Upper East Side #8

by Ashley Valentine

  Chanel fiddled with the button on the waistband of her blue-and-white uniform skirt and shifted from foot to foot. Why was talking to a teacher outside of class always slightly embarrassing?

  Especially when you suspected the teacher had a teensy-weensy crush on you.

  “Um, I just wanted to thank you for nominating me for senior speaker,” Chanel told him. She stuck her thumb in her mouth and began gnawing on its already chewed-on pearly pink nail.

  Note to all: Only ridiculously beautiful people can get away with this sort of behavior without grossing everyone else out.

  “Anyway,” she continued, “I just wanted you to know that I crossed myself off the list of nominees.” She moved on to her ring finger, which hadn’t been chewed on since breakfast. “I’ve never been that good at making speeches.” Plus, Porsha is the only other person nominated, and she really wants to do it, and I’m afraid if I get it she might murder me in my sleep.

  Mr. Beckham took off his glasses and began to clean them with the bottom of his black T-shirt, revealing a bare patch of surprisingly buff stomach. Chanel tried not to stare and wondered fleetingly if he was gay. His bare skin seemed totally indecent, like he was flashing her or something.

  “You know why I nominated you, n’est-ce pas?” he asked, looking searchingly at her in the red darkness as he continued to clean his glasses.

  Mais oui. Because you have le hots pour elle?

  “Well…” Chanel began, searching for an excuse to turn and flee. There was suddenly something creepy and unsanitary about the fact that Mr. Beckham had been eating a bagel while developing film. She wondered if he was addicted to the chemicals or something.

  Mr. Beckham put his glasses back on and sat back on his metal swivel stool. “Chanel, I’ve been watching you since I came here, back when you were only in seventh grade. And I know it sounds corny, but you really lit up my darkroom.” He stopped to clear his throat, clearly too nervous to think of any words in French. “If I weren’t your teacher, I’d…”

  He’d…pour fixer all over her and lick it off? Some advice: Run, girl, run!!!!

  Chanel was pretty sure she didn’t want to hear anything more. “Um, Mr. Beckham? Sorry, but I really have to go. I just wanted to say thanks for being so supportive.” She held up her hand and waved stiffly, even though he was sitting right in front of her. “I guess I’ll see you at graduation,” she added with faux cheerfulness. Then she turned to push her way through the heavy curtains again.

  “Wait.”

  Her stomach filled with dread and she shivered again in her thin white baby tee. She could hear voices outside in the hallway. Someone would hear her if she yelled loudly enough. She turned around. “I really do have to go.”

  Mr. Beckham slipped off his stool and walked toward her. “May I…” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously. “Would you mind if I just…gave you a petit, petit kiss?” he asked quietly, pinching together his thumb and forefinger to demonstrate just how small the kiss would be.

  Chanel hesitated, reluctant to turn this into a huge deal but eager to get rid of him. She could just say no and leave. Or she could freak out and run up to Mrs. M’s office and turn him in. Or she could let him give her a little tiny kiss to remember her by and then just forget about it forever.

  She shrugged her shoulders and turned to offer up her smooth, delicate cheek, making it quite clear that Mr. Beckham wasn’t about to get any lip action.

  He took a step forward and placed a careful kiss in the middle of her cheek, like a stamp. “Tant pis,” he breathed wistfully and then flung open the darkroom curtains, as if to let her know that he had no intention of molesting her any further.

  Guess he didn’t care much about exposing his film.

  “Adieu, Chanel.”

  In the hall just outside the darkroom, Mrs. M stood dressed in her favorite red, white, and blue linen pantsuit with Ms. D’Agostino, the freshman Spanish teacher, who was holding a gold metal tin full of chocolate truffles.

  “Ooh, you little she-devil!” Mrs. M cooed delightedly as she popped a truffle into her mouth. Then she noticed Chanel and her brown eyes grew wide, like a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

  Chanel fought back a fit of giggles, suddenly feeling like a balloon with too much air in it. How bizarre life was. She grinned at Mrs. M and snatched a truffle from the tin as she hurried toward the school exit.

  Oh, the things we seniors get away with. Now, run, baby, run!!

  8

  The final lacrosse team party of the year was in the St. Jude’s gym, which was kind of lame, since it was like eighty degrees outside and a party in the park would have been much better. But the boys were all underage, and so a few six-packs in the gym and some pizza was all Coach Michaels would allow. Besides, the boys had all gotten high at Jeremy Scott's house beforehand and would all go on to get trashed someplace else afterwards, so what did it matter?

  Kaliq picked at his pizza and squeezed his eyelids shut. The last lax party of the year. The last lax party ever. Damn. The tears were already beginning to fall.

  The gym was up on the roof of the six-story East End Avenue redbrick school building, with giant glass windows overlooking the shimmering East River and Queens. One afternoon near the end of tenth grade, Kaliq, Jeremy, Anthony Avuldsen, and Charlie Dern had volunteered to put away the gear after lax practice. They’d hung out for a while shooting hoops and then hidden from Rick, the janitor, behind the giant metal rack where the balls were stored. When Rick was done and the lights went out, they’d lined up in front of the windows—right where Kaliq was standing now—watched the sun set, smoked some weed, and eaten Starbursts until nine. An alarm had gone off when they finally left the building, but they’d sprinted to Carl Schurz Park a few blocks away and had never gotten caught. That had been a good time. Now the good times were about to be over. Maybe they already were.

  Kaliq’s eyes scanned the horizon above the silvery water and low industrial buildings. Somewhere southwest of Queens was Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where Porsha lived now. He wondered what she was doing. Standing on her roof, maybe, smoking a cigarette and sticking thumbtacks into the little voodoo dolls she’d probably made of him and Chanel.

  Don’t flatter yourself, honey.

  Kaliq flicked the tears away from his gorgeous green eyes with his thumb and dropped his barely touched slice of pepperoni pizza into the garbage. Anthony came over, slung his thick-muscled arm around Kaliq’s shoulders, and kissed him on the cheek with mock tenderness. “What’s the matter, sweetheart?”

  “Fuck off,” Kaliq replied, jabbing Anthony in the ribs.

  His friend refused to be shaken off so easily. “Will you just drink a beer with us and stop moping already? It’s party time!”

  Kaliq laughed and allowed himself to be dragged over to where the other guys were standing, drinking beer and listening to the coach talk. Jeremy hitched up his way-too-big Levi’s and tossed Kaliq a bottle of Heineken. “Hey, did you hear this? Every Wednesday after practice Coach has been popping Viagra and meeting his wife at the Pierre Hotel.” He cracked open another bottle for himself and took a long swig. “Who would have thunk.”

  Coach Michaels stuck his hands into the pockets of his ever-present windbreaker, looking pleased with himself. “Who says we can’t enjoy ourselves?”

  Kaliq raised his bottle in silent answer to the coach’s question and chugged half its contents. Coach Michaels had all the gruff fatherly qualities a guy could wish for in a coach, but Kaliq had never had much affection for him. The coach had made him captain halfway into the season only because the junior who was supposed to be captain went mysteriously AWOL from school. And the coach had yet to congratulate Kaliq on getting into Yale, Brown, and Harvard. It didn’t surprise Kaliq that the coach needed Viagra to get it on. He was sort of a cold fish.

  Not that Kaliq was one to judge. After the trunk show at the St. Claire that morning Chanel had been all over him, but instead of working up a swe
at with her as the cab zoomed up Park Avenue, all he’d been able to do was look out at the grassy divider running down the center of the street, weeping because the heat had caused the red and yellow tulips to scatter their blossoms and wilt.

  Guess the tulips weren’t the only things wilting.

  Coach Michaels started on a tear about how minivans were actually the sexiest cars on the road because they had two sets of backseats. Kaliq sipped his beer as he reevaluated the coach. Even in his stupid red acket he was healthy, sharp, and vital. No one ever caught him crying like a girl at the slightest thing. Maybe a little Viagra was exactly what Kaliq needed.

  Oh, no.

  Kaliq finished off his beer and set the bottle down on the long white collapsible table the school kitchen staff had set up for the party. Then he turned and headed toward the physical education staff office on the other side of the gym, next to the guys’ locker room. Everyone would think he was just taking a piss.

  When in fact …

  On Coach’s desk was a photo of his wife, Patricia. Small and wrinkly, in a magenta-colored version of Coach’s windbreaker, her brown eyes were shining and her lips were parted in a broad, happy smile. Her teeth were so white they had to be fake, and Kaliq wondered if she took them out during those Viagra-induced escapades at the Pierre Hotel.

  The P.E. department office smelled like stale potato chips and feet. A huge stack of old magazines was on the floor, topped with the swimsuit issue, which sported a picture of some impossibly sexy Brazilian chick wearing nothing but a thong. Her freckled arms hugged her bare chest casually, and she was laughing at the camera, as if to say, “Dare me to drop my arms!”

  Kaliq was tempted to pick the magazine up and check it out but he resisted, pulling open the wide drawer beneath Coach’s metal desktop instead. The drawer was a mess, full of those small foil bags of honey-roasted peanuts they pass out on airplanes, bottles of whiteout, Advil, ice packs, and various vials of prescription medicine. Kaliq sorted through them until he found the one he was looking for. Casually, he dropped it in his khakis pocket and slipped out of the office.

  The other boys were still listening to the coach brag about how many times he’d gotten his wife pregnant.

  “I was already married by the time I was your age,” the coach was saying.

  “Whoa,” Kaliq’s teammates murmured in horror. Actually, being already married to Porsha might have saved him a lot of trouble, Kaliq thought a little nonsensically.

  Right. Like being married would have kept him from cheating on her?

  “Yo, bro!” Jeremy shouted over to Kaliq. He hitched up his jeans and grabbed another Heineken out of the cooler. “You got a girl hiding in the bathroom or what?”

  The other boys looked up expectantly. Despite being a dumb handsome jock just like the rest of them, Kaliq always managed to deliver the most surprises. The mere fact that he’d managed to bag both Porsha Sinclaire and Chanel Crenshaw had raised his status to near godlike.

  Kaliq smiled weakly and held out his hands, motioning for Jeremy to toss him another beer. If they could have seen what was in his pocket, they would have been very surprised indeed.

  9

  “So good to have you with us, Miss Sinclaire,” the Yale Club’s uptight concierge greeted her. “If you’ll just follow me, Dominick will tend to your luggage.”

  “Thank you,” Porsha replied graciously, pleased with herself for having made Jaylen call and pretend to be her father, booking her a suite only minutes before she arrived. Of course, she could have asked her dad to call himself, but he was in Germany buying a plane or a car—she wasn’t sure which—for his new French boyfriend, Giles, and she didn’t want to bother him.

  The Yale Club lobby was businesslike and unfussy, with a black-and-white marble floor, white walls, and a few Yale-blue chairs scattered about. Porsha kept her chin up as the staff scurried about with her bags and keys, imagining she was Dorothy Dandridge, back in the days when she was beautiful, thin, and glamorous, arriving at some simple bed-and-breakfast in a small town where her new film was being shot. She could tolerate the old-fashioned crusty surroundings so long as she spent most of her time in the bar.

  She followed the black-vested, bow-tie-wearing concierge into one of the old wood-paneled elevators and stood silently waiting for the door to close, praying that her suite would have lots of closet space and decent sheets. It was precisely one of those awkward, mundant little moments that made her feel like most of life was just waiting for something to happen.

  But then, something did happen.

  “Hold it!” a tall, broad-shouldered boy shouted as he dashed into the elevator. His shiny hair was short and wavy, and his skin was the color of hot caramel. His glittering greenish-hazel eyes were framed by long thick lashes, and his pink lips were set off by a masculine square chin.

  “Cheers,” he thanked the concierge in a British accent. Then he turned and stood facing Porsha, unabashedly checking her out as the elevator doors rolled shut behind him.

  Looks like Dorothy has found her Harry Belafonte.

  Porsha teetered on her gold Manolo sandals as they glided upwards. What a charming British accent. What a beautiful crisp white shirt and perfectly ironed jeans. What adorable tan lace-up shoes. What wavy hair, what hazel eyes, what great height! He was like a taller, handsomer version of Kaliq—but even better than Kaliq, because of that delicious accent!

  Isn’t she supposed to be through with men? But a super-British version of Kaliq? Come on, who could resist?

  The elevator stopped on the fourth floor. The boy stood aside, and the concierge stepped out. “If you’ll just follow me, miss,” he said, motioning to Porsha to follow him. Porsha hesitated. How could she leave such a delicious-looking boy behind?

  “After you, miss,” the boy murmured quietly, pressing the door-open button so Porsha wouldn’t get squashed.

  “Right this way,” the concierge prompted, leading the way down the blue–carpeted hallway.

  Porsha stepped out into the hall and began to follow the concierge, walking as slowly as possible. Then suddenly the boy was walking beside her, exuding pleasant odors and looking delighted with his own sexiness.

  The concierge stopped at the end of the hallway. “Yours is the junior suite, miss. Right next to His Lordship’s.”

  His Lordship?!

  The English boy smiled at Porsha as he fumbled with his key. “Lord Marcus Beaton-Rhodes,” he introduced himself, thrusting his hand out. Porsha noticed right away he was wearing a Yale ring. “Embarrassingly enough, my friends at Yale all call me Lord.”

  Lord. I’d like you to meet my boyfriend, Lord. This is my husband, Lord. We met at Yale. The lord and his gorgeous wife will be vacationing on their yacht in the South of France this spring with their perfect family before a long sojourn at their summer castle in Cornwall…

  “And you are?”

  Porsha fluttered her thick mascaraed eyelashes, awakening from her delicious daydream. “Porsha Cornelia Sinclaire,” she trilled, sounding exactly like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s when she first introduces herself to her new neighbor, Paul Varjak. “Actually, I’m starting at Yale this fall.”

  “And I’ve just finished there.” Lord Marcus tossed his keys into his room and kicked off his shoes in the doorway. “Blimey, I’m late for squash, but let’s…” He smiled shyly. “Shall we get together for a drink tonight?”

  Porsha nodded in dumb agreement. She could hardly believe her luck.

  “See you in the lounge at seven, then.”

  The lord closed his door and the concierge deposited the adjacent suite’s keys into Porsha’s hand. “Your bags will be here in a moment. Is everything all right, Miss Sinclaire?”

  “Bloody hell!” she heard the lord exclaim in his adorable accent as he crashed around in his suite. Porsha imagined him throwing his beautiful tailor-made English clothes all over the place as he hunted for something to wear for squash. If she were his girlfriend, she’d colo
r code his shirts for him and alphabetize his shoes according to designer so he wouldn’t have to thrash around so much looking for things.

  Of course she would.

  She stepped inside her room and flopped down on the king-size bed to listen, her eyes darting around the room as she did so, taking it all in. It was small and shabby chic, erring on the shabby side. The gold accents on the curtains and bedspread and the Regency blue-patterned wallpaper was the only attempts at grandeur. It wasn’t exactly the Plaza, but there was a fine English lord living next door.

  Yes, yes—everything was more than all right.

  10

  It was already five in the afternoon by the time Bree and her father arrived at the Croton School, in Croton Falls, New York. Rufus’s weekly wine and poetry night with his weirdo anarchist poet cronies was starting in an hour at a speakeasy in Greenwich Village, and he was getting antsy. Croton was only an hour and a half from the city by train, and Bree was anxious to ditch him, anyway, so she offered to take the train home.

  “Don’t get off at 125th Street,” Rufus advised, even though the stop was closest to their apartment. He handed Bree three twenty-dollar bills. “Go all the way to Grand Central and then get a cab. And call me when you’re leaving so I can tell your brother when to expect you.”

  Like Mekhi really cared if she ever came home. Lately Mekhi had been so preoccupied, he barely seemed to remember that they used to kind of be friends.

  Bree kissed her father on the cheek. It was cute how he babied her, but she was almost fifteen—she could take care of herself. “Have a nice night, Daddy,” she told him sweetly. She waved goodbye as the battered Volvo station wagon disappeared down the road. Then she unbuttoned her blouse another notch and stepped inside a cute red clapboard house with a gold plaque on its door that read ADMISSIONS, eager to meet her Croton tour guide.

  “You!” a male voice crowed enthusiastically as soon as she opened the door. “It’s you!”