Relationship In Love

Bone and the White Mink: Carrie’s Christmas Carol

Christmas season in New York. The parties. The star on 57th Street. The tree. Most of the time, it’s never the way it should be. But once in a while, something happens and it works.
Carrie was at Rockefeller Center, thinking about ghosts of Christmas Past. How many years ago was it, she thought, putting on her skates, that I was last here? Her fingers trembled a little as she wrapped the laces around the hooks. Anticipation. Hoping the ice would be hard and clear.
Samantha Jones made her remember. Lately, Sam had been complaining about not having a boyfriend. About not having a love during the holidays for years and years. “You’re lucky now,” she told Carrie, and they both knew it was true. “I wonder if it will ever happen to me,” Sam said. And both of them knew what “it” was. “I walk by Christmas trees, and I feel sad,” said Sam.
Sam walks by Christmas trees and Carrie skates. And she remembers.

***
It was Skipper Johnson’s second Christmas in New York, and he was driving everyone crazy. One night, he went to three cocktail parties in a row.
At the first one, he saw James, a makeup artist. James was at the second and third cocktail parties, too, and Skipper talked to him. He couldn’t help talking to everyone. Remy, a hair-stylist, came up to Skipper and asked, “What are you doing with that guy, James? You’re too good for him.”
“What do you mean?” Skipper said.
“I’ve seen the two of you everywhere together. And let me tell you something. He’s scum. A user. You can do better.”
“But I’m not gay,” Skipper said.
“Oh, sure, daling.”
The next morening, Skipper called up Stanford Blatch, the screenwriter. “People thinking I’m gay, it’s bad for my reputation,” he said.
“Please,” said Stanford. “Reputation are like cat litter. They can be changed daily. In fact, they should be. Besides, I’ve got enough of my own problems right now.”
Skipper called up River Wilde, the famous novelist. “I want to see-e-e you,” he said.
“You can’t,” said River.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m busy.”
“Busy with what?”
“With Mark. My new boyfriend.”
“I don’t get it,” Skipper said. “I thought I was your friend.”
“He does things for me that you won’t do.”
There was a pause.
“But I do things for you that he can’t do,” Skipper said.
“Like what?”
Another pause.
“That doesn’t mean you have to be with him all the time,” said Skipper.
“Don’t’ you get it, Skipper?” River said. “He’s here. His things are here. His underwear. His CDs. His hairballs.”
“Hairballs?”
“He has a cat.”
“Oh,” Skipper said. Then: “You let a cat in your apartment?”
Skipper called up Carrie. “I can’t stand it. It’s Christmas, and everybody is in a relationship. Everbody except me. What are you doing tonight?”
“Big and I are staying hom,” Carrie said. “I’m cooking.”
“I want a home,” Skipper said. “I need a house. Maybe in Connecticut. I want a nest.”
“Skipper,” Carrie said, “you’re twenty-five years old.”
“Why can’t everything be the way it was last year, when I had the most amazing dream about Gae Garden,” he said, referring to the famously frosty socialite in her mid-forties. “She’s so-o-o beautiful. And I had a dream that we were holding hands and we were so in love. And then I woke up, totally bummed because it wasn’t true. It was just that feeling. Do you think you can ever have that feeling in real life?”
The year before, Skipper, Carrie, and River Wilde had all gone to Belle’s Christmas party at her family’s mansion in the country. Skipper drove his Mercedes, and River sat in the back seat like a papal personage and made Skipper flipping radio stations until he found some music he could tolerate. Afterward, they went back to River’s apartment, and River and Carrie were talking while Skipper complained about how his car was parked illegally. Then Skipper went to the window and looked out, and sure enough, his car was being towed. He started screaming, and Carrie and River told him to shut up and do a line or smoke a joint or at least have another drink. And they thought it was hysterical.
The next day, Stanford Blatch went with Skipper to get his car out of the ound. The car had a flat tire, and Stanford sat inside the car, reading the papers, while Skipper changed the tire.

The Bone
“I need a favor,” Stanford Blatch said.
He and Carrie were having their annual Christmas lunch, at Harry Cipriani. “I have to sell some paintings in the Sotheby’s auction. I want you to sit in the audience and bid them up.”
“Sure,” Carrie said.
“Frankly, I’m broke,” Stanford said. After he lost his investment in a rock band, Stanford’s family had cut him off. Then he’d gone through all the money from his last screenplay. “I’ve been such a fool,” he said.
And then there was the Bone. Stanford had been writing a screenplay for him and paying for the Bone to get acting lessons. “Of course, he said he wasn’t gay,” Stanford said, “but I didn’t believe him. Nobody understands. I took care of that kid. He used to fall asleep at night while we were talking on the phone. With the phone cradled in his arms. I’ve never met anyone who was so vulnerable. So mixed up.”
The week before, Stanford had asked the Bone if he wanted to go to the Costume Institute benefit at the Met. The Bone freaked out. “I told him it would be good for his career. He screamed at me,” Stanford said. “Insisted that he wasn’t gay. That I should leave him alone. Said he never wanted to talk to me again.”
Stanford took a sip of his Bellini. “People thought I was secretly in love with him. I thought I wasn’t.”
“He beat me up once. I was in his apartment. We got into a fight. I set up an audition for him with a director. He said he was too tired. That I should leave. I said, ‘Let’s talk about it.’ He threw me against a wall, then he literally picked me up and threw me down the stairs. Of course he lived in a cheap walkup. A beautiful boy like that. My shoulder hasn’t worked right since.”

The White Mink
Carrie has been getting complaints about Skipper. From women who are older than he is. Like Carrie’s agent, and one of her editors at a magazine. Skipper has been putting his hand on their knees under the table at dinners all over town.
The night of the Costume Institute benefit, Carrie was getting her hair done and yelling at Skipper on the phone when Mr. Big came home. He had a big package under his arm. “What’s that?” Carrie asked.
“It’s a present for me,” Mr. Big siad.
He went into the bedroom and came out holding a white mink coat. “Merry Christmas.”
“Skipper, I have to go,” Carrie said.

It was just three years ago Christmas that Carrie had been living in a studio apartment where an old lady had died two months before. Carrie had no money. a friend lent her a piece of foam for a bed. All she had was a mink coat and a Louis Vuitton suitcase, both of which were stolen when the apartment was inevitably robbed. But until then, she slept on the piece of foam with the fur coat over her, and she still went out every night. People liked her, and nobody asked questions. One night, she was invited to yet another party at someone’s grand Park Avenue apartment. She knew she didn’t really fit in, and it was always tempting to stuff your face on the free food, but you couldn’t do that. Instead, she met a man who had a name. He asked her to dinner, and she thought, Fuck you, all of you.
They went to dinner at Elio’s and sat at one of the front tables. The man laughed a lot and ate breadsticks spread with cold butter from his knife. “Are you a successful writer?” he asked.
“I have a story in Woman’s Day next month,” Carrie said.
“Woman’s Day? Who reads Woman’s Day?”
Then he said, “I’m going to St. Barts for Christmas. Ever been to St. Barts?”
“No.”
“You should go. You really should. I rent a villa every year. Everyone goes to St. Barts.”
“Sure,” Carrie said.
The next time they had dinner, he had changed his mind and couldn’t decide if he should go skiing in Gstaad or Aspen or to St. Barts. He asked her where she went to school.
“Nayaug High School,” she said. “In Connecticut.”
“Nayaug?” he asked. “Never heard of it. Hey, do you think I should get my ex-girlfriend a Christmas present? She says she’s getting me one. Anyway.”
Carrie just looked at him.
Still, her misery lited for a few days until she realized that maybe he wasn’t going to call again.
Two days before Christmas, she called him. “Oh, I’m about to take off,” he said.
“Where did you decide to go?”
“St. Barts. After all. We’ve got a terrific house party. Jason Mould, the movie director, and his girlfriend, Stelli Stein, are coming in from L.A. but you have a very merry Christmas, okay? I hot Santa is good to you.”
“You have a good Christmas, too.” She said.

Hi, Mom
That afternoon, she went ice skating, doing one spin after another in the center of the rink until they made everyone get off because the session was over. She called her mother. “I’m coming home,” she said. It began snowing. She got on a train at Penn Station. There were no seats. She stood in the vestibule between the cars.
The train went throught Rye and Greenwich. The snow turned into a blizzard. They passed Greens Farms and Westport and then the dirty little industrial towns. The train stopped, delayed because of the snow. Strangers began talking. It was Christmas.
Carrie lit a cigarette. She kept thinking about the man and Jason Mould and Stelli Stein (whoever she was) lying around a pool underneath a blue St. Barts sky. Stelli Stein would be wearing a white bikini and a black hat. They’d be sipping drinks through straws. People would come for lunch. And everyone would be long and tan and beautiful.
Carrie watched the snow blow into the car through a crack in the door. She wondered if she would ever get anything right.

It was midnight. Skipper was sitting in his apartment, talking on the phone to California, standing in front of the window. A cab pulled up to the building across the street. He could see a man and a woman in the back seat, making out. Then the woman got out, and she was wearing a big fur coat with like twelve cashmere sweaters wrapped around her head, and the cab drove off.
It was Samantha Jones.
Two minutes later, his doorbell rang.
“Sam,” Skipper said. “I’ve been expecting you.”
“Oh, please, Skipper. Stop with the juvenilities. I was wondering if I could borrow some shampoo,” sje saod/
“Shampoo? How about a drink?” Skipper asked.
“A small one,” Sam said. “And don’t get any funny ideas. Like putting Ecstasy in it or anything.”
“Ecstasy? I don’t even do drugs. I’ve never even done coke, I swear. Wow. I can’t believe you’re in my apartment.”
“I can’t either,” Sam said. She began walking around the living room. Touching things. “You know, I’m not quite as organized as everyone thinks.”
“Why don’t you take off your coat?” Skipper said. “Sit down. Do you want to have sex?”
“I really want to wash my hair,” Sam said.
“Youcan wash it here,” Skipper said. “After.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Who was that man you were kissing in the cab?” Skipper asked.
“Just another man I either don’t want or can’t have,” Samantha said. “Like you.”
“But you can have me,” Skipper said. “I’m available.”
“Exactly,” Sam said.

You’re So Naughty
“Cheri,” said a man’s boice from the living room. “I’m so glad you come to see me.”
“You know I always come to see you,” said the Bone.
The Bone checked himself in the mirror in the marble foyer, then went into the living room. A middle0aged man was sitting on the couch, sipping tea, tapping his Italian-slippered foot against the coffee table.
“Come to me. Let me see you. See how you’ve aged in the past two months. No sun damage from our time in the Aegean?”
“You haven’t aged at all,” said the Bone. “You always look young. What’s your secret?”
“That wonderful face cream you gave me,” said the man. “What was it again?”
“Kiehl’s.” The Bone sat on the edge of a bergere.
“You must bring me some more,” the man said. “Do you still have the watch?”
“The watch?” the bone said. “Oh, I gave that to some homeless man. He kept asking me what time it was, so I figured he needed it.”
“Oh! You’re so naughty,” the man said. “Teasing me like that.”
“Would I ever give away anything you gave me?”
“No.” the man said. “Now look at what I brought you Cashmere sweaters in every color. You’ll try them on?”
“As long as I get to keep all of them,” the Bone said.

River’s Party
River Wilde’s annual Christams party. Loud music. People everywhere. In the stairwell. Doing drugs. Someone was peeing off the balcomny onto the head of the unsuspecting superintendent below. The Bone was ignoring Stanford Blatch, who showed up with twin male models who had just come into town. Skipper was making out with a woman in the corner. The Christmas tree fell over.
Skipper broke free and came up to Carrie. She asked him why he was always trying to kiss women. “I feel like it’s my duty,” he said, then asked Mr. Big, “Aren’t you impressed with how fast I moved?”
Skipper moved on to River. “How come you never include me anymore? I feel like all my friends are dissing me. It’s because of Mark, isn’t it? He doesn’t like me.”
“If you keep this up, no one is going to like you,” River said. Someone was puking in the bathroom.
At one A.M., the floor wsa awash in alcohol, and a cadre of druggies had taken over the bathroom. The tree had fallen over three times and no one could find their coat.
Stanford said to River, “I’ve finally given up on the Bone. I’ve never been wrong before, but maybe he really is straight.” River stared at him, dazed.
“Come, River,” Stanford said, suddenly happy. “Look at your Christmas tree. Look at how beautiful it is.”