Only In Your Dreams (3 page)

“Excuse me, sir, can you tell me where I can find the romance novels?”

Daniel Humphrey was crouched on the floor, making sure the biographies were alphabetized by subject, not author. When working at the Strand, New York’s best—and biggest— bookstore, it was important to pay attention to details like the proper arrangement of the biographies.

Whatever turns him on.

“We might have a few on the shelves by the stairs, but we don’t have a romance section,” Dan explained, unable to hide his displeasure.

“Thanks,” the woman replied cheerfully as she strolled away to browse the dusty Johanna Lindsey books and what-ever Nora Roberts novels were still left on the shelves.

The Strand was legendary not just for its incredible selection but also for its highly educated, highly snotty staff, and Dan was thrilled to have gotten the job. He’d seen the help-wanted poster after dropping his sister, Jenny, off at Kennedy on her impromptu trip to visit their mom in Prague and take some art classes, and he’d been feeling a little down about what he was supposed to do with his own summer. When he saw the poster in the store window, it really felt like a sign.

Now here he was, shelving books at the best store in town. But compared to other bookstores, the Strand had zero atmosphere. There was no music, no coffee. Just rows and rows of mismatched bookshelves crammed with books.

Pushing a creaky cart overloaded with dusty volumes, Dan made his way down the narrow aisle of the biography section. His job involved spending lots of time on his own and ignoring customers, which gave him plenty of time to think: about literature, about his poetry, about what Evergreen College in Washington state was going to be like, and mostly about what his last summer in New York—and his last summer with Vanessa—was going to be like. He’d made a big scene at his graduation when he’d declared he wouldn’t be enrolling in college at all so he could stay by her side, but as it turned out, he was looking forward to driving out west in the rad metallic blue ’77 Buick Skylark his dad had given him as a graduation present. It was the perfect car for a road trip; he’d be just like Jack Kerouac in On the Road, tearing up the highways and making love to the land and sky with the words that crept into his head as he drove along. He’d leave poems for all the women he met—the mysterious lover they’d never quite have. Until then, he’d have one last perfect summer in the city with Vanessa, his first love.

Dan grabbed a copy of Boswell’s Life of Johnson off the top of his cart and crouched on the dusty wood floor of the store trying to find the spot where it belonged. His mind began to wander as the words came to him:

Hot hands steer the wheel

You’re my gears, my pedals

Stir up the dust. Lust. Lust. Make it last

Sure, it was a little cheesy, but God, that was how he felt right now. He started making a mental list of classic romantic New York dates: Seeing Shakespeare in Central Park, riding the Staten Island Ferry just for the hell of it, watching the sun rise over the Fifty-ninth Street bridge just like Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in Manhattan. Maybe a drive out to Jones Beach in the Skylark, the salty wind blowing through the open windows, Vanessa’s hair blowing behind them . . . Okay, well, not her hair—she basically had no hair—but maybe she could wear a long silk scarf or something. He could see it now. It was going to be the most romantic summer.

It’s going to be something, that’s for sure.

“Excuse me, do you have the Cliffs Notes for Ulysses?” a high-pitched male voice whispered barely audibly, interrupting Dan’s reverie.

Cliffs Notes for James Joyce? The horror!

Dan scowled at the nerdy-looking goth kid who’d asked for his help. He was holding a Batman lunch box, and Dan realized he wasn’t nerdy or goth so much as hopeless.

“Why don’t you try reading the real thing?” he responded disparagingly.

Hopeless, who was actually probably older than Dan—an NYU student, maybe, or some poor asshole toughing it out in summer school so he could finally graduate at twenty-three— shrugged.“Boring.”

Dan wanted to punch him in his skinny stomach, but he suddenly realized it was his job—no, his duty—to make this asshole read. He stood up. “Follow me.”

He led the mindless goth kid into a small back room full of leather-bound classics and found a beautiful Everyman’s Library copy of Joyce’s masterpiece. Dan began to read aloud from a random page: “Touch me. Soft eyes. Soft soft soft hand. I am lonely here. O, touch me soon, now. What is that word known to all men? I am quiet here alone. Sad too. Touch, touch me.” Dan paused and looked up. “Come on, you know you want to,” he urged.

The kid looked terrified, probably suspecting Dan was some sort of Strand-lurking literary pervert. He dropped his Batman lunch box and bolted.

Dan sat down on the floor to finish the page. He had to admit that James Joyce did always sort of turn him on.

Yes, it’s going to be an interesting summer indeed.

Nate stood up on the pedals of his vintage Schwinn, pushing them up and down with his feet, and then eased himself back onto the uncomfortable, unpadded leather seat. He liked to bike this way—pedaling as hard as he could and then sitting down to feel the warm summer breeze on his face. To the right, the waves rippled off the beach. On his left was a vine-yard full of Chardonnay grapes. The air smelled like salt and gas-grilled steak. He listened to the satisfying crunch of the gravelly road under his wheels and grinned lazily.

His morning joint had done just the trick, and by the end of the day, he’d been kind of grooving on what was supposed to be his summer punishment. There was something soothing about physical labor. He’d spent the summer after tenth grade helping his dad build their sailboat, the Charlotte, up at his family’s compound in Mt. Desert Isle, Maine, and the after-noon working on Coach Michaels’s place kind of reminded him of that summer, although the setting—rows of houses and overpopulated beaches—wasn’t quite as serene. Still, there was nothing like tough manual work, bright sunshine, and the reward of a cold Stella Artois when the day was done; and no distractions.

There were no classes to worry about: school was over at last, and Yale seemed impossibly far away. Blair, the girl he was pretty sure was the love of his life but who he could never seem to get it together for, was in England with her new aristocrat boyfriend, probably shopping, eating scones, and drinking way too much tea. Serena was back in the city becoming a movie star, and Jenny, the incredibly well-endowed freshman he’d somehow gotten involved with last winter, had been shipped off to Europe. He was better off far away from those three.

He grinned, realizing that this was how the whole summer would go: days of hard labor; bike rides back home; then a shower, a joint, and maybe some time by himself was just what he needed. Coach’s house was in Hampton Bays, several miles from his own house in East Hampton, but it was like a different world, with its suburban houses and minivans and malls. It was just the kind of place that would help him refocus this summer, which was his plan. He didn’t have his eye on any particular girl, and anyway, they tended to lead him into nothing but trouble. Maybe he was better off as a solo act.

As if he were ever alone for more than thirty seconds.

Nate had to climb off and push the squeaky bike up a particularly bad hill, wheezing from the effort. Sucking down three joints a day will do that to you.

Out of breath and sweating, he climbed back on the bike at the hill’s summit and drifted down, letting gravity do the work. He looked down and poked at his forearm to see if the pink skin turned white when he touched it. It was something Blair used to do to him when they went to the beach together. After declaring him burned, she’d gently slather him with her fancy sunscreen. He pushed at his forearm again. Definitely a little cooked.

That’s what you get for skipping the Coppertone!

Then he looked up and realized he was speeding straight for the road’s shoulder. He pulled on the handlebars, swerving across the road, but he was going so fast that he wiped out. Hard.

There was a polite round of applause, like at a golf match. Nate looked up, realizing he was splayed out in the dirt parking lot in front the Oyster Shack, a gray clapboard seafood joint about halfway between Coach’s house and his family’s hundred-year-old estate near Georgica Pond in East Hampton. A group of high-school-age kids was sitting at a picnic table, strewn with sweating beer bottles and baskets of fried food, and they were all staring at him.

“Shit,” Nate muttered. Tiny pebbles were embedded in the palms of his hands, and he’d torn the faded lime-green Stussy shirt he’d been working in all day. He brushed the dirt from his hands and looked down at his cutoff khakis—no damage there.

Leave it to Nate Archibald to look even better covered with sweat, blood, and grime.

He crouched to examine the bike’s front wheel. It was bent.

“Tough break.”

Nate looked up. The voice belonged to a curvy, blue-eyed blonde who wore her curly dark blond hair pulled back tight and tucked under a red bandana. Her pink tube top was riding dangerously low and her denim miniskirt promisingly high. A lipstick-smeared straw poked out of the Coke she gripped in her left hand. She extended her right hand to Nate, her long, perfectly painted nails exactly the same shade of red as the can.

“Just ignore my friends,” she told him apologetically.

Her skin was the same golden beige as that of every other girl who used the same shade of Clinique self-tanner, but beneath the beige was a smattering of freckles covering her nose, cheeks, shoulders, arms, and chest. Nate had learned from Blair that girls were usually more complicated than they first appeared, and this girl’s prominent freckles seemed to suggest that she was more than just a typical Long Island babe.

Nate grinned as he took her hand and let her pull him to his feet. “Yeah, no problem,” he answered sheepishly.

“You’re going to need to get that looked at,” Freckles advised, nodding at the bike.

“Yeah,” muttered Nate. He wasn’t that worried about the bike. The only thing that seemed worth looking at was right in front of him.

“I’m Tawny. I know a place where you can get your bike taken care of. But maybe I’ll buy you an ice cream cone first.”

Tawny? But isn’t that the color of her self-tanner?!

“Sure.” He’d smoked the roach from his morning joint before leaving Coach’s place—hence the accident, maybe?— and ice cream sounded very appetizing indeed.

“So what’s your story, Nate? I’ve never seen you around,” Tawny asked as she skipped across the street to a tiny, faded blue house that was so small it looked like it was out of a cartoon. A couple of little kids were perched on the steps licking strawberry ice cream cones.

“Two vanilla cones,” Tawny purred to the pimply guy behind the counter. She had the faintest hint of an accent, but Nate couldn’t quite place it.

“No story.” Nate idly kicked the side of the cartoon house with the toes of his battered Stan Smiths. He wanted to run his hands up and down her warm, freckled arms.

Tawny knelt down and smiled and laid a five-dollar bill on the counter, reaching inside the window to retrieve two pointy sugar cones piled high with creamy white scoops of ice cream. She handed one to Nate.

“Thanks.” The ice cream started to melt immediately in the late afternoon sun, trickling down his hand. He licked it delicately.

Tawny touched his skinned knee gently. There was some-thing about the way she did it—a possessiveness? A certainty? A particular je ne sais quoi—that reminded Nate of Blair. But this girl was nothing like Blair: Blair would never wear a pink tube top, or let an ice cream cone melt all over her hands, or . . . pay for food on a first date.

Date? That was fast.

“Are you okay?” Tawny asked, rising to her feet. She licked her pink, swollen-looking lips. “You look so serious.”

The truth was, Nate was wondering what Tawny looked like without her tube top on. Was her chest freckled too? His hands itched just thinking about it.

“I’m just really glad I met you,” Nate told her a little goofily. He dabbed his chin with a napkin. “We should hang out this summer.”

A world record: Nate Archibald managed to swear off girls for three whole minutes.

Vanessa slammed the rusty cab door and stared up at the weather-beaten brick façade of her Williamsburg apartment building, still mulling over Ken’s job offer. She wished there was someone she could ask for advice, but she knew better than to call her self-absorbed, Vermont-living hippie parents. They’d just lecture her about art and commerce and “creative responsibility.” She wished her sister Ruby was around—she was the only one Vanessa really trusted to talk to about these things.

A white Ford station wagon with a broken windshield was parked in front of the building where it had been for weeks. One of the back doors was missing, and the seats were piled with garbage bags and old blankets. Someone must have been living in it, which would explain the stench of urine that surrounded the car.

Nice.

Vanessa unlocked the building’s complicated array of dead bolts and latches and clomped up the stairs, hesitating halfway up. There were voices coming from inside her apartment. Had she left the TV on? She tiptoed to the door and listened, not breathing. Yes, it was definitely voices, they were definitely coming from inside, and there was something very familiar about one of the voices.

Vanessa’s older sister Ruby had been on a whirlwind tour of Europe with her band, SugarDaddy, for eight weeks. An occasional postcard from Madrid or Oslo had appeared in the mailbox, and they’d spoken on the phone once, but the touring-rock-girl lifestyle wasn’t all that conducive to staying in touch.

Vanessa threw the door open excitedly. “Ruby!” Vanessa cried, taking in her sister in her purple leather pants and her new matching shade of hair. It looked almost iridescent. “I can’t believe you’re back!”

“Hey,” Ruby greeted her casually from the couch. She was straddling a skinny, stubbly-faced guy wearing black leather pants just like Ruby’s purple ones. Ruby touched the tip of her cigarette to the tip of his to light it. She didn’t get up to hug her sister, and her tone of voice was completely nonchalant, like Vanessa had just been at the grocery store to buy milk or something.

“Um, hi?” Vanessa was slightly taken aback. She closed the apartment door behind her.

“What’s going on, sis?” asked Ruby, puffing on her Marlboro as she surveyed the apartment’s Blairified decor. “I see you did some redecorating.”

Vanessa didn’t want to make small talk about Blair’s renovations. Ruby was back just when she needed her most! “Hello, you’re back! That’s what’s going on. How was the tour?”

Her older sister shrugged. “Berlin, London, Paris, Budapest. We rocked. It was incredible.”

“All hail the conquering rock star. I’m Vanessa.” She clomped over to the guy Ruby was straddling. He hadn’t looked at her once.

“This is Piotr,” Ruby explained, wiggling her purple-leather-clad ass as she said his name, as if just saying it was a real turnon. “We met after our show in Prague.”

“Hallo,” Piotr replied in a stiff accent, exhaling a long plume of smoke as he spoke.

Charming.

“The apartment looks cool.” Ruby sounded skeptical. She glanced around the room. “But how could you afford all this? The furniture, the drapes?”

“It’s a long story,” Vanessa answered, leaning against the lavender-painted wall and trying to look anywhere but at the fawn-colored suede couch where the filthy, scrawny Eastern European stranger was stretched out underneath her sister.

“Like the story of where you got those shoes?” Ruby asked, throwing her purple hair back. It was the same color as Willy Wonka’s hat. “And that top? Jesus, look at you. You’re a real fashion plate.”

“I had a meeting.” Vanessa felt hurt. Why was Ruby being such a bitch? If only the slimebag between her legs would get lost so they could order some sushi and have one of their sis-terly heart-to-hearts.

“A word?” Ruby climbed down off of Piotr’s lap. She nod-ded toward the kitchen.

Vanessa followed, wondering how long Ruby was going to be home. They leaned against the Formica countertop. “You two look pretty . . . serious,”Vanessa observed.

“It’s love,” Ruby murmured wistfully, sounding surprisingly un–rocker chick. She did a little half-pirouette then stopped, pseudo-embarrassed, and leaned against the counter again.

“That’s cool,” Vanessa responded, irritated. It didn’t look like they were going to be doing any sisterly bonding after all. She fiddled with the ceramic Statue of Liberty salt and pepper shakers Dan had given her in a fit of romantic corniness.

“Well, the apartment does look good, even if it’s not what I expected to come home to,” Ruby commented. “But I hate to think that you went to all this trouble when . . .”

“When what?”Vanessa asked suspiciously.

“Not to be the bearer of bad news, but . . . Piotr is going to be here for a while. Some local galleries are interested in him—he’s a painter, did I mention? He does monolithic nudes with their canines. He’s huge in the underground Prague scene, and he’s hoping to break into Williamsburg.”

Vanessa wasn’t exactly sure what “monolithic nudes and their canines” meant, but she could imagine Ruby borrowing somebody’s pit bull and posing for him butt-naked, teeth bared. “Good for him.”

“Well, I kind of thought he’d stay here, with me,” Ruby mumbled.

“That’s kind of a tight fit,” Vanessa muttered back. “But that’s cool. We’ll work it out.”

“That’s the thing,” Ruby corrected her. “Piotr needs a studio. And since he can’t afford to rent one, we were thinking . . . we’d turn the other room, your room, into his studio.”

Ex-squeeze me?

“So, what, you’re kicking me out?” Vanessa stopped fiddling and turned to face her sister. She’d been living with Ruby since she was fifteen. It was her home too.

“Well, this was always just a temporary solution. You know, like, while you were in high school. But now that you’ve graduated, it’s time to strike out on your own, like I did when I was eighteen.”

“Fine,” Vanessa snapped. “That’s cool. I get it, I’m all grown up and on my own now. I get it.”

“Don’t be like that,” Ruby pleaded guiltily. “Come back and sit, let’s talk things over a little more.”

“No, it’s cool, really. Let me just grab my stuff and I’ll be out of Pita Bread or whatever-the-hell-his-name-is’s hair immediately.” Shaking a little, Vanessa stormed out of the kitchen and into the living room, where Pizza Face sat smoking some rotten-smelling Czech cigarettes. Vanessa snatched her still photograph of a dead pigeon off the wall above his head and tucked it under her arm. It was her favorite, and she wasn’t about to leave it behind so he could copy it in one of his paintings. She could see it now: he’d become known as the “dead pigeon” artist, when all along it had been her dead pigeon and her freaking apartment.

A few minutes later, Vanessa crashed down the stairs, lugging her camera equipment and one giant black duffel bag. She burst out into the late afternoon sun and stumbled down Bedford Avenue, dodging indifferent, funkily dressed passersby and piles of dog shit and wondering where, exactly, she was going to go.

She dropped her duffel on the ground and sat, using the fully stuffed bag as a perch. Digging her cell phone from her pocket, she hit speed dial. There were two rings and then the familiar sound of Dan’s voice.

“What’s up?”

“My sister kicked me out.” Her voice cracked. She tried desperately not to cry. “And I don’t have any money, and I don’t have anywhere to go, and I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

Guess she’ll be taking that job.