Upper East Side #3

by Ashley Valentine

  They looked at each other in wide-eyed horror.

  “Six months,” Porsha repeated, taking another big gulp.

  “That’s way too long,” Kaliq said, finishing her thought.

  Porsha almost ventured a smile. That was another thing she loved about Kaliq: He always knew exactly what she was thinking.

  “It’s crazy,” he went on, encouraged by her hint of a smile. “Next year at this time, we’re going to be hanging out with some new bunch of friends we met at college. People we don’t even know exist yet.”

  Porsha bit her cocktail straw, watching Chanel bump butts with two men in their twenties wearing matching navy blue sailor suits, who looked like twins.

  “I can’t wait,” she declared. “Once I get to Yale, I’m never coming back.”

  Kaliq smiled. He loved how Porsha always just assumed she was going to Yale. “I’ll have to come and visit you, then.”

  The vodka was going straight to Porsha’s head. She could see that Kaliq was trying to talk to her like nothing had happened, like he hadn’t dumped her for a preschooler and spent the last month avoiding her entirely. It was kind of irritating, but it was also kind of wonderful. She took a deep breath and finished her drink. She’d forgotten how green his eyes were.

  Jaylen suddenly walked up to them and slapped his palm. “Hey, welcome back. I saw your ass on that website. Nice work!”

  Nice timing.

  “Thanks, man,” Kaliq responded, trying to be cool. “See you later,” he added, clueing Jaylen into the fact that he didn’t want to discuss it.

  Jaylen took off and Porsha put another cigarette into her mouth. “What’d he mean, nice work on what?”

  Kaliq flicked open his Zippo and lit the cigarette for her. If Porsha hadn’t heard about him and Brianna on that video everyone kept talking about, he definitely wanted it to stay that way. “Nothing,” he answered.

  Porsha couldn't help noticing a piece of lint stuck in Kaliq's defined waves and she brushed it away for him, letting herself smile up at him as he smiled back. It almost felt like old times.

  Almost.

  32

  A little after ten, Porsha’s long lost stepbrother, Tahj, stepped off the elevator and into the loft in a cloud of herbal cigarette smoke, wearing one of his many black LEGALIZE HEMP T-shirts and looking surprisingly sad for having just spent a week in St. Barts.

  Right away, his eyes cut across the heaving crowd of drinkers and smokers and sweaty dancers and homed in on Porsha and Kaliq talking beside the bar, their eyes never straying from each other’s faces. Tahj’s heart slammed against the walls of his chest. Porsha looked like a completely different person from the Porsha in St. Barts. She was glowing. He wanted to go up to her and apologize and try to explain his idiotic behavior in the villa, but then he thought better of it. This was a party, and they were all supposed to be having fun. He would just have to wait until tomorrow, if Porsha wasn’t too hungover.

  Out on the dance floor, Chanel spied Tahj’s wild little dreadlocks and danced over to him, pink-streaked hair bouncing and silver painted toes gleaming. She threw her arms around his neck and pressed her cheek against his ear. “I’m so glad you came!” she said, sounding like she really meant it.

  “Me too.” Tahj grinned, thinking that maybe he meant it, too.

  “Where’s Miles? Didn’t he come with you?”

  Tahj shook his head. “He’s still in St. Barts. He kind of met someone there.”

  Chanel giggled. “Oh, did he?”

  Tahj put his hands in his pants pockets and glanced across the room at Porsha and Kaliq again. Chanel followed his gaze. Why was Tahj always staring at Porsha with that sad look on his face?

  “It’s so great to see them together again, isn’t it?” she gushed breathlessly, hoping that he would agree.

  Tahj forced himself to nod. Porsha wasn’t his to have, and she did look happy. “Yeah,” he said finally. “It is.”

  Chanel slipped her arm through his, leading him toward the dance floor. “Come on,” she cried, “let’s dance!” She smelled like sandalwood and patchouli, and in her bare feet she was exactly the same height as Tahj was.

  Wow, he realized as Chanel raised her lithe arms over her head and did a little spin, her pink-streaked hair flying out in all directions. She really is beautiful.

  Like everyone else in the entire world hadn’t already noticed.

  Tahj might have looked a little sad when he arrived, but somebody was about to have a very happy New Year’s Eve.

  33

  Yasmine wasn’t big on the idea of kissing a lot of drunk people she didn’t like very much and shouting, “Happy New Year!” It was kind of her nightmare. So instead of going to Chanel’s party she’d packed up her camera equipment, put on lots of layers, and taken the subway to Central Park.

  Everyone who “belonged” would be at Chanel’s party, so why not see what the people who didn’t belong were doing? It was only nineteen degrees outside, and the temperature was dropping. You couldn’t get any more misfit than the people who were about to participate in the annual midnight run around the frozen park. It was the perfect finale for her New York film essay.

  She began to film people as they turned up for the race at the entrance to the park near the reservoir on East 89th Street. It had begun to snow, so it was kind of a challenge to keep the lens clear and the lighting right, but the park looked incredibly pristine and beautiful with its thin coating of new snow, and the runners were all such total wackjobs. This was going to be even better than the doll’s head in the garbage truck.

  “Is the run something you do every year, or is this your first time?” Yasmine asked an emaciated man dressed only in denim cutoffs and basketball shoes with no socks. She zoomed in on his skinny caved-in chest, checking for goose bumps, but scarily enough, she didn’t see any.

  “First time?” the man exclaimed, pulling his stringy gray hair back into a ponytail and grinning at her with tobacco-stained teeth. “Do I look like a virgin to you?”

  Gross.

  Yasmine was glad her face was hidden by the camera. “All right,” she said, backing away. “Good luck to you.” She backed right into a woman who must have been in her seventies wearing a mink coat, sneakers, and mink earmuffs, leading a white poodle that was also wearing a mink coat. “Hey, who’s this?” Yasmine crooned, squatting down to pet the dog.

  “We love to run in the snow.” The woman smiled gaily, her crinkly lips coated heavily with orangey pink lipstick. Her white hair was done up in a French twist, and her cheeks were thick with creamy orange rouge. “My children are all grown and my husband’s off gambling in Nice, so Angel and I came here to amuse ourselves.”

  “Me too,” Yasmine said, even though she obviously didn’t have children or a husband or even a dog. She smiled conspiratorially at the woman. “It’s a kick, isn’t it?”

  The woman was pulling something out of her green Hermès bag, and Yasmine zoomed in so she could see: Little red rubber booties. “So he doesn’t get snowballs in his paws,” the woman explained, bending down to Velcro them on to the poodle’s feet.

  “And they’re so stylish, too,” Yasmine replied. Now she knew what people meant when they said, “Only in New York.” Only in New York would you find a woman and her poodle in matching mink coats running in a midnight race with that weirdo in the cutoffs. And now she had a title for her film essay, too: Only in New York. It was brilliant, even if she did say so herself.

  Boots on, Angel trotted around in a circle, showing them off. “Good boy!” Yasmine called, following him closely with the camera. She was so enchanted by her subject she didn’t even notice her hero, Ken Mogul, wander up and sit down on a nearby park bench to watch.

  * * *

  Mekhi had been looking for Yasmine for hours. First he’d gone to her apartment, which would have been the most obvious place to find her, but after buzzing the downstairs buzzer fourteen times and yelling up at the windows, he’d finally given up. Then
he’d wandered over to the Five and Dime, the Williamsburg dive where Ruby’s band, SugarDaddy, played. Ruby had been busy rehearsing with her band, but she’d told him Yasmine had mentioned something about filming crazy people in some park at midnight.

  How helpful. As if every park in the entire city wasn’t full of crazy people.

  First Mekhi looked in Madison Square Park. But except for a few people walking their dogs and a man sleeping on a bench with a paper bag over his head, the park was quiet. Then he tried Washington Square Park, which was full of hipster skateboarders and NYU students lighting illegal firecrackers. Finally he walked uptown again to Central Park, wandering aimlessly through it and cursing Yasmine for not believing in cell phones.

  He circled the reservoir, watching the mini ice floes float around and bump into one another and wondering where the ducks had all gone. Then he noticed a crowd gathered below him near the 89th Street entrance to the park. And working her way through the crowd, chatting with people as she squinted at them through her video camera, was a girl in a black overcoat, a black cap, and black combat boots.

  Mekhi walked down the wide stone steps that led up to the reservoir and sat down on a park bench next to an older black man in his thirties, who was wearing an expensive looking jacket with a fur-trimmed hood. The guy was sitting on his bare hands and appeared to be watching Yasmine intently.

  “See how she gets up behind people before she goes up and talks to them?” the guy asked Mekhi, pointing at Yasmine. “It’s like she’s getting to know the part they don’t even know about themselves yet.”

  Mekhi nodded. Who the hell was this guy, anyway?

  “And I love the way she just melts into the background sometimes, keeping so still, just letting people do their thing. She’s beautiful.”

  Mekhi turned and glared at the guy. He wanted to punch him.

  The guy held out his hand. “Hey, I’m Ken Mogul, filmmaker,” he said. “Are you in the film business?”

  Mekhi shook his hand briefly. “No,” he said. His breath floated skyward in cold white puffs. “I’m a poet.”

  They both watched as Yasmine squatted down to let a poodle wearing a mink coat sniff her camera lens. Mekhi leaned forward. She was so graceful behind the camera and so at ease with what she was doing, it was hard to believe she would ever misuse her material. Maybe Bree had been right not to blame her, he decided. Maybe she’d had nothing to do with posting that video. Somehow her work had just made it into the wrong hands.

  “Ever had anything published?” Ken Mogul asked him.

  “Not yet.” Mekhi smiled to himself. “But I’ve got a poem coming out in The New Yorker next month,” he added with pride.

  34

  It was almost eleven when Bree turned up at Chanel’s party. Her overly friendly cabdriver had gotten stuck in traffic in Times Square—which everyone knows is the one place to avoid on New Year’s Eve because it’s crammed with drunken tourists and it’s a complete nightmare. So Bree got out and walked. She felt sort of mature and cool, out on her own at night, on her way to a party where she would finally see her boyfriend again, the love of her life.

  When she stepped off the elevator and into the loft, Bree unbuttoned her coat and handed it to the coat-check girl. Her stupendous boobs ballooned out of her black and gold V-neck top and into the room.

  Hello, hello!

  Several male party guests instantly recognized the petite, curly haired girl from that leaked video that had been such a hot item over break. They stopped what they were doing and began to applaud.

  “Hey, come over here and show me your thong!” a random guy wearing an old-fashioned black top hat shouted drunkenly.

  “Want to get inside my coat?” shouted another.

  Bree stood frozen in the doorway, clutching her purse, and feeling very much like Clara in the Nutcracker when she’s surrounded by the gang of evil mice. Her eyes searched the room looking desperately for Kaliq. Where, oh, where was her Nutcracker Prince?

  Across the room, standing next to the bar, a boy with wavy hair and a girl with a thick ponytail were talking to each other with their faces so close together, they might as well have been kissing. They were looking at each other in exactly the way Bree always wanted to be looked at, like they’d forgotten they were at a party full of people, too distracted by love. The boys were still clapping and hooting at Bree when the wavy-haired boy and the ponytailed girl turned their heads to look.

  Hello, hello again!

  And in that instant, Bree knew. Kaliq had never been in love with her, because he’d never stopped being in love with Porsha. And because he had lied and pretended he loved her, he wasn’t even a good boyfriend, like Yasmine and Mekhi had said he was. Kaliq was no Nutcracker Prince. He was just another rotten mouse.

  “Kaliq,” Bree gasped, her voice catching in her throat. She wobbled up to where he and Porsha were standing by the bar, yanked the turquoise pendant from her neck, and threw it at him as hard as she could.

  “Brianna, I’m sorry—” Kaliq started to sputter, but his eyes didn’t look very sorry and Bree wasn’t interested. Porsha was glaring at her, but that didn’t bother her, either.

  “Fuck you,” she whispered as hot tears began to roll down her cheeks. Then she turned away to find the bathroom so she could splash cold water on her face and leave the party with some dignity.

  Kaliq bent down and stuffed the star shaped pendant into his pocket. He looked tired and clumsy. Porsha put another cigarette between her lips and struck a match against the flint, trying to light it. She kept striking it without any luck and finally let the match drop with an exasperated sigh.

  Kaliq opened his Zippo and held it out to her, but Porsha ignored him. “What’s wrong?” he asked, although he was pretty sure he knew.

  Porsha narrowed her eyes at him, the unlit cigarette still hanging from her mouth. He wasn’t her leading man. He was a has-been. And there were so many promising young stars out there—what did she need him for?

  “You’re another reason I can’t wait to go to college.”

  “I just want to light your cigarette,” Kaliq responded lamely.

  “Okay.” He lit the cigarette and Porsha inhaled deeply. Then she blew a stream of smoke directly into his face. “But now you can get away from me.”

  Kaliq frowned and closed the Zippo, extinguishing the flame. Porsha was always overreacting. Around them people began to chant, “Ten! Night! Eight!”

  “Porsha?” Kaliq took a step forward. All they had to do was kiss and make up and everything would go back to normal again. Just like old times.

  But Porsha was already gone, dropping her burning cigarette at Kaliq’s feet, her ponytail swishing between her shoulder blades as she headed for the sliding glass doors leading out to the deck. It was almost midnight, and she had better things to do than kiss another loser.

  35

  Chanel had been dancing so hard, she felt like she’d been running a marathon. Her mouth was dry, her legs ached, and her arms hung loosely at her sides. Someone had spilled their drink in her hair, but she didn’t even care. There was a very cute butt grooving very close to her own butt, and that butt was dressed in green army pants and belonged to a very sexy guy with short dreadlocks.

  “Seven! Six! Five!”

  Tahj grabbed Chanel’s hand. “Let’s go outside!” he yelled, pulling her across the room toward the sliding glass doors.

  “Chanel!” a voice called, stopping them in their tracks.

  Chanel turned around, her eyes wide with disbelief. It was Flow, stepping off the elevator wearing a tan suede coat and carrying a guitar case. There were circles under his eyes and his curly black hair was a little flat on one side from the long plane ride from LA, but he was still gorgeous. The girls at the party all stopped and stared, and so did most of the guys.

  “Hi.” Chanel flashed him an awkward smile.

  Flow breathed her in like a breath of fresh air. In her string bikini top, short shorts, and bare feet,
she looked like the goddess of his wildest dreams. He knelt down and unsnapped his guitar case. “I wrote a song for you on the way out here.”

  Chanel dropped Tahj’s hand and folded her arms across her chest. She didn’t want to be rude, but at what point was Flow going to just give it up and go home?

  Beside her Tahj slouched with his hands in his pockets. He didn’t mind hearing what Flow had to play. Neither did anyone else in the room.

  “It’s called ‘My Kandy Girl,’” Flow murmured quietly. He slung his guitar strap over his shoulder, strummed a few chords, and then squeezed his eyes shut as he began to sing.

  You stole my heart, now I’m paying the fine

  You cleaned me out, left me high and dry

  My love is like chocolate; it melts in your hand

  If only you’d taste it, then you’d understand

  It was probably the worst song ever written, but the party guests still swarmed around Flow, mesmerized by the music and his hunky good looks. The girls were all hoping he’d notice them and improvise a song for them on the spot, and the guys were all thinking that if they hung out with Flow, they were sure to get lucky tonight.

  Chanel was tempted to toss a dollar into Flow’s guitar case, but she was probably already breaking his heart—she didn’t have to insult him on top of it.

  “Come on,” she whispered to Tahj, backing into the crowd and tugging on his hand. “Let’s go outside.

  * * *

  Porsha wasn’t surprised when Jaylen found her standing out on the deck, furiously eating olives, smoking cigarettes and freezing her ass off. It was just before midnight, and knowing Jaylen, he was looking for someone to give him a blowjob while the fireworks went off.

  “Happy New Year, Porsh.” Jaylen walked right up and kissed her on the lips. There was an olive pit in her mouth, but he didn’t seem to mind.