V TAKES THE ROOM OUT OF ROOMATE Fireeater: I keep a pretty sick schedule, like I sleep all day and work at night Hairlessskat: What do you do? Fireeater: duh, I'm a performer Hairlessskat: you really eat fire? Fireeater: I'm working on it. Mostly I dance with my snakes. Hairlessskat: snakes? Fireeater: yea I have four snakes Fireeater: you're okay with pets right? Fireeater: you still there? Fireeater: yo, hello? "Nice try, loser!" Vanessa Abrams logged off her computer and went over to her closet, She'd taken off her hot and hideous maroon wool Constance Billard School winter uniform- the only uniform she owned- two hours ago and hadn't bothered to change into anything else. Even though the girl Vanessa was supposed to interview in three minutes had sounded cool in her e-mail that morning, she probably wouldn't be psyched if Vanessa greeted her at the door in her black cotton Hanes underwear. Vanessa pulled a folded pair of pants off the top shelf in her bedroom closet without even looking. Everything in her closet was black, and she was a strong believer in shopping in duplicate. If you owned six pairs of straight-legged black stretch Levis, you never really had to think about what you were going to wear, and you only had to do laundry once a week. She pulled the jeans up around her pale and slightly pudgy hips, yanked her black long-sleeved V-neck tee down over them and ran her hands over her shaved, dark head. She might have looked odd to all the so-called "normal" girls she went to school with, but the girl she was about to meet sounded more interesting than they could ever hope to be- well, at least she had online. The downstairs buzzer rang, just as she'd anticipated. Vanessa went over to the window and pulled aside the curtain, which was really just a black poly-blend Martha Stewart Everyday bed sheet she and her sister Ruby had bought at K-mart last Halloween. On the street two floors below, a drunk homeless guy was shouting at empty parked cars. A little boy with green spiked hair and no shirt on sped down the sidewalk on a mountain bike that was way too big for him. The crumbling cement block that served as Vanessa's front stoop was empty. The Prospective roommate was already on her way up. "Please be normal," Vanessa murmured, not that she actually like normal girls. Normal girls, , like the girls in her class at Constance, wore pink lip gloss and different versions of the exact same pair of shoes and were religious about things like highlights and pedicures. In her e-mail application this girl Beverly had said she was an art student at Pratt, so she was older, for one thing, and was probably kind of alternative. Hopefully she'd be as cool as she sounded. Vanessa opened the door to the apartment just as Beverly mounted the top of the stairs. And to Vanessa's complete surprise, Beverly wasn't a she, she was a he. Vanessa had sort of forgotten to specify that she was looking for a girl roommate in her web posting. A deliberate mistake? "Bet you thought I was female, right?" Beverly asked, extending his hand for Vanessa to shake. "The name is totally old-fashioned and totally misleading. Don't worry I'm used to it." Vanessa tried not to look surprised, which wasn't hard for her. She'd mastered the unexpressive stare long ago while eating alone day after day in the Constance Billard School cafeteria, turning out the senseless babble of her beautiful, bitchy classmates. She tucked her fingers into the back pockets of her jeans and nonchalantly led the way into the apartment "I was just IMing with this weirdo chick who dances with snakes. You don't have any snakes, do you?" "Nope." Beverly pressed his palms together in praying position and surveyed the starkly decorated apartment. The walls were white and the wood floors were bare. The kitchen was tiny and opened onto the living room/ second bedroom, which was furnished with a futon and a TV. The only decorations were framed stills from the dark, morose films that Vanessa notoriously made in her spare time. "Whose work?" Beverly asked, gesturing at a black-and-white photograph of a pigeon pecking at a used condom in Madison Square Park. Vanessa discovered she was staring at Beverly's firm, round buttocks and quickly averted her eyes. "Mine," she replied Horsley. "It's from a film I made earlier this year." Beverly nodded his head, keeping his palms pressed together as he examined the other photographs. Vanessa loved that he didn't start babbling about how offbeat or depressing the were, the way people usually did. Just the way he said, "whose work?" made her feel like a real artist. "Would you like a beer?" she asked. Her fridge was uncharacteristically full of beer from her eighteenth-birthday party two weekends ago, and she'd take any opportunity to get rid of it. "Sorry, I don't have much else except water." "Water would be fine," Beverly replied and Vanessa found herself liking him even more. Ask any high-school boy if he wanted a beer and he'd down a whole six-pack in three seconds flat. All Beverly needed was a little water to whet his palate, and a place to live- for instance, with her. Whoa...... Slow down, Nellie! What about the interview? Vanessa went into the tiny open kitchen and got out a vintage Scooby-Doo glass and some ice and a pitcher of filtered water from the refrigerator. She filled the glass slowly, surreptitiously studying Beverly as she did so. His small, intense eyes were pale blue, and his short, tousled hair was nearly black. The palms of his hands and his fingernails were stained black with some sort of ink he must have been using in his artwork, and his drab green t-shirt was flecked with what looked like sawdust. His black pants were just the sort of loose black cotton poplin slacks she would have worn everyday if she were a guy, and on his feet were a pair of those thin orange rubber flip-flops you can buy at the drugstore for ninety-nine cents. He was so not like the people she went to school with, Vanessa couldn't help but feel kind of excited. Could that have anything to do with the fact that he's a guy? She walked around the counter and handed Beverly the water, already envisioning what it would be like to stay up late and watch movies together. She could bring him water and he would nod his head at her in that thoughtful, sexy way of his. And then they would dissect Stanley Kubrick's work, film by film.... Naked. Vanessa took a seat on the futon sofa and Beverly sat down beside her. "So, I'm kind of between places right now," he explained. "I was in a dorm and now I'm in this group work-live arrangement with a bunch of artists in this warehouse space down by the Brooklyn Navy Yard. It can get pretty crazy there sometimes, though." He chuckled. "I just need a place to crash where I don't have to worry about my fingers getting hacked off while I'm sleeping-you know, for someone's "body parts" sculpture or something?" Vanessa nodded happily. She knew exactly how he felt. Really? Of course, she'd never expected to share an apartment with a guy- other than Dan- but she was eighteen now, an adult, able to make her own decisions and mature enough to have a guy roommate and no intention of jumping his bones. Right. "The thing is," Beverly continued, "it would be kind of weird living with someone I'd never even breathed the same air with before, you know?" Vanessa's big brown eyes widened. So he didn't want to live with her? "I guess so," she replied glumly. "I wondered if we could hang out for a few weeks first. Do stuff. Get to know each other. See if it could work out," he added. Vanessa sat on her hands feeling embarrassingly like one of those so-called normal girls she hated after some hottie had asked them to a prom or whatever they called those ridiculous dress-up parties they were always going to because it gave them the opportunity to buy a new dress. Beverly did want to live with her. He just wanted to get to know her first. How refreshing and exciting to finally meet someone so intelligent, creative, cool- and hot! "Well, I am interviewing other people," she responded, not wanted to appear too eager. "But that sounds like a good idea. I mean, you're right. It's important to know who you're about to move in with." "Exactly." Beverly polished off the water, stood up and carried the glass to the sink. Wow, he even cleans up after himself. He flip-flopped back into the living room. "We could do something this weekend or--" Suddenly Vanessa had an idea. What better way to show Dan that she'd moved on and had a life of her own beyond him and his selfish self than to bring a guy to his first gig? "Actually an old friend of mine is singing with the Raves tomorrow night. Want to go?" Thankfully Beverly was mature enough not to jump up and down and freak out about the fact that she knew someone who sang with the Raves. He pressed his palms together and nodded his head in that sexy, monklike way of his. "Sure. I'll call you tomorrow to make a plan." Vanessa walked him to the door and then rushed to the window, following his nice ass with her eyes as he flip-flopped his way down South Sixth Street and then disappeared into the maze of old factory warehouses that made up Williamsburg's landscape. Saturday mornings she and Beverly would sit by that window, making use of its southern exposure to make their art. He would work silently at his canvas, smearing black ink all over it with his hands while she filmed him. And both of them would be.... Naked. Of course. How exciting to live with an artist. Of course, Dan was a poet, but that was different. All he did was scribble in notebooks all day, drinking bad coffee and getting shakier and more neurotic by the hour. Of course she would continue to interview other people- at least Instant Messenger- until everything was worked out. But she was already pretty sure she'd found what she was looking for, the perfect mate. Wait. Doesn't she mean roommate? B CAN'T STOP RUNNING AWAY FROM HOME "Excuse me. What are you guys doing?" Blair demanded. Eleanor Waldorf and Blair's stepbrother, Aaron Rose, were standing on the bed in Blair's makeshift bedroom, thumb tacking some sort of large map on the wall. Blair stood in the doorway with her arms folded, awaiting an explanation. "Don't tell," her mom whispered excitedly to Aaron. Eleanor was wearing a bizarre Versace outfit that had bad sample-sale purchase written all over it. The outfit consisted of an orange-and-black vertically striped halter top attached to green-and-black horizontally striped pedal-pushers by way of a mess of gold chains and buttons. The petal-pushers even sported gold fringe. Why is it that the mom population is always drawn to designer's biggest mistakes? Not only was Eleanor's outfit ugly, but in another fit of postpartum depression she'd dome something dreadful to her hair. That morning it had been shoulder-length and blonde. Now it's dyed dark red and cropped close to her head, like Sharon Osbourne's. Needless to say, it was sort of hard for Blair to look at her. Aaron pushed the last tack into the corner of the map and hopped down from the bed, his wannabe Rastafarian mini dreadlocks banging merrily against his hollow vegan cheeks. "I hate to break it to you, Ma, but this is going to require a wee bit of clarification." He shot Blair and apologetic look. "Sorry, sis, we wanted to surprise you." Blair liked her stepbrother Aaron okay-much more than she liked his fat loser of a father, Cyrus Rose- but totally infuriated her when he called Eleanor Ma or her sis. After all his father and her mother had only been married since thanksgiving, so Eleanor was definitely not his mom and she was very definitely not his sister. Despite the existence of her little brother Tyler, who was a boy, and Yale, who was only a baby, Blair had always identified herself as an only child, except for those rare occasions when she and Serena were getting along so well it felt like they were sisters. Eleanor scooted off the bed, grabbed Blair's hand, and dragged her over to the sage-colored wall to look at the map. It was a detail of Australia and the Pacific Ocean, and there were four red circles drawn around four pinpricks in the sea between Vanuatu and Fiji. Underneath the circles, written in black ink in Eleanor's loopy cursive, were the names Yale, Tyler, Aaron, and Blair. Padonnez-moi? Blair twisted her ruby ring around and around on her finger. "What the fuck, mom?" she demanded impatiently. Eleanor was still holding Blair's hand and she squeezed her daughter's fingers tightly with manic delight. "I bought you an island, sweetie, and named it after you. Each of my four little darlings has their own Pacific Island! And next year, when they print the new maps, your names will appear right there nest to Fiji! Isn't that fantastic?" Blair stared at the map. Fiji had always sounded sort of exotic to her, but the island of Blair probably consisted of a scrappy shrub on top a piece of reef riddled with spiny sea urchins and kelp. Tyler's already planning our Big South Pacific Christmas trip next year," Eleanor rattled on. "He's researching which of the Islands have the best surf." "And your mom's buying each of us a board," Aaron informed her. "Except for Yale." Blair's noticed that Aaron's toenails were painted black. "It's a band thing," he explained, noticing her noticing. "We were bonding over the fact that, at the moment, none of us has a girlfriend." Big surprise Blair thought. If he wasn't careful, Aaron was going to become one of those pale, skinny, asexual, vegetarian old men like Morrissey, fading into the ether without anyone remembering that he'd ever been there. Aaron and Serena had hooked up and even been in love for a fleeting moment that winter, but Aaron wasn't exciting enough to hold Serena's attention for more than five minutes.