Читать книгу Sam and Ilsa's Last Hurrah - Дэвид Левитан, Рэйчел Кон, Rachel Cohn - Страница 9
ОглавлениеI open the door and immediately I know.
This must be Wild Card Boy.
I know because he has the shy, sweet look of so many of Sam’s city crushes. Starbucks Boy. AMC Theatre Boy. Pret a Manger Boy. Terminal 5 Boy. Trader Joe’s Boy.
Whoever this guy standing here is, he’s exactly why I’ve invited Freddie. Our dinner party absolutely needs a Smoking Hot, Seemed Uncomplicated on the B-ball Court but Could Be Deeply Disturbed Eastern European Guy to break Sam’s infatuation mold of Nice, Safe Boys.
Wild Card Boy is long and skinny, just like the others, and he’s wearing black jeans (not garish at all – did he even read the invitation?), just like the others. Wild Card’s major improvement is his white T-shirt picturing a hipster black cat standing on its hind legs, playing a fiddle with its front legs. The shirt says, I PAWS FOR BLUEGRASS. Wild Card Boy is pale-skinned like he’s a shut-in, with shaggy ginger hair and a scruffy ginger beard and deep-green eyes. With his red-orange hair and black skinny jeans, Wild Card Boy looks like an upside-down pumpkin. But Wild Card Boy is highly cute, and has a big, warm smile that I try not to find suspicious. He holds a violin case.
“Hi,” I say. “Welcome. I’m Ilsa. And you are . . . ?”
“Johan!” he says jovially. “Delighted to be here, but disappointed that Czarina won’t be here! With a name like that –”
I interrupt. “You have a funny accent. Are you Australian?”
“South African.”
“Isn’t that like the same?”
“In no way whatsoever.”
“You’re a long way from home, Johan. What brought you to New York?”
“Juilliard. I play the violin.”
“Classical?”
“At school, yes. But American bluegrass is where my heart is.”
I hear Sam’s voice behind me. “Stop with the interrogation, Ilsa! Let the poor guy in already. He’s not a vampire.” He stands behind me and loudly whispers in my ear, “Is he?”
I turn around and see Sam wearing his favorite suit, with his regrettably red-cheeked blush revealing his every feeling. Hope! Anticipation! The kid’s never going to be a poker champion.
“I think this one’s mortal,” I tell Sam. But just to be sure, I ask Johan, “You’re not a vampire are you?”
“No,” says Johan, “despite how tempting your neck is looking.” He winks at me, then at Sam. “His neck too.”
What. A. Pro. My favorite guest of the night, already.
“Come in, please,” I say, holding the door open for him to step through.
Johan carries in his violin case, but nothing else so far as I can see. You can tell a lot about a person by the type of gift they bring for their host (Pret a Manger Boy – leftover cookies; Terminal 5 Boy – flowers; Starbucks Boy – gingerbread syrup), or if they don’t (Trader Joe’s Boy – the worst). I suppose Johan is in the Don’t category. Maybe they don’t bring gifts in South Africa. Not like I throw a party just to get the gifts. (But please bring those amazing chocolates, Li Zhang.)
“This is your granny’s actual apartment?” Johan asks as we lead him through the foyer and into the living room, which is at the building’s corner and offers views of the Empire State Building and midtown Manhattan to the south and the Hudson River to the west. “Everyone I know lives in dirty dorms or crowded shares in Bushwick.”
“The apartment’s been in the family for three generations. Before everything got so crazy expensive around here,” says Sam, sounding like he’s apologizing for Czarina not living up to starving-artist, bohemian standards.
“Rent controlled,” I add, so Johan will know we’re only surrounded by lucky moneybags folk. We’re not them.
Sam hates hates hates when I bring up the rent-control subject – especially so soon – to total strangers, but I’ve found it’s a good way to appraise their character right away. Either they’re happy for you or they literally hate your guts for having such luck in your family. It’s better to know right away. What’s it matter, anyway? The luck’s all ending.
Johan says, “This is what rent controlled means? I’ve heard about it, but I thought it had to be an urban myth.”
“It’s a rarity, but not a myth. And it’s all going bye-bye,” I say, pointing to the movers’ boxes against the far corner of the living-room wall. “This whole apartment cost our grandmother significantly less every month than you probably pay for a tiny dorm room you share with a snoring roommate, or mice, or both.”
“I have both!” Johan says.
“May I get you a drink?” Sam asks Johan, trying to change the subject. “We have sparkling water, pomegranate juice, ginger ale . . .”
“Beer?” Johan asks. With his accent, the word sounds like beeyrah?
“Sorry,” says Sam the Saint. “I promised our grandmother we wouldn’t serve alcohol.”
“I’ll get you one,” I say. “Sam Adams or Sierra Nevada?” Sam and I have a tacit understanding: he repeats the party line about Czarina’s rules, then looks the other way when I disobey them.
“You choose,” says Johan. “Thanks, mate.”
I leave for the kitchen, to give Sam some time alone with Johan. New guests – especially if they’re not from the city – always want a tour of the grand, chipping-away old apartment. I hope Johan appreciates my party-decorating efforts. I pinned decorations across the living-room walls, picturing Liberace in his many years of spectacularly garish fashions. I dangled small, mirrored disco balls from the chandelier over the dining-room table. I stocked the bathrooms with Czarina’s best hand towels from Ireland, and stocked the bathroom vanity drawers with Advil (for guests who can’t handle the booze), Pepto-Bismol (can’t handle Sam’s cooking) and a colorful array of condoms (want to get handled).
The house phone in the kitchen that connects our apartment to the building lobby, rings, like it’s still 1956 and people don’t have cell phones.
“Hello?” I answer.
“Announcing . . .” the doorman starts to say.
“Please don’t announce, Bert. Please just send them up. Thank you!”
I hang up the phone and pull out a Sam Adams from the fridge for me and one for Johan, taking a count of the beers in there so I know how many I’ll have to replace with swiped stock from KK’s parents before Czarina gets home. They never notice the beer missing any more than they notice that KK practically subsists exclusively on sushi and frozen Jell-O pops.
As I head to the front door, I hear Sam playing the piano in the study, Duke Ellington’s ‘Prelude to a Kiss’. Bold move, brother, so early in the night! Such a sweet, hopeful melody. I’m encouraged. This is going to be our best dinner party ever. I can feel it.
I wait for the doorbell to ring, as I always do, resisting the urge to open the front door and look down the hallway to see our guests disembarking from the elevator onto the eighth floor. A good hostess welcomes her guests but doesn’t seem desperate for them. I look at myself in the mirror in the foyer, blotting my matte burgundy lips, de-smudging the black kohl lined beneath my eyes and smoothing down the black bangs of my newly cut, razor-sharp twenties showgirl bob, whose ends come to points on either side of my chin.
I wish upon the next guest: Please be Wilson Salazar, please be Wilson Salazar. Johan, one of Sam’s three mystery guests, has been accounted for, and I can already tell Johan is awesome. Sam will obviously invite Jason Goldstein-Chung, because Jason is Sam’s habitual safe choice. Jason is like the comfort food of ex-boyfriends. That leaves one more guest on Sam’s list, and I salivate with hope that Sam finally extended an invitation to Wilson Salazar, the most talented and hottest actor in the senior class at LaGuardia’s. Wilson killed as Macbeth last fall. He broke my heart in West Side Story this spring.
The doorbell rings. I cross my fingers and softly sing a little prayer invoking Wilson Salazar’s presence. “Tonight, tonight / It all began tonight.”
I open the door.
DAMMIT!
“You’re looking very fetching, Ilsa,” Parker Jordan manages to say, seemingly effortlessly, while holding a rose stem between his teeth. He’s wearing the sequined, Michael Jackson-style black and white tuxedo he always wore when we used to compete as ballroom dance partners. He’s let his hair grow to high-top, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air height, the style Parker always used to tease me that he’d finally get when I wasn’t telling the barber how to shave his head anymore. Wish = fulfilled.
I grab the red rose from his mouth and throw it down the hallway. “Fetch this, Parker!” I say.
Parker laughs. “Oh, Ilsa. Bygones already.”
“You’re early,” I tell Parker.
“What time was I supposed to arrive?”
“Never.”
“Right on time!” Parker says.
He doesn’t wait for me to usher him, but boldly steps past me, walks through the foyer and into the living room with the ease of someone who’s been here a million times. I close the front door and follow him. He hands me a brown paper shopping bag. “Here. These are from Mom and Dad.” His ears take notice of the sound of the piano-playing coming from the study. “Ellington. Nice start, Sam.”
I snatch the bag from Parker’s hand and don’t bother with “Thanks”. I’ll save that for an email, later, directly to his parents. The bag has two stacked boxes inside it, and I know exactly what’s inside them: a sweet potato pie and a lemon chess pie, my favorites from Parker’s parents’ vegan soul food café in Hell’s Kitchen.
I guess if they’ve sent my favorite pies, they’ve forgiven me for the video I posted of Parker breaking up with me, which went viral (at least among everyone we know, and a good deal of Manhattan). According to Sam’s report, that video has caused Parker to be besieged by hordes of angry girls recognizing him on the street and repeating his line back to him: “It’s not you, it’s me . . .” Then the girls swat at him and shrill, “JERK!” (I’m pleased every time I get this report. Sisters who’ve been dumped, unite!)
I guess if Parker’s here tonight, he’s forgiven me too.
I don’t know how long it will take me to forgive Sam though. He knows I have a moratorium on seeing Parker again until the school year is officially over. I don’t want to be so blatantly reminded of Parker until after prom night, until after senior week, until after graduation and all the things Parker and I were supposed to share together.
“No gifts to me from your parents?” Parker teases. I resist a laugh. No one was more relieved when we broke up than my parents. Relieved for Parker, not me.
“They’re at Home Depot right now looking for just the right ax to bash your high-top down to baldy height.”
“Tell them no interest on purchases over $250 if they use their HD credit card. They oughta splurge on that plasma welder your dad’s always dreamed of owning to finally shut your damn mouth.”
My parents don’t even know where Home Depot is.
Sam and Johan return from the study and Sam introduces Johan to Parker.
“You look familiar,” Johan tells Parker. “Do I know you from somewhere? Like a commercial?”
I try to telepathically message Johan the punch line of his recognition. It’s not you, it’s me . . . JERK! But Johan doesn’t receive it, and Sam quickly changes the subject. “Ilsa. Where have we decided to check the phones tonight?”
After four dinner parties ago, when #Stantastic #livetweeted #Stanstunnedbyboredom all night, we banned cell phones from our parties, which improved our parties to an infinite degree. Now our guests savor their food instead of just Instagramming it. They enjoy the city view instead of getting lost on their phones trying to add “@theStanwyck” location to their Facebook posts. They talk to each other.
Now I have a change of heart. “Let’s not put away the phones tonight.” I maybe can’t handle a whole evening of witty conversation with guests when suddenly I’d rather spend the night crying in my room because Parker is here, and he’s probably going to talk all night about what amazing (not reckless) girl he’s taking to prom, or about all the first- and second-tier colleges he got into because what Ivy League school wouldn’t want a half-Dominican, half-African American male valedictorian who’s also a star lacrosse player, a champion ballroom dancer (in his previous Ilsa life) and the son of vegan baking royalty.
I’m going to be a hostess like Czarina tonight. I’m going to act like everything’s just grand even though I can’t believe Sam invited Parker. I feel so betrayed. Much as I think it would be healthy for Sam to have his heart broken, I would never then invite the cause of his pain to his own party after the breakup! This hurts.
“Please, let’s put away the phones!” says Johan. “I’ve always been curious to go to a party without them. I know, we could lock the phones in my violin case.” He walks over to where his violin case rests on the floor by the foyer. As he’s about to open the case, Johan looks up at us and says, “I didn’t know what to bring as a host gift. So I brought the ‘garish’ inside here.”
