Candace Bushnell: Summer and the City

I raise myself slowly, sliding carefully off the bed so as not to jiggle the mattress. The mattress itself is about a hundred years old, left here by the original owners. I wonder how many people have had sex on this bed. I hope a lot. And I hope it was as good for them as it was for me.

I find my clothes splayed around the couch. The Chanel bag is by the door, where I dropped it when Capote grabbed my face and backed me up against the wall, kissing me like crazy. I practically tore his clothes off.

But I’m never going to see him again, so it doesn’t matter. And now I have to face the future: Brown.

Maybe, after four years of college, I’ll try again. I’ll storm the gates of the Emerald City, and this time, I’ll succeed.

But for now, I’m too tired. Who knew eighteen could be so exhausting?

I sigh and wriggle my feet into my shoes. I had a good run. Sure, I messed up a few times, but I managed to survive.

I tiptoe back to the bedroom for one last look at Capote. “Good-bye, lover,” I murmur quietly.

His mouth pops open and he wakes, pounding his pillow in confusion. He sits up and squints at me. “Huh?”

“Sorry,” I whisper, picking up my watch. “I was just-” I indicate the door.

“Why?” He rubs his eyes. “Didn’t you like it?”

“I loved it. But-”

“Why are you leaving then?”

I shrug.

He feels for his glasses and puts them on, blinking behind the thick lenses. “Aren’t you going to at least allow me the pleasure of giving you breakfast? A gentleman never lets a lady leave without feeding her, first.”

I laugh. “I’m perfectly capable of feeding myself. Besides, you make me sound like a bird.”

“A bird? More like a tiger,” he chuckles. “C’mere.” He opens his arms. I crawl across the bed and fall into them.

He strokes my hair. He’s warm and snuggly and smells a little. Of man, I suppose. The scent is strangely familiar. Like toast.

He pulls back his head and smiles. “Did anyone ever tell you how pretty you look in the morning?”

At about two in the afternoon, we manage to make it to the Pink Tea Cup for breakfast. I wear one of Capote’s shirts over my rubber pants and we eat pancakes and bacon with real maple syrup and drink about a gallon of coffee and smoke cigarettes and talk shyly and eagerly about nothing. “Hey,” he says, when the check comes. “Want to go to the zoo?”

“The zoo?”

“I hear they have a new polar bear.”

And suddenly, I do want to go to the zoo with Capote. In my two months in New York, I haven’t done one touristy thing. I haven’t been to the Empire State Building. Or the Statue of Liberty. Or Wollman Rink or the Metropolitan Museum or even the Public Library.

I’ve been sorely remiss. I can’t leave New York without going on the Circle Line.

“I need to do one thing first,” I say.

I get up and head to the restroom. There’s a pay phone on the wall outside the door.

Miranda picks up after the first ring. “Hello?” she asks urgently, as if she’s expecting bad news. She always answers the phone like that. It’s one of the things I love about her.

“I did it!” I squeal triumphantly.

“Carrie? Is that you? Oh my God. What happened? How was it? Did it hurt? How was Bernard?”

“I didn’t do it with Bernard.”

“What?” She gasps. “Who did you do it with? You can’t go out there and pick up some random stranger. Oh no, Carrie. You didn’t. You didn’t pick up some guy at a bar-”

“I did it with Capote,” I say proudly.

“That guy?” I can hear her jaw drop. “I thought you hated him.”

I glance back at Capote. He casually tosses a few bills onto the table. “Not anymore.”

“But what about Bernard?” she demands. “I thought you said Bernard was The One.”

Capote stands up. “Change of plans,” I say quickly. “He couldn’t do it. I had to abort the mission and find another rocket.”

“Carrie, that’s disgusting. Did Samantha tell you to say that? You sound just like her. Oh my God. This is insane. What are you going to do now?”

“Visit the polar bear,” I say, laughing. I gently hang up before she can ask any more questions.

Have I ever been in love? Really in love? And why is it that with each new guy I think I’m more in love with him than the last? I think briefly of Sebastian and smile. What on earth was I doing with him? Or Bernard? I lean over the wall to get a better view of the polar bear. Poor Bernard. He turned out to be even more messed up than I am.

“What are you laughing about?” Capote asks, wrapping his arms around me from behind. We haven’t been able to take our hands off each other, leaning into each other on the subway, walking arm in arm as we strolled up Fifth Avenue, and kissing at the entrance to the zoo. My body has turned to butter. I can’t believe I wasted the whole summer pursuing Bernard instead of Capote.

But maybe Capote wouldn’t like me so much if I hadn’t.

“I’m always laughing,” I say.

“Why?” he asks sweetly.

“Because life is funny.”

At the zoo, we buy hot dogs and polar bear baseball caps. We run down Fifth Avenue, past the old man who sells pencils in front of Saks, which reminds me of the first time I met Miranda. We join a line of tourists inside the Empire State Building and ride the elevator to the top. We look through viewfinders and make out until we’re breathless. We take a taxi back to Capote’s.

We have sex again, and don’t stop until we both realize we’re starving. We go to Chinatown and eat Peking duck, which I’ve never had before, and we wander through SoHo and laugh about how Teensie took a pill at Barry Jessen’s opening and all the other crazy things that have happened to us during the summer. It’s pretty late by now-after midnight-so I figure I’ll spend one more night with him and go home in the morning.

But when morning comes, we still can’t manage to tear ourselves apart. We go back to my place and make love on Samantha’s bed. I change my clothes, stick my toothbrush and a change of underwear into my carpenter’s bag, and we head out to be tourists again. We do the Circle Line and the Statue of Liberty, climbing all the way to the top and laughing about how small it is once you finally get up to the crown, then we go back to Capote’s.

We eat hamburgers at the Corner Bistro and pizza at John’s. I have my first orgasm.

The hours pass in a fuzzy, dreamlike way, mingled with a thread of despair. This can’t last forever. Capote starts a job at a publishing company after Labor Day. And I have to go to Brown.

“Are you sure?” he murmurs.

“I don’t have a choice. I was hoping something would happen with my play and I’d be able to convince my father to let me go to NYU instead.”

“Why don’t you tell him you changed your mind?”

“I’d need a pretty big excuse.”

“Like you met a guy you’re crazy about and want to be with him?”

“He’d have a heart attack. I wasn’t raised to base my decisions on a guy.”

“He sounds like a tough old nut.”

“Nah. You’d like him. He’s a genius. Like you.” Three days with Capote have taught me that what I thought was Capote’s arrogance was simply due to his deep knowledge of literature. Like me, he has a searing belief that books are sacred. They might not be to other people, but when you have a passion, you hold on to it. You defend it. You don’t pretend it isn’t important at the risk of offending others.

And suddenly it’s Wednesday morning. Our last class is today. I’m so weak with sadness I can barely lift my arm to brush my teeth. I’m dreading facing the class. But like so much in life, it turns out I needn’t have worried.