The Elite by Jennifer Banash Read Free Book Online Page B

loft to a seven-figure Park Avenue penthouse—it was the crown moldings and the mind-set that was different up here. And she was cute.
    As the elevator made its way silently up to the thirty- fifth floor, he couldn’t help but wonder what she looked like underneath that skirt and weird floaty top she’d been wearing . . .
    Drew shook his head, exhaling loudly as the elevator doors opened to a long cherrywood hallway. Why did he have to be so sexed- out all the time? When he really thought about it, there were probably about ten minutes out of the entire day where he wasn’t thinking about seeing some random girl naked.
    When Drew stepped into the entryway of his parent’s apartment, he was hit with the pungent, unmistakable smell of curry, and the sizzling sound of grilling meat reverberated through the sleek, modern living room decorated in shades of cream and white. The couch was Eames, and a white, plastic 4 7

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    ultra- mod Egg chair sat in one corner, a pair of hidden speakers nestled inside its red, cocoonlike interior. Drew could remember hiding inside the dark, cozy space when he was six, The Beatles’ “Blackbird” streaming though the speakers. Splashes of color were everywhere—in the primary- colored shards of pot-tery his mother had brought back from her trips to Southeast Asia and Morocco, the large, op art circular turquoise- and-white rug covering a large expanse of the polished floor.
    The room’s focus were the floor- to- ceiling windows that brought in waves of light at every turn, and, of course, the much- coveted view over Central Park, the Empire State Building off in the distance, framed by the Van Allens’ enormous, wraparound terrace. When his family had first moved to the Upper East Side a little over two years ago, Drew would stand out on the terrace for hours, marveling at the view and waiting for dusk, that magic time when the sky would soften in shades of crimson, violet, and tangerine, and the lights on the Empire State Building would switch on, bathing the top in a shining glow of light—red, white, and blue on the Fourth of July; red and green on Christmas Day; plain red on Valentine’s Day; and electric blue on the anniversary of Frank Sinatra’s death.
    Since the big move uptown, these colors had been the way Drew marked the passing seasons of his life, and nothing rep-resented Manhattan more strongly or iconically to him than that mythic steel spire.
    “Drew, is that you, honey?” his mother’s high voice sang out, reverberating off of the apartment’s enormously high ceilings. From the way her voice echoed, and the sound of 4 8

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    Miles Davis’s Seven Steps to Heaven , he could tell that she was in her studio again, getting ready for her next big show at the Mary Boone Gallery.
    “Yeah,” he yelled, throwing his keys down on the Lucite-and-glass coffee table covered with glossy cata logs of his
    mother’s work. Suddenly he was fucking exhausted. He stretched his long arms over his head, yawning loudly.
    “Well, come in when you have a minute,” she called out over the music, “I want to show you this new piece I’m working on.”
    His mother’s huge abstract paintings and collages covered the walls, lit softly from above by tiny spotlights that brought out the rough brushstrokes in the thick, brightly colored paint she often used—swirls of magenta and aqua, yellow the color of buttercups, lime green and violent fuchsia. Drew didn’t pretend that he exactly understood his mother’s work, but he did admire it. When she tried to explain her paintings, often times she’d get exasperated, throwing her hands in the air as he asked her repeatedly what exactly a certain piece meant .
    “Stop thinking so much!” his mother would exclaim, laughing impatiently and gesturing toward the large, brilliant canvas. “Concentrate on how it makes you feel instead. Drew, baby, your whole problem is that you think too much—about