The Pretty Ones (6 page)

It's my house too.

Nell exhaled a long sigh, shoved the note into the pocket of her sweater, and slipped out the door. Had he threatened to leave if she went through with her plan, she would have dropped the whole idea. The fact that he didn't gave her an inkling of hope that maybe he wasn't as opposed to Linnie's visit as it seemed. Because what kind of a boy could oppose a girl dropping in for an afternoon?

Walking the few blocks it took to get to the closest secondhand store, Nell perused the aisles for items that would spruce up their shabby kitchen. She settled on a simple white tablecloth, a couple of mismatched teacups, and a tiny porcelain creamer pitcher with a toadstool printed on the side. Then, she headed for the grocery store, referencing the shopping list she'd scrawled onto the back of one of Barrett's many notes. This one voiced his concern about Bryant Park. About dope fiends and drug addicts. About how it was just a matter of time before Nell got mugged, possibly murdered. Odd that someone so opposed to all things maternal could, at times, be a reflection of an obsessive mother figure. Always worried. Always issuing warnings about things Nell had no way to control.

When she returned home from the shops, she set to baking. The cake would be three layers tall, slathered with two cans of pink frosting and topped with sprinkles, just like the ones Mary Ann had placed one after the other upon her tongue. Nell hadn't ever baked a cake of such magnitude, but if ever there was a time to make an impression, it was now. She wanted to dazzle Linnie, not only with her baking prowess, but with the fact that she'd gone out of her way to set up the perfect tea party for her new friend. She beamed at the thought of Linnie sitting in her sunny kitchen, having white cake and tea. Linnie would be Alice and Barrett would be the Mad Hatter. Nell would stand back and watch as they sipped Earl Grey and licked frosting off the tines of forks. It was, in Nell's opinion, the perfect way to start a friendship and, perhaps, the only way to get Barrett to relax. She couldn't wait to see the spark of excitement in Linnie's eyes when Nell extended the invitation. She couldn't wait to see the relief spread across Barrett's grimacing face when he finally saw Linnie Carter standing in front of their apartment door, pretty as a picture, decked out in pastel ruffles and an Easter hat.

But come Friday, Linnie wasn't nearly as excited as Nell had anticipated.

Nell stood in the break room, clutching her half-empty Mr. Topsy-­Turvy mug to her chest. Her smile faded as Linnie blinked at the invitation, wearing a stupidly blank expression across her face.

“It's white cake,” Nell explained, trying not to panic at Linnie's lack of enthusiasm. Maybe Linnie was taken aback by Nell's thoughtfulness? That could be it. “I spent all afternoon yesterday on it. It came out swell. You
do
like white cake, don't you? I couldn't decide between white or chocolate, but white seemed to go so much better with pink frosting. I mean, I guess chocolate would have been fine, but I've always liked white better. Either way, we'll have tea too. It'll be great, don't you think? A real party.”

Shut your mouth, Nell, before I shut it for you . . .

“Nell . . .” Linnie's face was strangely solemn, but there was a shadow of something else playing at the corner of her eyes. Nell couldn't be sure, but it almost looked like a touch of nerves. She brightened at the realization of it. Linnie was
anxious
. She was flustered by Nell's gratitude, by the fact that Nell had put in so much thought and spent so much time on something as insignificant as cake and tea.

“It's okay,” Nell said, smiling. “I didn't mind. I
wanted
to do it.”

“But, Nell . . .” Linnie's frown was obvious now. She shifted her weight from one platform shoe to the other, fingering the wooden bangles around her left wrist. They clattered like xylophone keys. “I'm sorry, I just . . . I really can't.”

Nell shook her head, not understanding. “You can't?”

“No, I really can't. It's very nice of you to offer, though. I'm flattered that you'd go to such lengths—”

“Well, tomorrow, then,” Nell said, cutting Linnie off. “You can tomorrow, can't you? Tomorrow is Saturday.” Rambert & Bertrand wasn't open on weekends. “I'll even take the train to your place to meet you if you want. You don't have to ride into Brooklyn by yourself. It'll be better if we meet somewhere and I ride in with you, if only to make sure you find the apartment okay.”

Linnie cleared her throat. Her hands moved from her bracelets to worrying the hem of her orange floral-print blouse. “I can't tomorrow either.”

“Well, Sund—”

“Look, Nell.” It was Linnie's turn to interrupt. Her tone was abrupt, edging toward annoyed. Its hard edge demanded that Nell listen. “Not Sunday either, okay? I'm not going to Brooklyn.”

Nell furrowed her eyebrows. If it was the neighborhood, she could understand Linnie's trepidation. Nobody wanted to deal with a bunch of Puerto Rican boys catcalling from their stupid bicycles. Maybe, even with Nell walking her to the apartment, Linnie didn't want to be anywhere near that part of New York. It was a rough neighborhood. Girls got harassed all the time. People got mugged. Sometimes, bodies would turn up in alleys and the police would block off entire streets. And then there was the Son of Sam . . . the one the cops had yet to catch. None of the shootings had been anywhere near Nell's place, but people were still scared to go out.

“Okay,” Nell relented, and Linnie let out a breath, as though she'd been holding it for the length of their conversation. That was it, then. The neighborhood was the problem, not Nell's invitation. “Just tell me where you live and we can do it at your place instead.”

Linnie's angular features went taut. She shot Nell an incredulous look. “You're really far out, you know that?” Nell opened her mouth to speak—
Is that a compliment?—
but Linnie didn't give her the chance to respond. “It's . . . creepy.”

Nell shook her head. But . . .

“Listen, I don't want any cake, okay? I was being nice the other day because nobody else ever is to you. I felt bad. But you just can't take a hint.”

“A hint,” Nell echoed.

“We just
work
together,” Linnie reminded her. “Just because I helped you get a coffee stain out of your shirt . . . What I'm trying to say is . . . I was just being nice, Nell. I'm sorry, but it doesn't mean we're friends.”

Nell stood motionless, her eyes fixed on the girl who was now unable to meet her gaze. Linnie splashed coffee into a plain white mug and turned away, darting out of the break room with a mumbled “I'm sorry.” Nell didn't have time to protest or cry or throw Mr. Topsy-­Turvy, coffee and all, in Linnie's face. Left alone with burnt coffee and day-old doughnuts, Nell stared out the open break-room door. Beyond it, a sea of perfectly aligned desks. Typewriters. Telephones.

How may I direct your call?

Linnie Carter was a fake.

Hollow. Insincere.

A backhanded contemptible Jezebel.

A real
bitch
.

Please hold.

A pair of girls walked into the break room. They paused in their conversation, taking note of Nell as she winced next to the Bunn-o-Matic auto drip. Nell's eyes shifted to catch their judging glances. Their Janus-faced expressions. Their clown-painted eyes and mouths. She imagined them hanged by the silk scarves they had fashionably tied around their necks. Pictured their faces blue and lifeless as they swung beneath the fluorescent office lights.

Not so pretty when you're dead.

“Um, hello?” One of the girls spoke, jolting Nell out of her momentary fugue. “Wanna get out of the way, please?” She nodded toward the coffeepot, waiting for Nell to step aside. Nell's eyes darted from one girl to the other, and then, before either one of them could say something underhanded—
loser, whale—
Nell slammed her mug onto the floor. It shattered into a dozen ceramic pieces, Mr. Topsy-­Turvy's bean-shaped body wrecked by the impact. Coffee sloshed across her penniless loafers, spattering the closest girl's stockings. The girls jumped, exhaling yelps of surprise.

Nell narrowed her eyes.

I don't want any cake.

Bared her teeth at them.

It doesn't mean we're friends.

And marched past them with a hiss.

.   .   .

Kings Highway's resident bicycle gang was parked just outside the train station. They were passing around a small cigarette, sucking in smoke and exhaling in slow, deliberate breaths. The moment they spotted Nell, they abandoned their lackadaisical post, shoved their dirty sneakers against the pedals of their bikes, and began to trail her down East 16th like a group of roving hyenas.

“Hey,
bibliotecaria
,” one called out. “Hey, I lost my library card . . .”

“I've got late fees,
Blanca
,” another chimed in. “I borrowed that
Karma Sutra
book to figure out what position I want to try on your dimpled ass first.”

Their jeers weren't anything new. Nothing shocking or all that disturbing after dealing with them day after sweltering day. She'd spent months ducking her head between her shoulders and walking faster and faster, until she was marching just under a full run.

Shouldn't complain, you need the exercise.

She never spoke to them, never made eye contact. Barrett had warned her about doing so:
If you give them an inch, there's no telling how far they'll take it.
For all she knew, they'd drag her into an alleyway and rape her just for standing up for herself. Maybe she'd be one of the bodies the cops found behind a Dumpster. They'd probably shut down the street—a sad white girl found in a crappy area. Tabloid news.

But today, after Linnie's rejection, their catcalls woke something dormant and ugly deep within her guts.

The moment they had set eyes on her, the new girl on Kings Highway, they'd nicknamed her “the librarian,” because she was homely. Boring. A milquetoast girl taunted for the same reason her coworkers exiled her to eating lunches alone at the office. Because God forbid anyone should eat anywhere near her, which could increase caloric intake. It all boiled down to looks, to stereotypes, to who they
thought
she was—a big girl wearing a sweater in the dead of summer—rather than having the guts to find out for themselves.

“Oh shit, man,” the first boy jeered. “I think you pissed her off.”

“Damn, dude,” a third spoke up. “You better watch it. She's gonna lay you out with her yardstick or something.”

“Like one of them Catholic school nuns,” another laughed. “
La monja voladora!
”

“Yeah, she looks pretty Catholic to me,” the first egged on. “You a straitlaced
chica Catolica
? You wanna teach me a lesson, slap me around with a ruler?”

“That in the
Karma Sutra
?” the third boy asked. Despite his laughter, Nell could sense his genuine curiosity.

“Yeah,” the first one said. “It's in the fat-girl section, filed under ‘Jesus Freak.' Get on your knees and pray to my
bicho
, baby.”

Nell's legs stopped working.

Her feet refused to take another step.

She glared down at a sidewalk that was black with grime, small tar-like circles of chewing gum pockmarking the concrete like freckles among the filth. She clamped her teeth together, felt her nostrils flare. Somewhere, in the not-so-far-off distance, she could hear Italian opera filtering into the street from someone's open apartment window. All at once, the heat that Nell had become accustomed to beneath the bulk of her unseasonable sweater hit her head-on, threatening to burn her up from the inside out. Spontaneous combustion. Flash paper. Atom bomb.

She snapped her head to the side.

Shot a steely look at the group of boys on their childish bikes.

Let her upper lip curl away from her teeth.

“Oh
damn
, dude,” said one. “Here we go. Rabid like a fuckin' dog!”

“Aw, don't be mad,
chica
,” said another. “We like you, girl.”

“Yeah,” said the third, pumping his hips into the handlebars of his bike. “We
really
like you.” He let his tongue roll out of his mouth and flicked it at her. Obscene.

Nell's stomach pitched.

A wallop of pain punched her between the eyes.

She turned away from them as if to run, and they laughed among themselves as soon as she looked in the opposite direction. But the celebration of their victory over pudgy Ms. Nobody was premature. Nell wasn't turning away to flee. She regarded a patch of gravel between the sidewalk and the nearest building. The rocks were a mishmash of small pebbles and larger stones. Without so much as a second thought, she swept up a handful of the rocks and looked back toward her assailants. They weren't paying attention anymore, distracted by a group of black kids on the opposite side of the street.

Nothing but two lanes of tarmac separated both gangs. Traffic was sparse. Nell could sense that, at any second, the bicycle gang would move to meet their enemies, where they would be out of her reach. The tallest of the black kids yelled something that she couldn't understand, but his tone was clear: he didn't like the bike gang either. They should get out of his neighborhood. Off his streets. Or he'd show them exactly why they should never show their faces on the corner of Kings Highway and East 16th again. There was no doubt in Nell's mind that, had the bike gang not been there, the grouping of black guys would have harassed her just like the Puerto Ricans had. But that was the way things in Brooklyn worked. Everyone was at odds with one another. Nobody was safe from scrutiny. And yet, at that particular moment, Nell felt solidarity with the boys across the street. They were conveniently distracting. Just what she needed.