Love and Chaos Read Free Page A

talking happily again in the kitchen, ruffles smoothed over, conversation ebbing and flowing the way it should. Without me.
    For a second, just as I close the front door, I’m overwhelmed by the urge to run back and apologize for being a drunk brat. To find my place as part of the group, with all the ease and laughter and fun that entails … But I don’t fit with them. Not really. Pia was my only tie to them, and she doesn’t even act like she likes me these days. Though I don’t like me much these days, either.
    Anyway, I already said I was leaving. I need to stick to my word.
    I call Stef from the cab. This time, he answers.
    “My angel. Got a secret bar for you. Corner of Tenth Avenue and Forty-sixth Street. Go into a café called Westies and through the red door at the back.”
    He always knows the best places.
    I quickly check my outfit in the cab; this is a great dress. Short, white, with a sort of punk-hipster-Parisian attitude. I tried to copy it last week but failed; I can’t get the arms quite right.
    And by the way, I tried to get a job in fashion when I first got to New York. I sent my résumé and photos of the stuff I’ve made and some designs I’d been sketching to all my favorite New York fashion designers. No response. So then I sent all the same stuff to my second-favorite designers. Then my third favorites. And so on. No one even replied. I don’t have a fashion degree—my parents wanted me to get (I quote) a “normal” education first—and I don’t have any direct fashion experience at all. I thought maybe I could leapfrog over from my job with the food photographer I worked for last year, but then she fired me. (Well, I quit. But she would have fired me anyway.)
    The problem is that when you’re starting out, there’s nowhere to start. And there are thousands—maybe tens of thousands—of twenty-two-year-old girls who want to work in fashion in New York. Girls who do little fashion illustrations and take photos and love clothes. I’m a total cliché. And I hate that. I feel … different . I can’t explain it, I’m just sure I am.
    So I never talk about my secret fashion career dream. It’s easier that way. Secretly wanting something and not getting it is one thing. I can handle that; I’m good at it. But talking about wanting it, putting it out there, making it real … and then not getting it? I couldn’t deal with that much failure.
    The café, Westies, is in Hell’s Kitchen, an area of Manhattan I’m not that familiar with, but it seems appropriate today. The streets are freezing and empty, heaped with filthy, blackened snow. Manhattan looks mean in February.
    Stef’s car is parked outside. Predictably, it’s his pride and joy, a red Ferrari 308 GTS. It’s a gorgeous car, I admit. A little “look at me!” for my taste, but he loves it.
    I stride into the empty café—past greasy counters and scabby cupcakes on a dirty cake stand—to the back wall, open the red door, walk down some stairs that smell strangely like cabbage and yeast, past a dark red velvet curtain, and find myself in a warm, dark little room.
    There’s a ladder against a wall, where someone’s been putting up dark red wallpaper. A handful of small round tables, a mirrored bar, candles, and the Ramones playing in the background. The perfect secret after-hours bar.
    Stef’s the only person in here, and he’s sitting at the bar. He’s cute, though a little simian for my liking. Overconfident and overintense with the eye contact. You know the type.
    “What’s up?” I greet him with a triple cheek kiss, the way Stef always does.
    “Nothing, my angel,” he says, running his hand through his hair and lighting a cigarette. Wow, this must be a secret bar if they let you smoke inside. “How’s life with Cornie? It’s so cute that you work for her. Does she say yoo-hoo every morning when she sees you?”
    “She’s away.” Stef is part of that Upper East Side Manhattan rich kid crowd that all know