it’s been an age. I think I was on the West Side Highway when you left.” He laughed. “That was two spaces ago!”
Charlotte smiled at him. Only a handful of people got to call her Charlie, and Nick was one of them. He’d been at school with her, and she’d helped him get his first club off the ground. Clubs like Nick’s tended to move: it’s not the space, it’s the mix. You had to stay one step ahead of the police, two steps ahead of the East Village hipsters, and three steps ahead of the bridge-and-tunnel crowd. Nick was a master. As soon as he found one location, he started looking for the next. A warehouse in DUMBO. An abandoned department store above Harlem. A townhouse being gutted in the West Village. His clientele were the young, the rich, and the bored. They came to him to be entertained, to see their friends, to watch the show.
“Who’s here?” Charlotte leaned closer to hear his answer.
He took her hand and pulled her to one side. “Actually, lovely, Taylor is here. I nearly told you not to come, but then I thought enough water might have flowed under the bridge by now.”
Charlotte felt herself get colder, despite the sweaty heat of the club. “Oh.”
Nick pulled back and looked at her. “Ah, I see I was wrong.” “Is she with him?”
“Are you crazy? No, love, she’s long gone. He’s with Stacy Star tonight. And her girlfriend. And her girlfriend’s girlfriend.” He coughed. “Celebrities, what can I say?” Charlotte raised her eyebrows, but Nick just shook his head. “Ignore him, sweetheart. You were always too good for him, anyway.”
Charlotte sighed. During her first year at Yale, she’d fallen deeply in love with Taylor Augustine. He was a couple of years ahead of her, studying European literature, and was totally gorgeous. He considered himself a beat poet for the twenty-first century, and he mumbled a lot. He and Charlotte hung out in bed most of the time, reading poetry and smoking weed. Then, suddenly, he decided that was too bourgeois and dumped her for a fiery political science major who thought shaving her underarms was bowing to the Man.
Charlotte had been devastated. It was literally the first time she couldn’t have something she wanted, and she hadn’t handled it very well. Not well at all. Drunk and furious, she’d torched the political science building.
Luckily, her father was able to step in and offer to rebuild those parts of the building that hadn’t burned to the ground, and he and the Yale board had agreed that Charlotte should spend her sophomore year elsewhere. Europe might be far enough, they thought, and the Sorbonne acquired a new student and an updated computer system.
And now here she was, back less than a day, and already she’d run into him. Sometimes life was just a bitch.
AS SHE WALKED into the main part of the club, she saw that things hadn’t changed much while she’d been away. Anyone who was young, gorgeous, rich, or horny was there, and most of Nick’s guests were all four. Beautiful girls and boys danced essentially naked on podiums all around the club, and everyone pretended not to look at them while at the same time hoping they were being looked at themselves. Same same. She turned to Nick, who was following her in, presumably to make sure she didn’t set fire to his club.
“I see you’re still working the ugly beat.”
He shrugged. “What can I do? The beautiful are drawn to me—why else would you be here?” He looked around, his experienced eyes seeing everything, despite the candlelight and heavy smoke. “There. He’s in that corner.”
Charlotte took a moment to make him out, but then her heart stopped. Taylor. Still gorgeous, although now he seemed to be working a gangsta look, which is hard when you’re from Connecticut and your father is the president of a major bank. The closest he ever got to the threat of violence was hiding from the townies in New Haven. Loose pants, slumped posture, lots of bling, and three girls dressed as sluts from the future on either side. Bottle of Courvoisier on the table. Bottle of Cristal, presumably for the sluts.
Nick squeezed her arm. “Are you going to cause trouble, or are you cool?”
“I’m cool.”
“Don’t light any fires, promise?
” “That was more than a year ago.”
“Do you even have matches?”
“No, you idiot. Besides, look around. The place is full of candles and drunks. About six hundred people are in danger of burning the place down. If the fire marshal comes in … ”
He quickly put his hand over her mouth. “Don’t ever, ever say those two words in my presence again.” He raised his finger. “I mean it, it’s bad luck. Don’t make me block your number.”
She laughed and watched him melt into the crowd. In the far corner, as far from Taylor as possible, her dinner posse had set up camp, and James was apparently trying to persuade two pole dancers to let him join them onstage. They really weren’t interested, but they were drunk enough to let him try.
Emily and Jane waved her over. She sighed inwardly and headed in their direction. In many ways, these clubs were where she lived or, at least, where the public face of Charlotte Williams lived. Before she’d discovered her inner bitch and realized that people found her entertaining when she was naughty, she’d found clubs scary. And they still made her feel anxious inside, but she guessed everyone felt that way when the world was looking at them. Not that any of her crowd would ever admit it.
“Did you see Taylor?” Jane looked worried.
Charlotte nodded. “It’s OK. It’s been a long time.”
“Did you see who he’s with?” Emily looked excited.
Charlotte nodded again. “Stacy Star.”
Zeb was beside himself. “I have all her albums. She’s outrageous. She worked the runway for Gaultier, and it was beyond fabulous. She’s awesome.”
Charlotte looked at him. “You’re babbling, Zeb. Calm down.”
He was quivering like a greyhound. “I can’t. She’s awesome. I love her.”
Charlotte frowned, indicating to a passing waitress that she needed service. The waitress ignored her. “Zeb, I went to preschool with her. Her real name is Stacy Fishbein.”
Zeb refused to be put off. “Well, good for her that she changed it, then. I’d change mine if I could.”
“What’s stopping you?”
“My parents. They think Zebediah is a cool name for a faggot. Fucking hippies. They’re so accepting, it’s really annoying.”
The waitress came over, finally. Charlotte smiled up at her.
“Did Nick make you wear that, or are those your own clothes?”
The waitress was wearing a peekaboo bra, with glitter on her nipples and short-shorts. She narrowed her eyes. “You’re a friend of Nick’s?”
“I’m a very good friend of Nick’s. You must be new, or you’d know me by sight and would already have brought me a Grey Goose and grapefruit, which is what I always have. I never pay, and neither does anyone with me.”
The
