Would I Lie To You (8 page)

“Male. Ball. Male, ball. Male balls.”

Dan groaned and flopped over in the soft, once-white, now coffee-and-nicotine-stained sheets of his bed. Male balls? Sweating profusely, he rocked his head from side to side.

“You awake in there?” Rufus Humphrey, Dan’s boisterous-and-eccentric-editor-of-lesser-known-Beat-poets dad banged on the bedroom door urgently. “Mail call! Mail call! Are you listening?”

“Mail call!” Dan sat upright in bed. Mail call, you idiot, not male balls. “I’m awake,” he announced, his voice cracking.

“Remind me to tell you about the early bird and the worm sometime!” Rufus stormed into Dan’s bedroom purpose-fully, clad in a typically demented outfit: a pair of carpenter’s pants splattered with the same dingy off-white paint that cov-ered the apartment’s walls—making them around nineteen years old—and an official Breakfast at Fred’s crew jacket he must have pilfered from a pile of Vanessa’s dirty laundry. It was unzipped, revealing a chest of furry gray hair. He held a massive cardboard box that someone had haphazardly sealed with twine, butcher paper, bubble wrap, and two kinds of tape.The word FRAGILE was scrawled all over the box in five different languages. Rufus dropped the package onto the bed. “You’ve got mail.”

“Jesus.” Dan picked up the ungainly box. He could have tossed it into the air, it was so light. “It doesn’t feel like there’s even anything inside here.”

“Open it, open it,” Rufus urged. “Your sister sent it all this way and the shipping could not have been cheap, so I’m guessing there’s something good in there.”

“Sure.” Dan started tugging at the twine.

“I didn’t hear you come in last night.” Rufus grinned down at Dan. “Guess your first meeting went pretty well, huh? Stayed up late, debating the merits of the minor Shakespeare plays, did you?”

“Something like that.” Dan burrowed through another layer of paper before finally reaching the flaps of the cardboard box. If there had been any discussion at all the previous night, he couldn’t remember it. He could barely remember anything except the sensation of Greg’s tongue on his, the fuzz of Greg’s facial hair against his own stubble.

Eek.

“I remember my old salon days.” Rufus perched on the windowsill and watched as his son reached into the depths of the cardboard box. Dan pulled out fistful after fistful of crumpled-up newspaper. “We had some pretty crazy times back then.”

“It wasn’t so crazy,” Dan replied defensively. At last his hand gripped something firm inside the mush of newspaper. Grabbing hold tightly, he pulled on the narrow object until it popped out and the loose cardboard shell fell to the ground, showering balled-up newspaper all over his floor.

Rufus laughed. “Too bad. You kids today. No passion, no guts. I remember back when I was your age, me and some friends, we’d go out to the lakes, up in New England. Camp out, write poetry, stay up all night talking.”

Dan half-listened as he pondered the object in his hands: it was about two feet long and wrapped tightly in a cocoon of bubble wrap and packing tape. He dug at the wrapping with his fingernail, anxiously going over the events of the night before. How far had he gone with Greg exactly? How had he gotten back home? He had almost no memory of putting himself to bed. And he’d woken up in just his favorite pair of red Gap boxer shorts—had he been wearing them yesterday? He couldn’t remember.

Rufus had a faraway look in his eye as he continued: “I remember this one afternoon, out on the lake, things got pretty heated. We were all out skinny-dipping and I had this very passionate argument with Crews Whitestone—you know, the playwright. We were arguing about the elemental nature of truth, and things just got so heated, wouldn’t you know it, before long there we were, rolling around on the beach, wrestling one another to the ground, each trying to get the other to admit that his conception of the truth was the superior one.”

Dan was only half-listening to his dad’s pornographic mumblings. He’d found a gap in the bubble wrap and unwound it from the long, ceramic . . . thing.

“Yeah, your literary get-togethers today are probably much more dignified, aren’t they?” Rufus went on. “But that’s how we liked it then: naked, vibrant, duking it out over the truth. God, those were the days.”

Still trying to tune out his dad, Dan tossed the excess wrapping aside and considered the vessel in his hands: it was a long, hollow, tapered column of white ceramic, finished in a soft, inviting glaze. It was about eighteen inches tall, and open at the top, so it must have been a vase. At the base were two small, rounded pieces, one on either side, which helped stabilize the tall, central shaft. It was a vase. It was some-thing. It was ...well, a nicely glazed penis.

This was his sister’s idea of a present? He put the vase— or whatever it was—on his bedside table and eyed it warily.

“Well, I’d recognize that anywhere.” Rufus chuckled, interrupting his reminiscence. He picked up the vase and stroked it gently. “You know who made that, don’t you? Your mother.That’s her handiwork.”

“Really?” Dan took the vase back from his father and studied it more carefully. Maybe he was mistaken: maybe it resembled a rocket ship in flight, or an alien, or maybe it was an abstract representation of an earth mother flanked on either side by her children.

Nope. No matter how he squinted at it or turned his head, it just looked like a big wang.

He turned the vase over to study the base, where he found a tiny, hand-carved inscription: “A totem for my son. Imparted with love.”

A totem? What the hell did that mean? Was his mother trying to tell him something, something about himself that he’d somehow never managed to figure out before? He hadn’t seen his mom in years, and then this—a penis-shaped vase coincidentally shows up in the mail just hours after he’d made out with a guy? But he wasn’t gay. How could he be gay? He loved girls. He had loved Serena van der Woodsen. He had loved Bree. And he had loved Vanessa most of all.

Right: the girl who looks like a boy.

Was it possible that he was gay and that everyone but him had known it all along? Was he one of those obviously gay little boys who like to have tea parties with their stuffed animals and carry their mothers’ old cast-off purses to school?

Sighing as he placed the vase on the floor by his bed, Dan looked up at his Dad, who was lost in thought. “So, you were telling me about the skinny-dipping and the literary discussion.” Dan paused. “Was that like, um, normal? For your literary conversations to end up . . . with you, like, naked with some other guy?”

“Normal!” Rufus laughed heartily. “Believe me, when it comes to literature there’s nothing more normal. Passion. Fire. When you’re young, you’re just filled with it. It’s got to play out somehow.”

Dan nodded, brow furrowed. “So you’re saying that, in your experience, it’s not uncommon for a literary salon to turn into a naked same-sex orgy?”

“More common than you think, sonny.” Rufus ruffled his son’s mussed bed-head affectionately. “Too bad times have changed.”

Yeah, too bad.

“Turn your head now, just to the left a tiny centimeter.... Another centimeter . . .” Vanessa complied, turning her head slightly to the left to allow Bailey Winter an unfettered look at her profile.

“My goodness, isn’t that just yummy?” Bailey was talking to no one in particular as he scribbled furiously in his crocodile-bound sketchbook, wielding his pencil and turning the pages like a madman. “Yes, yes, Vanessa, my dear, this is it, you’ve really got it. You give Giselle and Kate and those little chickadees a run for their money now, don’t you, dearest? Mmmm!”

Only half-listening and unsure who Giselle and Kate were anyway, Vanessa fiddled with the camera that was perched on her lap like a kitten. She was reclining on a long stone divan laden with enough pillows and fur throws to actually make it pretty comfortable, but hot for a July after-noon, with a nice, clear view of the pool. She watched Chuck Bass frolicking in the shallow end, clad only in a floral-print European-style bathing suit that left nothing to the imagination, while his monkey perched on the diving board, eating a bowlful of grapes.

How erotic.

She wasn’t supposed to fiddle too much, so she couldn’t study the shot through the viewfinder, but she was confident it was all cinematic gold: there was Chuck wading through the waist-high water, chattering into his Bluetooth headset with Sweetie chomping in the background. Behind him, Stefan, the skinny houseboy, was sweeping the flagstone path that led from the tennis courts to the main residence, trying not to accidentally whack the five overindulged pugs that were angrily attacking the broom. Every so often, she slid the camera across her lap to face Bailey Winter himself, who was wearing a vintage boy’s khaki suit—short pants and all—that he’d had remade to accommodate his girth. It was the raw material for a jaw-dropping documentary.

“Don’t fiddle too much, darling,” clucked Bailey disap-provingly.

Vanessa smiled placidly and turned her camera back to the action in the pool. As she sat still like that, her mind drifted idly over the whirlwind of the past couple of weeks. She’d gone from Hollywood player to friendless Hamptons servant to kept woman. It was all pretty exciting, in a way, but the thing was, she missed having someone to share it with.

Vanessa surprised herself when she realized that she wasn’t just staring idly into space: she was admiring Chuck Bass’s perfectly toned torso, the little ripple in his muscles as he ran his fingers through his damp-but-still-perfectly-mussed dark locks. Forgetting for a minute everything she knew about the guy, every interaction she’d ever had with him, and every grody rumor she’d tried to ignore, she kind of wanted to reach out and . . . touch him. She licked her lips involuntarily.

“That’s it!” Bailey Winter threw his pencil into the nearby swimming pool, then grabbed another. “You look amazing.You look satisfied and hungry all at once. Like you’re ready for dessert, even though you’ve just had the yummiest meal ever!”

Vanessa blushed, embarrassed, and then reminded her-self she wasn’t admiring Chuck Bass, necessarily, just his various physical attributes. The truth was, her type was a little skinnier and paler than Chuck. The thought of Dan suddenly tugged the corners of her mouth down.

“Chin up, dear! Where’s that smile gone?” Bailey Winter clapped his hands once, twice, three times, like a demented cheerleader.

Vanessa tried to will a smile onto her face, but somehow the thought of Dan had tainted everything. She missed him. And Chuck Bass’s beefy chest was no substitute for love. Vanessa sighed, panning the camera around the property’s emerald green lawn. Once again, all she really had was her art.

She trained the camera back on Chuck, who was now leaning up against the edge of the pool chatting with Stefan. Sweetie bobbed up and down behind him, teasing the pugs, which were barking angrily.

“Girls! Please! Quiet down!” Bailey stuck his fingers in his mouth and gave a shrill, surprisingly loud whistle. “Daddy is working! I can’t concentrate with all this racket!”

“Sorry, Bailey.” Chuck turned and grinned over his shoulder. “I’ll try and make sure Sweetie doesn’t bother them.”

“What is that plague-ridden monster doing in my swimming pool anyway?” Bailey screeched, his skin turning from bronze to scarlet.

Vanessa focused her camera on the other side of the pool, and it was immediately clear to her what that plague-ridden animal was doing: Bailey’s discarded pencil wasn’t the only thing floating on the pool’s surface.

“Tell me that is not what I think it is!” Bailey was definitely screaming now.

“I’m sorry, Bailey.” Chuck waded toward the offending turd. “Sweetie can’t control himself sometimes.”

“Get out! Get out! I will not have you turn my sanctum sanctorum into some kind of sewer! This is East Hampton, not Calcutta!”

Vanessa pushed herself up from the divan, using both hands to steady the camera as she zoomed in quickly. This was a cinematic gold mine.

Yeah, or a land mine.

Air Mail - Par Avion - July 12

Dear Jenny,

I’m gay.

Love,

Dan

“We’re h-o-o-o-o-o-me!” Serena’s voice echoed through the foyer and deep into her parents’ apartment, which she knew, as soon as she pushed the door open, was empty. It had that dark, quiet, cold quality of a home without anyone inside it, which was hardly surprising, since her parents spent more time out of the country than they did curled up on the couch. She wasn’t even sure when she’d last seen them on the couch.

“God, I have to pee.” Blair shoved past her and into the apartment, turning on lights as she went—the landscape of Serena’s penthouse apartment was as familiar to her as that of her own home. She disappeared down the gallery hallway, making a beeline for Serena’s bedroom. Nate shuffled in behind them, closing the door a little too noisily. The slam magnified in the eerily quiet rooms.

“Sorry.” He shot Serena a crooked smile.

“It’s okay.” Serena tossed her keys onto the mahogany console table, where they landed with a clatter. “Let’s find something to eat.” She led Nate into the apartment and through the kitchen’s swinging door.

Peering into the nearly barren Sub-Zero, Serena considered their options. “We’ve got some olives,” she announced. “A bag of baby carrots. I think there’s some cheese.You can probably find some crackers or something somewhere. I don’t know where the new maid keeps everything.”

It is so hard to find good help.

“I’ll take care of it.” Nate charged over to the pantry and started plundering it, removing jars and containers and setting them on the travertine counter with a bang.

“I’ll load up on supplies, I guess.”The whole reason they’d come back to the van der Woodsen apartment was to crash before they embarked on a road trip to find the Charlotte, and to stock up on the essentials: clothes and booze.

Serena made her way to the liquor cabinet that her parents had never had the foresight to lock, placing bottles of Grey Goose, Hendrick’s, Havana Club, and Patrón into her Hermès tote. There was something about raiding her parents’ stash while Nate and Blair puttered around her house that reminded Serena of days long past. Nothing had changed and yet everything had. That thought made her unexpectedly sad.

We all get a little moody around our birthdays.

Serena padded into her father’s library and slunk into his swiveling Aeron chair. She grabbed the telephone from his desk and dialed one of the few telephone numbers she’d ever memorized.

“Hello?” Her brother Erik’s voice sounded very suspicious. It was six o’clock in the morning, after all.

“It’s me.” Serena leaned back, placing her bare feet on her dad’s old mahogany desk.

“Shit, Serena. Came up as the home number—was worried for a minute.” Her brother laughed.

“They’re not here.” She studied the book-lined walls, examining the framed family photos of Erik playing tennis, of Serena astride a black horse, of her tanned parents sipping Campari-and-sodas at an outdoor café on the Amalfi coast. “Wimbledon,” Serena and her brother said in unison.

“They’re so damn predictable.” Erik scoffed. “What are you doing home, anyway?”

“Just planning a little summer getaway. Thought I’d give my brother a call. And where are you exactly?”

“Connecticut,” Erik told her. “I thought Dad might be calling to say they were coming out.”

Serena glanced through the French doors into the living room, where Nate was chasing Blair around a buttoned-leather ottoman, trying to stick cornichons in her ears. “We’re taking a road trip,” Serena told him. “You want to come? We’ve got room in the car for one more.”

And maybe she didn’t feel like being the third wheel?

“Tempting. But I’m kind of digging it up here. How about a pit stop in Ridgefield instead?”

She did some quick mental planning—they could crash here today, then head out tomorrow morning. Then maybe she could convince Blair and Nate to spend a night in Ridgefield, and hopefully someone would realize that the next day was her birthday. “I think we can arrange that.”

Serena said goodbye to her bother, replacing the phone on her dad’s desk. She glanced toward the closet, wondering idly if her parents had stashed a surprise birthday present for her somewhere in the apartment.

Aren’t surprises always the most fun?

Blair yawned—the kind of deep yawn you feel all through your body—and ran Serena’s Mason Pearson brush through her hair roughly. She’d never been one of those one-thousand-strokes-of-the-brush-before-bed types but still, it couldn’t hurt. It was only eight o’clock in the morning and the sun was streaming in through the window, but it seemed like years, not hours, since she’d had a proper night’s sleep.

“I can’t believe I’m so tired.” Serena collapsed onto the wide plain of her bed, arms and legs stretched out around her.

“Yeah.” Nate hesitated at the foot of the bed, glancing at Blair, who was standing by the mirror, and then down at Serena, lying prone in front of him.

“I’m done.” Serena unbuttoned her jeans and wiggled out of them without standing up. “I can’t even get under the blankets.”

Blair glanced at Serena’s long, tapered legs and then at Nate looking at those same legs. She felt a familiar pang of jealousy inside her chest. She’d loved and been jealous of Serena for as long as she’d known her, which was pretty much forever. But things were finally different. The year had been filled with so many ups and downs, but it was finally summer, they were going to Yale together in the fall, and they had the rest of their lives as best friends ahead of them. And she had Nate, right here, right now, right in front of her.

Now who’s forgetting about someone?

Blair slipped her borrowed pale pink Lacoste polo over her head and then reached up her back to unclasp her bra, which she let fall to the ground casually. “Nate, can I sleep in your shirt?” she asked shyly.

“Course.” Nate nodded eagerly, trying to look away. He pulled his cotton tee off and tossed it to her.

She pulled it over her head, pausing inside the darkness of it to breathe in his overwhelming scent: his armpits and his laundry detergent, a hint of pot smoke and toothpaste.

Good enough to eat.

By the time she popped her head through the head hole in the still-warm T-shirt, Nate had kicked off his khakis and crashed out on the bed next to Serena in a pair of funny palm-tree-printed boxer shorts that Blair was pretty sure had been a present from her.

She switched off the bedroom’s overhead light. The morning summer sun was pouring through the bedroom window, illuminating the bodies of her friends. She walked over to the foot of the bed, then carefully wedged herself between Serena, who was already sleeping, her breaths long and muted, like a baby’s, and an almost-naked Nate.

“’Night,” Nate whispered.

“’Night,” she quietly repeated. Her heart pounding in her ears, Blair suddenly felt wide awake. She studied the delicately molded and crenellated panels of Serena’s ceiling as she listened to the light snore of her best friend and tried to ignore the soft skin of her other best friend—the only guy she had ever really loved—whose arm was grazing hers ever so slightly. How was she ever going to fall asleep?

Then she felt fingers trailing down her arm, so delicately it tickled. Nate’s hand slid down over her wrist, then slipped into her palm, giving it a gentle squeeze.

Letting out a sigh, it felt like she was breathing out something she didn’t even know was inside of her. The frustration, the jealousy, the worry over what would happen next. She turned to look at him, but his eyes were closed, and soon hers were too. And that’s how they slept, for the rest of the day and into the night.