Take a Chance on Me Read online

  “Barcelona was good,” Baby replied, remembering. It had been good, but it had also felt like something was missing. She absentmindedly pulled her hair toward her mouth, chewing the ends. She used to do it just to gross Avery out when they were younger, but it was comforting and had become a habit.

  “I just thought that getting out of New York would be good for me. You know, to get away from my family, away from school uniforms. Maybe I should become a nudist or something,” Baby said randomly. She glanced up to see if Dr. Janus would crack a smile, but she just nodded blankly, as if Baby was actually intending to strip down. Baby self-consciously pulled her Nantucket High sweatshirt closer across her body. “Just kidding,” she added lamely. What did Dr. Janus want from her anyway?

  Besides $250 an hour?

  “What were you looking for?” Dr. Janus prompted thoughtfully. A white noise machine in the background reminded Baby of the sound before a summer storm.

  Baby crossed, then uncrossed her arms. This was all so contrived and designed to be relaxing that it had the opposite effect.

  “Well, I was looking for Mateo. He was just this friend I met here in the city,” she began. He’d told her that he’d come to New York on a dare with his best friend. It had seemed so unique and spontaneous that Baby had wanted to do the same sort of thing.

  She knit her fingers together and held her hands above her head in a stretch. Maybe if she could just explain the situation rationally, Dr. Janus would understand how normal she was and that she didn’t need twenty hours of mandatory therapy. “I thought he and I would just have fun. But then I couldn’t find him, but I had a good time on my own. I mean, really, I just wanted to explore a new place—”

  “Right, but what were you looking for?” Dr. Janus asked again, as if she were stuck on an endless repeat loop.

  “Maybe an adventure, I guess. I mean, I just thought it’d be fun.” Baby frowned. That sounded kind of lame. “I mean, I thought it’d be a good way to find myself.” There. That sounded more therapy-appropriate.

  “I have a different theory,” Dr. Janus said, her voice rising an octave in excitement. “What if I told you that you were looking for your father?”

  Baby blinked. Excuse me? Sometimes Baby flipped through Edie’s old bootleg tapes, trying to figure out if any songs were about her mother, in case her dad was some super-famous hippie rocker. But other than that, she rarely thought about it.

  “No. I was looking for Mateo,” Baby said firmly. She sat up, swinging her legs down off the couch. Weren’t therapists supposed to let you come up with your own answers?

  Dr. Janus sighed heavily. As if on cue, the white noise machine changed from the ocean sound track to a rainstorm one. A clap of fake thunder sounded. “It seems like you’re spending more time hunting down boys than you are trying to discover yourself. What would you say to that?” Dr. Janus had her pen poised as though she were a court reporter.

  Baby sighed in frustration.

  “You’re resistant,” Dr. Janus said smoothly. “That’s okay. This is a safe space. You don’t have to talk. You can lie there until the hour is up,” she offered, examining her nude-polished finger-nails.

  “Isn’t that kind of pointless?” Baby asked rudely. If she was just going to lie around, she’d much rather do it in her own bed, thank you very much.

  “It’s not pointless at all.” Dr. Janus opened her eyes even wider, and Baby realized she was a little cross-eyed. One blue eye remained fixed on Baby while the other one looked down at her paper. It was extremely disconcerting. “What you need is to learn your inner motivations. And it’s going to take a while,” she explained matter-of-factly. “You’ll probably want to come in every day,” she concluded as she closed her small leather-bound notebook.

  “What?” Baby flung up suspiciously. What could she possibly talk about every day?

  “We’re going to go on a journey into your psyche together.” Dr. Janus clapped her hands together in rapture, as if she couldn’t wait. “Who knows? One of my patients has been with me for the past twenty years. You wouldn’t believe the work we’ve done together.” She nodded importantly.

  “Can I think about this and call you?” Baby asked. Not waiting for an answer, she stood up, then bolted toward the door and slammed it shut.

  “You didn’t really close the door to personal enlightenment, you know,” Dr. Janus yelled from the other side. Baby hurriedly opened the door to the hallway, ignoring the doorman as she burst outside.

  Freedom!

  rien de rien

  “I need a Brazilian—anyone want to come with me?” Sarah Jane Jenson asked as she, Jiffy Bennett, Genevieve Coursy, and Jack Laurent walked out the doors of Constance Billard. They rushed past the windows to get out of sight of the headmistress’s office.

  Jack fought the urge to roll her eyes. Why would Sarah Jane Jenson, who hadn’t had a boyfriend since camp in eighth grade, and wasn’t planning on going to the beach anytime soon, possibly need a Brazilian bikini wax? Several tenth graders clustered on Constance’s front steps immediately glanced over, eager to hear Jack’s response.

  “I wish I could,” Jack lied. She dug into her voluminous blue Balenciaga city bag, fishing out a pack of Merits. She lit up and then passed the pack to Genevieve, keeping an eye out for her boyfriend, J.P. Cashman. He didn’t like that she smoked, and after their brief breakup just a few weeks ago, she didn’t want to rock the boat. “I’m hanging out with J.P. this afternoon.”

  “But it’d be like a present to him!” Jiffy justified. Jiffy had never really had a boyfriend, but her thirty-two-year-old socialite sister Beatrice had already been married three times, so she considered herself an expert on guys.

  “That’s such a male-centric view,” Genevieve said dismissively, exhaling smoke in Jiffy’s face. She’d recently started reading Simone de Beauvoir in an attempt to be cast in her director dad’s new Sartre biopic, and it was really rubbing off on her. Pretty soon she’d get her nipples pierced and start hanging out with that weird possible lesbian Sydney. Jack wrinkled her nose. She was so glad she had a boyfriend.

  “What’s wrong with being male-centric?” Jiffy countered, brushing her way-too-long wispy brown bangs out of her brown eyes. She turned to Jack. “Please come? We’ve hardly seen you since you got back together with J.P.!” she pleaded.

  “I can’t. Besides, waxing isn’t exactly a group activity,” Jack responded boredly, even though a quick appointment—by herself—at the Elizabeth Arden Red Door salon on Fifth might not be such a bad idea. Things with J.P. had been going especially well lately. Maybe it was time they finally did it. It it. Jack turned sharply on her heel and walked toward Fifth Avenue. Immediately, just like she knew they would, the other girls followed.

  “Um, the problem with being male-centric is that guys don’t like that. Guys like it when girls don’t give a fuck,” Genevieve explained in exasperation, exhaling another cloud of smoke. Sarah Jane nodded thoughtfully.

  “Baby Carlyle doesn’t give a fuck,” Jiffy mused as she practically jogged to keep up with Jack’s long strides

  Jack whirled around and glared at her. Could Jiffy really be dense enough to bring up Baby fucking Carlyle in front of her? Baby had briefly dated J.P., and the last Jack heard, she’d run off to Spain or Switzerland or something. And that was fine by her. “Sorry, Jack!” Jiffy exclaimed, seeing the look on Jack’s face. “But I wonder where she is. I mean, who just disappears?”

  “I heard she was getting a sex change.” Genevieve shrugged. “Whatever, why does she matter? The point is that Jack and J.P. are together.”

  Jack smiled at Genevieve, glad that someone was making sense. The girls kept talking, but Jack tuned them out as she walked a few steps ahead. She had much better things to think about than Baby Carlyle—such as tomorrow’s itinerary. She’d head over to Elizabeth Arden during double photography, then go home with J.P. after school and casually lie on his bed and…

  “Hey ladies!” J.P. called from
the opposite side of the street, interrupting Jack’s little X-rated fantasy. Jack threw her Merit down, dangerously close to Genevieve’s black Tory Burch flats. She fluttered her Dior Black Out mascaraed eyelashes at him in an I’m innocent gesture.

  “Hey handsome!” Jack threw her arms around him as soon as he crossed, mostly for the viewing pleasure of her friends. He was wearing a perfectly pressed blue oxford shirt and an unfortunate Riverside Prep baseball cap that did nothing for his brown hair.

  “This is for you, princess.” J.P. grinned as he handed Jack a steaming venti Starbucks cup. “Do you girls need anything?” He cracked his perfect smile and Sarah Jane and Jiffy giggled. Jack resisted the urge to kick their Wolford stocking–clad shins.

  J.P. was the son of Dick Cashman, a major real estate mogul, but he wasn’t an asshole about it. He was generous, funny, and smart, and they’d been dating for just about forever. Except, of course, for when he’d broken up with Jack just a few weeks earlier for Baby, a brilliant match that had lasted all of a week. As a method of psychological warfare, Jack had pretended to date Baby’s brother, Owen, only to walk in on him hooking up with some slutty Seaton Arms girl. Now, Jack and J.P. were back together, and Baby was God knew where, becoming a man or whatever, and everyone was happy.

  Another Upper East Side fairy tale.

  “See you girls later,” Jack called, hurriedly steering J.P. down the street. The girls looked disappointed to see them go. Too bad. Maybe they could get their own boyfriends.

  Jack concentrated on the feeling of J.P.’s hand firmly guiding the curve of her back as they walked west, toward Central Park. The leaves were falling off the few lonely trees, and the sky was cloudy, but she loved days like these. They felt so European, the perfect backdrop for a love affair. She took a large sip of the latte, feeling the warm liquid travel down her throat. It felt so good to be with someone who remembered that she needed two Splendas to make it sweet.

  “I missed you,” J.P. said, giving Jack’s arm a squeeze. Her stomach fluttered. She wanted to scream to everyone walking down the street, from the nanny with two kids in a stroller to the old man in an elegant Oscar de la Renta suit navigating the sidewalk with his cane, that this was her boyfriend.

  Jack’s life had been a shitstorm this past month: Her banker father had cut her and her mother off, forcing them to move out of their luxurious town house and into its attic, and refused to pay for anything except school. But things were starting to look up. First, her father had relented over dinner at Le Cirque last week and given her a monthly, prepaid debit card. It was the personal finance program he had in place for Jack’s kindergarten-age stepsisters, but it was nice not to be scrounging for quarters to buy Diet Cokes from the vending machine. She’d also nailed two scholarship auditions for her ballet program and was just waiting for a call to let her know she’d been accepted into the School of American Ballet’s prestigious apprenticeship program. And, most importantly, she and J.P. were back together.

  “You look good,” Jack said as she reached up and pulled his tacky Riverside Prep cap off his head. She stuffed it in her purse. There. Now he looked even better.

  “Want to go over to my place?” J.P. asked as they approached the gigantic interlocking-C sculptures that marked the Cashman Complexes, one of the many buildings owned by J.P.’s father. He lived in the penthouse with his dad and his European former–fashion model mother.

  “Not today.” Jack smiled mysteriously. She actually did have other plans. Even though she was almost positive she’d gotten the dance scholarship, she hadn’t gotten a definite yes. That meant she had to take pay-as-you-go classes at Steps, a studio on the Upper West Side, which was above a Fairway supermarket and always smelled like bacon. Besides, even though she loved being back with J.P., she still wasn’t 100 percent sure she could count on him not to ditch her again. With her luck, Baby Carlyle would probably come back a man and J.P. would decide he was gay.

  He does dress well….

  “Okay.” J.P. nodded agreeably. “I’ll call you?” He pulled her face toward his and kissed her. His mouth tasted familiar and reassuring, like eucalyptus mixed with spearmint gum. “See you later, babe,” he called, waving as he whooshed through the gold revolving door of his building.

  “Bye,” Jack called, as if to herself. She suddenly shivered, pulling her Marc by Marc Jacobs leather bomber jacket closer around her shoulders. The jacket had been a total mistake, bought on clearance at one of those tacky designers-for-less websites—just one more reminder that things had changed since the last time she and J.P. had been dating.

  She continued to walk down Fifth, pausing when she came to Seventy-second Street, the street the Carlyles lived on. She looked up toward the top floor, but all the windows were dark and it was impossible to see anything from the street. Not like she was looking for something. After all, she and Owen hadn’t really been dating at all.

  Finally, she made her way to her town house (she still thought of it as hers, even though another family lived downstairs) on Sixty-third between Fifth and Madison, where she’d change before heading to Steps. She snuck in the back entrance and lightly walked up the stairs to the attic, hoping her overly dramatic, French former-ballerina mother wouldn’t be home.

  “Ah, cherie!” Jack’s mother flew out of her bedroom and into their cramped foyer, knocking over a rickety hat stand in excitement. Her red hair stood askew around her face like an unchecked campfire.

  “Hi Mom.” Jack’s mood darkened. Her mother wore a flowy, muumuu-style Diane von Furstenberg sample sale error over her thin ex-dancer frame. She still had a certain elegance about her, though, and looked a little bit like Norma Desmond, the crazy aging actress from the movie Sunset Boulevard.

  “Today Paris, tomorrow the world!” Vivienne Restoin cried. “I will be drinking real Sancerre by sunset.” One Gitane cigarette hung limply between her mother’s fingers. Someday she’d seriously burn down the house in a dramatic fit.

  Maybe then they could move somewhere nicer.

  “Okay, well, have a good trip.” Jack shrugged. This was news? Vivienne always went to Paris to see her old ballerina friends and gossip about the old days, when they’d all dated much wealthier, much older men. That was how Vivienne and Jack’s dad had met.

  Jack brushed past her mother and dropped her purse on top of the ugly spinach-green couch in the living room. The garret was furnished with Vivienne’s most egregious decorator mistakes, making the entire apartment look like the showroom for the Housing Works thrift shop.

  “‘Have a good trip’! My comedienne!” Vivienne exclaimed affectionately, trailing behind Jack. “We are leaving. I received the call about my show. You call your father—le bâtard—and have him make arrangements for your schooling,” Vivienne commanded, her cigarette flying through the air.

  Jack paused. A week ago, Vivienne had vaguely mentioned a possible part in some French soap opera, but Jack had assumed she’d confused it with some weird dream she’d had or play she’d seen. But now her mom sounded 100 percent sure of herself. What the fuck? Did that mean she was expected to move to Paris while her mom played out her totally lame comeback on French television?

  “I’m not going,” Jack stated flatly.

  “But you must. You and me, we are a team. You cannot desert me now. And this is just the beginning for us,” Vivienne went on, her eyes gleaming. She tottered over to the mantel and picked up a silver Tiffany frame that contained a picture of herself as a prima ballerina at the Paris Opera House. Jack wanted to grab the frame, throw it on the floor, and stamp on it. Could her mom be a little less self-obsessed and realize for just a second that she was ruining her only daughter’s life?

  “How could you do this to me? What about me?” Jack fought to keep her voice steady. She sounded like a third-rate actress in a crappy reality TV drama. At this rate, they’d sign her up to costar with her mom on whatever the fuck the show was called.

  Le Insane?

  “La folie des je
unes,” Vivienne said disdainfully, artfully flinging her hand so the ash from her still-burning cigarette fluttered to the scuffed wooden floorboards. She came over and wrapped her skinny arms around Jack. Jack stood ramrod straight, refusing to hug her mother and let her think for a moment she approved of this. “Your life hasn’t begun yet, darling,” Vivienne cooed into her ear.

  “We leave on Sunday. Nous devons preparer!” As if to emphasize her point, Vivienne flung open the hall closet, pulled out a chinchilla coat, and wrapped it around her skinny body.

  Jack stomped into her bedroom and slammed the door. Angry tears slipped down her face. She wiped them away with the back of her hand. She picked up her Treo and dialed 1 for J.P.

  “I’m coming over,” Jack announced flatly. There was no way she could concentrate on a dance class this afternoon. She needed a different type of physical activity to distract her from what was going on. She opened her closet and shoved her favorite pair of skinny Citizens and a gray Theory sweater into her purse. Then she opened her bureau drawer and pulled out a pair of pink Cosabella panties she’d bought last spring at Barneys and a lacy black La Perla bra. She frowned. Was the color combination too do-me? She always bought sexy underwear, but so far, she’d never taken it off for J.P.

  There’s a first time for everything….

  The strains of “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien,” her mother’s favorite Edith Piaf song, emanated from beyond the door. Usually, Vivienne would only listen to it after drinking an entire bottle of wine. Jack wanted no part in that. She didn’t have time to think—she needed to get out. She shoved the lingerie into her purse, raced out of her room, and clattered down the stairs, not bothering to say goodbye. Maybe her mom would think she’d run away. Then she’d be sorry.

  She hurried uptown in the growing darkness, trying to imagine Paris. She’d lived there over the summer, as a dance student at the Paris Opera House. Yes, it was beautiful, but it wasn’t New York. She pulled her pack of Merits from her bag and furiously clicked her Tiffany lighter. This was an emergency. Besides, why quit now? Everyone fucking smoked in France.