Nothing Can Keep Us Together (9 page)

“Is this too brown?” Jenny Humphrey asked her sometimes-best friend, Elise Wells. She flicked a tiny Sephora makeup brush over the ridge of her adorable button nose a few times. “I’m trying to reduce the size of my nose.”

Like there isn’t another part of her body that actually needs reducing?

“What nose?” Elise demanded. “You barely even have a nose.” Elise had a small nose too, but it was pugged, which was almost worse than having a big honker, because she was tall and was forever concerned that people were staring up at her nose hairs and boogers.

Nose hairs and boogers, oh my!

It was last-period study hall, and Jenny had taken over the kindergarten bathroom, which was always free in the afternoons because the kindergartners went home at two. The stalls were narrower than those in the rest of the bathrooms in the school, and the toilets were only eighteen inches off the ground, with bright pink Hello Kitty toilet seats. Even the sinks were lower, with pink plastic Hello Kitty step stools in front of them and clear pink Hello Kitty soap dispensers. All the Hello Kitty paraphernalia had been donated by a parent from Tokyo who happened to own Hello Kitty.

“Have you ever heard of a school called Waverly Prep?” Jenny asked, blotting wine-colored blush onto her lips and then smearing them with Vaseline—another tip she’d learned on TV from some model/actress named Lauren Hutton who was the same age as her dad but was still pretty enough to model for J.Crew.

Elise shook her head. “Is it another boarding school?” She never said it out loud, but Elise hated the idea of Jenny going off to boarding school and leaving her friendless and alone in Constance’s tenth grade. Who else would order takeout egg rolls with her and have them delivered right to the blue doors? Who else would tell her—gently—that her shirt would look better untucked?

“Well, I just heard they have this great new art program. Like, they have a real gallery that’s open to the public and the students curate the shows and everything. It sounds really cool. Of course, applications were due in, like, December, but I was thinking maybe I could send them some of my artwork…” Jenny zipped up her yellow-and-pink striped LeSportsac makeup bag, watching herself in one of the diminutive, square over-the-sink mirrors as she talked. Lauren Hutton was right. Her nose did look smaller. If only her dark hair weren’t so darned curly and unmanageable. “This is my last chance. If I don’t get in there, I’m going to have to go to public school.”

Heaven forbid!

“I just wish I hadn’t burned all those paintings…” she added wistfully and rubbed her lips together one last time.

Back when she’d been in love with Nate, Jenny had painted his portrait in the style of each of her favorite painters: Matisse, Picasso, Chagall, Monet, Warhol, Pollock. The paintings had been vivid and full of emotion, as if she’d been trying to invoke love itself right there on the canvas. But when Nate had broken her heart, she’d set fire to them in a metal trash can out on the sidewalk in front of her building, burning every last one.

Elise bared her teeth at the mirror, trying to dig out the remains of the orange she’d eaten for lunch with her jagged, unpainted pinky nail. “Yeah, but would you really want to send a boarding school a whole bunch of paintings of some boy you don’t even talk to anymore?” she asked reasonably.

Well, at least they’d know I was capable of having a boyfriend, Jenny retorted silently, suddenly irked by the prep-piness of Elise’s shell pink Peter Pan-collared blouse and the way her breath always smelled like yesterday’s egg rolls.

Besides, Waverly sounded like the kind of school that was always evolving; not a party school per se, but a school that wasn’t afraid to try something new or take a risk on someone.

Like her, for instance?

Elise stopped picking her teeth and reached for Jenny’s makeup bag, opening it without asking permission and unscrewing a tube of shimmering lilac-colored Stila lip gloss. She puckered her wide mouth and began generously smearing lip gloss all over it.

When Jenny really thought about it, she had taken a risk on Elise. First she had been friendless, and now she had a friend, whether she liked it or not.

“You’re right,” she mused, retrieving her makeup bag and spilling it into one of the small, low sinks. “I should send Waverly something new anyway. Something I haven’t tried before.” She sorted through the assortment of eyeliners, shadows, and glosses, looking for her favorite Clinique four-shades-of-gray eye shadow palette in its mint green plastic case. “Would you mind if I painted your portrait with this?” she asked her friend, holding up the palette and feeling suddenly inspired. She’d do Elise in eye shadow, her dad in red wine, and Dan in … instant coffee. It was innovative and meaningful, and way better than sending Waverly a tear sheet of her jog bra modeling debut or her first appearance on Page Six.

Not that Jenny wasn’t still a party girl looking for a party school, but Serena van der Woodsen had taught her a very important lesson: Party girls are deeper and smarter than they first appear.

Nothing Can Keep us Together

Vanessa was sitting on the floor in her living room wearing only the black SUGARDADDY DID HUNGARY T-shirt her sister, Ruby, had sent her from Budapest, a recent stop on her band’s tour, and a pair of somebody’s gray-and-white striped boxers—it was getting hard to keep them straight. She was trying to smoothly splice together Chuck Bass’s horrifying and amusing interview, complete with pet snow monkey, with Kati and Isabel talking about how they’d decided to go to Rollins College in Florida together even though Isabel had gotten into Princeton. Chuck was wearing a tight white wifebeater T-shirt and was rubbing his beefy, unnaturally tan arms with Bain de Soleil dark tanning oil as he explained how he stayed golden brown all year. His monkey remained curled in his lap, blinking stupidly at the camera with its creepy light blue eyes.

“Normally I lie in the beds like once, maybe twice a week, or I use this amazing Estée Lauder bronzing stuff to keep it nice and even all year round. I wonder, though—do you happen to know if there’s a good tanning salon near Fort Lee?”

Isabel and Kati were lying on their backs with their heads pressed together—Isabel’s sleek and dark and Kati’s frizzy and strawberry blond—smiling up at the camera like sisters who looked nothing alike.

“It’s like, how am I going to concentrate in, like, Intro to Law at Princeton, if my best friend in the whole world is down in Florida all by herself?” Isabel demanded gaily, her lips so thoroughly glossed, they were practically dripping.

“Besides, we’re both going to lose ten pounds this summer on the South Beach Diet so we can look awesome in our matching Shoshanna black-and-red paisley bikinis, which we get to wear every single day!” Kati shrieked excitedly, kicking her bare legs so hard, her light-blue-and-white seersucker uniform flipped up, revealing her sensible white cotton Gap underwear.

The crazy thing was that the more Vanessa replayed the interviews, the more she realized she was actually going to miss these people, freak shows that they were, and she wondered for their sake if there was any way to make them sound more intelligent and less insane.

Probably not. And what would be the fun of that anyway?

As she worked, she couldn’t help feeling distracted by the knowledge that just over the Williamsburg Bridge, the indie film director Ken Mogul was casting his first moneymaking blockbuster venture, Breakfast at Fred’s, which would be filmed at Fred’s restaurant in Barneys department store on Sixtieth and Madison. Months before, Ken Mogul had spotted a piece of Vanessa’s film footage that had accidentally been leaked on the Internet and tried to hire her to work with him. He’d wanted her to quit school and postpone college. Of course, Vanessa had said no. But now Ken Mogul was in New York, making a movie right under her nose. She was supposed to be driving around the country with Aaron this summer anyway, but…

It’s kind of tempting, huh?

Someone knocked on the front door. “Yeah?” Vanessa called out before getting up to see who it was. Aaron was supposed to come over after band practice and had promised to bring Thai food for dinner and help her study for her math exam. He was due any minute, but he had a key. She got up and peered through the little glass peephole in the door. There was no one there.

Hearing faint footsteps echoing on the stairs, she shifted her gaze and squinted, just making out Dan’s skinny, navy-blue-board-shorts-clad ass as it disappeared up the grubby black steps on his way to the roof. She’d forgotten he still had a key, too.

Already Vanessa could feel the adrenaline rush she’d felt the last time Dan had come over. Was it being with him that made her feel this way, or was it the notion that Aaron could walk through the door at any moment and catch them? Did it even matter?

Hell no.

She scribbled a hasty note to Aaron—Went to get laundry—even though she’d already picked up her laundry at the Wash ’n’ Fold that morning before school. Then she threw open the front door and dashed upstairs.

Dan was lying on his back on the futon underneath the water tower, wearing only his black cotton boxer briefs, leafing through a glossy-pink-covered collection of Pablo Neruda love poems. Beside him on a tinfoil tray were four bluepoint oysters from Zabar’s and an open bottle of red Merlot with two Styrofoam cups. When he saw Vanessa, he immediately sat up and began to read aloud.

Don’t go far off, not even for a day, because—

Because—I don’t know how to say it: a day is long.

“Do you think maybe you could call first before you come over?” Vanessa demanded, pretending to be furious, because she knew it turned Dan on to see her mad. “Aaron’s coming over, like, right now.”

“That’s from a poem called ‘I Crave Your Mouth, Your Voice, Your Hair,’” Dan explained, gazing at her sweetly. He poured a little wine into a cup and held it out. “Want some?”

Vanessa rolled her eyes and went over to the futon. “I think I know what you crave.” She sat down and took off her shirt, the adrenaline pumping even harder now. “Hurry up,” she ordered. “Aaron’s bringing my dinner and then I have studying to do.”

Neighbors in the surrounding apartments adjusted their telescopes. They’d moved to the area because the rent was cheap. Who knew there was also going to be built-in, live entertainment?!

The bossier and pissier Vanessa was, the more hot and bothered Dan grew, and the more he loved her. His hands shook and sweat formed on his freshly shaved upper lip. He was entirely at her mercy.

Down on Broadway, Aaron ignored the group of bystanders on the other side of the street, all staring up at the roof of Vanessa’s building. He was carrying two orders of hot and spicy pad Thai in a paper bag under his arm, he had to pee, the freaking L train was insanely crowded, and he was sweating his ass off. All he wanted was to get inside and take a nice cool shower. Preferably with Vanessa.

He found her note and scribbled over it, I’m in the tub. Then he left the front door standing open to make it easier for her to bring her basket of clean laundry inside and turned on the stereo, blasting that Raves song Dan Humphrey had recorded with them—the only one that was any good.

“Crack me like an egg!” Aaron sang along in the shower.

Three floors up, Dan was already ramming his feet back into his socks. The music was faint but unmistakable.

“Do you think he saw us?” A little thrill ran through Vanessa’s body at the thought. God, was she perverse!

Dan hastily slurped down the last oyster. “What do you want me to do?” he asked, sounding just as excited as she did. See how perfect we are for each other? he thought. They were both totally getting off on the fact that Aaron had no clue. Of course, cheating was bad and wrong, but it was totally fun when you were completely, madly in love with the person you were doing it with!

“I’ll go downstairs and distract him,” Vanessa whispered, even though the traffic on the Williamsburg Bridge was so loud no one could possibly have heard her. “While you leave.”

Dan shoved the cork into the half-drunk bottle of Merlot and tried to prop it up inside his black Manhattan Transfer messenger bag. “You want me to leave?” he responded, baffled. He’d imagined scaling the outside of the building like Spider-Man with Vanessa clinging to his neck like Kirsten Dunst.

Like that would ever happen, Mr. Spaghetti Arms.

“You can leave that here.” Vanessa pointed at the wine. “We’ll drink it later.”

We meaning she and Dan, or she and Aaron?

“Fine,” Dan replied, catching on to the fact that Vanessa was about to go downstairs and pretend he’d never even been there. God, she was smart. And so tough and cool under pressure. “Good luck studying this weekend.”

Vanessa gave his butt a little slap. “I’ll call you,” she promised before hurrying downstairs. The door to the apartment was open and Aaron was in the shower.

Vanessa undressed for the second time in fifteen minutes.

“Hi,” she greeted him, yanking back the shower curtain.

“Hey.” Aaron grinned and held out a soap-flecked hand to help her in.

Dan tiptoed slowly downstairs, reading Neruda aloud to himself, his hands sweating as he tried to figure out if what had just happened was either insanely exciting or insanely insulting.

… In this part of the story I am the one who dies. …

The problem with poets like him is they always err on the negative side.

Nothing Can Keep us Together

Saturday morning, the line of gorgeous girls wound its way out Barneys’ front doors, up Madison to Sixty-first Street, and around the corner to Fifth Avenue. Most of them were wearing black sleeveless cocktail dresses, pointy black flats, and black Jackie Onassis–big sunglasses. Serena was wearing her favorite new pair of True Religion jeans.

Typical.

Somehow, she’d managed to be one of the first girls in line. Maybe it was because she and Nate had never really gone to sleep last night—thanks to the little bottle of pills he kept popping?—and she’d still been awake at five A.M. She’d just grabbed a double latte at the deli and headed over, lugging her French textbook with her, as if she’d really get any studying done.

Blair was first in line. And, surprise, surprise, she was Audrey Hepburn. Same black vintage Givenchy dress, same pearl choker, same French-twist hairstyle—with the help of a little faux hair—same oversize Chanel sunglasses, same black elbow-length gloves. Lord Marcus, being the sweet and charming hunk that he was, had helped her get dressed and even had come up with the idea of spending the night in a hired town car, parked right in front of Barneys, so she’d be sure to be first in line for the open call. Of course, they hadn’t been able to do much for fear of messing up her costume, but it was still fun to hold hands in the backseat and talk about the very near future, when Blair would be a famous Hollywood star.

“I’ll be your pool lad,” Lord Marcus offered in his adorable English accent. “I’ll fan you with palm fronds and pour your cocktails.” Of course he wouldn’t mind giving up his spot in the graduate business program at the London School of Economics, where he was starting in the fall. He’d do anything for Blair—anything!

“And I’ll have the best designers making clothes for me in every city in the world,” Blair fantasized over her stomach’s nervous rumblings. She wanted this part so badly, she hadn’t eaten all day, but it was nearly midnight and she was famished. “Or maybe I’ll ask Uncle Oscar to make all my clothes.”

A hot dog vendor was packing up for the night on the corner of Sixty-first and Madison. Would Lord Marcus be perfectly horrified if she ate one, standing on the curb in front of Barneys?

It would be no worse than Audrey Hepburn eating a Danish out of a paper bag in front of Tiffany’s.

“Look, darling, dinner!” Lord Marcus cried, noticing the vendor and literally reading Blair’s mind. “You sit tight and I’ll go fetch us some.”

Darling. She was his darling, and he fetched things for her!

So they’d eaten Sabrett hot dogs with mustard and relish and sipped A&W root beer, holding hands and dozing off until Blair’s eyelids had fluttered open to find Serena looming out of the early morning mist in her perfectly distressed jeans and no makeup. She’d bolted out of the car and slapped her black Chanel sunglasses over her eyes. No way was that blond bitch going to steal her part in this show.

Never mind the other hundreds of actress-wannabes who were beginning to turn up for the audition.

Now it was nearly eight o’clock and the audition was about to begin. It was an unusually hot and humid May morning and the two girls stood front-to-back at the head of the line, fanning themselves with the page of lines Ken Mogul’s helpers had handed out and which they’d already memorized.

Finally Serena could stand it no longer. “God, it’s hot.” Blair didn’t respond, so Serena reached out and touched Blair’s bare arm. “So, that guy you’ve been hanging out with—he seems really nice,” she ventured awkwardly.

Blair wished she were taller so she could gaze down at Serena with such hawklike severity that Serena would never attempt to speak to her again. Alas, she was nearly six inches shorter than Serena, especially since she was wearing the required Holly Golightly–esque superflat flats.

She was about to give a short and extremely nasty reply when she realized something startling. She didn’t even mind anymore that Serena had Nate. She had the hotter, taller, more refined, better-bred, British version of Nate, and she was perfectly happy with him, thank you very much. In fact, just to prove how fine she was with everything, they could all be friends—the four of them.

She pushed her enormous Chanel sunglasses on top of her head and smiled brightly up at her former friend. “How about after this the four of us all get a drink down at the Yale Club together? They have a great lounge. It’s like a hotel bar out of an old movie or something. You’d love it.”

“Really?” Serena gasped, wondering if she might be dreaming. Had Blair really just invited her and Nate to have a drink with her and her new boyfriend?

“Sorry for the wait, ladies. All right, Blair Waldorf, you’re up,” announced a skinny guy in his twenties with a hipster-mullet haircut and faded Diesel jeans rolled up to his knees.

Blair flipped her sunglasses back onto her nose.

“Good luck,” Serena said faintly, still unsure of whether they were really talking to each other or not.

Mullet guy led Blair inside the store—thank goodness for air-conditioning!—and across the cosmetics floor to the elevators. Barneys didn’t open until ten on Saturdays, so it was weirdly quiet. Of course, Blair spent so much time there, she could have found her way to Fred’s blindfolded, but that wasn’t enough to get her the part.

Fred’s, the store’s notorious restaurant, was up on the ninth floor. Long and narrow, with windows along one wall overlooking Madison, and a small, modern bar, it was the type of restaurant that was surprisingly unspectacular looking given its popularity. What made it spectacular was its usual clientele—the Holly Golightlys of the present day and their Park-Avenue-dwelling mothers or publicists, all dressed in Chanel and Prada, sipping white wine spritzers and picking at their salads while they worried about whether someone else was going to buy the last pair of faun-colored Costume National knee-high stiletto boots they had spotted on their way up to the restaurant.

Right now, though, the restaurant was empty, except for Ken Mogul and his crew. The director was standing by the bar giving lighting direction to a gaggle of Swedish-looking blond female crewpeople in matching black tunics, his notorious bulging blue eyes bloodshot with fatigue. He sported a short, prickly, reddish beard with no mustache—never a good look—and shoulder-length curly red hair. His 1980s-style leather jacket had huge rounded shoulders, and his Levi’s were way too tight—also not a good look. Blair had never seen him before and thought he might be one of the crew until he addressed her.

“Well, you certainly look the part.” He pointed to one of the chrome-and-black-leather bar stools, gesturing for her to sit down. “But this isn’t a complete remake, you know. I’m taking some liberties. For instance, Holly might not have brown hair. And she could be tall.”

Way to rub a brunette who’s always been on the shorter side the wrong way!

It had taken Blair three hours to get dressed, so she decided to ignore his insult. She folded up the sheet of paper she’d been given to read from and tucked it into her purse, partly to impress Ken Mogul with the fact that she’d already memorized her lines, and partly to show that her feathers weren’t easily ruffled. Then she sat down on a bar stool and crossed her legs with Audrey Hepburn–like balletic grace.

“I’m not going to give you any direction,” Ken Mogul remarked. “You just do your thing, okay? So … action!”

Blair had Googled Ken Mogul and found a ton of articles about how he called himself the “undirector,” and how actors hated working with him because he just stared at them without giving them any direction at all. He probably thought he was terribly avant-garde or whatever. Well, that was fine with her, because she didn’t need any direction—she was Audrey Hepburn playing Holly Golightly twenty-four hours a day.

She pulled a cigarette and the long ebony-and-mother-of-pearl cigarette holder she’d found in an antique shop in Rhode Island two summers ago out of her slim black satin vintage Chanel pocketbook.

“How do you do?” she purred, sounding exactly like Audrey at her most charming. She lit her cigarette and blew a delicate stream of smoke over Ken Mogul’s head. Then she delivered that dreamy, faraway smile that was Audrey’s trademark. “Don’t you just love it here? Isn’t it wonderful waking up and knowing this place is right here, every day? It’s my absolute paradise.”

Blair waited for Ken Mogul’s response. Those were the only lines she’d been given to say, and she’d said them perfectly, even if she did say so herself.

Ken Mogul covered his bulging blue eyes with his hand and then pulled it roughly away again in a bizarre game of peekaboo. He stared at Blair for a moment longer and then yelled, “Next!”

Blair dropped down off the stool and walked gracefully out of the restaurant to where Lord Marcus was waiting for her near the elevator doors. He gathered her in his strong, capable, royal arms. “You were stunning,” he reassured her. “I was watching from the door.”

Blair leaned her cheek against his chest, still in character. “I do love it here,” she sighed dreamily.

The elevator doors rolled open and Serena and Nate stepped out.

“Good luck!” Blair called out generously. She took another drag on her cigarette holder and offered Nate a serene smile. He smiled weakly back at her, looking a little red around the eyes, like he’d been crying, or, more likely, was extremely stoned. But from where Blair stood, with her body pressed against her hunky British lord, that was really none of her concern.

Then Lord Marcus kissed the back of Blair’s head, sending a little thrill down her spine. The door to the ladies’ lounge was right in front of them. She took his hand and tugged him toward it.

Nothing better than a little make-out session before breakfast.

Nothing Can Keep us Together