Girls We Love (4 page)

“David?” she wailed. “You're upset, aren't you. I know, I know. I didn't think the prison guard part was right, either. We'll do better. I'll make Ric come up with something amazing for you to do.” She put her head back against his chest. “But David? The important thing is we're together. Right? David?”

“Is that what I think it is?” Philippa Frady's girlfriend of a few months muttered disgustedly when she saw the white horse. Her name was Stella, and she was a junior at Barnard. “This is like some bizarre, candy-coated 1950s fantasy of girlhood.” Stella's eye had begun to twitch. “If you'll excuse me.”

Philippa watched as her older girlfriend flipped open her phone and walked over to a corner of the restaurant to make a call. Stella had been making calls all day. She had severe features and wore a stiff-collared shirt, and she always did things with a determined seriousness. Right now, she was probably calling the Barnard paper to report pre-feminist doings. She was their art critic.

When Philippa was sure that Stella was out of sight, she turned and giggled apologetically at the couple they had come to Liesel Reid's sweet sixteen with. Liesel was a
friend of hers from elementary school, before Philippa's parents left their natural setting, the Upper East Side, for the West Village. “I really like the Boat House,” she said softly. “Don't tell Stella, though, okay?”

She'd meant it as a joke, but Mickey Pardo, her last boyfriend as a straight person, and Sonya Maddox, this bi girl she'd met at Starlight, didn't laugh. Sonya had seemed like a good potential playmate for Mickey, because when Philippa first saw her she was dancing on the bar to that unbearably catchy Kelly Clarkson song, and Philippa knew from personal experience that Mickey liked that sort of thing. So she played matchmaker.

Plus, Philippa had been brought up with manners, and it just seemed like good manners to make sure your ex was taken care of once you'd moved on. Even if he was sort of trouble, and even if her parents were really uptight and had never approved of him in the first place. But the loyalty she felt toward Mickey went way back, and it was hard to just stop feeling a thing like that.

As far as Philippa was concerned it was a perfect setup. By double-dating, she and Mickey could hang out free of any of the lingering tension from their long-term relationship, and plus, Sonya could be her new bi/queer-friendly buddy. Mickey had only met Sonya three hours ago and they already seemed to be talking to each other with their eyes the way couples do. Philippa sensed that they had already planned out a
whole summer of antics, and she wasn't sure why this made her feel weird.

“Whatever,” Sonya said, tossing her long, straight, dyed-black hair over her shoulder. “She's just pissed 'cuz she doesn't get to ride the horse.”

Sonya had thin lips, piercing blue eyes, long, dirty-blond roots, a very high forehead, and a pink face, and she was wearing a jeans skirt and a wife-beater. Her outfit made her look tough, but also like a girl who just wanted to have fun. Philippa could tell just from looking at her that she smoked a lot of pot.

“Lesbians.” Mickey rolled his eyes and then instinctively protected his chest with his arms. Sonya's and Philippa's punches landed hard. “Hey, I'm outnumbered. Quit it!”

Then Philippa ruffled Mickey's thick, dark hair affectionately, and forgot that she had come to the party with somebody else. It was only earlier that year that she'd come out to Mickey and then broken up with him. They had gone out for years, so she still had brief lapses of relationship amnesia.

Sonya put her inexplicably athletic body against Mickey and kissed him. Philippa caught a little glimpse of tongue. That jogged her memory.

“Anyway,” Philippa said, to remind them she was still there, “I think the horse is really pretty.”

“Oh, me too,” Sonya said, pulling her mouth away
from Mickey but leaving her arm draped around his shoulder. “I would definitely ride it.”

Mickey was shorter than all his friends, and stocky almost, and Sonya was wearing high wedge heels, so she was a few inches taller than him. Philippa had paired ballet flats with her Built by Wendy madras summer dress—it was still sort of her habit to wear shoes that kept her shorter than Mickey. She noticed for the first time that Mickey, under his basic Dickies cutoffs and white T-shirt, was wearing white clogs. Improbably, he looked cute in them.

“What do you think is going on over there?” Mickey asked.

“Some kind of big to-do,” Philippa said, raising her arched eyebrows in the direction of the white horse, which was now moving restlessly amid all the confusion at the center of the crowd.

“Whoa, that little man with the bow tie is turning all tomatolike,” Mickey said.

“He agrees with your girlfriend, apparently,” Sonya said, smiling at Philippa. “Horses are definitely a pre-feminist fantasy of—”

“Oh, hold up,” Philippa said, pretending like she hadn't heard the reference to her girlfriend. If they all kept dwelling on it she thought she might cry. And also, she knew that her girlhood had basically been of the pre-feminist sort, and she wanted to keep
the conversation clear of that. “Look at that. Liesel's totally yelling back.”

“Damn,” Mickey said. “I would not want that chick yelling at me. That's that crazy preppy girl Arno was hooking up with last winter. The one who always sounds like she's talking baby talk.”

“Um, yeah? It's her party, Mickey,” Philippa said impatiently.

“Right, right,” Mickey said. “Hey, look! She's getting down off the horse.”

“I love how she's wagging her finger at the bow-tie dude. That's out of control!” Sonya laughed. She had a deep, throaty laugh. “Oh my God, she's really telling him off.”

Liesel Reid did indeed appear to be pissed off, and all the people around her were staring at the bow-tie man in a kind of menacing way, too. “I sort of feel for that guy, actually. Liesel really knows how to throw a fit,” Philippa said. “I was with her at Saks once, and the gift-wrap girl forgot to clip the tag… it was brutal.”

“Oh, whatever. She's just going to tell him he ruined her party and he's going to grovel and later her family will tip him double.” Sonya shrugged. “What I'm worried about is the horse. I'm a vegan.”

Later, Philippa would return to that moment as the beginning of her questioning the wisdom of matchmaking.

“Wait a minute… ” Mickey said. He said it kind of slowly, like an idea was coming to him. Then he leaned over and whispered into Sonya's ear. Her mouth opened slightly like she'd been told something unbelievable and grand, and then she nodded vigorously. “Okay, c'mon,” Mickey said, grabbing her hand and dragging her into the crowd. “Catch you later, sister,” he called behind him. Sonya gave Philippa a thumbs-up and mouthed
thank you
as she followed Mickey in Liesel's direction.

Philippa watched as Mickey and Sonya weaved through the crowd, which was looking a little drunk by now. Mickey was always pulling these dangerous, crazy stunts—when they had first started going out it seemed exciting, but then it felt scary, and then after that just sort of old. Now, watching him slip through all those loud, buzzed people to lift this other girl up onto a horse, Philippa was struck by how fun it looked.

“Sorry,” Stella said. Philippa turned to see that her girlfriend had returned and was standing right behind her. “I had to make that,” Stella said as she slipped her cell phone into her trousers pocket.

“No problem,” Philippa said. She could never help but be impressed by Stella, who was always thinking of things that had to be said out loud and getting calls that she had to take.

“Where'd Mickey and Sonya go?”

“Um, they—” Before Philippa could say anything else, a collective gasp reverberated through the crowd. She turned and saw Mickey and Sonya on the back of the big white horse. Which was charging through the Boat House.

“Oh my God,” Philippa whispered gleefully. She heard Mickey yell “Adios, suckers” just before the horse made it to the front door and disappeared in a flash of white. She turned to her girlfriend, expecting to see an expression of awed disbelief.

Stella smiled a deeply sarcastic smile. “Are we having fun yet?” she said in a tone that seemed designed to kill any possibility of fun.

“Look, you let them steal my hawsie!” Liesel Reid shouted at Georges Langley, the manager of the Boat House, who was supposed to be making sure her sweet sixteen party was fabulous. Thus far, she didn't think he was doing an especially good job. “Are you trying to ruin my party?”

“Miss Reid,” Georges stammered. “You don't seem to understand—”

“I mean, do you know who my family is? Or who I wuhk for? I may be in high school, but I've been in PR for two semesters now, so if you think… ” Liesel might have gone on, except that she noticed that Georges's bow tie was pathetically askew. And anyway, yelling at a short, paunchy, middle-aged restaurant manager was beneath her, and so she huffed, and turned on her Louboutin heels. “Nevah mind, Georges,” she called over her shoulder as she headed for the bathroom to fix herself up.

Liesel was tall and pale, with the boyishly skinny body of an Eastern European runway model, and the kind of bone structure that screamed old money. Her parents were famous art collectors, and she was used to being stared at. But she also knew a thing or two about grace, which was why she was striding through a crowd of her enthusiastic friends and admirers and past the long bathroom line to splash some water on her face, wash off every bit of that unpleasant encounter, and put her charm back on.

When she reached the head of the line she smiled sadly at a girl in a sweater set and headband, who was pressing her knees together and gritting her teeth, and said, “You understand.”

“Of course, Liesel,” the girl said sweetly.

“You'll make sure nobody comes in?”

The girl nodded, and then Liesel pushed through the door.

She was carefully reapplying the mascara that brought out the cornflower blue of her especially round, especially wide eyes, when the door swung open.

“Hey, wait,” Liesel said, swiveling around from the mirror. When she saw who it was, her face brightened. “Oh, Awno!”

“Hey, Liesel,” he said softly. That was weird. Arno Wildenburger was not known for his soft voice. He was six feet tall—exactly as tall as Liesel, which was
only one of several reasons that they had always seemed like the perfect couple that hadn't quite happened yet. He had the kind of just-exotic-enough features that made it hard for a girl to stop picturing his face when she was kissing other guys. He was really downtown, and Liesel liked that about him.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. “We're pretty far from your scene.”

“Huh?” Arno looked almost hurt that she had said this. “You invited me. Don't you remember?”

“Oh, did I? I invited so many people,” Liesel said breezily. “But I'm glad you're here.”

“Anyway, I just wanted to say I'm really pissed that my friend stole your horse,” Arno went on, in the same weird, earnest voice. “I just wanted to make sure you were, you know, okay. And say that I was sorry. That whole stunt Mickey pulled was really childish.”

“Oh,” Liesel said coyly, trying to think of what had changed about Arno since the winter, when they'd last hooked up. “Is that why you're here? It's okay. It's not your fault. And anyway, that wasn't
my
horse. I just borrowed it for the day.”

“Um, so you're not upset?” Arno said. He shifted like he wasn't sure how to act anymore.

“Whatever,” Liesel said. “Get over here.”

Liesel was, after all, the daughter of people who had
made an art out of collecting art. And other precious objects. She didn't waste time. When Arno hesitated for a minute, she grabbed his ironic first season
American Idol
T-shirt and pulled him so that he was basically forced to push her against the wood-paneled wall of the ladies' room. He hesitated again, so she put his hands in place and started kissing him ferociously.

They made out for another ten minutes, in which Liesel remembered how much she liked making out with Arno, and also how great they looked together, which must have been why he'd made her invite list, and then she detached herself.

“We'd better go back into the party,” she said forcefully, because Arno didn't seem quite ready yet. “People will start to talk.”

“Yeah,” Arno said, brushing his dark mop of hair into place. “Sorry.”

Liesel tossed back her head and laughed, because really, sometimes the weirdest things came out of Arno's pretty mouth. “Don't be
sorry.
That was hot.”

She turned and started to fix her mascara in the mirror, and then redid the buttons of her dress. When Arno didn't say anything, she went on, “You're acting different somehow, but you can't deny that you still want it. We make a steaming hot couple.”

Arno shrugged and leaned his long frame against the
wall. “I'm a different person since we last, you know … I've been trying to change. Not be so shallow. I guess I just don't know if… ”

Liesel didn't hear the rest of what Arno was saying, because she was laughing with her whole body now. Feelings were nice and everything, but she didn't usually have time for them. “Oh Awno,” she said, when she managed to calm down. “That was a good one.” She refocused in the mirror for a minute, drawing her fingers over her perfect skin to make sure it was still perfect.

Then she met Arno's dark eyes in the mirror. He was staring at her, he couldn't help it, and for a moment she just stared back. Then suddenly she remembered inviting him and realized why it had seemed so important to do so. “Wildenbuwger, you should just accept your fate now.”