Would I Lie to You Page 3

  “New York Review of Books, huh?” asked the blond guy.

  “What? Yeah.” Dan pinned the cheap red tag to his faded black T-shirt, eyeing the stranger suspiciously. Dan hadn’t noticed him around before. Was it his first day? Was it possible that Dan was no longer technically “the new kid”?

  “I’m Greg.” The stranger smiled. “It’s my first day.”

  Fresh meat in moldy-book land. Sounds like a freaking party.

  “Cool. Welcome to hell,” Dan barked, secretly thrilled that he now had seniority over someone.

  “Actually, I can’t believe I’m here,” Greg continued eagerly, glancing around the room as if it were the Sistine Chapel instead of a dirty, windowless room in a rat-infested basement. He was wearing a short-sleeved cowboyish but-ton-down shirt and cutoff khaki pants that reminded Dan of Vanessa. The other afternoon when the A/C had blown out in the living room, she’d spontaneously cut the legs off her favorite black cargos to make shorts. God, he missed her.

  “I’ve always wanted to work here, you know?” Greg went on.

  “Job’s a job,” replied Dan, disinterestedly. Of course he knew exactly what Greg was talking about, but he was kind of enjoying mimicking the attitude copped by the rest of the senior Strand employees. It made him feel tough, like he might put out his next cigarette on the back of Greg’s hand. “I saw a whole cart of old literary journals upstairs by the elevator. Guess that’s what you’ll be dealing with till lunchtime.”

  “Sounds great to me!” gushed Greg. “Am I supposed to just wait down here, though? This guy Clark told me to come down here and that he’d be with me soon, but that was, like, fifteen minutes—”

  “Well, Clark knows what he’s doing,” Dan interrupted. “I’ve got to get upstairs, but I’m sure I’ll see you around, Jeff.”

  “It’s Greg,” the guy corrected him. “Did anyone ever tell you that you look exactly like that guy from the Raves, Dan Something?”

  Dan froze in midstep. “Humphrey. His name’s Dan Humphrey,” Dan informed him. “Well, actually my name’s Dan Humphrey.” Dan’s career with downtown rockers the Raves had lasted for exactly one gig at Funktion on the Lower East Side. He couldn’t believe anyone remembered that night. He certainly didn’t.

  An entire bottle of Stoli can do that to you.

  “Oh man, are you serious?” Greg crossed the small room and extended his hand. “You’re Dan Humphrey? You’re the Dan Humphrey, the poet? I can’t believe I’m meeting you! Of course, it makes total sense—you would work at the Strand.” He pushed his geeky horn-rims up on his nose. “It’s perfect. I can’t believe it. I loved your poetry, man. Got any new stuff I can read?”

  Dan felt himself blushing. Before his unlikely stint as a rock star, he’d published a poem called “Sluts” in The New Yorker. He’d been the buzz of the literary world for exactly five minutes, and though his memories of that time were warm and fuzzy, he couldn’t believe there was someone besides his dad who remembered his brush with poetic fame.

  “Well, poets have to keep working,” Dan lied energetically. “I’m putting together some ideas for a novella. That’s why I’ve been laying kind of low lately.”

  “Dude, this is such an honor, I almost can’t believe it. I’m meeting a New Yorker poet. This is incredible.”

  “It’s really not such a big deal.” Dan waved his hand like he was batting away the praise.

  Mister Modesty.

  “This is perfect,” Greg continued, shoving his hands in the pockets of his just-below-the-knee cutoffs. “Look, I can’t believe I’m going to ask you this, but I’ve been trying to get a salon going, you know, kind of an informal thing, lots of people who care about books, getting together every so often to just shoot the shit, talk about literature and poetry and films and music. And blogs. But only sometimes. I’m sure you’re probably really busy, but maybe you’d like to join up? Or I mean, if you’re too busy it’s cool, but—”

  “A salon,” Dan interrupted Greg’s rambling. It actually sounded kind of . . . awesome. He’d come to work at the Strand expecting lots of stimulating break-room discussions about the classics and foreign films, but so far the most in-depth conversation he’d participated in had involved two coworkers asking to bum cigarettes. “That sounds cool.”

  “Oh man, that’s great!” Greg cried excitedly, his voice cracking. “I’m still working on all the details, you know, drafting a mission statement, thinking about how to recruit members.”

  “A mission statement.” Dan nodded thoughtfully. “Maybe I could help you out with that.”

  “Really?” Greg asked. “Fucking fantastic.” He pulled a rainbow swirly pen out of his breast pocket and grabbed Dan’s hand. “I’ll give you my e-mail.” He scrawled his address across Dan’s palm. “Just send me any random ideas and I’ll plug them in. Also, we need a name. I was thinking we could mix up the names of some dead poets, like Wadsworth Whitman or Emerson Thoreau. They wouldn’t mind.”

  No, but they’ll be rolling in their graves.

  “Cool.” Dan pulled his hand out of Greg’s grasp and glanced at the address he’d written there. “I’ll be in touch,” he added, trying not to sound too eager, even though he definitely was. He needed some new friends now that Vanessa was rightfully tired of him.

  One word: sad. But also . . . slightly cute. In a seriously sad way.

  oh, the places you’ll go!

  “Okay.” Vanessa sighed, kneeling on the fifth-floor play-room carpet of the James-Morgan family’s Park Avenue town house. “Let’s just do one final bag check and then we are out of here. Ready?”

  “Ready!” Nils and Edgar screamed in unison. They were twins and so they did pretty much everything in unison, whether it was spilling cranberry juice on their mother’s antique ivory silk–upholstered armchairs or screeching at the top of their lungs (probably to remind their mother that they indeed existed). They were adorable in their own way, but that way was particularly hard to see when you were responsible for wiping their various body parts and making sure they got through the day with those body parts intact and unharmed. And that was exactly the position in which Vanessa found her-self. She’d been fired from her first serious Hollywood gig as the cinematographer on Breakfast at Fred’s, and in a moment of personal and financial desperation, she’d signed on to be a nanny.

  Also, she’d been drunk at the time. Obviously.

  It was almost too depressing to consider that two weeks ago she’d been in private rehearsals in a major movie star’s suite in the Chelsea Hotel, doing what she loved best, and now she was in a slightly Edwardian attic nursery in Carnegie Hill with a grape jelly stain on her Levi’s and two snot-nosed boys somersaulting at her feet, while the movie’s stars were sunning themselves on the beach, only a few miles away, in the Hamptons. Not that she was much of a star-fucker, but still.

  “Here we go.Tissues?”Vanessa asked.

  “Yay!” cried the twins, brandishing two Kleenex bundles. They flung them into the pink-and-green Lilly Pulitzer tote bag.

  “Snack bags?”

  “Yay!” They whipped in two little plastic baggies filled with cheddar cheese goldfish crackers.

  “Juice boxes?”

  “Yay!”

  “Don’t throw them!” Vanessa immediately recalled the pink stains she’d tried so hard to scrub out of the antique chairs.

  “Throw what?” Allison Morgan—also known as Ms.— strode purposefully up the narrow wooden stairs and into the sun-drenched playroom, her snakeskin Jimmy Choo stiletto slingbacks clacking on the blond parquet.

  “Mommy!” The boys abandoned their day-trip bag and threw themselves face-first into the ivory bouclé of her knee-length Chanel pencil skirt.

  “Packing up for an outing?” Ms. Morgan asked in an über-fake, high-pitched tone, backing away from the twins.

  Very perceptive, Mom.

  “Thought we’d head to the Central Park Zoo today,” Vanessa explained.

  “Oh dear,” clucked All
ison. “Central Park? You remember what happened last time.”

  Of course Vanessa remembered: she’d never forget the sight of Dan in neon yellow kneepads and Rollerblades, hand in hand with another girl. A long-haired, spandex-clad, horrifically perky girl. It had been so hilariously bizarre and so completely heartbreaking. Smoking a cigarette, scruffy rock star hair matted, dirty T-shirt, long-to-the-point-of-ridiculous puke-colored cords—that was the Dan Humphrey she knew.

  And loved?

  But of course that’s not what Vanessa’s militant new boss was referring to. She meant that the twins had ruined their clothes eating Fudgsicles and stayed up half the night yelling, “Fudgie-poo!” because of the sugar.

  But Vanessa couldn’t stop thinking about Dan. Things were kind of back to normal now. Or almost normal. Maybe it was just from lack of sleep, or the fact that she was so relieved that he’d ditched the blond yoga-toned health-nut bombshell and the old Dan was back, but damn, that morning in the kitchen Vanessa had barely been able to resist kissing him. He just looked so sweet, gulping bad coffee from that lumpy mug, sleep crusties still stuck in his eyes. It almost felt . . . natural, the way she’d always pictured their life together. Except they weren’t together. They were just ...friends. And she probably didn’t want to do anything to ruin that, like bury her nose in his warm, delicious, stale-cigarette-smelling hair. No, she absolutely did not.

  Liar.

  “Listen, Vanessa, I’m glad I caught you.” The sound of Allison’s raspy, too-much-chardonnay-last-night voice snapped Vanessa back to earth. “Were heading to our place in Amagansett in a few days. The city’s just so unbearably hot, and the boys do so love the beach.”

  “The beach!” screamed Nils and Edgar, in unison of course, taking the announcement as their cue to race all over the playroom in a frenzy.

  “You see how excited they are already,” Ms. Morgan observed. “Anyway, what do you say? We’ve got an extra suite in the top wing of the house—very comfortable, very private. You’d spend days with the boys and be free to go at, say, sixish, when they sit down to have their dinner.Your pay would remain the same of course.”

  Vanessa considered the situation: there she was, filling an offensively preppy tote bag with juice and crackers while two little micromaniacs raced around her, yelping about the waves. What did she have to look forward to? Another night staring at the crack in the ceiling of Jenny’s room, which still smelled like paintbrush cleaner, wondering what Dan was doing on the other side of the wall, fantasizing about the taste of his warm coffee-and-cigarette-breath kisses?

  She hated the sun, didn’t even own a bathing suit, and basically despised everything about the beach and the tan, half-naked, thoroughly annoying people who glommed to it. But her life sucked just enough right now that it actually sounded . . . not so bad.

  “Amagansett,” Vanessa pronounced slowly, like it was a disease, or a genital area, or a Far Eastern country she’d never heard of before. “That sounds lovely.”

  Oh, it is lovely. But only under the right circumstances.

  Disclaimer: All the real names of places, people, and events have been altered or abbreviated to protect the innocent. Namely, me.

  hey people!

  I interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to bring you this late-breaking news:

  my tipsters are the best. You may remember a concerned reader writing in a few days ago about a couple of look-alike impostors who’d infiltrated Hamptons society? Turns out they weren’t fooling: the gruesome twosome who bear a disturbing resemblance to and are a couple of Estonian semibeauties who a certain designer has hired to be the faces of his newest venture, a ready-to-wear line he’s launching this fall. Looks like it’s going to be double (quadruple?) the trouble. And here I thought scientists had only figured out how to clone a sheep! Estonia is so technologically advanced. But the real dirt is on these girls’ sor-did history. Details are surfacing as we speak! My money’s on to freak out first, but before she does, let’s all take a second to appreciate the possibilities—couldn’t having your own private look-alike come in mighty handy at times? I know I would have loved one this past May at exam time, when all this body wanted to do was lounge in Sheep Meadow. And what about avoiding boring family brunches at Le Cirque? Or having an extra pair of hands to do some charity work in our names? And isn’t more a little merrier anyway? Then again, more bodies = less space on those overcrowded Hamptons beaches. Maybe ditching those doppelgangers isn’t such a bad idea. (Did you really think that getting into college meant I’d forget all my SAT words?)

  If you’re merely nodding to my overcrowded beaches comment and haven’t actually experienced it firsthand, consider this a public service announcement: no matter how many people flock to the Hamptons in the summer, it’s the only place to see and be seen. So fold up that lap-top, grab a beach bag, and get your booty to the nearest private jet! In a pinch, the Hampton Jitney will do—it should only take an extra couple hours of miserable bumper-to-bumper traffic. But trust me, it will be worth it when you’re digging your toes into the shimmering sand. What price glory!

  Since you’d all be helpless without me, I’ll lay out exactly what you need to bring. . . .

  packing list for a hasty hamptons departure

  — Oversize Chanel sunglasses or old-school aviators. Impostor sunglasses are a little like impostor models: they look fine on first inspection, but close-up they just look bad.

  — Clarins SPF 30 with moisturizer. That whole tanned-to-a-crisp thing went out with last year’s espadrilles.

  — Kiehl’s SPF 15 lip balm with berry tint. Just because you’re avoiding tan lines doesn’t mean your lips should go naked.

  — A monogrammed boat bag with matching towel. Sort of the designer equivalent of name tags on your clothes for summer camp. If you lose a towel, keep your fingers crossed that a hottie finds it—and then finds you to return it.

  — Metromint mint-flavored water. It’s cooling for a hot day in the sun. Plus, it freshens your breath, making you all the more kissable. Mwa! Mwa! Mwa!

  — Your best friends. You’re going to need someone to rub Coppertone on your back, and we all know that summer fling of yours isn’t really a long-term solution. . . .

  your e-mail

  Speaking of summer flings, it seems from your e-mails that you all are having some serious relationship woes. Let me help you out:

  Q: Dear GG,

  I’ve been living with my ex-boyfriend/friend, and now I’m planning to take off for a while. It’s nothing personal—just a vacation. What’s the protocol? Do I tell him or just let him figure it out?

  —Roommate on the Run

  A: Dear RotR,

  Just because you know how your roommate kisses doesn’tmean you should go and throw the house rules out the pent-house window. Allow me to share the basics: 1) Food is communal unless otherwise labeled. 2) Give a call if you’re not coming home at night—we worry! And 3) If you aren’t inviting us onyour vacation, the least you can do is leave a note and a gift.(I’ve been checking out the new Marc by Marc Jacobs beachtotes, but maybe that’s just me.) Bon voyage!

  —GG

  Q: Dear GG,

  I know my ex-boyfriend is living on the same street as me this summer, but I can’t figure out which house is his. Help!

  —Stalking the Neighborhood

  A: Dear Stalking,

  Maybe you should take a clue from Hansel and Gretel and help him find his way to you. If he’s like every boy I know, a trail of discarded clothes will do the trick!

  —GG

  sightings

  An infamous lacrosse coach’s wife—we’ll call her older B—coming out of a tattoo parlor in Hampton Bays. I wonder who the experience was more painful for: her, or the tattoo artist who had to see her topless? Former yoga enthusiast D chain-smoking cigarettes outside the Strand. Looks like those downward-dog days are over. That is, unless someone else can whip him into shape . . . His l
ittle sister J all the way in Prague, sketching a totally adorable boy while he sketched the local market scene—nice to see traveling hasn’t changed her! A certain monkey-toting Manhattanite, C, stocking up on Fake Bake self-tanning cream in Chocolate Mousse. Yummy! Will the Hamptons be accommodating yet another visitor? V buying Bermuda shorts and a black-and-white striped boatneck tee in Club Monaco on Broadway. How positively summery of her. S and B sharing cocktails with their look-alikes—how weird would it be if the four of them became BFFs?!

  Okay, darlings, that’s it for now. I have a mani-pedi scheduled for this afternoon, and I still can’t decide between pale pink Bikini with a Martini, golden-beige Cabana Boy, or bright-coral Shop Till I Drop. Decisions, decisions. At least I can’t go wrong!

  You know you love me.

  gossip girl

  b & v break out the birthday suits

  “Tell me again,” Serena sighed, idly flipping the glossy pages of that month’s Japanese Vogue as she lay sprawled across the minimalist oak platform bed, “why we’re inside on a day like today?”

  The day in question was ninety degrees and clear as glass, with the slightest suggestion of an ocean breeze. Serena looked up from the close-up photo of a very blond Japanese model with painted-on eyelashes sucking on an applered lollipop. She could see an inviting cool patch of shade under the wide white canvas umbrellas stationed alongside the swimming pool. Today was definitely a lounge-around-half-in-and-half-out-of-the-water sort of day.