Sunday found me drinking black coffee in the kitchen at one in the afternoon and glancing at the already heavily picked-through Sunday New York Times. I hate the Sunday Times. It weighs about seven pounds and everything in it is dorky and wrong. Back before my dad moved to London, we used to read it together and he’d outline every single thing that the Times had misunderstood about business and the rest of the world. That was a little exhausting, but it was also pretty funny. So I went ahead and gave him a call to see if he wanted to talk about how stupid the paper was over the phone, but he wasn’t home, or he wasn’t picking up.
Then I spied something particularly insane and exciting. Men’s Fashions of The Times. The magazine section. I knew for a fact that once I opened it my gut was going to hurt from laughing so hard at the assinine outfits those fools put together and called fashion, so I set it aside and decided to call around and see what had happened to everybody the night before.
I started with Arno. He picked up, which meant he thought I was someone else.
“I really don’t appreciate you not showing up where I invited you and then taking my innocent little cousin and doing who knows what with her.”
“Cool it, Jonathan,” Arno said. “I just got home and you sound like my mom.”
“Oh yeah? Well has your mom been asking you how far you got with my cousin? And did you see David crying on TV last night? He must’ve found out about you and Amanda.”
“Maybe he was just into the game.”
“Yeah, right. For your sake, you better hope that Amanda didn’t tell him what she did with you.”
“Yeah,” Arno said slowly. “I guess I do hope that.”
“Now what about my cousin?”
“What do you care?”
“Um,” I said. And then I immediately realized that 1) I couldn’t be jealous, because she was my cousin, and 2) Arno had fooled around with Amanda and potentially destroyed David’s relationship, thus violating the single pact we’d had going since we were tiny, or at least since fifth grade when Arno had French-kissed Molly, who had been passing love notes with David for practically the entire year. How was I going to keep us together if David found out what Arno did? Patch could probably mellow us out, but where the hell was he? I didn’t have a clue.
“How could you do that to David?”
“Ask Amanda. It was her idea and believe me, I don’t feel good about it.”
“Hmm,” I said.
“Listen, you’re not going to tell David, are you?” Arno asked.
“No,” I said flatly. “It’d kill him.” And we hung up.
Then I called David, who didn’t answer. I called Mickey, but he didn’t answer either, so I gave up. The chances of Mickey knowing where his phone was were about as good as there being a decent pair of shoes on a model in the Men’s Fashions section.
I sat there, spinning my phone on the kitchen table and wondering what to do with myself. Then I opened the magazine and started looking at the pictures of bunches of guys wearing ugly Wall Street suits with boring old white button-down shirts.
That’s when I heard a noise and remembered that my house had visitors. Kelli wandered into the kitchen. To say she was unsteady on her feet was an understatement. She gripped the kitchen counter like it was the side of a sailboat and our apartment was the sea.
“Need something?” I asked. I tried to make my voice surly, but it didn’t come out right. Even hungover as she was, she was a pretty sexy looking character. Her lips were puffy and pink and her hair was pointing in all directions. She didn’t have bed-head. She had orgy-head.
“Back to bed, going,” she said. “Mom?”
“Our moms are out shopping at Bergdorf’s.”
“’s lucky.”
“Mmm,” I said. “Out late?”
“Till just now,” she said.
“Ready for your Barnard interview tomorrow? Coffee?” I asked. I poured a steaming cup and held it, just out of her reach.
“Mmm,” she said. She reached toward it. I handed it to her and she needed both hands to steady the cup. She let go of the counter and trembled. When the coffee aroma reached her nose, she dropped the cup and vomited, instantly and heavily, all over our onyx Bizazza kitchen tile. Then she collapsed in a heap of platinum blond hair, makeup, and scuffed high-heeled boots.
She was asleep in a matter of moments. I grabbed a napkin and tied it over my mouth so the smell wouldn’t kill me.