Dream Girl Read online

  “Let’s have a hug.” Kiki put down her martini glass and wrapped her arms around me. Her body felt solid and her hands were cool on the back of my neck. “No need to hunch, my love. A little posture goes a long way.”

  I adjusted my shoulders and imagined that strings were pulling them up, as Kiki had recommended countless times.

  “There you go! Now, that’s what I call beautiful carriage!”

  “Can we just call it ‘not slouching’?” I asked her. “Carriage makes it sound like I’m being pulled around by a horse.”

  Laughter came from the shadows. Only then did I see a familiar nest of auburn curls. Slouched in an armchair and holding Kiki’s ages-old IF YOU DON’T HAVE ANYTHING NICE TO SAY, THEN SIT BY ME needlepoint pillow was Louis, my one remaining friend from Farmhouse. He was wearing a jacket and tie, and instead of the wire-rim glasses he’d worn ever since I could remember, he had on a pair of heavy tortoiseshell frames. There was no question they were more attractive, but I missed his old glasses, the ones that used to fog up all the time. He’d even invented a character called the Man with No Eyes who would walk into walls and mistake armoires and coatracks for his girlfriend.

  “When you stand like that, you remind me of Frankenstein,” he teased me.

  “If it isn’t the crab apple of the Upper West Side,” I answered with a smirk. It was all I could do to keep my excitement in check.

  “Seriously,” Louis said, still laughing. “You look like you just sat on something painful.”

  “Are you feeling left out?” I asked sweetly. “I can give you something painful to sit on.” I looked around for a candlestick, but there was none on hand.

  “That’s all hooey. Pay him no mind,” Kiki told me. “You look smashing.”

  “Thank you.” I gave Louis a pointed look.

  “Who are you wearing?” This was Kiki’s way of asking who had designed my dress. Not that she needed to. Ninety-nine percent of my clothes came from her closets.

  Kiki has boatloads of stunning clothes from her International Best-Dressed List days (1963 to 1967)—Givenchy dresses, Halston coats, Yves Saint Laurent jackets—most of which she can no longer fit into. Luckily, there was somebody who could. Tonight I was helping her resurrect an old red halter cocktail dress. It was perfect except for its high neck, which covered my new necklace.

  “Still waiting,” Kiki remarked.

  “Um…,” I said, racking my brains. I’d seen the tag just hours ago, but sadly, my visionary powers did not extend to photographic memory. “Balenciaga?”

  “For shame!” Kiki pshawed. “That’s an Yves Saint Laurent original. And if memory serves, I wore it to Babe Parkhurst’s fiftieth birthday party.”

  “Which one of her fiftieth birthday parties?” Clem asked with a chuckle. “The one in ’65, ’66, ’67, or ’68?”

  “Oh, there weren’t that many,” Edie twittered.

  “Maybe she was born on a leap year,” Louis offered.

  “Ha!” Kiki yelped.

  Kiki used to be a big-deal socialite. And you wouldn’t necessarily know by looking at her now, but she was also a celebrated beauty—she was dubbed “the Gazelle” by the New York Herald Tribune. She still has the peacock-feather mask she wore to Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball and pictures from her nights at Frank Sinatra’s al fresco parties upstairs on the hotel’s Starlight Roof. Still, she doesn’t like to indulge her nostalgia. The last time she pulled out the bird mask for me, she was quick to point out that it smelled like the bottom of a pigeon coop. How she knew, I had no idea.

  Once upon a time, back when Kiki was a Broadway showgirl, she and her mother, Clarissa, lived at Mildred Terrace, a residence for women in Hell’s Kitchen. During a fateful Friday-night performance, Kiki caught the eye of a certain gentleman in the third row. Only two months later, she handed in her showgirl costume and married Joseph Merriman, my grandfather. As the wife of a diplomat, Kiki had to move to the capital, where she needed to consult Things to Do and Things to Don’t, Washington’s protocol guidebook, every time she wanted to open her mouth.

  Kiki could only take so much of trying to memorize gift-giving and place-setting rules and cunningly told my grandfather that a pied-à-terre at the Waldorf Hotel, an Art Deco palace on Park Avenue, would be good for his “professional prospects.” After a few weekends in their new suite, Kiki pretty much took up residence there. My grandfather died when I was three, and Kiki wasted no time in selling the D.C. home.

  “Will somebody get a chair for the birthday girl?” John wondered aloud.

  “I’m okay,” I said, squeezing onto the couch between him and his wife. “It’s cozy this way.”

  “I forgot!” George cried. “It’s your birthday.” He began to croon the birthday song. His voice was a little wobbly, and I tried to cut him off with applause, but he kept singing until the end.

  George Jupiter (né Jaeweschi) inherited a suite on the thirty-eighth floor when its sole inhabitant, a lonely auto magnate who lived for George’s lobby piano performances, had a heart attack.

  “Happy birthday, lamb chop,” Edie peeped in her Betty Boop voice. Edie Wilcox and my grandmother had met back when they were both in the chorus of “Coney Island Follies.” They drifted apart when my grandmother got married, though not for long: Kiki persuaded Edie to move into the hotel when Edie married John, a wealthy ad man who only got excited when speaking on the subject of avoiding toxins. Most of the time Edie seemed to be too busy gossiping to mind her husband’s dull conversation.

  “Well, what now?” Kiki asked. “Down to Peacock Alley for cake?”

  Kiki is the hotel’s formal restaurant’s most loyal customer. Without her, it would have gone out of business long ago. To tell the truth, I sort of wish it had. There’s a difference between fancy and stodgy, and Peacock Alley is pushing the limits.

  “How about room service?” I asked.

  “What is it with you and having your food rolled in on a trolley?” Edie tweeted.

  “It tastes better that way,” I said.

  “You know it always gets here cold,” Kiki tut-tutted.

  “But it is Claire’s birthday…,” said George.

  “Well, technically it was a month ago,” Louis pointed out.

  “Ignore him,” I said to Kiki. “Oh, can we, please?”

  “Go on, then,” she moaned. “Why is it that I can deny you nothing?”

  Sometimes I wonder how different things would be if Mom and Kiki were on good terms. Or even semidecent terms. Though I probably shouldn’t admit this, I’m kind of glad they aren’t. There’s no way I would get away with half as much as I do.

  “Well, what are you waiting for?” Kiki said after calling down our order. “There’s a table of presents that need to be opened.”

  “Oh, you shouldn’t have!” I tried to sound as though I meant it.

  Louis rolled his eyes at me and whispered, “You’re shameless.” I ignored him and skittered across the room to pour myself another Orangina.

  When I came back, I started with Louis’s present, a pair of yellow terrycloth wristbands. He cringed when I showed everyone his gift—which he’d obviously picked up at his tennis club at the last minute. With all his shrink appointments and tennis classes, Louis was busier than anybody I knew.

  Edie was the only one who could muster a response. “Yellow is such a good color for you, Claire! So…brightening.”

  “Thanks, Louis,” I said, examining them more closely. “They’re very…stretchy?”

  I looked over at Louis, who was smiling into the middle distance. I could tell how uncomfortable he was by how fast he was tapping his foot. I’m a sucker for Louis when he gets all awkward and bothered. He starts to look lost and skinny, like a runaway pet.

  “I know, I know, I’m a terrible friend, but I’m not the only one.” Louis was blushing profusely. “Remember the Statue of Liberty cookie cutter you got me last year?”

  “I thought it was cute.” I held down my laughter. I’
d stayed up late the night before making a Motown mix on iTunes that was going to take up five CDs, but midway through burning disc three, my computer decided to crash, and I ended up having to run down the block to the Associated Supermarket to pick out a gift. “I also gave you that apron,” I reminded him.

  “Sure did.” He looked at me over the frames of his glasses. “‘Kiss the cook.’ And women’s sized, I might add.”

  “What are you talking about? Aprons are unisex.”

  “Most are, but not that one. No worries. I’m comfortable with my masculinity.”

  “Why don’t you two make up for lousy birthday presents and go to a basketball game?” Kiki suggested. “You can get seats, can’t you, Louis? And Claire can buy the sandwiches.”

  “Sure.” He shrugged.

  Everyone else started oohing and aahing, but I could tell Louis was bluffing. Even though his dad is the general manager of the New York Knicks, Louis never asks him for things like that. In Louis’s household, there’s an unspoken rule that all favors are reserved for Louis’s stepmother, Ulrika, the Swedish spa receptionist Mr. Ibbits married the year after Louis’s mom died in a plane crash.

  “Basketball would be totally wasted on me,” I muttered to him. I didn’t want him to worry about it. “Just promise you’ll come visit me at Hudson sometime,” I added under my breath.

  “I’ll see what I can do, Lemonhead.”

  I opened the rest of my presents—a Kate Spade wallet from Edie and John, a Dean Martin CD from George, and a watermelon-sized silver lump from Clem.

  “It’s an original disco blob,” he told me. “More organically shaped than the typical disco ball. A collector’s item—I used to sell them to Bianca Jagger and her set.”

  I was so busy admiring Clem’s handiwork I didn’t notice that Kiki had gotten up to open the door for our molten chocolate cakes.

  She fingered the top of one and frowned. “They’re room temperature.”

  “I’ll microwave them,” Louis offered.

  “Not mine,” John said, suddenly energized. “Don’t trust invisible waves.”

  Louis shot me a look, and I had to bite my lip not to laugh as I got up to join him in Kiki’s “kitchen”—a sink, a mini-refrigerator, a microwave, and Kiki’s personal stash of electric kettles, toasters, and Crock-Pots.

  “What about television?” Louis asked John from across the room. “Do you trust those invisible waves?”

  “That’s different,” John said dismissively. “Though I won’t watch prime-time network programming. Toxic in its own way.”

  “Convenient logic,” I whispered to Louis. “Kiki told me that John is addicted to soaps. He watches them when he does his morning stretches.”

  Louis considered this. “I think that makes me like him a little bit more.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “So?” Kiki said once we’d all gathered around the table and tucked into our birthday cakes. “You left for France two months ago. You must have something amusing to tell us.”

  I sifted through my reserves of anecdotes and shared a few, in increasingly scandalous order. I started off telling them about how I’d come in second at the teen dance contest at La Goulue, an outdoor disco named after a famous cancan dancer, and ended with how I found my Aunt Ségolène in a closet feeding Nutella to her supposedly gay work friend Jacques.

  “Can’t eat that stuff,” John shared, glossing over the interesting part of the story. “I’m allergic to nuts.”

  “And how’d your brother get on?” Kiki asked, steamrolling over her friend’s dud of a husband.

  “Fine. He can read chapter books in French, so he stayed pretty busy.”

  “So bright, that boy.” Kiki smiled. “And how are you getting on at this new school of yours?”

  Why did she have to ruin my birthday party and bring up Hudson? I put down my fork and looked at the ceiling, trying to figure out how to phrase it.

  “That great?” asked Louis.

  “Let’s see. Lobotomized teachers, metal detectors, and students who are so competitive they cry if they only get a ninety-four percent. But I’m optimistic.” Everyone around the table started to smile at me, until I completed my thought. “I might flunk out.”

  “Don’t say that!” Edie peeped.

  “I wouldn’t get your hopes up, dear,” Kiki said knowingly. She looked at me the way she does when she’s waiting for me to figure out something that’s obvious to the rest of the world.

  “You might warm up to the place,” Edie said feebly.

  “Yeah, and the place might warm up to me.”

  A sense of seriousness settled over the room as we finished our cakes.

  “Well, you can’t be a recluse forever,” Kiki said when I was done with my last bite. “Let’s go downstairs for a moment. Shall we?” She took hold of my arm and dragged me out of my chair and toward the hallway.

  “What about everybody else?” I protested after the door had shut behind us.

  “Oh, they can look after themselves for ten minutes. I wanted some private time with my granddaughter on her quasi-birthday. Is that so terrible?”

  “Depends on what you want to talk to me about.”

  When we got downstairs, the big Art Deco clock in the lobby said it was a little after eight-thirty, and the lounge was jumping. Everyone was gussied up, and it smelled of vacuum cleaning and new clothes.

  Kiki put in our order with the maitre d’ while we waited for our balcony table to be set.

  “Um, do you want to explain why you kidnapped me from my party?” I asked. Kiki raised her hand and waited until the piano player had finished a song about putting all his eggs in one basket.

  “I bet you don’t even know that song. It was an old Fred Astaire number. Your grandfather was crazy about it.”

  “Really? What other music did he like?”

  Apart from the fact that he was a big-shot diplomat who liked to get down on the dance floor, I knew pathetically little about my grandfather.

  “Now, there was something I wanted to talk to you about,” she went on, chatting away as if she hadn’t heard a word I’d said. “The necklace I sent you…”

  A dark expression crossed her face, and my heart started to pound. I felt like such a jerk—how could I have forgotten to send her a thank-you note? Kiki was an etiquette fanatic.

  “Kiki,” I said, my cheeks crimsoning, “I can’t believe I didn’t send you a card. It’s just with school starting, it must have totally—”

  She shook her head and chuckled. “Is that what you think this is about? I do expect a note, but that’s not why I brought you down here.” She reached over the table to pull my necklace out from under the dress. “I wanted to talk to you about the present. You should know it’s no ordinary trinket.”

  “Obviously.” I reached up to pull it out. “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

  My words seemed to please her. “That’s because there is nothing else like it. Now, if you lose it, I’ll be beside myself with sorrow.”

  “I won’t. When I don’t wear it, I’ll keep it tucked away in my secret hiding spot.” Kiki knew about the back corner of my underwear drawer.

  “No, no, no, don’t stash it away with those old potpourri sachets. It’ll absorb that wretched smell. Promise me that you’ll wear it at all times. And pay close attention.”

  “For thieves?”

  “Thieves are the least of my worries. My point is, when I wore that necklace, well, all my dreams started to come true.”

  Now I was starting to understand why the necklace held a special significance for her. “And that’s when you started to dance on Broadway?”

  Her gray eyes glimmered in a way I’d never seen before, and she shook her head unsteadily. “Just promise me this: I want you to pay attention to your dreams. I’d be most surprised if they didn’t lead you somewhere interesting. Don’t let them waft away, you hear?”

  Just then, a waiter’s arm inserted itself betwe
en us and plunked another miniature round cake on the table.

  “Oh, will you look at that!” she said, sounding like her normal self again. She tapped the top of the cake. “Now, this time it’s warm, as it should be. Hurry up before it gets cold!”

  The chocolate steam smelled delicious. I used my fork to shave off some cake and release the oozy center.

  “How is it?” she asked after my first bite.

  “Out of this world,” I told her, feeling weak from the most heavenly mouthful I’d had since…fifteen minutes earlier.

  “Out of this world,” Kiki repeated, and let out a pleasant, almost fluttery sigh and eyed my necklace pointedly. “Yes, that is rather a good way to describe it.”

  I’d grown used to all of Kiki’s sides—bossy, charming, flirtatious, melodramatic, and so on—but I wasn’t used to this vagueness. I hoped it didn’t mean she was coming down with a brain tumor or something.

  “Oh, what was I thinking?” She lunged at me and tucked a napkin into my neckline. “Be careful or you’ll smudge it!”

  { 8 }

  A League of Our Own

  Henry Hudson High School was guilty of many things, but unpredictability was not one of them. At 10:10 every morning without fail, Dr. Arnold made his daily homeroom announcement. His voice would come through the loudspeakers, and he would tell us about the upcoming fire drill or how to sign up for a flu shot. On the Wednesday of our second week of school, after letting us know about a ribbon cutting for the new Shuttleworth chemistry lab, he urged us to check out the Henry Hudson activities fair. “Sports, science, music, religion, debate. Clubs of all shapes and sizes. Come build your third dimension!”

  At Farmhouse I had belonged to the Supper Club, a monthly dining society that invited special guests, and I was hoping to find a similar group at Hudson. But on Wednesday morning, when I trudged down to the cafeteria for my ten-twenty-five lunch (or was it brunch?), none of the club tables that had been set up by the cash registers—yearbook, blood drive, juvenile obesity foundation—looked remotely fun.

  I made my way to my new regular table. A few days earlier, I’d found out that Ian Kitchen had the same lunch period as me. And it turned out he wasn’t quite as lonely as he’d led me to believe: he sat at a back table in a crook by the recycling area with his friends Zach and Eleanor. Zach belonged to the Hudson JV football team, but he seemed more like a member of the Boy Scouts than any organized sports team. He maintained an aggressively sunny disposition; he actually claimed to like Henry Hudson—though Ian said this was because it was the only school where a five-foot-tall kid could make it onto the football team. Eleanor had thick black hair, thicker black glasses, and a unique ability to stay engaged in a conversation while not saying a single word. There was a palpable intensity to her, and our table’s energy would droop every time she got up to buy a cookie or to pee.