I can hear the girls talking happily again in the kitchen, ruffles smoothed over, conversation ebbing and flowing the way it should. Without me.
For a second, just as I close the front door, I’m overwhelmed by the urge to run back in and say sorry for being a drunk brat. To try to find my place as part of the group, with all the ease and laughter and fun that entails.… But I don’t fit with them. Not really. Pia was my only tie to them, and she doesn’t even act like she likes me these days. Though I don’t like me much these days either.
Anyway, I already said I was leaving.
I call Stef from the cab. This time, he answers.
“My angel. Got a secret bar for you. Corner of Tenth and Forty-sixth. Go into a café called Westies and through the red door at the back.”
He always knows the best places.
I quickly check my outfit in the cab; this is a great dress. I tried to copy it last week, but failed; I can’t get the arms quite right.
And by the way, I tried to get a job in fashion when I first got to New York. I sent my résumé and photos of the stuff I’ve made and some designs I’d been sketching, to all my favorite New York fashion designers. No response. So then I sent all the same stuff to my second-favorite designers. Then my third favorites. And so on. No one even replied. I don’t have a fashion degree—my parents wanted me to get (I quote) a “normal” education first—and I don’t have any direct fashion experience at all. I thought maybe I could leapfrog over from my job with the food photographer I worked for last year, but then she fired me. (Well, I quit. But she would have fired me anyway.)
The problem is that when you’re starting out, there’s nowhere to start. And there are thousands—maybe tens of thousands —of twenty-two-year-old girls who want to work in fashion in New York. I’m a total cliché. And I hate that.
So I never talk about my secret fashion career dream. It’s easier that way. Secretly wanting something and not getting it is one thing. I can handle that; I’m good at it. But talking about wanting it, putting it out there, making it real … and then not getting it? I couldn’t deal with that much failure.
The café, Westies, is in Hell’s Kitchen, an area of Manhattan I’m not that familiar with, but it seems aptly named today. The streets are freezing and empty, heaped with filthy, blackened snow. Manhattan looks mean in February.
Stef’s car is parked outside. Predictably. It’s his pride and joy, a red Ferrari 308 GTS. It’s a gorgeous car, I admit, a little “look at me!” for my taste, but he loves it.
I stride into the empty café—past greasy counters and scabby red velvet cupcakes on a dirty cake stand—and open the red door, walk down some old metal stairs that smell strangely like cabbage and yeast, past a dark green velvet curtain, and find myself in a warm, dark, calm little room.
There’s a ladder against a wall, where someone’s been putting up wallpaper. A handful of small round tables, a bar area the size of a bed, candles, and the Ramones. The perfect secret after-hours bar.
Stef’s the only person in here, and he’s sitting at the bar. He’s cute, though a little simian for my liking. Overconfident and overintense with the eye contact. You know the type.
“What’s up?” I greet him with a triple cheek kiss, the way Stef always does.
“Nothing, my angel,” he says, running his hand through his hair and lighting a cigarette. Wow, this must be a secret bar if they let you smoke inside. “How’s life with Cornie? It’s so cute that you work for her. Does she say yoohoo every morning when she sees you?”
“She’s away.” Stef is part of that Upper East Side Manhattan rich kid crowd that all know one another, always have and always will, and so is Cornelia. “I need to make some money, fast.”
“You wanna split an Adderall?”
“Sure.”
“Drug tales and dreams, baby.… This is my buddy’s place. It’s not open to the public yet, but the bar’s fully stocked. Help yourself to a drink.” Stef takes out his wallet, looking for his pills. He has a sort of cracked drawl, so he sounds permanently amused and slightly stoned. He probably is. “Fix me something while you’re at it. I’m going to the bathroom. Unisex. Pretty nineties, huh?”
Two vodkas and half an Adderall later, and the world is a lot smoother.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gemma Burgess spent her twenties getting lost, drunk, dumped, fired, or in a state of mild hysteria, and still managed to have some of the best times of her life. She lives in New York City with her husband and baby. You can find out more at www.gemmaburgess.com.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
BROOKLYN GIRLS. Copyright © 2013 by Gemma Burgess. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Excerpt from Love and Chaos: A Brooklyn Girls Novel copyright © 2013 by Gemma Burgess.
Cover design by Olga Grlic
Cover photograph © Tony Anderson/Getty Images
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Burgess, Gemma.
Brooklyn girls / Gemma Burgess.—First edition.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-250-00085-9 (trade pbk.)
ISBN 978-1-250-02887-7 (e-book)
1. Young women—New York (State)—New York—Fiction. 2. Female friendship—Fiction. 3. Self-realization in women—Fiction. 4. Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6102.U68B76 2013
823'.92—dc23
2013003053
eISBN 9781250028877
First Edition: July 2013
Brooklyn Girls Page 32
