Love from London (10 page)

“Among his other useless talents, my brother happens to be a big womanizer. Just so you know.” She looks at me with narrowed eyes for long enough to make me wonder if she knows about the tea-cup encounter. “I hate every girl he’s ever brought home. He has complete shit taste in women.”

Feeling good, Love! I think about commenting, but realize it would just sound like I’m defending Asher when I would really just be defending myself so I just say, “Be careful with Tobias. Don’t get caught in another celebrity scandal.”

“It’s just Amsterdam,” Arabella says. “And only for a couple nights. But thanks for keeping my cover.”

“Sure,” I say. “I’ll tell them you’re working on a project with Keena and spending all day and night toiling away.”

I’m not going to blame my entire Choir audition on the letter I receive via the Mailroom Minder (the sweet old guy who moves slowly, inspiring guilt and an overly thankful me). I really don’t have time to read the whole thing, just the first couple of lines in Chris’s beautiful, neat handwriting, but I’m too curious and happy to hear from him to wait.

Dearest Love,

Greetings from the depths of winter at Hadley Hell. I mean Hall. Just when you thought the school of scandal couldn’t get worse, it has. I’m sure by now you know there was a fire in the dorms — Fruckner House is no longer. New Construction begins in the spring, after the ground has thawed and ashes have cleared, but for now the devil herself had taken up residence in the most unlikely of places. Yes, the one and only Lindsay Parrish, homeless after the middle-of-the-night blaze of gory (I write gory because a certain senior was caught in the elevator stance — that’s going down for those minds not in the gutter—s and had to stand outside naked in the snow waiting for the fire department). Anyway the point I’m trying to make but failing to is that the inhabitants of Fruckner have been dispersed all over campus — tripling up in the other girls’ dorms, farmed out to a couple of day student families, etc. But since Little Miss Bitch Parrish just can’t make do with the temporary housing her trustee mother has called in yet another favor and she’s living at your house with your dad. Yes, you read right.

Fruck me. I’m frucked.

“Are you ready? Please come this way.”

Sliding the pages back into the envelope, I shove the whole mess of messages back into my pocket.

I try to breathe from my belly as I’ve been instructed.

“Love Bukowski?” The Head Girl (not kidding) calls my name and motions for me to stand front and center. When I for some reason don’t exactly hit my mark and stand a half-inch to the left, the Head Girl says, “Millie, please show Miss Bukowski where to position herself.” Up your ass? I want to say but don’t — both because the thought of that in reality is not something I’m interested in and because I know they’d never let me audition and because my mood in altered by Chris’s dire news. Lindsay Parrish is living in my house? With my stuff? With my dad — is she like a single white female stalker who will steal my identity but have a better wardrobe?

Millie, still in her St. Paul’s formal uniform (blazer, skirt, knee socks, hair bow, beret — natch), fixes her hat so it doesn’t threaten to overtake her face and puts her hands on my shoulders. “Here.” I shuffle my feet. “No, just there.”

“Is this right?” I ask quietly. Millie nods and takes a seat at the table with Head Girl (her actual name has slipped past me in a plethora of double-barrel names and English cutie-pie boarding school nicknames). I feel like I’m on trial or in some lame movie where the audition is really tense and the girl thinks she won’t make it but then amazes everyone with her talent and fresh ideas that ultimately convince the pole-up-the-butt judges that she’s a rising star.

“What will you sing for us today?” Head Girl asks. She has perfect posture that reminds me to put my shoulders back and stand up tall. The result of this, of course is that my rib cage is open and my voice stronger, but also that my boobs look just that much bigger.

Of course I thought a ton about what song to sing — it’s the kind of thing where not only do I have to pick something that shows off some vocal range but also since the words and original artist will no doubt be subject to criticism or commendation, the song has to withstand both my rendering and the judgment of it. Looking at The Choir panel, I erase my settled on song, figuring that Jolie Holland is too obscure for them (hell, she’s somewhat obscure for me), anything from Mable’s discs is bound to be too American, and any Ella/Louie/Nina Simone/Chet Baker is too done.

Something palatable, something bland but sweet. “Ice Cream,” I say.

Your love is better than ice cream

Better than anything else that I’ve tried

Sure, it’s clichéd now, but it has decent vocal potential and doesn’t require a back-up band to sound good when singing it. To my surprise, The Choir seems to like my voice.

“Thank you,” they say and take some notes in their St. Paul’s binders. “If you just wait in the hall, we’ll give you the results soon.”

Soon=forty minutes later.

I follow Millie back into the audition room and use my useless breathing exercises from Body to try to center myself. Some girl rushes out of the room, clearly dealing with failure fallout after being told she didn’t make the cut. Dressed in crisp school uniforms are two young ladies smug enough that I know they’ve joined the ranks of The Choir. If I’m correct, that means there’s only one more spot. For me?

“Miss Bukowski,” Head Girl says. The English people who don’t know me (that’s most of them) pronounce my name the way Arabella did when she first met me, Bee-yoo-kowski. I’m getting used to it, but it’s still slightly unsettling.

“Yes,” I say.

“We are delighted…” Head Girl smiles at Millie and Millie gives me a real smile, showing me she’s on my side. My heart soars. “To offer you a place on the wait list.” My heart comes tumbling down, with my pulse still raging and my hopes dashed. “Obviously, you are very talented. We just felt, as a collective, that your sound is very…”

I decide to stand up to the task. “American?” I offer.

“Well, yes.”

Millie clears her throat and tries to console by saying, “It’s not that being American is bad — that’s not at all what we’re trying to say. It’s more…”

Head Girl, annoyed by Millie’s cavalier attitude toward her captainship butts in, “What Millicent means is that, while we welcome your audition and enthusiasm, we’re not quite sure if The Choir is the best spot for you right now, given the intense competition.”

“I understand,” I say. I don’t expect to win everything, I don’t need to have everyone’s approval for my self worth, but it’s times like this I feel like I could crumple up and slink into the corner and watch everything go by. I’m already writing all this into my journal — I can picture how I’m going to describe the whole scene.

“But take heart, Love, spaces do open up sometimes at mid-term — and we’d be happy to have you as an alternate should you accept.”

Possibly, they want me to deny the alternate place. It could be they expect me to be so crushed or conceited that I can’t deal with being second (or third or fourth) choice. But after thinking for a (Millie)second, I say, “Thanks. I’m thrilled to have made it this far. I look forward to the potential opportunity of singing with you.”

Sure, it’s the speech I’ve said aloud in the shower should I ever bump into Simon or Randy or Paula Abdul while getting a smoothie in LA, where of course spontaneous tryouts for American Idol occur, but it seems fine. I leave the room feeling on the one hand disappointed about being waitlisted, but on the other hand, confident I sang as well as I could and that I can’t help but stick out a little bit. Plus, there were thirty-six people trying out for three spots.

The word
waitlisted
inspires anxiety that could only be related to college. TCP (the college process) at Hadley starts in infancy basically, and I am semi on my own here in terms of setting a summer tour of my reaches, safeties, et al. Back in my former life, I’d be visiting Mrs. Dandy-Patinko every other day, obsessing about the details of extracurricular activities and teacher recommendations, but in London I am blissfully unaware of the constant pressure for Ivy.

I wait for a red bus to take me all the way across town, back to the dump I call my dorm. When it arrives, I show my frequent traveler card and sit down, ignoring my propensity for motion sickness in favor of finding out what other news Chris has to share.

You don’t need me to tell you that addressing the situation with Lindsay Parrish is something that has to be dealt with pronto. Just convince you dear dad to kick her out. Maybe she can stay at the Ritz and hire a driver — no, that wouldn’t work — she’d need supervision — ohhh, they could give her one of those ankle things that monitor her every move and jolt her if she strays too far. But Prada doesn’t make those ankle cuffs, so she probably wouldn’t agree to wear it. Oh, well.

In other less shitty news…Mr. Chaucer agreed to write my college rec. letter. I’m thinking of applying early decision to Stanford but kind of worried that I might regret it. Dandy-Patinko says she thinks I’ll get in and that it’d be the right place for me, but I also get the feeling she’s basing this on TGF (the gay factor) on the west coast.

What else. Snow, blah, blah, blah. I want a boyfriend. Hooked up with a hottie in Chicago over break — don’t know why I’m just telling you now — it still feels weird to talk about it, I guess. I’ll avoid the nitty-gritty but tell you I wouldn’t mind another trip to the windy city. Road trip this summer??

I look up from the letter to make sure I’m not missing my stop. As soon as I get back to the phones at campus I need to call home and talk to my dad. Mentally going back five hours, I figure he’d be in the middle of his day, probably talking trash with the other faculty members at their Thursday morning meeting, so I’ll have to wait anyway. Passengers get on the bus and the driver lurches the vehicle forward. I have no idea where we are, only that we’re around halfway to school. My bus and Tube route knowledge is limited; when I stray from my usual places, I get lost and it takes forever to backtrack to familiar territory.

As I’m thinking this, I suddenly think that maybe that’s my problem. Maybe I’m too comfortable doing my little exchange student thing and treating this like a Hadley Hall in London experience rather than a totally separate, fun, potentially wild or eye-opening deal. Right then, I pull the overhead wire that alerts the driver to stop at the next place and I get off the bus still clutching my letter.

Feeling proud that I’ve stopped following the path of normalcy and banality, I wander around for a minute, dodging traffic and weaving among the throngs of people. Down a u-shaped lane, I look in the shop windows, check out the menu at a cool looking bistro, and pause by an art gallery. It’s small, tucked back into the side of a mews house. Mews houses used to be old stables back when horse and carriages were the norm, and they are my favorite kind of houses here — even more than a place like Bracker’s. The ones on this street are painted all different colors, and the effect — especially at this time of day — is amazing. I feel transported. My footsteps echo on the cobblestones, like this is my street and I really live here.

Then I walk under an archway and just as suddenly as I found the quiet haven of my little street, I’m in a loud burst of noise, spicy smells, drum beats, and loud voices. All around are vendors selling fruit and vegetables on those little carts with handwritten signs stating the price. Other stalls have gauzy Indian shirts, beaded skirts, Irish lace, and jumbled masses of old watches. I pick through a couple, still looking around me. I notice a street name tacked to the white-washed building and it registers as a place Arabella mentioned to me; it’s the part of town she and her family used to have a flat when she was younger.

“Want one?” The watch stall guy asks. He’s got a thick accent — Scottish maybe — and tries to get me to buy a pocketwatch. “This would suit you.”

“It’s lovely,” I say. “But I don’t really need it.”

“Oh, come now,” he jibes, “There’s got to be something you need here.”

I smile at him and shake my head. Just behind him I notice a well-lighted window on the garden level — which is the London way of saying basement. I crouch down to peer into the space and see that it’s a gallery with enormous — wall-sized — photos. Slowly, so as not to seem rude — I never know how to tactfully end the bartering/salesman thing — I back onto the curb and look for the stairs down.

“That way,” the watch man says and points behind a black gate.

I take the steps one by one, just enjoying my newfound freedom in this city. I so needed to break away from the noise of my dorm life and the routine of trekking from one place to the next for my classes.

I push the door but nothing happens. I pull the door and nothing happens. I’m about to leave when there’s a buzzing sound that unlocks the door and I go in. The room is almost bare, but warm — both in temperature and in tone. The floors are wood painted a rich caramel color, the few chairs are a mix and match of old bar stools and ladderbacks. Nothing takes away from the impact of the walls — each one has just a single image on it. Rather than a crying child or a black and white pouty image of a girl being ogled, these are very simple. The first one has a cup on a table in the center of an open room — I stare at it, transported, because the photo itself is so big, it feels like I am part of it, that I could reach out and touch it.

“See anything you like?” asks a voice — the gallery owner, probably.

Without taking my eyes off the wall, I say, “This is incredible. It’s like I’m in it.”

“That’s the exact point I’m trying to make.”

I look away from the image and over to the other side of the room to see Asher Piece with his hands in his pockets, hair falling onto his forehead, caught in a half-smile, staring directly at me.

He waits for me to talk, but even with my mouth open — which I realize it is and quickly shut it — he volunteers. “I wondered when you’d find this place.”