Here Kitty Kitty Read online

  ACCLAIM FOR JARDINE LIBAIRE’S

  Here Kitty Kitty

  “A Tribeca restaurant manager, Lee makes a late-morning Scotch, after snorting coke all night, seem whimsically glamorous….There are no easy epiphanies in this dark, tender book. Libaire instead wisely explores her heroine’s long and difficult struggle to take care of herself: to be sober, to sleep peacefully, to be alone. In the process, the author offers glittering descriptions of New York life, both its obstacles and its promise.”

  —Suzy Hansen, New York Times Book Review

  “Darkly comic…cribbed from the breathless pages of Interview and New York magazines.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “Here Kitty Kitty brings the streets of New York alive with beautiful poetic prose, and like a bottle of expensive champagne, it tastes of bittersweet sadness once it’s gone. Like John O’Hara’s BUtterfield 8, Here Kitty Kitty shows a woman struggling from the bottom and sinking even deeper, making roadkill of the men who fall under her spell, while searching for something more meaningful than money, or even love.”

  —Michael Hornburg, author of Bongwater and Downers Grove

  “Author reminds me of: Truman Capote and Jack Kerouac, when both were at the top of their game. Lee also would get along fine with the ever-willful Ivich from Sartre’s war trilogy. Best reason to read: This is a marvelous book! This stream-of-consciousness novel does a superb job of depicting a self-destructive artist, and the city itself.”

  —Ed Halloran, Rocky Mountain News

  “The fine line between distraction and madness is one that Jardine Libaire’s narrator, Lee, crosses several times. This novel draws a remarkable picture of the romance of self-destruction—all the attractions of what is bad for you—and, also, of the more difficult ‘pyrotechnics of faith.’ ”

  —Charles Baxter, author of Saul and Patsy and The Feast of Love

  “Libaire may be ahead of her game.”

  —Pauline M. Millard, Associated Press

  “As one might expect from the come-hither title, the protagonist of Here Kitty Kitty walks that tightrope between sophisticate and psycho.”

  —DailyCandy.com, “Cracking the Books: Bad Girls”

  “Libaire is talented, no question.”

  —Alynda Wheat, Entertainment Weekly

  “Libaire’s voice is urgent, tough, and elegant. She takes a classic story—of a young woman unraveling at the seams—and gives it the poetry of a fairy tale. Lee is a haunting urban archetype. She swills pink champagne for breakfast, snorts coke on the job, and, with a cheerful nihilism, veers closer and closer to prostitution. Here Kitty Kitty documents the secret rites of passage into a certain variety of American womanhood. It reflects the excitement, sadness, and trashy glamour of New York.”

  —Lisa Dierbeck, author of One Pill Makes You Smaller

  “Libaire jams her paragraphs with fractured images of the cityscape, brand-name clothing, trendy neighborhoods, and after-hours clubs….Quite a few readers will be seduced by her cinematic writing and her vulnerable hipsters.”

  —Joanne Wilkinson, Booklist

  “Here Kitty Kitty’s heroine, Lee, reads like an old friend. Hard, soft, funny, and dangerously out of control but relentlessly lovable. An affectionate and completely believable slice of New York’s not-so-young and reckless, distinctive for its unapologetic tone and finely observed details.”

  —Anthony Bourdain, author of Kitchen Confidential and A Cook’s Tour

  “With Here Kitty Kitty, Jardine Libaire gives chick lit a swift kick in the rump. She writes with a clipped, cinematic panache, and her deadpan decadence will remind readers of an East Coast version of Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays and Bret Easton Ellis’s Less Than Zero.”

  —Kurt Wenzel, author of Gotham Tragic and Lit Life

  “They say the best nonfiction reads like fiction. But is the reverse also true? It would seem so after reading this gorgeously written debut novel, whose narrator is so keenly evoked that her reminiscences read like a memoir….Laced with musings about art and marked by unexpected metaphors, the book summons consistently powerful images….Those looking for a darker, more literary slant of chick lit would do well to check this out. Libaire’s fashion sense is as well honed as her perfectly turned phrases.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Here Kitty Kitty is a first novel possessed of an impressive grace and restraint, which provides a sharp contrast to the reckless existence of its heroine. Living dangerously can be a tiresome subject, but nothing about this novel is predictable, including how engaged readers will become with Lee’s struggle to interrupt her own descent. Jardine Libaire is a delightful writer and I look forward to being surprised by her next novel.”

  —Katharine Weber, author of The Music Lesson and The Little Women

  ALSO BY JARDINE LIBAIRE

  White Fur

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2004 by Jardine Raven Libaire

  Excerpt from White Fur copyright © 2017 by Jardine Raven Libaire

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Hogarth, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  crownpublishing.com

  HOGARTH is a trademark of the Random House Group Limited, and the H colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Little, Brown and Company, New York, in 2004. Subsequently published in paperback in the United States by Back Bay Books, New York, in 2005.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 9780525574491

  Ebook ISBN 9780525574507

  Cover design: Catherine Casalino

  Cover photographs: © Fabrizia Milla/Trevillion Images

  v5.2

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Jardine Libaire

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Excerpt from White Fur

  This book is for my mother and father.

  ONE

  The opium-eater loses none of his moral sensibilities or aspirations. He wishes and longs as earnestly as ever to realize what he believes possible, and feels to be exacted by duty; but his intellectual apprehension of what is possible infinitely outruns his power, not of execution only, but even of power to attempt.

  —THOMAS DE QUINCEY, from Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

  One should consume Baileys in a crystal tumbler while watching Spice Hot. At jazz clubs, red wine and queen-sized, white-filtered Nat Shermans. At Hamptons polo games, a Pimm’s Cup for style and a line off the dash of a police-auctioned Ferrari for effect. Crème de menthe before going down on someone who deserves it. Super Bowl Sunday, Bud cans (shotgunned) and Ritalin (crushed and snorted). A boxing match on a hotel room TV, Maker’s Mark Manhattans (up, three cherries) and petite ham sandwiches on a silver tray. White Castle and Remy Red for a dogfight. While wrapping Christmas presents, Pabst Blue Ribbon and pizza. For suicidal depression on a weekday morning, pink champagne. Before a job interview, Irish coffee and Xanax. Straight tequila on your birthd
ay. And on that night that rolls out of the blue unknown future into the lap of the present, when a lady realizes the game is over, that kind of evening calls for martinis: stock gin, filthy, up, no olives.

  I found this list scrawled on a series of cocktail napkins, stuffed into a gold clutch. Belinda and I must have written it one night a couple years ago. This was our religion. Actually, it was more important; it was art. But one day, the things that make you free start to keep you down.

  * * *

  —

  The beginning of the end began with a vision.

  I’d twisted all night to Brazilian records at Black Betty. A strawberry-blond cornrowed kid in a Lakers jersey cut lines for me in the men’s room. At home, I drank warm milk with brandy. I leaned back in my orange butterfly chair and calculated the money I owed. It was uncountable.

  Outside, the night sky turned turquoise at the horizon, highlighting a clutter of buildings close by, while the World Trade Towers glittered in the distance, across Brooklyn, on the other side of the East River. I fell asleep sometime before the sun came up.

  I dreamed I was lying in a bathtub full of oatmeal, like the soak my mother made when I had chicken pox. Around my neck, dropping to my sternum like a necklace, lay a ring of blisters. I understood them in the dream to be “fever pearls.” From above, I looked down on my body, on my bloated white form, and knew the pulsing marks to be pockets of toxins locked under my skin.

  I woke to sunlight, clutching a teddy bear that hadn’t existed in many years.

  * * *

  —

  I’d waited half an hour and was late for work. Anthony leaned against his Escalade, beefy arms crossed, talking to someone hidden under the keyboard awning. I owed him three months of rent, and soon, September. I bit my nails and watched through my cheap lace curtain.

  I paced. Checked the time on my phone every thirty seconds. Opened the fridge once more: a few Rheingolds and a pink gel eye mask. Eggs and orange juice hadn’t materialized. Stopped in front of the mirror to curse my baby face again. The dimple in my chin, the pucker under my eyes that made me look sleepy even when I was wired, my pout, my long, dark-red hair and Bettie Page bangs: these features conspired against me. I looked exactly like a girl who wouldn’t pay rent.

  Finally he left, and I ran down the stairs.

  Everyone still wore leather, even though it was a hundred degrees, squinting as they emerged from steamy buildings with bulldogs. Cars cruised, windows open, bass thumping. Girls walked to summer school pushing strollers. Boys strutted down the sidewalk, earphones around necks, diamonds in both ears. A hydrant exploded, crystal in the haze.

  Air conditioners leaked down from windows. Plastic bags floated across empty basketball courts. A fat white kid, shirt hung around neck like scarf, walked in the middle of the street with an ice cream melting off the cone faster than he could lick it.

  “Lee.”

  Anthony was sitting at an outdoor table. We fought in low, restrained voices. Then he offered me two weeks to pay up. Otherwise, he warned, eviction.

  “I’ll do it legal, Lee, but I’ll put your stuff on the street. You know I will.”

  “You’re some friend,” I said.

  He laughed, looked at the sky, shaking his head. “I’m not your friend.”

  Old Polish ladies sat on stoops and appraised me. I straightened my shoulders, sauntered past them without smiling.

  * * *

  —

  I was at least fifty-five K in the hole. Spread around on credit cards, personal loans (i.e., friends who wouldn’t return my calls anymore), back taxes, medical and utility bills.

  I was a wild card at spending money. I shopped like a Dadaist. When Belinda found out she had herpes, I sent eight dozen white roses to her apartment. Sometimes, if I felt low, I copied Warhol and bought myself a birthday cake. One Saturday night, Sherry and I rented a white limousine to drive us through the city, over bridges, through tunnels, and eventually to a McDonald’s drive-through in Brooklyn.

  A couple years ago, Belinda and I met for lunch, which turned into afternoon martinis. It accelerated, and then we were in the back of a Town Car choosing pills from the bento box of drugs in the console.

  Next I remember snow and making some sort of scene at Bergdorf’s.

  I’d woken up the following morning with that feeling I wasn’t alone. Like when you open your eyes, and without turning around, without hearing breathing, without feeling warmth, you know there’s a man in your bed. Dragged myself from the sheets and tripped into the kitchen. On the floor, a half-eaten piece of Wonder bread and a hot-pink cocktail umbrella. And there it was, lying across the table.

  A white knee-length fur. Square black buttons with the Fendi logo. Gold and black Fs on the silk lining. Pleased to meet you, I thought.

  * * *

  —

  Belinda used to be my partner in crime. My fellow outsider. I’d known the girl since she was a ninety-pound catalog model cracked out at System, her Australian accent rugged, her language X-rated. We used to sunbathe topless on her East Village roof, wearing white jeans and rainbow-mirrored sunglasses we’d bought on the street. After long nights, we parted ways at eight in the morning, stepping gingerly through ice in stilettos, lipstick smeared from making out with strangers in the red-lighted downstairs of clubs.

  We used to stumble down Avenue A, sipping tallboys in paper bags, with no destination. I picked her up from the hospital after she fainted at a rave. She picked me up after a girl clubbed my head with a cell phone on the F train.

  She could have had anyone back then. Monstrous cheekbones. Blond bob. Wicked eyes, the whites as hard as china, lashes curled back to the lid. A wide frame she used to starve to stay in business. Legs that lasted for miles. Her voice was so raspy, she’d ask for butter to be passed and men would feel she’d promised them something. She made both good and very bad choices. She’d call me from anonymous apartments. The guy’s pimpled back, the dusty mirror, and no condom wrapper in sight.

  Eventually I did notice a shadow, a dark thing that was chased around her face. Like a black moth behind a curtain, trying to find the way out.

  A year and a half ago, she got pregnant. She freaked out, decided on abortion, but all she could do was cry in her bedroom. Matt coaxed her from the edge the way a parent beckons a toddler off thin ice in the middle of the lake—you can’t go get him, you cannot frighten him, and the only way you’ll save his life is to act contrary to how you feel.

  * * *

  —

  Brunch shift. The Tribeca restaurant I’d managed for years, a chic converted diner, slanted like the original establishment. Mirrors framed in mother-of-pearl chips covered walls. The mosaic floor was primitive, its pieces beige, white, turquoise. The stools, whose gold sparkles reminded me of banana seats on bicycles, were pulled to a white Formica counter decorated with gold spirals and stars. We’d been written up again in Time Out, so all of uptown was downtown today.

  The woman sent back her soup. I apologized and explained that it was meant to be rich. She was the kind of woman who made me feel like an orphan. Her highlights had been painted strand by strand, and she wore a white Marc Jacobs sundress and an aquamarine cube on her finger.

  When she beckoned for the second time, I pretended not to notice.

  “Miss,” she said firmly. “Hello?”

  “How can I help you?”

  “This white you recommended, I’m afraid it’s turned.” Her lips pursed as though she could barely restrain a smile.

  “Do you want me to taste it?” I offered.

  “Um, not necessary. I mean, be my guest, if you really want to. But I know wine.”

  I held up one finger to indicate I’d return and walked to the bar for a new bottle. I dallied for a moment, fussing with nothing, to slow my heart rate. Then I marched back to her table and uncorked it.

  “You’re a doll,” she said, taking a sip and winking.

  Walking away, I wiped sweat from my upper
lip. I’d experienced much worse than this, every day, but here I was: trembling, hot. I suddenly knew I would quit.

  * * *

  —

  Yves opened the office door and looked me over with ice-gray eyes. I’d been pounding a snifter of B&B and crying. He had a way of smiling without saying anything that made me feel like a child.

  Not missing a beat, he said he’d just stopped by to see me. The bartender had told him I was down here.

  “I’m quitting,” I said, my voice yolky. “I’m telling Brendan tonight. I’m going to call him at home.”

  With slender, suntanned hands, he struck a match and held it to two Dunhills. After shaking out the fire, he gave one to me.

  “Quitting,” I repeated. He’d seen me fall apart a hundred times, but a new note of desperation in my voice surprised us both.

  He squinted at me through the smoke he’d exhaled. His eyes moved from my right eye to my left. His cuffs, undone, exposed handsome wrists.

  His face was icy, Nordic, even though that wasn’t his heritage. Arched eyebrows and pointed eyeteeth, plus a slant of skin over cold blue cat eyes, made for a beautiful and frightening face. His chin wasn’t too small, or too delicate, but there was a fineness to its sculpted shape that lent the head a feminine dimension.

  Yves was old enough to be my father. In some ways—table manners, yellow-white hair like the inside of banana skin—he seemed older, and in other ways—lithe golden body, nightlife stamina—younger.

  He wore high-waisted slacks like Fred Astaire. Walked like a gentleman, as if he could break out tap-dancing. His voice rumbled in his Adam’s apple: a jaguar purring, licking blood from its own teeth.

  “Do you know what that bitch said to me?” I asked, and then put my hand on the phone. “I’m calling Brendan now.”