Only In Your Dreams (14 page)

The bang of the slammed door echoed off the walls of the underfurnished apartment. It was hard to stomp in angrily after climbing all those stairs—and in rubber flip-flops, no less—but Serena did her best, stomping on the wood floor, dropping her oversize white leather Jil Sander duffel without a thought for the iPod Nano and glass Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses inside.

“You home, roomie?” Blair called from inside the apartment’s one bedroom, which they’d decided to share. They were basically sisters anyway.

They certainly fought like they were.

“Yeah,” Serena called back. She grabbed a Corona from the fridge and perched on the windowsill overlooking the back of the town house, her feet dangling out of the window over the fire escape.

“How was work?” Blair strolled into the kitchen wrapped up in a massive white Frette towel she’d swiped from her mom’s well-stocked linen closet. She pulled a pack of Merits from Serena’s abandoned purse and used the gas stove to light one.

“Work was work.” Serena stared glumly down through the slats of the fire escape at the slate backyard below. She sighed. “Honestly, Blair, it kind of sucks.”

“What do you mean?” Blair’s workday had consisted of running fabric samples from the tailor on Thirty-ninth Street to Bailey Winter’s home, where he was enjoying a “tea” party and private fitting with a Saudi princess.

Blair pushed open the window next to Serena’s and leaned outside. She exhaled a plume of smoke into the wind and glanced over at Serena. The breeze blew her blond hair gently as she swung her bare feet and frowned.

“I don’t know,” Serena sighed, chugging her beer. It had been one of her worst rehearsal days to date. She’d overheard some of the crew members calling her Holly Go Slightly, and then Ken had yelled, “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” right in the middle of her scene. “It’s been a long day.”

“Tell me everything,” Blair urged.

Serena hesitated. They’d never really discussed it, but she knew Blair well enough to know that she wasn’t exactly thrilled that Serena was starring in Breakfast at Fred’s. It was Blair’s lifelong dream, after all, not Serena’s; how would Blair react to hearing Serena complain about it?

“I’m having some trouble getting this whole acting thing down,” Serena admitted sheepishly.

That’s an understatement.

“I thought I could do it. I mean, I did it before, but that was different, without lots of experts and people running around on set, watching you, and without that big, huge camera just staring at you like, like . . . like Darth Vader or something.”

“Tell me more.” Blair leaned out of the window, exhaling smoke into the hot summer night. She loved helping other people with their problems.

More like she just wanted to hear that other people had problems.

“I can’t do it,” complained Serena. She frowned down at her Marc Jacobs flip-flops. “It’s just not connecting.”

“Serena,” Blair murmured dreamily, “you know what you look like?”

“Huh?” Serena looked up. Blair was leaning out the window, still clad only in her towel, clutching a cigarette but not smoking it, so her ash was almost an inch long. She looked like a crazed Madison Avenue maven in an alcoholic trance.

“You look exactly,” Blair said, “I mean, exactly, like Holly Golightly. The fire escape, the wisps of hair, the light—it’s all perfect. It’s fucking creepy almost.”

“Thanks,” Serena uttered. It was one of the nicest things Blair had said to her in their many years of friendship.

“I’m serious,” Blair proclaimed. “I’m an expert. I’m in the business, okay? I know about fashion, I know about looks, I know about glamour, and you’ve got it. I don’t care what Ken Mogul might say: you are Holly Golightly,” she continued determinedly, “if I have anything to do with it.”

“What do you mean?” Serena demanded.

“Who is the world’s greatest Holly Golightly expert?” Blair asked.

Serena laughed. “You are, no question.”

“Well, you’re pretty damn lucky to know me, then, aren’t you?” Blair remarked. If she couldn’t be Holly Golightly, well, then she could make Serena into her. That would be satisfaction enough. “Come on.” She stubbed out her cigarette and grabbed her friend’s hand. “We have work to do.”

Their first stop was obvious: the sidewalk outside of Tiffany.

Blair had thrown on a vaguely Mexican embroidered cami she’d bought the previous summer at Scoop and a pair of jeans and had insisted that Serena dress down too. When the cab pulled up in front of the store, Blair practically shoved Serena out into the street.

“Now,” Blair barked. “Let me see your walk.” Blair stationed herself in front of the store windows and faced her friend. With the traffic zooming past behind her and the tall buildings rising into the sky, Serena looked very small, very vulnerable. Very un-Serena. Very, very un-Holly.

Serena strolled awkwardly toward the store, taking funny little half-steps like a flower girl in a wedding.

“Stop!” Blair howled. She walked out into the middle of the sidewalk. “What was that?”

“What do you mean?” Serena was barely audible over the roar of traffic and the chatter of all the shoppers and tourists milling around.

“You’re not trying,” Blair intoned, channeling a tough but lovable coach from some inspirational sports movie she’d seen on HBO. “Show me, show me, show me! I know you can do a more convincing walk.”

“I feel so stupid,” Serena admitted. “Everyone’s looking at me and I feel all weird and self-conscious.”

Miss Dancing-on-the-banquette-at-Bungalow-8, self-conscious?

“You can’t feel that way,” Blair snapped. “You’ve got to feel confident. You’ve got to feel cool. You’ve got to feel like the whole world is at your disposal, like you’re calling the shots, like you’re in charge.”

And this was called acting?

“But I’m just supposed to walk?” Serena asked. This wasn’t like walking in a fashion show—which she’d done, of course. “I feel silly.”

“Pretend it’s graduation again,” Blair suggested, remembering Serena’s irksome, last-minute dash down the aisle of Brick Church, wearing the exact same Oscar de la Renta suit Blair was wearing.

“I’ll try,” Serena sighed.

Blair returned to her station in front of Tiffany. She had a lot of work to do, but she had to admit it was kind of fun bossing Serena around for a change.

All in the name of friendship.

With Nils tugging at her left hand and Edgar pulling on her right—or was it Nils on the right and Edgar on the left?— Vanessa Abrams remembered why it was never a good idea to have two boys vying for one girl’s attention.

Like she hadn’t already learned that lesson.

“Come on, come on,” complained one of the boys—who cared which one anymore? Their tiny hands were sticky, their little-boy voices whiny, and besides that they were strong. They had grips of steel, and since they refused to slow down, Vanessa was half walking and half being dragged along Central Park’s shady asphalt paths. It reminded her of the times she and Aaron had walked his fawn-and-white purebred boxer, Mookie, together, except the twins were even more eager to get outside than that dog had been. If they’d had tails, they’d have been wagging them insanely.

“Christ,” muttered Vanessa. “Slow down, please!”

Eighteen dollars an hour, eighteen dollars an hour. She’d already made thirty-six dollars that day; not a fortune, but it would go right in the coffers for her next project.

How about her next apartment?

Vanessa stumbled a little as the boys stopped short in front of an umbrella-covered cart.

“Can we get ice cream sandwiches?”

She highly doubted that their mother had ever in her life taken the kids to the park, let alone bought them ice cream. Vanessa hadn’t even set eyes on her since their bizarre job interview, and Ms. Morgan didn’t seem like the kind of woman who would tolerate ice cream dripping on her bouclé Chanel suits. The Abramses had always kept her and Ruby on a strict sugar-free diet when they were kids, preferring Tofutti and fruit to ice cream and candy, but she didn’t care what these two ate.

“Sure, ice cream sandwiches, whatever, you got it,” she agreed, wriggling free of the boys’ death grips and pulling a crumpled twenty out of her jeans pocket. “Three ice cream sandwiches, please,” she told the vendor, who had a handlebar moustache and was wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt circa 1972.

The boys leapt up and down, grabbing at the ice cream. They tore the wrappers open hungrily, then raced away into the confines of the playground, screaming and laughing through gooey mouthfuls of ice cream.

“Wait up!” Vanessa yelled after them halfheartedly. She wasn’t sure she cared if they disappeared and she lost her job and went to prison. Had it really been only three days since she’d started work as the principal cinematographer on a major Hollywood production? Or was this whole thing some kind of horrible nightmare?

She sank onto a bench under a tall, gracious oak and watched the twins scarf down their treats and toss their wrap-pers onto the ground. Oops. Then they started a dizzying game of tag, racing under the slide, between the swings, narrowly avoiding collisions with teetering prewalkers and their menacing minders.

“Stay close!”Vanessa called out weakly. She finished her ice cream and leaned back onto the surprisingly comfortable wood-and-concrete bench. Cars whizzed by on their way through the park at Ninety-seventh Street, a nice, sleep-inducing sound. The sun was strong but there was plenty of shade, and for one brief second she almost didn’t mind that she was there as a nanny, not just as some other adult enjoying the park on a nice Sunday afternoon. Her eyes closed and she tuned out for a moment.

Then she heard a familiar high-pitched yelp and her eyes flew open.

Who knew she had a maternal instinct?

There was a commotion not far in the distance, and Vanessa recognized two familiar blond heads.

She got to her feet and hurried over to where one of the twins was sprawled out on the sidewalk, clutching his skinned knee and crying. His brother stood at his side, pointing an angry finger at a rollerblader lying prone on the sidewalk.

“What’s going on?” Vanessa demanded, trying to sound authoritative.

“That big boy ran into Edgar!” cried Nils.

A freckle-faced blond nymphet cheerleader type in hot pink short shorts and a complicated electric blue sports bra rolled athletically up to the scene. “What’s going on,” she snapped, “is that you’re not controlling your kids, and we’re trying to get some exercise here!”

“They’re not my kids,”Vanessa retorted, kneeling to pat the sobbing Edgar on his head. “And you don’t have to be rude.”

“Vanessa, Vanessa, let’s go home now,” Nils whined, pulling on her arm.

“Maybe that’s not such a bad idea,” Lycra Girl commented, kneeling to tend to her fallen comrade. She looked like she’d rollerbladed right out of a Coors Light commercial.

“Hey.” Vanessa was in no mood to take crap from some bimbo stranger. “Next time watch where you’re going.”

“Vanessa?” Mr. rollerblader-who’d-fallen-on-his-ass demanded, struggling to sit up.

Vanessa’s eyelids flapped up and down in disbelief. Was she seeing things?

There, splayed out on the asphalt under the oaks, in the middle of Central Park, wearing rollerblades, dorky athletic shorts, and a clingy white spandex tee, plus wristbands, kneepads, and elbow pads, with a flushed face and messy, sweaty hair, was Dan. Her Dan.

“Dan?” she gasped with so much horror and confusion in her voice that Edgar actually stopped blubbering and stood up.

“Hi.” Dan grinned sheepishly. The blond bimbo in the skimpy jog bra extended her hand and helped him to his feet. He swiveled unsteadily on his blades.“Hey Vanessa .. . what’s up?”

“What’s up is she’s not paying attention to these little animals running around,” the blonde started, tugging her shorts so high she was in grave danger of causing some severe camel toe. “And I’m really trying to be very Zen about this, but—”

“Who are you?”Vanessa demanded.

“Who are you?” the girl retorted bitchily.

“I’m his girlfriend,”Vanessa replied.

Lycra Butt recoiled a little.

“Wait,” Vanessa insisted. “What are you doing?” She studied Dan critically. His outfit was so completely ridiculous she could barely look at him. She turned back to the girl. “You must be the reason I never see Dan around the house any-more.”

“You guys live together?”

The words from Dan’s poem flooded into Vanessa’s head:

Pure love. Pure lust. Trust trust.

Buddha was no Jesus. Neither am I.

I’m just a guy.

“Who are these kids, anyway?” Dan wondered aloud.

“We’re her friends,” snapped one of the twins—Vanessa still couldn’t tell them apart—sticking his tongue out at Dan.

“Your friends?” Dan repeated.

“Right,” Vanessa snapped. “Kind of like she’s your friend, right, Dan?”

A church bell rang down on Fifth Avenue. The sound was so pure and so totally inappropriate for the moment, it made Vanessa want to scream.

“Vanessa?” The other twin tugged on her hand. “I don’t feel so good.”

“Not now,”Vanessa responded sternly.

“I’m confused,” Dan stuttered. “Why aren’t you on set right now?”

“I was fired. Not that you’d care.”

“Let’s just pause before we say anything we’re going to regret,” interrupted Short Shorts. Pigeons were picking at the sticky remains of the twins’ ice creams. If only one of them would peck the bitchy blonde in the ass.

“Vanessa?” the same twin whined. “I really don’t—” But before he could finish his sentence, he vomited chewed-up ice cream sandwich all over Dan’s acid green Nike rollerblades.

So that’s the definition of bad karma.

Nate’s legs felt a little shaky, the way they did when Coach caught him goofing off at practice and sentenced him to run laps as punishment. It had been a long day of ferrying new fence posts from the driveway, where they lay piled up higher than he stood, to various points around the yard. He lurched into the house, arms aching and knees wobbling.

Weak in the knees—and not even because of a girl.

On his way to his bedroom he stopped in the bright, white-and-steel kitchen and rummaged in the refrigerator. Regina, his parents’ maid/caretaker/chef, kept the place well stocked but Nate pushed aside the terrine of homemade paté and the heirloom-tomato-and-orzo salad to grab a bottle of Lorina orangeade. It had always been his favorite when he was a kid, but for some reason they only ever had it when they were out in East Hampton, so he associated the light, fizzy taste with the carefree summers of his childhood, when he’d hosted out-rageous skinny-dipping pool parties and cleaned out his par-ents’ wine cellar.

Those were the days, he thought to himself as he made his way into his bedroom. There’d been nothing to worry about except whether it would be sunny enough to spend the afternoon at the beach, or if he was high enough, or if he’d ever manage to hook up with Blair.

These days life was so much more complicated. Even though it was summer vacation, Nate was stressed out about a bunch of stuff: what Tawny’s townie buddies would do to him if he ever ran into them without Tawny, what he would say to Blair when he saw her at Yale, whether what Chuck Bass had told him about her was true.

Clutching the open bottle, Nate collapsed into his soft, unmade bed with a groan. He closed his eyes and tried to clear his head, but there was one person he couldn’t stop picturing.

Guess who?

Suddenly he wished he hadn’t returned the moss green cashmere V-neck Blair had given him the spring before last when her dad took them skiing in Sun Valley. He’d put it on, close his eyes, and remember simpler times, when he and Blair were together and all seemed right with the world. Because, except for those times when he’d pissed her off by saying the wrong thing or getting baked and flaking out on plans, being with Blair— however difficult she was—made Nate feel complete, like everything was exactly the way it was supposed to be. Now Blair was going to marry that English guy. Was it really true? Suddenly, Nate had to know.

He sat up, took a swig from the chilly bottle of orangeade and reached for the black Bang & Olufsen telephone on his bedside table. He hesitated for a second before dialing those familiar digits.

“It’s Blair.” She answered after a couple of rings. She sounded curt, professional, like she hadn’t recognized the number.

“Hey.” Nate turned over onto his stomach and fiddled nervously with the sheets.

“Nate?” she yawned, sounding bored already. “God, I’m sorry. I’m so tired.”

“Yeah, it’s me,” he replied sheepishly. He suddenly couldn’t remember why he had thought calling Blair would be a good idea.

“I’m working,” Blair explained. “It’s been a crazy week.”

“That’s cool.” Blair had a job? Wow, things really had changed.

“Yes,” she agreed. “Bailey Winter has really been busting my ass.”

Nate had no idea what she was talking about but decided he should try to be sympathetic. “That’s too bad.”

“It’s just life in fashion. Where are you, anyway?”

“East Hampton. My parents’ place. I’m doing some work for my coach down here, helping him with his house.”

“I wish I could get away,” Blair replied dreamily. “Just for a minute. But you know what it’s like....”

“Yeah,” Nate agreed. “If you’re working, that’s how it goes.”

“Did I mention I’m doing wardrobe on that new movie— Breakfast at Fred’s?”

“Cool,” Nate intoned. Why hadn’t she said anything about her engagement? “So, you’re back from London, I guess.”

“Oh, yes.” Blair sighed deeply, “I had to get back to New York. I decided this was the best way to build up my résumé before we start Yale, you know, get some real, professional experience under my belt.”

“That sounds like a good plan,” Nate agreed, suddenly wishing he’d rolled a joint before making the call. “Especially now that you’re, you know, making plans for the future.”

“Aren’t you?” asked Blair. “You’ve got to think about what lies ahead, you know that, Nate, right?”

“Right,” Nate agreed, even though he rarely thought farther ahead than whether to get a burrito or pizza for dinner. “So, anyway, I guess I was just calling to say congratulations, you know.”

“Oh, it’s nothing. Just a little summer job with one of the best designers in America.”

“I was talking about the engagement. I heard everything.”

“Engagement?” Blair echoed. “Who have you been talking to?”

“Chuck told me,” Nate admitted, pulling a pillow over his head.

“Chuck told you I was engaged?” Blair barked. “As usual, he’s got the story all wrong.”

“What do you mean?” Nate pulled the pillow off and sat up.

“Well, I’m back,” Blair pointed out. “It just wasn’t working out in London. I couldn’t marry him. I need to think about my future.”

Like someone had actually proposed? As if.

“So you’re not getting married? I should set Chuck straight.”

Good luck with that.

“He’s an idiot,” Blair declared. “Who cares what he thinks? Why would you ever listen to him?”

Nate shrugged, even though Blair couldn’t see him over the telephone. “I just didn’t know, you know, I hadn’t heard from you or anything. But I’m glad you’re back. I know it was always your dream to be Katharine Hepburn, but it’s cool that at least you get to be close to the action.”

“It’s Audrey Hepburn,” Blair corrected him. “And I’m not close to the action, I’m an integral part of the action. In a major motion picture like this, wardrobe is critical.”

“Remember that time we watched that movie and you kept pausing it and making me practice the lines with you?” Nate reminisced wistfully. It had been a snow day and school was canceled, so they spent the afternoon cuddling in her bed and watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s, only Blair kept pausing it to recite the lines and trying to convince Nate to go along with it. He’d tried, because it was easier to just keep her happy. Now he was in the Hamptons and Blair was in New York and their relationship was over—even the bedroom was gone, turned into Blair’s baby sister’s luxurious pastel-colored nursery.

“I’ve decided that as a long-term career goal, working in fashion, behind the scenes, makes a lot more sense,” Blair explained.

“Yeah,” Nate agreed. “Serena’s the one who’s really cut out to be a movie star anyway.”

Ouch.

Blair paused for a moment. “I should really get going, Nate. I’ve got to run some samples uptown to the set.”

“Okay.” Nate was disappointed. “That sounds important.”

“It is important. Have fun at the beach.” Blair hung up.

Nate pressed end and dropped the receiver onto the floor, then turned over and stared at the ceiling. Have fun? Suddenly, the Hamptons didn’t seem fun at all. His whole summer stretched before him and he felt lonely and isolated. He missed the city, he missed his friends, he missed Blair.

And no island babe could ever make him forget that.