Summer and the City Read online

  “I don’t think so,” she calls out.

  “Damn.” Peggy must have aspirin somewhere. “Can I come in?” I ask. L’il is in the shallow tub, under a soft pile of bubbles. I check the medicine cabinet. Nothing. I look around, my gaze resting on the closed door to Peggy’s bedroom.

  Don’t do it, I think, remembering Peggy’s one final rule. We’re not allowed into her room. Ever. Under any circumstances. Her bedroom is strictly verboten.

  I carefully open the door.

  “What are you doing?” L’il shrieks, jumping out of the tub and grabbing her towel. Remnants of bubbles cling to her shoulders.

  I put my finger to my lips to shush her. “I’m only looking for aspirin. Peggy’s so cheap, she probably keeps the aspirin hidden in her room.”

  “What if she realizes some of her aspirin is missing?”

  “Even Peggy can’t be that crazy.” I push the door wider. “You’d have to be really wacky to count your aspirin. Besides,” I hiss, “aren’t you dying to know what her room’s like?”

  The blinds are drawn, so it takes a second for my eyes to adjust. When they do, I squeal in horror.

  Peggy’s bed is covered with bears. Not real bears, of course, but what appears to be every variation on the stuffed animal kind. There are big bears and small bears, bears holding tennis rackets and bears wearing aprons. Bears with pink fur and bears with earmuffs. There’s even a bear that appears to be constructed entirely of clothespins.

  “That’s her big secret?” L’il asks, disappointed. “Bears?”

  “She’s a middle-aged woman. What kind of middle-aged woman has stuffed animals all over her room?”

  “Maybe she collects them,” L’il says. “People do, you know.”

  “Not normal people.” I pick up the pink bear and hold it in front of L’il’s face. “Hello,” I say, in a funny voice. “My name is Peggy and I’d like to explain a few of my rules. But first I need to put on my rubber suit—”

  “Carrie, stop,” L’il pleads, but it’s too late. We’re already in stitches.

  “Aspirin,” I remind her. “If you were Peggy, where would you keep it?” My eye goes to the top drawer in Peggy’s bedside table. Like everything else in the apartment, it’s cheap, and when I tug on the knob, the whole drawer flies out, spilling the contents onto the floor.

  “Now she’s going to kill us for sure,” L’il moans.

  “We won’t tell her,” I say, scrambling to pick up the pieces. “Besides, it’s only a bunch of pictures.” I begin gathering the snapshots when I’m startled by what seems to be an image of a naked breast.

  I take a closer look.

  Then I scream and drop the picture like it’s on fire.

  “What is it?” L’il shouts.

  I sit down on the floor, shaking my head in disbelief. I pick up the photograph and examine it more closely, still not convinced. But it’s exactly what I thought it was. I shuffle through the other photographs, trying to suppress my laughter. They’re of Peggy, all right, but in each and every one of them she’s buck naked.

  And not just any old naked. She’s arranged herself like a model in a porn magazine.

  Unfortunately, she doesn’t exactly look like one. “L’il?” I ask, wanting to delve into this mystery of why Peggy would have posed for these photographs and who might have taken them, but L’il is gone. I hear a faint thud as the door to her room closes, followed by the louder bang of the front door. And before I have a chance to move, Peggy is standing over me.

  We both freeze. Peggy’s eyes get bigger and bigger as her face turns from red to purple and I wonder if her head is going to explode. She opens her mouth and raises her arm.

  The photograph falls from my fingers as I shrink back in fear.

  “Get out! Get out!” she screams, swatting at my head. I drop to my hands and knees, and before she can figure out what’s happening, crawl between her legs to the hall. I stand up, run to my room, and shut the door.

  She immediately yanks it open. “Listen, Peggy—” I begin, but really, what can I say? Besides, she’s shouting too much for me to get a word in.

  “The minute I laid eyes on you, I knew you were trouble. Who do you think you are, coming into my home and going through my things? Where did you grow up? In a barn? What kind of animal are you?”

  “A bear?” I want to say. But she’s right. I did violate her privacy. I knew it was wrong and I did it anyway. It was worth it to see those naked photos, though.

  “I want you, and your stuff, out of here now!”

  “But—”

  “You should have thought about your ‘buts’ before you went into my room,” she snaps, which doesn’t help much, because after seeing those photographs, all I can think about is her butt. Indeed, I’m so absorbed by the image, I hardly notice her segue into how good it will be for me to spend a night or two on the streets.

  The next thing I know, she’s pulling my suitcase out from under the bed and heaving it onto the mattress. “Start packing,” she orders. “I’m going out for twenty minutes and when I get back, you’d better be gone. If you’re not, I’m calling the police.”

  She grabs her purse and storms out.

  I stand there in shock. The plywood door opens and L’il comes in, white as a sheet.

  “Oh, Lord, Carrie,” she whispers. “What are you going to do?”

  “Leave,” I say, picking up a pile of my clothes and dumping them into the suitcase.

  “But where will you go? This is New York City. It’s night and it’s dangerous. You can’t be out there on your own. What if you’re attacked or end up dead? Maybe you could go to the YMCA—”

  I’m suddenly angry. At Peggy and her irrationality. “I have plenty of places to go.”

  “Like where?”

  Good question.

  I slip on the Chinese robe for good luck and snap my suitcase shut. L’il looks dazed, as if she can’t believe I’m going to carry through with my plan. I give her a wan smile and a brief hug. My stomach is clenched in fear, but I’m determined not to back down.

  L’il follows me to the street, begging me to stay. “You can’t just leave with no place to go.”

  “Honestly, L’il. I’ll be fine,” I insist, with way more confidence than I actually feel.

  I hold out my arm and hail a cab.

  “Carrie! Don’t,” L’il pleads as I shove my suitcase and typewriter into the backseat.

  The cab driver turns around. “Where to?”

  I close my eyes and grimace.

  Thirty minutes later, stuck outside in the torrential rain of a thunderstorm, I wonder what I was thinking.

  Samantha’s not home. In the back of my mind, I guess I was figuring if Samantha wasn’t there, I could always go to Bernard’s and throw myself on his mercy. But now, having splurged on one cab, I don’t have enough money for another.

  A rivulet of water runs down the back of my neck. My robe is soaked and I’m scared and miserable but I attempt to convince myself that everything is going to be all right. I imagine the rain washing the city clean, and washing Peggy away with it.

  But another rumble of thunder changes my mind, and suddenly I’m being attacked by pinpricks of ice. The rain has turned to hail and I need to find shelter.

  I drag my suitcase around the corner, where I spot a small, glass-fronted shop at the bottom of a short flight of steps. At first, I’m not sure it even is a store, but then I see a big sign that reads, NO CHANGE—DO NOT EVEN ASK. I peer through the glass and spot a shelf dotted with candy bars. I pull open the door and go inside.

  A strange, hairless man who looks quite a bit like a boiled beet is sitting on a stool behind a Plexiglas barrier. There’s a small opening cut into the plastic where you can slide your money across the counter. I’m dripping all over the floor, but the man doesn’t seem to mind. “What can I get for you, girlie?” he asks.

  I look around in confusion. The store is even tinier on the inside than it looked from the outside.
The walls are thin and there’s a door in the back that’s bolted shut.

  I shiver. “How much for a Hershey’s bar?”

  “Twenty-five cents.”

  I reach into my pocket and extract a quarter, sliding it through the slot. I pick out a candy bar and start to unwrap it. It’s pretty dusty, and I immediately feel sorry for the man. Apparently he doesn’t have much business. I wonder how he’s able to survive.

  Then I wonder if I’m going to be able to survive. What if Samantha doesn’t come home? What if she goes to Charlie’s apartment instead?

  No. She has to come home. She just has to. I close my eyes and picture her leaning against her desk. You really are a sparrow, she says.

  And then, as if I’ve willed it to happen, a cab stops on the corner and Samantha gets out. She’s clutching her briefcase across her chest, her head ducked against the rain, when suddenly, she stops, looking defeated. By the weather and, just possibly, by something else.

  “Hey!” I yank open the door and race toward her, waving my arms. “It’s me!”

  “Huh?” She’s startled, but quickly regains her composure. “You,” she says, wiping the rain from her face. “What are you doing here?”

  I muster up my last ounce of confidence. I shrug, as if I’m used to standing on corners in the rain. “I was wondering—”

  “You got kicked out of your apartment,” she says.

  “How did you know?”

  She laughs. “The suitcase and the fact that you’re soaked to the skin. Besides, that’s what always happens to sparrows. Jesus, Carrie. What am I going to do with you?”

  Chapter Eight

  “You’re alive!” L’il throws her arms around my neck.

  “Of course I am,” I say, as if getting kicked out of an apartment happens to me all the time. We’re standing in front of The New School, waiting to go in.

  “I was worried.” She steps back to give me a searching once-over. “You don’t look so good.”

  “Hangover,” I explain. “Couldn’t be helped.”

  “Did you finish your story?”

  I laugh. My voice sounds like it’s been scraped over the sidewalk. “Hardly.”

  “You’ll have to tell Viktor what happened.”

  “Viktor? Since when did you start calling him by his first name?”

  “It’s his name, isn’t it?” She starts into the building ahead of me.

  I was beyond relieved when Samantha showed up and rescued me, explaining how she’d decided to give Charlie the night off to keep him guessing. And I was thrilled when I realized Charlie’s night off meant Samantha’s night out, and that she expected me to accompany her. It wasn’t until I discovered that Samantha’s night out literally meant all night that I began to get worried.

  First we went to a place called One Fifth. The inside was a replica of a cruise ship, and even though it was technically a restaurant, no one was eating. Apparently, no one actually eats in trendy restaurants because you’re only supposed to be seen in them. The bartender bought us drinks, and then two guys started buying us drinks, and then someone decided we should all go to this club, Xenon, where everyone was purple under the black lights. It was pretty funny because no one was acting like they were purple, and just when I was getting used to it, Samantha found some other people who were going to a club called The Saint, so we all piled into taxis and went there. The ceiling was painted like the sky, illuminated by tiny lights over a revolving dance floor that spun like a record, and people kept falling down. Then I got caught up dancing with a bunch of guys who were wearing wigs and lost Samantha but found her again in the bathroom, where you could hear people having sex. I danced on top of a speaker and one of my shoes fell off and I couldn’t find it, and Samantha made me leave without it because she said she was hungry, and we were in a taxi again with more people, and Samantha made the driver stop at a twenty-four-hour drugstore in Chinatown to see if they had shoes. Mysteriously, they did but they were bamboo flip-flops. I tried them on along with a pointy hat, which was apparently so hilarious, everyone else had to have bamboo flip-flops and pointy hats as well. Finally, we managed to get back into the taxi, which took us to a metal diner where we ate scrambled eggs.

  I think we got home around five a.m. I was too scared to look at my watch, but the birds were singing. Who knew there were so many damn birds in New York? I figured I’d never be able to sleep with the racket, so I got up and started typing. About fifteen minutes later Samantha came out of her room, pushing a velvet sleeping mask onto her forehead.

  “Carrie,” she said. “What are you doing?”

  “Writing?”

  “Can you please save it for morning?” She groaned in pain. “Plus, I’ve got terrible cramps. They don’t call it ‘the curse’ for nothing.”

  “Sure,” I said, flustered. The last thing I needed was to annoy her or her cramps.

  Now, following L’il’s neat head up the stairs to class, I’m racked with guilt. I need to start writing. I have to get serious.

  I only have fifty-six days left.

  I run after L’il and tap her on the shoulder. “Did Bernard call?”

  She shakes her head and gives me a pitying look.

  Today we’re treated to the pleasure of Capote Duncan’s work. It’s the last thing I need, considering my condition. I rest my head in my hand, wondering how I’m going to get through this class.

  “‘She held the razor between her fingers. A piece of glass. A piece of ice. A savior. The sun was a moon. The ice became snow as she slipped away, a pilgrim lost in a blizzard.’” Capote adjusts his glasses and smiles, pleased with himself.

  “Thank you, Capote,” Viktor Greene says. He’s slumped in a chair in the back of the room.

  “You’re welcome,” Capote says, as if he’s just done us an enormous favor. I study him closely in an attempt to discover what L’il and, supposedly, hundreds of other women in New York, including models, see in him. He does have surprisingly masculine hands, the kind of hands that look like they’d know how to sail a boat or hammer a nail or pull you up from the edge of a steep rock face. Too bad he doesn’t have the personality to match.

  “Any comments on Capote’s story?” Viktor asks. I turn around to give Capote a dirty look. Yes, I want to say. I have a response. It sucked. I actually feel like I might puke. There’s nothing I hate more than some cheesy romantic story about a perfect girl who every guy is in love with and then she kills herself. Because she’s so tragic. When in reality, she’s just crazy. But, of course, the guy can’t see that. All he can see is her beauty. And her sadness.

  Guys can be so stupid.

  “Who is this girl again?” Ryan asks, with a touch of skepticism that tells me I’m not alone in my thinking.

  Capote stiffens. “My sister. I thought that was pretty apparent from the beginning.”

  “I guess I missed it,” Ryan says. “I mean, the way you write about her—she doesn’t sound like your sister. She sounds like some girl you’re in love with.” Ryan’s being pretty hard on Capote, especially since they’re supposed to be friends. But that’s what it’s like in this class. When you enter the room, you’re a writer first.

  “It does sound a little . . . incestuous,” I add.

  Capote looks at me. It’s the first time he’s acknowledged my presence, but only because he has to. “That’s the point of the story. And if you didn’t get the point, I can’t help you.”

  I press on. “But is it really you?”

  “It’s fiction,” he snaps. “Of course it’s not really me.”

  “So if it’s not really you or your sister, I guess we can criticize her after all,” Ryan says as the rest of the class titters. “I wouldn’t want to say something negative about a member of your family.”

  “A writer has to be able to look at everything in their life with a critical eye,” L’il says. “Including their own family. They do say the artist must kill the father in order to succeed.”

  “But Capote h
asn’t killed anyone. Yet,” I say. The class snickers.

  “This discussion is totally stupid,” Rainbow interjects. It’s the second time she’s deigned to speak in class, and her tone is world-weary, defiant and superior, designed to put us in our place. Which seems to be somewhere far below hers. “Anyway, the sister is dead. So what difference does it make what we say about her? I thought the story was great. I identified with the sister’s pain. It seemed very real to me.”

  “Thank you,” Capote says, as if he and Rainbow are two aristocrats stranded in a crowd of peasants.

  Now I’m sure Rainbow is sleeping with him. I wonder if she knows about the model.

  Capote takes his seat, and once again I find myself staring at him with open curiosity. Studied in profile, his nose has character—a distinctive bump of the type passed from one generation to another—“the Duncan nose”—likely the bane of every female family member. Combined with closely spaced eyes, the nose would give the face a rodentlike demeanor, but Capote’s eyes are wide-set. And now that I’m really looking at him, a dark inky blue.

  “Will L’il read her poem, please?” Viktor murmurs.

  L’il’s poem is about a flower and its effect on three generations of women. When she’s finished, there’s silence.

  “That was wonderful.” Viktor shuffles to the front of the room.

  “Anyone can do it,” L’il says with cheerful modesty. She might be the only genuine person in this class, probably because she really does have talent.

  Viktor Greene stoops over and picks up his knapsack. I can’t imagine what’s in it besides papers, but the weight tilts him perilously to one side, like a boat listing in the waves. “We reconvene on Wednesday. In the meantime, for those of you who haven’t handed in your first story, you need to do so by Monday.” He scans the room. “And I need to see Carrie Bradshaw in my office.”

  Huh? I look to L’il, wondering if she might know the reason for this unexpected meeting, but she only shrugs.

  Maybe Viktor Greene is going to tell me I don’t belong in this class.

  Or maybe he’s going to tell me I’m the most talented, brilliant student he’s ever had.