Upper East Side #8

by Ashley Valentine

I was so excited with hiring you for my summer assistant, I forgot to tell you the subject of my book: sex poems. I mean, poems that are about making sex through the ages, which is interesting to me because I teach poetry and biology, and I am Greek! The book has no title yet but maybe you will help me think of a good one! I also did not explain that you will live in my small home with my two dogs, Plato and Plato Jr., and my son, Mick, because Evergreen does not allow students to move in until orientation in end of August. Hammock in attic is fixed, so come! We will make a good time with Micky’s homemade ouzo!

  Sincerely,

  Pierre

  Mekhi sat in the back of AP English class, his hands trembling as he reread the letter. Professor Papadametriou sounded like a nice man, and he’d probably make a good advisor. Mekhi could totally picture enjoying a few glasses of wine in the professor’s home while he talked about the fall of Troy and his son stuffed grape leaves or whatever. The thing was, Mekhi didn’t want to go to Evergreen at all anymore.

  “Mekhi, could you enlighten us as to who the narrator is in this poem?” Ms. Solomon asked. She was wearing a tight black dress, her thin spidery arms and bony legs poking out of it, making her look like a cartoon witch in a Halloween TV special. She wound a strand of hair around her index finger, a gesture she probably thought was irresistible to Mekhi. Ms. Solomon had a serious crush on him, and whenever she suspected he wasn’t paying attention in class, she stomped her feet like a petulant child and asked him a question, demanding his attention. He wasn’t even sure which poem she was talking about, although he knew it was Robert Frost, and he’d memorized most of Frost.

  “It’s either the guy or the horse,” Mekhi answered mechanically without even looking up.

  “Thanks, Stormfield,” Ms. Solomon cracked sarcastically.

  “Even I could do better than that,” Jaylen jeered from the front of the room, where he’d decided to sit every day up until the final exam, in his last-ditch effort to get better than a D in English. Jaylen was wearing orange-and-white plaid shorts, a white polo shirt, white patent leather shoes, and a matching white patent leather belt. It was the sort of outfit a Park Avenue mom would dress her three-year-old son in for church, only Jaylen had chosen the outfit himself. Sweetie sat in his lap, wearing a tiny rhinestone tiara.

  Mekhi shrugged. He was beyond Jaylen’s nasty wisecracks, and beyond Ms. Solomon’s insolent crush. Way beyond. In fact, right now he was so consumed with love for Yasmine, he wasn’t sure what to do with himself.

  Uh-oh.

  On the subway he’d started writing his graduation speech, modeling it after all the stupid graduation speeches he’d heard in movies. We are the future. The ticket to a successful life is a good education. The world awaits us with all it has to teach. But that had been before he and Yasmine had sex on her roof. Now he was pretty sure he was changing the topic. For how could he not write about love?

  Double uh-oh.

  He glanced down at the letter again, picked up his chewed-on black pen, and turned to a clean sheet of paper in his loose-leaf binder.

  Dear Professor Papadametriou,

  Thank you for offering me the opportunity to work with you this summer. However, something has come up and I will not be able to accept the position. I would very much like to meet you and your dogs and your son sometime. Until then, good luck, and good luck with your book.

  All the best,

  Mekhi Hargrove

  P. S. I’ve enclosed a poem you might want to include in your book.

  He turned to another fresh page.

  view from the roof

  The view is better from up here.

  See her factories, her rivers.

  If her hills weren’t in the way

  I could see into the windows of the apartment across the street.

  See a woman pouring milk as she sets the table for dinner.

  Oh there. There’s the table. There.

  I can see everything from here.

  There. Yes. Right there.

  Mekhi wasn’t sure if he really had the guts to send such a sexually explicit poem to a professor he’d never even met, but it would be cool if Professor Papadametriou actually used the poem in his book.

  Ms. Solomon sat down at her desk and rested her pointy chin in her hands, looking completely defeated because she’d worn her sexiest dress just for Mekhi and he’d barely looked at her for the last forty minutes.

  “I’d like you to open your notebooks and take the last ten minutes of class to write whatever you feel like writing,” she instructed with unusual generosity. Normally she droned on about Wordsworth or some other dead poet until five minutes after the bell had rung, driving the boys apeshit. Mekhi took the opportunity to get started on a new graduation speech.

  Ladies and gentlemen, we are gathered here today to celebrate the end of the first chapter in our lives and the beginning of the second. We already know what comes next. Four years of college, and then another graduation. But whoop-dee-doo! Now is the time to be in love…

  Whoop-dee-doo? Triple, super-duper uh-oh.

  13

  Senior homeroom was last period on Tuesday in the Emma Willard senior lounge, a windowless room above the library that had been a storage area until it was given to the seniors as a place to relax and escape from all the underclassmen. No teacher was present, which meant that none of the girls were paying any attention to Mimi Halperin, the perky but lame president of the senior class, as she made announcements about senior privileges during exam week.

  “No uniforms all week, girls. And we only have to come to school for our exams. Cool, huh?” Mimi clapped her chubby hands together and pushed her thick hair behind her weirdly small ears. The other girls yawned and looked at their watches, eager to leave so they could continue their quest for the perfect graduation dress or get their nails done or go to the hair salon. Mimi had been the class clown and everyone’s buddy way back in third grade, but now that they were all grown up, no one thought she was funny. Still, they’d voted for her for president at the end of junior year because she was the only one who seemed to want to do it. Because it went on your transcript for college, class president was a coveted position, up until senior year. The class president had to attend weekly student council meetings at 7:30 A.M. and help out at all the school functions, like the book fair and the scholarship fund drive. It was a lot of work, and now that it was the end of senior year and everyone was already into college, no one cared.

  “Moving on, I’m pleased to announce—drumroll, please—our senior class graduation speaker is…Porsha Sinclaire! Yay, Porsha!!” Mimi jumped up and down on her stubby legs and clapped her hands over her head like this was the best thing that had ever happened.

  Take that, you bitch! Porsha gloated silently at the back of Chanel’s silky head. That’s what you get for trying to sabotage me.

  The lounge hummed with gossip as everyone discussed the results. No one had really wanted Porsha to be speaker, because her whole speech was going to be about herself, but they questioned Chanel’s ability to write a coherent speech.

  “She’s so dumb from all the drugs she did up at boarding school, she’d probably have to bribe Porsha to write the speech for her anyway,” Lauren Salmon whispered to Rain Hoffstetter.

  “I heard Chanel dropped out,” Rain whispered back. “Kaliq gave her some gross STD and she’s going to miss graduation anyway because she has to go to some clinic in Belgium to try and get cured.”

  “Is that true?” Porsha wondered out loud. Not about the STD part, but about the dropping-out-of-the-running-for-senior-speaker part. She was reluctant to prolong homeroom, because there were only five more minutes left for her to get changed, powdered, glossed, and perfumed before she was scheduled to meet up with a very sexy English lord who’d promised to spend the afternoon dress shopping with her.

  Last night over Ketel One martinis, Lord Marcus had confessed that his squash game had been a total disaster because he’d been thinking about her the
whole time. And Porsha had confessed to Googling him the minute she’d unpacked her laptop. His family, the Beaton-Rhodeses, owned the largest textile mill in England and lived in a very huge and historical old mansion outside of London. They also owned a villa near Milan and a beach compound in Barbados. Marcus’s parents were special friends of the royal family, and Marcus himself had even attended Princess Diana’s funeral. He was listed by People magazine as one of the most eligible young bachelors in England, and Porsha was determined to win his heart before any of those greedy English bitches got to him. But first she needed to know if she’d beaten Chanel by getting elected senior speaker or if she’d only won because she was the only girl left in the running. She glared at Chanel and repeated, “Is that true?”

  Chanel squirmed in her seat, pulling her school uniform down over her bare knees and pulling up her ankle socks so they looked nerdy and ridiculous. She’d wanted her act of martyrdom to go unnoticed by the rest of the senior class. Now everyone knew about it. “Is there a problem?” she responded, sounding a lot bitchier than she’d intended.

  “But Porsha, you want to be our speaker, right?” Yasmine asked from her seat right next to Porsha’s. Yasmine was wearing a black tank top and no bra and should have been sent home for being inappropriate and out of uniform. Normally this sort of go-class-go type of homeroom drove her nuts, but she’d been feeling so nostalgic about graduating lately, she was actually sort of into it.

  “Yes,” Porsha admitted. “I do.”

  Yasmine rolled her eyes and gave her friend’s arm a gentle little shove. “Then what do you care?”

  Porsha shrugged. “Can we go now?” she asked Mimi, eager to get out of her uniform and into the tight white pants and green halter top she’d brought to wear shopping with Lord Marcus.

  Chanel shot Yasmine a grateful glance. She really hadn’t meant to make a fuss. And maybe, when she thought about it later—like, years later, when they both had grey old-lady hair and had retired to Mustique or some other hot and sunny place, Porsha might hate her a little less.

  After homeroom, the senior girls congregated outside Emma Willard’s great blue doors, still buzzing about the senior speaker situation. They couldn’t help but notice the gorgeous, tall, wavy-haired boy who was standing on the sidewalk only a few feet away, wearing perfectly ironed jeans and the cutest button-down shirt. Porsha brushed by them wearing a completely different outfit from what she’d worn to school that day, sprinted down the steps, and, to their complete amazement, kissed the boy on the cheek without even stopping for air.

  “Nice to see you too,” Lord Marcus chuckled, holding her arms and looking her up and down appreciatively.

  Porsha blushed down to her jade green flats. God, he was dreamy—even better than the boy she’d dreamed up to star opposite her in the movie in her mind, because he was real, and royal, and more perfect than Kaliq could ever attempt to be.

  Last night at the Yale Club bar, when she’d begun to slur her words from drinking too much Ketel One, he’d held her hand all the way back to their rooms, kissing it gently before he said good night. Porsha had swooned so hard she almost puked. How could something so insanely sexy come so effortlessly to him? It had been all she could do to keep herself from sledgehammering the wall between them with her salon-size hair dryer and jumping his adorable bones.

  The group of senior girls clustered in front of the school in their matching light blue uniforms, looking a little like the pigeons roosting in the eaves of the school roof as they stared incredulously at Porsha and her sexy British lord.

  “What, did she, like, create him in a lab or something?” Lauren demanded with a mixture of jealousy and awe. She pulled her blouse down tight across her chest in a lame attempt to show off her new red bra.

  “He’s completely perfect,” Imani breathed, yanking out some of the bobby pins holding down her grown-out bangs. “But I bet he, like, washes dishes at the Yale Club or something.”

  “Actually, I think he’s her cousin—you know how she has that aunt in Scotland?” Rain improvised. “She’s just pretending he’s her sexy new boyfriend to make Kaliq jealous.”

  “But Kaliq’s not even here,” Alexis pouted, her shiny lower lip jutting out in a way that made her look even dumber than she actually was.

  “No, but Chanel is,” Imani remarked insightfully.

  The girls turned to stare at Chanel, who had just stepped outside the blue doors. She adjusted the earphones on her iPod mini and blinked her gigantic almond-shaped eyes, her silky hair gleaming in the bright, hot sun. She waved to the other girls and then started on her merry way, traipsing down the steps until she caught sight of Porsha, hanging on the lapels of her royal British hunk.

  Lord Marcus was about to hail them a cab down to the Oscar de la Renta boutique on Madison and 66th Street, where he’d promised to help Porsha sort out her graduation dress issues, when Porsha suddenly grabbed his shirt, nearly ripping it off his body.

  “Kiss me now,” she told him urgently. Of course it was sort of unexpected—they’d only just met yesterday—but didn’t that make it all the more romantic?

  Or all the more bizarre.

  “Because somebody’s looking or because you want me to?” Lord Marcus responded with an amused, irresistible smile that made it very clear he didn’t care either way.

  “Both.” Porsha closed her eyes in anticipation of the kiss. Of course she wasn’t in love, yet. It was the idea of Lord Marcus she loved. But their first kiss lasted longer than an on-screen kiss, tasted better than steak frites, and felt better than a daydream—way better. It certainly wouldn’t take much for her to fall genuinely in love. She was definitely almost there.

  A cab pulled to a stop beside them and, his lips still pressed against Porsha’s, Lord Marcus raised his hand to flag it. But the cab was already occupied by a very tense Kaliq Braxton.

  Kaliq opened the cab door, and Lord Marcus and Porsha stepped aside to allow Chanel to breeze past them and into the backseat. Chanel pulled the door closed, looking up at Porsha and Lord Marcus through the window with her huge dark eyes. Porsha stared back, her body pressed against Lord Marcus. Chanel lifted her hand to wave at them, her perfect lips parting in a smile as the cab took off toward Fifth Avenue.

  And even though Chanel was already gone, Porsha smiled back. Because for once in her life, she honestly didn’t give a damn where they were going.

  14

  Located at Fifth Avenue and 58th Street, Bergdorf Goodman was one of the oldest and most beautiful luxury department stores in Manhattan. It was the first store Chanel’s mother had ever taken her shopping in, and even though it was stuffier and more old-fashioned than Barneys or Bendel’s, it seemed like the appropriate place to buy her graduation dress. She’d asked Kaliq to come along only because she needed a second opinion, although with his standard uniform of well-worn polo shirts or button-downs and khakis, Kaliq wasn’t exactly astute when it came to fashion.

  “I wonder where Porsha met him,” Chanel mused aloud as Bergdorf’s sleek elevator whisked them up to the third floor.

  Kaliq didn’t respond. He was staring at Chanel’s boobs. They were hard looking, like the small apples that grew on his family’s estate on Mt. Desert Island, Maine. He had taken a couple of Coach Michaels’s Viagras on his way to pick her up and he was pretty sure he was beginning to feel the effect. There was a lot of pressure down there, like a handless hand job, and if he didn’t do something about it soon, things were going to get kind of messy.

  Like, how soon?

  The elevator doors glided open and Chanel was immediately drawn to a rack of exquisitely made white suits—swishy pleated knee-length skirts and fitted jackets with cool white leather belts.

  “I don’t know why I even care,” she continued as she fingered the suits without even noticing that Kaliq was staring at her like she was a slice of extra-cheese pizza hot out of an oven. “Porsha will probably never talk to me again.”

  “May I help you?” offer
ed a bulky middle-aged saleswoman with a gold Bergdorf’s name tag that read JOAN.

  “I need to try these on in a size four.” Chanel pointed to three of the white Oscar de la Renta suits. Until now she hadn’t thought of wearing a suit to graduation instead of a dress, but it seemed to make perfect sense. She’d never been the frilly-white-dress type anyway, and there was something so crisp and final about the suits that made them totally perfect for graduation.

  Kaliq was practically bursting as he followed Chanel and Joan to the ladies’ fitting room. He stood just outside as Joan hung up the suits, closed the heavy velvet curtain, and then hurried off to find something else she thought Chanel might like. Now was his chance.

  He yanked the curtain open. Chanel had unbuttoned her uniform. Her white shirt was around her neck and she was wearing only a flimsy white camisole instead of a bra underneath. “Hey,” she greeted him with a shy smile. “It’s okay if you come in.”

  Kaliq yanked the curtain shut with one hand as he unbuckled his belt with the other. Go, go, go!

  Chanel began to remove one of the suits from the hanger. Then she noticed Kaliq staring at her with his pants around his ankles.

  Hello?

  “Kaliq, what are you doing?” His brilliant green eyes glittered and his lips parted hungrily, like he hadn’t eaten lunch or something. She giggled and crossed her arms over her chest. “They don’t have cameras in these things, do they?”

  As if either of them cared?

  He grabbed her camisole and yanked it away from her body, ripping it entirely in half in the process. Chanel dropped the suit on the dressing room floor and grabbed him back. For once, Kaliq wasn’t weeping into a fistful of soggy tissues. She wasn’t about to miss this opportunity.