I Went to Vassar for This? by Naomi Neale

Publishers Weekly

After a TV dinner explodes in her microwave, modern New York City girl Cathy Vorhees wakes up in 1959, setting in motion this inventive romantic comedy from Neale (Calendar Girl). Mortified to find herself living the life of uptight Cathy Voight, office tyrant and recipe creator, Cathy bravely tries to "relax and enjoy my psychosis" with the help of her nifty '50s flatmates Tilly and Miranda, who think she's suffered an electric shock. More often, Cathy reacts like a movie heroine waking up next to a strange man "with absolutely no memory of how... the knife sticking out of his chest got there." When she isn't expressing shock at all the pork products, fur coats and sexual harassment in the workplace, she's trying to make a confidante out of hunky Hank, owner of her apartment building, and to find a way home. While some of Cathy's actions are out of character for a savvy city girl (i.e., brainlessly blurting out future events like the Kennedy assassination to Hank), she's got an enjoyable, sarcastic narrative voice that carries readers from confusion and despair ("why hadn't that microwave outright killed me?") to a You-go-girl! finale that's sure to please. (June) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

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I Went to Vassar for This?

Dorchester Publishing

All right reserved.

ISBN: 0-505-52686-7

Chapter One

What-? Was it-? Had I-? The flowers fell onto the kitchen tile
as I groped for the Freezer Classics box. Its smiling Donna
Reed mascot grinned inanely at me from both sides of the box
as I flipped it over. Do not place metal containers or
aluminum foil in the microwave, it read. For traditional or
convection ovens only. Crap! Why hadn't anyone one told me?
Everything could be nuked in a microwave, couldn't it? I'd
seen whole turkeys cooked in one! Oven mitts. I needed oven....

The last thing I remembered, as I turned back to the microwave
with a dishtowel in my hands, was a flash of light and a sound
like thunder when, in slow motion, the little oven's door
exploded from its hinges and winged its way toward my head.
Then there was nothing but whiteness, where a familiar face
with evenwhiter teeth smiled maternally at me.

Go towards the light! urged the Freezer Classics dinner woman,
her apron's ruffles not a bit mussed. Go towards the light!

Aw, shut up, I growled at the wench. Then the lights went out.

* * *

At first the eyes staring into mine seemed immense, like the
river of rich, warm chocolate from Willy Wonka and the
Chocolate Factory into which I'd always wanted to dive as a
kid. With every passing second, those vast pools seemed to
recede, twirling away in a dizzying spiral until almost
nothing of them was left. Machinery had been pounding away
somewhere near me, but its sounds faded as well.

No. I was merely dizzy. The factory noises had been my own
heartbeat and the blood coursing through my veins. The eyes
were, well, eye-sized. After blinking a few times, I realized
I was sitting on something soft, and that a strange man was
hovering over me. "Miss Voight?" The light baritone voice was
so loud at first that I twitched, but my ears adjusted
quickly. "Are you all right? Miss Voight?"

Oh, right, I thought to myself. The voice belongs to the eyes.
That makes sense. Were there other parts, too? Any woozy
notion I might have had about having ended up in a hellish
afterlife inspired by Hieronymus Bosch, where giant noses ran
around on tiny legs while knives protruded from between
disembodied ears, was quickly disabused when the eyes' owner
stood upright. The first thing I noticed about him was the
old-fashioned crew cut he sported, so coarse that every short,
straight hair seemed to defy gravity. Then I focused on the
cleft in his chin. I've always been a sucker for those. Thick
horn-rimmed glasses sat on the bridge of his nose, and ...
oh dear, what a deal-killer. The dark red plaid of his geek
shirt that hung from his broad shoulders was spotted with
little white flakes. If he'd only paid attention to my
campaign for Zincsational!, the all-herbal shampoo for problem
scalps, little Mr. Retro Hipster could have sudsed, sudsed,
sudsed his way to dandruff-free hair irresistible to the
opposite sex. Or the same sex, if that's what he was into.

I was babbling. My mouth wasn't moving, but jolted to life
once more, my brain was zipping along at a hundred miles a
minute. "Miss Voight?" said the guy. His lips didn't seem to
be moving quite in synch with the noises he made, but that was
okay. I remembered something had hit my head. Obviously I was
still a little woozy.

Who was this Miss Voight he kept talking about? Prompted by
some weird worry that I'd lost it when ... well, when
something had happened. I reached up to make sure my face was
still on tight. Touching my head sent a dull, hangover-quality
pain throbbing through my brain.

"Miss Voight?" Again with the Miss Voights! Whoever the hell
Voight was, I wished she'd speak up already so I'd stop having
to hear her name. Mr. Brown Eyes kept staring steadily in my
direction. "Cathy?" he asked.

The word had been so soft and tentative on his lips that for a
long moment I didn't even recognize it as my name. "That's
me," I finally murmured. I'd suffered massive hangovers
before, believe me-after a particularly bad one involving too
many Lemon Drops, a friend's bachelorette party, and a
stripper dressed like a lumberjack, I hadn't been able to look
at citrus for six weeks. Speaking aloud luckily didn't trigger
the massive headaches I usually experienced from too-close
encounters of the hooch kind, luckily. "I'm alive, right?"

"Why, sure you are. Can I get you something? Ice? Water? A
Coca-Cola?"

Knowing my habits, my refrigerator contained nothing more than
leftover Thai take-out, a jar of pepper rings, and the
mostly-empty supersack of miniature Halloween Milky Ways I'd
bought two weeks ago, knowing full well that precious few
kiddies tricked or treated in my building. "Coffee," I
mumbled. Things were so much better with my eyes closed.
They'd improve more with caffeine.

"Your electric percolator's on the fritz, remember? From what
I could tell, you must have gotten a shock from the frayed
wire. How about I get you some tea?" His footsteps were soft
on the floor as he backed away.

Tea? I had some in my cupboards, I knew-a few packets of
herbal crap that had come in one of the thank-you gift baskets
clients were always sending me. In fact, the only stuff
occupying my cupboards had come from gift baskets. Gourmet
mustards in tiny jars. Wee samples of exotic, seedy jams.
Pasta in novelty shapes. I let the guy fumble around in the
other room while I rested my eyes.

I might have nodded off for a minute, or else a nice
concussion could have been kicking in, because the next thing
I knew, Flaky Pete was back, pressing a cup and saucer into my
hands. Who knew I had a saucer? Gratefully I accepted them,
and while I peeled open my eyes once again, I took a sip. "Oh
my God!" I exclaimed, genuinely surprised. "Real tea. I mean,
real tea from real tea leaves. I thought I was going to have
to drink that homeopathic, Celestial-seasoned lawn squeezings
shit."

Ol' Geek Chic stared at me like he'd never heard a girl swear
before, but he couldn't have been as wide-eyed as I. The hot
liquid had given me focus for the first time in several
minutes, and the first thing I focused on was the sofa the guy
sat on. It was low. It consisted of swooping brass and some
rectangular salmon-colored leatherette cushions-salmon
cushions!-and though it could have come from my grandmother's
dentist's waiting room in Schenectady, it was definitely, most
definitely, not mine. Nor were the squat wooden coffee table
with metallic accents, the rag rug underneath it, the Formica
dinette beyond, the wall clock with long space-agey spikes
where the numbers should have been, the ginormous table lamp
with a plaster base in the shape of a matador, and especially
not the metallic wall hanging bristling with cut-out
ginsu-edged leaves and wandering branches. None of it was
mine! "Where am I?" I whispered, putting the willowware coffee
cup on the table. The sofa on which I sat was armless and
upholstered in a dull gray fabric with tiny metallic threads
glistening within. Someone was really going for flea-market
ambiance, here. The whole tiny apartment was a vintage store's
trash-day wet dream. "This isn't my apartment. Where the hell
am I? And can you do something about that dandruff? It's
driving me crazy."

Suddenly self-conscious, Mr. Plaid Fad sprang up and batted at
his shoulders. He seemed mortified. "Miss Voight...."

That name again! "Why do you keep calling me that? My name is
Voorhe...." My name was halfway out before I thought better
of sharing it with this guy. "Oh God! Are you a stalker? You
are! Are you the bastard who keeps stealing the perfume
inserts out of my Vogue subscription? Sick!"

"No! I-!" My Prada Purloiner tried to circle around the coffee
table to get to me, his hands outstretched. The freak probably
wanted to cop a feel! I felt dirty all over. What if he'd
tried something while I'd been out like a light? "I'm from...."

"I don't care what electrical ... repair ...! Whatever!
How did you get me here, you, you ... Jeffrey Dahmer?" I
demanded. "Were we at some bar? Did you slip me a roofie?"

"Jeffrey who? Rufus who?"

"Oh-ho-ho, nice!" I laughed coldly, edging my way to the door.
He was slick, Mr. Innocent was. I didn't remember having been
to a bar that night, but I have a vague memory of something
bad having happened. "Was it one of those Houston Street
lounges? I'll kill Thuy."

"You-you're not making any sense." He nervously pushed his
glasses up his nose. "Why don't you sit down and drink your...."

I recoiled from the cup in the same way Socrates must have
when they brought him his hemlock Cosmo. "Shit! You laced the
tea with a roofie, too!" I clutched at my throat with both
hands. "GHB! PCP! SOS!" I was blacking out. The drug was
taking effect. Another ten minutes and he'd be having his
filthy, filthy way with my unconscious body. And it was really
a pity he was such a depraved bastard, because under normal
circumstances I might actually have found him adorable, in an
alternative-band-lead-singer sort of way.

No, wait. I wasn't blacking out. The spots in front of my eyes
had appeared because I'd gotten off the sofa too fast. And
let's face it: full-figured girls like me have more to haul
off sofas. "Are you all right?" my ravisher asked.

I reached down and, because it was hampering my movement,
clutched at my skirt as I replied, "Of course I'm not all
right, what with being stalked and molested and ...!"

Hold up a second. My skirt?

One look down was enough to propel me to a mirror surrounded
by what looked like the most rococo frame from the Met's
Renaissance collection. A ravishing blond creature stared back
at me from the glass. Oh, it was definitely me. Someone,
however, had stuffed my ample form into an old-fashioned
billowing A-line dress of deep blue covered with white
polka-dots. Polka-dots! Me! Impending violation meant nothing
in the face of those polka-dots. Somehow the dress gave me an
hourglass figure my loose work suits never had. "Wait a
minute," I snapped, narrowing my eyes. "Wait one god-damned
minute. Did you-?"

"I haven't done-whoa!" When I hauled up my skirts to see what
was underneath, he flinched away and held his hands in front
of his face. Funny kind of thing for a date rapist to do. "Do
you have to show your ...? Aw, jeez! I should...."

"Oh my God!" What had this deviant done to me? "I've got on
some kind of petticoat!" Isn't that what this slippy-type
thing was? "And granny panties!" They were enormous. They were
baggy. They were white. I dropped my skirts back down again.
"And my hair! You've, you've...." My helmet of rigid, short
curls made me look like a young and platinumed Liz Taylor; I
had such a round face that the style wasn't something I
necessarily would have tried on my own, but danged if it
wasn't actually pretty cute. Still. I had bigger fish to fry.
"You've set it!"

"I didn't!" my would-be hairdresser stammered out. Now he was
the one backing away, fear in his eyes.

"Don't look at me like that!" I yelled, alarmed beyond all
measure. Obviously my commotion was making him nervous. Good.
Score one for victims who stood up for themselves. "What's
with putting me in June Cleaver drag? Oh, you sick freak! Were
you planning to video this? What are you running, some kind of
deranged necrophiliac goth ... fetish video ring? And you're
the perfume-sniffing hairdresser ringleader?" In my upset I'd
clutched my throat. Alarmed at what I found there, I whirled
around to the mirror again. "Pearls?" I gasped.

"I think they're bakelite," said Chester the Molestor.

"I don't care what they are!"

He flinched twice, once at my screech, and a second time when
the door behind him opened. I caught a quick glimpse of a
battered antique stairwell beyond, and then in walked two
dames. Friends of my bakelite-lovin' buddy, no doubt. "Oh,
thank God," he murmured, scampering over.

I wasn't worried. There might have been three of them to one
of me, but the smaller of the women-a short-haired blonde with
the tiniest wasp waist I'd ever seen-couldn't have been more
than five-three. I could've snapped her like a saltine. The
other was one of those elegant numbers with a deep red mane
straight out of the Miss Clairol box, curled at the ends in a
Bettie Page style. She was obviously the higher-rent model of
the two. Both of them wore the same type of costume I'd been
stripped and stuffed into-the short girl in a plaid skirt,
wide like my own, and the tall one in an off-the-shoulder
emerald number that could have come from the racks of
Butterfield 8. They both wore long, elbow-length white gloves,
I noticed with a wary eye. All the better to leave no
fingerprints with. "Say, what's going on?" asked the tall
chick. As if I bought her phony alarm!

"Your friends are here now." The pornographer's tone of voice
might have reassured a kid afraid of thunderstorms, but not
this girl. His accomplices weren't my friends. "Can we talk?
In the hallway?" he murmured to them. Then, in the same bland
way, he added to me, "They'll be right back to take good care
of you."

"Oh, I'm so not doing that kind of video!" I shouted at the
closed door. "I'm not like that! I don't care what Melissa
Lawson from Vassar might have told you! We were drunk freshman
playing truth or dare and there wasn't even any tongue!" I
needed a phone. I could call the cops with a phone. As wildly
as I raced around the room, though, I couldn't find so much as
a single empty cell phone holster. Tricky, planning it so
well.

Fine, then. I'd take a good look at my surroundings so I could
describe them to the cops after my escape. Judging by the
narrow confines of the apartment and the original fireplace
and mirror, my jail was one of those run-down converted
Victorian townhouses with a dine-in kitchenette and mile-thick
walls. I could probably scream for days without being heard.
The street outside the heavy window was too dark to see
anything more than a distant streetlight glinting from the
hoods of the parked cars. Great. So not only was I in some
unknown part of the city, but I was going to have to walk
through some really crummy neighborhoods before I got back to
civilization.

I'd decided that the smart thing to do would be to grab some
kind of sharp weapon from the kitchen, when the door opened
again and the two women returned. I backed against the mantel,
wary. "Where am I?" I demanded. "Don't come any closer. I know
Tae Kwan Do." I'd once dated a guy who did Tai Chi in Central
Park, anyway.

"Cath, honey." The shorter woman's voice was Tupelo honey to
the ear; her Southern drawl made every vile word sound
perfectly harmless, damn her! She stood with her hands on her
hips for a moment, staring at me. "Don't you recognize us?"

"He was right," said the other in her deep alto. "That shock
must have hit her pretty hard."

"How do you know my name?" What they were selling, I wasn't
buying. "Forget it. You can tell that kidnapper friend of
yours-"

The tall woman gave the Munchkin a look of significance, then
started removing her gloves while she walked in my direction.
I backed away. "He wasn't a kidnapper. He came to help after
you called for him. Anyway, he's gone, dear."

Meanwhile, Short 'n' Southern hopped up and down in what
resembled genuine anxiety. "Cath, don't you remember me,
Tilly? And Miranda? Your flatmates?"

"You are not...." I stopped, putting a hand to my head.
These women were far too polished for what you'd expect from
necrophiliac goth Donna Reed girl-on-girl porn actors.

"You're in your apartment at 125 East 63rd," said the tall
one. Miranda, if I could believe a word of what Tilly had to
say. "Everything's all right. You took an electrical shock
from the percolator and it gave you what's-it-called.
Temporary gymnasia."

"Amnesia," Tilly murmured from her perch on the sofa's arm.

"That's what I meant. Darling." In one fell swoop, Miranda
sidled up beside me to lay a hand on my shoulder. I was so
stunned that I didn't move. Her voice throbbed with emotion.
"You're very dear to us. We couldn't bear to think that while
we were gadding about, you were here ... hurt. No, injured ...!"

"That was swell!" Tilly's applause was reduced to a patter by
her gloves.

Miranda turned and performed a coy little bow. "Wasn't it?"

"I don't know don't know why you didn't get that role in the
radio serial," said Tilly. "You're awfully talented." Off she
sailed behind us down the little hallway, pulling off her
gloves one by one.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from I Went to Vassar for This?
by Naomi Neale
Copyright © 2006 by Naomi Neale.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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