“That’s all right.” Owen stared down into his bourbon, looking pensive as he stirred the ice cubes around in his glass. He looked up again. “Do you mind my asking what you did in your first Yale interview that was so awful you think they’re not going to let you in?”
Blair took another sip of her wine, and then another. As soon as she explained what had happened, Owen was going to change his mind about her for sure. “I was having a bad day,” she confessed, the words tumbling out of her mouth as she frantically spun her ruby ring around and around on her finger. She didn’t want to go into the gory details of her botched interview, but if Owen was going to help her, he’d best know the truth. “I hadn’t gotten enough sleep. I was tired and nervous and I had to pee really badly. The interviewer said, ‘Tell me about yourself,’ and before I could really think about what I was saying, I told him all about how my dad was gay and my mom was going to marry this gross, fat, red-faced guy with an annoying teenage son with dreadlocks who you just had the pleasure of meeting. I told him my boyfriend, Nate, was ignoring me. Then he asked me what books I’d been reading lately and I couldn’t think of the title of a single book. I started to cry, and then, at the end of the interview, I kissed him.” Blair sighed dramatically, snatched her cocktail napkin off the table, and began to shred it in her lap. “It was only on the cheek, but it was still totally inappropriate. I just wanted him to remember me. You know, you only get a few minutes to make an impression, but I guess I went a little overboard.” She looked up into Owen’s sympathetic blue eyes. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Owen sipped his drink silently as he considered the information. “I’ll see what I can do,” he responded finally, but his voice sounded detached and skeptical now.
Blair swallowed. It was pretty obvious he thought she was hopelessly stupid and insane. Oh, God. She was ruined.
Suddenly he broke into a devilish white-toothed grin. “I’m only joking, Blair. That doesn’t sound so bad. It was probably the most memorable, entertaining interview Jason Anderson III has ever had. Face it, he’s not the most exciting guy in the world, and his job has got to be a little monotonous. I’m sure you were the highlight of the fall interview season.”
“So you don’t think it’s hopeless after all?” Blair asked in her most tragic Audrey-needs-your-help voice.
Owen took her small, ruby-ringed hand in his large tanned one. “Not at all.” He cleared his throat. “Has anyone ever told you you look a bit like Audrey Hepburn?”
Blair blushed from the roots of her hair down to her toe-nail cuticles. Owen seemed to know exactly the right things to say, and he looked so much like Cary Grant, it made her dizzy. His thick gold wedding ring pressed into the bones on the back of her hand. She frowned down at it. If he was so married, what was he doing holding her hand?
Owen withdrew his hands and shifted in his seat, reading her mind. “Yes, I’m married, but we’re not together anymore.”
Blair nodded hesitantly. It was really none of her business. Although if Cary—Owen—wanted to ask her out again, she wouldn’t exactly say no.
Ask her out again? Was she forgetting this wasn’t exactly a date?
“So, I’m sure you have to get back to your AP homework and all that.” Owen reached for her hand again as if he couldn’t bear to let her go. “But do you mind if I call you again sometime?”
Blair hoped she looked exactly like Audrey at this very moment. Yes, Owen was nearly her father’s age, a lawyer, a man, but she’d never felt so strongly attracted to anyone in her life. Why fight it? It was her second semester of senior year. She’d worked hard throughout high school and was hopefully getting into Yale soon. Yes, seeing an older man was crazy and irresponsible, but it was about time she had a little fun.
“Sure.” She smiled and cocked her neatly plucked right eyebrow theatrically. “I’d like that.”
Disclaimer: All the real names of places, people, and events have been altered or abbreviated to protect the innocent. Namely, me.
hey people!
Teen heiress sells horses for drugs!
Last night I was out at that new club on Harrison, and between sips of the club’s signature “adult” version of the Shirley Temple I got the latest scoop on one of my nursery-school classmates. Although she’s heir to the largest lumber fortune in the entire world, she was recently caught selling her show horses for drug money. Apparently she doesn’t come into her inheritance until she’s eighteen and only gets a “small” monthly allowance. She was short on cash, so she took Guns’n’Roses, her prized show jumper, down to auction and used the money to buy some speed or whatever she does. How tacky is that? Apparently her eighty-year-old nanny—or whoever looks after her now that her father has passed away and her mother has moved to Sandy Lane in Barbados—found out about the horse and sent my old friend straight to rehab.
Sounds like rehab is the place to be this winter!
Fashion Week: the lowdown
Expect to freeze your ass off while trying to hail a cab. Expect to wait an hour for a show to start only to be told that the show is running another hour late. Expect to see lots of Botoxed, fake-tanned, anorexic girls trying not notice that they all wore the same thing to the same show, and lots of gay men wearing more perfume than the girls. Expect to find out that those ugly-ass cargo pants with tapered legs are back in style again. Expect to be envious of the pouty-lipped, giraffe-legged models who actually look good in them. Expect to be annoyed by heavily made-up, fur-wearing women who bring their little Louis Vuitton collar–wearing French bulldogs to the show in matching Louis Vuitton handbags. Expect to be dying for the after-party to start so you can smoke. Expect the after-parties to be truly mind-blowing. Expect not to remember what happened the morning after.
Your e-mail
Q: Dear GG,
I was walking by the bar in the Compton Hotel last night and I saw B with this man who I recognize from my building. He has a daughter who’s like in ninth or tenth grade at my school. What’s that all about?
—Tom
A: Hey Tom,
Who knows what she was up to, but can’t you totally see B as some poor girl’s evil stepmom?
—GG
Q: Dear G-Dawg,
Can I just say that you kick ass! Also, I heard N is going to that fancy rehab up in Greenwich. My cousin went there and came back more messed up than before.
—F.B.
A: Dear F.B.,
Thanks for the compliment, although I don’t know if I dig the whole “G-Dawg” thing. And whatever happens to N in rehab, they can’t take away his soul or his divine beauty!
—GG
Sightings
N and his parents having a tour of that stylin’ new rehab clinic in Greenwich. C having his nails done at Coin, an all-male spa in Chelsea. No kidding. S picking up a custom-made baby tee at one of those customized T-shirt places in Chinatown. B standing in front of Tiffany, drinking out of a paper cup and eating a Danish, just like
Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, except B was wearing her gray school uniform instead of a black Christian Dior evening gown. K and I putting up NO LOITERING signs around the Les Best tent. It looks like they actually volunteered their services so they could get good seats.
It’s supposed to snow like crazy this weekend but has that ever stopped us? See you in the front row!
You know you love me.
gossip girl
kindred spirits connect in rehab
“Has everyone heard about the snowstorm? We’re supposed to get four feet by midnight!” Jackie Davis, Nate’s teen group facilitator at the Breakaway Rehabilitation Center, rubbed her hands together as if the idea of being snowed in with all these rich derelicts was her idea of a rocking good time.
After Nate had gotten busted in the park, his father and Saul Burns, the family lawyer, had come to fetch him at the precinct. Nate’s father, a stern, silver-haired navy captain who handled emergencies with crisp, efficient formality, had p
aid the fine of three thousand dollars and cosigned an agreement that Nate would immediately attend a drug rehabilitation program for a minimum of ten hours per week. That meant Nate was going to have to ride the train out to Greenwich, Connecticut, five days a week for counseling and group therapy.
“Just think of it as a job, son,” Saul Burns had tried to reassure him. “An after-school job.” Captain Archibald hadn’t said anything. It was pretty clear that Nate had disappointed him beyond words. Luckily Nate’s mother had been in Monte Carlo visiting her thrice-divorced sister. When Nate had relayed the sordid tale over the phone she’d shrieked and wept, smoked five cigarettes in rapid succession, and then broken her champagne glass. She was always a little dramatic. After all, she was French.
“All right. Let’s start out by going around the circle,” Jackie instructed in a sunny voice, as if this were the first day of nursery school. “Tell us your name and explain why you’re here. Keep it short, please.” She nodded at Nate to start, since he was sitting directly to her right.
Nate shifted uncomfortably in his Eames chair. All the furniture at the posh Greenwich, Connecticut, rehab clinic was twentieth-century modern, to match the minimalist beige and white décor. The floor was cream-colored Italian marble, crisp white linen curtains covered the floor-to-ceiling windows, and the staff wore beige linen uniforms designed especially by nineties denim impresario Gunner Gass, a former patient who was now on the facility’s board.
“Okay. My name’s Nathaniel Archibald, but everyone calls me Nate,” Nate mumbled. He kicked at the legs of his chair and cleared his throat. “I got busted a few days ago buying weed in Central Park. That’s why I’m here.”
“Thank you, Nate,” Jackie interrupted. She smiled a frosty, brown-lipsticked smile and made a note on the pad in her clipboard. “We prefer it here at Breakaway if you call the substance in question by its true name. In your case, marijuana. If you can use its name consistently, you are making one more step toward your freedom from it.” She smiled at Nate once more. “Would you like to try again?”
Nate glanced self-consciously at the other losers in the group. There were seven of them altogether, three guys and four girls, all staring at the floor, worrying about what they were going to say and looking just as uncomfortable as he felt.
“I’m Nate,” Nate repeated mechanically. “A narc caught me buying marijuana in the park. That’s why I’m here.” Across the circle a girl with dark brown hair that hung down almost to her waist, bloodred lips, and skin so pale it was almost blue gazed at him soulfully, like a coked-up version of Snow White.
“Better,” Jackie said. “Next.” She nodded at the Japanese girl sitting next to Nate.
“My name is Hannah Koto and I took Ecstasy before school two weeks ago and got caught because I laid down on the floor to feel the rug in my trig class.”
Everybody laughed except for Jackie. “Thank you, Hannah, that was fine. Next.”
Nate tuned the next two people out, kind of grooving on the way Snow White was jiggling her foot, like she was keeping time to her own private concert. She was wearing light blue suede boots that looked like they’d never been worn outside.
Suddenly it was her turn. “My name is Georgina Spark. Everyone calls me Georgie. I guess I’m here because I wasn’t very nice to my father before he croaked, so I have to wait until I turn eighteen before I can live my life the way I want to.”
The rest of the group tittered nervously. Jackie frowned. “Can you name the substance you were found abusing, Georgina?”
“Cocaine,” Georgie answered, letting a curtain of dark hair fall over her face. “I sold my favorite show horse to buy fifty grams. It was in the papers and everything. New York Post, Thursday, February—”
“Thank you,” Jackie interrupted. “Next group member please.”
Still jiggling her foot, Georgie glanced up through her hair and met Nate’s intrigued gaze with a mischievous bloodred smile.
“Bitch,” she mouthed, obviously referring to Jackie.
Nate grinned back and nodded his chin ever so slightly. Saul Burns had told him to treat rehab like an after-school job. Now he had a reason to work hard at it.
s wears her love like a baby tee
“You’re friends with that Serena chick, right?” Sonny Webster, a lanky boy with jet-black hair streaked with paper-bag-brown highlights asked Chuck Bass as they sat in the second row, waiting for the Les Best show to begin on Friday night. Sonny was the son of Vivienne Webster, a British lingerie designer whose hip-hugging boy shorts were all the rage at the moment. Sonny and Chuck had met in a bar last night and were already fast friends. They were even wearing matching Tods moccasins— dark brown with neon green rubber soles. Very gay urban yachtsman, and extremely impractical for the unprecedented amount of snow that had been predicted for that evening.
Chuck nodded. “She’s appearing naked. That’s what I heard, anyway.” He rubbed his newly toned stomach. “I can’t wait,” he added halfheartedly.
“See Chuck talking to whatshisname, Vivienne Webster’s totally gay son?” Kati Farkas whispered to Isabel Coates. “I swear Chuck’s into guys now.” She and Isabel had made it to the front row, just as they’d set out to do. Not because of their completely unnecessary little volunteer effort hanging up NO LOITERING signs around Bryant Park but because Isabel’s father, Arthur Coates, was a very famous actor who’d complained that his daughter and her friend deserved to be in the front row this year because he’d already spent a fortune on Les Best’s entire spring-summer collection.
“I think maybe he’s bi,” Isabel whispered back. “He’s still wearing that gold monogrammed pinky ring.”
“Yeah,” noted Kati. “Like that’s not totally gay.”
The huge white tent in Bryant Park was packed with fashion magazine editors, photographers, actresses, and socialites. Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” pounded out of Bose speakers. Christina Ricci sat in the front row on her cell phone arguing with her publicist and defending her decision to come to Les Best’s show instead of Jedediah Angel’s, which was happening downtown at exactly the same time.
“Look, there’s Flow from 45!” Sonny squealed. “He’s such a god. And there’s Christina Ricci. My mom just got a huge order from her.”
As Chuck gazed around the room, looking for more celebs and trying to be seen himself, he spotted Blair about ten seats down in the third row. He blew her a kiss and she smirked back.
“Why are we here again?” Blair yawned to Aaron. Even though she was completely annoyed with Serena these days, she’d decided to come to the show to see if any of Les Best’s autumn collection suited her new image. Now that she was packed into the hot, crowded tent with its overly loud music and overwhelming perfume stench like a twelve-year-old with a general admission ticket at a 45 concert, she honestly couldn’t give two fucks about the clothes or that Serena was the star of the show. It was all Serena needed to prove that she really was the center of the universe.
Blair didn’t need to hang out with gorgeous models and camp fashion designers, anyway. She was going to Yale, the premier institution of higher learning in the entire world, and she was going to be asked out very soon by a classy older man. She felt extremely accomplished for someone so young. The noise and glitz of Fashion Week seemed less alluring now that her own life was so . . . stimulating. Plus they were seated in the third row, which was a major insult when she’d always been seated in the first or second row at every other show she’d ever been to.
“I’m honestly not sure why I’m here,” Aaron answered grumpily. He unzipped the bright green Les Best golfing jacket Serena had given him and then zipped it up again. The jacket was made of stiff cotton canvas that made a loud, swishy sound when he moved. It was way too flashy for his taste, but he’d kept it on because Serena had insisted that he couldn’t come to a fashion show and sit in the third row without wearing an article of the designer’s clothing. Aaron liked the buzzy vibe of the fashion show. It was like b
eing at a rock concert. But it was just so bogus that they were all gathered there to look at . . . clothes.
Outside the snow had been falling steadily on the brightly lit city for over two hours. Blair could just imagine how insane it was going to be to find a cab home later that night, with everyone totally underdressed, totally buzzed, and all thinking they deserved the next available ride. She kicked the back of Nicky Hilton’s chair with her black patent leather Les Best flats and yawned for the fiftieth time. While her mouth was still stretched open in full yawn, the lights suddenly dimmed and the music stopped. The show was about to begin.
The collection being shown was for next fall, and the theme was Little Red Riding Hood. The stage was decorated like a fairy tale forest, with dark brown velvet tree trunks and low branches covered in glittering emerald green silk leaves. Fluttery flute music began to play, and suddenly Serena skipped onstage wearing her gray pleated Constance Billard
School uniform skirt, red suede over-the-knee boots, and a little red wool minicape tied at the neck. Under the cape she was wearing her own white baby tee with I LOVE AARON emblazoned in black across the chest. Her long blond hair was done in pigtails, and her face was free of makeup, except for her lips, which were painted a bright, thrilling red. Serena walked the runway with easy confidence, flouncing her pleated uniform skirt, twirling around, and then pausing for the cameras like she’d been doing it for years.
Who is she? A hundred gossip-starved voices murmured at once. And who is Aaron?
Blair rolled her eyes, even more bored and annoyed now that the show was under way.
“Who’s Aaron?” Sonny whined to Chuck Bass.
“The fuck if I know,” Chuck answered back.
“Is that supposed to be Aaron Sorkin? You know, the television writer?” a bewildered fur-wearing Vogue editor asked her neighbor.