Brooklyn Girls (12 page)

But God, he’s hot.

The cab is so quiet. I can hear him breathing. I wonder if he can hear me breathing. Oh God, now I’m not breathing at all. I might pass out.

“Um, thanks for stopping,” I say finally.

“I caught the end of your adventure,” the British guy replies. “I have friends who used to taxi surf across the Williamsburg Bridge.”

“By ‘friend’ you mean ‘you,’ right?” I say, raising an eyebrow.

“Dash it, you broke my code. What are you, some kind of enigma machine?”

“Did you just say ‘dash it?’”

He grins. “I’m Aidan.”

“Pia.”

We shake hands in an awkward-yet-flirty way, and I can feel my heart or maybe my entire torso beat
thumpetythumpthump
. Aidan looks like he wants to laugh, like he knows how I’m feeling and what I’m thinking, oh, God, my stomach is tingling.…

“So … you live in Brooklyn?”

“Yeah. Actually, I’m on my way to meet a mate for a nightcap at Minibar. It’s sort of my local.”

“I’ve heard of it,” I say. (I totally haven’t.)

“My dog prefers Bar Great Harry. Probably because they let him in.”

I’m fighting the urge to ask exactly where he lives, what kind of dog he has, where his girlfriend from the other day is, and if he’d ever consider dumping her to date me instead. Thankfully, before I can start frothing at the mouth, the cab driver interrupts.

“You’re from London?”

“More or less,” says Aidan.

“You been here long?” the cabbie asks him.

Angie stirs, and I look over at her and make a slight are-you-okay face, and she shrugs. She’s clearly tired, and sad, but fine. But who was the French guy? And what the hell is going on with her?

I tune back into the conversation.

“About six years ago,” Aidan’s saying. He’s got a very deep, self-assured voice. Sexy.

“What do you do?” asks the cabbie.

“Uh, boring financial stuff,” he says, then glances at me. “But I am totally hip and groovy in every other way, obviously.”

“I went to London once,” says the cabbie. “The food, man! I don’t know how you guys survive over there.”

I cringe inwardly. Never criticize a stranger’s country unless you have lived there.

“It’s a miracle,” says Aidan. “Frankly, I’m surprised any of us are still alive.”

I turn to him and grin, trying to make up for the cabbie’s rudeness, and he winks at me, his eyes crinkling with a secret smile. I wink back and I feel that hot tingling again, so I quickly drop my gaze.
Ohpleaseaskmeoutohpleaseaskmeoutohpleaseaskmeout—

Then, too quickly, we reach Union Street. Angie somehow rouses herself and staggers out of the cab. “Thank you so much, for, um, being our knight in shining armor,” I say. “Here, this is for the cab fare, or the tip, or whatever—” I try to put a twenty in his hand.

“No, no. Consider this karma. Pay it forward. Or whatever that awful movie was called.”

Aidan puts his hand on mine and I swear to God, electric sparks shoot through my hand and up my arm. I flinch from shock and snatch my hand away.

His sexy-cocky smile fades. “You okay?”

“Yes … No. I mean, yes.”

Our eyes meet again. There’s a pause. Suddenly the world is totally silent.

For a second I’m overwhelmed with the urge—no, not to kiss him (though that would be, you know, just fine). I want to talk to him more. I want to close the cab door and just keep going, wherever he’s going. It feels like it would be the right thing to do.

Stupid, I know.

And impossible. I can’t ask for his number out of the blue, it’s just not my MO, and he hasn’t asked for mine, and anyway, he has a girlfriend. She’s tall and glamorous and loud and sexy. I saw her on the damn street. Jesus, Pia. Get a grip.

So I get out and slam the door without looking back.

CHAPTER 9

I never used to like waking up alone. Even if I woke up next to the wrong guy, it was better than being by myself. Just two weeks ago today I was lying here next to Mike, yet to deal with the chaos of my post-party life. I wish I hadn’t slept with him, by the way. Massive oopsh. The first guy I ever slept with was Eddie. We waited three months, and finally did the deed at Thanksgiving, at his parents’ house, during the first snow of the year. It was so—oh, God, why am I thinking about this? I’ll just get upset and I have a big day ahead.

It’s time to get the SkinnyWheels show on the road!

First: Angie. I need to figure out what’s going on with her. When we got in last night, she just came upstairs and went right to sleep.

I knock on her door. A moan tells me she’s awake.

“Good morning, ladybitch.”

Her room smells as bad as it looks: there are more clothes on the floor than in the closet, and there are so many paintings and sketches pinned up you can hardly see the wallpaper.

“I need sustenance,” she moans. “My kingdom for a French fry.”

“You have a kingdom?”

I look down at her, sprawled on the bed, hair a wild mess, eyeliner even more messy-cool than usual.

“Let’s talk about you, my kamikaze friend. Talk about crash and burn: you were a total mess yesterday.”

Angie shrugs. “I got afternoon drunk, came home, carbed up, and passed out. What’s the big deal?”

“Umm…” Shit, I hate telling people what they did when they don’t remember. It usually seems kinder to pretend it never happened. But I think Angie needs to know.

“You had a bit of an oopsh, ladybitch.”

“I did?”

So I tell her about the “coldy flu” text, the party, the coke, and finally the gymnastic-surfing-on-a-Hummer journey over the Brooklyn Bridge.

When I’m done, she puts her pillow over her face and screams into it.

“I don’t remember any of that! This is the oopsh to end all oopshes!”

“What is going on with you? I know it’s not your style but really, maybe we should talk about it,” I say, as gently as I can. “And there’s something else. I saw you at the Brooklyn Flea yesterday. Having a fight with some French guy.”

“Oh. Him.”

“Yeah, him. And I guess you don’t remember this either, but we saw him at the party.”

“Did I do anything?” Angie clutches my arm.

“No…” I say. “Well, you called him a fuckpuppet. He pretended he didn’t know you.” I pause. “He was with another woman.”

Angie lies back, puts her pillow back over her face, and screams again. I lean forward and grab it off her.

“Talk. Now,” I say. “Everything.”

She sighs, grabs a cigarette from the pack on her nightstand, and puts it, unlit, in the corner of her mouth. “His name is Marc. We met in Cannes last year, but he lives in SoHo. Remember when I told you I was skiing in Vail with my UCLA friends?”

I nod.

“I lied. I spent the week with him, skiing in Megève. He told me then that he was married, but separated, and that we might have to cool off while he got a divorce, blah blah blah.” She sighs. “Then … anyway, I went to Cannes again this summer with Annabel, remember?” Angie always calls her mother by her first name. “She wanted some mother-daughter bonding time or some shit like that. I saw him there with his wife. I confronted him, he confirmed it, but said that they were having a trial separation and were together for a family gathering and he only loved me.… God, I hate him, he’s just like my fucking father, just lying all the time. It’s my fault. I’m a gullible cliché.”

“It is
not
your fault! And he’s a total cockmonkey!” I exclaim.

Angie stares at the ceiling, lost in thought.

“And so … then what? How did you get from there to slapping him at the Brooklyn Flea?”

Angie turns to face me, propping the still-unlit cigarette in the side of her mouth. “On Friday night I met up with Lord Hugh and his friends, remember? But Hugh ignored me, so I texted Marc just to boost my ego—or compound the rejection, whatever. He replied, and then later on, when I was drunk enough, I went to his place.”

“Well, sex is just sex,” I say, trying to make her feel better.

“I’m starting to think sex is never just sex.… Anyway, I’m surfing the crimson wave, and he’s not into that. I think I dislocated my jaw from blow jobs, actually.” She rubs her face, frowning. I laugh, and she hits me with a pillow.

“Then what happened?”

“Well, I made him take me to the Brooklyn Flea yesterday to force him to act like a boyfriend, I guess. And that’s when he told me he really was back with his French bitch wife and he had to go pick her up from the airport, like, immediately. And he thought it was best if we never saw each other again.” Angie’s voice is whispery with tears. “I guess he thought I wouldn’t make a scene in public.”

“How dare some ancient Euro-trash piece of
merde
treat you like that!” I feel hot with anger. God, I
hate
it when my friends get mistreated. “Do you want to get revenge? We could egg his house, or something.”

“He’s not worth it. I knew about that party last night because I stalked him on Facebook yesterday when I got back from the Flea. I guess that, later on, drunk me decided I’d surprise him. That’s pathetic, right? After the way I made you stop Eddie-stalking that summer.…”

“No, no, it’s totally understandable.” And I don’t want to think about Eddie. Or that summer. “Is that all?” I say. “I mean, is that all that happened with Marc?”

A pause. Angie closes her eyes again. A signal that the conversation is over.

“Okay, you don’t have to talk about it.… Tell me about the Spring Lounge instead.”

“It was a birthday thing for someone from Penn. It sucked. I got kicked out for smoking a joint at the bar.… Screw it, I don’t care. I’m leaving soon, you can come and visit me in L.A. and have lots of crazy sex with hot actors.”

“Sounds great.” I’d hoped that Rookhaven was growing on her, the way it is on me. That she was starting to feel like it was, I don’t know. Home. Guess not. Time to change the subject.

“I bought a food truck.”

“What the what?”

I tell her the whole story, omitting the Cosmo details.

“I love it,” she says. “Sounds like a surefire hit. Maybe you can employ me. Get me away from the Bitch.”

“I can’t afford to employ anyone. And I don’t think you should call your boss the Bitch.”

“Why not? She’s a total dog. It’s the correct terminology.”

“Funny. Want to help me go food shopping and then make the salads?”

“Can I watch and make sarcastic comments instead?” Angie climbs out of bed, still wearing her clothes from last night.

“If you shower first and change out of that thing, you can do anything you like.”

“Oh, wow.” Angie sits back down on the bed. “Holy shit, I am hung-over.”

When I get back to my room, there are two missed calls from my parents. No message. For a second, I consider calling them back. But I can’t. And not because I don’t want that whole we’re-coming-to-New-York-to-force-you-to-leave-Brooklyn conversation. But because I have a job to do. I have a business to start.

Step one: ingredients.

What I thought would be a straightforward shopping expedition turns into a scavenger hunt for the right ingredients, disposable salad boxes and knives and forks and tiny salad dressing things, and then paint for the truck. Angie’s so hungover that she only sticks around for an hour, then bails to go get a restorative mani-pedi.

By the time I get back to Rookhaven, it’s 3:00
P.M.
and I’ve spent every penny I had leftover after buying Toto. The idea of ten thousand dollars gone in just twenty-four hours is petrifying. It gives me a sort of giddy sick feeling … like financial vertigo.

But you have to spend money to make money, right? And this is business. I get back to Rookhaven and find Coco, Julia, and Madeleine draped over the sofas in the living room, watching a Kardashian marathon.

“Okay! Let the food trucking begin!” I say.

They don’t move.

I wash my hands, put the chicken breasts in the oven, and write my menu. I’ve decided to do it elementary-school style.

Salad 1 = chicken + avocado + snow peas + beets + cherry tomato + reduced-fat feta + baby greens

Salad 2 = turkey + watercress + almonds + apple + celery + reduced-fat cheddar + baby greens

Dessert 1 = brownie (– fat)

I would eat those salads. I think.

And low-fat string cheese was on special at Trader Joe’s, so I bought eight packs of them, too. I’ll charge twenty-five cents more than I paid and make a profit. (I am pretty proud of myself for thinking of that.)

I called Lara and Phil as I was driving around Brooklyn to ask how to book Toto into the food-truck-commissary thing. They’re hooking me up with their contact. There are commercial kitchens, too, so I’ll prepare all my food there. Cooking in Rookhaven is a teeny tiny sanitation violation. Even though I’m, like, totally clean.

“Why don’t you add sunflower seeds? Or candied walnuts?” says Coco, standing at the doorway, holding
Daddy-Long-Legs
by Jean Webster open against her chest. I think she’s been reading on the stoop. “Or raisins, or cranberries?”

“Calories,” I say. “I mean, you’re right, they’re delicious. But this is SkinnyWheels. I gotta deliver what I promise, the only high-fat items are the almonds and the avocado, which are so good for you, it’s like eating Crème de la Mer.…” I’m rambling.

I look at the salad menu and frown. “Sheesh, I wish I knew more about cooking. I seriously have no idea if these are okay, you know?”

“They look great,” says Coco reassuringly.

I Googled a few low-fat salad dressing recipes on my cell as I was shopping, and purchased extra-virgin olive oil, avocado oil, red wine vinegar, cider vinegar, raspberry vinegar, Worcester sauce, whole-grain mustard, Dijon mustard, freshly squeezed lemon juice, and natural fat-free plain yogurt.

I figure I’ll improvise something.

Hmm.

“Avocado oil and cider vinegar,” says Julia from the doorway. I look around: Coco’s gone. I didn’t even notice. I’ve been kind of preoccupied.

“It has to be reduced fat.” I make an anguished face. “I mean, you need some fat for taste, and if you don’t eat a bit of fat you never feel full, but.…”