Summer and the City Read online

  Time to get moving.

  I search the area around the futon for my belongings. Tucked behind the cushion is a heavy piece of drafting paper, the edge slightly greasy and crumpled, as if I’d lain clutching it to my chest. I study Bernard’s phone number, the numerals neat and workmanlike. At the party, he made a great show of writing out his number and handing it to me with the statement, “Just in case.” He pointedly didn’t ask for my number, as if we both knew that seeing each other again would have to be my decision.

  I carefully place the paper in my suitcase, and that’s when I find the note, anchored under an empty bottle of champagne. It reads:

  Dear Carrie,

  Your friend George called. Tried to wake you but couldn’t. Left you a twenty. Pay me back when you can.

  Samantha

  And underneath that, an address. For the apartment I was supposed to go to yesterday but didn’t. Apparently I called George last night after all.

  I hold up the note, looking for clues. Samantha’s writing is strangely girlish, as if the penmanship part of her brain never progressed beyond seventh grade. I reluctantly put on my gabardine suit, pick up the phone, and call George.

  Ten minutes later, I’m bumping my suitcase down the stairs. I push open the door and step outside.

  My stomach growls as if ravenously hungry. Not just for food, but for everything: the noise, the excitement, the crazy buzz of energy that throbs beneath my feet.

  I hail a taxi, yank open the door and heave my suitcase onto the backseat.

  “Where to?” the driver asks.

  “East Forty-seventh Street,” I shout.

  “You got it!” the driver says, steering his taxi into the melee of traffic.

  We hit a pothole and I’m momentarily launched from my seat.

  “It’s those damn New Jersey drivers.” The cabbie shakes his fist out the window while I follow suit. And that’s when it hits me: It’s like I’ve always been here. Sprung from the head of Zeus—a person with no family, no background, no history.

  A person who is completely new.

  As the taxi weaves dangerously through traffic, I study the faces of the passersby. Here is humanity in every size, shape, and hue, and yet I’m convinced that on each face I divine a kinship that transcends all boundaries, as if linked by the secret knowledge that this is the center of the universe.

  Then I clutch my suitcase in fear.

  What I said to Samantha was true: I don’t ever want to leave. And now I have only sixty days to figure out how to stay.

  The sight of George Carter brings me back to earth with a thump. He’s sitting dutifully at the counter of the coffee shop on Forty-seventh Street and Second Avenue, where we agreed to meet before he trots off to his summer job at The New York Times. I can tell by the set of his mouth that he’s exasperated—I’ve been in New York for less than twenty-four hours and already I’m off course. I haven’t even managed to make it to the apartment where I’m supposed to be staying. I tap him on the shoulder, and he turns around, his expression both relieved and irritated.

  “What happened to you?” he demands.

  I set down my suitcase and take the stool next to him. “My purse got stolen. I didn’t have any money. So I called this girl, the cousin of someone I know from Castlebury. She took me to a party and—”

  George sighs. “You shouldn’t be hanging around people like that.”

  “Why not?”

  “You don’t know them.”

  “So what?” Now I’m annoyed. This is the problem with George. He always acts like he thinks he’s my father or something.

  “I need you to promise you’ll be more careful in the future.”

  I make a face.

  “Carrie, I’m serious. If you get into another jam, I’m not going to be around to help you out.”

  “Are you abandoning me?” I ask jokingly. George has had a crush on me for nearly a year. And he’s one of my dearest friends. If it weren’t for George, I might not be in New York at all.

  “Actually, I am,” he says, sliding three crisp twenty-dollar bills in my direction. “This should tide you over. You can pay me back when you get to Brown.”

  I look from the bills to his face. He’s not kidding.

  “The Times is sending me to DC for the summer. I’ll get to do some actual reporting, so I agreed.”

  I’m stunned. I don’t know whether to congratulate him or chastise him for deserting me.

  The impact of his defection hits me, and the floor drops out from below my feet. George is the only person I really know in New York. I was counting on him to show me the ropes. How am I going to get by without him?

  As if reading my thoughts, he says, “You’ll be fine. Just stick to the basics. Go to class and do your work. And try not to get mixed up with any crazy people, okay?”

  “Sure,” I say. This wouldn’t be a problem but for the fact I’m a little crazy myself.

  George picks up my suitcase and we stroll around the corner to a white brick apartment building. A tattered green awning with the words WINDSOR ARMS shields the entrance. “This isn’t so bad,” George remarks. “Perfectly respectable.”

  Inside the glass door is a row of buttons. I press the one marked 15E.

  “Yes?” a shrill voice shrieks from the intercom.

  “It’s Carrie Bradshaw.”

  “Well,” says the voice, in a tone that could curdle cream. “It’s about time.”

  George kisses me on the cheek as a buzzer sounds and the second door clicks open. “Good luck,” he says, and pauses to give me one last piece of advice: “Will you please call your father? I’m sure he’s worried about you.”

  Chapter Three

  “Is this Carrie Bradshaw?” The voice is girlish but demanding, as if the caller is slightly annoyed.

  “Y-e-e-e-e-s,” I say cautiously, wondering who it could be. It’s my second morning in New York and we haven’t had our first class yet.

  “I have your bag,” the girl announces.

  “What!” I nearly drop the phone.

  “Well, don’t get too excited. I found it in the garbage. Someone dumped nail polish all over it. I was thinking about leaving it in the garbage, but then I thought: What would I want someone to do if I lost my purse? So I called.”

  “How’d you find me?”

  “Your address book. It was still in the bag. I’ll be in front of Saks from ten o’clock on if you want to pick it up,” she says. “You can’t miss me. I have red hair. I dyed it the same color red as the Campbell’s soup can. In honor of Valerie Solanas.” She pauses. “The SCUM Manifesto? Andy Warhol?”

  “Oh, sure.” I have absolutely no idea what’s she talking about. But I’m not about to admit my ignorance. Plus, this girl sounds kind of . . . bizarre.

  “Good. I’ll see you in front of Saks.” She hangs up before I can get her name.

  Yippee! I knew it. The whole time my Carrie bag was gone, I had a strange premonition I’d get it back. Like something out of one of those books on mind control: visualize what you want and it will come to you.

  “A-hem!”

  I look up from my cot and into the scrubbed pink face of my landlady, Peggy Meyers. She’s squeezed into a gray rubber suit that fits like sausage casing. The suit, combined with her shining round face, gives her an uncanny resemblance to the Michelin Man.

  “Was that an outgoing call?”

  “No,” I say, slightly offended. “They called me.”

  Her sigh is a precise combination of annoyance and disappointment. “Didn’t we go over the rules?”

  I nod, eyes wide, pantomiming fear.

  “All phone calls are to take place in the living room. And no calls are to last more than five minutes. No one needs longer than five minutes to communicate. And all outgoing calls must be duly listed in the notebook.”

  Duly, I think. That’s a good word.

  “Do you have any questions?” she asks.

  “Nope.” I shake my head.<
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  “I’m going for a run. Then I have auditions. If you decide to go out, make sure you have your keys.”

  “I will. I promise.”

  She stops, takes in my cotton pajamas, and frowns. “I hope you’re not planning to go back to sleep.”

  “I’m going to Saks.”

  Peggy purses her lips in disapproval, as if only the indolent go to Saks. “By the way, your father called.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And remember, all long-distance calls are collect.” She lumbers out like a mummy. If she can barely walk in that rubber suit, how can she possibly run in it?

  I’ve only known Peggy for twenty-four hours, but already, we don’t get along. You could call it hate at first sight.

  When I arrived yesterday morning, disheveled and slightly disoriented, her first comment was: “Glad you decided to show up. I was about to give your room to someone else.”

  I looked at Peggy, whom I suspected had once been attractive but was now like a flower gone to seed, and half wished she had given the room away.

  “I’ve got a waiting list a mile long,” she continued. “You kids from out of town have no idea—no idea—how impossible it is to find a decent place in New York.”

  Then she sat me down on the green love seat and apprised me of “the rules”:

  No visitors, especially males.

  No overnight guests, especially males, even if she is away for the weekend.

  No consumption of her food.

  No telephone calls over five minutes—she needs the phone line free in case she gets a call about an audition.

  No coming home past midnight—we might wake her up and she needs every minute of sleep.

  And most of all, no cooking. She doesn’t want to have to clean up our mess.

  Jeez. Even a gerbil has more freedom than I do.

  I wait until I hear the front door bang behind her, then knock hard on the plywood wall next to my bed. “Ding-dong, the witch is dead,” I call out.

  L’il Waters, a tiny butterfly of a girl, slips through the plywood door that connects our cells. “Someone found my bag!” I exclaim.

  “Oh, honey, that’s wonderful. Like one of those magical New York coincidences.” She hops onto the end of the cot, nearly tipping it over. Nothing in this apartment is real, including the partitions, doors, and beds. Our “rooms” are built into part of the living room, forming two tiny six-by-ten spaces with just enough room for a camp bed, a small folding table and chair, a tiny dresser with two drawers, and a reading light. The apartment is located right off Second Avenue, so I’ve taken to calling L’il and me The Prisoners of Second Avenue after the Neil Simon movie.

  “But what about Peggy? I heard her yelling at you. I told you not to use the phone in your room.” L’il sighs.

  “I thought she was asleep.”

  L’il shakes her head. She’s in my program at The New School, but arrived a week earlier to get acclimated, which also means she got the slightly better room. She has to walk through my space to get to hers, so I have even less privacy than she does. “Peggy always gets up early to go jogging. She says she has to lose twenty pounds—”

  “In that rubber suit?” I ask, astounded.

  “She says it sweats the fat out.”

  I look at L’il in appreciation. She’s two years older than I am, but looks about five years younger. With her birdlike stature, she’s one of those girls who will probably look like she’s twelve for most of her life. But L’il is not to be underestimated.

  When we first met yesterday, I joked about how “L’il” would look on the cover of a book, but she only shrugged and said, “My writing name is E. R. Waters. For Elizabeth Reynolds Waters. It helps to get published if people don’t know you’re a girl.” Then she showed me two poems she’d had published in The New Yorker.

  I nearly fell over.

  Then I told her how I’d met Kenton James and Bernard Singer. I knew meeting famous writers wasn’t the same as being published yourself, but I figured it was better than nothing. I even showed her the paper where Bernard Singer had written his phone number.

  “You have to call him,” she said.

  “I don’t know.” I didn’t want to make too big a deal of it.

  Thinking of Bernard made me all jellyish until Peggy came in and told us to be quiet.

  Now I give L’il a wicked smile. “Peggy,” I say. “She really goes to auditions in that rubber suit? Can you imagine the smell?”

  L’il grins. “She belongs to a gym. Lucille Roberts. She says she takes a shower there before. That’s why she’s always so crazy. She’s sweating and showering all over town.”

  This cracks us up, and we fall onto my bed in giggles.

  The red-haired girl is right: I have no problem finding her.

  Indeed, she’s impossible to miss, planted on the sidewalk in front of Saks, holding a huge sign that reads, DOWN WITH PORNOGRAPHY on one side, and PORNOGRAPHY EXPLOITS WOMEN on the other. Behind her is a small table covered with graphic images from porno magazines. “Women, wake up! Say no to pornography!” she shouts.

  She waves me over with her placard. “Do you want to sign a petition against pornography?”

  I’m about to explain who I am, when a stranger cuts me off.

  “Oh, puhleeze,” the woman mutters, stepping around us. “You’d think some people would have better things to do than worrying about other people’s sex lives.”

  “Hey,” the red-haired girl shouts. “I heard that, you know? And I don’t exactly appreciate it.”

  The woman spins around. “And?”

  “What do you know about my sex life?” she demands. Her hair is cut short like a boy’s and, as promised, dyed a bright tomato red. She’s wearing construction boots and overalls, and underneath, a ragged purple T-shirt.

  “Honey, it’s pretty clear you don’t have one,” the woman responds with a smirk.

  “Is that so? Maybe I don’t have as much sex as you do, but you’re a victim of the system. You’ve been brainwashed by the patriarchy.”

  “Sex sells,” the woman says.

  “At the expense of women.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Have you ever considered the fact that some women actually like sex?”

  “And?” The girl glares as I take advantage of the momentary lull to quickly introduce myself.

  “I’m Carrie Bradshaw. You called me. You have my bag?”

  “You’re Carrie Bradshaw?” She seems disappointed. “What are you doing with her?” She jerks her thumb in the woman’s direction.

  “I don’t even know her. If I could just get my bag—”

  “Take it,” the redheaded girl says, as if she’s had enough. She picks up her knapsack, removes my Carrie bag, and hands it to me.

  “Thank you,” I say gratefully. “If there’s anything I can ever do—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she replies proudly. She picks up her placard and accosts an elderly woman in pearls. “Do you want to sign a petition against pornography?”

  The old woman smiles. “No thank you, dear. After all, what’s the point?”

  The red-haired girl looks momentarily crestfallen.

  “Hey,” I say. “I’ll sign your petition.”

  “Thanks,” she says, handing me a pen.

  I scribble my name and skip off down Fifth Avenue. I dodge through the crowds, wondering what my mother would have thought about me being in New York. Maybe she’s watching over me, making sure the funny red-haired girl found my bag. My mother was a feminist, too. At the very least, she’d be proud I signed the petition.

  “There you are!” L’il calls out. “I was afraid you were going to be late.”

  “Nope,” I say, panting, as I join her on the sidewalk in front of The New School. The trek downtown was a lot farther than I expected, and my feet are killing me. But I saw all kinds of interesting things along the way: the skating rink at Rockefeller Center. The New York Public Library. Lord & Taylor. Something
called the Toy Building. “I got my bag,” I say, holding it up.

  “Carrie was robbed her very first hour in New York,” L’il crows to a cute guy with bright blue eyes and wavy black hair.

  He shrugs. “That’s nothing. My car was broken into the second night I was here. They smashed the window and stole the radio.”

  “You have a car?” I ask in surprise. Peggy told us no one had cars in New York. Everyone is supposed to walk or take the bus or ride the subway.

  “Ryan’s from Massachusetts,” L’il says as if this explains it. “He’s in our class too.”

  I hold out my hand. “Carrie Bradshaw.”

  “Ryan McCann.” He’s got a goofy, sweet smile, but his eyes bore into me as if summing up the competition. “What do you think about our professor, Viktor Greene?”

  “I think he’s extraordinary,” L’il jumps in. “He’s what I consider a serious artist.”

  “He may be an artist, but he’s definitely a creep,” Ryan replies, goading her.

  “You hardly know him,” L’il says, incensed.

  “Wait a minute. You guys have met him?” I ask.

  “Last week,” Ryan says casually. “We had our conferences. Didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t know we were supposed to have a conference,” I falter. How did this happen? Am I already behind?

  L’il gives Ryan a look. “Not everyone had a conference. It was only if you were going to be in New York early. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Hey, you kids want to go to a party?”

  We turn around. A guy with a Cheshire cat grin holds up some postcards. “It’s at The Puck Building. Wednesday night. Free admission if you get there before ten o’clock.”

  “Thanks,” Ryan says eagerly as the guy hands us each a postcard and strolls away.