California Dreaming (30 page)
—GG
Sightings
This just in, from the newbies:
O
running in
Central Park,
without a shirt. Does he own any shirts? Let's hope not! …
A
trying on a silver sequined Marni minidress in the dressing room of
Bergdorf
’s. Didn't anyone tell her Constance has a dress code? … And her sister
B
in
FAO Schwartz,
clinging to a guy in a barn-red
NANTUCKET HIGH
hoodie putting stuffed animals in inappropriate poses and taking pictures. Is
that
what they do for fun where they're from?
Okay, ladies and gents, you all probably have to go back-to-school shopping—or for those of you who've headed off to college, read Ovid and chug a beer in your new 8 × 10 dorm room. But don't worry; I'll be here, drinking a glass of Sancerre at Balthazar, reporting on what you're missing. It's the dawn of a new era on the Upper East Side, and with these three in town, I just know it's going to be another wild and wicked year. …
You know you love me,
gossip girl
Baby Carlyle woke up to the sound of garbage trucks beeping loudly as they backed up Fifth Avenue. She rubbed her puffy eyelids and set her bare feet on the red bricks of her family's new terrace, pulling her boyfriend's red Nantucket High sweatshirt close to her skinny frame.
Even though they were all the way on the top floor, sixteen stories above Seventy-second and Fifth, she could hear the loud noises of the city coming to life below. It was so different from her home in Nantucket, where she used to fall asleep on the beach with her boyfriend, Tom Devlin. His parents ran a small bed-and-breakfast, and he and his brother had lived in a guest cottage on the beach since they were thirteen. He'd come to visit for the weekend, and after he left last night, Baby dragged a quilt onto the terrace's hammock and fell asleep in a Frette duvet cocoon.
Note: Sleeping al fresco is a worst-case-scenario situation. Never done willingly (i.e., only if your cruise ship hits an iceberg or your elephant loses a leg on safari).
Baby shuffled through the sliding French doors and into the cavernous apartment she was now expected to call home. The series of large rooms, gleaming hardwood floors and ornate marble detail was the opposite of comfortable. She dragged the duvet behind her, mopping the spotless floors as she wound her way to her sister Avery's bedroom.
Inside, Avery's golden-blond hair was strewn across her pale pink pillow, and she sounded like a broken teakettle. Baby pounced on the bed.
“Hey!” Avery Carlyle sat up and pulled the strap of her white Cosabella tank top. Her long blond hair was matted and her blue eyes were bleary, but she still looked regally beautiful, just like their grandmother had been. Just like Baby wasn't.
“It's morning,” Baby announced, bouncing up and down on her knees like a four-year-old high on Sugar Smacks. She was trying to sound perky, but her whole body felt heavy. It wasn't just that her whole family had uprooted themselves from Nantucket last week, it was that New York City had never—
would never
—feel like home.
When Baby was born, her emergence had surprised her mother, and the midwife, who thought Edie was only having twins. While her brother and sister were named for their maternal grandparents, the unexpected third child had simply been called Baby on her birth certificate. The name stuck. Whenever Baby had come to New York to visit her grandmother, it was clear from Grandmother Avery's sighs that while twins were acceptable, three was an unruly number of children, especially for a single mother like Edie to handle. Baby was always too messy, too loud, too much for Grandmother Avery's presence, too
much
for New York.
Now, Baby wondered if she might have been right. Everything, from the boxy rooms in the apartment to the grid of New York City streets, was about confinement and order. She sighed and bounced on her sister's bed some more and Avery groaned sleepily.
“Come on, wake up!” Baby urged, even though it was barely ten, and Avery always liked to sleep in.
“What time is it?” Avery sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes. She couldn't believe she and Baby were related. Baby was always doing ridiculous things, like teaching their dog, Chance, to communicate by blinking. It was as if she were perpetually stoned. But even though her boyfriend was a raging stoner, Baby had never been into drugs.
It doesn't really sound like she needs them.
“It's after ten,” Baby lied. “Want to go outside? It's really pretty,” she cajoled. Avery looked at Baby's puffy brown eyes, and knew immediately that she'd been crying over her loser boyfriend all night. Back in Nantucket, Avery had done everything possible to avoid Tom. This past weekend, it had been impossible. Even though their apartment took up half the top floor of the building, it wasn't large enough to escape his grossness. Every day, she'd found something more disgusting about him, from the stained white Gap athletic socks he'd ball up and give to their cat, Rothko, to play with, to the one time she had walked in on him wearing Santa Claus–print boxers and doing bong hits on the terrace. She knew Baby liked that he was
authentic
, but did authentic have to mean appalling?
Short answer? No.
“Fine, I'll come outside.” Avery pulled herself out from under her 600-thread count Italian cotton sheets and walked barefoot onto the terrace, and Baby followed. Avery squinted her eyes in the bright sunlight. Below her, the wide street was empty except for an occasional sleek black towncar whooshing down the avenue. Beyond the street was the lush expanse of Central Park, where Avery could just barely make out the tangled maze of paths winding through its greenery.
The two sisters sat together, swinging in the hammock and overlooking the other landscaped Fifth Avenue terraces and balconies, empty except for the occasional rooftop gardener. Avery sighed in contentment. Up here, she felt like the Queen of the Upper East Side, which was exactly what she was born to be.
Was she really?
“Hey.” Owen Carlyle, six foot two and shirtless, stepped onto the terrace carrying a carton of orange juice, a bottle of champagne, and wearing just a Speedo, a maroon towel knotted around his slim hips. Avery rolled her eyes at her swimming-obsessed brother, who could easily drink anyone under the table and then beat them in a 10K.
“Mimosa anyone?” He took a swig of orange juice from the carton and grinned at Avery's repulsed grimace. Baby shook her head sadly as her tangled hair brushed against her shoulder blades. Always tiny, Baby now looked absolutely fragile. Her tangled brown hair had already lost the honey highlights that always showed up during the first weeks of a Nantucket summer.
“What's up?” he asked his sisters companionably.
“Nothing,” Avery and Baby answered at the same time.
Owen sighed. His sisters had been so much easier to understand when they were ten, before they'd started acting all coy and mysterious. If girls weren't so irresistible in general, he might have given them up and become a monk. Case in point: The only reason he was up so early was the semi-pornographic dream that had forced him out of bed and on an unsuccessful hunt for a pool.
Dream about whom? Details please.
He placed the unopened bottle of champagne in a large daisy-filled planter and took another swig of OJ before squishing into the hammock next to his sisters. He glanced down at the mass of trees, not believing how small Central Park seemed. From up here, everything looked miniaturized. He just wished he had an expanse of dark ocean in front of him, like he'd had back in Nantucket.
“Helloooooo!” The sound of their mother's voice and the jangling of her handcrafted turquoise and silver bracelets carried out onto the terrace from inside. Edie Carlyle appeared in the French doorway. She wore a blue Donna Karan sundress, and her normally blond-streaked-with-gray bob had been knotted into a hundred tiny braids. She looked like a scared porcupine rather than a resident of Manhattan's most exclusive zip code.
“I'm so glad you're all here,” she began breathily. “I need your opinion on something. Come, it's inside.” She gestured toward the foyer, her chunky bracelets clanking against each other.
Avery giggled as Owen dutifully slid off the hammock and wavered into the apartment, following Edie's long stride. For the past week, Owen had been acting as Edie's de facto art adviser. He had been to an opening almost every night, usually in an overcrowded, patchouli-ridden gallery in Brooklyn or Queens where he drank warm Chardonnay and pretended to know what he was talking about.
The expansive, wood-paneled rooms that had once housed toile Louis XIV Revival chaises and Chippendale tables were now empty except for a few cast-offs Edie had found through her extensive network of artist friends. Avery had immediately ordered a whole ultramodern look from Jonathan Adler and Celerie Kempbell, but the furniture hadn't yet arrived. In the interim Edie had managed to find an orange moth-eaten couch to place in the center of the living room. Rothko was furiously scratching at it, his favorite new activity since moving to New York. Most of their pets—three dogs, six cats, one goat, and two turtles—had been left in Nantucket. Rothko was probably lonely.
Not for long.
Sitting next to Rothko was a two-foot-high plaster chinchilla, painted aquamarine and covered in bubble wrap.
“What do you think?” Edie asked, her blue eyes twinkling. “A man was selling it for 50 cents on the street down in Red Hook when I was coming home last night from a performance. This is authentic, New York City found art,” she added, rapturous.
“I'm out of here,” Avery announced, backing away from the plaster sculpture as if it were contaminated. “Baby and I are going to Barneys,” she decided, locking eyes with her sister and willing her to say yes. Baby had been moping around in Tom's stupid sweatshirt all weekend. It had to stop.
Baby shook her head, pulling the barn-red sweatshirt tighter against her body. She actually kind of liked the chinchilla. It looked just as out of place in the ornate apartment as she felt. “I have plans,” she lied. She'd decide what those plans were just as soon as she was out of her family's sight.
Owen gazed at the statue. One of the chinchilla's heavily lidded eyes looked like it was winking at him. He really needed to get out of the house.
“I, uh, need to pick up some swim stuff.” He vaguely remembered getting an e-mail saying he needed to pick up his uniform from the team captain at St. Jude's, his new school. “I should probably get to it.”
“Okay,” Edie trilled, as Avery, Owen, and Baby scattered to opposite ends of the apartment. School started tomorrow and all three knew it was the dawn of a new era.
Edie tenderly carried the chinchilla sculpture into her art studio. “Have fun on your last day of freedom!” she called, her voice echoing off the walls of the apartment.
Like they don't
always
have fun?
gossip girl
the carlyles
Coming May 6th
