Introducing the New York Crowd

Five-hundred eighty-nine.

I'm sprawled over two seats in a most unladylike fashion, my pedal pusher-clad legs crossed at the ankles. If my mother was here, she'd have a fit. "Where are your manners, Suzie? Sit up like a lady." Nobody wants to sit next to me, the serious teenage girl with too much black on and a large hardback book with no pictures. I am far too literary for a girl my age. It's Jack Kerouac, which I chanced upon at a bookstore that I visited one night when I got tired of drinking coffee till I got a headache. Brilliant stuff. I doubt anybody in Sweet Apple has even heard of Jack Kerouac, let alone carries him at a bookstore.

The train ride drags on longer than usual today. Echoes of our godforsaken Telephone Hour, as I'm now referring to it (it certainly felt like an hour, though it was only a few minutes), are ringing in my head, on a constant repeat. It's all I can do to keep from finding a gun to bore it out of my brain with – but I fear that wouldn't do it, and plus then I would have a large, bleeding, gaping hole in my head. Somehow, that doesn't seem like the most appealing option.

Time ticks on and I doze off with my head against the window, my book still on my lap. My glasses – cat-eyed, sprinkled with rhinestones – rest on my nose awkwardly, no doubt causing me to look like a very young librarian. Eh. C'est la vie. I don't wake until we pull into Penn Station. A porter is jostling with my suitcase above my head, creating an incessant drone that almost cancels out the still-present echoes of Goin' steady! Goin' steady! in my pathetic head. I have been in suburbia far too long.

As I step off the train, trying to remove the repetitive choruses of the Sweet Apple Teenagers from my brain and concentrating on my suitcases slamming into my knees over and over, bang-bang-bang, I know I won't have to look for my welcoming committee. This is for one very specific reason.

"Suuuuuuuuuziiiiiiieeeeee!"

There it is.

"Bonnnniiiiiiiiiieeee!" I call back, dropping my luggage and hugging my cousin. No traces of obvious sarcasm drip out of my ear-splitting shriek. I am a wonderful actress. Mary Elizabeth and Caroline appear behind Bonnie, with the other members of our branch of the Conrad Birdie Fan Club – bubbly Dorothy, and the twins, Betty and Marilyn - trailing behind them and Aunt Suzanne bringing up the rear. We are a happy lot.

"Oh, Suzie, it's been so long," says Marilyn, delicately hugging me and air-kissing me on either cheek with all the coquettishness of her name-twin, the famed Miss Monroe. I see some college boys nearby, admiring her charm. Lucky duck. College boys are so much more mature than the ones my own age, I've noticed. Now, there's a thing that Kim MacAfee and I can agree on: older men. We just think of different older men. She wants the posey, pretty-boy type; I go for the smoldering, intellectual ones.

The girls murmur assorted niceties as Aunt Suzanne picks up my suitcase. "Have a nice trip, honey?" she asks, all beaming wifely purity.

"You bet," I smile. "It was swell." New York Suzie uses lots of words like "swell" or "spiffy" with a completely straight face. Sometimes I think that both New York Suzie and Sweet Apple Suzie act almost too normal, just to see if anyone notices.

"I hope you didn't eat on the train, because we found the most darling café to have lunch at!" exclaims Dorothy. "Really dainty, lots of little flowers – you'll love it."

Real Suzie is thinking, You know what I'd love more would be if those college boys came with us... Instead, New York Suzie says, "Gee, that would be spiffy." Maybe back in Sweet Apple, where the girls know me better, I would be called on my over-enthusiasm. Then again, Sweet Apple Suzie would never say 'spiffy'. She at least has a little bit of integrity, unlike New York Suzie, who sacrificed hers on the altar of the Conrad Birdie Fan Club years ago.

Aunt Suzanne takes my suitcase to the apartment while we girls go out for lunch at the darling café. It's an adorable little hole-in-the-wall, Dorothy's right, but it's certainly not a place I'd frequent of my own free will. My two main requirements for a top-notch café are Good Coffee and Good Men. I see neither good coffee nor good men here, and so I allow myself to space out while the other girls natter, tossing in a few choice phrases every now and then, things like, "Oh, wow!" and "That's swell!"

Then Caroline drops the bomb. The very large, very dangerous atomic bomb.

"So I'm reading the paper this morning, and it was talking about the Conrad's going in the army -" I've always thought it funny how the girls refer to him like one of their personal friends: 'Oh, Conrad's just released a new record!' 'Did you hear Conrad's doing a concert here in two weeks?' – "And how for his official send-off, his manager picked some lucky girl to kiss him good-bye on the Ed Sullivan Show!"

This is news to all of us, and we all let out a sigh in perfect unison. "Oh, wow, lucky thing," we all murmur.

"What's her name?" asks Mary Elizabeth, with a blend of jealousy and admiration for the mystery girl.

"Kim MacAfee."

Well, pardon me while I scrape my jaw off the floor and pop my eyes back into their sockets. Is that so? Kim MacAfee, going to kiss Conrad Birdie on the Ed Sullivan Show. Before Real Suzie can say anything, New York Suzie quickly pushes her out of the way and interrupts, with an enthusiastic, "Gee, what a lucky duck! Wish it was me."

"Yeah," the other girls sigh. To them, Kim is the Luckiest Girl Ever. They have no personal ties to this golden goddess of a teenager, or so she's portrayed amongst her peers. To me, this is just incredible. This is going to greatly complicate my façades.

"Oh, I have the best plan!" Bonnie suddenly exclaims. "I've been thinking about it since you brought it up. Caroline, when did it say that Conrad's leaving?"

"Nine o'clock on Sunday morning," replies Caroline. "Why?"

"Well, we're going to give him a proper good-bye! We'll meet him at Penn Station and wave him off. Maybe even get his autograph!" She rummages in her purse for a pen, then hands it to me. "Suzie, take notes? Use a napkin or something. We can all meet up at eight forty-five, okay? Suzie, aren't you leaving on Sunday? It'll be so convenient! We love you Conrad, then whisk off our darling Suzie – we won't even have to make an extra trip! Yes, we can meet at eight forty-five and sing the Birdie song until Conrad shows up. Then we can try and talk to him, tell him how much he means to us, okay? And then we can get his autograph before he leaves! Oh, it's a perfect plan, don't you think? We only have a day and a half to organize, so let's get to it!"