Upper East Side #8

by Ashley Valentine

  Maybe when she decided to ditch Manhattan and become a Brooklyn hipster?

  Usually Porsha couldn’t leave a store without buying at least one thing, but usually the stores she went into were stocked with irresistibles. As far as Porsha was concerned, Isn’t She Lovely should have been named Isn’t She Ugly.

  Across the litter-strewn expanse of Broadway from Yasmine’s crumbling gray five-story apartment building, a cluster of people stood looking up, their mouths agape.

  Hmm, wonder why?

  Oblivious and not at all curious about anything the locals might find interesting, Porsha hurried across the street, mounted the crumbling cement stoop, and unlocked the building’s graffitied front door. She held her breath as she climbed the steps up to Yasmine’s second-story apartment. The building was practically sitting on top of a sugar factory, and the air around it was as sweet and heavy as syrup-logged French toast—mixed with a twinge of stray cat pee.

  “Foul,” Porsha muttered aloud while still trying to hold her breath. How she longed for the immaculate marble lobby of the 72nd Street full-service, white-glove, luxury apartment building where she’d lived until now. Oh, how she missed the sweep of the doorman’s wool cape as he opened the door to her cab and helped her with her bags, shielding her from the rain with his enormous black umbrella. How she yearned for the hum of the velvet-upholstered-elevator as it whisked her up to the penthouse.

  The black-painted door to the apartment was standing open, shedding little chips of old black paint onto the dusty cement floor of the hallway. “Honey, I’m home!” Porsha called out tentatively as she stepped inside the apartment that she’d gladly redecorated only a few weeks before in shades of lavender, dove gray, and celery. The small, low-ceilinged one-bedroom looked so much prettier than it had when she’d moved in, especially without those revolting black sheets in the windows. She and Yasmine had even bonded—they really had. And it was fun to live somewhere so different from the place where she’d grown up. Really, it was. But she was still a little homesick. After all, Isn’t She Lovely was hardly a replacement for Barneys.

  “Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yes!” a boy’s voice, hoarse with ecstasy, echoed down the back stairway and into the apartment.

  Ew.

  Porsha’s lips curled into a grimace. Yasmine and Tahj were at it again, up on the roof. Not that they hadn’t spent the entire night last night moaning and howling like wild dogs. Porsha’s stomach turned and she poured herself a glass of water from the filter she’d bought because she didn’t trust the water in Brooklyn. Since breaking up with Kaliq, she hadn’t once made herself sick—that would be the ultimate sign of weakness, and she was no longer weak—but the image of Yasmine and Tahj, their shaved heads locked and their bodies thrashing up on the roof in broad daylight, was too similar to the image of Chanel and Kaliq thrashing around in Imani Edwards' pool house bathtub. It was enough to make her want to violently hurl the mango smoothie she’d drunk three hours ago.

  Porsha may have given up on boys entirely—who wouldn’t, after Kaliq's latest stunt?—but Yasmine seemed to be enjoying the company of the opposite sex more and more. She and Porsha's shaven-headed vegan stepbrother, Tahj, had been romping unfettered and partially clothed in coffee shops and on park benches all over Williamsburg.

  Gulping her glass of water, Porsha gripped the cracked white countertop to steady herself. On the ancient electric stove was a pot of stale water with two cold tofu dogs lolling inside—leftovers from Tahj’s disgusting breakfast, or lunch, or dinner. What with the awful dresses in the store across the street, the yucky-smelling entryway, the moaning sex from the rooftop that was supposed to be reserved for girl time with Yasmine while they planned a way to sabotage Chanel’s run for senior speaker, Porsha had had enough. She dug into her purse and grabbed her cell phone, pressing the buttons frantically.

  “Porsha darling? To what do I owe the pleasure, chica?” Jaylen Harrison answered in a loud voice, sounding more gay than usual. “Don’t tell me, you’ve secretly been in love with me all these years and now that we’re about to graduate, you’re finally bold enough to tell me.”

  “Not exactly,” Porsha snapped. “You’re the only one I know with a car.”

  “A gray convertible Jag isn’t just a car, it’s a mobile pleasure den.” Jaylen tooted the horn in the background. “I happen to be in ‘the car’ as we speak.”

  “Whatever.” Porsha threw open the loose-hinged door to the cramped, mothball-smelling closet in the living room and yanked out her two matching Louis Vuitton duffel bags. The bags were still partially packed, since Yasmine didn’t have enough closet space to accommodate Porsha’s endless wardrobe. All she had to do was fold in the dresses hanging from the closet rail and fill a shopping bag or four or five with the mere thirty-six pairs of shoes she’d brought with her, and she’d be ready to roll. “Can you come get me?”

  “Of course, my sweet.” Jaylen’s voice took on a faux paternal tone. “You’re not in any sort of trouble, are you?”

  Porsha grimaced at the sight of a roach motel camped in the back of the closet, a half-dead roach flailing its hind legs on its doorstep. “I’m in Williamsburg,” she wailed, as if she were being held hostage in somebody’s basement.

  “And Manhattan needs you,” Jaylen intoned. “We absolutely need you!”

  Porsha giggled. It felt good not pretending anymore that she was going to become one of those hipster girls who wore striped kneesocks and vintage kilts and kooky glasses, ate hummus all the time, and went to art galleries after school instead of to Barneys. She pulled her favorite polka-dotted dress off its hanger and put it on, shedding her black jean skirt and boring gray T-shirt. Manhattan needed her. Of course it did.

  “I’ll be there in five, honey. I’m just getting on the bridge now,” Jaylen assured her, the Jag’s engine roaring in the background. “So, where am I taking you, anyway? Back home?”

  Porsha hadn’t thought about this. Or rather, she had, but home wasn’t her first choice. Her mother was still mentally unsound after marrying Cyrus Campbell that fall and having his baby daughter that spring. Cyrus was loud and sweaty and obnoxious and preferred to wander the house wearing only a loosely tied silk robe and nothing else. Baby Yale was adorable most of the time, but she had taken over Porsha’s room, shunting Porsha into Tahj’s old room, where Porsha’s cat, Kitty Minky, had developed a peeing problem in reaction to the scent of Tahj’s boxer, Mookie. Speaking of—where was Mookie? He usually came with Tahj when Tahj stayed over at Yasmine’s instead of sleeping in Porsha’s brother Brice's room or passing out on the leather sofa in the penthouse library.

  “Maybe now that I’m into Yale, I won’t mind being at ho…” Porsha’s voice trailed off as inspiration hit and a new, fabulous idea began to form in her head.

  After her father had moved out of the penthouse and before he’d left for France to live with his gay French lover—Jacques or Jean Claude, or whatever the fuck his name was—he’d camped out at the Yale Club for a few months. It was right across the street from Grand Central Station, but, unlike the old train station, the Yale Club had never really been renovated and still had that shabbily elegant Old New York vibe. It was the type of place Porsha’s former best friend Chanel would adore, while Porsha would normally have preferred a more elegant suite at the Carlyle or one of the city’s other landmark hotels. But she’d already stayed in a suite at the Plaza, where she’d been treated like just another well-to-do guest. At the Yale Club she’d be “Harold Sinclaire’s daughter,” which was almost as good as being royalty.

  Almost.

  “Actually, I’m moving to the Yale Club—at least until I figure out what I’m doing this summer,” she announced into the phone, smiling down at her perfectly manicured fingernails as if this had been her plan all along.

  “Is that so?”

  Porsha looked up from her overstuffed Barneys shopping bags full of shoes. Yasmine was standing in the open doorway to the apartment, hands on her roun
d hips, wearing a black wifebeater and black cotton Hanes underwear. That scraggly boy Porsha thought Yasmine had dumped for good was standing behind her, wearing only a pair of Fruit of the Looms, while the rest of his worn-too-often-to-ever-come-clean clothes were bundled in his arms. A huge grapey bruise stood out on his throat, just below his Adam’s apple.

  Ew—a hickey!

  “It’s the one with the graffiti all over the door. I’ll be downstairs in five minutes,” Porsha instructed Jaylen before hanging up. She put her hands on her hips, trying to think of a nice way to tell Yasmine that she was out of there. It was amusing being friends with the shaven-headed girl everyone in her class thought was so weird, and Porsha genuinely liked Yasmine for her no-bullshit approach to everything and her dark, sarcastic sense of humor. But as graduation approached, Yasmine had grown slightly manic—asking Porsha to paint her toenails on an almost nightly basis and even getting Porsha to try that stupid brush-on hai highlighting kit with her.

  Thank God it had only been temporary.

  Yasmine seemed to crave company, so if two-timing Porsha’s stepbrother with this straggly Mekhi guy made her happy, Porsha honestly didn’t care. She personally was through with men. In just a few short minutes, Yasmine would have the apartment all to herself again—she could go ahead and have a full-fledged orgy if she wanted to.

  “Someone’s coming to pick me up,” she said in lieu of an explanation.

  Yasmine had just been caught cheating on Porsha’s stepbrother, Tahj, with Mekhi, who was supposed to be history. Most people would have acted at least slightly sheepish in such a situation. Not Yasmine. She blinked her big hazel eyes accusingly at Porsha. “You’re leaving? How come? Are you pissed at me?” She cocked her shaved head and corrected herself. “I mean, more than usual?”

  To call Porsha and Yasmine the Odd Couple was an understatement. Porsha had been raised by a team of nannies and had attended preschool on Park Avenue, just like all the other children from the best Upper East Side families. Yasmine had been raised by her hippie artist parents in Vermont and been homeschooled until the age of ten. She’d moved to Williamsburg to live with her older sister, Ruby, at the age of fifteen and had spent her first two summers working double shifts at the local Kinko’s copy shop to earn enough money to buy her first digital video camera. Porsha had spent her summers playing tennis on her father’s estate in Newport, Rhode Island, or helping Chanel filch bottles of Stoli out of the liquor cabinet in Chanel’s Connecticut, country house. Porsha modeled herself after Audrey Hepburn and Dorothy Dandridge, and her favorite color was bright pink. Yasmine modeled herself after no one, except maybe the great Swedish avant-garde filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, and wore only black. They couldn’t have been more different.

  “No.” Porsha shrugged, allowing a small smile to play on her foxlike face. “Why would I be mad?”

  Yasmine padded into the kitchen and retrieved one of the waterlogged tofu dogs Tahj had left in the pot on the stove, eating half of it in one bite. She’d developed a taste for them since hooking up with him. “Want one?” she offered both Porsha and Mekhi, waggling it at them like a chewed-on finger.

  Gee, thanks.

  “I’m good,” Mekhi mumbled, fumbling with his rumpled pants.

  Porsha flapped her hands at the tofu dog, the half-naked Mekhi and his icky hickey, the dingy-despite-its-new-coat-of-paint apartment, and all of Williamsburg outside. “It’s just not me,” she tried to explain.

  Yasmine nodded slowly. Ever since Porsha had found Chanel and Kaliq colluding in the pool house bathtub at Imani's Hamptons beach house, she’d been acting a little manic. “Are you sure the Yale Club will even take you? It’s not like you’re an alumna yet.”

  Porsha shoved an armload of PINK tracksuits into her already-heaving duffel bag. She used to be so sensitive about the subject of Yale, but that was before she got in. “My dad’s a member. They’ll take me or he’ll kick their asses.”

  Yasmine was still watching her. Porsha could hear the ticking of the electric clock on the old stove. “Oh. I almost forgot.” She picked up the Browns of London shopping bag she’d lugged all the way home from school.

  Not that she’d actually walked all the way.

  “I got you a dress for graduation. It was too perfect, and I figured you didn’t know where to buy anything that isn’t black. I even have the perfect shoes you can have to go with it.”

  Yasmine tugged the white-tissue-wrapped bundle out of the bag and shook out the dress. Even though it was white, it was awesome. Of course, she didn’t have the heart to tell Porsha that Tahj had proposed they leave town before graduation even happened.

  And we thought she’d forgotten all about that.

  Yasmine stood on one foot and scratched the back of her calf with the black-painted toenails of her other foot, still holding the dress. She was already freaking out about graduating and what lay ahead, and now this. “Shit. This is sad.” She threw her arms around Porsha. “I’m going to miss you.”

  Porsha hugged her back. “Look, we’re practically the same height,” she murmured gently, giving Yasmine’s doughy half-naked body an affectionate squeeze. “We’ll totally be next to each other in the graduation lineup.”

  Yasmine smiled and wiped away a stray tear. She pointed to one of the countless pairs of Louboutin stilettos scattered on the dusty wooden floor. “Not when you wear those.”

  “Well, you can always borrow a pair,” Porsha offered gently. The two girls laughed, and in an instant all was forgiven. Even the loud sex with Tahj last night and the random sex with Mekhi on the roof in what was supposed to have been Porsha and Yasmine’s special spot. If that was what she needed to do to fend off pregraduation jitters, then so be it.

  “I’m going to take a shower,” Mekhi announced, even though neither of the girls was paying any attention to him.

  Yasmine picked up the black jean skirt Porsha had discarded on the floor and pulled it over her butt without even attempting to button it. Then she slung the handles of one of the Louis Vuitton duffel bags and two of the Barneys bags full of shoes over her shoulder. “Come on. I’ll help you carry your bags downstairs.”

  Jaylen was waiting on the corner behind the wheel of his new silver convertible Jag—an early graduation present. The car looked completely out of place in the funkily rundown neighborhood. He popped open the trunk and the girls dropped Porsha’s bags inside.

  “I left some other stuff for you in the closet.” Porsha gave her classmate a quick hug. “See you tomorrow in English.”

  Yasmine hugged her back. “See you tomorrow, bitchface,” she answered tenderly.

  Porsha watched the graffitied door slam closed behind her as Yasmine went inside. Then she opened the Jag’s passenger side door.

  “I heard that back in the forties all the alums used to keep prostitutes at the Yale Club,” Jaylen announced as Porsha reached for her seat belt. “And they didn’t even have a ladies’ room.” He pulled away from the curb and slipped his hand over Porsha’s bare knee. “I knew it would never last. You’re a boy’s girl, not a girl’s girl.”

  Porsha shoved his hand away and rolled her eyes in annoyance. Jaylen was and always would be a slimeball, tolerated only because he and Porsha and the rest of their clique had all been born at Lenox Hill Hospital at 77th and Park and had all gone to nursery school together. They’d attended dancing school together and vacationed with their families in St. Barts. Their parents were on the boards of the Metropolitan Museum and the Metropolitan Opera, and they all spoke the same unspoken language. But unlike his other Upper East Side cohorts, Jaylen had failed to get into any of the private colleges he’d applied to. His parents were sending him to a random military academy in northern New Jersey instead. So it was easy to understand why he was so critical of the Yale Club: He was a teensy bit jealous.

  You think?

  Drake's new CD was playing on the car stereo, and Porsha turned it up as loud as it would go. Jaylen put his hand on her knee again as
they approached the Williamsburg Bridge. She picked it up and put it on the gearshift. Had Jaylen confused her with a slut like Chanel, who had no morals and would fool around with a boy just because he was good looking and she was vaguely horny?

  “Drive,” she ordered. “Just drive.”

  She folded her hands primly in her lap. She wasn’t like that.

  Oh, wasn’t she?

  7

  “Mr. Beckham?” Chanel called, tugging open the first of four heavy black curtains that led into Emma Willard’s darkroom. “Mr. Beckham, is it okay if I come in and talk to you for a minute?”

  Chanel heard a stool squeak. “Sure thing, come on in,” Emma Willard’s only film teacher called back. “Careful with the curtains.”

  Classes were over for the day and a quiet hung over the school, broken only by the laughter of a few stray girls or the click of a teacher’s heels. Chanel had stayed behind to see if she could remedy the whole senior-class-speaker situation. Not that she’d definitely get it, but she’d taken enough away from Porsha already. Becoming senior class speaker would just be one more thing she got without really wanting it.

  Like a certain green-eyed boyfriend?

  She slipped inside the darkroom, making sure the curtains swung closed behind her to block out every bit of light. A special red darkroom lamp glowed overhead, but it was still hard to see. Goosebumps appeared on Chanel’s bare arms and legs. The darkroom always gave her the chills.

  Mr. Beckham was the only cool young male teacher at Willard. Except he thought he was cooler, younger, and better looking than he actually was. Fancying himself an artist, he wore chunky black rectangular glasses and tight long-sleeved T-shirts that showed off his gym-toned chest. He spiked his dark blond hair with gel and inserted the odd French word whenever he could.

  “Ah, Chanel,” he exclaimed, pushing away the bagel with cream cheese he’d been snacking on. He spread his arms out wide. “Quelle pleasure!”