I Like It Like That (11 page)

Leo dried the last bowl and set it on the dish rack to dry. “I have to go.”

Jenny put down the brownie she'd been munching on. They'd baked twenty, and there were only twelve left. She licked the crumbs off her fingers and gazed up at Leo with her long-lashed brown eyes. She was tired of guessing. She wanted to know the truth. “Where?”

Leo leaned against the cracked yellow linoleum kitchen counter and fiddled with the buttons on the dishwasher. Marx, the Humphreys' fat black cat, was splayed out on the grubby kitchen floor, asleep. Leo cleared his throat, and Marx flapped his tail up and down in annoyance.

“I have errands to do,” he told her vaguely.

“Well, can I come?”

He kicked his feet around and blew out of the side of his mouth. “It's really not very interesting.”

Jenny wasn't convinced. “You're not, like, hiding something from me, are you?”

He laughed. “Like what? I'm really Spider-Man?”

Jenny's face turned red. She walked over to the fridge, opened the door, then let it slam shut again. “I don't know.

I just think it's weird, the way you're always busy doing stuff and you never talk about it.”

Leo put his hands in his pockets. His light blond hair looked transparent under the glare of the harsh kitchen light. “If you really want to come, you can come.”

Jenny tried to keep her face calm. This was it. She was going to find out all the secrets that lay behind Leo, mystery boy and megazillionaire. “Okay.”

They took the Ninety-sixth Street bus across town and then walked down Park toward the building on Seventieth Street. The avenue felt deserted in the dark, with everyone away on vacation.

“It's just a couple more blocks,” Leo told her. Jenny's whole body tingled with anticipation.

When they reached the building with the green awning, the door man tipped his hat to Leo. Then they rode the elevator straight up to the penthouse.

“Whoa,” Jenny gasped, when the elevator doors opened up onto the parlor. The room was done in black and white and gold. A round gilt table stood in the middle of the black-and-white marble floor, with a giant white vase in the shape of a swan on it, filled with black roses. To the left was a sort of gold-painted railing and stairs down to a room so big, it could only be a ballroom.

“I know. It's kind of insane,” Leo agreed. “Here, Daphne!” he called

Immediately Jenny heard the scratch of nails on the floor. The giant white mastiff she'd seen Leo walking before trotted into the parlor, wagging her tail elegantly. She went over and licked Leo's hand. “Good girl.”

Jenny watched in dumb amazement as Leo opened the coat closet door and retrieved Daphne's Burberry coat and matching collar. The dog waited carefully while he buckled them on. Then he knelt and Velcroed those horrible pink leather booties over her paws. “There. We're all set to go.”

Jenny still couldn't figure out why Leo's parents didn't just get one of their maids to walk the dog, but she wasn't about to say anything, especially not when Leo obviously loved Daphne so much.

“We'll just take her for a little spin around the neighborhood. I have to pick up some hairspray for Madame at the drugstore. Maybe you could hold her while I go in?”

“Okay.” Jenny kept her eyes on Daphne's boots. He called his mom Madame?

They stopped in front of Zitomer on Madison. Jenny took the plaid canvas leash while Leo went in to get the hairspray. She bent down, and Daphne offered her a pink-booted paw. “I bet he lets you sleep in his bed,” she said. “I bet you're allowed on all the furniture.”

Leo came out of the store carrying a huge shopping bag full of lots of bottles of the same kind of Redken hairspray. He chuckled. “Madame uses this stuff a lot.” He took Daphne's leash, and they walked briskly back to the building with the green awning. “I still have to feed her and water the plants and stuff. It's really not very exciting. Do you want to get a cab home, or can we walk you to your bus stop?”

Jenny didn't know what to say. It was almost as though he didn't want her in his house. “I guess I'll just take a cab,” she answered stiffly.

“Okay. Walter will help,” Leo said, nodding at the doorman. He kissed Jenny's cheek. “Don't eat any more brownies today or you'll get sick. I'll call you later, okay?”

Jenny smiled grimly at him and walked over to the curb to catch a cab. It was a while before Walter could snag one, and as soon as he closed the door behind her and she gave the driver her address, Jenny collapsed in the backseat, sobbing.

The cab got stuck waiting for the light at the corner next to Leo's building, and she glared at it miserably through her tears. Just as the light changed and the driver turned the corner, Leo walked out of the building and headed uptown.

“Wait,” Jenny ordered the driver. “I changed my mind. I'm getting out.” She paid him quickly and leaped out, hurrying up Park Avenue after Leo.

He kept walking uptown until he reached Eighty-first Street. Then he turned right, crossing Park and then Lexington. She jumped behind a pile of garbage bags as Leo turned in at a three-story brownstone and walked down two steps to the below-ground entrance. He got out his keys and unlocked a black metal gate. When he pushed it open Jenny could see two metal garbage cans with a racing bicycle leaning against them. Then he closed the gate and disappeared inside.

She remained crouched behind the garbage for half an hour, half expecting him to come out again with another dog in tow. But he stayed inside, and she thought she could see a TV flickering behind the thick gray curtains in the windows. Finally, she gave up and went home.

Just when you think you know someone, you find you don't know them at all.

On his second day of work, Dan didn't even try to find the post office. Instead, he stood on the end of the pier and one by one dropped the six letters from Sig Castle's out box into the Hudson River. One of the letters was addressed to Mystery Craze, care of Rusty Klein, which gave Dan a smug sense of satisfaction. For all he knew, Mystery was so friggin' internationally famous, she might even get the letter, washed up on a beach in Sardinia, where she would be giving a reading to a bunch of drunken fishermen.

He stared into the brown, swirling water, thinking about all the girls he'd ever had anything to do with. Serena and Vanessa and Mystery and Elise. Not all of them had gone so well, especially that last little episode with Elise. But next year he'd be off to Brown or U. Mass or whatever college would take him, and he'd have four very different experiences with four bizarrely different girls to carry with him always. Wasn't that what being a writer was all about—having experiences and translating them into meaning with words? Something like that, anyway. He was a published writer. He knew what he wanted to do with his life. That was a hell of a lot more than most people his age could say. So what kept him feeling so … unhinged? It was like he was constantly looking for something, just looking and looking.

Sig Castle had asked him to buy some kind of special rice paper in a store down in Chinatown once he was finished with the mail, so after finishing his fifth Camel, Dan walked over to West Fourth Street and took the subway downtown.

It was raining lightly and the street vendors on Canal were hawking fake Burberry umbrellas and those disposable plastic rain ponchos only desperate tourists wore in sudden downpours. Dan meandered down the wide, crowded street, taking his time. The air smelled of wet newspaper and fish from the Chinatown fish markets. It made him think of Vanessa. She was quintessentially perverse, a lover of bad smells and ugliness. It was what he most loved about her.

Liked, Dan reminded himself. How could you claim to love something about a person you weren't even talking to anymore?

He stopped and watched a vendor demonstrate a battery-operated pink plastic toy shaped like a UFO with three little Japanese girls sitting on top of it, spinning and revolving to a Japanese pop song that sounded sort of like SugarDaddy—Vanessa's sister's band—on speed. The toy was just the sort of device Vanessa would use to open one of her films. She'd zoom in on the toy and then cut to a girl dancing by herself in a club. Vanessa created meaning with images the same way Dan did with words.

He walked down Broadway to Pearl River Mart, a huge store that carried just about everything, from plastic Buddhas to rubber boots. He found the nearest thing to Siegfried Castle's favorite ultrathin, ultrasoft, impossible-to-get-a-paper-cut-from rice paper and then headed back over to Canal to the vendor with the pink UFO.

“I'd like to buy that, please.”

“I have a new one here,” the guy said, ducking down to pull a mint green UFO toy out from under the table the pink one was spinning on.

“No. That one,” Dan insisted, pointing at the pink toy. Pink was such an un-Vanessa color, she'd have to see the humor in it, and at least he knew it worked.

“Two dollars,” the man said, even though the cardboard sign taped to the side of the table said, “$3!!” “It's on sale.”

Dan handed over some of Sig Castle's change from the rice paper. His boss was such an asshole, he got a certain satisfaction from fucking him over every chance he got.

“Have a good day.” The guy handed him a bright blue plastic bag with the pink toy in it. Dan was pretty sure there was a post office over on Bowery Street only a few blocks away. He could mail the package to Vanessa from there before taking the subway back up to work.

Funny, he'd never thought to mail the Red Letter mail from there!

Sig Castle had made it sound crucial that he get his rice paper before lunch, but it was even more crucial that Vanessa get her UFO, Dan decided. It was imperative.

“Send it next-day,” he told the postal worker behind the counter after he'd bought a box and taped it up. “It's important.”

gossipgirl.net

Disclaimer: All the real names of places, people, and events have been altered or abbreviated to protect the innocent. Namely, me.

hey people!

Those people we meet on vacation

Face it, you wouldn't be caught dead with them at home. Their shoes are bad, their jeans are sad, their hair needs help, and they say “wow” a lot, but you eat breakfast with them every day and invite them out with you at night. Don't feel guilty if the above scenario sounds weirdly familiar. Even I've been guilty of palling around with someone for the duration of my vacation and then ditching them the minute I return home. It's got something to do with the herd instinct, although I'm not sure what. Maybe I'll learn about it next year in Psych 101.

What about those two?

My sources say this is definitely not the first encounter between the infamous Greenwich heiress and our favorite perfume model. The two were fast friends at Hanover their junior year but had a fight over a boy in France the summer before they were both kicked out. I'm pretty sure there's more, but instead of making up a lot of hooey, I'd rather wait for the skeletons to come tumbling out of the closet, and I'm sure they will.

Sightings, lots of 'em

V walking from Manhattan to Williamsburg, picking up trash with her parents and looking miserable. D taking out a recycling bag filled with hundreds of little bottles of unopened San Pellegrino water outside a building on Eleventh Street. B taking off her skis in the middle of a run in Sun Valley, just to see if a certain boy would hike all the way back up the run to help her put them back on. S and G in the bathroom at the bottom of the mountain in Sun Valley, with the entire Dutch Olympic snowboarding team. Playing kissing games? C and N on the lift up to Sun Valley's half-pipe. Also playing kissing games? S and the Dutch Olympic snowboarding team posing for a ChapStick ad at the top of the mountain.

She's not the only one keeping busy on her vacation! Enjoy it while it lasts.

You know you love me.

gossip girl

“Okay, I'm ready,” Serena said after smearing a little moisturizer on her face and running a brush through her still-damp hair once or twice.

Of course she looked beautiful—she couldn't help it—but she could have given the locals a real treat and at least worn a little lip gloss.

“Well, I'm not.” Blair leaned over the bathroom sink to apply some mascara. A white towel was wrapped around her head and her freshly polished nails were barely dry. “Aren't you even going to blow-dry your hair?”

“Nope.” Serena looked at her watch. Erik was waiting for them in the lobby, and she'd barely gotten a chance to talk to him alone since they'd arrived. “I'll meet you downstairs, okay?”

“Fine,” Blair answered distractedly. She didn't know why Serena had to be in such a hurry. This was their first Sun Valley party, and she for one wanted to look good. Erik had been so attentive and was always so completely adorable that tonight might just be the night she said, Yes, oh yes! “What's the rush, anyway?”

Serena blew out her breath. “What's the point of making an effort? It's not like I'm going to be flirting with somebody's brother all night!”

Blair screwed the top back on her mascara and glared at her friend's reflection in the bathroom mirror. “So you're mad at me because of Erik?” She dug around in her cosmetics bag for her bronzing powder.

Serena kicked the door frame with her fuzzy sheepskin boot. “I'm not mad. I'm just …”

Jealous?

She sighed noisily and turned around to yank her powder blue parka from the hook by the door. “I'll see you downstairs,” she mumbled, as she hurled herself out the door.

“Don't worry,” Blair called after her. “I'm moving back home when we get back!”

“Aren't you cold?” Nate took off his well-worn, navy blue Brown sweatshirt and offered it to Georgie. He slept in the sweatshirt for luck sometimes. As if the Brown admissions office was going to overlook the fact that he'd been busted by the cops for buying weed just because he liked to sleep in their sweatshirt.

Georgie was walking around in her orange sorbet La Perla panty-and-bra set while Chuck Bass, Josef, Sven, Ulrich, and Gan played mah-jongg on Xbox. Maybe they are all gay, Nate thought hopefully. Even so, he didn't like it when Georgie walked around in her underwear. She was too … too … naked, and her nakedness was supposed to be reserved for herself and him, After all, she was his girlfriend. Well … wasn't she?

“Why don't we go upstairs?” he whispered suggestively in her ear. He'd imagined that he and Georgie would spend the majority of their time in Sun Valley in bed having lots of sex. But he'd never even taken his pants off in her presence. Not once. And it wasn't that Georgie was actually a serious prude under all that flaunting and nakedness. She was just too busy being crazy and guzzling mood enhancers to lie still for a second and let him kiss her.

“What's upstairs?” Georgie asked, lighting a cigarette. Her long silky brown hair was pulled over one pale shoulder and her long pale legs were crossed, twice.

Only seriously skinny girls can do that.

Nate shrugged. “I just thought we could … you know … hang out.”

Any normal girl would have looked into his emerald green eyes and gone all prickly and faint at such an invitation. But Georgie was too screwed up even to notice how cute and irresistible he was.

In other words, she was an idiot.

She cocked a suspicious eyebrow at Nate. “You didn't smuggle in weed without telling me, did you?” she asked hopefully.

“Nah.” He reached out and touched her hair, smoothing it over her bony shoulder. “I just thought we could use the privacy,” he said, his cheeks turning adorably pink at the suggestion in his voice.

Georgie swung her legs over the arm of the wooden chair she was sitting on. It had been carved by Shoshone Indians out of birch trees and then painted orange.

Butt-ugly, but probably worth a fortune.

There was a honk outside. Georgie swung her feet to the floor and swiped Nate's sweatshirt out of his hand. “Guess I should put something on,” she mumbled, yanking the thing over her head as she headed for the front door. Her white butt cheeks peeked out from under the navy blue sweatshirt, somehow making her look even more naked than before.

“Thank God you're here,” she told the bemused delivery guy. She pulled a bottle of Stoli out of the crate on his dolly and cracked it open. Then she grabbed the remote control for the ten-disc CD player and clicked it on. An old Blondie song came on—”The Tide Is High.” “You can set up the coolers out by the hot tub.” Georgie pointed at Nate with the bottle of Stoli. “He'll show you where it is.”

Down in the lobby of the Sun Valley Lodge, Erik was talking to a bunch of ski patrol guys about the day's big rescue. Some dude had been showing his girlfriend how to ski backward and had skied right into a tree. A branch had impaled him right in the ass.

“It was pretty gnarly,” Serena heard one of the ski patrol guys say.

“What was?” she asked, climbing into Erik's lap. He draped his long arms around her, and she burrowed her cheek into his chest, hungry for attention. “Mmm. You smell nice and clean.”

The ski patrol dudes sipped their beers and looked on enviously. If only they each had their own model-gorgeous blond sister to snuggle with.

“Hey, where's your friend? The one with the cute little … haircut?” one of them asked.

Serena sat up and perched on Erik's knee, her baby-blue-Ugg-bedecked feet just grazing the carpet. She tugged on the legs of her Habitual jeans. Usually people were too busy looking at her to ask about Blair. But Blair did put a hell of a lot more effort into her appearance than Serena did, so maybe Blair deserved the attention.

“She's upstairs, getting ready.” She elbowed Erik in the belly. “You want to go up and check on her?”

Erik kind of liked that the ski patrol guys had noticed Blair, since he and Blair were so clearly going to be getting it on very soon. He elbowed Serena back.

“Ow!”

The two siblings exchanged fierce glances. “I didn't say anything bad,” Serena insisted sulkily. Erik's fierce look turned into an amused grin. “What?”

“I think someone's here to see you,” he whispered.

Serena looked up to find Jan, future dentist and blond Dutch Olympic snowboarder, gazing at her soulfully. “I was hoping to escort you to the party.”

The ski patrol guys stepped back to make room for him. Serena slid off her brother's knee. This wasn't exactly the kind of attention she'd been hoping for. “Um, we're waiting for Blair.”

Erik gave her a little push from behind. “Why don't you two run along?” He gestured to the ski patrol guys. “I invited these guys to the party. Blair and I can get a lift with them.”

Just then the elevator doors binged and slid open.

Ladies and gentlemen … Queen of the Mountain!

Blair had fastened a little gold heart barrette in her hair and was wearing the jade chandelier earrings Les Best had given Serena after she'd modeled in his runway show. She was also wearing Serena's light blue cashmere pullover, which was fine because Serena had been planning on giving it to her, anyway. It was a little tight in the chest, which was also fine. Blair liked it like that.

So did the Sun Valley Ski Patrol. They nudged one another and shifted their feet and mumbled noisily, like animals in a barnyard.

“Hey. You look fantastic,” Erik said, liking the way the other guys were ogling her. He held out his hand possessively. “Ready to go?”

Blair was glad she had taken her time getting ready. She was even wearing the plain white cotton Hanro underwear that Serena always made fun of, calling them her “grannypants.” But the truth was, Blair was always more comfortable in her granny undies than in all the fussy, lacy panties and thongs she owned. And she looked better in them, too. They were what she imagined herself wearing when she was being undressed.

And someone was definitely going to be undressing her tonight.