Candace Bushnell - Summer and the City

“But New Jersey’s just across the river.”

“Physically, yes. Metaphorically, no. And New York wasn’t my first stop.”

“It wasn’t?” Now I’m really intrigued. I can’t imagine Samantha living anywhere but New York.

“I traveled all around the world when I was eighteen.”

I nearly fall off the couch. “How?”

She smiles. “I was a groupie. To a very famous rock ’n’ roll guy. I was at a concert and he picked me out of the crowd. He asked me to travel with him and I was stupid enough to think I was his girlfriend. Then I found out he had a wife stashed away in the English countryside. That suitcase has been all around the world.”

I wonder if Samantha’s hatred of her luggage is actually due to a bad association with the past. “And then what happened?”

She shrugs, picking out lingerie from the pile and folding the pieces into little squares. “He dumped me. In Moscow. His wife suddenly decided to join him. He woke up that afternoon and said, ‘Darling, I’m afraid it’s over. You’re binned.’”

“Just like that?”

“He was English,” she says, laying the squares into the bottom of the suitcase. “That’s what Englishmen do. When it’s over, it’s over. No phone calls, no letters, and especially no crying.”

“Did you? Cry?” I can’t picture it.

“What do you think? I was all alone in Moscow with nothing but this stupid suitcase. And a plane ticket to New York. I was jumping up and down for joy.”

I can’t tell if she’s kidding or not.

“In other words, it’s your runaway suitcase,” I point out. “And now that you don’t need to run anymore, you need something better. Something permanent.”

“Hmmm,” she says cryptically.

“What’s it like?” I ask. “When you pass a record store and see the rock ’n’ roll guy’s face on a poster? Does it make you feel weird to think you spent all that time with him?”

“I’m grateful.” She grabs a shoe and looks around for its partner. “Sometimes I think if it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have made it to New York at all.”

“Didn’t you always want to come here?”

She shrugs. “I was a wild child. I didn’t know what I wanted. I only knew I didn’t want to end up a waitress and pregnant at nineteen. Like Shirley.”

“Oh.”

“My mother,” she clarifies.

I’m not surprised. There’s an underlying pulse of determination in Samantha that has to come from somewhere.

“You’re lucky.” She finds the matching shoe and pushes it into the corner of the suitcase. “At least you have parents who will pay for college.”

“Yeah,” I say vaguely. Despite her confessions about her past, I’m not ready to tell her about my own. “But I thought you went to college.”

“Oh, Sparrow.” She sighs. “I took a couple of night courses when I arrived in New York. I got a job through a temp agency. The first place they sent me was Slovey, Dinall. I was a secretary. They didn’t even call them ‘assistants’ back then. Anyway, it’s boring.”

Not to me. But the fact that she’s come so far from nothing puts my own struggles to shame. “It must have been hard.”

“It was.” She presses down on the top of the suitcase. There’s practically her whole closet in there, so naturally, it won’t shut. I kneel on the cover as she clicks the locks into place.

The phone rings as we’re dragging the suitcase to the door. Samantha ignores the insistent ringing, so I make a move to grab it. “Don’t answer,” she warns. But I’ve already picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Is Samantha still there?”

Samantha frantically shakes her head. “Charlie?” I ask.

“Yeah.” He doesn’t sound terribly friendly. I wonder if he found out it was me doing the cooking after all.

I hold out the receiver. Samantha rolls her eyes as she takes it. “Hello, darling. I’m about to walk out the door.” There’s an edge of annoyance in her tone.

“Yes, I know,” she continues. “But I can’t make it.” She pauses and lowers her voice. “I told you. I have to go. I don’t have a choice,” she adds, sounding resigned. “Well, life’s inconvenient, Charlie.” And she hangs up the phone.

She briefly closes her eyes, inhales, and forces a smile. “Men.”

“Charlie?” I ask, perplexed. “I thought you guys were so happy.”

“Too happy. When I told him I suddenly had to go to LA, he freaked out. Said he’d made plans for us to have dinner with his mother tonight. Which he somehow neglected to tell me. As if I don’t have a life of my own.”

“Maybe you can’t have it both ways. His life and your life. How do you put two lives together, anyway?”

She gives me a look as she picks up her suitcase. “Wish me luck in Hollywood, Sparrow. Maybe I’ll be discovered.”

“What about Charlie?” I hold open the door as she bangs the suitcase down the stairs. It’s a good thing it is a Samsonite. Most suitcases probably couldn’t take the abuse.

“What about him?” she calls out.

Boy. She must really be angry.

I run to the window and lean out over the parapet to catch a glimpse of the street below. An enormous limousine is idling at the curb. A uniformed driver stands next to the passenger door. Samantha emerges from the building as the driver hurries forward to take her suitcase.

The passenger door opens, and Harry Mills gets out. He and Samantha have a brief exchange as he lights up a cigar. Samantha slides past him and gets into the car. Harry takes a big puff on the cigar, looks up and down the street, and follows. The door closes and the limo pulls away, a puff of cigar smoke drifting from the open window.

Behind me, the phone rings. I approach it cautiously, but curiosity gets the better of me and I pick it up. “Is Samantha there?” It’s Charlie. Again.

“She just left,” I say politely.

“Damn,” he shouts, and hangs up.

Damn you, too, I think, quietly replacing the receiver.

I retrieve my own Hartmann suitcase from under Samantha’s bed. The phone rings some more, but I know better than to answer it.

After a while, the caller gives up. Then the buzzer goes off. “Yes?” I ask brusquely, into the intercom.

“It’s Ryan,” comes back the garbled reply.

I click open the door. Ryan. I’m working myself up to give him what-for about Maggie, when he appears at the top of the stairs holding a lone rose. The stem is limp and I briefly wonder if he picked it up off the street.

“You’re too late,” I say accusingly. “Maggie left last night.”

“Rats. I knew I fucked up.”

I should probably tell him to go away, but I’m not finished. “Who runs out of a diner while their date is in the bathroom?”

“I was tired,” he says helplessly, as if this is a legitimate excuse.

“You’re kidding. Right?”

He gives me a hangdog look. “I couldn’t figure out how to say good-bye. I was exhausted. And I’m not Superman. I try to be, but somewhere along the line I seem to have encountered kryptonite.”

I smile in spite of myself. Ryan is one of those guys who can always joke himself out of the bad books. I know he knows it, and I know it’s disloyal, but I can’t stay mad at him. After all, he didn’t stand me up.

“Maggie was really, really hurt,” I scold.

“I figured she would be. That’s why I came by. To make it up to her.”

“With that rose?”

“It is pretty sad, isn’t it?”

“It’s pathetic. Especially since she took her anger out on me.”

“On you?” He’s surprised. “Why would she take it out on you? It wasn’t your fault.”

“No. But somehow I got lumped in with your bad behavior. We got into a fight.”

“Was there hair pulling?”

“No, there was not,” I say, indignant. “Jesus, Ryan.”

“I’m sorry.” He grins. “Guys love girl fights. What can I say?”

“Why don’t you just admit you’re an asshole?”

“Because that would be too easy. Capote’s an asshole. I’m just a jerk.”

“Nice way to talk about your best friend.”

“Just because we’re friends doesn’t mean I have to lie about his personality,” he says.

“I suppose that’s true,” I unwillingly agree, wondering why women are so judgmental of each other. Why can’t we say, “Hey, she’s kind of messed up, but I love her anyway?”

“I came by to ask Maggie to Rainbow’s father’s art opening. It’s tonight. There’s a dinner afterward. It’s going to be really cool.”

“I’ll go,” I volunteer, wondering why no one invites me to these glamorous parties.

“You?” Ryan asks, unsure.

“Why not? Am I chopped liver or something?”

“Not at all,” he says, backpedaling. “But Maggie said you were obsessed with Bernard Singer.”

“I don’t have to see Bernard every night.” I fudge, unwilling to admit that Bernard and I are probably over.

“Okay, then,” he gives in. “I’ll meet you at the gallery at eight.”

Yippee, I think, when he’s gone. I’ve been hearing about this art opening for weeks, wondering if Rainbow would ask me, and if not, how I could wrangle an invitation. I kept telling myself it was only a stupid party, while secretly knowing it was an event I didn’t want to miss.

And since Bernard hasn’t called, why not? I’m certainly not going to put my life on hold for him.

The gallery is in SoHo, a deserted patch of run-down blocks with cobblestoned streets and enormous buildings that were once factories. It’s hard to imagine Manhattan as a center of industrialism, but apparently they used to make everything here, from clothing to lightbulbs to tools. A metal ramp leads to the gallery’s entrance, the railing decorated with all manner of chic, downtown types, smoking cigarettes and discussing what they did the night before.

I push my way through the crowd. It’s packed inside, a mass of patrons forming a bottleneck by the entrance as everyone seems to have run into someone they know. The air is filled with smoke and the damp smell of sweat, but there’s the familiar buzz of excitement that indicates this is the place to be.