Nothing Left To Want (19 page)

Milan had been facing me on her side while I babbled and, when I finished, she rolled over onto her back and stared at the ceiling.

I waited. After what felt like forever, she asked me to order us lattes. At Trump that means call the concierge and have him go to Starbucks. I said fine and then, “Does that mean you’re not going to tell me what you think till the coffee gets here, because I really can’t take your silent act this morning. This is my life, Mills, this is important to me. You have to help me, you have to.”

She yawned and smiled. Rolling gracefully, she stepped out of bed. “Oh I will, Care Bear, but if we’re going to plot your whole life out, I need a shower and a latte. Actually, tell him to bring me two. This is going to be a looong day. I have to fix your life, meet with my new assistant and a promoter, be at a shoot across town, and show up to like thirty places tonight, so … ” she leaned down and kissed my forehead, “ … you still come first, but you’re going to have to wait till I have my shower and my coffees. Go ahead. Call, call.”

She strode off to her bathroom and I obediently called the concierge and then impulsively called Gucci and ordered two of their new pet carriers to be delivered to Milan’s apartment. I knew she would love them and I knew I was going to owe her a present. It’s not that she expected presents - the love and iron support she gave me was real - it was just that I didn’t see what, if anything, being friends with me offered her in return, so I bought her things.

When she'd had her shower and her coffee, she climbed back onto the bed, grabbed Captain Hook out of my arms and held him up in the air.

She cocked her head. “Captain Hook, my fuzzle bun, what are we going to do with Carey Carey most contrary?” Captain Hook was the strong silent type of pink bunny, so he gave an ear twitch as an answer and Milan nodded like she understood. She set him down on her lap and stared into my eyes. “Okay, if you want him, then I want him for you, but there’s problems, Cares.” She ticked them off on her long fingers. “He’s totally hot, you’re right about that. Of course, so are you, but it’s a sad fact of life that there are a million of us hot girls and just a few hot boys. That gives them a … what’s that word?”

“
A monopoly,” I supplied helpfully. Kellehers understand monopolies. Then sulkily I said, “And you don’t even believe what you just said. You’re never one of a million, you’re one in a million. God, he probably only came near me to get closer to you.”

I had worked myself up again and started to cry. Milan is no more emotional than most of us, me being the sole humiliating exception to our class, so she waited me out. When I was calm, she went on like I had never interrupted her. “Two, he’s super-ambitious. I asked around last night. He isn’t going to school, he’s trying to get started in P.R..” She shrugged.

“
I don’t mind ambition, I mean … ”

She rolled her eyes. “Well, obviously, and so let’s not go there, and say he wanted to meet me, maybe he does, but if he does, it’s for work, and that’s okay. Stop selling yourself short. You’re perfect. If he wants an in for promotion and if he makes you happy, whatever, maybe I’ll even let him rep me. Would that make you happy?”

I nodded, my heart too full of love and gratitude to answer her coolly, the way I knew she would be comfortable with.

She nodded. “Okay, that’s fine, but the biggest thing here, Care, is one I can’t help you with. He’s eighteen and guys age in dog years, so in the real world that makes him like seven. Seven year old little boys are totally ahhdorable but they are barely doing more than starting to think we don’t have cooties. In real boy-girl terms, what I mean is you can come on hard in bed and out of bed, you need to lighten up and I worry, Cares, that you can’t do that. You’re such a baby yourself. You show everything you’re feeling and you have to stop
now.
If
you want him, you have to stop. You can’t ever call him, text him, ask when he is going to call you or, worse, why he hasn’t. You have to say no at least once out of every three times he wants to see you and, no matter what, no matter how stupid he will act, and he will, 'cause that’s what boys do, the only thing you can ever show him is that dimple, okay?”

“
Okay, but none of that sounds real. What are the things I can do?”

She shrugged. “You can look beautiful all the time, be great in bed, cool out of it, happy whether you are with him or not, or at least act happy, and you can wait.”

“
Wait for what because, Mills, this sounds kind of bogus.”

“
I guess it is maybe, but it’s the way it is, and if you do it, you’ll gain time to wait.”

“
Wait for what?”

She slid her arms around me, squashing Captain Hook between us. “Time with him, to wait for him to grow up, to wait for him to grow up enough to see my diamond girl, my one-of-a-kind, huge-hearted little buddy, to see that all any guy should want is you, to understand that you wearing your little heart out there for anyone to take isn’t something to make fun of or to use, but to value and to be happy about. That’s what you’ll be waiting for.”

Chapter 20

Michael and I became a couple - a couple! I’d never been one half of one of those before, and being coupled with Michael was the single greatest experience of my life.

For our second date, as he insisted on calling it, which I didn’t like since in my mind we’d already moved past dating, even though I’d only met him the day before, he took me to this horrible, grungy club in outer hell, aka New Jersey, a place the native New Yorker tends to avoid like toxic waste dumps. I think they also have a lot of them in New Jersey and that is why the grass is an almost luminescent green, hence the name the ‘Garden State.’

Not all of New Jersey is a pit by any means. Princeton is pretty and there are a lot of other decent parts. That’s why so many people with money, both old and new, live there. Heck, my crazy great-uncle, former husband of the Dominican maid, had once tried to buy New Jersey. Apparently his neighbors had objected to him covering the forty-eight thousand square foot love palace he had built - his version of the Jersey Taj Mahal - all in barbed wire. My uncle said it was to discourage intruders. His very rich but not-as-rich neighbors said it was a worse eyesore than a giant roadside ball of twine and lobbied to have the barbed wire removed. My uncle reacted as reasonably as he did to all requests and responded by trying to buy New Jersey. It wasn’t for sale and years of bitterness ensued.

I used to be embarrassed by that story when I was a little girl, but Daddy told me that old families are not as interesting without at least one real ‘cuckoo in the nest‘ and told me the story of one of the Du Pont family members trying to become an eagle. The old wacko even moved an eagle’s nest into his home and lived in it for a year. Now there is a really awesome nature preserve in his name and my own crazy uncle’s barbed wire palace is presently a golfing facility, so everything turned out fine for the people of New Jersey.

That part of New Jersey is not where Michael took me. He took me to Bergenfield and to a bar/club called Death You.

To make the evening more of an adventure, Michael didn't drive us to Bergenfield and Death You; we took the train.

When he picked me up at my apartment, he laughed when he saw my clothes. Wanting to show him a more sophisticated side than the disastrous dress I’d met him in, I was wearing a red pleated Bottega Veneta strapless and a really beautiful pair of forties style suede pumps from their line. I don’t know what I thought our night was going to entail, maybe dinner at some ironic retro place like 107 West where you could eat fried chicken for a hundred and ten a serving. After all, he had said he liked old school. I had planned my look with an eye to that kind of night.

He cracked up on the phone when I offered to arrange a car for us and said we’d be walking, so I had thought, oh, something along the lines of a nearby restaurant and a romantic stroll home. Maybe I would be able to find a grate and do a little Marilyn Monroe pirouette for him, which is why I had chosen that particular fifties style full-skirted look. I loved Marilyn Monroe and had always planned to have New York nights like the ones in the 'Seven Year Itch' as soon as I met the right guy, which he was, he totally was.

But, as in the beginning of any relationship, until you learn each other’s tastes, you make mistakes. Michael had envisioned a very particular kind of movie night date too.

It’s just his mojo was more
This is Spinal Tap
or
Harold and Kumar go to White Castle
than say,
Gentlemen Prefer Blonds
or
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
. His clothes might have given away the awesome surprise he had in store for me but they didn’t because, back then, all the Upper East Side boys were wearing standard prep by day and their sad wannabe version of gangsta grunge by night.

So his designer sags and leather coat didn’t tip me off. All I thought when I saw him was that he was even better than I had remembered from seeing him early that morning, and he smelled so good, and when he saw me he looked at me like he couldn’t decide whether to kiss me or laugh at my outfit.

He did both, and that part, the kiss in the doorway where his tongue dialed up my mouth and my nerve endings, and his long beefy body pressed against mine, made me think that we could stay in after all.

But then he said. “Jesus, you are pretty. I don’t know what you’re wearing, but no one will care since you’re so much fun to look at.”

“
What do you mean,
what I’m wearing
? This is a Bot … uh … just a dress. Aren’t we going out? I mean, Gawd I don’t care, we can stay in. I don’t think I have anything to eat in the house but I can call … ”

“
We are def going out and I can see it’s a dress. I just wondered if you wanted to wear that to Death You, but now I want you to wear it and, Carey, if you have panties on, leave them at home, okay?”

I didn’t care if Death You was going to be some nasty not-yet-hot club in the meat packing district or in Harlem, I only knew that he thought I was pretty and he wanted me to take off my panties. I rose up my skirt and showed him my Strumpet and Pink knickers, purchased just two hours earlier.

People say that British people don’t like sex but, given the lingerie they make, I can’t agree with that. Michael wouldn’t have either. He was panting a little. “Oh man, how do these ties work?”

“
Oh and I thought you were a smart boy.”

“
I am and I have good teeth too.” He had great teeth, white and sharp, so he was able to bite through the laces pretty easily. I didn’t care. If he liked them - and he did, he did - I would just order fifty more pairs.

I thought for sure we wouldn’t get outside after that, but he was on a mission, and when I realized he was dragging me toward the subway to make a connection at Grand Central, I started sulking and dragging my feet, asking where we were going.

He pulled me close to him. “We are going, my naïve Manhattan child, to the wilds of New Jersey, Bergenfield to be exact, and that is why we have to take the train. The neighborhood where the band I want to look at is playing is too shady for me to want to leave my car there. It would be stripped before we got back to it.”

I thought about that and tried to be helpful. I was only trying to show him that I could be flexible. “We could take one of my cars.”

“
Baby, I’m trying to kind of blend in with the crowd there. It’s bad enough that I’m walking in with a girl that looks like you, I mean, you’re no Jersey girl, but we can’t show up in a limo, Jesus.”

“
No, I didn’t mean a limo. I have cars, regular cars, two of them. They’re in the garage next to my apartment. It would be fun to take one. They’ve never been driven. I don’t know how to drive yet, so they just sit there. If one gets stolen tonight, that’s okay. I’m positive they’re insured.”

We were at the entrance to the subway when I said it, and he stopped cold and looked down at me like I was speaking Greek. “You have two cars and you don’t know how to drive? Why do you have one car, let alone two?”

“
Oh well, one’s not a car, it’s like an SUV thingy, and I didn’t buy them, Gawd. Daddy got me the SUV thing, I think it’s a Range Rover, for my birthday when I was fifteen. He thought it would be a really safe car to learn to drive in. Then this year for my birthday, he gave me the Porsche. I think he forgot about the first one and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, and I am going to learn how to drive soon. Maybe we should take the old one if it’s going to be stolen. The Porsche is so pretty and how would I explain to Daddy?”

He shook his head and guided me down towards the dirty escalator. “I don’t know. I have no idea how you’d explain it, Carey. We’ll take the subway tonight and maybe this weekend I’ll start teaching you how to drive. Not in the city, we can go out of town.”