have someone sent up if you’d like a serenade. I’m sure they have at least one professional piano player on staff.”
“No, thanks,” Trina says. “Piano serenahhdes are so déclassé. I mean, they’re all right for older women, but . . .” It’s another phrase from Breakfast.
“If they could send up a string quartet, however, I might consider it,” Trina says. “Dahling.”
“You’re such a princess,” Bryan says. He picks up the phone on the desk. “Front desk? We’ll need a car, please, in about an hour. A big one. We’re shopping. An Escalade? Perfect.”
I go from room to room in the suite, sitting in every chair. There are easy chairs big enough to drown in, situated in front of plasma televisions. Desk and table chairs in shiny mahogany with brocaded fabric on the seats. And beds! A huge king bed in one room, and a pair of queens in another. I take a running leap onto one of the queens but can barely reach the middle. Trina immediately piles on top of me.
“This is insane!” she says. “It’s marvelous! Simply marvelous!”
“Who stays in rooms like this?” I ask, wriggling out from underneath her.
“Actually, you’d be surprised at the kinds of people who stay here. You’d think it’s all movie stars and supermodels, but really it’s mostly people no one’s ever heard of,” Bryan says, drawing back the bedroom curtain. “Ladies, your view.”
We both sit up on our knees. I gasp. Central Park, brilliant green in the morning sun, stretches into the distance north-ward, studded with sparkling lakes and ringed by beautiful limestone apartment towers. The sky, now periwinkle blue, has no clouds and is never-ending above us.
“Wow,” I manage.
“Just how rich are you?” Trina asks.
Bryan shakes his head. “No comment.”
I reach up, grab Bryan, and pull him down onto the bed with us.
“Can you adopt me?” I say.
“OK, girls,” he says. “Let’s get serious. We have less than sixteen hours until we need to be at the Ziegfeld. Actually, less than fifteen. I have every intention of being there at least an hour early, to ogle the crowd.”
“The crowd?” Trina says.
“The crowd,” Bryan says. “You don’t think this screening is going to be attended by a bunch of schlubs, do you?”
“It’s true,” I say. “Every Audrey Hepburn fanatic on the planet will be there.”
“The competition is going to be ferocious. And you’ll be going in the nude if
we don’t get to Barneys and start dropping some cash,” Bryan says.
“But—”
“But nothing. Dresses are on me.”
“I don’t need anything,” I say, digging through my suitcase. “I have an outfit already prepared.”
“Let’s see!” Trina says.
“Not a chance,” I say. “It’s a surprise. But I’ll come along. Just let me rinse off and change. I can’t go shopping in an evening gown.” I pull out a white and black picnic dress and a camel cardigan.
“Cute,” Bryan says.
“Secondhand,” I say. I wink at Trina.
I step into the bathroom with the outfit slung over my forearm and my makeup bag in my teeth.
“I won’t be a minute,” I say. I close the door. I can’t believe how beautiful it is in here. Marble everywhere, and mirrors from floor to ceiling. The shower is the size of a walk-in closet, with the showerhead right in the middle of the ceiling, five feet above my head and dripping water like a tropical waterfall, warm and soft. I want to stand in it for an hour. But we have things to do.
I towel off, slip into my dress, clasp my hair into a ponytail, and slide on a pair of ballet slippers. I’m ready.
Back in the living room, Trina is buttoning her shirt, a pale blue men’s oxford. “How’s my hair?” she asks.
I hand her a scarf. “Here.” She ties it around her hair. Perfect. She smooths the tails of her shirt over her yoga pants.
“Oh, dear,” Bryan says.
“What?” Trina says.
“You weren’t kidding about the yoga pants.” He wraps a black cotton scarf around his neck, adjusting the drape over one shoulder. “We really are in a crisis.”
10:00 A.M.
This way, ladies,” Bryan says as we exit the elevator. “Next stop, Barneys. They carry Givenchy there.”
The lobby of the Four Seasons is busy with people coming and going—checking in, checking out, waiting for cabs, asking the concierge whether they can get a last-minute lunch reservation at Le Bernardin (A corner table, please) or find someone to walk Poopska the Pekinese. There seem to be only two kinds of people here: really rich people and the people who work for them. Sometimes it’s not easy to tell the difference.
