It’s a hard-knock life.
“You lost?”
Serena looked up . . . and up, and up. Standing above her was a gorgeously tall guy with broad shoulders, preppily cut dark brown hair, a cleft in his wide chin, and pretty blue eyes. He was wearing a plain gray suit and stiff navy tie, but his smile was so charming she was willing to overlook his dorky office ensemble.
But would she be willing to overlook the dorky plaid box-ers he was probably wearing underneath?
“I’m just looking for this address,” Serena sighed, handing the stranger her keys with the number 169 painted on them in red.
Some girls really know how to work the damsel-in-distress thing.
“Well”—he grinned, “I think I know exactly where this building is. Because I actually kind of live there.” He extended a hand to help Serena to her feet. “Hey, I’m Jason Bridges.”
“Serena van der Woodsen,” she replied, smoothing her Kelly green Lily Pulitzer skirt, smiling the sort of sly, wide-eyed-ingenue smile that Audrey Hepburn was famous for.
No wonder she got the part.
Just like Holly Golightly, Serena was a master of the she-can’t-possibly-be-that-beautiful-and-that-innocent-allure that made guys flock to her.
“Well, Serena.” Jason bent down to pick up her two over-stuffed totes. “Let’s head on home.”
He unlocked the door to number 169, a white town house with black trim and ivy climbing up the side of it. He shoved the heavy old black door open to allow Serena to step inside first.
A true gentleman!
“So,” he began as the door slammed behind him. “You visiting Therese?”
“No.” Serena frowned as she inspected the vestibule’s creaky wooden staircase, lit only by a pretty but dim wrought-iron chandelier. The whole place smacked of dead old lady, as though it hadn’t been touched since its original owner died thirty years ago. Yet it was still charming and semi-grand, in its own way. “I’m moving in, I guess.”
“You guess?” Jason laughed as he started to climb the wooden steps, which groaned and squeaked noisily. “What does that mean, exactly?”
“Well,” Serena began, “I’m in this movie, and this morning I got a note from my director telling me to pack my bags and come here, and now here I am. I think it’s to help me get into character or something.”
“Movie star, huh?” Jason asked.
“Something like that,” Serena answered, mildly embarrassed.
“Wow.” He turned to shoot her a slow, shy smile. “This is a nice building, but I’d think most movie stars would just want to stay somewhere a bit more glamorous, like the Waldorf or something.”
“We’re doing a retelling of Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” she explained, choosing the exact words Ken Mogul had used to describe his big-budget debut, Breakfast at Fred’s. “This is where Holly Golightly lived in the original movie, but I guess you probably knew that already. It’s supposed to make me feel just like she does. It’s my first movie.”
“Oh yeah?” Jason asked as they reached the landing, where the black-and-white mosaic-tile floor was missing a few tiles. “What’s it about?”
“It’s about a wild city girl—that’s my part—who meets this innocent guy from the country who’s trying to make it as an actor.” She conveniently left out that the guy would be played by super-hot actor Thaddeus Smith. “Then, this uptight Upper East Side girl wows him with her money . . . and things like lunch at Fred’s, the restaurant at Barneys?” Serena hoped what she was saying made some sense. She had a tendency to ramble and lose track of the plot.
As if any guy she’d ever talked to even cared.
They turned up another staircase and Serena went on, starting to feel a little winded as she spoke. “The other girl ruins his innocence, which is, like, the one quality that would make him a success as an actor—and turns him into a jaded New Yorker. Then it’s up to my character to save him.”
“So does that means we’ll be neighbors all summer?” Jason asked, sounding adorably hopeful.
“Actually, just for a couple of weeks,” she admitted. Breakfast at Fred’s was a big-budget picture, but Ken Mogul had only twelve days scheduled for the actual filming.
They reached one landing and walked down a narrow hall. Then he turned and led her up another flight of steps.
“How far up are we going?” Serena wondered out loud. She was slightly out of breath.
Better lay off those hard-core French cigarettes.
They reached another landing, walked down another hall-way, and started up another flight. Was it possible that he was just leading her up to some dark, hidden, date-rape lair? Should she be scared? She patted her skirt pocket, checking for her cell phone, just in case.
“I’m at my first job, too,” he explained. “I’m a summer associate at Lowell, Bonderoff, Foster and Wallace. The law firm? I was there until four last night, so that’s why I’m going to work now. I don’t usually have to work so late, though.”
At last they reached the top floor, where the ceiling was low and the hallway was dark. Serena could see the flush on Jason’s cheeks. She wasn’t sure if it was from all those damn stairs or if he was blushing because of her.
“Here we are,” he announced.
She unlocked the door and pushed it open. Jason followed her inside and dropped her bags on the ground with a thud that echoed off the walls of the empty apartment. Two bare bulbs protruded from the urine-colored ceiling, which was marred with so many water stains, it almost looked like the orange-and-yellow tie-dye pattern had been painted on.
“It’s nice,” he observed gamely.
It is?
Serena strolled around the apartment’s main room, almost losing her balance on the sloping, creaky wood floor. Three windows faced the street, with tattered screens and a view of the solid brick old people’s home across the street. Out of the back window off the tiny kitchen, Serena recognized the fire escape from the original Breakfast at Tiffany’s, where Holly Golightly had strummed her mandolin and sung “Moon River.” Blair got teary every time they watched that scene. Serena pushed a window open. The apartment had a stale, claustrophobic, gag-inducing smell, like sweaty feet and sardines.
“But where’s the furniture?” she asked, her voice dangerously close to a whine.
“And who’s this?” Jason added. A black cat wandered into the living room from the bedroom at the back of the apartment.
Well, that explains the smell.
Serena pulled out her pack of Gauloises and poked her head out that famous kitchen window, hoping to feel inspired, but all she felt was nervous and a little lost. Why was she there again?
Because she was about to star in a major motion picture— hello?
“He’s cute.” In the kitchen, Jason crouched down to stroke the cat behind its ears.
Serena turned, lighting her cigarette as she watched her dark-haired, blue-eyed neighbor playing with the cat, who apparently lived in their building too.
See? The views aren’t all bad.
d learns the art of customer service
“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 siste
r, 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.
helmets are almost as important as condoms
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.
“T
ough 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.