Lauren Weisberger 3-Book Collection: Everyone Worth Knowing, Chasing Harry Winston, Last Night at Chateau Marmont. Lauren Weisberger
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Автор: Lauren Weisberger
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
isbn: 9780007518777
isbn:
It was official: he was perfect.
I exhaled. ‘Great call. It’s only the best diner on earth. Do you love it as much as I do?’
‘More. I used to go there by myself in high school, if you can even believe how humiliating that is. I’d just sit there with a book or a magazine and a cup of coffee. It broke my heart when the original wart lady left.’
The Starlight had been the epicenter of our high school social life, the place I’d spent the better part of my teenage years, hanging out with my friends who, like me, weren’t quite pretty or cool enough to be considered popular, but who could still confidently claim superiority over the dorks and losers (mostly the horrifyingly antisocial math and computer types) who unwillingly occupied the rungs beneath us. The social hierarchy was strictly maintained: the cool kids monopolized the smoking section, the severely socially challenged played video games at the two booths all the way in the back, and my crowd (assorted hippies, alternative punk kids, and the socially striving who hadn’t quite made the big leagues yet) held the half-dozen tables and the entire counter space in between. The guys would sit in one booth, smoking and discussing – quite suavely, and with the strong suggestion of expertise – whether they’d sacrifice blow jobs or sex if forced to decide at gunpoint, as we, their loyal girlfriends (who weren’t doing much more than kissing any of them), gulped coffee and analyzed in great detail which of the girls at school had the best clothes, chest, and boyfriend. Starlight was the Poughkeepsie version of Central Perk, only slightly stickier and with fluorescent lights, brown vinyl booths, and a waitstaff where each employee, incredibly, possessed either a sprouting facial wart or a missing finger. I loved the way some people remain devoted to their childhood bedrooms or summer-vacation spots, and I returned, like a homing pigeon, every time I went back to town. The idea of Sammy there alone made me sad and nostalgic.
We settled into the least sticky booth we could find and pretended to examine the plastic menus, which hadn’t changed in decades. Even though I was stuffed, I debated between cinnamon toast and fries and then decided that carb-loading was acceptable outside the Manhattan city limits and got both. Sammy ordered a cup of regular coffee. One of my favorite waitresses, the woman with the longest hair of all growing from the wart near her lip, had snorted when he’d asked for skim milk instead of cream, and the two were now involved in some sort of glaring contest across the room.
We sipped coffee and chatted and picked at the food.
‘You never mentioned you were doing brunch at Gramercy Tavern. I’d love to come by.’
‘Yeah, well, you never mentioned that you were salutatorian of your class. Or that you won the Martin Luther King Award for cross-cultural community service.’
I laughed. ‘Boy, they didn’t miss a thing, did they? I thought it was lucky you graduated three years before me so you wouldn’t remember any of that stuff, but I should’ve known better.’
The waitress refilled Sammy’s mug and let a little of the coffee splash for good measure.
‘They’re proud of you, Bette. I think that’s so nice.’
‘They were proud of me. It’s different now. I don’t think my newfound ability to draw celebs to Bungalow 8 and get written about in gossip columns was exactly what they had in mind for me.’
He smiled sadly. ‘Everyone makes compromises, you know? Doesn’t mean you’re any different from the person you were back then.’
The way he said it made me want to believe it. ‘Can we get out of here?’ I asked, motioning for the check, which, regardless of how many people were in the party or what was ordered, always amounted to exactly three dollars per person. ‘I think I need to conserve my energy for tomorrow’s festivities, which I’m hoping to convince you to attend. …’
He left a twenty-dollar bill on the table (‘To make up for all the nights I left really shitty tips after sitting here for hours’) and put his hand on my back to direct me out. We detoured long enough for him to win me a small stuffed pig from the claw game in the foyer – the one that sat just past the rotating pie display. I hugged it to me and he told me it was the best two bucks in quarters he’d ever spent. The ten-mile drive to his house was quiet, and I realized that in all the years I lived in Poughkeepsie, I’d never been to this part of town. We were both contemplative, with none of the chitchat or joking or confiding that we’d shared during the past nine hours we’d spent together – nine hours that felt like five minutes. I pulled into the short, unpaved driveway of a small, tidy Colonial-style home and put the car in park.
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