“That sounds good, Alice.”
I sat on an unstable stool while she messed around with the candles and situated her Izzy doll.
“I think you should come out tonight. Val needs us right now. We need each other.”
I figured she’d put up more resistance, but she rubbed her hands on her skirt and pushed herself up from the floor and said, “Yeah. I’ll go for a little while.”
We met at the duck pond just after six, when all the birds were at their most fluttery. Jean wouldn’t get out of the car.
Alice was in a foul mood. Val barely talked. I almost told Gordie to take me home, where my grandmothers were in the backyard beating all the rugs in our house with wooden spoons.
“I have an idea,” Gordie said. “But no judgment, okay?”
When Gordie Harris said No judgment, it usually meant he was going to expose yet another facet of his excessive family wealth. This time, it was the Harmony, a colossal yacht.
“Oh, shit. No. You’re lying,” Jean said when we pulled up to the marina where Dad used to park the ice cream truck so we could look at all the pretty boats.
“Stop. Don’t make a big deal. It’s embarrassing.” Gordie held his phone to his ear. “Jay, we’re coming down.”
“Who’s Jay?” I said.
“He’s the captain.”
We followed Gordie with his messy hair and his beat-up Converse and his ratty I LOVE NEW YORK T-shirt onto the gleaming yacht. Captain Jay and two other guys nodded hello and busied themselves preparing for our excursion. Gordie led us up to a deck in the front of the yacht and dove on top of a massive sectional sofa. We all piled on and quickly assumed the relaxed, pillowed posture of the very rich.
“Gordie, get me a cocktail, darling,” Jean said. “I’m going to have a look around.”
The boat glided slowly toward open sea.
“I could get used to this,” Val said, sipping her lemon Pellegrino and sinking into a bed of ivory cushions.
Alice scrolled through her phone.
“Alice, we are on a yacht cruising the Atlantic on a beautiful summer night. Can you put your phone away for a little while?” I snatched the phone out of her hand.
“It’s not my phone, Sadie. And it’s a little hard to enjoy all this when my best friend is missing, you know?”
She had been searching Izzy’s drug phone for signs of Hector, texting contacts, trying to find anyone linked to Izzy.
“I’m literally texting Hey, have you seen Hector? to every single contact in Izzy’s phone.”
“You’re not abandoning Izzy if you take a little break. I promise.” I tucked the phone into my jacket pocket.
“She’s in the city. I know she is.”
I looked at Val. Val looked at Gordie.
“Hey, Alice,” Gordie said. “What if we went to the city with you to look for Izzy? Would that help?”
“I’ll go,” I said. “I have the next two days off. I’m in if we can go tomorrow.”
“I’m in,” Val said. “I’ll totally go into the city.”
Alice’s face softened. She motioned for us to come closer. The boat lurched forward and I fell across her lap, and we lay there tangled and laughing. Gordie tossed a container of hummus and a bag of pita chips on the coffee table and sat on the chair next to Val.
“Jean’s steering now. Brace yourselves,” Gordie said. “He’s like a five-year-old.”
I wrapped my arms around Alice and held her like I used to hold Shay when she was upset.
“It’s going to be okay,” I whispered. “The poppets will fix it.”
Jean’s head emerged from the lower level. “I’m king of the world!” he shouted.
It was almost as if Gordie had paid somebody to erect the most glorious sunset in the history of sunsets.
We made fun of Jean’s tongue sticking out while he sketched furiously, intent on capturing the layers of color as they appeared on the horizon.
“I think it’s time to break out the big guns,” Gordie announced, glancing at me. He went down to the cabin and came back up with a saxophone. He sat back and played, and we felt the notes bounce off the deck and fall into the sea. The music surrounded us. It found its way inside me. I held on to Alice and Val and closed my eyes as Gordie Harris’s music turned me into pure air.
“Show-off,” Alice said, wiping tears from her cheeks.
Gordie put the sax in its case and stretched. “You’re just jealous the men have all the talent in this operation.” He slid open a cabinet and grabbed a bunch more food. We lay around stuffing our faces and watching the lights zoom by. I couldn’t stop looking at Gordie. I loved his smile. I loved the way his hands were strong and smooth. I loved how he didn’t care how rich he was or how poor we were compared to him.
Unlike the rest of us, Val didn’t eat a thing. She smiled and said things like I really needed this and I’m so glad I have you guys, but her head and her heart and her stomach were in breakup land.
“So how long have you two been banging, may I ask?” Jean said, pointing his fingers at Gordie and me.
“Oh my God, Jean. You’re such an ass,” I said, mortified.
“We might as well discuss, right?” Gordie looked at me.
“What do you want to discuss? That we have hooked up? Yes. We have hooked up. No. We haven’t banged.”
“I don’t know if I’m cool with this,” Jean said. He made a sweeping hand gesture. “I kind of like this Unlikelies dynamic we’ve created. Now you two are going to screw it up with inevitable couple drama. It will happen. You know it will.”
He wasn’t wrong. Our hooking up definitely complicated things.
“Nice, Jean. Way to be positive,” I said. “I don’t know if I’m comfortable with you judging my business.”
“Sadie, can I have a word with you?” Gordie held out his hand and pulled me up.
“This is all so awkward,” I said as I searched for my flip-flops and hurried down the stairs.
“Go ahead, abandon your friends,” Alice called after us.
And then we were in the bedroom with the huge bed and the million-thread-count bedding, attached and struggling to get clothes off because our bodies didn’t want to separate, not even for a second.
“Stop. Stop. Stop.” I pressed the palm of my hand into his chest and looked up at his face in the dim light. His cheeks were flushed.
“Okay. I didn’t plan to go there,” he said, smiling. “I just wanted to talk about the situation. Shit, Sadie. What are you doing to me?”
I took a deep breath and put my T-shirt on. “Regroup, Gordie. We’re being rude. What did you want to say?” He kissed me two, three, four times.
“Basically that I can’t stop thinking about you. Like all day and night. I just think you are incredible. I mean, I always did, but then you were with Seth, and whatever. I like you. A lot.”
I buzzed like a hornet wedding.
“And I get what Jean is saying, but… sorry… don’t care right now,” Gordie said.
He stopped talking and looked at me.
All my body parts battled over first dibs at Gordie Harris.
“Are you saying you want me to be your girlfriend, strange boy?”
“Uh. Yes.”
My lips found his and I wished we were alone on a boat heading for eternity. But I felt bad for ditching our friends and I knew if we stayed any longer we’d be proving Jean’s point.
“Come on.” I pushed him toward the door. “Let’s not be assholes.”
Gordie announced our couplehood and gave a little speech about how he loved us and didn’t care about the future and he liked me and let’s just all be cool with that. He got flustered and passionate like he did in civics debates at school. And, just like at the civics debates at school, he was met with bland acknowledgment.
“Gordie, relax, man,” Jean said. “Congratulations. You like each other. Just keep the PDAs to a minimum. Nobody wants to see that shit.”
We sailed back to reality early
, even before the Hamptons cars had arrived at their fashionably late dinner reservations. We needed to get home and rest up and lie low, and then just plain lie to our parents about the upcoming, fabricated Turtle Trail Recreation Center overnight trip to New York City.
Alice texted us that night at three a.m., One of Izzy’s junkie friends just responded. All he wrote was: Stop bothering me. Hector’s dead.
TWENTY-FIVE
I CALLED ALICE right away and tried to gauge her reaction to the Hector news. “I’m beyond happy. This means Izzy has a chance.”
“Don’t you feel bad, a little, about the poppet?”
I was thoroughly creeped out thinking about the cemetery and burying the doll and the rum and the death curse. I had never met Hector, but I still felt guilty.
“No, Sadie. I wouldn’t have made that doll if I didn’t want it to work. Do you believe in the power of the voodoo now?”
When I asked my parents if I could go into the city to assist with another Turtle Trail field trip, they happily let me go because I was going to be with the gay class valedictorian and my other wholesome, do-gooder friends. I stooped as low as I had ever stooped and justified it by telling myself I was helping a friend save someone’s life.
I remembered this girl from my school named Kelsey Rollins who played the cello. Kelsey Rollins cut school regularly to feed her gaming addiction by telling her teachers she had music lessons. They believed her because Kelsey Rollins was a music nerd and why would she lie to teachers?
I was Kelsey Rollins. Except instead of pretending to have music lessons so I could game in my basement, I was pretending to take developmentally disabled people on a field trip so I could hunt down a heroin addict.
I felt really, really bad.
Grandma Sullivan and Grandma Hosseini were the only ones at the house when Gordie arrived bright and early. He waved as I grabbed my stuff.
“That boy loves you,” Grandma Hosseini said in Farsi.
“What did she say?” Grandma Sullivan called after me. I ignored her.
Gordie’s dad called no fewer than five times between my house and Alice’s to remind Gordie to turn on the AC in the brownstone, flush all the toilets once we got there, and check the sugar jar for ants.
“How many toilets do you have?” I said.
“Too many.”
We had perfected the art of bullshitting. We stopped at Alice’s and acted sad and despondent. Alice’s parents thanked us for taking Alice out of the East End to get her mind off Izzy. We stopped at Val’s and acted warm and loving. Gordie assured her mom (in Spanish) that a night away was just what Val needed to get her appetite back. We stopped at Jean’s and raved about the Tiny Art Show to Jean’s mom, who was resting on the couch with her feet in a bucket of ice. She told us how we had changed Jean, that he wasn’t the loner he used to be, and how nice that was to see.
Trying to act perfect, fully functional, innocent, and wholesome all at the same time was exhausting. Gordie played music and we didn’t talk until the Manhattan skyline popped up out of nowhere. Then we got serious about a game plan.
Alice told us the building Izzy took her to had an ornate gate with black leaves.
“You’ve got to give us more than that,” Gordie said.
Alice stared out the window. The walls of the Midtown Tunnel whipped past us.
“I remember looking up at a cool building with a gargoyle. It was somewhere downtown, definitely south of Times Square because we walked through Times Square and I made Izzy stop at the M&M’s store.”
Gordie parked in front of an immaculate brownstone near Gramercy Park and we jumped out. Inside was all chocolate mahogany and expensive Persian rugs. The largest New York home I had seen prior to entering Gordie Harris’s seven-bedroom, six-bathroom, four-floor brownstone was my uncle’s two-bedroom, one-bath, second-floor apartment in Astoria, Queens.
And Grandma Hosseini called that uncle the family success story.
“I call the master bedroom,” Jean yelled from the top of the staircase.
“I’m going to text this guy Ahmed,” Alice said, studying Izzy’s drug phone. “I met him once at the shrink’s house but he has a New York number. He looks like a sumo wrestler.”
I’m in the city. Where are you? Alice texted from the drug phone.
We waited awhile for Gordie to turn on the AC, flush all the toilets, and check the sugar jar. Ahmed didn’t respond. So we hit the streets, a flock of beach-bred kids skating on adrenaline, fear, and the thrill of being on our own for the entire night.
“I’m nauseated,” Val said, clutching her taut belly.
“You haven’t eaten in days, Val,” I said.
“Water,” Val moaned.
We stopped for waters at a bodega and continued down the path Alice didn’t remember. “It was snowy last time I was here” was her excuse.
We walked east to west, staring up, like the world’s worst tourists, trying to find a gargoyle standing guard over an ornate gate.
“Puppy!” Alice stopped in front of a homeless guy sitting cross-legged with a puppy between his legs and a copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass in his hand.
“Can I pet her?” Alice leaned down.
“Sure. Her name is Annabelle.” The guy had eyes the color of moss, bad acne, and a sign propped in front of his duffel bag that said HOMELESS. FOOD APPRECIATED.
Alice nuzzled the tiny puppy against her face.
“How’d you end up homeless, dude?” Jean said, reaching out to pet the puppy.
“Long story, man. It was one unfortunate series of events after another. It’s so tragic it’s almost comical.”
“Any chance you know where we could score some smack?” Alice said.
I was mortified.
The guy stared at her, perplexed. “Nah, you guys don’t use.”
“We’re looking for somebody who uses. Missing, of course. It’s so cliché I could barf,” Alice said.
“Yeah, I get the old ask the homeless guy to help find your strung-out loved one question all the time. Nah. My drug of choice is McDonald’s. But there’s a pack of asshole kids with asshole dogs that hang out down around St. Mark’s. They’ll give out dealer addresses for money.”
“Thanks, dude. Very helpful tip,” Jean said.
“I don’t want to give Annabelle back,” Alice said.
“You better give my baby back.”
Gordie handed the guy a twenty-dollar bill. “Godspeed, bud.”
“Same to you, man.”
We passed countless ornate gates and a few gargoyle statues as we snaked around the streets of Manhattan, trying to fish the murky memory from Alice’s brain.
We stopped in Union Square to watch old guys play chess next to an assembly of chanting Hare Krishnas and a pack of skateboarders veering dangerously close to all of them. I was hot and my feet ached already.
“This is ridiculous, Alice,” I finally said. “There are millions of people and, apparently, thousands of ornate gates in this city. Can you try to remember something else?”
“I have been trying, Sadie. I was pissed off that day and I specifically remember I was freezing and cursing my life. That’s it.”
“Guys, you know we could be so far off. Izzy could be out in Montauk, like, a block away from where we were last night. Or Jersey, or Arizona,” Val said. “We should have thought this through a little more carefully.”
The Hare Krishnas didn’t move. They sat in their saffron dresses with their bald heads and wisps of hair sticking out of their skulls like tails, and they chanted. Their faces showed no signs of distress or anger or fear. I almost got sucked into their cult, just to escape the drama.
“Let’s go. These people are getting on my nerves,” Alice said, turning. We argued over which way to go.
Alice refused to share her pretzel with Jean, who then insisted we go back so he could get his own. As they all waited in line for pretzels, I sat on a bench and held a water bottle against my aching feet. I watched a c
ouple not much older than me as they wrestled with a baby who didn’t want to sit in her stroller. They were as mismatched as we were, the pretty, fair-skinned, brunette, Ralph Lauren–model type with an NYU bookstore bag slung over her shoulder, the tattooed guy with piercings and a leather cuff, the dark-skinned baby girl in a peach-colored dress. A very hot guy in soccer cleats and a bright yellow jersey called out to them. The Ralph Lauren girl stood, picked up the crying baby, and kissed the very hot guy as the pierced guy grabbed the stroller and followed after them.
I would have loved to know their story.
We were almost at the High Line park when Alice stopped short and stared down at Izzy’s drug phone. Her eyes got wide.
“It’s Ahmed.”
Yo. Izzy. I heard you were at the nest.
“I don’t know what the hell the nest is. Ahhh. Let me think.” Alice paced back and forth, and finally replied, I was. I went out and now I’m lost. What’s the nest address again? So f’d up!
“That’s perfect,” Gordie said.
We stood in a circle, staring at the phone like it was an egg about to hatch. After an excruciating two minutes, Ahmed texted, Near Fourteenth Street.
Alice texted back, Thanks. What’s the building number?
Trying to find molly on St. Mark’s.
“The dipshit didn’t answer my question.”
“That’s the street the Walt Whitman guy was talking about,” I said.
“Let’s go,” Val and Jean said at the same time.
“Jinx,” I said.
Jean made a face. “What the heck is jinx?”
St. Mark’s Place was packed with tattoo parlors, noodle restaurants, and drug paraphernalia shops. We wandered into a bizarre store where some disturbed artsy person had packed glass cases with naked dolls. A guy with a feather-shaped birthmark on his cheek sat on a blowup doll, smoking a joint.
The Unlikelies Page 18