Love and Chaos (3 page)

My love life is like a cheap match. Lots of sparks but the flame never catches. I pretend I don’t care, of course. Even when I’m dying inside, I just put a cigarette in my mouth and say something stupid and flippant, and no one can ever tell. Well, Pia can. Or used to.

“You are very good at making dirty martinis, Angie,” says Stef, taking another sip of his drink.

“One of my not-so-hidden talents,” I reply. Alcohol always makes me cocky.

“I’ll just bet.”

“Hey guys,” says a voice as two guys, one heavy and one skinny, walk into the bar.

“Angie, this is Busey and Emmett. Emmett is the owner of this particular establishment.”

“Hey,” I say. “Love the place. Does it have a name?”

“Not yet,” says Emmett, the skinnier guy, fixing himself a drink in that self-consciously arrogant way that guys who own bars always do. “Why? Got any ideas?”

“Name it after me,” I say. “The Angie.”

The guys laugh. “Fuck it, why not?” Emmett smiles, holding my gaze just a fraction too long. “Maybe I will.”

“Emmett, a word in my office?” says Busey. I look over. He’s racking up lines on one of the little round tables. Ugh, I am so over coke.

“Angie? Ladies first.”

“Not for me,” I say. “Not my bag.”

“I’m good for now, buddy,” Stef takes out a little leather purse. “Let’s have a smoke, and then I’ve got a couple of parties for us.”

“Okay,” I say. “What are we smoking?” It doesn’t look like plain old weed.

“That’s for me to know and you to enjoy.”

For a second, I wonder if I should. I’ve been drinking since, what, 2:00
P.M.
? And Adderall sometimes makes me a little crazy.

Then I think about why I started drinking. And about the fact that my father still hasn’t called. I don’t want to feel alone right now.

“My folks are splitting up,” I say to Stef, accepting the joint.

“Mazel tov! Welcome to the club. Let’s celebrate.”

CHAPTER
3

I wake up naked. And alone.

The first thing I think is: forty-one days till I turn twenty-three.

The second thing I think is: something is wrong.

I’m not sleeping on my pillow. I always have the same pillow. It fits my head perfectly. This pillow is higher, firmer.

I open my eyes and sit up real fast, my heart hammering with panic. Where the hell am I? Big bed, square windows, taupe blinds, huge TV, desk, one of those weird phones with the Line 1 and Line 2 buttons.

A hotel room. NakedinahotelroomIamnakedinahotelroom.

Okay, breathe, Angie, breathe …

On the nightstand there’s a little notepad with
SOHO GRAND
printed on it. I know that hotel. It’s in downtown Manhattan. And the clock says it’s 10:00
A.M.

Fuck.

What am I doing here?

I try to remember last night.

We hung out in the bar with no name for a while, drank more, then we met some friends of his—an Italian guy? And was the chick Croatian? Something like that. Then we were in some new bar on Lafayette, or maybe it was Hudson? Or did we get a cab uptown?

Nothing. I remember nothing.

With a sick thud somewhere deep inside me, I see the indent of a head in the other pillow. I didn’t sleep here alone.

Maybe the pillow just does that. Or maybe I started the night sleeping on that side.

I head to the bathroom to pee. The wallpaper has cool little cartoon drawings of birds. Nice. It’d make a cute fabric print actually.

Then, with an even sicker thud than before, I see something in the bottom of the toilet bowl.

A discarded condom.

Stef, probably. We’ve had sex before. It was years ago, at a house party in Boston, and it was not pleasant, but shit happens. At least we used a condom.

Goddamnit. I always end up sleeping with my male friends. A couple of drinks, I think maybe I have feelings for them, they give me that
look
and then … boom. It’s totally wrong, I know. But I always seem to do it. I always think that this time it’ll be different. I’m a sexual optimist.

I quickly shower, lathering soap all over my body to obliterate the sticky drunk-sex-morning-after feeling, and use the hotel shampoo and conditioner. My hair is pale blond, almost white, and very long, and it responds well to almost any hair product. As does my liver with almost any booze. Ha.

I wish I had a toothbrush. I look like shit, but I can make a quasi–smoky eye by rubbing yesterday’s mascara and eyeliner around my eyelid. Part panda, part rock groupie. Fine.

It’s when I’m getting dressed that I notice it, right over on the TV cabinet.

My cell phone, propped carefully over a Soho Grand envelope with “A xx” written on the front.

First I pick up my phone. Two missed calls and a text from Pia wondering where I am. She didn’t even bother to get in touch until this morning. Thanks a lot, ladybitch. If she left the house drunk and upset, I’d sure as hell chase her. Though she wouldn’t do that, of course. Not anymore.

Then I open the envelope.

It’s full of hundred-dollar bills. Thirty of them.

Three thousand fucking dollars.

I count it again quickly, my skin burning strangely at the sight of so much cash. It’s such a tiny stack of notes, but just imagine what I could buy with it.… Holy shit, that’s a lot of money. That’s more than Cornelia gave me every month. When she remembered.

Three thousand dollars.

I pause, looking out the hotel window over SoHo. I can see over the downtown rooftops, some with those funny Manhattan water thingies on top, and a bit of West Broadway, and people walking and shopping and going to Felix for brunch and leading ordinary days that probably didn’t start naked, alone, and confused in a hotel room.

Why would Stef give me three thousand dollars?

Then my phone buzzes again.

It’s Stef.

Hey kitten! Great night. Sorry for bailing, but hope you two had fun.…;-) Heading to a party in Turks tomorrow if you want to come. xoxo

What does he mean “hope you two had fun”? Two who? Who two? And he bailed? So I didn’t sleep with him? And the money isn’t from him? Who is it from? Who the fuck did I sleep with?

I turn the envelope over again. No signature. Nothing else.

I feel sick.

I don’t want to think about it, so I quickly throw my white dress back on, tie my wet hair into a tight little knot and secure it with the Soho Grand pencil, put the “A xx” envelope in my fur/army coat, and leave the room. I hope I don’t see Mani. He used to hang out in the lobby here a lot. He was so—Urgh,
why
am I thinking about my ex-boyfriend at a time like this?

Five-inch heels before noon: not cool. The Soho Grand lobby, at least, is kind of sexy and dusky, so I don’t feel too out of place, but once I’m outside, the freezing white glare of the February morning is horrific.

I feel like everyone is looking at me and thinking,
Slut.
I try my usual walk-of-shame trick of dialing up the attitude and pretending I’m too gnarly for this shit, but it doesn’t work.

Deep inside my body I’m nauseous … in my soul, or heart, or brain, or something. Cold and itchy.

I always do the wrong thing. Always.

It’s always an accident.

But it’s always wrong.

A tall doorman with kind eyes puts me in a taxi, and I say, “Union Street, Brooklyn, please.”

And then as the cab starts driving, I lean forward, bury my face in my knees so the driver can’t see me, and cry.

CHAPTER
4

When I get home, I throw my dress and shoes in the very back of my closet so I don’t have to think about them again. Then I put on my favorite old jeans and a pale gray rowing sweater that belonged to my dad when he was at Princeton. I saved it from being thrown out in one of Annabel’s house purges years ago, and I wear it on special occasions, when my soul is cold and anxious and I really need comforting. It’s like sartorial Xanax.

Three thousand dollars. Three thousand dollars.

Grabbing my latest romance novel,
Heart Crossing,
I glance at the back.

Angry, petulant Ivy hated the imperious Captain Drummond almost as much as she hated love. When the only way to save her invalid aunt is to marry the captain, she thinks she knows what to expect. But she didn’t know she was about to meet her match.…

They always meet their match in the blurbs, have you ever noticed?

Yeah, I know it’s seriously uncool to read romance novels, and yeah, I know that it’s lame that the dude is always a rich guy and the chick is always a secretary and all that. I don’t care. A good romance novel is simple, predictable, and makes me smile. Perfect escapism.

Except today, it’s not helping me escape. I keep starting paragraphs and halfway through, I’ve already forgotten what I’ve read.

Three thousand dollars.

I can’t bear to be alone with my thoughts today. And there’s only one solution.

Cheers to me.

Swigging vodka periodically and smoking out my window when the urge takes me, I play around with some vintage silky scarves covered in faded gold Art Deco prints that I picked up last week at Brownstone Treasures, this little place on Court Street, and sew them into a cool little clutch bag.

I have to pick the bag apart and resew it four times, but by about 6:00
P.M.
and after the rest of the vodka, it’s just how I want it. Perfectly sized to fit my phone, keys, cigarettes, money, and lipstick, with a little flat handle so it sort of hugs my hand just right, and padded with extra layers of scarves so it scrunches softly. The rain is hammering down outside, it’s freezing cold and dark and endlessly, endlessly February. But right now I don’t care. I’m sewing something out of almost nothing, making the dreams in my head into reality, creating something new and real and lovely.

My phone rings. I glance at it and quickly press “Ignore.” Annabel. My mother. Probably calling to give me shit for leaving the other day. I don’t want to talk to her until my dad calls me. I haven’t heard from him yet, but maybe he’s waiting until we can talk in person. He usually comes to New York about once a month for work.

The combination of hangover and vodka suddenly has me starving. So I smile at my handiwork once more, and then head down to the kitchen for some raisin toast with extra butter, cinnamon, and brown sugar (one of the best things in the whole world, by the way).

Three thousand dollars. Three thousand dollars.

It’s not like I’m a bad person just for blacking out, right?

My vodka stash in the freezer has run out, so I open a bottle of Merlot that someone brought home. It’s pretty nasty—very acidic, which Merlot shouldn’t be (I know I sound like a wine fuckwit, and I’m at peace with that). But it’s wet and alcoholic and that is what I need to survive the rest of the day. I’ll buy another to replace it. As I’m pulling out the cork, I notice that the old green curtains above the kitchen window are torn. Like, seriously torn. I could fix them! That would be a good peace offering for Julia. Maybe she’d like me again.

So I climb on the kitchen counter, slightly unsteadily, carefully take down the curtains, pick up my toast and wine, and with the curtains tucked under my arm, head back upstairs.

La-di-dah! Thank hell for booze, right? I bet it would be easy to make new curtains for my bedroom, too. Maybe I could—Oh … shit.

I tripped and spilled wine
everywhere
. All over the curtains, and the carpet and wallpaper outside Julia’s and Pia’s rooms. It’s all one big, red stain.

I’ll just hand wash the old curtains now and then fix them and then deal with the other cleanup later. The curtains probably need cleaning anyway, right? They’re like a hundred years old!

I try to wash them. I really do. But the stain won’t come out.

Wait! Brain wave! I’ll make curtains out of that new yellow cotton I just ordered instead. It’d be an even better peace offering for Julia, and yellow would look great in the kitchen! Yes!

I should always drink and sew.

Because then, an hour later, when I head back down to the kitchen to hang our brand-new, beautiful yellow curtains, I feel warm and loose and absogoddamnlutely peachy keen.

I climb up onto the counter, wobbling slightly. The kitchen so looks different from up here! And I carefully reach up to rehang the curtains.

BANG!

The front door slams, surprising me. I lose my balance and instinctively grab at the curtains as I fall backward off the counter and
whoomp
hit my head on a chair or the table or something, ripping down the entire curtain rail off the window frame at the same time. I land hard on my back, plaster and paint and wood chips showering over my body like confetti.

The pain is immediate.

Like the shrieking.

Julia. Of course. “What the fuck are you doing!? You’ve destroyed my fucking kitchen!”

I can’t move, so I just lie on the floor and close my eyes, my head
bangbangbanging
. It really hurts. I can feel the throbbing reverberating in my cheekbones, the shock of the fall bringing a painful lump to my throat and tears to my eyes. What kind of person cries after she falls over? What am I, some kind of sissy?

God, I feel so detached from myself. It’s like I’m watching myself lying prostrate and alone on the kitchen floor. Alone. Always, always alone.

I wonder when my dad will call.

“You’re drunk again,” Julia says. “And you reek of cigarettes.”

I move my arms up, slowly, over my head, so that I’m hiding my face in the crook of both elbows. Maybe if I lie here long enough she’ll go away. I wish I wasn’t here.

Then I hear the front door bang again. It’s Pia. On the phone with Aidan, as usual.

“No, you pick a restaurant. Why? Because I am not the goddess of food!… Ha, you are a sweet talker.…” I hear her footsteps approach the kitchen. “Oh …
merde.
Aidan? I’ll call you back.”

Julia: “She’s drunk.”

Pia: “Angie, are you okay?”

Julia: “She’s fine! She’s like one of those alcoholics who survive tornados!”