The Stand-In

by Steve Bloom

  But I don’t say that.

  “Well, thanks for the memories,” I do say, a little more crisply than intended, sticking out my hand.

  “You too,” she says softly, shaking hands with me. “Good luck with Columbia.”

  “Give ’em heck at Stanford,” I respond, sorry to have been so sharp.

  We just stand there, then Celia Lieberman starts down the stairs. I watch her go with strangely mixed feelings. Glad to be rid of her, but deeply grateful, a little nostalgic too. Can’t say it hasn’t been uneventful. Then, as she’s about halfway down—I swear to God I don’t know where it’s coming from—but I call after her:

  “If you want to attract that Franklin guy, you have to make an effort.”

  She stops, teetering on a step, and turns to me, surprised. What have I done? What am I doing? We look at each other. Neither of us speaks. Finally, she picks up the conversation where I so abruptly left off.

  “I’ve tried everything,” she laments. “Laughing at his lame jokes. Dropping stuff and bending over. Listening to his incredibly awful taste in music. Get this, Franklin actually thinks the Backstreet Boys are underrated.”

  “You cannot be serious.”

  “Seriously underrated,” she emphasizes.

  “God,” I sympathize.

  “I even let him beat me in chess, which is hard because Franklin really sucks.”

  “I mean, how you dress,” I suddenly say, trying to stay on subject, again not sure why. Celia lowers her eyes, self-conscious.

  “That’s a lost cause.”

  Climbing back up the stairs, she rejoins me on the sidewalk. People stream in all directions around us. We’re in the way. She follows me through the fray, off by the storefronts where we can conduct a more private consultation. I turn to her, all business.

  “You’ve got all the right fundamentals to build on,” I say, “analytically speaking, of course. You just need to find your own style.”

  “Oh, and you’re an expert,” she says, ever the skeptic.

  “After four months of being a stand-in, I happen to consider myself an authority on fashion,” I sniff haughtily.

  Actually I kind of do. In the past months, I’ve pretty much seen it all. Strapless gowns, backless dresses, those halter jobbies. Hair straight, teased, curled, up, down, sideways, sometimes all at once. And shoes. Don’t get me started on shoes. Why the female gender’s so obsessed with them is beyond me. I own like two pairs. But not them. At least three pairs of everything. High heels, flats, open-toed, the variety is mind-numbing. I won’t delve into the dos and don’ts of makeup, the toners, enhancers, powders, and lotions, or the ins and outs of proper nail color. It’s like each girl is her own personal work of art. Before late September, I never realized the stupendous effort, infinite choices, and extreme anxiety that go into being a typical teenage girl. And, if you ask me, they’re all insane. Yeah, I know it’s how society tells them they have to be. But still. Lunatics, every last one of them.

  But, again, I don’t say that.

  “Well, maybe not,” I concede instead. “But I know what guys like, being that I am one.”

  “My mother buys all my stuff,” she says.

  “What would you wear if it was your choice?”

  “My choice?” The idea seems inconceivable to her.

  “Your hair,” I say. “Ever consider going shorter?”

  “Like in a bob like—?” she looks at me, alarmed. “Isn’t that a little radical?”

  I chuckle. There’s so much I could do.

  “Give me two hours and I’ll rock your world,” I vow.

  Celia Lieberman stares critically at herself in the front window of a Chinese restaurant. Despite the flocks of drying duck carcasses dangling from hooks alongside her reflection, she seems intrigued by her possibilities. Then I read the doubts flickering on her face. Self-expression, to sink or swim by one’s individual predilections and preferences, without mom and dad as an excuse and ultimate safety net, is too much for her.

  “Sorry,” she says, wimping out. “But I can’t afford you.”

  “No charge.”

  “No charge?” She looks at me, incredulous.

  This isn’t exactly the way I expected to spend my precious afternoon in the City. But like I said, in the City, you never know what’s going to happen. So I go with it.

  “One good turn deserves another,” I toss off, casual-like. “Besides, I’m meeting a friend later so I’ve got some time to kill anyway.”

  ---

  I take her to Williamsburg, the new hipster section of Brooklyn. She’s never been. I’ve been once, but act like I’m a regular. As we stroll down funky Bedford Avenue, I recount all my adventures at the local watering holes, making them up as I go. I nod in warm greeting at people I don’t know, and I’m quickly running out of material when we finally reach our destination. A techno hair salon of which I took mental note on my sole prior reconnaissance as a hotbed of super hotties. If I’m going to do a good deed, might as well soak in the scenery while I’m at it.

  “Prepare to be transformed!” I announce grandly.

  First, a multi-tattooed, multi-pierced beautician prepares to hack off a good six inches of Celia Lieberman’s unruly locks with a giant pair of medieval scissors. Celia Lieberman pleads with me for three inches. I hold firm at five. She resorts to death threats. It’s like she’s possessed by Satan, only her head’s not spinning around and she’s not puking up green slime. I remain resolute. Five it is.

  Next, the glasses. The frames, I mean. They have definitely got to go. They’re earnest and clunky, and Celia Lieberman’s earnest and clunky enough as it is. We move on. I take her to an out-of-the-way place I’ve read about in Greenpoint with cool stuff. In her newly shorn state, she blindly squints at herself in the mirror in a succession of trendy, retro-hip items. Cat eye, rainbow, aviator, oval, oblong, octagonal. Most are hopeless on her. But I keep trying, methodically winnowing through looks and affectations. As I make my final selection—horn half-rims, bookish but with just the right touch of attitude—Celia Lieberman expresses loud reservations. I tell her to trust me. She has to since she can’t see a thing without corrective lenses.

  By the time I practically drag her into the vintage store down the block, Celia Lieberman’s in full rebellion. She gapes at the racks and racks of rumpled garments.

  “But they’re used!” she squawks, backing to the door.

  “Oh, excuse me, your Royal Highness,” I say, yanking her back in.

  But it’s the last time I will have my say.

  For the next two hours it’s like I’m a prisoner trying to escape from a music video in some chick flick. Skirts. Dresses. Ensembles. Mod. Punk. Goth. A parade of major and minor fads of the past half century. One by one, Celia Lieberman tries them on for my inspection. Why, I have no idea. Because my opinions are roundly ignored, soundly ridiculed, or summarily rejected. In a minor snit, I throw up my hands and catch up on my email. It’s like a feeding frenzy, the cute little shopping bags with handles multiplying exponentially as we make the rounds. I become her Sherpa.

  By the time we get to shoes, as I feared we eventually would, I’m zonked, going on fumes, but not Celia Lieberman. No, Celia Lieberman’s just hitting her stride. She balances on stilettos, spins around on disco platforms, poses in checkered sneakers. About ten cute little bags with handles later, when we finally leave the store, I’m in a dazed stupor but momentarily rouse myself as we pass a large picture window displaying skimpy, kinky lingerie. Now here’s a cute little bag with handles I would gladly add to my burden. I hasten to open the door for Celia Lieberman. She gives me a bemused look and marches on. A guy can try, can’t he?

  ---

  Greenwich Village. Fourteenth to West Houston, Hudson to Broadway. A few blocks only, but its own special vibe. In the Village, the streets aren’t numbered or alphabetized or laid out logically in grids; they have names and go nowhere. MacDougal, Christopher, Grove, St. Luke’s Place: each is it
s own story. Right from the start, the Village’s been the part of New York reserved for the unconventional—the rebels, the oddballs, the outcasts. The dreamers. Super important writers composed masterpieces here. Edgar Allan Poe. Mark Twain. Robert Louis Stevenson. You can still feel their presence somehow. And Dylan Thomas, just about the only poet I halfway get. In the early sixties, when he was just starting out, Bob Dylan played the Gate and the Vanguard, both tattered and worn but still doing business. Later on, at the late, lamented CBGB, it was the Velvet Underground, the Dolls, the Ramones, the whole glam and grunge scenes. Gay rights started in the Village. So did the women’s rights movement. In the Village, the stuff of legend happens. It’s my favorite piece of the City, one I know well.

  And the best time to be in the Village is right now, just before Christmas. It’s not just the strings of colored lights strewn everywhere, the rappers rhyming, the ethnic foods frying, the clusters of demonstrators demanding this, the counter-demonstrators protesting that, or the steady buzz and bustle of holiday commerce that makes December so awesome here. It’s the all of it. The energy, the expectation, the sense something Big’s coming.

  So even though I’m laden like a pack mule with Celia Lieberman’s purchases, I’m feeling frisky. Uncle Max’s going to put in a personal word to the Dean of Admissions about me, my self-inflicted shopping ordeal is over, the mighty Pixies await! Crossing the narrow cobblestone lane, I breathe in Café Figaro with its intoxicating aroma of steamed milk, chocolate, and freshly roasted coffee. And almost get flattened by an errant taxi running the light. We’re talking inches. The asshole doesn’t even honk.

  “DICKHEAD!” I shout, lucky to be alive.

  The turbaned cabbie flips me the bird. I cheerfully flip him right back.

  “God, I dig this city!” I exclaim.

  “You certainly seem to know your way around it,” remarks Celia Lieberman, now having to do the scurrying to keep up.

  “I come whenever I can,” I say loftily, surveying my domain. “It’s neutral territory.”

  “Neutral territory?”

  “Yeah, you never know anybody and nobody knows you so the gloves are off. You can be yourself without the slightest social consequence. It’s liberating.”

  We safely reach the other side. Another cab rockets by. I smack a forearm at it, just for the fun of it.

  “FUCKFACE!!”

  In Pritchard if I shouted that in public on the street, I’d most likely be arrested. In Green Meadow, I’d be beaten to a pulp by the local police within seconds. But this being the City, I don’t get a single look, reaction, or objection. Not even by the beefy cop in a long coat, patrolling his beat, twirling a nightstick.

  “See?” I boast. “No one gives a fart!”

  Celia Lieberman looks at the cop, then at me again, a little appalled. “So this is the real Brooks Rattigan?” she asks wryly. “A seething mass of anger and resentment?”

  “That’s me.”

  Suddenly, from down the corner, I hear a familiar refrain.

  “YO, BROOKSIE!”

  Do my eyes deceive me? It’s The Murf, just as expected, but it’s The Murf of old: happily disheveled, hammered out of his mind, swinging one-armed from a lamppost. Can this day get any better? It can. He holds up a huge square bottle of wine, which God only knows where he scored.

  “Manischewitz!” he toasts. “This shit’s kosher!”

  ---

  “It’s good,” admits The Murf, furiously chewing. “I ain’t gonna lie. Damn good. But I’ve had better.”

  The three of us are devouring an entire extra-large sausage and peppers, standing up, squeezed at a grimy counter. John’s of Bleecker Street is one of those places aficionados swear by, and who’s got the best pizza is the heated topic of an ongoing debate between The Murf and me since we were five.

  “Wanna real slice?” pontificates The Murf, shoveling his down. “Come to Jersey! Tony’s in Neptune City. Now there’s crust. Now that’s a pie! Am I right or am I right, Brooks?”

  Drying her fingers on a napkin, Celia Lieberman dutifully types in the name on her iPhone. “Tony’s. Neptune City. Got it.”

  “The Murf’s the world’s greatest authority on junk food,” I inform her.

  She laughs, relaxed and not uptight as usual. She’s actually having a good time with us. I hadn’t intended to include Celia Lieberman, but The Murf had insisted and I’d reluctantly given in. I’m not that comfortable with having my two realities intersect. Celia Lieberman and The Murf’s are very different sides of me that I’ve carefully kept separate from each other. But surprisingly, they get along pretty well.

  “I don’t know,” she says, “we’ve got some pretty good places in Green Meadow.”

  “Sure, if you’re looking for a nonfat, nontaste, tiny slice of nothing,” The Murf scoffs. “Quiche-eaters.”

  “You’re right.” Celia Lieberman smiles, surrendering gracefully. “Give me Jersey anyday.”

  She’s being open and nice, not patronizing and condescending. The Murf beams. I can tell he likes this Celia Lieberman.

  ---

  It’s getting close to concert time. Under The Murf’s thoroughly amused eye, I dutifully haul Celia Lieberman’s plunder outside after her, staggering beneath the tonnage, and signal for a cab.

  “Your friend’s nice,” she notes, almost as much to herself as to me.

  Little does she know that, right behind her, displayed in the front window of John’s, The Murf’s flashing me two emphatic thumbs up like Celia Lieberman’s some kind of hot babe.

  “Yeah, The Murf’s one of a kind,” I remark fondly. “Which is good because the world couldn’t handle two of him.”

  Then, to up the ante, The Murf puts up paws and wags his tongue like a crazed canine, like I should totally go for it. The man’s got no shame.

  Go for it? With Celia Lieberman? The idea’s preposterous.

  A taxi skids over to the curb. I swing open the door and pile all her little cute shopping bags on the backseat. She slides in beside them and then turns to me, waiting. For what, I don’t know.

  “Franklin will never know what hit him,” I tell her.

  “It’s probably still a losing effort, but thanks, Coach.”

  “Confidence! Positive mental attitude! Go team!” I close the door. This is it. This time I have a clear conscience and no regrets. All accounts have been settled. We part with a clean slate. As the cab rolls away, she lowers her window and leans out.

  “Well, nice knowing you, Brooks Rattigan!”

  “You too, Celia Lieberman,” I call back, slightly surprised because I kinda sorta mean it. I watch her disappear into traffic and out of my life forever.

  Close Call(s)

  The Pixies are what they always are when I see them. Atomic. No gimmicks, Jumbotrons screens, or elaborate light shows with this crew. Just a damn fine band jamming, charging through straight-ahead, kick-ass tunes. In fine fettle, Black Francis growls, snarls, roars, a deranged monk. Joey’s wailing, killing it on lead, and Dave’s pounding the skins like he’s gonna give himself a heart attack, which, at his semi-advanced age, he just might. Good, honest music. I ask you: Does it get any better?

  Smooshed in front of the sold-out house, The Murf and me are buffeted in the hurricane of sound, both of us well on the way to glorious drunken stupor, me having secured a treasured colored wristband from a sympathetic elder hipster. Pumping our fists to the thunderous beat, barraged by flailing limbs, we give back as good as we get, pushing and shoving, getting pushed and shoved in return. Absolute chaos, pure abandon, unbridled release. It’s been so long, the sensations feel almost brand new again.

  I trap The Murf in an exuberant headlock. He counters with a hard elbow to my gut. I double over. We both grin. Like old times. Buds again. I brandish two fingers, querying if he’s ready for refortification. The Murf nods enthusiastically.

  It takes a full ten minutes for me to battle my way to the bar in the lobby and another ten to order up anot
her round. I’m regrouping when I hear:

  “Brooks?” The seductive voice sends tingly sensations up and down my spine. “Brooks Rattigan?”

  I don’t have to tell you who it is, but I will anyway.

  Shelby Pace.

  Leaving little to my vivid imagination in a micro-skirt that stops just short of being prosecutable. Shelby Pace, of long lithe leg, of tawny skin, of plunging neckline revealing glimpses of nothing else underneath. Shelby Pace, the beyond-attainable.

  I’m speechless. Not only by her presence but by the impossibility of her. I’m a puddle, an overheated, soggy heap. Everyone is. My God, it’s the freakin’ Pixies! How can you not be? But somehow Shelby isn’t. Even jostled in the crush, she’s perfectly put together, not a hair out of place, apart from it all. It’s like she’s one of those Greek goddesses we studied in class, the ones who descend from Olympus to sport on a whim with us lesser beings. Shelby’s lips, ripe and luscious, smile coyly. Her emerald cat’s eyes tease.

  “Should have known you’d be here making the scene,” she says.

  I look at her dumbly. Why would she think that? Then my web of deceit re-engulfs me. I’m not from Jersey, I’m from here. I’m cutting edge, ahead of the curve. My gears snap into alternate reality mode.

  “I . . . I practically live next door,” I shrug, nonchalant.

  “You alone?”

  A tremor in the crowd presses us together. I breathe her in again. Her scent’s subtle, delicate, yet pungent. She smells like Money.

  “Oh, I am,” I profess. “So very alone!”

  On cue, I’m handed two large, overflowing plastic cups of beer by the guy behind the counter, indicating to Shelby that I’m either an alcoholic or a compulsive liar or both.