Upper East Side #6

by Ashley Valentine

  Kaliq couldn't imagine what somebody so new to the world could be dreaming about, but he supposed it must be kind of like one of those dreams he had when he was severely high. Nothing happened, he just felt stuff. And he always woke up hungry.

  Porsha reached into the bassinet and retrieved a little silver rattle. It looked like a tiny barbell. "This was mine when I was a baby." She turned it over. "See all the little bite marks?" She handed the rattle to Kaliq.

  At first glance it appeared smooth, but when he looked closely he could see hundreds of indentations. It was no surprise that Porsha had been a various teether, obsessive and aggressive right from the start. But there was something calm about her now, as if through soothing the baby she'd learned to soothe herself.

  Kaliq handed the rattle back and it shook noisily. Instantly, Yale began to fuss and whimper, her arms and legs sticking out in all directions and her face puckering like a dried apricot.

  Porsha leaned over the bassinet and picked her sister up. "Shhh," she whispered. "It was nothing. Go back to sleep." She rocked back and forth until Yale stopped fussing. Then she put the baby down and tucked the blanket up around her. "There. Go to sleep," she said again, and then looked up at Kaliq.

  "She's beautiful," he told her, his voice cracking. Silently he reached for Porsha's hand and pulled her out into the hallway. She closed the nursery door and he hugged her fiercely, pressing his lips against hers. "My parents are out," he whispered into her hair.

  The penthouse was so hushed, Porsha could practically hear her own heart beating. Brice and Tahj were watching movies in the library, and her mom and Cyrus were out. But she couldn't exactly have sex with Kaliq while Yale lay sleeping innocently in the next room. She closed her eyes and kissed him again before whispering, "Okay, I'm ready."

  Finally.

  41

  Bree had never been a big dancer, but how could she not dance in those crazy, white, pointy boots? And the amazing thing about her turquoise leather vest was it held everything in place. No boob whiplash. No accidental groping. No wiggly-wobbly. Even without the vest, though, she would have been okay. Better than okay.

  The Raves stopped playing and announced that they were taking a short break. The Whiffenpoofs, however, were just getting going. "One, two, a one, two, three—" They began to sing in their traditional acappella harmony, "Bree, oh, Brianna," they began to serenade her. "Chanel's little sister, Brianna. They don't look alike. One's tall, one's short, but they're the craziest gals in any pan."

  Chanel came and draped her arm around Bree's shoulders, swaying back and forth to the song. The other party-goers drifted back and forth across the room, not paying much attention now that the real music had cut out.

  "Brianna, she's got big huge bazongas!" Jaylen Harrison sang loudly as he staggered past the two girls, shaking his ass drunkenly with his monkey on his shoulders and his military school beret on his head. A few titters echoed throughout the room.

  Uh-oh.

  "You know they did it once, right?" a girl from Seaton Arms whispered to her friend. "Got caught at a party in October, in the bathroom. She was, like, completely naked and Jaylen was giving it to her on the toilet."

  "I thought he was gay," said a girl wearing a brand new Vassar T-shirt.

  "Everyone wants to squeeze Bree's great big boobeez!" Jaylen carried on obnoxiously.

  "Jaylen has a hairy anus-en!" Chanel countered loudly. "Just ignore him," she told Bree.

  But instead of turning embarassed with outrage and utter shame, Bree couldn't stop giggling. Two weeks ago Jaylen's little performance would have been devastating. Now everyone was laughing at him, not with him. And now that she'd been through a scandal—or two or three—and come out ahead, she was more resilient. She had a past, a history. She was the girl no one would be able to stop talking about. Big bazongas and all, she, Brianna Hargrove, was destined for success. And if life took a crappy turn and things went irreparably wrong, she could always get sent to boarding school like her father had threatened. There she could reinvent herself. Maybe she'd even come back from boarding school and reinvent herself again, just like Chanel had done.

  She might even have as many boyfriends as Chanel. One day.

  42

  "Could I borrow a smoke, bro?" Kash, the lead guitarist of the Raves and one of Mekhi's musical favorites, asked him. Mekhi was too drunk to be starstruck. He held up the rumpled half-empty pack of Newports he'd opened only a half hour ago, then Kash lit his cigarette with Mekhi's yellow plastic Bic. Kash was wearing a sort of brown canvas military coat with words in Finnish or some other random language painted on it. It was the type of coat only a famous person could get away with. "Don't happen to know who lives here, do you?" he asked.

  "I do," Mekhi responded drunkenly. "Sort of. With my girlfriend. It's her older sister's place, but she's away." He decided not to mention Tiphany. He preferred to think that Tiphany didn't exist. And now that he thought about it, he hadn't seen Tiphany or Yasmine all night. How long could a piercing take, he wondered, his head murky with Vodka.

  Kash nodded thoughtfully. "Any idea who wrote all those songs in those black leather books in the other room?"

  Mekhi wondered suddenly if he hadn't passed out and was dreaming this entire conversation. "Poems," he corrected, blinking away the happy melodic notes of the Whiffenpoofs, who were still serenading his sister. A tall, dark-skinned guy with wire-rimmed glasses and a short woman with burgundy hair tangoed across the floor. "Those are my poems." He tried to stand up but his ankles buckled and he slumped against the wall again. If he didn't move soon, he was going to piss himself.

  Kash tucked his coat behind him and squatted down in front of Mekhi. "I'm telling you, man, they're songs."

  Mekhi stared woodenly at the famous five-inch-long scar that cut across Kash's forehead. It was supposedly from a BMX bike accident. Was he brain damaged or something?

  "Dude," he insisted. "I wrote them. They're poems."

  "Songs. Songs, songs, songs." Kash held out his hand and coaxed Mekhi into a standing position. "Come on, I'll show you."

  Mekhi stumbled along after Kash, bumping into people and slurring his sorrys.

  "When you guys gonna start playing again?" someone yelled.

  "Soon, asshole," Kash muttered, giving them the finger.

  Yasmine's room was just as crowded as the living room. The other members of the Raves were gathered on her bed, sorting through Mekhi's notebooks.

  "Did you see this one? It's called 'Sluts,'" the bass player told Kash, holding up the poem. "It'd be the perfect, like, pissed-off love ballad, you know? Like the perfect middle song for a show. Especially after this funny one, 'Killing Tooter.'"

  Mekhi stared at them. There was still a very good chance he was dreaming or had died after being stepped on by one of Tiphany's huge, construction worker friends.

  Kash nudged him forward. "I found the guy who wrote them. He's good looking enough to be a front man."

  Mekhi swayed in front of the others. Front man?

  "But can he sing?" the drummer asked, giving Mekhi the once-over and pulling on his weird, scary mustache. The Raves had a mixed-bag kind of style. Part cool older brother, part serial killer.

  Sing?

  Kash clapped Mekhi on the back. "You'll give it a try, won't you? They're your songs, after all. Sing 'em however you want to. We play pretty loud, so you'll feel like you're shouting." He patted Mekhi's back again. "Just make it sound good, yeah?"

  "Yeah."

  As he followed the band into the living room, Mekhi felt like his body was in the hands of some maniacal puppeteer with a very twisted sense of humor. Next thing he knew, he'd be taking his shirt off.

  Well, he is the front man, after all.

  The drummer whacked his drums a few times and a hush of anticipation fell over the room. "We'll do 'Killing Tooter' first, yeah?" he asked Mekhi.

  Mekhi nodded. He barely knew the words, but he was so drunk anyway, it wasn't like he'd be enunciat
ing.

  The band broke into a frantic, rhythmic, slamming beat with an undulating bass line. It was perfect for the poem, or song, or whatever the fuck anyone wanted to call it.

  '"You hungry? I made you something! Die, Tooter, die!'" Mekhi screamed into the microphone. "'You tired? I'll put you to sleep! Die, Tooter, die!'"

  "'Die, Tooter!'" The Whiffenpoofs crooned in support.

  The room was packed and immediately people picked up on the craziness of the moment, slam dancing and taking their clothes off.

  Mekhi ripped off his shirt. What the hell? He gave everyone the finger. '"You want some more? Come and get it! Die, Tooter, die!'"

  Okay, so maybe he was completely shitfaced, but this was still better than wallowing in self-pity and dust bunnies back in the corner. And at least he knew now, after all these years, that he'd been writing twisted, morbid songs, not poems.

  43

  "Yo, is there somebody named Yasmine in there?" a guy yelled from outside the bathroom.

  "Yeah?" Yasmine called back, and opened the door a crack. For the last half hour she'd been bent over the bathroom sink, running her lip under cold water, but it was still bleeding.

  The guy shoved the phone into her hand. He was shirtless, and had a tattoo of a snake on his chest. "Some bitch called like five hundred times. Doesn't she get we're trying to listen to music out here?"

  Yasmine took the phone and cradled it between her chin and shoulder while Tiphany applied ice to her lip. "Hello?"

  "Hey, it's your sister, remember me?" Ruby shouted on the other end of the line. "What the fuck is going on over there?"

  "I'm having a party," Yasmine explained, although it hardly explained anything. Ruby knew perfectly well that, other than Mekhi, Yasmine had exactly zero friends.

  "Oh, yeah, Miss Birthday Girl? And who might be attending this party?"

  Yasmine glanced at Tiphany. "Is that your sister?" Tiphany mouthed. Yasmine nodded, and Tiphany pressed a fistful of ice into her hand. "Catch you later." She kicked away the blood-soaked towels littering the bathroom floor, leaving the door open behind her as she left. The uproar of music and shouting and the smell of smoke and vodka almost knocked Yasmine over.

  "Is that the Raves—live? What, did MTV like hire you to film their video or something?" Ruby demanded.

  "I'm not sure," Yasmine answered honestly. She knew the party had swelled tremendously since she'd disappeared into the bathroom, but she hadn't realized to what extent. Were those really the Raves, or just some geeky Williamsburg bar band impersonating them? "So anyway, Tiphany has been staying here," she informed her sister.

  "Tiphany who?"

  "Tiphany. You gave her the key. She said you told her she could crash here for as long as she wanted. She's been sleeping on your bed."

  Ruby was silent for a moment. "Wait, I think I know who you're talking about. She has a ferret, right? And she comes with this whole story about how she's traveled the world and done all these things and she just needs a place to crash for a while?"

  Check.

  "I can't believe she still has the key! Don't you remember the story about the girl who was, like, squatting in the apartment when I moved in? I finally got the landlord to get rid of her, and the whole time she acted like we were best friends."

  "But she's not even from here," Yasmine faltered. "She's from all over. She's got wanderlust." It was one of Tiphany's favorite words, but boy did it sound idiotic when Yasmine said it.

  "She's a fuckup," Ruby corrected. "And a user. She used to be a nice girl. By that I mean she went to a good private girls' school on the Upper East Side, lived in a townhouse, and played tennis. Senior year she decided to rebel, "forgot" to apply to college, dropped out of school, got disowned from her family, and started wandering the country giving piercings to make money. Whenever she runs out of cash, she always comes back to town to mooch off her old friends and steal their clothes. And she's always so cheerful about it all, it usually takes a while for people to catch on. I bet she hasn't paid for any food or anything since she's been there, except maybe alcohol."

  That did kind of sound like Tiphany. Yasmine didn't know what to say. It was true. She and Mekhi had basically been feeding her for over a week.

  "Besides, we're not allowed to have pets in our building. That ferret could get us evicted. Kick her out, babe. Okay?"

  Yasmine was on the verge of tears. How could she have been so stupid and let this girl she didn't even know take over her life?

  "I'll call you tomorrow, okay?" Ruby promised.

  "Okay." Yasmine hung up. Her hands were shaking. She tossed the phone into the sink and stormed into the living room, forgetting all about her bleeding lip.

  Christ. The apartment was mobbed. Girls from Emma Willard and Seaton Arms and all the other schools Yasmine wished she had nothing to do with were slam dancing and gyrating their asses against the pelvises of boys from St. Jude's and Riverside Prep. The members of Tiphany's "construction team," who Yasmine now suspected were probably professional burglars or worse, were attacking the living room wall with Tiphany's pick-axe. Tiphany's ferret and Jaylen's monkey were chasing each other and humping on Ruby's futon. And Tiphany herself was parked in front of the TV, playing one of the films Yasmine had made a few months back for all to see. But where was Mekhi? Had she been ignoring him or was he ignoring her?

  Pushing through the crowd, Yasmine lunged at Tiphany and yanked the remote out of her hand. "That's private!" she yelled, snapping the TV off. Little by little she could feel her old, outraged, pissed off self coming back...and it felt great. What made her even more angry was that Tiphany had stolen it away from her.

  Atta girl.

  Tiphany laughed her goofy, loud, ain't-we-just-the-bestest-friends laugh. "Mekhi's a boring poet, and a really bad actor." She pointed across the living room. "But mix them together and look what you get!"

  Yasmine glared at her, and then turned to see what she was pointing at. She didn't know how she could have missed it. There was Mekhi, standing on top of an overturned milk crate, shirtless and sweaty, biting the microphone as he spat out the words to his poems, pretending they were songs. She turned away again. She'd deal with him later.

  "That's my sister's shirt," she told Tiphany levelly. "Put it back."

  Tiphany's mouth opened slightly. "You're wearing her pants."

  "She's my sister. Give it back," Yasmine ordered. "And then find your friends and your goddamned ferret and get the fuck out of here."

  The rage that had been building since her conversation with Ruby in the bathroom suddenly consumed her. It was her birthday and no one seemed to give a flying fuck that they were trashing her house. She didn't even know most of these people.

  "Fuck everybody!" she shouted. "I want you all fucking out!!"

  Of course no one could hear her, not over the din of Mekhi's drunken howl.

  Yasmine had one thing going for her, though. It was her apartment and she knew where the fuse box was. Shoving her way past a half-naked sweaty boy and his teetering drunk girlfriend, she tore into the kitchen, climbed up on the counter, and opened the metal box above the stove. With a flick of a few switches, the music went dead and the only light left on was the one above her head.

  "EVERYBODY OUT!" she shouted again, her mouth opening inhumanly wide, which hurt like hell with such a newly pierced lip.

  "What the fuck?" a guy wearing nothing but a pair of orange Princeton boxers demanded.

  "Who the hell is she?" his girlfriend whined.

  But these were well-bred kids, and no one likes to stick around at a party when they're not welcome. Slowly, people began to trickle out the door and down the stairs. Yasmine even thought she heard the distinct sound of a pick-axe clattering to the floor. She sat down on top of the stove, swinging her combat boots against the oven door as she watched everyone leave.

  "Why didn't she just ask us to keep it down or something?" somebody grumbled.

  "What are we supposed to do now? It's onl
y midnight," someone else complained.

  Of course Jaylen had the perfect solution. "We'll move the party to my house!!" he cried, gathering up his monkey and tucking it into his shirt. He put his arm around two of the blond Georgetown girls. "You can even sleep over if you want."

  Tiphany stalked past the kitchen wearing only a black bra, which was probably Ruby's too. She tossed something at Yasmine. "There's her goddamned shirt."

  Yasmine didn't think that sort of behavior warranted a response. She watched with smug satisfaction as Tiphany grabbed her ferret by the scruff of the neck and dragged her army duffel bag across the living room and out the door.

  It wasn't like she'd be homeless. Jaylen had plenty of room.

  44

  There were only a few stragglers left now. Yasmine turned the fuses back on and surveyed the damage. She would have to hire a cleaning service to help her deal with it. Maybe she could find some way to charge it to Tiphany.

  Mekhi was on his hands and knees, looking for his shirt and shoes. His scraggly, newly-grown-out twists were matted over his eyes and he could barely see.

  Yasmine hopped off the stove. "You can stay," she told him gently. What had happened was her fault, after all. If she hadn't been so swept up in Tiphany's bullshit, she and Mekhi would be living together and getting along fine instead of drowning in disaster.

  Mekhi found one Puma sneaker and shoved it on. One was better than none. He stood up. Yasmine's lower lip was crusty with blood but she still looked better than he felt. "Gotta catch up with the band. They want me to be their front man," he slurred with drunken urgency.

  Yasmine had no idea what he was talking about. Maybe if they just sat down and talked to each other like they always used to, things would go back to normal.

  "It's my birthday," she reminded him, trying to keep her voice from breaking. "Will you read me the poem you wrote for me?"

  Mekhi shook his head. Nearly everything he'd ever written was for Yasmine. "It's a song. They're all songs."