Brooklyn Girls (39 page)

I share an apartment with four other girls in an old brownstone called Rookhaven, in Carroll Gardens, an area of Brooklyn in New York City. I’d love to live in Manhattan, but I can’t afford it, and my best friend Pia hooked me up with a cheap room here after graduation.

I didn’t think I’d stick around long, but it’s the sort of place where you get cozy, fast. Décor-wise, it’s a cheesy time capsule, but after six months of living there I even like that about it. What bad things can possibly happen in a kitchen that has smelled like vanilla and cinnamon forever?

I walk up the stairs to my room. “Is anyone home?”

No answer. No surprise. Everyone’s at work. Until a few weeks ago I was working as a sort of freelance PA to Cornelia Pace, the spoiled daughter of some socialite my mother knows. Basically, I ran errands (dry-cleaning, tailoring, Xanax prescriptions) for her and she handed me cash when she remembered. She’s in Europe skiing for the next, like, month. She said she’d call me when she gets back. I’ve got enough cash to survive until then. I hope.

And no, I don’t take handouts. My folks paid my rent when I first moved in last year, and always gave me a generous allowance, but between you and me, they don’t have the money anymore. A few investments went sour over the past few years, and my dad told me at Christmas that they were basically broke, which freaked me out completely. I’d never seen him look that defeated, and I can’t be a financial burden on him anymore. Especially with the bombshell my mother just dropped.
They’re divorcing.…

Do you think that an empty, cold, gray house at 2:00
P.M
. in February, with nothing to do and no dude to text, might be one of the most depressing things in the history of the fucking universe? Because I do. I feel like my toes have been cold forever.

Oh God, I need a vacation. I want sandy feet and clear blue skies and hot sun on my skin and that blissed-out exalted tingly-scalp feeling you get when you dive into the ocean and the cool seawater hits the top of your head. I crave it. We had the best vacations when I was little. My dad taught me how to sail and fish, and Annabel would stop wearing makeup and not worry about her hair for a few weeks. It was the closest to perfect we came as a family.

I flop down on my bed and look around my bedroom. Closet, drawers, bookshelf with back issues of
Women’s Wear Daily
and Italian
Vogue,
an old wooden desk with my sewing machine and drawings and photos that I never get around to organizing, and clothes on every surface. Particularly the floor.

Clothes are my life, but not in a pretentious-label-whore kind of way. I honestly love H&M as much as Hermès (and my only Hermès was a present from an ex, anyway). Making clothes or styling clothes or thinking about clothes, or mentally planning how I could pick apart and resew my existing clothes, my future clothes, my friends’ clothes, and sometimes, to be honest, total strangers’ clothes—is my favorite pastime. I can lose hours just staring into space, thinking about it. Apparently, this sartorial daydreaming gives my face a sort of detached “fuck-off” expression.

I wonder how many of my problems have been created by the fact that I look like an über-bitch when I’m really just thinking about something else?

Sighing, I reach into my nightstand where there’s always my latest Harlequin romance novel, M&Ms, cigarettes, and Belvedere vodka. I read a lot of romance novels; they’re my secret vice. But they’re not going to be enough today. All I want—no, all I
need
—is to forget about everything that’s wrong with my life. I need to escape.

And I know exactly how to do it.

Cheers to me.

CHAPTER 2

“What’s up, ladybitches?” I stride into the kitchen and do a twirl hello.

It’s just past 7:00
P.M.
, and everyone’s home from work. They’ve all assumed their usual kitchen places: Pia’s texting her boyfriend, Madeleine’s reading
The New York Times,
Julia is answering e-mails on her BlackBerry while eating pasta, and Coco is baking. How productive. La-di-dah.

“Angelface!” exclaims Julia. “You’re just in time. Deal me in.”

Julia’s the loud, sporty, high-fiving, hardworking banking trainee, former-leader-of-the-debate-team type, you know the kind of girl I mean? I think her hair automatically springs into a jaunty ponytail every time she gets out of bed. We didn’t get along that well at first, but actually, I think she’s pretty fucking cool. She really makes me laugh. Maybe it just takes me a long time to get to know people. Or for them to get to know me.

“Oh, I’ll deal you in,” I say, picking up the cards I always keep over the fridge. “I’ll deal you in real good, just the way you like it.”

Julia snorts with laughter. “You make everything sound dirty.”

“Everything is dirty,” I reply. “If it’s done right.”

“What’s on your top?”

“Lingonberry juice. Duh.”

“Have you been drinking?” asks Pia, looking up.

Pia’s my best friend, and she used to be a reliable party girl, a high-maintenance and hilarious drama queen lurching from meltdown to meltdown, but then she went and got her shit together. Now she has a serious career in food trucks and a serious boyfriend named Aidan. She even looks after his dog when he’s away, that’s how serious it is. Serious, serious, serious. I’m happy for her—no, I really am, I’ve known Pia forever, she’s so smart and funny and she deserves to be happy. But I miss her. Even when she’s right here, it sort of feels like she’s not really here. If that makes sense.

She stares at me now. She’s absolutely gorgeous: mixed Swiss-Indian heritage, green eyes, and long black hair. “Seriously, ladybitch. Have you?”

“No!… Okay, that’s a lie. Yes, I’ve been drinkin’. Actually, I’ve been drinkin’ and sewin’,” I say, shuffling the cards so fast they look like a ribbon.

Drinkin’ and sewin’ was actually kind of fun. One part of my brain was focusing on the sewing, the other part was skipping around my subconscious, thinking about movies and books and Mani—the fuckpuppet who dumped me last year—and what my grandmother taught me about pattern cutting and wondering when my father would call.

“Angie, it’s a school night,” says Pia. She’s wearing her version of corporate attire: skinny jeans, heeled boots, and a very chic jacket that I may have to borrow one day. “Don’t you have to work for Cornelia in the morning?”

“Cornelia doesn’t exactly need me to be firing on all cylinders,” I say. “Or any cylinders.” I haven’t exactly gone into details about my current job situation with the girls.

Pia narrows her eyes at me, and I ignore her.

“If you’re all done, I’m taking the rest of this lasagne down to Vic,” says Coco. Vic’s our ancient downstairs neighbor, who has lived in the garden-level apartment for longer than I’ve been alive.

“Good idea, Cuckoo,” says Julia.

Coco beams. Such an approval junkie. Coco is Julia’s baby sister, and a total sweetheart. She’s a preschool assistant, and whenever I think of her, I think of Miss Honey from that Roald Dahl book
Matilda
.

I take a swig of my drink and look around. How is it I can still feel alone in a room full of people? “How were your days at the office, dears?”

“Shit,” say Julia and Madeleine at the same moment Pia says, “Awesome!”

“I’m on a project so boring, I may turn into an Excel spreadsheet,” says Madeleine. She’s kind of an enigma. (Wrapped in a mystery. Hidden in a paradox. Or whatever that saying is.) Accountant, Chinese-Irish, smart, snarky, does a lot of running and yoga and shit like that. Pia once described her as “nice but tricky.” Recently Madeleine joined a band, as a singer, but she hasn’t let us see them live yet. Who the fuck wants to be a singer but doesn’t want anyone to actually hear them sing?

“At least your work environment isn’t hostile. I sit next to a total douche who stares at my boobs all day,” says Julia.

“To be fair, your rack is enormous,” I point out. Julia frowns at me. Oops. That comment might have pissed her off. Oh well, if you can’t laugh at your own boobs, what can you laugh at, right?

“Well, I’m happy. SkinnyWheels Miami has doubled profits in under a month,” says Pia. SkinnyWheels is a food truck empire she started six months ago. You know the drill: tasty food that won’t make you fat. Sometimes I think Pia has literally replaced our friendship with a truck. Well, a truck and a hot British dude who has his own place, so she practically lives there. But it’s not like I can beg her to be my best friend again, right? I’m a grown-up. Adult. Whatever.

“Actually, I’m happy, too. My boss said ‘great job’ again today. That’s the second time this year!” Julia looks insanely proud, and spills pasta sauce on her suit jacket. “Fuck! Every fucking time!”

“Does anyone want herbal tea?” says Madeleine, standing up.

I raise my glass. “Could you dunk the tea bag in my vodka?”

Madeleine gazes at me. “Is that a withering look?” I say. “Because it needs practice. You just look a bit lost and constipated. Maybe you should— Oh, no, wait. Now
that’s
withering.”

Madeleine ignores me.

“How about you, Coconut?” I look over at Coco. “Good day shaping young hearts and minds?”

She grins at me, all freckles and blond bob and oven mitts, and her usual layers and layers of dark “hide me!” clothes. “I got pooped on.”

“Someone took a
shit
on you?” I pause. “People pay good money for that.”

“Ew! Gross! He is four years old! And it was a mistake. I hope.”

No one asks me how my day was, and they all go back to their own things, so I get up and open the freezer, where I always keep a spare bottle of Belvedere, and fix myself another three-finger tipple, on the rocks, with a slice of cucumber and a few crumbs of sea salt. My dad taught me this drink; we drank it together at the Minetta Tavern last time he was in Manhattan, about a month ago. But he didn’t say anything about a divorce.

Cheers to me.

Several swigs later, I take a cigarette out of my pack and prop it in the corner of my mouth, and look around at the girls, so calm and happy together, so sure of one another and their place in the world. I can’t remember the last time I felt like that.

My phone buzzes. Finally! A text from Stef.
Just woke up. Making a plan. xoxo

It’s weird the way he ends texts with
xoxo,
I think, making myself another drink. What is he, a nine-year-old girl?

“Oh, Angie, there’s mail for you.” Julia points at some parcels on the sideboard. “What the hell do you keep ordering?”

“Stuff.” I start opening them. Buttons from a funny little button shop in Savannah, a bolt of yellow cotton from a dress shop in Jersey, and a gorgeous 1930s ivory lace wedding dress that I bought for two hundred dollars on eBay when I was drunk last weekend.

Julia screws up her face at the dress. “Wow. That is fucking disgusting.”

This riles me up, for some reason, though the shoulder pads and puffed sleeves
are
a little Anne of Green Gables Does
Dynasty
. “This lace is exquisite,” I snap. “And the bodice structure is divine, so I’m gonna take the sleeves off and make a little top.”

“Good luck with that,” says Julia, with a laugh in her voice, which again, really pisses me off.

“I’m not taking fashion advice from someone who wears a double-breasted green pantsuit to work.”

“This pantsuit is from Macy’s! And who died and made you Karla Lagerfeld?”

“You mean Karl Lagerfeld.”

“I know that! I was making a joke.”

“Really? What was the punch line?”

“Kids, play nice,” says Pia, a warning in her voice.

“I am nice,” says Julia. “Angie’s the one living in a vodka-fueled dream world. I can’t even remember the last time I saw her sober.”

“That is a total lie! I was sober when I saw you this morning! As you headed out the door with your pantsuit and gym bag and laptop like the one percent banker drone that you are!”

“Okay, that’s enough!” Pia says. “Both of you say you’re sorry and make up.”

“Fuck that. I’m out of here.”

I slug my vodka, head upstairs, throw on my sexiest white dress from Isabel Marant, some extremely high heels, my fur/army coat, take a moment to smear on some more black eyeliner, and stomp down to the front door. I love wearing white. It makes me feel clean and pure, like nothing can touch me.

I can hear the girls talking happily again in the kitchen, ruffles smoothed over, conversation ebbing and flowing the way it should. Without me.

For a second, just as I close the front door, I’m overwhelmed by the urge to run back in and say sorry for being a drunk brat. To try to find my place as part of the group, with all the ease and laughter and fun that entails.… But I don’t fit with them. Not really. Pia was my only tie to them, and she doesn’t even act like she likes me these days. Though I don’t like me much these days either.

Anyway, I already said I was leaving.

I call Stef from the cab. This time, he answers.

“My angel. Got a secret bar for you. Corner of Tenth and Forty-sixth. Go into a café called Westies and through the red door at the back.”

He always knows the best places.

I quickly check my outfit in the cab; this is a great dress. I tried to copy it last week, but failed; I can’t get the arms quite right.

And by the way, I tried to get a job in fashion when I first got to New York. I sent my résumé and photos of the stuff I’ve made and some designs I’d been sketching, to all my favorite New York fashion designers. No response. So then I sent all the same stuff to my second-favorite designers. Then my third favorites. And so on. No one even replied. I don’t have a fashion degree—my parents wanted me to get (I quote) a “normal” education first—and I don’t have any direct fashion experience at all. I thought maybe I could leapfrog over from my job with the food photographer I worked for last year, but then she fired me. (Well, I quit. But she would have fired me anyway.)

The problem is that when you’re starting out, there’s nowhere to start. And there are thousands—maybe tens of thousands —of twenty-two-year-old girls who want to work in fashion in New York. I’m a total cliché. And I hate that.