by J. Minter
“We think that if we bring all you boys up there tomorrow, he’ll show up too.”
“Great,” Mickey said.
“And with Jonathan already staying with us, it can’t be too hard to round you all up.”
“Okay,” David said.
“Check with your parents, would you? But I’m sure they’ll be fine with it. You all have been coming up there with us forever.”
“Yeah, since farther back than I can even remember,” Mickey said.
“Well, that’s taken care of then. See you in the morning. Ten a.m. Why don’t you all sleep here? That will make things easier. We’re off to dinner at Bouley with…David’s parents. David, no need to tell them about tomorrow, we’ll do it.”
She reached for a spare set of keys and tossed them in the direction of the boys as she strode out of the room. Arno caught them.
“Let’s go upstairs and make a plan,” Mickey said.
The three of them trooped up to Patch’s room. When they got to the third floor, they looked around for Flan or February, but neither was home.
They filed into Patch’s room, which had the still, delicate air of a place that is rarely occupied. Arno looked around. It was a mess certainly, with a pile of skateboards in various states of repair in one corner and some schoolbooks sitting forlorn and ignored on a desk by the window. The twin beds were equally messy and anonymous. It was unclear which was used for sleep and which was for building boards and storage. The Nakamichi stereo was on, and a Granddaddy CD was playing, low, on repeat. Arno touched the amplifier and it was burning, so he turned it off to give it a rest.
“Maybe we should call Selina Trieff,” Arno said. “She might know where Patch is.”
“Didn’t you hear his mom?” David asked.
“Oh, right.” Arno’s voice dripped sarcasm. “We’re going to Greenwich to be bait, and then maybe Patch will come home.”
“Right.” Mickey picked up a skateboard that had his name on it, and then dropped it. “God, so much of my shit is over here. Anyway. What about Jonathan? If he’s staying here, where is he?”
Mickey and Arno looked at David. David looked out the window at a girl across the street, who was reading on her bed. He missed girls.
“Are we going to talk about Jonathan?” David said. “I think we should.”
Fido, the Floods’ dog, came running and jumped up on Arno, who was sitting at Patch’s desk. Arno hugged Fido tightly until the dog was barking to be set free.
“Okay, let’s.” Arno checked his watch. “But I’ve got to run in a minute. I’m seeing Liesel even though things are definitely over with her. I think we both need to make absolutely sure that we shouldn’t be together.”
“Or you both want to make sure it wasn’t all about sex, and if it was, maybe that’s all right,” Mickey said. “It’s okay, I’m over how she hurt my feelings. And yeah, I’ve got to see Philippa later at this party for a similar bunch of insane reasons.” He grabbed David’s arm and checked his Swatch. “Or now, actually.” Mickey stood up to go.
“Okay then let’s do this fast.” David stood up. “I think we need to tell him that he’s got to choose who is coming on this trip. Yeah?”
“Fine,” said Mickey.
“Sure,” said Arno.
Then they all kind of looked at each other, sizing the others up as competition. Sure, Mickey was the most fun, but Arno would definitely find a way to meet girls down there, and David probably was actually closer to Jonathan than the other two. It was anybody’s game.
“Well, I guess I better see Amanda again,” David finally said. “I know she’s at home, because she has SAT prep in the morning. I’m going to try to get back together with her, even if means doing this crazy thing that I haven’t even told you guys about—”
But Arno and Mickey were already streaming down the stairs and they didn’t hear him.
Out on the street, Arno passed Jonathan, who was headed toward the Floods’.
“I’ll be back in an hour,” Arno said. “We’re all going to Greenwich tomorrow to be bait for Patch.”
“Okay,” Jonathan said. “Where are you going now?”
“Me and Liesel broke up—but I need to go see her for a few hours and make absolutely sure it was the right thing to do.”
“Got it,” Jonathan said.
mickey’s one and only true love
“I hear Jonathan’s girlfriend’s parents are international lawyers and that’s kind of complicating things for them,” Philippa said. She was dressed entirely in cashmere, in various shades of dark brown. She looked like a cross between Elizabeth Hurley and the world’s most beautiful seal.
“Enough with the rumors, baby.”
“Don’t baby me.”
Mickey and Philippa were sitting on a couch at someone’s party—a girl named Charlotte Brackett who went to Philippa’s school and lived in a converted firehouse on the Bowery. The girl’s father was an artist who’d had a fistfight with Mickey’s father at a Whitney opening a few months earlier, so Charlotte kept walking over and talking abstractedly about peace and unity with Mickey, but of course he was oblivious and had no idea what her problem was. Charlotte had on a green felt jumper, so she looked like a bit of a Peter Pan character.
“Fine. Is everyone meeting us here?” Mickey asked.
“I doubt it. I hardly know anyone here.”
“Huh?” Mickey stared at Philippa, and was suddenly utterly confused. “If you don’t know anyone, then what are we doing here? I thought we were supposed to be done with parties anyway.”
“I just chose it because it’s neutral territory. I can’t be alone with you. We broke up.” Philippa smiled a heartbreakingly soft and broken smile at Mickey. He was now in a black T-shirt that said DEMOCRACY SUX on the front, and a pair of red canvas shorts, and black motorcycle boots. It was forty degrees out. Philippa rubbed her thick scarf over his arms and smiled at him.
“You could also say—” Mickey searched for words. “That this is our last chance.”
“No. Everyone tells me I’m not crazy enough for you. I have to admit that they’re right. I can’t take how wild you are. Not anymore.”
“I didn’t cheat on you with that waitress.”
“That’s not the point. I wanted to be able to call and tuck you in. But you were nowhere near home. Mickey, that made me cry.”
They were quiet for a moment. Even though they didn’t know anyone at the party, the people hanging around seemed to know who they were. In the other room, the kids were all chasing a half a dozen piñatas that were meant for a kid’s birthday party. A bunch of guys had hockey sticks and baseball bats. They’d put on some old Metallica CD and were starting to chant. Normally, Mickey would have been right in there with them, but instead he kept staring at Philippa. Because he had no memory at all of the night he’d disappointed her, he felt even worse that it was coming between them.
“I guess when you’re really in love, you have to break up a few times before it takes,” Mickey said.
Mickey looked down at Philippa. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. She said, “You’re crazy, you know that. But sometimes even when it sounds like you’re just talking shit, what you say is really true.”
“It only sounds that way when I’m with you…” He trailed off.
“Let’s stay broken up though, okay? Please?”
“But why?”
“It’s like, I love you, but I don’t always want to feel disappointed by you. I can’t take that anymore. Like, right now, I know you want to blow apart those piñatas with those guys—I don’t want to keep you from that.”
“Really? I didn’t even notice them. Look, what if I promised not to do any more wild stuff?”
“I think we already tried that. And besides, this’ll be good. It’s almost winter break and then I’ll be in Nice with my family and you’ll be on that giant boat with Jonathan and we’ll both have some distractions.”
Mickey snorted, but Philippa didn’t need
to hear him say again that Jonathan might not take him. Then they didn’t speak. And Mickey began to understand that it was really and truly and finally over. Not that it contradicted the fact that they were totally in love. He brought his foot up and kicked a tiny bronze sculpture of a naked boy off the glass coffee table in front of them. Charlotte Brackett immediately skipped over to them.
“Can’t you see that I specifically put all the fun and destruction in the other room?” she asked. “Now if you can’t play nicely with the other boys, you’d better leave.” Mickey thought it was kind of too bad she was yelling at them since she seemed pretty and had a nice tilted nose.
“Me, too?” Philippa asked.
“Of course not. But this violent asshole has to go.”
Mickey sighed. He’d been sober and serious for far too long. He kind of thought that he wanted to leave anyway. And he was pretty sure he’d said the one smart thing he wanted to say, though he couldn’t exactly remember what it was now.
They walked out through a corridor that was a dozen feet wide and lit by a flashing neon painting that flickered between the words Fate and Jiminy Cricket, which Mickey dimly recalled his father making fun of at a dinner party when he was eight. Charlotte Bracket ran after them.
“I’m sorry I’m so sensitive,” she said. “Usually I’m really kind, but it’s hard with all this expensive art around.”
“That girl’s awfully talkative,” Philippa said.
Mickey tried to touch Philippa’s hand, but she pushed him away.
“I wonder how David is doing,” Mickey said.
“Why?”
Mickey tried a smile. He knew that he never said things like that, so he was sure it would get her attention.
“Well, when I left him he was going over to Amanda’s house to do basically what I just tried to do with you.”
“Oh?” Philippa’s eyes widened. She reached forward and grabbed a few white M&Ms from a bowl by the front door. “Are you sure?”
“It couldn’t go any worse for him than this has for me.”
“No,” Philippa said. “It actually could.”
amanda is studying, dammit!
“Really, David,” Amanda said. “You might have called first. I’m studying.”
She had her little fist cocked on her little waist as she stood in the doorway of her parents’ massive Tribeca loft, which looked like a house in the English countryside.
“But isn’t this more important? I’m ready to do what you asked me to do, I think.”
“Well… come in for ten minutes and we can discuss it. Just because you got fifteen-forty the first time doesn’t mean you should feel free to diss the rest of us who don’t have your brainy genes.”
“I’m not. I offered to help.”
“You get so impatient. It’s impossible to study with you.”
David was quiet. It was true. Amanda was really, frustratingly awful at math. They went into her living room, which was filled with overstuffed couches and paintings of someone else’s ancestors. What little light there was came from tiny lamps set on end tables.
Amanda sat down on the couch across from David and straightened her white sweatpants and her pressed Oxford shirt.
“You took so long to think about it,” she said. “I guess I figured…I thought you didn’t want to ask me. But I still want you to. Then we’ll be able to really trust each other.”
David let his head fall to the side for a moment. She’d spoken awfully loud. He looked to his right, but the apartment was set up so that you couldn’t see any one room from any other. Jonathan had visited once and said the place had really bad feng shui.
“Okay, are you ready for me to ask? Because the thing is, if Jonathan decides to bring me on this trip to the Caribbean—which I’m pretty sure he will—then, well, we can make this really official.” He was shaking.
“Yes, I’m ready to get engaged.” Amanda practically yelled. “And then neither of us will cheat anymore.”
“Okay, but remember, you cheated on me first, with my best friend.”
“I would not call Arno your best friend.” For some reason, Amanda had come over and sat on the couch, and she was whispering. David twitched his nose. What the hell? She was yelling before.
David yelled, “Whether or not he’s my best friend, you fooled around with him!”
“Shhh!”
David stood suddenly. “Maybe this whole idea of getting secretly engaged is insane.”
“Could you shut up?” Amanda was standing too. “If you can’t understand that I need us to do that, you can’t understand anything at all. It’s simple, we’ll get engaged and then I’ll stop—”
“Stop what? Cheating? You still are, aren’t you?”
David could feel the tears well up.
“I just want my Yale sweatshirt back, then I’ll go.”
He walked quickly to the closet in the hall and yanked it open. Amanda was right behind him.
“I want you to go!”
“My sweatshirt!” He ran down the corridor toward her room.
“No!”
He pushed the door and it gave too quickly, as if someone had been leaning against it and had suddenly jumped back. The door swung open, and there, sitting in a chair, was Alan Ebershoff.
“Froggy?” David asked. He was so shocked that he sat down with a thud on Amanda’s bed, where the covers were still warm and mussed from whatever they’d been doing just a few moments before.
“Don’t call me that,” Alan croaked. He wore khakis and one of those multicolored striped shirts that can only be bought at Brooks Brothers. David couldn’t believe it. The kid brushed back his hair. He was kind of fat and his breath was labored.
“I didn’t even know you two knew each other.” David held out his hands, palms open, to Amanda. She stood in the doorway, twitching her nose.
“Everybody knows each other. You think the uptown kids live in a different country? In a cab at night it’s like twenty minutes to uptown.”
“The subway is faster,” David muttered.
“If you could’ve just done what I asked …” Amanda trailed off, and looked up at David.
“I shouldn’t have to ask you to marry me just to keep you from fooling around with other guys.” David stood slowly. “I was going to buy you a ring and everything in one of those island towns, though, you know. Just to make you happy.” He could see the sleeve of his sweatshirt peeking out from under Amanda’s desk. He got down on his knees and retrieved it. The silence in the room was cut only by the radiator, which squeaked and swooned as if it were absorbing the pain of all three of them.
“Hey, you want a bong hit before you go?” Alan asked.
“No. Take an extra toke for me. I know my way out,” David said. “And do me a favor and don’t marry her, okay? She asked me first.”
He heard Amanda’s muffled voice behind him as he moved swiftly down the corridor. Around him, the recessed lighting glowed softly. David shook his head. He did kind of love Amanda. He only wished she was a little more confident. And he frowned at himself, since he knew he was way too young to understand that about her.
maybe liesel really is the girl for arno
“Suck it!” Liesel screamed. She hammered on the table with both hands.
Arno stared at her. Weren’t they not getting along? Hadn’t they broken up?
She shoved the lemon farther into his mouth. He focused on the bottle of Stoli between them and wished that Liesel was into something mellower, like pot or Vicodin, or Ecstasy. But nothing doing. She liked hard alcohol, very cold, and in large quantities.
They were in a back room at the Daze Inn, a new club on West Street. The Daze Inn catered to entertainment types in from L.A. who were into making sure absolutely everything they did was very expensive and illegal. Liesel had an uncle who owned a piece of Interscope records, and he’d given her his private pass.
“Ready for more?”
“I guess.” Arno didn’t really feel like
drinking, but it was nearly midnight, and he didn’t have to be anywhere but back at Patch’s house, and that wasn’t really till tomorrow morning. He sighed. They had a semi-private room, which meant they were cordoned off from the crowd, but people could see them do shots, which were definitely going to turn into body-shots if things kept going.
Liesel threw back her gigantic mass of blond hair. She groped for the bottle, poured herself a shot in a painted gold glass. She threw it back and nearly flipped out of her chair.
“Now make me suck it!”
So Arno grabbed up a lemon and shoved it at Liesel’s face. She sucked. After a few seconds she spat the sucked lemon onto the floor and it bounced out onto the dance floor, where some guy picked it up.
“God my parents hate it so much when I say suck. It’s so good to say it a lot. I fucking love you, Arno Wildenburger, you know that?”
“But we can’t stand each other. We can’t even agree on what color white roses are.”
“Or a jet-black BMW X5. I know.” Suddenly Liesel nodded very seriously. “It’s true. We don’t get along.”
“Maybe we should really call this thing over, you know? Especially after the fight we had about my friend Mickey.”
“There’s just one thing.”
“What?”
Liesel picked up the bottle of vodka and sipped from it, like they were exercising and she was sipping water.
“Okay, I’ll tell you. You ready?”
“Yeah.” Arno sat back and crossed his legs. He really missed hanging out with his friends. He was looking forward to a splash fight in the Floods’ indoor pool. Or a roman candle massacre in the English garden. He’d have to remember to get the gardener to give them some fireworks when they got there.
“Are you listening?”
“Yeah, yeah.” He looked at her. She was smiling, like she’d thought of something really brilliant to say.
“Okay, you ready?”
“Yes, Liesel, come on, what is it?”
“We look really cool together! Isn’t that enough?”