Upper East Side #8

by Ashley Valentine

  Hell no.

  She scribbled a hasty note to Tahj—Went to get laundry—even though she’d already picked up her laundry at the Wash ’n’ Fold that morning before school. Then she threw open the front door and dashed upstairs.

  Mekhi was lying on his back on the futon underneath the water tower, wearing only his black boxer briefs, leafing through a pink-covered collection of Pablo Neruda love poems. Beside him on a tinfoil tray were four oysters from Zabar’s and an open bottle of red Merlot with two Styrofoam cups. When he saw Yasmine, he immediately sat up and began to read aloud.

  Don’t go far off, not even for a day, because—

  Because—I don’t know how to say it: a day is long.

  “Do you think maybe you could call first before you come over?” Yasmine demanded, pretending to be furious, because she knew it turned Mekhi on to see her mad. “Tahj’s coming over, like, right now.”

  “That’s from a poem called ‘I Crave Your Mouth, Your Voice, Your Hair,’” Mekhi explained, gazing at her sweetly. He poured a little wine into a cup and held it out. “Want some?”

  Yasmine rolled her eyes and went over to the futon. “I think I know what you crave.” She sat down and took off her shirt, the adrenaline pumping even harder now. “Hurry up,” she ordered. “Tahj’s bringing my dinner and then I have studying to do.”

  Neighbors in the surrounding apartments adjusted their telescopes. They’d moved to the area because the rent was cheap. Who knew there was also going to be built-in live entertainment?!

  The bossier and pissier Yasmine was, the more hot and bothered Mekhi grew, and the more he loved her. His hands shook and sweat formed on his freshly shaved upper lip. He was entirely at her mercy.

  Down on Broadway, Tahj ignored the group of bystanders on the other side of the street, all staring up at the roof of Yasmine’s building. He was carrying two orders of hot and spicy pad Thai in a paper bag under his arm, he had to pee, the freaking L train was insanely crowded, and he was sweating his ass off. All he wanted was to get inside and take a nice cool shower. Preferably with Yasmine.

  He found her note and scribbled over it, I’m in the shower. Then he left the front door standing open to make it easier for her to bring her basket of clean laundry inside and turned on the stereo, blasting that Raves song Mekhi Hargrove had recorded with them—the only one that was any good.

  “Crack me like an egg!” Tahj sang along in the shower.

  Three floors up, Mekhi was already ramming his feet back into his socks. The music was faint but unmistakable.

  “Do you think he saw us?” A little thrill ran through Yasmine’s body at the thought. God, was she perverse!

  Mekhi hastily slurped down the last oyster. “What do you want me to do?” he asked, sounding just as excited as she did. See how perfect we are for each other? he thought. They were both totally getting off on the fact that Tahj had no clue. Of course, cheating was bad and wrong, but it was totally fun when you were completely, madly in love with the person you were doing it with!

  “I’ll go downstairs and distract him,” Yasmine whispered, even though the traffic on the Williamsburg Bridge was so loud no one could possibly have heard her. “While you leave.”

  Mekhi shoved the cork into the half-drunk bottle of Merlot and tried to prop it up inside his black messenger bag. “You want me to leave?” he responded, baffled. He’d imagined scaling the outside of the building like Spider Man with Yasmine clinging to his neck like Mary Jane.

  Like that would ever happen, Mr. Spaghetti Arms.

  “You can leave that here.” Yasmine pointed at the wine. “We’ll drink it later.”

  We meaning she and Mekhi, or she and Tahj?

  “Fine,” Mekhi replied, catching on to the fact that Yasmine was about to go downstairs and pretend he’d never even been there. God, she was smart. And so tough and cool under pressure. “Good luck studying this weekend.”

  Yasmine gave his butt a little slap. “I’ll call you,” she promised before hurrying downstairs. The door to the apartment was open and Tahj was in the shower. Yasmine undressed for the second time in fifteen minutes. “Hi,” she greeted him, yanking back the shower curtain.

  “Hey.” Tahj grinned and held out a soap-flecked hand to help her in.

  Mekhi tiptoed slowly downstairs, reading Neruda aloud to himself, his hands sweating as he tried to figure out if what had just happened was either insanely exciting or insanely insulting.

  …In this part of the story I am the one who dies…

  The problem with poets like him is they always fumble on the negative side.

  18

  Saturday morning, the line of gorgeous girls wound its way out Barneys’ front doors, up Madison to 61st Street, and around the corner to Fifth Avenue. Most of them were wearing black sleeveless cocktail dresses, pointy black flats, and big black sunglasses. Chanel was wearing her favorite new pair of True Religion jeans.

  Typical.

  Somehow, she’d managed to be one of the first girls in line. Maybe it was because she and Kaliq had never really gone to sleep last night—thanks to the little bottle of pills he kept popping?—and she’d still been awake at five A.M. She’d just grabbed a double latte at the deli and headed over, lugging her French textbook with her, as if she’d really get any studying done.

  Porsha was first in line. And, surprise, surprise, she was Audrey Hepburn. Same black vintage Givenchy dress, same pearl choker, same French-twist hairstyle—with the help of a little faux hair—same oversize sunglasses, same black elbow-length gloves. Lord Marcus, being the sweet and charming hunk that he was, had helped her get dressed and even had come up with the idea of spending the night in a hired town car, parked right in front of Barneys, so she’d be sure to be first in line for the open call. Of course, they hadn’t been able to do much for fear of messing up her costume, but it was still fun to hold hands in the backseat and talk about the very near future, when Porsha would be a famous Hollywood star.

  “I’ll be your pool lad,” Lord Marcus offered in his adorable English accent. “I’ll fan you with palm fronds and pour your cocktails.” Of course he wouldn’t mind giving up his spot in the graduate business program at the London School of Economics, where he was starting in the fall. He’d do anything for Porsha—anything!

  “And I’ll have the best designers making clothes for me in every city in the world,” Porsha fantasized over her stomach’s nervous rumblings. She wanted this part so badly, she hadn’t eaten all day, but it was nearly midnight and she was famished. “Or maybe I’ll ask Uncle Oscar to make all my clothes.”

  A hot dog vendor was packing up for the night on the corner of 61st and Madison. Would Lord Marcus be perfectly horrified if she ate one, standing on the curb in front of Barneys?

  It would be no worse than Audrey Hepburn eating a sandwich out of a paper bag in front of Tiffany’s.

  “Look, darling, dinner!” Lord Marcus cried, noticing the vendor and literally reading Porsha’s mind. “You sit tight and I’ll go fetch us some.”

  Darling. She was his darling, and he fetched things for her!

  So they’d eaten hot dogs with mustard and relish and sipped root beer, holding hands and dozing off until Porsha’s eyelids had fluttered open to find Chanel looming out of the early morning mist in her perfectly distressed jeans and no makeup. She’d bolted out of the car and slapped her black sunglasses over her eyes. No way was that bitch going to steal her part in this show.

  Never mind the other hundreds of actress-wannabes who were beginning to turn up for the audition.

  Now it was nearly eight o’clock and the audition was about to begin. It was an unusually hot and humid May morning and the two girls stood front-to-back at the head of the line, fanning themselves with the page of lines Ken Mogul’s helpers had handed out and which they’d already memorized.

  Finally Chanel could stand it no longer. “God, it’s hot.” Porsha didn’t respond, so Chanel reached out and touched Porsha’s bare
arm. “So, that guy you’ve been hanging out with—he seems really nice,” she ventured awkwardly.

  Porsha wished she were taller so she could gaze down at Chanel with such hawklike severity that Chanel would never attempt to speak to her again. Alas, she was nearly six inches shorter than Chanel, especially since she was wearing the required superflat flats.

  She was about to give a short and extremely nasty reply when she realized something startling. She didn’t even mind anymore that Chanel had Kaliq. She had the sexier, taller, more refined, better-bred British version of Kaliq, and she was perfectly happy with him, thank you very much. In fact, just to prove how fine she was with everything, they could all be friends—the four of them.

  She pushed her enormous sunglasses on top of her head and smiled brightly up at her former friend. “How about after this the four of us all get a drink down at the Yale Club together? They have a great lounge. It’s like a hotel bar out of an old movie or something. You’d love it.”

  “Really?” Chanel gasped, wondering if she might be dreaming. Had Porsha really just invited her and Kaliq to have a drink with her and her new boyfriend?

  “Sorry for the wait, ladies. All right, Porsha Sinclaire, you’re up,” announced a skinny guy in his twenties with a hipster-mullet haircut and faded jeans rolled up to his knees.

  Porsha flipped her sunglasses back onto her nose.

  “Good luck,” Chanel said faintly, still unsure of whether they were really talking to each other or not.

  Mullet guy led Porsha inside the store—thank goodness for air conditioning!—and across the cosmetics floor to the elevators. Barneys didn’t open until ten on Saturdays, so it was weirdly quiet. Of course, Porsha spent so much time there, she could have found her way to Fred’s blindfolded, but that wasn’t enough to get her the part.

  Fred’s, the store’s notorious restaurant, was up on the ninth floor. Long and narrow, with windows along one wall overlooking Madison, and a small modern bar, it was the type of restaurant that was surprisingly unspectacular looking given its popularity. What made it spectacular was its usual clientele—Park-Avenue-dwelling mothers or publicists, all dressed in Chanel and Prada, sipping white wine spritzers and picking at their salads while they worried about whether someone else was going to buy the last pair of knee-high stiletto boots they had spotted on their way up to the restaurant.

  Right now, though, the restaurant was empty, except for Ken Mogul and his crew. The director was standing by the bar giving lighting direction to a gaggle of crewpeople in matching black tunics, his notorious bulging eyes bloodshot with fatigue. He sported a short prickly beard with no mustache—never a good look. His 1980s-style leather jacket had huge rounded shoulders, and his Levi’s were way too tight—also not a good look. Porsha had never seen him before and thought he might be one of the crew until he addressed her.

  “Well, you certainly look the part.” He pointed to one of the chrome-and-black leather bar stools, gesturing for her to sit down. “But this isn’t a complete remake, you know. I’m taking some liberties."

  It had taken Porsha three hours to get dressed, so she decided to ignore his insult. She folded up the sheet of paper she’d been given to read from and tucked it into her purse, partly to impress Ken Mogul with the fact that she’d already memorized her lines, and partly to show that her feathers weren’t easily ruffled. Then she sat down on a bar stool and crossed her legs with Audrey Hepburn–like balletic grace.

  “I’m not going to give you any direction,” Ken Mogul remarked. “You just do your thing, okay? So…action!”

  Porsha had Googled Ken Mogul and found a ton of articles about how he called himself the “undirector,” and how actors hated working with him because he just stared at them without giving them any direction at all. He probably thought he was terribly avant-garde or whatever. Well, that was fine with her, because she didn’t need any direction—she was Audrey Hepburn playing Holly Golightly twenty-four hours a day. She pulled a cigarette and the long cigarette holder she’d found in an antique shop in Rhode Island two summers ago out of her black satin pocketbook.

  “How do you do?” she purred, sounding exactly like Audrey at her most charming. She lit her cigarette and blew a delicate stream of smoke over Ken Mogul’s head. Then she delivered that dreamy faraway smile that was Audrey’s trademark. “Don’t you just love it here? Isn’t it wonderful waking up and knowing this place is right here, every day? It’s my absolute paradise.”

  Porsha waited for Ken Mogul’s response. Those were the only lines she’d been given to say, and she’d said them perfectly, even if she did say so herself.

  Ken Mogul covered his bulging eyes with his hand and then pulled it roughly away again in a bizarre game of peekaboo. He stared at Porsha for a moment longer and then yelled, “Next!”

  Porsha dropped down off the stool and walked gracefully out of the restaurant to where Lord Marcus was waiting for her near the elevator doors. He gathered her in his strong, capable, royal arms. “You were stunning,” he reassured her. “I was watching from the door.”

  Porsha leaned her cheek against his chest, still in character. “I do love it here,” she sighed dreamily.

  The elevator doors rolled open and Chanel and Kaliq stepped out.

  “Good luck!” Porsha called out generously. She took another drag on her cigarette holder and offered Kaliq a serene smile. He smiled weakly back at her, looking a little red around the eyes, like he’d been crying, or, more likely, smoking weed. But from where Porsha stood, with her body pressed against her hunky British lord, that was really none of her concern.

  Then Lord Marcus kissed the back of Porsha’s head, sending a little thrill down her spine. The door to the ladies’ lounge was right in front of them. She took his hand and tugged him toward it.

  Nothing better than a little make out session before breakfast.

  19

  Chanel worried that she should have dressed up like the other girls. Would the director think she wasn’t trying hard enough because she hadn’t worn pearls and a black cocktail dress? In fact, now that she thought about it, she really shouldn’t have been trying out for the part at all.

  Too late.

  “Oh, thank God,” Ken Mogul exclaimed when he saw her. “Go ahead. Action.”

  Chanel hadn’t bothered to Google Ken Mogul, and she didn’t know anything about his directing style, but she knew what the word action meant, and the minute she heard it, she started to do her thing.

  “How do you do?” she chirped brightly, holding her hand out to an imaginary bartender. She took a seat and then spun once around on the bar stool, giggling and kicking her feet with girlish satisfaction. “Don’t you just love it here? Isn’t it wonderful waking up and knowing this place is right here, every day? It’s my absolute paradise!”

  Ken Mogul did that weird peekaboo thing with his hands again. He glanced at one of his crew girls, ripped off the pair of mirrored aviator shades she had propped on her head, and tossed them to Chanel.

  “Do it again with these on,” he ordered.

  Chanel did as she was told, wondering if it was a good thing or a bad thing that Ken Mogul closed his eyes when she started to talk.

  “Next!” he shouted, dismissing her.

  Kaliq was standing by the elevators, a damp tissue wadded in his fist. “My mom brought me here to buy my first real suit,” he told Chanel, his lower lip trembling. “Afterwards we got ice cream and she took me to the zoo in the park. It smelled like peanuts.”

  “Aw.” Chanel hugged him and kissed his ear. “Listen, I think I know of a way to cheer you up.” After the Viagra incident in Bergdorf’s on Tuesday, Chanel thought Kaliq was basically up for it anytime, anywhere. She nodded toward the ladies’ lounge.

  Kaliq hesitated. He’d smoked a tiny joint when he woke up, and he’d left the Viagra at home. Besides, all this crying was so exhausting. He really wasn’t in the mood.

  The ladies’ lounge door swung open, and Porsha and that
wavy-haired hunk of hers came out, holding hands. “How do you do?” Porsha gestured with her empty cigarette holder in an exaggerated imitation of the part both girls had just played. She giggled. “You guys want to go get a drink?”

  “Definitely,” Chanel gushed eagerly.

  Of course, it was only ten-thirty on a Saturday morning, but the future Audreys of the world clearly know how to enjoy themselves.

  Lord Marcus pressed the button for the elevator and the doors rolled open.

  “Wait!” one of Ken Mogul’s black-tunic-wearing crew girls yelled. Porsha’s heart skipped a beat. Surely they were going to offer her the part right now and send the other girls packing. But the girl was looking at Chanel.

  “Oops!” Chanel blushed, swiping the mirrored aviators off her head and handing them back. “I’m such a klepto!”

  The girl took the sunglasses and then stood on tiptoe to whisper in Chanel’s ear. Porsha watched, riveted, as Chanel nodded, listening silently. Then the crew girl left to supply her sunglasses to another Holly hopeful.

  Porsha bit her lip, nearly drawing blood. The need to know what the crewperson had whispered to Chanel was killing her, but she forced herself not to ask, and Chanel decided not to tell her. The idea that they were sort of talking to each other again was so tenuous and so new, neither of them wanted to ruin it.

  Plus, Lord Marcus had only seen Porsha on her best behavior. She couldn’t pull an Exorcist and freak out in front of him now or he’d pack his bags and head back to the U.K. as quick as you can say, “Bloody hell.”

  Chanel reached for Kaliq’s hand and gave it an excited squeeze, barely able to keep the secret to herself. “Let’s go get silly.”

  “Hear, hear!” Lord Marcus agreed.

  Porsha didn’t even flinch at the sight of Chanel and Kaliq holding hands. She’d always wanted to be a foursome; she’d just always thought it would be her and Kaliq and Chanel and someone else. She looked up into Lord Marcus’s handsome hazel-green eyes and he swooped down and kissed her tenderly on the tip of her nose.