Upper East Side #6

by Ashley Valentine

  Chanel winced and took a gulp of champagne. Two months ago, the designer Les Best had asked her to star in the advertising campaign for his new perfume, and he'd even wound up naming the perfume Chanel's Tears. In the ad Chanel stood crying on a wooden footbridge in Central Park, wearing a yellow sundress in the dead of winter. Contrary to popular belief, the tears on her cheeks were entirely real. The ad had been shot the very moment Porsha's dreadhead stepbrother, Tahj Campbell, had decided to break up with her; the very moment the tears began to fall.

  "Actually, I think I might try acting next," she replied.

  Bree nodded eagerly. "I just love how you look so real in that ad. Like, of course you look amazing, but not, like, airbrushed or made up or anything."

  Chanel giggled. "Oh my God, I was wearing so much makeup—you know that gross beige stuff they smear all over your face? And they totally airbrushed out my goosebumps. I was freezing my butt off!"

  The lights over the bar went out for a second and everybody screamed. Then they came on again. Bree remained composed, eager to give the impression that she attended out-of-control parties like this all the time.

  "Honestly," Chanel declared, relieved to take a break from ruminating over her uncertain future. "Anyone can model. As long as you have the right look for the shoot."

  "I guess," Bree replied doubtfully. It was easy for Chanel to say that anyone could model when she was endowed with giraffe-like legs, a gorgeous face, amazing almond-shaped eyes, and long, luxurious, natural hair. "But how do you know if you have the right look?"

  "You go to something called a go-see," Chanel explained. She polished off her champagne and pulled a pack of cigarettes from her gold Dior clutch. Within seconds the bartender zipped over to refill her glass and light her cigarette.

  You know what they say: Beauty = Convenience.

  "Listen, if you're interested, I can ask around and hook you up with some people I know," Chanel offered.

  Bree stared up at her with huge eyes, unsure if she had misunderstood. It was so exactly what she'd wanted Chanel to say, it was almost too good to be true. "You mean to model? Me?"

  Just then Chanel was distracted by a moan from behind her. "Um, you guys," she called over her shoulder to Yasmine and Mekhi. "There are suites and stuff downstairs, you know."

  "I always thought I was way too short," Bree insisted, worried that Chanel was losing her train of thought.

  "No way. You'll be great," Chanel assured her. "I'm going to call some people, and then I'll e-mail you. Okay?"

  "Really?" Bree cried giddily. She couldn't believe this was happening. She was going to be a model! She set her champagne flute down on the bar. Now there was so much work to do. Manicure, pedicure, eyebrow shaping, mustache waxing, maybe even those henna highlights she'd always wanted.

  "Aren't you going to finish it?" Chanel asked, pointing at Bree's glass.

  Bree shook her head, suddenly feeling completely unprepared. "I have to go home and get ready," she faltered. Then she stood on tiptoe and kissed Chanel on the cheek. "Thank you. Thank you so, so much!"

  Chanel smiled down at the younger girl. So her best friend was mad at her and she wasn't in love? At least she could take pleasure in helping Bree out.

  As soon as Bree left, three junior guys from Riverside Prep crowded behind Chanel's bar stool, daring each other to ask her downstairs to one of the hotel suites with them.

  "Man, is she fine. How come she doesn't have a boyfriend?" one of them murmured.

  "Why don't you ask her?" his friend responded.

  "Why don't you?" said the third guy.

  But they were either too stupid, too chicken, or too humbled by Chanel's beauty and supposed intelligence even to come close. Chanel picked up the remains of Bree's champagne and poured it into her glass.

  It's no fun being beautiful when even losers won't talk to you.

  10

  "I can't believe this is happening," Yasmine breathed for the thirtieth time that night. She and Mekhi hadn't stopped kissing since he'd walked up to her in the bar and kissed her neck, and now they were tearing each other's clothes off in one of the Pier Hotel suites downstairs. She wanted to tell him how much she'd missed him and how stupid it was that they'd stopped talking. And even though sex in a hotel suite this close to graduation was tacky and cliche, it felt like the best way.

  The rooms in the Pier had round windows looking out onto the Hudson, wrought-iron anchors hanging from the walls, and green carpeting. The complimentary soap, shampoo, and body lotion in the bathroom were all seaweed-based, and the bed linens were a light oceanic blue. Brushed-steel ceiling fans spun round and round from the ceilings, cooling off what was turning out to be a very hot night.

  Mekhi yanked his belt out of his jeans and sent it snaking across the room. He was drunk with happiness and horny as hell. Bounding onto the bed, he jumped up and down on it a few times. "Whoo!" he shouted. "Whoo-hoo!"

  Yasmine grabbed him around the knees and he fell down on top of her, grappling with her shirt and yanking it off over her head.

  "Dude! I survived!" some drunken doofus shouted. Next door, a bunch of guys in Bowdoin and Bates T-shirts were playing stupid drinking games while they watched the Nets game on TV.

  "If we lived together, we could do this every day," Mekhi realized out loud as he watched Yasmine unhook her black lace bra.

  Yasmine tossed the bra on the floor and crossed her arms over her bare chest. "Did you ask your dad?"

  "Yup," Mekhi replied happily. "He said okay. But if my grades slip and if I don't have dinner with him and Bree at least twice a week, I have to move back home." He pulled Yasmine's arms away and dove headfirst into her chest.

  Yasmine hugged his shaggy head and closed her eyes. She'd only drunk a Coke that night, but the bed was still spinning. She and Mekhi were in love again. They were moving in together. They might even go to NYU together. It was almost too perfect to believe.

  And how often does anything ever stay that perfect?

  11

  Bree had always been lauded for her excellent calligraphy and detailed accurate copies of the major works of classic artists. The handy thing about being artistic and a good copier was that she could forge notes, like this morning's note from her dad about a supposed "allergist appointment" downtown. She sniffled grotesquely as she handed it to her math teacher, Ms. Hinckle. In the back of the room, Elise tucked her hair behind her ears and pretended not to eavesdrop.

  "Next time, try to schedule your appointments after school," Ms. Hinckle instructed, dropping the note on her desk. She waved Bree away. "Now shoo."

  "Thanks," Bree responded sheepishly. Ms. Hinckle was old and treated all of the girls like her grandchildren, baking them oatmeal cookies and making them Christmas cards and caramel apples. Bree felt kind of bad taking advantage of the kindly teacher, but her career was at stake. This was important!

  The go-see Chanel had emailed her about was in a photographer's studio on West 16thStreet. A bunch of tall skinny girls with pouty lips were smoking cigarettes on the sidewalk downstairs. Models, Bree thought, trying not to feel intimidated.

  She had rang the buzzer for the third-floor studio and was buzzed into a dark space that looked like some sort of loading dock with a steel-lined freight elevator. Bree had stepped onto the elevator and pressed 3, trying not to feel as terrified as she actually did.

  "Hello?" A tall, pointy-chinned woman wearing a white patent leather beret, black leather short shorts, and knee-high suede boots greeted Bree as she stepped off the elevator. "Are you lost?"

  Bree realized she probably should have changed out of her Emma Willard uniform, but it was too late now. "I'm here for the go-see?" She still wasn't even sure what a go-see was exactly, but it certainly sounded cool.

  "Oh." The woman looked her up and down. "May I see your book?"

  Bree glanced down at her backpack. "My book?"

  The woman gave her the once-over again, and pointed to an empty chair between two bored-lo
oking models. "Sit down. I'll call you when he's ready." Then she stepped behind a white screen where Bree could see a camera flash flashing and the shadows of bodies moving around the room. Suddenly an uproar of hysterical laughter bounced off the studio's pounded tin ceilings, giving Bree the shivers.

  She glanced at the girl next to her. The girl was chewing gum, her eyelids drooping heavily like she'd been up all night. Bree looked away and tried to make her eyelids droop in the same cool affected way, but her eyeballs kept rolling back in her head. More Night of the Living Dead than cool, bored model.

  The woman in the beret came out from behind the screen. "You." She pointed at Bree.

  Bree blushed and glanced apologetically at the other girls who'd gotten there before her. Then she followed the woman behind the screen. The screened-off part of the studio had brick walls and a wood floor. In the center of the room was an antique-looking red velvet chaise lounge, and around the chaise lounge spotlights on tripods and silver reflective screens were set up.

  "Take off your sweater and lie down," a stocky man with a goatee ordered, already squinting at her through a huge Polaroid camera.

  Her heart pounding, Bree put down her bag and folded her cardigan on top of it. Then she sat down on the edge of the chaise lounge, ashamed of how knobbly her bare knees looked in the harsh light. "Lie down?"

  "On your back," the photographer directed, kneeling in front of her only a few feet away.

  Lie on her back? She couldn't possibly, not in the only moderately supportive cotton bra she was wearing. What if that horrible thing happened with her boobs, where each enormous breast oozed over her ribcage and into her armpits, causing her to look completely deformed? She scooted back on the chaise and propped herself up on her elbows in a position she decided was comparable to lying down. It also made her boobs stick out even farther than they already did.

  "Good enough," the photographer muttered, slapping the Polaroids he'd already taken down on the floor and crawling toward her to take some more.

  Bree squeezed her legs together so he wouldn't be able to see her underwear. "What kind of expression should I make?" she asked timidly.

  "Doesn't matter," the man answered as he slapped down more film. "Just keep your shoulders back and your chin up."

  Bree's arms were beginning to tremble with strain, but she didn't care. The photographer seemed to like her, and he was talking to her like a real model.

  "All right. We're done," he said finally, standing up. "What's your name anyway?"

  "Brianna," she answered. "Brianna Hargrove."

  The man nodded at the woman in the beret and she jotted something down on her clipboard.

  "May I see the pictures?" Bree asked, pointing at the Polaroids lined up on the wood floor. Each one was covered with a black piece of film paper that had to be peeled away to see the image.

  "Sorry, honey, those are mine," the photographer told her with an amused smile. "I want to see you here next Sunday. Ten AM. Got it?"

  Bree nodded eagerly and slipped on her sweater. She wasn't completely sure, but it sounded like she'd just been hired as a model for a photo shoot!

  Or at least some part of her had been hired.

  "So what was the go-see for?" Chanel asked when Bree saw her at peer group during lunch later that day. "I'm sorry I couldn't find out more info. My model friends are pretty lame that way."

  Bree put her hand over her mouth. "I forgot to ask. But it was so great. Everyone was really nice to me, like I was a real model and everything."

  "Okay, but you should find out at the shoot what it's for," Chanel advised. "One girl I know thought she was doing a gum commercial and it turned out it was for maxipads. I guess she was confused between Carefree and Stayfree."

  Bree frowned. Maxipads? No one had said anything about maxipads.

  "And don't let the stylist dress you in anything you're not comfortable with. I know that Les Best ad is good, but come on, a sundress in February? I was sick for like three weeks afterwards," Chanel added.

  The rest of the ninth-grade girls in peer group giggled politely. They loved hearing Chanel's modeling stories, but they were super jealous of Bree and didn't want to encourage her. How come the shortest girl in the class, the one with curly hair and those ridiculously huge breasts, was now, like, a model? It made no sense.

  "I bet it's for a plus-size bra catalog and she's too stupid to know," Vicky Reinerson whispered to Mary Goldberg and Cassie Inwirth.

  "I'm sure it's just for something basic, like orange juice," Cassie assured them, trying to keep a straight face.

  Elise was jealous, too, but she was trying hard not to show it. "Where's Porsha?" she asked Chanel in an effort to change the subject.

  Porsha was Chanel's peer group co-leader. Chanel shrugged. "I don't know. She's kind of mad at me right now."

  Mary, Cassie, and Vicky nudged one another under the table. They loved being the first to find out about Chanel and Porsha's fights.

  "I heard Porsha didn't get into any of the colleges she applied to. Her dad's sending her to France right after graduation so she can work for him," Mary announced.

  Chanel shrugged again. She knew from experience how stories got distorted and how quickly rumors spread. The less she said, the better. "Who knows what she'll do."

  Bree was still mulling over the maxipad issue. Did she really mind if the photo shoot next weekend was for something uncool, like frozen fat-free TV dinners or zit cream? At least it was a start. How else was she going to get discovered?

  "Stop being so paranoid," Elise hissed at her, even though they weren't even supposed to be talking to each other. Ever since they'd become friends two months ago, Elise had had the uncanny ability to read Bree's mind.

  Talk about annoying.

  Bree glanced at Chanel. The ethereally pretty senior had once had an unmentionable part of her body photographed by a pair of famous photographers, and the picture had wound up on the sides of buses and on top of taxis all over the city. It was one of the things that made Chanel the coolest girl in the entire city, or maybe even the universe! A maxipad ad was the same kind of thing.

  Sort of.

  12

  "Forget your tender breasts, your swollen ankles, your stretch marks. Imagine your buttocks are balloons that are being deflated. Let go. Breathe ouuut."

  Porsha refused to imagine any such thing. It was bad enough lying on the floor with a bunch of pregnant women in their stinky stocking feet, all moaning like overfed cows—there was no need to degrade the situation even further by involving her buttocks.

  On the floor to her right, Porsha's mother giggled. "Isn't this fun?"

  A blast.

  Porsha felt like hitting her. She'd taken a "personal day" and stayed home from school, too upset about being wait-listed at Yale to face her classmates, especially Chanel. But after six hours of Mob Wives reruns, an entire carton of fat-free chocolate sorbet, and now this, she wished she'd gone to school.

  "All right. Now that the partners have had a moment to relax, it's time for them to get to work. Remember, it takes a team to make a baby!"

  Eleanor's trendy-with-the-Upper-East-Side-set birth class "coach" was a yoga-slim, frizzy-haired former nurse named Ruth, who taught the class in her ultramodern Fifth Avenue penthouse. Ruth was married to a newly successful appliance designer, meaning that he designed washing machines, refrigerators, and dishwashers that looked like spaceships and cost as much as cars. They had five children, including a set of fraternal twins, and every once in a while one of the children would wander through the living room to get something from the enormous chrome fridge in the kitchen without even batting an eye at all the pregnant women sprawled on the floor.

  They'll probably all turn into psychologically disturbed gynecologists, Porsha thought.

  Ruth hitched up her weird black-and-white yoga pants, crouched on the floor, and scrunched up her face until she looked like a baboon trying to expel a whole banana tree from its ass. "Remember the
stages of labor we went over in the beginning of class? This is the face of the third stage. Very antisocial. Later on, when the epidural has worn off and you begin to push? Forget about it. That's when you start shouting at your husband to fuck the prenup. Babies may be pretty, but there's nothing pretty about having them. That's why they call it labor."

  Porsha raised herself up on her elbows. Didn't they have more technologically advanced ways of doing this nowadays? Couldn't they just, like, laser the baby out?

  "Now it's time for a treat. Ladies, keep relaxing on the floor. Partners, kneel down at their feet, where you belong. Now, ladies, get ready for a fabulous foot massage!"

  All the other partners happened to be the women's husbands, not their seventeen-year-old daughters. Husbands were supposed to give foot massages. It was part of the job. Daughters weren't.

  Porsha stared at her mom's feet. They looked sort of like hers, except they were encased in skin-colored knee-high socks. Just the thought of touching them made Porsha gag.

  "Start working on the right heel. Cradle the foot in one hand and use your thumbs. Don't be afraid to dig in. She's been carrying two people around all day. Her feet are tough!"

  Gingerly, Porsha picked up her mother's right foot. One thing was certain: After each of these birth classes she was going to buy an extremely expensive pair of Louboutins and charge them to her mother's credit card. She would also need a series of heavy-duty spa treatments to rid herself of the memories of all this touchy-feeliness and birth talk, never mind the foot odor.

  "Now rest her foot on your chest and drum your fingers from the big toe up to the knee. I know it sounds odd, ladies, but it feels wonderful."

  The husbands started drumming. They were really getting into it.

  "I have to go to the bathroom," Porsha announced, letting her mother's foot fall with a thud to the carpeted floor.