Nothing Can Keep Us Together (8 page)

Located at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-eighth Street, Bergdorf Goodman was one of the oldest and most beautiful luxury department stores in Manhattan. It was the first store Serena’s mother had ever taken her shopping in, and even though it was stuffier and more old-fashioned than Barneys or Bendel’s, it seemed like the appropriate place to buy her graduation dress. She’d asked Nate to come along only because she needed a second opinion, although with his standard uniform of well-worn knit polo shirts or white button-downs and khakis, Nate wasn’t exactly astute when it came to fashion.

“I wonder where Blair met him,” Serena mused aloud as Bergdorf’s sleek ivory-colored elevator whisked them up to the third floor.

Nate didn’t respond. He was staring at Serena’s boobs. They were hard looking, like the small Empire apples that grew on his family’s estate on Mt. Desert Island, Maine. He had taken a couple of Coach Michaels’s Viagras on his way to pick her up and he was pretty sure he was beginning to feel the effect. There was a lot of pressure down there, like a handless hand job, and if he didn’t do something about it soon, things were going to get kind of messy.

Like, how soon?

The elevator doors glided open and Serena was immediately drawn to a rack of exquisitely made white Oscar de la Renta suits—swishy pleated knee-length skirts and fitted jackets with cool white leather belts decorated with adorable little white leather bows.

“I don’t know why I even care,” she continued as she fingered the suits without even noticing that Nate was staring at her like she was a slice of extra-cheese pizza hot out of a Ray’s Original Pizza oven. “Blair will probably never talk to me again.”

“May I help you?” offered a bulky middle-aged sales-woman with a gold Bergdorf’s name tag that read JOAN. Joan was wearing a purple Chanel suit that did nothing for her lumpy hips and piano legs.

“I need to try these on in a size four.” Serena pointed to three of the white Oscar de la Renta suits. Until now she hadn’t thought of wearing a suit to graduation instead of a dress, but it seemed to make perfect sense. She’d never been the frilly-white-dress type anyway, and there was something so crisp and final about the suits that made them totally perfect for graduation.

Nate was practically bursting as he followed Serena and Joan to the ladies’fitting room. He stood just outside as Joan hung up the suits, closed the heavy gray velvet curtain, and then hurried off to find something else she thought Serena might like. Now was his chance.

He yanked the curtain open. Serena had unbuttoned her uniform. Her white polo shirt was around her neck and she was wearing only a flimsy white camisole instead of a bra underneath. “Hey,” she greeted him with a shy smile. “It’s okay if you come in.”

Nate yanked the curtain shut with one hand as he unbuckled his belt with the other. Go, go, go!

Serena began to remove one of the suits from the hanger. Then she noticed Nate staring at her with his pants around his ankles.

Hello?

“Nate, what are you doing?” His brilliant green eyes glittered and his thin lips parted hungrily, like he hadn’t eaten lunch or something. She giggled and crossed her arms over her chest. “They don’t have cameras in these things, do they?”

As if either of them cared?

He grabbed her camisole and yanked it away from her body, ripping it entirely in half in the process. Serena dropped the suit on the dressing room floor and grabbed him back. For once, Nate wasn’t weeping into a fistful of soggy tissues. She wasn’t about to miss this opportunity.

Nate was eternally grateful that Serena was Serena and not Blair. Blair would have wanted to dissect his behavior. She would have wanted to make a fuss or have an argument, while Serena just flicked away the remains of her camisole and helped him off with his shirt. “You didn’t tell me you were all hot and bothered.”

Slightly.

Nate grabbed the other pristine white satin Oscar suits off their hooks and scattered them at their feet. “Remember when we were in the tub at my house, the summer before tenth grade?” he told her urgently, pressing his lips against her neck.

Serena blushed again. How could she forget? It had been their third time. When they were both still counting.

“Let’s do the same thing again,” Nate practically shouted. “Pretend all these white dresses are the bubbles!”

Whoa. Who ever said boys lack imagination?

“Yes!”

“Oh, yes!”

“Found something you like, dear?” Joan, ever the helpful Bergdorf sales matron, poked her gray head through the opening in the thick velvet curtain. She stared at the confusion of tanned, writhing limbs and white satin on the floor of the dressing room and then quickly withdrew, popping a few blood pressure pills before attending to a new shipment of Missoni sweaters. That sort of vulgar behavior was completely unladylike and therefore completely un-Bergdorf’s, but there wasn’t much she could do. Serena van der Woodsen had opened a Bergdorf’s charge account when she was seven and had been a loyal customer ever since. And of course it was nice to see that she was so comfortable in the store.

Nate began to cry as soon as it was over. The Viagra had worn off just in time. “I just can’t believe you’re going to be wearing one of these,” he murmured, extracting the skirt to one of the suits from underneath his bare ass.

“Well, I haven’t even tried it on yet.” Serena let her head fall back, closing her enormous dark blue eyes as Nate pressed his soggy cheek into her hair. It was sweet and sort of feminine of him to cry after they’d done it, and she suddenly realized she was the stronger, more “masculine” one in their relationship. At least they’d finally done it. Now they were more authentically a couple.

That’s some couple.

“I already have this yellow Tocca dress I really like, anyway. Maybe I could bleach it or something,” she continued distractedly.

Then Nate’s mind began to wander, too, to his final history term paper.

Talk about multitasking!

He was writing about the origins of lacrosse, but would his history teacher, Mr. Knoeder, aka Mr. No Dick, think it was un-PC or whatever to write about an old Native American sport without really dealing with the politics of how the Indians had been treated in colonial times and all that? After all, Nate was going to Yale next year to play lacrosse, not to become some kind of lacrosse historian.

Obviously.

He propped himself up on one elbow and tugged a tissue out of his navy blue canvas Jack Spade book bag. He’d grown accustomed to carrying tissues.

“Maybe we should have gone to Bendel’s to look for dresses instead of here,” Serena mused, fingering the buttons on one of the suits.

Nah, their dressing rooms aren’t nearly as big.

Nothing Can Keep us Together

Why Blair had never been inside the Madison Avenue Oscar de la Renta boutique before was beyond her. The boutique was modeled after Mr. de la Renta’s home in the Dominican Republic, with imported Dominican coral stone walls, plaster palm trees, and a shoe display set up like a catwalk. The eveningwear was hung in a special lounge furnished with love seats from de la Renta’s furniture collection. Too bad Blair wasn’t in the market for a black tulle ball gown or she would have tackled Marcus and pulled him down on one of the toile love seats just to thank him for taking her there.

“Hello, Marthe,” Marcus greeted the amazingly beautiful, Amazon-like, Latina saleswoman. She was wearing a gold pouf skirt and a tight, hot pink short-sleeved sweater that were simultaneously fifties retro and ultramodern.

At first Blair’s hackles rose and she started to bare her fangs, but then she quickly realized that being jealous of anyone that impossibly tall, curvy, and gorgeous would be a total waste of time.

“Miss Waldorf is looking for a gown in white,” Marcus explained, putting his arm around Blair and totally erasing any jealous or irrational thoughts she’d ever had, or ever would have.

Wow, he is good.

Marthe nodded seriously and led them to a rack of white goddess gowns that would have looked stunning on Marthe, but that Blair already knew would make her look like a fat runt with no real cleavage to speak of. She was about to protest, but Marcus—bless him—had already figured it out.

“What about one of those suits?” he asked, walking over to finger an exquisite pleated white satin skirt. The skirt was paired with a fitted white satin jacket that sported the most perfect white leather belt around the waist, fastened with a nifty white leather bow.

“You have the perfect figure for his suits,” Marthe declared in a wonderful, thick accent. She strode over to the rack and selected three of the suits for Blair to try on. “And you are a size four, I am sure.”

“Maybe she is even a size two,” a sonorous male voice chimed in from behind them.

Blair whirled around, her heart already aflutter at being mistaken for a size two, and nearly choked on her own saliva when she saw who it was. Standing just a few feet away from her was Oscar de la Renta himself, wearing a perfectly tailored gray suit, a starched white shirt, and a pink tie, his handsome bald head looking like it had been oiled with olive oil, his gray-black eyebrows smoldering. Blair had seen him hundreds of times in the pages of fashion magazines and in the society columns but never in person. And for an old man, he was supremely sexy.

“Ah, Mr. de la Renta,” Marthe greeted her boss with a warm smile. “Miss Waldorf will wear your suits well, no?”

Mr. de la Renta looked Blair up and down and then flashed her an appreciative smile. “Very well,” he agreed. He turned to Marcus. “I missed your mother in Milan.”

“Hello, Uncle Oscar.” Marcus smiled broadly, stepped forward, and embraced the designer, hugging him affectionately. Blair nearly threw up all over the beautiful floor.

Uncle Oscar!?

Marcus chuckled and then touched her arm. “He’s not really my uncle, but he may as well be. My mother won’t wear anything but the clothes Uncle Oscar makes for her.”

Who could blame her?

For once, Blair was speechless. She felt exactly like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz when she wakes up after the Kansas cyclone and finds herself in Munchkinland, confronted by Glinda, the beautiful, good witch. Except that Blair wasn’t nearly as fat as Judy Garland. She was a size two!

“This way, Miss Waldorf,” Marthe instructed, leading the way to a large jade green–curtained dressing room. She hung up four suits on the hooks inside—two in size four and two in size two.

“Don’t worry, I’ll fit her, Marthe,” Mr. de la Renta called after them. “Let me just find my measuring tape.”

Blair was convinced she was dreaming, so whatever Mr. de la Renta said was fine with her. Marthe helped her into a size two skirt, which fit her like a dream, but as soon as she slipped her arms into the sleeves of the size two jacket, it was clear that the shoulders were going to be too tight. Marthe swapped it for the four, fastened the bow on the narrow leather belt, and then threw open the curtain.

Ta-da!

Blair put her hands on her hips and strutted out of the dressing room like a runway model, swishing the pleated skirt from side to side, a huge grin plastered to her face. Why hadn’t she thought of wearing a suit like this before? Not that there were many suits like this one. It was elegant and tarty at the same time—totally chic, but most of all, unique.

“Blimey,” Marcus breathed. “You’re stunning.”

And so are you! Blair almost blurted out. Not only was Lord Marcus breathtakingly handsome and royal, he was bosom buddies with the most amazing fashion designer in the universe.

Mr. de la Renta frowned and shook out his measuring tape. “The waist is all wrong,” he fretted, tugging on Blair’s jacket. “And the bodice is too high.” He undid the belt and unfastened the buttons on the jacket, yanking it roughly away from Blair’s arms. “You may keep the skirt, darling. But please, may I make you a jacket that fits?”

May he?

Blair wished Serena or one of her other classmates would walk by and see her standing in the middle of the Oscar de la Renta boutique wearing only her shell pink La Perla bra and one of “Uncle Oscar’s” gorgeous pleated skirts, getting fitted for her graduation outfit by Oscar de la Renta himself. She glanced at Marcus, who grinned back at her and then silently placed his right hand over his heart, his emerald green eyes shining with adoration.

Whoa.

Blair had to force herself not to pee in her pants. She was so happy, she wasn’t sure if she could stand it.

“Hold still,” Mr. de la Renta instructed as he lifted her arms and slipped his measuring tape around her 34Bs. Maybe it was the fact that she was surrounded by beautiful men and beautiful clothes, but Blair had the most ridiculous urge to lick his shiny, sexy, bald head. She giggled, wobbling a little in her bare feet as he slid the measuring tape down to measure her hips. “Hold still!”

She squeezed her eyes shut and did her best not to move, truly believing that when she opened them again, she’d find she’d died and gone to heaven.

Gossipgirl.net

Disclaimer: All the real names of places, people, and events have been altered or abbreviated to protect the innocent. Namely, me.

Open call

In case you haven’t heard, that weirdo indie film director Ken Mogul has realized no one is ever going to pay much attention to him until he makes a big blockbuster movie, and so he is making one. He’s also on a mission to discover the next hot young actress, so he’s having an open call for his new feature film, Breakfast at Fred’s, at the restaurant of the same name in Barneys this Saturday. The movie is a remake of Breakfast at Tiffany’s with an entirely teenage cast. Guess who’s going to be first in line to try out? And guess who absolutely cannot act?

But guess who can??!

Hmmm … will they choose the girl who definitely knows how to make herself look the part but has no talent, or the girl with talent who doesn’t look anything like Audrey Hepburn? Sounds like one of those vacuous catchphrases from America’s Next Top Model, my all-time favorite love-to-hate-it show.

Prestigious boarding school to expand art curriculum

Aren’t I just full of all the latest news? Anyhoo, in case anyone’s interested, Waverly Prep, a prestigious boarding school in the upper Hudson Valley, is looking for budding young Picassos and Monets. They’re expecting a rush of artsy new applicants this fall, but we know of one particular still-schoolless soon-to-be-sophomore who simply can’t wait that long. (You don’t really want to go to public school, do you, J?)

Celebrity body doubles

Britney’s got one. Leonardo’s got one. And even some of the regulars on New York’s society circuit have them. Apparently fashion designer Oscar de la Renta is so much in demand at parties all over the world that he sends his clones to the parties he doesn’t care to attend, and to his Madison Avenue boutique to keep the staff on their toes. His body doubles are all relatives of his from the Dominican Republic, and some of them even have his name, so it really isn’t a stretch for them to impersonate their famous cousin. Now, if I could just get myself a body double to attend my final exams so I could concentrate on resting up for the parties after graduation!

St. jude’s lax coach investigating viagra theft

This warning came in the form of an e-mail, and caught me quite off guard:

Dear Gossip Girl,

Please let your readers know stealing is a serious matter. Whoever took my prescription for Viagra—and I’m pretty sure it was a senior on my lax team—will not graduate! Thank you for your help.

michaels

Any advice on how I should respond?

Sightings

S and B, both with huge shopping bags, walking out of Bergdorf Goodman and the Oscar de la Renta boutique, respectively. Guess they got lucky and found the graduation dresses of their dreams! An unshaven and more-neurotic-than-usual-looking D buying a collection of Pablo Neruda love poems at B&N. Has he gone over the edge this time? Wait, what am I talking about—he always goes over the edge. V in the CVS in downtown Williamsburg, loading up on Jergens antibacterial shower gel. All those prehookup and posthookup showers—gotta be prepared. J, with her brother, in the bookstore, reading The Best Public Schools in NYC. Has she given up on boarding school already? Hey, J—see above. You’d be surprised what can happen in the last few weeks of school. Kids going wild, getting kicked out right and left. You just gotta have faith. It’s like that song from West Side Story: “There’s a place for us! …”

I’ll stop singing now and pretend to study for my finals.

See you at the open call at Barneys on Saturday morning—who won’t be there?

You know you love me.

gossip girl

Nothing Can Keep us Together