West 57

by B. N. Freeman

  “Hey, can I get you something?” Mandi asked. “Bottle of San Pellegrino?”

  “Sure.”

  Mandi waved a hand at another of Thad’s people. There was obviously a pecking order, and she had graduated beyond water girl. She’d done the polite thing by greeting me, and now she was off to more important matters.

  “Julie.”

  I heard Thad’s voice behind me, as seductive as if he were on stage with JJ. He spun me around, grabbed my shoulders with strong hands, and planted a kiss on me. He was genuinely excited to see me.

  “Congratulations,” he said when we disentangled our tongues. “This is the first day of the rest of your life.”

  “That’s what Cherie tells me,” I said.

  He laughed in a practiced way, the way people laugh when they have an audience. “Well, listen to her! She’s your mother! Mother knows best, right?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “I talked to her today. She’s so excited about your coming out there.”

  “Really? I hadn’t picked up on that.”

  He did a double-take until he realized I was joking, and then he tapped my face in a mock slap. “You are an evil woman. We’re going to have our hands full with you.” While his hand was in the vicinity of my cheek, he took hold of my hair and twirled it around his fingers like a forkful of spaghetti.

  “This hair,” he said. “So you really like it long, do you?”

  “Yes, I do,” I said.

  “I have a guy in Malibu. He spent five years in Jamal Hamadi’s salon, and now he does his own thing. He is the trendsetter right now. I’ll make an appointment for you. You’ll be amazed at what he can do. He’ll convince you to do a bob, I guarantee it.”

  “Do you have a dentist for me, too?”

  “Actually, I do. Why, do you want me to get you in? Your teeth will be as white as an elephant’s tusk, I promise.”

  I’m not sure I want my teeth compared to an elephant’s tusk. Anyway, I was joking, but Thad didn’t get it.

  He gestured at the bag on the floor. “That’s all you’re bringing?”

  “It’s just a week,” I said again. Maybe someone will believe me.

  Thad shrugged. “You don’t have to come back here, Julie. Everything can be done long distance. We can get people to pack up your things and ship them. Anyway, don’t worry about clothes. Cherie gave me your size. I had my closet stocked with everything you’ll need...casual, formal, beach, dancing, premieres, you name it, whatever we want to do. You’ll be ready.”

  “You bought clothes for me?” I asked.

  “I had Mandi arrange a wardrobe with one of her gals. I figured you didn’t know the L.A. styles. This way, you’ll fit right in. It’s like having your own personal D&G store.”

  “Thank heavens for Mandi.”

  “Yes, she’s amazing,” he said.

  Thad gave an overly-interested look at his perky assistant that went from her blond hair to her sky-high heels. She felt his eyes and returned the stare. I felt a little crackle of electricity between them.

  “Are you sleeping with her?” I asked casually.

  Thad froze. “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Oh, come on, Julie. We’re not going down that road again, are we? Now you’re sounding like the girl I knew in her twenties. I thought we’d both matured.”

  “If by matured you think I don’t care if you sleep with other women, then no, I haven’t matured.”

  “You were pretty clear to me that you didn’t want a relationship,” Thad said. “We’re in a trial phase, right? So how about you spare me the jealousy until we’re really involved?”

  He was right. We did sound like we were back in our twenties. Sometimes you can block things out because you’re in such a rush to pretend that you’ve moved on.

  Before I could say anything else, he leaned down and whispered, “Look, here’s the truth. Have I slept with her? Yes. Am I sleeping with her? No. That’s how it is in L.A. Everybody sleeps with everybody else at some point. It doesn’t mean anything. If I eliminated everyone I’d slept with from my staff, I’d never hire anyone.”

  “Well, that’s good to know,” I said.

  “You know what I mean. I’m just saying Mandi and I are not involved anymore.”

  “I’m not questioning your taste, Thad. If I had breasts like that, I’d walk around topless,” I said.

  “She’s beautiful, but everyone in L.A. is beautiful,” he told me. “You’re beautiful.”

  “Even with my breasts?” I asked. “Can an A-cup girl find love and happiness on the west coast?”

  Thad shrugged. “Who says you have to be an A-cup? If you want implants, I know a guy. Best plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills. He did my eyes. Not to mention a few other things.”

  Thad’s eyes are impressive. They are an eighteen year old’s eyes, not a wrinkle or sag anywhere. I wondered where else he’d been nipped and tucked. I was beginning to think that everything about him belonged to an eighteen year old. His ego. His body. Only his wallet had gotten older.

  “I don’t want implants,” I said.

  “Then don’t get them. I’m just saying, they can help you in L.A. Even on the other side of the camera, it gets you noticed.”

  “I’ll add it to the list. Hair, teeth, boobs. Anything else?”

  My sarcasm was lost on him, because Thad wasn’t paying attention to me now. He was already on the phone again. It was a busy job, running Thad, Inc. The movers kept moving, but there was almost nothing left in the hotel room to carry out. I expected them to roll up the carpet and take it with them. Mandi with an i waved at us and called, “We’re all set, T.”

  T waved back. I had a brief, blinding vision of their naked bodies entwined. Mandi moaning. Make love to me, T. Harder, T. That’s the spot, T.

  Thad hung up the phone and gave me one of his very best smiles. The don’t-worry-about-anything smile. I almost believed it.

  “You ready?” he said.

  “Sure, let’s go.”

  We headed for the elevator. The three of us, me, T, and Mandi with an i. Mandi had her clipboard with her, and she was going over plans for the house in Malibu. It must be nice to have such an efficient assistant you can sleep with. She talked about a bedroom for me and winked. That was her way of saying, “You won’t need a separate bedroom, will you?”

  “I did the deal for West 57 today,” I told Thad. “I signed the papers.”

  Thad didn’t reply. He was busy with Mandi.

  “It’s gone,” I said.

  Thad finally looked at me. “What?”

  “I signed the papers to sell West 57 today.”

  “Oh, sorry, I thought you already did that. Great. One less thing to worry about, right?”

  I blinked. “Right.”

  The blood, sweat, tears, smoke, and laughter of thirty years of my father’s life. One less thing to worry about. It’s no big deal. All he did was publish books, and who reads books anymore?

  We emerged onto the sidewalk outside the hotel. The limo was waiting for us, its rear door open, its engine running. Across the street, I saw a large van, where Thad’s life was packed up for its return voyage to L.A. Mandi bent and slid inside the limo with the grace of someone who does this every day. Her dress stretched tightly across her shapely backside. Thad’s eyes followed it. He climbed in behind her and turned and reached out his hand to me like I was dangling from a cliff and in need of rescue.

  “Time to go,” he said.

  Time to go.

  I took a breath of the New York air. You could smell everything in the New York air: hot dogs, onions, leather, steam, urine, cologne, horses, soot, roses, sweat, cigars, dog poop, sugar, rain, trash, beer, and musky sex. You could smell everyone in the world doing everything in the world. You could smell conception, birth, life, death, and all of the crazy highs and lows in between. On those rare occasions when I’ve left the city, I always thought with wonder: the rest of the world doesn’t smell
at all. I didn’t like it. Something always felt missing until I returned to the nose-wrinkling perfume of New York.

  “It’s going to pour,” I said to no one in particular. Soon enough, the horses would smell like wet horses, and the trash would smell like wet trash, and the dog poop would smell like wet dog poop.

  “Julie,” Thad said impatiently, his hand still waiting for mine. “Climb aboard.”

  Climb aboard. Climb aboard the express train. Take a ride. I stared at him in the limo, and I had a vision of myself in ten years that was as blindingly clear as a high-def LED Samsung television. I was going to be exactly like my mother. Exactly. I’d be surgically perfect and rich, and Swedish men named Erick and Pieter would give me massages, and I would drive a yellow Audi convertible down the 405. I would be the ultimate California gurl. And Thad? He’d have an even bigger mansion, and Mandi with an i would have been replaced by Candi with an i, and he’d send me big alimony checks and support payments for our daughter, who would tell me she wanted to grow up to be an actress.

  “Julie,” Thad repeated, with a hint of annoyance.

  I shook my head.

  “We have to go,” he insisted.

  No. I don’t have to go anywhere. I will go where I want and do what I want. I’m a one-choice girl, and this isn’t my choice.

  “I’m sorry, Thad.”

  “Julie, what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying goodbye.”

  He reached for me, but I turned and walked up the street away from him and away from his life. I wondered if he would chase me, but I knew he wouldn’t. Not Thad. He had a plane to catch. I heard the slam of the limousine door and the growl of the engine as they left me behind. I just kept walking, smiling at the doormen in the doorways, who tipped their hats to me. The first raindrops began to fall on my head, but I didn’t care if my long hair got wet.

  44

  Bree was in a corner of the rooftop hotel bar under a big, dripping umbrella when I found her. It was ten o’clock at night, but she still had her sunglasses on, and she’d had her hair freshly tinted with rainbow colors. The music and partying went on around her, and she did a little sway with her shoulders to the beat. She sipped a martini and smoked a cigarette.

  I sat down across from her with no greeting and no fanfare. She grinned at me without taking her sunglasses off, and she didn’t look surprised. “Aren’t you supposed to be on a plane, darling?” she asked.

  “Nope.”

  “No Los Angeles for you?”

  “Nope.”

  “No sandy beaches and year-round sunshine?”

  “Nope.”

  “Live forever in stinky, crowded, wonderful New York?”

  “Yep,” I said.

  “Good for you.”

  “Good for me,” I agreed.

  “So how did Thad take it?” she asked. “Did he cry?”

  “No, he took it well.”

  “How emotionally authentic of him. How about your mother?”

  “Not so well, but she’ll get over it. She loves me no matter where I am.”

  Bree finally stripped off her glasses, where her eyes twinkled at me. “Of course, I knew you wouldn’t go,” she said.

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “Yes, I did. I’m your evil twin, remember? Twins always know what the other one is thinking.”

  As if to prove her point, a cosmopolitan miraculously appeared in front of me. We clinked our glasses, and we drank. It was strong and smooth and sweet and wonderful. Just like the two of us.

  “Are you alone?” I asked, because Bree is never alone.

  “Perish the thought,” Bree said. “Viggo’s in the little boy’s room.”

  “Viggo Mortensen? Are you two dating?”

  “Oh, not anymore. It got a little weird when he kept wanting me to call him Aragorn. We’re just friends now. Want to meet him?”

  “I would, but I have to be somewhere.”

  “Ah.”

  “What, ah?”

  “Nothing,” Bree said, but she smirked at me with that all-knowing, I’m-your-evil-twin Bree smirk. She knew where I was going. “So what are you planning to do with the rest of your life, Julie Chavan?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” I said. “I have options.”

  Bree cocked her head and put a finger on her temple, as if she were trying to guess. “Options, hmm? Plural? Let’s see. You could go back to your cubicle in the Flatiron building with the McNally-Brown Agency.”

  “I’m not going to do that.”

  “You could call up Helllmooooot and sign on with Gernestier to run West 57.”

  “I’m not going to do that, either.”

  “You could change your mind and jet your way to L.A.”

  “Definitely not going to do that.”

  “So what’s your plan, darling?” she teased me. “I’m at a loss.”

  “You know what my plan is,” I said. “I want to know if you were serious.”

  “About what?”

  “About you and me. About the Chavan-Cox Agency. About us taking on the world.”

  “The Cox-Chavan Agency? You know I was serious.”

  “You really want to be partners.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “You and me. Us.”

  “You and me.”

  I took a long, deep breath, like a bungee jumper or a zip liner. Anyone about to take a plunge from a nose-bleed height.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

  “Truly?”

  “You and me,” I said. “Partners.”

  “This is fab, darling, utterly fab.”

  We shook hands to seal the deal. We hugged. We kissed. Just like that, we were in business. Julie Chavan and Bree Cox.

  “Of course, you know this is probably a bad idea that will never work,” I said, when we’d finished celebrating.

  “Why is that?”

  “Because friends make terrible partners.”

  “Do they? Well, what about enemies? We’ve been enemies, too.”

  “Even worse,” I said.

  “Then we can agree to be frenemies,” Bree replied. “Frenemies make great partners, right?”

  “Absolutely.” I raised my glass.

  We drank. I slugged mine down, and it went right to my head. I could have had six more, but I had somewhere to be.

  “I have to go,” I said.

  “Yes, I know. I’ll see you tomorrow, darling. We can plan our takeover of the entertainment industry over coffee and donuts.”

  “I thought you were heading back to London,” I said.

  “Actually, I changed my tickets to stay another week. I had a feeling you might be sticking around.”

  I leaned across the table and kissed her on the cheek. “Life with you will never be dull, Bree Cox.”

  “Why, thank you, darling.”

  I headed for the elevators, passing through the drinkers and the dancers with a strange buzz in my head. There was an electricity all around the patio, but mostly, it was inside me. My heart was beating like crazy. That’s what happens when you suddenly find you are in love with your future and can’t wait to see what it brings.

  I stood in front of Garrett’s door.

  I’d never been to his apartment before, above the all-night Turkish coffee shop. The building smelled of dark-roasted dregs and the inside of an old hookah pipe. I heard twingy-twangy music and a yipper dog yipping. Inside Garrett’s apartment, I heard late-night Yankees sports talk on the television.

  Everything seemed clear to me while I was walking through the city, but nothing seemed clear when I was about to see his face. What if he wasn’t thinking what I was thinking? What if I’d misjudged everything? I thought about what I would say, and my mind drew a blank. I had nothing. I decided I would know what to say when the words came out of my mouth. I’d say something clever and funny. I’d break the ice. Or I’d fall through it.

  My nervousness soared as I second-guessed myself. Let’s face it, I
didn’t exactly look like a million dollars. The rain as I left Bree’s hotel was a deluge, with animals starting to pair up for the Ark. I was soaked to the bone. I was dripping on the carpet. My hair looked like dreadlocks. Very sexy.

  I knocked.

  Inside, Garrett turned off the television and answered the door. There he was. He knew it was me; he’d already buzzed me in. We stared at each other, him all warm and casual and sexy with that crooked smile, me as pathetic as a homeless wet dog. I opened my mouth, waiting to say something clever, something funny, something, anything, to explain why I was here.

  I couldn’t think of a thing to say. Not a word. Nada. Neither did he.

  You know what? It was still okay. As it turned out, we didn’t need to talk at all. We both knew what we wanted. We both knew why I was there. Words were just going to slow us down.

  I got on tiptoes and kissed him, and he bent down and kissed me back, and he pulled me into his apartment and kicked the door shut with his foot, and my arms were around his neck, and his arms were around my back, and I began taking off his clothes, and he began taking off my clothes, and soon enough, there were lots of clothes on the floor, and there were none on us, and we were stumbling into the bedroom and tumbling into the bed, and sorry, that’s as far as I go with you.

  I think it was two hours later when I finally said something. By then, we’d definitely broken the ice.

  I was lying next to him. We were staring at the ceiling fan going around and around and around. We may have been in a sex coma. We were both naked and sweaty, and I was really, really hungry. That’s how you know it was good. I could have gone to an all-night deli and scarfed down eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes, French toast, hash browns, oatmeal, and washed it all down with coffee.

  “Did I mention I was staying?” I said to him.

  “I was hoping you were staying,” he said.

  We were quiet for a long time again, holding hands. Being here, under the ceiling fan, with the smell of the Turkish bakery in the vents, listening to the hammering of rain on the windows, was better than any beach in Malibu.

  “I’ve wanted to do that for, like, years,” I said.