Super in the City (11 page)

“We’re supposed to keep a low profile, Zeph,” Tag reminded me ominously. “Or did you just love being chased out of the St. Regis?”

“Hey, I got chased out of the St. Regis, too!” said a deep, familiar voice. We all looked up and there, close enough to stroke the stubble on his perfect cheek, was the one and only Dover Carter smiling down at us from his awesome height.

I was used to seeing celebrities on the street, but I rarely looked them in the eye, because I wanted to demonstrate that
we New Yorkers were sophisticated enough to grant them the privacy they sought… and I hoped one day to be rewarded for my self- restraint. Maybe I’d be doing some good deed like helping a family push their stalled car, when a celebrity—ideally Jill Amos from
Getting Warmer—
would fall into step beside me and together we’d push the car to a garage. Something sitcomishly funny would happen—a shoe lost in a pothole, uproarious miscommunication with the car’s owners—and we’d have a good belly laugh together, and then she would comment on how great it felt to be a real, regular person for a brief time, and our friendship would blossom as she sought refuge in my refreshingly unglamorous life. I’d introduce Jill to the Sterling Girls and we’d be the genuine friends she’d always wanted, refusing to be interviewed by the press and remaining reliably unimpressed by her fairy-tale lifestyle.

But if my current reaction to Dover Carter’s proximity was any indication, I had a long way to go before I qualified to become Jill Amos’s best friend. As I gazed up at the star of
Last Call, The Ecstasy,
and
Who Needs Mo?
and the voice of the kingly grasshopper in
Squashed!
my heart rate doubled and my vision narrowed.

Why was Dover Carter slumming it at a B-list bash? Dover Carter only made films that were historically or politically important. He showed up at Democratic fund- raisers and was unafraid to tout liberal ideals. He was the first guy in Holly wood to drive a Prius and install solar panels on the roof of his Malibu mansion. If someone had asked me for which movie star I’d most want to bear children, there was really only one answer. And now he was standing next to us, smiling sheepishly. I sank back down onto the lounge chair I’d been sharing with Lucy.

“Oh, yeah?” Tag looked up at him dubiously. “Why’d
you
get chased out?”

Lucy and I exchanged nervous glances. It was entirely possible that Tag had no idea who she was talking to.

“Paparazzi,” he said simply. No false modesty there. “You?”

Tag looked at him quizzically, trying to place him. Lucy and I groaned.

“We crashed the Princess of Spain’s birthday party.”

“Really?” Dover Carter said, crossing his arms and holding his elbows, a sweetly insecure gesture, like he was protecting himself. “Do you make a habit of doing that?”

“Yes,” Mercedes interjected. “We’re doing it now.”

Tag whirled around, furious. Mercedes shrugged and sipped her champagne.

“I’m glad you did.” Dover looked… shyly? … at Mercedes.

“Why?” Tag demanded. “You don’t know the first thing about us.”

Lucy and I watched mutely, like slow- witted spectators at a tennis match. I kept trying to think of something droll to offer up, but wisely continued to censor myself.

“Yes, I do,” the movie star said.

Oh, here it comes, I thought, already disappointed. A feeble pickup line revealing Dover Carter to be as gormless as the bulk of the single male population.

“You’re the third chair violist for the Philharmonic,” he said to Mercedes.

As exciting as it was to be in Dover Carter’s airspace, it was nearly as thrilling to see Tag speechless.

“How could you possibly know that?” Lucy blurted out. He smiled at her, and she leaned back, as if the sheer force of his gaze required her to seek shelter.

“I’m a groupie.” He spread his arms helplessly. “I try to schedule my shoots around your performances.”

“You’re bullshitting us,” Tag said, recovering quickly.

“ Ta- aag,” I managed to say.

Dover Carter, to his everlasting credit, just laughed. “Well, I purposely skipped some of last season. Too much Rock and Shostakovich. Maybe it’s unoriginal, but I’m a Mozart man. I think you guys are better at it, too.”

Mercedes nodded intently.

“Rock?” I asked, bravely trying to be a part of this historic conversation.

“Rachmaninoff,” Mercedes and Dover said together. I turned red.

“Did you catch Josh Bell’s concerto? You think he’s the real thing or an overrated pretty boy?” Mercedes asked earnestly.

And they were off. It would have been surreal, except that Dover seemed more in awe of Mercedes than she was of him. He was a genuine nerd, in the best sense. He knew the names and stats of nearly every member of the Philharmonic, savoring this bulk of largely unimportant information as if he were a baseball junkie. He knew who had joined when, and where they had played before, and what pieces they were best at. All he needed was trading cards.

“Let’s check out that fortune- teller,” Tag said in an uncharacteristically considerate gesture.

Mercedes and Dover didn’t notice the three of us sidling away.

“Is that really happening?” I asked, looking back at one of my oldest friends in an intimate tête- à- tête with last year’s sexiest man of the year (according to scientifically rigorous periodicals).

“Are we really going to a fortune- teller?” Tag asked disdainfully.

“I am,” Lucy told her firmly “I need to know when I’m going to meet my soul mate.” She steeled herself. “I’m prepared for her to tell me it’s never going to happen. I’m strong. I’m independent. I’ll be okay.”

Tag looked at me.

“Aren’t you curious?” I asked sheepishly.

Tag gave us a look of disgust and headed for the bar. Lucy and I got on line behind a square- jawed network weatherman who had a woman clinging to each arm.

A warm breeze rolled across the roof deck, sending the Chinese lanterns fluttering, and blowing the women’s hair across their faces, making it catch in their lipstick. This made the three of them laugh riotously, and I imagined the women recounting the incident the next day to other friends and laughing again with equal gusto. I was on the verge of a moment of snobbish superiority—windblown hair is what these people find funny?—when one of the women caught my eye and gave me a sweet, conspiratorial smile that belied her high-pitched giggle. I decided she was savvier than anyone I knew and that she would probably be anchoring the evening news long before I learned how to fix a running toilet.

I looked impatiently toward the front of the line and was rewarded by the sight of Adam Mason, one of my earliest objects of desire, emerging from the tent. He gave all of us waiting on line a thumbs- up and a white- toothed grin. I elbowed Lucy frantically, instantly awash in the same desperate longing I used to feel when I was ten, watching him cavort around a soundstage kitchen. Adam was not aging well, but Lucy clutched my hand and gasped, apparently also in thrall to our childhood crush. Dover Carter
and
Adam Mason, moonlight, free food, lily- pad- filled pool… this was turning into a stellar evening. And tomorrow I’d see Gregory. First- world moment approaching.

After the weatherman and his arm candy made a quick trip into the tent together, a hand beckoned from inside, and I grew jittery. I was afraid of being outed as a party crasher for the second time in a month. I started to veer off the line, but an
assistant pretty boy in tight black jeans parted the curtain and led me into the tent.

Seated at a table covered in candles and a pile of books (at thirty percent off the cover price) was a woman I vaguely recognized from the sides of buses. She was plump—as plump as you could be and still hold a job on network television—with a red bob. She wore Mardi Gras beads and exuded an unthreatening, matronly aura. I could see why people believed what she told them.

“I’m Renee Ricardo,” she said in a voice that was higher than I expected. “Thank you so much for coming out tonight to share
my
good fortune.” She gestured to a seat across the table. “Won’t you please sit down?”

The chair was warm, and I indulged a tingle at the thought of Adam Mason’s molecules clinging to my dress.

“Before you ask me your question, I’d like you to give me something to hold, preferably a piece of metal that’s always on your hand, maybe a ring or a watch. I can learn a lot about you from the energy.”

So this was all going to be a circus act. Politely, I pulled off the garnet ring my parents had given me on my twenty- first birthday and handed it over. I wondered how fast I could get out of there without offending her.

Renee held the ring between her palms in a prayer pose. I looked over at the assistant. He was thumbing through a copy of Renee’s book and chewing his fingernail.

“I’m getting a vibration, but it’s not strong enough. Do you have anything else? Let’s try your watch.”

I unclasped my watch, certain I was about to be outed as an imposter. It had to be the only Timex in the whole building.

“Oh, much better,” she said with her eyes closed, smiling. “I’m getting a lot. You have a very solid character and that’s making this easy.”

Well, I
am
pretty solid, I thought hopefully.

“Your guides are speaking to me. I’m getting a very strong maternal voice. Do you have a mother or grandmother who just passed over?”

“My aunt died this year!” I said excitedly.

“Oh, boy, does she love you. She is watching over you and she is so happy about something.” I tried not to think about the fact that I had talked to my aunt about twice a year while she was alive.

“She’s saying you recently switched jobs? Or, it’s hard to hear exactly… she thinks your current job is not exactly right for you.”

Why
hadn’t I gone to a fortune- teller before?

“Both,” I shouted. The assistant looked over at us. I lowered my voice. “Both. I recently switched, well, yeah, switched jobs
and
I don’t think it’s the right job for me!” I could barely catch my breath.

“Okay.” Renee opened her eyes and looked at me, smiling. “What would you like me to ask your aunt?”

My mind was reeling. This was a momentous opportunity. What did I most need to know?

How long will I be a super?

Will I ever stop looking for Hayden?

What am I going to be when I grow up?

“Am I supposed to get involved with Gregory Samson?” I blurted out.

Renee smiled at me.

“Wait!” I said. “I don’t want that to be my one question.”

“You can ask more than one question,” she said kindly.

“I can?” I thought about how to phrase what I wanted to know without letting on that I was responsible for disposing of people’s garbage and had no right to be at her book party. “Am I ever going to … to … find work that makes me happy?”

Renee closed her eyes again and furrowed her brow.

I fidgeted. The assistant spit out some chewed- off fingernail and looked over at us.

“Yes,” Renee said quietly. “You will be very happy. Some time soon, you will discover what it is you want to be doing—”

“How soon?” I interrupted. Was I imagining it or did a look of impatience flicker across her foundation- saturated face?

“In the next two years,” she said crisply. “And actually, you are going to spend your life with Gregory Samson. Con gratulations! Would you like to purchase a copy of my book at thirty percent off the cover price?”

A
FTER JUST TWO WEEKS, I WAS ALREADY RESIGNED TO
Mrs. Hannaham’s wake-up calls. When the phone rang the next morning, I wondered whether the sententious “early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise” had in fact been coined out of resignation: perhaps Ben Franklin just lived next door to Mrs. Hannaham’s annoying ancestors.

“There are strange people going into her apartment,” Mrs. Hannaham croaked into my ear at seven- fifteen.

My bladder was about to burst. I took the phone into the bathroom and sat down on the toilet.

“I’m sorry, who’s speaking?” I couldn’t resist needling her.

“Zephyr, this is Mrs. Compton Hannaham, your tenant on the garden level. What is that sound? Is something leaking?”

I
was leaking and I didn’t plan on stopping. I hoped my hearing was that good when I was her age.

“It’s the faucet,” I told her. “I’m doing dishes.”

“Make sure you use the Joy and not the Ivory. The Ivory doesn’t get the china as clean.”

“Gotcha,” I said, thinking about my chipped IKEA “china.” I rested my elbows on my knees and closed my eyes.

“So?”

“So what?”

“So there are strange people in her apartment,” Mrs. Hannaham growled.

“Whose apartment?” I said, cementing my place in hell for needlessly tormenting a lonely old woman.

“You know,” Mrs. Hannaham said ominously.
“Hers.”

I said nothing.

“Mrs.
Boureau.”

“What kind of strange people?” I was too tired to get off the toilet so I paged through an old water- stained
New Yorker,
skimming for cartoons.

“Men, women.
Unseemly
men and women. At all hours of the night.”

I suspected that Mrs. Hannaham construed any hour after eight as “all hours.”

“Okay. Well, I’ll talk to her about it.” I yawned loudly.

“You should take something for that cold,” she instructed before she hung up. For a moment, I pictured her shuffling around her white apartment, straightening the white feather boas she sometimes wore, looking through photos of Compton (no doubt in white frames), and I tried to feel sorry for her. I really tried.

I flushed the toilet and hurled myself back into bed. Now I could go back to thinking about Gregory and our definite future together, beginning with what I would wear when he came over to help fix my parents’ dryer that afternoon.

Renee Ricardo’s predictions the night before had been met with a certain amount of skepticism.

“You’re a damned fool,” Tag said. After Lucy had taken her turn inside the fortune- teller’s tent, we reconvened on a
corner of the roof that had an unfettered view of the Hudson River.