Read Online This Beautiful Life by Helen Schulman - Free Book Online Page A

the basement, backyard pool. Her father is heir to some label fortune.”
    â€œLabel fortune?” said Jake.
    â€œYou know, like Calvin Klein? The labels?” said Arthur.
    Davis said, “We’ve got nothing better to do. We’ve got nowhere else to go.”
    â€œAin’t that the truth,” said McHenry. He and Davis high-fived.
    They followed Arthur and his freak squad to the Cavanaughs’.
    D aisy Cavanaugh’s house was one of the biggest houses in Riverdale. It was white, modern; each of its three glassy levels seemed to rise out at some new angle to better capture a view of the Hudson. It was almost as if someone had moved the house east from California, it had so little in common with the surrounding Tudors and neo-Georgians. The place was an advertisement for itself.
    It wasn’t that steep a climb up the road, but McHenry kept pounding his chest and coughing. As he went, he kept saying, “Got to lay off the stogies,” which Jake took as an affectation, although maybe it wasn’t; maybe, at seventeen, McHenry had already totaled his lungs. They could hear music, really loud music, rocking out, and the blue light of the first level of the house glowed like there was a swimming pool inside of it, even though everyone said the swimming pool was out back. The party was downstairs. The main entrance to the house was farther up the road. This bottom tier was where the garage was, the little movie theater Arthur had mentioned, the playroom, and the wet bar. The sauna. The changing room that led out to the pool. Henry explained all of this to Jake. He’d been there once, Henry said, when the Cavanaughs threw a retirement party for some kindergarten teacher that he and Daisy had suffered through during different years, and all her ex-pupils and their families had been invited to send her off.
    McHenry went in first and scoped the place, while the boys huddled together on the road, Arthur passing around a joint. It was getting cold outside, even though it was May. The wind was whipping across the river, and Jake half wished he was home, watching a movie. Arthur and his friends weren’t exactly mesmerizing conversationalists, and the rest of the guys had all pretty much run out of shit to say. So they stood, hands in pockets, shifting their weight, eyeing each other, bouncing on their toes. Davis was on his cell phone texting around, looking for other action, in case this party was officially over.
    â€œMaya and Chloe are at Chloe’s highlighting their hair. Cantor and a bunch of dudes are in the East Village at the Blue and Gold, but how the hell would we get there? Josh says there’s a crew hanging on Park Avenue. Been there.” And then, turning to Django: “I dunno. Maybe we should have stayed in town.” He was fast on that thing.
    â€œSo let’s go back,” said Django, who was kind of nerdy and hardly talked, unless he was talking to Davis. “I’m down with that.”
    Jake had turned to Henry and whispered, “I think I’m going to head home,” when a Lexus sedan pulled up behind them. Luke, the fucker, was driving. Audrey was sitting outside on the windowsill of the passenger seat, her butt resting in the tight little hammock of her black jeans, beating a drumbeat on the roof of the car with her fists. “Aloha, boys,” she said, as Luke, grinning, pulled past them and into the driveway.
    McHenry came outside then with a thumb up. “There’s beers inside,” he said. When he passed Luke, who was getting out of the car, they bumped fists (they hung out sometimes, a fact that upped McHenry’s ante, which he was well aware of), and then Luke went around to Audrey’s side and sort of swung her out of the window. She wrapped her arms and legs around him, clinging like a koala cub, and he carried her into the house.
    Henry looked at Jake looking at Audrey.
    â€œNot in this lifetime,” said