A locked refrigerator. No parent should starve their child. Birdie had called it food monitoring.
Paparazzi which has tormented and snapped photos of me (usually when I was at my worst) my entire life. Such as…when I’d eaten a chocolate and vanilla twist cone, dipped in a raspberry hard shell and dusted with rainbow sprinkles. Purchased from a Mister Softee truck, parked on Madison Avenue—while standing outside in one hundred degree weather with one hundred percent humidity, in a horizontal-striped-sheer-stretchy poly-blend sun dress—which had ridden itself almost entirely up my bum. How I knew it had ridden up my bum? See number 5.
A Vicodin, given to me by Dad to stop my hysteria, instead of a band-aid or a hug, after I’d fallen and scratched my knee on Madison Avenue while running from the Paparazzi. I was like eleven.
The photos of my backside, at the ice cream truck, appearing on the cover of The Manhattanite Times the very next day. The headline had read, “Alexandra the Great Swallows for Mr. Softee.”
A mother who has and forever will have a hotter body, prettier face, and better hair than I do. Even when I’m seventy years old and she’s like dead.
A father who was never around. Years have passed without him walking through our front door. I’m not sure he even knows Birdie sold the Central Park West mansion and moved to Soho last year. I should probably give him the new address.
The fear I’ll never meet or exceed my parent’s financial or professional success, regardless of what industry I work in. According to the economics class Vive and I took our senior year, I have less than a five percent chance to make it as an adult without riding my folk’s coattails to maintain this lifestyle. Poor Vive, her family is the second richest in North America. She has less than half a percent.
Infamy! I’ll forever be associated with the Easton’s.
Birdie and her full-on, balls-to-the wall sex with my high school sweet-heart. I had loved Kelle Sterling Dolley. Or at least, I thought I had.
Fifty minutes later, my toiletries, shoes, and day-evening-school wear were all thrown into nine Louis Vuitton wardrobe trunks. One garment wasn’t going to see the Upper East Side, my striped-stretchy dress, circa childhood from hell. I found that effer in the back of my closet. Birdie must’ve packed it when we’d moved downtown.
“I cannot believe I didn’t burn you ages ago.” Alone, I shouted out loud to the dress as if I were a mad woman, because I was. I carted that rag of bad memories to the bathroom and threw it in the tub.
“Ah-ha!” In the medicine cabinet, I found an aerosol can of StrawberryNet’s Ultra Mega Super-duper Hold Extreme Hairspray. I doused that dress and lit a match. “Burn, baby, burn!”
On my way out, I dumped a shoebox of photos into the inferno too. “I bid you adieu.” They were of Kelle and me from prom, homecoming dance, and our winter formal. It was all there.
Peaceful and quiet, the penthouse seemed unoccupied. Birdie had probably passed out.
I jammed two more nicotine gum pieces in my mouth. Jaw tensing, teeth snapping, I chewed up one mofo of a wad, I imagine no one had ever chewed before or has since.
The elevator doors opened.
Onto the lift I pushed one case in, then two, and so on. I turned back to get my purse and my helmet when “lover boy” approached.
He acted as if he’d arrived mere moments ago.
“Lex.” Puffy lipped and woman-handled, Kelle’s red eyes didn’t make contact with mine. His attempt to kiss me on the cheek failed when I pushed him away from me.
“Get lost Kelle.”
“Whaa?” He played innocent.
“I saw what you and Mom did. For crying out loud, residents as far away as Staten Island could probably hear you two with all that moaning and groaning.”
“Ugh.” He raked his fingers through his light brown hair. Flipping his part from left to right, Kelle stood there, speechless.
“Say something for yourself!” I so wanted to fight. Growing up Easton had taught me to throw punches and kicks.
“Sweets.” He air-pumped his hands in a “let’s calm down, I’m stoned” kinda way. “I came to get you. You were out. Mrs. Easton gave me blow. I got too high. We smoked to chill. The end.”
“Now you’re doing cocaine?” In two short hours he’d gone from gorgeous to hideous, right before my eyes.
“Just a few lines. One thing led to another. Mrs. Easton’s clothes popped off. Mine did too.”
“Popped off?” I repeated his malarkey. Rolling off my tongue, it tasted as if I’d licked Hedda Hopper’s curvy tail, complete and utter dog-do. On instinct, my right foot jetted out. “Hmmm.” I gauged the distance. Kelle needed a kick in the head. I owed him at least that. Dang, he was too darn tall for me to give him one.
“Whaddya want me to say.” He grimaced annoyingly, and in his mind and in his world, I bet he walked on some kind of mythical water, making him impervious to any repercussions.
The urge to hold him under his own Kool-Aid, till every ounce of air had left his lungs, tore at me with temptations ten times stronger than my usual cravings to go to Dylan’s Candy Bar.
Now I understood why women on the TV show “Oh Snapped” had whacked their hubbies in acts of rage and passionate revenge. Their victims had earned it. Regardless, there wasn’t a swimming pool in this Soho high-rise for me to even try drowning his sorry ass.
“Well?” he asked again.
Where would I start with the inventory of things this moron could say to me?
“How ‘bout, I’m sorry?” I suggested. My eyes finally locked with his.
Not only did we both know that “us dating, him taking my Lady V,” was way over, but he wasn’t sorry.
“Lex, no matter what happened, I came for you. Come. Be with me.” In a thick manipulative tone, he beckoned me.
“Go f—”
“Babe, come to Kelle.” With kahunas bigger than coconuts, Kelle caressed his gym-toned chest. Ever so slightly, he lifted up the front edge of his shirt, a smidge, enough to lower my focus from his soon-to-be-busted face onto his cheating body’s six-pack, navel, and happy trail patch.
The blankety-blank knew right there that what he just did always made my scalp tingle, insides flip-n-spark, eyelashes flutter, and Victoria Secret’s oh so wet.
Well, not anymore, sistah!
Sheepishly I held a breath and flashed my teeth giving him a bit of Geri Halliwell’s sexy persona, Ginger Spice from the Spice Girls.