Trading Up Read Online Free
Author: Candace Bushnell
Tags: Fiction, General, Contemporary Women
promising—from Mimi’s description, he might even be another Comstock Dibble—but the fact that Mimi had called to fix her up with him reassured her that she had come as far as she’d thought. And wouldn’t that be a slap in the face to Comstock Dibble, and a way of showing him that he mustn’t mess with her. She didn’t know what Mimi meant, exactly, about being “sweet” to Selden Rose (if she expected Janey to give him a blow job in the bathroom, she could forget about it), but she would certainly pay him some attention, and when Comstock saw that she’d made it into Mimi’s inner circle, it would drive him crazy . . .
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The traffic came to yet another halt just before Exit 70, and feeling a renewed sense of her personal power, Janey took the opportunity to flip open the large lighted mirror in the car’s sun visor. Her reflection never failed to satisfy her, and leaning forward, she marveled at her own beauty.
Her hair, long, thick, and blond, was like cream; the shape of her face nearly perfect with its high forehead and small, neat chin. Her eyes were blue and turned up ever so slightly at the outer corners, promising a certain mysterious intelligence, while her full lips (recently made even fuller by injections from her dermatologist) implied a certain childlike innocence. Indeed, the only technical flaw was her nose, which had a slightly bulbous, turned-up tip, and yet, without this nose she would have been a cold, classical beauty. Because of it, her beauty became accessible, giving the common man the impression that he could have her if only he could manage to meet her.
She was, indeed, so engrossed in her appearance that she didn’t notice that the traffic had finally begun to move until a few sharp horn blasts from the car behind her broke her reverie. Annoyed and slightly embarrassed, she looked into the rearview mirror and saw that the offending driver was a stunningly handsome young man sitting behind the wheel of a hunter green Ferrari. Janey was immediately filled with envy—she’d always loved that Ferrari—but her resentment turned into pure jealousy when she saw who the passenger was: Pippi Maus.
Pippi and her younger sister, Nancy Maus, comprised the Maus acting sisters from Charleston, South Carolina. They had faces like little mice but possessed enviable figures of the type so rarely found in nature: They were skinny girls with naturally huge breasts. Notoriously talentless, in Janey’s mind they represented
“everything that was wrong with the world”; still, they had managed to carve out careers by playing quirky characters in independent films. Janey couldn’t imagine how, or why, Pippi was on her way out to the Hamptons—from Janey’s point of view Pippi wasn’t the sort of person who belonged there—but even more mysterious was what she was doing with such an amazingly gorgeous guy. Even stuffed into the little Ferrari seat she could tell that he was tall—maybe even 6'4"—with the lean body, full lips, and chiseled face of a male model. Perhaps he was gay—
Pippi, after all, was the kind of girl who probably only hung out with gay men—but Janey suspected from the macho way he had leaned on his horn that he was not.
And then, adding insult to injury, the Ferrari made a sudden sideways move and pulled onto the shoulder. In a second, it was passing her as if she were no more significant than a bug. Pippi squealed with delight as Janey glared at the driver. His eyes met hers, and for a second, Janey was completely taken aback. His shocked expression was that of a man who has suddenly seen an angel . . .
But then the green car disappeared around the bend in the exit, and Janey was 18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:22 PM Page 14
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left feeling, once again, that somehow she’d been left behind. If she couldn’t take the seaplane to the Hamptons, then she ought to be in a car
18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:22 PM Page 13
t r a d i n g u p
13
The traffic came to yet another halt just before Exit 70, and feeling a renewed sense of her personal power, Janey took the opportunity to flip open the large lighted mirror in the car’s sun visor. Her reflection never failed to satisfy her, and leaning forward, she marveled at her own beauty.
Her hair, long, thick, and blond, was like cream; the shape of her face nearly perfect with its high forehead and small, neat chin. Her eyes were blue and turned up ever so slightly at the outer corners, promising a certain mysterious intelligence, while her full lips (recently made even fuller by injections from her dermatologist) implied a certain childlike innocence. Indeed, the only technical flaw was her nose, which had a slightly bulbous, turned-up tip, and yet, without this nose she would have been a cold, classical beauty. Because of it, her beauty became accessible, giving the common man the impression that he could have her if only he could manage to meet her.
She was, indeed, so engrossed in her appearance that she didn’t notice that the traffic had finally begun to move until a few sharp horn blasts from the car behind her broke her reverie. Annoyed and slightly embarrassed, she looked into the rearview mirror and saw that the offending driver was a stunningly handsome young man sitting behind the wheel of a hunter green Ferrari. Janey was immediately filled with envy—she’d always loved that Ferrari—but her resentment turned into pure jealousy when she saw who the passenger was: Pippi Maus.
Pippi and her younger sister, Nancy Maus, comprised the Maus acting sisters from Charleston, South Carolina. They had faces like little mice but possessed enviable figures of the type so rarely found in nature: They were skinny girls with naturally huge breasts. Notoriously talentless, in Janey’s mind they represented
“everything that was wrong with the world”; still, they had managed to carve out careers by playing quirky characters in independent films. Janey couldn’t imagine how, or why, Pippi was on her way out to the Hamptons—from Janey’s point of view Pippi wasn’t the sort of person who belonged there—but even more mysterious was what she was doing with such an amazingly gorgeous guy. Even stuffed into the little Ferrari seat she could tell that he was tall—maybe even 6'4"—with the lean body, full lips, and chiseled face of a male model. Perhaps he was gay—
Pippi, after all, was the kind of girl who probably only hung out with gay men—but Janey suspected from the macho way he had leaned on his horn that he was not.
And then, adding insult to injury, the Ferrari made a sudden sideways move and pulled onto the shoulder. In a second, it was passing her as if she were no more significant than a bug. Pippi squealed with delight as Janey glared at the driver. His eyes met hers, and for a second, Janey was completely taken aback. His shocked expression was that of a man who has suddenly seen an angel . . .
But then the green car disappeared around the bend in the exit, and Janey was 18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:22 PM Page 14
14
c a n d a c e b u s h n e l l
left feeling, once again, that somehow she’d been left behind. If she couldn’t take the seaplane to the Hamptons, then she ought to be in a car
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