“Everything okay?”
The weight of Greg’s hand on his shoulder startled Dan. “Hey, sorry.”
Greg laughed. “Nervous?”
“No, no,” Dan lied. “Just looking at this painting.” He gestured at the huge canvas hanging over the mantel in Greg’s parents’ apartment. They were older than Rufus and spend most of their time in Phoenix. A swirl of glossy grays and flesh tones glinted in the afternoon sunlight streaming through dusty living room windows.
“You like it?” Greg wondered. “It’s one of mine.”
“Really?” Dan turned to study the painting, actually looking at it this time. When he took a step back into the foyer, and then another, he realized that he had been staring at a life-size self-portrait of Greg, sitting on top of a tiny stepladder, completely naked. “Oh, right.” He tittered nervously. “Of course.Yeah. It’s you.”
“In all my glory.” Greg noticed the rectangular-shaped bottle that Dan was gripping as though his life depended on it. “You brought something!”
“Yeah, some absinthe.” It was the most literary thing he could find.The kind of thing Rimbaud or Shelley might have drunk. Plus, it was the only unopened bottle in the musty cracked-glass dentist’s cabinet his dad stored liquor in.
“Awesome!” Greg took the bottle. “Should I fix us a drink before everyone gets here?”
“Sure.” Dan followed his host down the bookshelf-lined hallway toward the living room. “I could use a little some-thing to loosen me up.”
Just a little though, right? That stuff is so strong it’s like . . . illegal.
“There’s shlomeone, I mean, someone, there’s . . .” Dan slurred. His tongue felt like it was the size of an eggplant. “Doorbell, dude. They’re here. It’s time!” he added, attempting to sit up.
“It’s time!” Greg leapt up off the low brown leather couch that he and Dan had been sinking further and further into the more shots of absinthe they drank. They’d allotted an hour for planning their opening remarks, but they’d spent most of the time pouring absinthe over lumps of sugar, then swallowing the sticky, sweet mix in one gulp. Dan picked up the sterling absinthe spoon they’d been sharing and popped it into his mouth.
Taste of metal on my tongue. Poison the color of envy—I’m delirious, you’re delicious, I’m deluded and delusional.I’m lost without you. I need you.
Dan grinned. It was true—absinthe did inspire. He teetered a little as he crossed the living room’s shiny wood floors to retrieve his backpack, where his notebook waited for him. He had to get that fragment down on paper before he forgot it.
“Look who’s here,” Greg called. Dan dropped the bag— poetic fragment already forgotten—and tried to focus on the faces of the people who were streaming into the room, which suddenly seemed to be spinning. Because they’d sent their pictures he felt like he’d met them already. There was the cute Charlotte Brontë girl. And the insane vampire-lover.
“Everyone grab a drink.” Greg pointed: “Bar’s over there. Plenty more ice in the fridge. Then I guess we can all just sit in a circle and introduce ourselves. Sound good to you, Dan?”
Dan nodded, suddenly unable to form a single word. Sit. Yes, that sounded like a good idea. He lurched through the surprisingly thick crowd—just how many people had been at the door? Or had the doorbell rung more than once? How long had he been digging around in his bag for that note-book, anyway? He collapsed back onto the leather couch.
“How about another?” Greg pointed at the silver tray set with a tiny bottle of pale green liquid and a bowl of sugar cubes. Then he took off his glasses, and Dan noticed for the first time that Greg had millions of tiny freckles all over his face.
“But ...my speech,” Dan murmured. “I need to—”
“You need to calm down.” Greg gently pried the sterling spoon from Dan’s hand and balanced it on the rim of the glass. He deposited a sugar cube on the spoon and poured a thin stream of the potent green liquor over it.
“That was in my mouth,” Dan protested.
“Doesn’t bother me.” Greg grinned, and then used the spoon to give the liquor a quick stir before popping it between his lips. He pulled the spoon out of his mouth and slipped it back into Dan’s.
Ew, thanks for the germs!
Greg slipped off his beaten black leather Doc Martens, then stepped up onto the couch, almost stepping on Dan’s thigh as he did so. He shook the ice in his glass to get the attention of the assembled company. “Okay, everyone, grab your drinks and settle in.We’ve got a lot to cover tonight.”
The room was filled with voices, but Dan was having trouble focusing his hearing. He was grateful Greg seemed to have everything under control.
“I’ll hand the reins over to our other fearless leader now.” Placing one hand on Dan’s shoulder to steady himself, Greg hopped off the couch and took a seat on the battered wooden floor at Dan’s feet.
“Thank you, Greg.” Dan wobbled a little as he studied the group. This is it.This is our salon.And you’re their Gertrude Stein. “Gadies and lentlemen, welcome to our first meeting of our first salon of the inaugural meeting of our group.” He burped quietly. “I’m so pleased to excite you and tell you about exciting and books. These things I believe and you believe and we all believe together that about books and books are good and change our lives and make us happier. And it matters to us, doesn’t it? It really does.”
Dan paused. The only sounds besides the clink of ice were a couple of muffled titters from across the room. His tongue felt thick and dry and he knew he was having trouble with his pronunciation, but he was determined to get his opening remarks out. He’d spent so long drafting their mission statement and fielding e-mails and had gone through revision after revision of his speech—he wasn’t going to go and blow it just because he’d had one drink too many.
One?
“We were going to start today with the reading from the book that I liked that I found that day at the Strand. That’s where I work. Where’s that book? Greg, do you know where I left that book?”
“Hey, hey.” Greg laughed. “Why don’t we put off the reading for now and maybe just go around the circle or some-thing? We can all introduce ourselves. Dan and I have been reading your e-mails, but we’re looking forward to a chance to getting to know you guys in real life.” Greg helped ease Dan back into his seat on the couch. “Why don’t you go first?” He nodded at a girl sitting cross-legged on the floor near the coffee table. Her head was half-shaven and she was sporting a tattoo of a cockroach on her skull. She seemed to have a very toned body, but her face looked weirdly misshapen.
The misshapen-faced girl nodded back. “Yo, what’s going on, my name’s Penny,” she barked. “Favorite book, totally got to be Sexing the Cherry, you know how it goes. I just finished school, heading out to Smith in the fall, but I’m so psyched to be here right now, meeting some cool book-lovers, you know?” She turned to glance at the strawberry redhead to her left, who was hugging her knees and sipping shyly at a cup of cheap white wine.
“H-h-hey,” strawberry-head whispered. “I’m Susanna. My favorite book is The Awakening. I’m from the East Village, I’m thinking of going to Bennington when I finish school next year, and I love Tori Amos.”
“You totally look like her,” interjected Penny.
Susanna blushed, looking down at the ground.
“I guess I’ll go next,” blurted out a gaunt guy who looked about fourteen, dressed in a gray suit complete with bright maroon bow tie and sitting in a rocking chair across from Dan.
“Yes, please do,” replied Greg, slipping Dan a bottle of water.
Mister Considerate!
“I’m Peter, I’m about to start my sophomore year at NYU, and my favorite writer is definitely J. D. Salinger. In fact, as my honors thesis, I’m thinking of memorizing Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters in its entirety.”
Dan sipped the bottle of tepid water. That sounded vaguely familiar—he sort of remembered having read an e-mail from a d
evoted Salinger fan, but for some reason he was having trouble remembering things.
Like his own name?
“Anyway,” Peter continued, “I’m glad I made the cut. Word on the blogs is that this group is pretty exclusive.”
“I heard that too!” exclaimed the girl sitting next to him, a prim brunette whose milk-white face was framed by perfect brown ringlets. “And I’m so lucky that you were willing to include two Salinger enthusiasts. My name is Franny, and yes, I’m named after the Salinger book, and yes, it’s obviously my favorite book in the world. I’ll be starting at Vassar next year and, um, well, I guess I hope I make some new friends today.”
Maybe she’ll meet her Zooey?
“Vanessa,” Dan murmured, running his hands over the soft-prickly stubble on the back of her head as she kissed him ever so tenderly. “You came back to me.”
“Er, Dan? It’s me, Greg. Are you okay?”
Greg’s voice snapped Dan back to reality. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. “Oh, sorry, I think I was nodding off there.”
“It’s okay.You’ve been sleeping for about an hour.”
“I have?” He stood up and then sat down again quickly. Whoa. “I was just listening to that girl talk about liking Salinger and that’s the last thing I remember....”
“That girl?” asked Greg, pointing out the curly-haired Franny, who was sprawled on the floor across the room while Peter, her fellow Salinger fan, tickled her neck with his tongue. “She, uh, connected with a fellow book lover, as you can see.”
“What’s going on?” Dan looked around the room, which had grown considerably darker. It seemed like all twenty-two salon-goers were hunkered on the floor in pairs, or in small groups. No one seemed to be doing much talking, and if they were, it certainly wasn’t about books. On the room’s other big couch, Dan counted seven legs and eight arms. The half-bald punk girl, Penny, was getting her multiply pierced ears worked over lovingly by that redhead Susanna’s tongue right in front of him. Dan frowned. His elite literary gathering was turning into an orgy. And he could have sworn someone had been kissing him right before he woke up. But who? There weren’t any girls there with completely shaved heads.
“Don’t worry, Dan,” murmured Greg, slipping an arm around his shoulders. “We’re all just having a good time getting to know one another.You know, it’s like we wanted, right?”
Dan nodded. It was?
Greg reached out and cupped Dan’s chin gently with his hand. “We’re all passionate people, passionate about books, passionate about life.” Squeezing Dan’s chin playfully, Greg pulled Dan’s face close to his and kissed him, softly, on the lips.
Dan yanked his face away. Excuse me? What the fuck?
Greg smiled and kissed Dan again, this time letting his warm tongue slip over Dan’s lips. Dan was about to pull away again, but his hand involuntarily ran up the back of Greg’s neck and into his short, prickly hair. There was some-thing so totally familiar and comforting about kissing some-one with short, spiky hair.
Hello? Even if that someone is a dude?
Feeling totally confused and extremely nauseated all of a sudden, Dan mustered enough energy to push Greg away and mumbled something about needing to puke as he stumbled for the bathroom. It was the absinthe that was to blame, he assured himself as he settled onto the white-tiled floor in front of the toilet.
For the kissing-someone-with-face-stubble part, or the puking part?
Air Mail - Par Avion - July 11
Hi Dan!
How come you haven’t been replying to my postcards? Are you okay? Has Vanessa painted my room black yet? Write me baaaaack!
Love (but not for long if you don’t write me soon),
Jenny
s and b’s sweet revenge
“Are you ready yet?” Serena banged on the thick, bleached wood pocket door to the guest house’s only bath-room, straining her voice to be heard over the persistent beat of techno playing outside, and of the noise of partygoers laughing and yelling to one another across the wide, emerald green lawn.
“Almost.” Blair dabbed a bit of her current favorite perfume—a lilac concoction from Viktor & Rolf—behind her earlobes, on her wrists, and, just in case, on the soft space between her breasts that was just visible in her low-cut, tissue-weight pale yellow cotton Alberta Ferretti dress. She glanced at herself in the mirror, imagining what she might look like if someone like, say, Nate, just happened to wander next door to check out the party. With her tousled, beachy hair and her long nearly white dress, she looked like a bride about to get married on a sailboat. A sailboat like the Charlotte, the boat Nate had built that very first summer they were together.
Which was the only sailboat she’d ever really sailed on.
She’d been thinking about Nate a lot ever since they ran into him three days ago, hoping he’d come visit again. She’d already heard from a million people that his hot romance or whateverthefuck he had with that townie girl was long over, and with some proper groveling, she could forgive him for his romantic retardation. Yes, he was a total fuckup and yes, he’d broken her heart a million times, but something about the way he’d watched her run off, taking in her familiar naked form like it was a painting or something, had left her wanting to see him again and again.
Spinning around on the heels of her white alligator Bailey Winter gladiator sandals, Blair slid the rolling bath-room door open dramatically and stepped into the bedroom, where Serena was pretending to smoke the fourth cigarette she’d lit since Blair first disappeared into the bathroom.
Boredom can turn any nice girl into a pyromaniac.
“Nice choice.” Serena nodded approvingly, studying Blair’s outfit. “But we’ve got to make our grand entrance soon, and there’s no way I’m doing it without you.”
“You-know-who already outside?” Blair asked.
Serena hopped off the bed and walked over to peer out the window at the action poolside. Blair joined her, taking in the dozens of silhouettes and the bright blue pool lit up behind them. She spied Ibiza and Svetlana in the distance. “DJ booth.” Serena pointed. “Nice shorts,” she added, pretending to admire Ibiza’s trashy, butt-cheek-revealing hot pants.
Blair snorted, stepping back inside the bathroom to dab a bit of her Aesop nail cream onto her cuticles—they seemed a little dry lately.
Must be all that manual labor.
“Shit, Blair, come on, what are you doing back in the bathroom?”
“I’m coming, I’m coming.” Blair wiped the excess cream off her nails with one quick swipe. She dropped the tissue in the trash and froze. What. The. Fuck. What was that in the trash!? She bent over and picked up the mother-of-pearl-encrusted basket and placed it on the rose-marble counter-top. “Get in here.”
“You look fine.” Serena leaned into the bathroom to grab Blair’s forearm. “Let’s just go. I’m dying for a drink.”
“Look.” Blair shook the basket angrily. “Does this strike you as at all suspicious?”
Serena glanced at the baby-pink plastic bottle inside the trash can. “Nair.” She paused. “Whatever. I mean, I prefer a waxing, but who knows what they do in Latvia or wherever.”
“There’s something weird going on.” Blair’s eyes darted all over the bathroom, looking for signs of criminal activity. She felt like Audrey Hepburn in Charade. She just knew she was in danger. She could sense it. Of course! It dawned on her at last, and she threw open the creamy linen shower curtain, sending its sleek gold hanging rings clattering.
“What’s going on?” Serena yawned, smoothing the waist of her Chloè micropleated cotton sundress.
“I know they’re up to something.” Blair grabbed her bottle of Kerastase shampoo from the shelf in the shower. “And I know it can’t possibly be anything original. And I think we both know that the Nair-in-the-shampoo thing is the most obvious trick in the world. Remember that time? At Isabel’s sleepover? When we were, like, eleven?”
Serena just stared at her.
“Well, I rem
ember.” Blair unscrewed the top of the bottle. She didn’t even need to sniff it to realize that someone had indeed tried to pull a switch on her—the powerful chemical fart stench of the depilatory was unmistakable. “Bitches!” she swore. “It’s a fucking good thing I wanted to have beach hair.” She touched her brown locks worriedly to make sure they were still there. “Now it’s fucking war.”
Dignified and determined, Blair and Serena burst out of the guest house’s French doors and onto the white pebble path leading to the swimming pool. Blair surveyed the crowd, seeing now that they were all men. Every single one. Whoa. A hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty people, and the only girls in sight were her and Serena—and Ibiza and Svetlana, of course.
“My dad would totally love this.” Blair almost wished that her fabulous gay dad, Harold Waldorf, and his much-younger French boyfriend, Etienne or Edouard or whatever-thefuck his name was, weren’t off living the good life in the south of France. She wanted someone besides Serena to witness what was about to happen.
“My girls are here!” Bailey Winter emerged from a thicket of silver-haired news-anchory types, all of whom seemed to be wearing blue blazers and white pants, despite the fact that it was easily eighty degrees. Bailey himself wore a similar ensemble, but with three-quarter-length sleeves and pant legs that left his neon-orange-and-hot-pink argyle knee socks and white nubuck saddle shoes exposed. Skipping up the path to Blair and Serena, he extended one chubby hand to each of them, his entourage of five yelping pugs following closely on his heels.
“Come, girls, make a Bailey sandwich.” He giggled. “Hopefully it won’t be the only threesome I’m in tonight.” He grinned and gave a little wave to the shirtless DJ.
“Lovely party,” Blair complimented Bailey, noticing the many barely clothed waiters circulating with champagne flutes.