Love and Chaos (8 page)

“Are we getting along?” asks Julia. “Ladybitch? Can I call you that?”

I arch an eyebrow at her. “That’s
Sir
Ladybitch to you.”

Julia giggles and chokes on some frosting, making a strange quacky-bark sound, and I crack up.

“What are you laughing at?” Pia sounds annoyed. Like Julia and I shouldn’t be allowed to have private jokes.

“At Julia,” I gasp. “She gagged on some frosting.”

“That sounds like a euphemism,” says Julia.

“What, like … he frosted my mouth?” I say. “Mmm. Glaze me, you stud.…”

Julia shrieks with laughter. Pia rolls her eyes.

“Exsqueeze me, but there are no
guys
here,” says Coco, looking around plaintively.

Oh, yeah. I nearly forgot. It’s Meet a Dude Day.

I do a quick survey of the area. There are hundreds, probably thousands of people here, but she’s right. Hipstery girls, young families, older parental types, and bewildered tourists. This is not a target-rich environment for the single girl. You need two or three guys, alone, who are up for some flirty conversation over a drink. Or in this case, an artisan farm-reared slow-pulled-pork organic-sourdough sandwich.

“You could talk to the food dudes,” I suggest.

Madeleine laughs. “Ugh, they’d be all obsessed with their work like all food people in Brooklyn.”

I glance over at Pia to see if she heard, but she’s too busy making notes. What is with Madeleine and the snide comments?

“That guy over there is gorgeous,” says Jules. “See him? Next to the chick in the hat?” We all look over. “Don’t look now! Jeez, you guys! Oh, shit, he just kissed her. What a dick.”

We all sigh in supportive disappointment.

“I think the flaw in the Meet a Dude Day plan is that you need an excuse to talk to guys,” says Madeleine. “Like, you know, an activity, a conversation starter. Maybe you should take a cooking course or something.”

“Yeah. All hot single guys just love a cooking course,” says Pia, deadpan.

“I’m not a joiner. And the flaw in Meet a Dude Day is that we’re treating this like an excursion to the dude zoo,” I say. “They’re not wild animals waiting to be observed.”

“No, the Meet a Dude Day flaw is that it’s practically impossible to pick up a guy sober,” says Pia. “You know, unless you work with him, or you’re, like, religious or something.”

“So true. Alcohol is a social lubricant,” I say. “It makes everything slip just that little bit easier.”

“Ew, gross.” Madeleine wrinkles her nose.

“You’re a sensitive little flower, aren’t you?” I say. And a raging bitch, I don’t add.

My phone rings. I glance at it quickly. It’s Annabel, my mother. But I’m not talking to her until Dad calls me and tells me the full story. So I quickly press silent.

“Excuse me?” asks a voice. We all turn around. A dude! Slightly chubby, has not quite mastered the art of the clean shave, but a dude nonetheless. “I was wondering if you’ve seen the headcheese? One of my Twitter followers said it was going to be here, but we can’t find it.”

“Headcheese?” I repeat. “That sounds…”

“Fucking disgusting,” finishes Julia. “What is it?”

“It’s kind of like meatloaf made from the parts of a pig no one else wants to eat. The face, the feet. Sometimes the heart.”

We all gaze at him in total horror.

“I think I might be sick,” I whisper to Julia.

“I hope I will be,” she whispers back. “That shrimp is really repeating on me.”

Coco is fascinated. “Wow! Are you a chef?”

“No, I run a food blog called the Hungry Geeksters! You gotta meet my cobloggers, hang on—”

We all turn around as two guys—one tall and flabby, one short and squat—come over. They’re not bad-looking, and they seem friendly. For a second, it looks like Meet a Dude Day might actually work out.

Then they start to talk.

Normally, I kind of like geeks. I hung out with them a lot at boarding school. They’re easy to make blush, they’re smart, they let you sit with them at breakfast. But these geeks are a different breed. Big-city geeks. Boring know-it-alls with superiority complexes who aren’t making eye contact and just talking to one another
around
us, if that makes sense. Maybe they have a touch of Asperger’s—hey, it’s not unlikely, let’s be honest—or maybe they just never hung out with people with real live breasts before. Whatever. It’s boring me.

“… and remember that time you ate jellied eel, Gary?”

“That was great! It tasted like river trout cooked in Vaseline.”

“You’re such a gourmand! That was still our most successful post ever.”

After a minute or two Coco is the only one still smiling at them hopefully. Madeleine surreptitiously started texting someone. Pia muttered something about making notes and wandered away. Julia is giving me “get me the fuck out of here” eyes. (You know the look: a stare, into a sort of eye-widening glare, back into a stare.)

Time to take charge. I clap my hands together, hoping it makes me look authoritative. “Well, boys, it’s been great, but it’s time for us to get home before we turn into pumpkins.”

“It’s two-thirty in the afternoon,” says the chubby geek.

“And I believe that it was Cinderella’s coach that turned into a pumpkin, not Cinderella herself,” says the spectacled geek.

“Right on.” I put a cigarette between my lips and walk away. The other girls follow me. “Why do I always have to play the bitch?” I mutter.

“Well, it just seems to come naturally to you,” says Julia, and we both start laughing again.

I think Coco and Madeleine have that slightly dejected feeling you get when you were hoping something would be the highlight of your weekend and it turns out to be totally not. But as we walk home through the frosty afternoon, Jules and I are actually having a good time.

“You have such a cool walk, you know that? You sort of swagger like a cowboy,” says Julia.

I arch an eyebrow. “Like I have a dick?”

She cracks up. “No! You just … look like you own the world.”

“Ha.” Yet another thing about my outside that doesn’t match my inside. “I’m sorry Meet a Dude Day didn’t work out, Jules.”

She shrugs. “I haven’t met any guys in forever. You know what we need? Some platonic male friends who can introduce us to a continuous flow of new single men,” says Julia thoughtfully. “Only dudes know dudes.”

“Like a dude dealer?” I say.

“Yes! Exactly like a dude dealer. Or a pimp.”

I flinch. Fuck. Stef is a pimp, I guess. A casual rich-kid high-end pimp with a “he needs a girl, you need money” mentality, and hopefully without a switchblade and a sideline dealing meth, but essentially a pimp nonetheless. All day, I’ve been trying not to think about how I was on the boat this time yesterday, or what was happening to me.…

“Sorry,” whispers Julia. “I was only messing around.”

I turn to her and smile. Man, she’s a nice person. “It’s okay,” I say. And all of a sudden, it is. Just like Vic said: it happened, now it’s in the past. I have to let it go. Or at least try.

Coco skips up next to us. “Why did we leave? I liked them!”

“You liked the fact that they were male, Coco. Aim higher,” says Julia.

“Harsh,” I say, seeing Coco’s face fall, before she plasters on her usual “everything’s great!” smile.

“Is it? I don’t mean to be harsh. Coco, honey, next time you decide you truly like someone, I swear we will all be one hundred percent behind you. Right, Angie?”

“For sure,” I say. “I’ll get his name printed on a T-shirt with an ‘I heart’ in front of it.”

Coco is trying to act flippant. “Well, I will never meet anyone. I work in a preschool. My job is the least guy-friendly job in the world.”

“What about all those hot dads?” Pia finally tunes in to the conversation, though she’s still texting someone. Aidan, I bet.

“Are you
serious
? They’re old. And married.”

“Can you imagine being a wife and having, like, children?” says Julia. “Right now I think it would be easier to learn Russian.”

“I could learn Russian in six weeks if I tried hard enough,” I say. “But find a dude who might like me for
me
in six weeks? Not a chance.”

“Aw, do you have low self-esteem?” Julia pulls my ponytail affectionately.

“No, I really don’t,” I say. “I just know what guys see in me. And it’s never … me.”

Julia is quiet for a moment, suddenly serious. “I know exactly what you mean. Sometimes I would kick a puppy just to have an interesting conversation with a good-looking guy who also happened to find me attractive.”

We stroll along in silence, Julia’s words echoing in my head.

An interesting conversation with a guy.

You know, I can’t even remember the last time I actually talked to a guy. Like, really
talked
.

Take any of the guys I’ve dated (please!
Boom, tish
). Mani, Marc, Jessop, Hugh, the guys I met at college, in bars, on vacation … My entire life, it’s always the same.

They talk, I listen. They joke, I smirk. I never reveal anything about myself, I never trust them enough to show them who I really am or how I really feel, so it’s just chase, flirt, party … and then sex. Which is always shit, anyway, the kind of sex where afterward I feel inexplicably like crying, and I go to the bathroom alone and look in the mirror and wonder what the hell I’m doing and why I feel empty inside. (Urgh, sorry. Drama, I know. But it’s true.)

And then in the morning I always wake up next to them and feel more alone than ever. But I stick around in the hope that next time, they’ll try to see past the tough shell I’ve built over the years. That they’ll suddenly
know
me, and I’d understand them and feel a connection. A real connection.

It never happens, of course. Why would a guy bother to get to know me? So I act flippant and cool and tough, and eventually they dump me, and I never hear from them again. They even defriend me on Facebook. Like there is no point in keeping in touch. Like I am disposable.

No wonder I’ve always liked that moment before the first kiss so much. The prekiss. That is the moment when there is still a chance that this time, it will mean something. Like I might meet someone worth trusting, someone to whom I can show my true self. Like there might be a happy ending.

Never again. Never, ever again. I’m staying single. Forever. I’m staying away from all dudes. Especially rich kids and liars.

And I’m going to get a job in fashion.

CHAPTER
12

I’m never going to get a job in fashion.

In the past week, I’ve tried everything. I’ve scoured
WWD,
talked to the few recruitment agencies that specialize in fashion, searched Craigslist and every fashion website and blog. I e-mailed my resume to all my favorite Manhattan-based designers yet again, just in case the last time I sent it last August, when I first got to New York, it was misplaced. I told them I loved creating clothes; I asked if they needed a junior designer, an assistant, a receptionist, a coffee flunky, shoe polisher, anything.

Nothing.

I called everyone nice who I met via my old boss The Bitch food photographer; I phoned Cornelia’s contacts that I used to call to pull samples when she was on her way to some gala. I Facebooked, I IM’d, I tweeted. I called back and back and back.

Nothing.

I asked about internships, but they’re booked up months or even years in advance, and the problem is that they don’t pay anything and I need
money
. I guess this means that every intern in New York either still lives with their parents, or has an enormous salary-type allowance that enables them to pay for a New York apartment and, you know, eat. Which means that only rich kids get fashion internships, and therefore, are first in line and the most qualified for the best jobs. Doesn’t that seem fucking stupid to you, by the way? Shouldn’t it be the hardest working and most talented people who get the best jobs? Sometimes it seems like being in your early twenties in New York is not survival of the fittest, it’s survival of the richest.

So I applied for sales positions in my favorite designers’ stores. If you work in a Marc Jacobs store, you’ve got to meet him at some point, right? I spent all day yesterday going to all the best stores. I filled out forms and left my perfect Julia-approved résumé and smiled so much that my face ached.

Nothing.

Getting a job is the only thing I’ve thought about, the only thing I’ve focused on in the past week. When my thoughts slip back to Stef, and Hal, and the yacht, and everything else, I force them forward.
Get a job. Get a life.

But I’m not getting anywhere. I’m failing.

New York City is rejecting me.

Today it was cold and rainy, a typical March day, so I hid in my bedroom, reading romances and drawing and sewing little bits and pieces. Throwing out all my high-end clothes the other night also ripped a hole in my wardrobe, and obviously I can’t afford to go shopping right now, so I decided to take my cheap-ass basics and make them more interesting. For example, I ripped the sleeves off all my shirts and T-shirts. Yes, it’s still cold as hell outside. Yes, I should have thought it through a bit more.

Anyway, when Julia found me moping in my room earlier (“Are you sick? I have never, ever seen you in the house on a Saturday night before”), she suggested I get the girls together to “brainstorm a solution.” Pia isn’t here, of course. She’s with Aidan.

But that’s okay. I’m in the warm, cozy kitchen at Rookhaven, eating pizza from Bartolo’s and drinking wine while it rains outside.

“What the hell is this? I asked for triple pepperoni, this is, like, double at the most,” says Julia, peering at her pizza.

“I think there’s more than enough processed pig on there,” says Madeleine through a mouthful of spinach and ricotta.

Julia sighs. “I guess.” She looks up at me. “Pepperoni, Angelface?”

I grin at her and take a slice. There’s nowhere else in the world that I’d rather be right now than right here.

“I don’t know when I started drinking wine, but I like it,” comments Julia. “It just tastes so fucking sophisticated.”