Would I Lie to You

by Cecily von Ziegesar

  “I should really just go,” Nate interrupted the disturbing quasi-porno scenario Babs was describing. He didn’t want to trade her Mrs. Robinson fantasies for some skanky nurse setup. “In fact, I think I hear my ride outside.”

  “You just rest and take it easy,” Babs cooed. “Don’t you worry about work. I’ll tell Coach you need a rest. He’s wearing you down.”

  “Thanks Mrs. M.” Nate nodded gratefully as he bounded off the porch. Forgetting that he was supposed to be sick, he whooped with delight when he heard a car horn and saw Anthony’s black BMW turn recklessly into the coach’s driveway. Saved.

  “You sure you’re just playing sick?” Anthony momentarily took his eyes off the road to study Nate, who was sunk low in the cream-colored reclined leather seat, shielding his eyes from the bright sunlight with his hand.

  “No, dude, I’m fine,” Nate assured him, fiddling with the dashboard vents so that the cool blast of AC was aimed directly at his face. “Babs was just, you know, coming on kind of strong.”

  “No shit!” Anthony laughed, turning down the stereo, which was blaring the latest Reigning Sound album. “This I have to fucking hear.”

  “Nothing to hear,” Nate mumbled, grinning despite him-self. “Believe me, it’ll give you nightmares for fucking weeks.”

  Nate stared out the window at the landscape whizzing by: the fields of green grass, the rich blue sky, the weather-beaten, enormous shingled houses, all of it blurred together, a rush of images he couldn’t separate into their various parts, almost the same way that the summer had been nothing but a stream of various moments he couldn’t separate into distinct events. He sighed. There was just something incredibly depressing about realizing that the only memorable moments of the summer had been a total bust of a party in the city where he’d been abandoned by his date, and yesterday, when he’d caught Blair and Serena skinny-dipping or whatever the hell they were doing.

  “I saw Blair Waldorf and Serena van der Woodsen naked yesterday,” Nate announced suddenly, reaching for the joint he had prerolled and stashed in somebody’s leftover pack of Marlboros that morning. He rolled down the window and lit it up.

  “Threesome?” Anthony asked, nodding at Nate to hand him one of the cigarettes. “You are one lucky fucker.”

  Nate shook one loose and passed it to his left. “Nah,” he explained, though a very intriguing mental picture was starting to take shape in his head.

  Oh, really?

  “They were, like, skinny-dipping in my neighbor’s yard,” he continued, exhaling a cloud of pot smoke out the window. “It was so weird.”

  “Skinny-dipping?” repeated Anthony, deftly lighting his cigarette and making a left turn at the same time. “No shit.”

  “Blair, man, she’s just . . .” Nate trailed off as the image of Blair, naked, a little sweaty, laughing at him, clouded his vision. He just wanted to hold her again.

  “I hear you, dude,” Anthony agreed, nodding vigorously. “I mean, you’ve got, like, a thing. And it’s our last summer. It’s like . . . fucking carpe fucking diem, right?”

  “Carpe diem....”Nate pondered this. Seize the day. He took another deep drag and swallowed, closing his eyes. Carpe fucking diem. What an idea. It was downright . . . inspiring. He turned and smiled appreciatively at Anthony. He was a genius.

  Or maybe he was just high?

  “Seriously, man,” Anthony continued, holding the roach. “I’ve been telling you, haven’t I? It’s time to get serious about having a good time.”

  Nate nodded. It was time for him to get serious about having a good time. Fuck Coach Michaels and his horny wife, fuck the lawn, and fuck responsibility. He was going to seize the fucking day.

  And maybe someone else, too.

  the lost art of letter writing

  FROM: Steve N.

  TO:

  Subject: Re: Announcing Inaugural Meeting,

  Song of Myself (Manhattan)

  Date: 9 July, 16:37:07

  To whom it may concern:

  It was with great delight that I read your announcement. I desperately want to be surrounded by like-minded peers who are as passionately devoted to the power of the written word as I am.

  In the spirit of true iconoclasm, I decline to answer any of your questions. I suspect that you’re only really interested in independent spirits who aren’t willing to submit to your silly queries. Rest assured, I live by the book and I shall die by the book.

  Regards,

  Steve

  FROM: Cassady Byrd

  TO:

  Subject: Re: Announcing Inaugural Meeting,

  Song of Myself (Manhattan)

  Date: 9 July, 20:04:39

  I couldn’t believe it when I saw your posting. Right on, motherfuckers! I’m really looking forward to getting together and talking . . . maybe more!!!!

  My fave verb is “to love.” My least fav verb is “to hate.” You’re gonna hate how much you love me. Burp!

  My pic is attached. . . .

  xoxo

  CB (aka Charlotte Brontë)

  FROM: Bosie

  TO:

  Subject: Re: Announcing Inaugural Meeting,

  Song of Myself (Manhattan)

  Date: 9 July, 22:31:14

  Saw your ad. Violently intrigued.

  My favorite books:

  The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice

  Favorite movie: Party Monster starring Macaulay Culkin

  Favorite song: “Walk on the Wild Side” by Lou Reed

  Favorite word: Bite

  Least favorite word: Choke

  I bit him and choked.

  As you can see from my pic, I’m a guy who likes to dress up.

  when it comes to the hamptons, v’s a total virgin

  “Here we are!” announced Ms. Morgan as she navigated her cream-colored Mercedes into a circular pale-pink crushed-seashell driveway.

  Finally. After a grueling four hours stuck in traffic on the Long Island Expressway, they had finally arrived at the James-Morgan-Grossmans’ gray-shingled nouveau-Victorian Amagansett mansion. Vanessa stepped anxiously out of the car, feeling the foreign crunch of the seashells under her feet. The sky overhead was turning a dusky sunset pink, and the air smelled like a far-off barbecue and freshly mown grass. She felt a sudden wave of relief—maybe getting out of the city really was just what she needed.

  Ms. Morgan stepped ahead of her, pushing the heavy antiquered front door open. The boys scrambled inside, jostling Vanessa, who was smiling goofily at nothing in particular. Not that Vanessa cared about these things, or usually even noticed, but she couldn’t help but gape at, well, all of it. The double-height windows framing the front entryway. The preppy blue-and-white nautical-striped bins filled with beach supplies just inside the front door. The massive living room spilling out in front of her. The inviting turquoise pool just beyond it. It was all so unlike her—but then again, every-thing that was like her had totally sucked lately. Maybe she should embrace the easy, sunny life that was right here, right in front of her? Maybe all that dark thinking wasn’t helping anything?

  Vanessa followed the boys into the massive kitchen, where Ms. Morgan was checking the notes the maid, gardener, and pool boy had left behind. Everything was so . . . taken care of. Vanessa could just see the hot summer days ahead of her: Reading The New Yorker poolside, occasionally stopping to photograph its glistening surface in black and white. She’d trot inside and fix herself a smoked gouda sandwich from the stocked kitchen, then eat it while wandering the perimeter of the well-manicured property, enjoying the peace and quiet.

  Home, sweet home.

  “Mommmmmeeeeee, we’re hunnnnggggrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry,” Edgar whined, snapping Vanessa out of her reverie. Oh right, them.

  “Vanessa will f
ix you something.” Ms. Morgan smiled and patted his head, without bothering to glance at her.

  “Right. Sure.” Vanessa set down her black army-navy duffel bag on the polished blond-wood floor and opened the heavy stainless-steel fridge. Inside were piles of fresh produce, containers of orzo salad, and curried salmon filets garnished with yellow currants. Where were the cold leftover chicken nuggets, or at least the PB and J?

  Behind her, Edgar and Nils began a wrestling match in the middle of the floor. Vanessa usually let them do this, hoping they would tire themselves out like the puppies she’d once filmed at the Union Square dog run. She’d been hoping to catch a dogfight or see one of those rat-eating hawks the city had released swoop down to pick up a Chihuahua, but had been forced to settle for puggle playtime instead. She figured that eventually the boys would flop onto their backs like the dogs, their tongues hanging out to the side, panting.

  “Boys!” Ms. Morgan barked, and then smoothed her knife-pleated khakis. Her ivory tank top was trimmed with a thick brown satin sash. Looking at her weirdly taut face and defined cheekbones, it was hard to tell if she was thirty-two or fifty-five. “You can head upstairs to get ready for dinner.”

  She turned back to Vanessa, the wooden heels of her huarache sandal wedges clacking on the floor. “Vanessa, we’ll be having the salmon filets, and if you could just throw together a little fresh salad, maybe a dill-yogurt sauce for the fish? That would be lovely.”

  Wait. Throw together? What did Vanessa look like, the . . . the ...

  Help? Oh. Right. Except she’d never cooked anything but boiled ziti with jarred Ragu in her life.

  “You got it,” Vanessa told her as she started searching for dill in the produce drawer. Upstairs she could hear the boys making explosion noises and then screaming. She turned around to hold up a pile of leafy herbs—was this dill? cilantro? crab-fucking-grass?—when she was met with a frightening sight.

  Ms. Morgan’s pale, skinny, dimpled ass. Oh. My. God. Vanessa quickly swiveled around again. Even with the refrigerated air hitting her in the face, she could feel her cheeks burning. Loudly clearing her throat—had Ms. Morgan just forgotten she was there or what?—she turned back, holding the herbs directly in front of her face.

  She peeked out from behind the greens only to see her employer, arms akimbo, standing in only her wooden huarache sandals, a sheer applered thong, and a lacy black bra.

  “Something wrong?” she asked.

  “Um, no, of course not.” Vanessa began a sudden, uncharacteristic cuticle examination. Her hands sure were rough! But she couldn’t help sneaking a sidelong glance as Ms. Morgan, liberated woman of the twenty-first century, tugged off her bra and let it fall, oh-so-casually, onto the arm of a kitchen chair.

  Vanessa willed herself to look her boss in the face. “Um, could you excuse me for a second? I’d like to put my things in my room.” She had to get out of there.

  “Top of the third staircase.” Ms. Morgan started rooting around in her monogrammed canvas boat bag, presumably for something to wear.

  Let’s hope so!

  Vanessa threw her army-navy-store duffel over her shoulder and took the wide wooden staircase two steps at a time. She tried to shake the image of Ms. Morgan’s thong from her mind. Who even wore thongs, besides overeager thirteen-year-olds who liked them peeking out above their low-rise jeans?

  Tres passé.

  And whatever happened to boundaries? It was as if Vanessa were the family cat, not an actual human being. She needed to be back in the real world, among people who respected her and didn’t just act like she was a piece of furniture. She’d been in the picture-perfect Hamptons for no more than fifteen minutes, and she was already ready to leave.

  Arriving at the third set of stairs, Vanessa climbed toward her attic suite. At least she’d have some privacy and maybe even a little luxury up here, right? She reached the top step, and glanced around, looking for a door she could shut. But no, the stairs went straight into the attic-room, where the pitched ceiling was so low, she had to duck to step inside. What.The. Fuck.

  Taking heaving, pseudocalming breaths, she walked straight down the middle of the hot, stuffy room—the only possible route she could take without ducking. She dropped her bag on the floor and tried to push the one small window open. Stuck. More than stuck. Painted shut. Shit, shit, shit.

  Vanessa stripped off her suddenly sweaty faded black T-shirt and unzipped her duffel. She pushed aside her hair trimmers and the yellow-and-black bumble-bee-striped one-piece bathing suit that she’d swiped from Jenny’s underwear drawer, looking for her black ribbed cotton tank top.

  “Great, you found it.”

  She turned to see Ms. Morgan, now thankfully wearing a white sundress, standing at the top of the attic stairs. Good, she was dressed.Vanessa, unfortunately, was not.

  This wasn’t quite the hot summer she’d had in mind.

  Air Mail - Par Avion - July 10

  Hey Dan!

  How’s everything going in the city? I loooooove Prague. I’ve been spending my afternoons at little outdoor cafés, pretending to sketch but really checking out all the European boys—I mean sights! (There’s no harm in looking, right?) So really the only thing I miss is you and Dad. Please write back. Don’t worry, you don’t have to send a novel, just a few lines. Knowing you, you’ll probably send a haiku.

  Love you!

  Jenny

  reading is fundamental

  Taking the rickety Strand steps two at a time, Dan made it from the main floor to the basement-level employee lounge in about thirty seconds, by far a personal best. He’d been pretty down ever since last night, when he’d come home from reading the salon member e-mails with Greg to find a yellow Post-it note on the refrigerator addressed to both him and Rufus. It was written in Vanessa’s weirdly boyish handwriting: Off to the Hamptons for work. Will e-mail with details. Left half a turkey sandwich in fridge. –V Dan had opened up the fridge to find the sandwich with another Post-it stuck to it. It said simply: Eat me. He couldn’t believe she was just . . . gone.

  He’d thrown himself into work all day, trying to keep his mind off of her, which had suddenly completely paid off while he was shelving outdated biographies. The empty feeling inside of him had instantly filled with excitement. And he had to share.

  Dan shoved the door marked PRIVATE open with his shoulder, crying out at the top of his lungs, “Greg? You in here?”

  Of course it was totally unnecessary to shout, since the room was about the size of an elevator. Greg was inside, digging in his cruddy locker.

  “What’s up?” Greg looked a little startled but smiled broadly, pushing his tortoiseshell frames back up his long, slender nose. He slammed the vomit-green locker door shut. “What’s going on? I’m just knocking off for the day.”

  “You’re never going to believe what I found.” Dan bran-dished a tiny, tattered chocolate brown hardback. “The second I saw it, I grabbed it off the shelf and ran down here.” Technically, employees weren’t supposed to leave the floor when they were on a shift—there wasn’t even an only-in-an-emergency clause—but Dan had always lived by the rule that rules were made to be broken.

  “What is it?” Greg asked excitedly, stepping over the low, wooden bench that was screwed to the floor.

  “Ta-da!” Dan waved the book in the air above his head. “Just guess, first.Take a guess, please.”

  “I can’t!” Greg reached out playfully and tried to grab the book from him.

  “No you don’t.” Dan tucked the volume behind his back.

  Greg reached around him, still trying for the book. “Let me see, come on.”

  Dan brought the book in front of him, holding it faceup on his palms. “I hold in my hand an out-of-print masterpiece . . . by one of the most important midcentury American novelists . . . published by a seminal San Francisco publishing house ...in 1952....”

  “Shut.” Greg sat down on the bench, as though he might faint. “Up.”

  “I’m ser
ious,” Dan confirmed. “The Poet’s Wake! By Sherman fucking Anderson fucking Hartman.”

  “That’s, like, the Holy Grail or something,” Greg muttered in awe. “Can I see it?” he asked, his voice wavering.

  “Just be careful. Some of the pages are pretty moth-eaten, which is really tragic, but I guess we can’t complain, I mean, given how hard it is to find a copy of this anywhere. I’ve heard stories about people unearthing them in old used bookshops in Midwest college towns, but right here in New York City? What are the odds?”

  Greg placed his hands over Dan’s, enveloping both Dan’s fingers and the book within his grasp.

  Hey, grabby.

  “I’ve got a better idea actually, Dan,” Greg whispered seriously, knitting together his fine, blond eyebrows. “Why don’t you read me a passage?”

  Dan shrugged. He did have a pretty good reading voice. He glanced at his watch. He was supposed to be upstairs, shelving books, but no one ever came into the employee lounge—he could afford to spend a few minutes. Besides, some things were just more important than work.

  Clearing his throat, Dan flipped through the book to a random point and then began reading:

  “Emily arrived some time after midnight. She’d taken the train. She looked the way he had always pictured her, in his late-night fever dreams, when he’d thrown down his pen and pushed his paper off of his desk, unable to write, unable to concentrate, unable to think about anything other than her graceful neck, the curve of her hip. She looked like the very idea of a woman, and wasn’t that better, he wondered, than the reality of the situation? Weren’t ideas, when all is said and done, so superior to reality?”

  Dan stood in silence, still cradling the tattered volume reverentially, and Greg just sat there, staring up at Dan the way you’d stare up at a complicated stained-glass window, or at someone undressing in front of an apartment window, high above.

  “It’s a crime,” Dan muttered darkly. “How could this be out of print?”