Little Black Lies (15 page)

Carling blows a drunken kiss to the limo from behind the great glass doors of the Four Seasons Hotel. Then she leans against the glass and grins at us through the wavy net of streaked hair lying across her face. “Ladies, we are free.”

“Couldn't you have faked that Samantha's party was closer to the actual party?” Sloane pouts and tilts her head to the side. “The T is such a hassle. So much walking.”

Isabella swipes her lips with blue-pink gloss. “I don't mind. I walk everywhere. Makes me feel like a New Yorker.”

“It's only a few stops,” says Carling. “The boys are meeting us on the platform. Anyway, we'll stink of Brice's finest scotch. Which, when combined with T exhaust, should make us smell like we took a private jet over from Rome.”

Not me. I took one sip of my drink and felt my throat catch fire. I fake-sipped the whole way here and when the girls stupidly stuck their heads out the windows to howl at boys at a red light, I dumped my scotch into their empty glasses. No one seemed to notice the gift from the alcohol gods when Horace forced them back inside.

“Anyway, I like the T,” says Carling. “Remember when we were in kindergarten, Sloaney? Throwing fishy crackers at the third rail during field trips was the best part.”

“Why? Can you see it spark?” I ask.

“Je-sus.”
Carling looks at me, shocked. “Don't they have subways in London?”

Before I come up with an answer, I'm saved by Sloane. “I heard a story,” she says, “where this college guy stood on the platform and peed on the third rail and the electrical current raced back up his urine stream and killed him.”

“Impossible,” says Isabella with great authority. “But you can die a urinary death by candiru. If you pee in a South American river, this little heat-seeking fish can follow the urine stream and swim into your body. Once inside, it flares its barbed fins and gets lodged in your flesh. Has to be surgically removed.”

Sloane says, “Once again, Latini, you make me retch.”

I watch Isabella push her lip gloss into a flowered container and slip it into a special lip-gloss-shaped pocket in her purse—so nonchalant, so assured of her superiority. But the way she labors over her possessions, her lopsided friendship with Carling, her tales of revulsion, expose her as anything but. I'm still incensed by her abortion-clinic remark about my mother's sweater, and something inside me splinters. “It's a sign of insecurity, you know,” I say.

“What does that mean?” she says, shifting her weight.

“Dropping these sensational facts like tiny conversation-busting bombs to make yourself sound superior. It's a sign of insecurity.”

Isabella doesn't answer right away. Two splotches of color bruise her cheeks.

Sloane bursts out laughing. “Go, London!”

Isabella sweeps through the doors, which are being held open by a man in a uniform with gleaming brass buttons. She calls back. “I'm not even going to acknowledge that remark with an answer.”

Of course not. Because you don't have one
.

I follow her through the door and slow to check if the doorman's name tag says
ARTHUR
. It does, so I stop to tell him his brother is coming over for dessert. Arthur is thrilled and tries to chat with me but Carling yanks me away. Out on the busy—and freezing cold—sidewalk, she puts her arm around me. I don't mind one bit; it gives me a chance to be warmed by my mother's sweater. “Our London is a real friend of the people, have you noticed, girls? She brings a certain groundedness to our little group. Makes me feel like a better person. Like, at any moment, I might go dig a well in Sierra Leone or bottle-feed a goat in Belize.”

Sloane snorts. “Knowing you, you'd probably hand the poor goat to your Molly and tell her to duct-tape its noisy parts. You're better off adopting Izz. She's starving just as bad as any goat.”

“Why is everybody picking on me?” asks Isabella, folding her arms across her chest. “I'm going home.”

“Leave Izzy alone, girlies,” says Carling. “She's the only person on earth who's got my back. Right, Izz?”

Isabella stares out into traffic. “I guess.”

“I'm being serious about this charity thing,” Carling continues. “My boyfriend's going to work at his dad's office and pay for his own car, which doesn't make me look good. So what if I give back to society? Donate money or something?”

“Easier than getting a job, that's for sure,” says Sloane, peeling brown polish from her chewed-up thumbnail and dropping the curled shards to the ground.

“You read my mind, Sloaney. Tomorrow I'm going to get up early and sponsor one of those kids in a third-world country. You know, where you give up one coffee per day and it pays for, like, rancid milk and pencil stubs for a kid in Ethiopia.”

“This is seriously impressive,” says Isabella, tucking Carling's hair behind her ears. “You're like a really hot Mother Teresa.”

I look at Carling's platform sandals, her skintight jeans, her long blondish hair and peach-kissed lips, the way she glances at her reflection in the windows we pass. “I can barely tell them apart,” I say.

Carling grins and blows a kiss to a couple of tourists.

The Park Street station was the first subway station in the country. Built about a hundred years ago, the entrance looks like a grand old mansion, only shrunken down to the size of a freestanding public restroom. It's getting dark outside, so the lights from within cast a pretty green glow on the sidewalk as we approach. The girls skip nonchalantly inside and down under the ground, but I slow down, taking it all in. The gum-spotted steps, the gust of heated wind that rises from below and lifts my hair. The disappearance of street sounds—no more honking, car engines, bus motors. The stale, pungent, earthy smell of soot. Filth. Microscopic particles of metal that fill my lungs.

I've never been on the T before. While the others might be bored by the thought of traveling underground, it's a shameful thrill for me. We buy tickets at the glass booth, stuff them into the fare box, and push through the turnstile. More rushing air. The faraway metal-on-metal screech of a train slowing down.

As planned, waiting for us down on the platform are Griff, Leo, and two guys I've seen around school but never met. Carling rushes up to Leo, who gives her a self-conscious hug, and Griff moves close to Isabella to be swatted by her purse. The other boys are introduced as Jeffie and Mike.

With Carling still hanging from his neck, Leo glances at me. “You came.”

I nod and turn away from Carling's eyes.

Sloane ruffles Griff's gelled hair. “And how are you going to get into Crush, Little Man?”

He flashes a California driver's license. His photo is badly Scotch-taped over the original, which belonged to someone named Aaron Zitzer, born in 1985. “I'm twenty-four, with a very serious growth-stunting condition called focal segmental glomerulosclerosis. Don't tell me you've never heard of it.”

“I have,” says Isabella. “The actor from
Diff'rent Strokes
has that. But where's your proof?”

Griff holds up a fifty-dollar bill and grins. “Here's my proof.”

A hopeful voice comes from behind us. “You kids have a few dollars for an old geezer?”

We all turn around to see a life-worn man sitting on the bench by the tracks with a huge bottle of wine on his lap. All around him is evidence of his vagabond existence: ripped sleeping bag blackened with city grime, sacks full of rotted cardboard and bits of cloth, a rickety stroller stuffed with filthy jackets and plastic bags filled with plastic bags.

“Good thing you ladies have us around,” says Griff. His nose is so stuffed tonight it sounds like he's underwater. “If only to stop Sloaney from falling in love with the locals.”

I sneak another glance at the homeless man, paying particular attention to the layers of T-shirts under his shirt. The hero wrapper making his pocket bulge. The battered ladies' purse strapped across his chest.

“London has inspired me,” says Carling. She fishes through her tiny patent bag and pulls out a twenty. “You people are looking at the new Carling Burnack. The Carling Burnack who cares.” She turns to face the man and flashes him a smile.

“Leave him alone, Carling,” says Leo.

With a flirty wink, she spins around and sashays toward the man, swinging her hips as though she's headed down a fashion runway. It's pretty clear her actions have little to do with philanthropy and everything to do with being the center of attention.

The blackened tunnel behind us starts to rumble, then roar, with an oncoming train. The money in Carling's hand flutters, then flaps in the rushing wind. When the silver train whooshes into the station on our left, the fierce wind gust snaps the bill out of Carling's hand and sends it bucking and darting through the air until it loses force somewhere over the empty tracks on the other side, and somersaults down to the ground below the platform.

“Aw, hell,” wails Carling. “You try to be charitable one goddamned time …”

The homeless man waves his hand, looking resigned to what is probably only a minor disappointment in the lousy scheme of his life. “Thanks anyway, princess,” he says. “God will remember you.”

Carling ignores him and hands her purse to Leo. “I'm going after it.”

“You are not,” says Leo. “You'll get yourself killed.”

She looks at him as if he's crazy. “It's only about eight feet down. I've jumped off boathouses higher than that.”

“Yes,” says Isabella, “into lakes. The Red Line is filled with rats. Plus there's the third rail. And a train could come at any moment. Don't do it, Carling.”

“There's a ladder right there.” Carling points to a spot near the mouth of the tunnel where a thin black ladder leads down to the tracks. “I'll be back up in ten seconds.” She presses herself against Leo. “If I get hurt, will you save me?”

“Me? I'm not jumping onto the train tracks.”

She slithers her arms around his neck and plays with the curls at his collar. “What if I got pushed? Would you save me then?”

“No way.”

Griff snorts. “Why should the boy ruin a perfectly good pair of jeans? It's not like it was me who needed saving. Now
that
would be worth wasting some denim.”

Leo laughs. “Not quite. But I would point out the girls who pushed you to the cops.”

Carling pulls away from him and wanders to the edge of the empty tracks. Behind us, the other train closes its doors and pulls away. For a moment, it looks as if she's just waiting for a train like anyone else.

“Don't do it,” says Isabella.

“She won't,” Griff says. “You know Carling, she's just gunning for attention.”

Carling looks back at us. She doesn't belong down here. With her wild, sunstreaked waves flung across her right shoulder and dewy olive skin, it's as if someone has lassoed the perfect summer day, sculpted it into female perfection, and set it up against a backdrop of soot-stained billboards and blackened exit signs to show just how depressing it is down here. It's pretty clear Leo has noticed. His eyes are drinking her in as if parched. She blows him a kiss, which makes his mouth twitch to one side. Then, without any warning, she jumps.

We gasp and rush to the edge of the platform. Leo, Sloane, and I get there first, along with the homeless man, to find her sitting in a giggling, inebriated heap between the tracks, the rumpled twenty in her hand.

“Carling, get up here now!” I plead.

“I think I'm drunk,” she says. “But I got my money back.”

“Now, Carling,” says Leo. “Straight to the ladder and climb up.”

“You're so cranky, Leo,” she says. She points at all of us, laughing. “Hey, it's like you guys are my audience.” With that, she stands, starts humming and fake stripping, pulling off my mother's sweater and twirling it on a finger above her head while she swings her hips.

“Carling,” says Leo. “Cut it out. Climb up now!”

She giggles, dropping my sweater into the grime. “Look. The third rail. Should I pee on it?”

We all shout, “No!”

I feel a faint rumble beneath my feet. “A train's coming! Please climb up, Carling!”

“I don't hear it.”

“Carling, now,” shouts Leo. “Up the ladder this minute!”

She crosses her arms and looks at me, an evil smile spreading across her face. We can hear the train now; the sound inside the tunnel changes from a distant hum to a roar. “Hey, London. Why don't you come down here and get me? Doesn't that sound fun?”

She wouldn't. No way. Even Carling Burnack wouldn't resort to this kind of blackmail. “Me?” I squeak. “I'm not climbing down there.”

“No? If I were you I'd rethink it. Because you never know. All this danger just might force me to start doing yoga.”

You sick and twisted little bitch. You freak-of-the-earth sicko. You scab on the flesh of humanity.
I should stand perfectly still. Ignore her. But I can't. My heart clashes against my ribs as I step closer to the ledge and squat down. “Carling, this is crazy talk.”

“Jesus Christ, Carling,” says Leo. “Get the hell up here!”

“No.” She juts out her chin like a stubborn toddler. “Not until London comes down.”

A faint reflection of headlights illuminates the tunnel walls but I have to go. I don't even care if she tells on me. She's drunk, she's insane, and she'll be killed if I stand here any longer. Tears sting my eyes and my body is shaking so hard I think I might pass out. The roar of the train is getting louder; the headlights are now in full view. A horn blares. Carling looks straight at me. “You better hurry, London. I don't want to die.”

I spin around backward and step on the ladder. It's greasy with soot and one foot slips. I right myself and start down.