Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

by Rachel Cohn

  From behind him I don't see Caroline but I do see that stupid bitch, Tris, rhymes with bris, cuz that's what she'll do to a guy, rip apart his piece. She's doing her Tris strut with her big boobs sticking out in front of her, wiggling her ass in that way that gets the instant attention of every dumb schmo in her wake, even the gay boys, who seem to be highly represented here tonight, NoMo notwithstanding. She's coming right toward me. No No NOOOOOOOOOOO. How did she find out Caroline and I would be here tonight? Does she have lookouts with text pagers set up every place Caroline and I go on a Saturday night, or what?

  Boyfriend to the rescue! I answer NoMo's question by putting my hand around his neck and pulling his face down to mine. God, I would do anything to avoid Tris recognizing me and trying to talk to me.

  FUCK! I didn't expect NoMo to be such a good kisser. Asshole. See this, Randy? NO. MO. Confirmed. But I am not looking for chemistry here, just a ride home for my girl. I am also not looking for tongue, but NoMo's wastes no time sliding its way into my mouth. My mouth revolts against my mind: Umm, feels good down here, steady girl, steaaaady!

  No matter how good he tastes, this five-minute girlfriend still needs a few seconds to come up for air. I separate my mouth from his, hoping to catch my breath and hoping to catch Tris walking away from us without having noticed me after all.

  WOW. I feel like in this riot of people, I have been kicked in the stomach, but by the giddy police. Forget about the need for oxygen. My mouth wants to go back to the place it just left.

  Unfortunately, Tris is standing right in front of us, hanging on to her latest slobber victim, who is near enough now that I can positively ID him as one of Caroline's recent rejects; he's buddies with Hunter from Hunter, whose band, Hunter Does Hunter, is scheduled to play next (you're welcome, Hunter, for the introduction to Lou). Tris clutches her arm tight around the guy's waist, probably squeezing out whatever remaining life that soul-sucking skank hasn't yet gotten out of him in the three weeks or so since Caroline gave him the heave-ho.

  Tris says, "Nick? Norah? How do you two, like, know each other?"

  That bitch should not be in a club like this. As if her language is not enough indication, there is also the matter of her Hot Topic mallrat outfit: short black leather skirt with buckles up the side, mass-produced "vintage" Ramones T-shirt, and piss-yellow leggings with some horrible pair of pink patent-leather shoes. She looks like a neon sign bumblebee by way of early Debbie Harry rip-off.

  I'm going to need another talk with Uncle Lou about standards vis-a-vis owning and operating a club. The guy can snag great new talent-the raw, hungry kind who are ready to bleed their intestines or other useful body parts onto Crazy Lou's stage for the opportunity to perform on it-but he doesn't know shit about how to run this business. Look at the underage Jersey riffraff he lets in! He probably even comps the beers for the band members! LOU! Why do you think so many of these assholes are alcoholics and junkies? They've got the music right. They can play the core punk songs with conviction-hard, fast, angry-but they haven't wised up yet to the fact that the real punk goes down now with a straight edge: no alcohol, no drugs, no cigarettes, no skanks. The real punk now is the only punk left after all the madness: the music, the message.

  Well, dudes, drink up, because when I get back from South Africa next year and take over managing this club as Uncle Lou has promised instead of reapplying to Brown as I promised my parents, there's gonna be a new sheriff here on the Lower East Side, my friends. Have your lecherous, skanky fun now, because the clock is running out on you.

  I may reconsider the future make-out ban, however. The making-out part is nice, it has possibilities, with the right pair of lips.

  I don't know why, but I do that thing Caroline does to her male victims, where instead of taking the hand of NoMo, I place my hand at the back of his neck and scratch the nape softly, possessively, while Tris watches. My fingers scan the buzz cut of his hair back there, and I feel goose bumps rising on his neck. I likee. There is some satisfaction in seeing Tris's bottom lip nearly fall to her chin in shock. That's the thing about Tris: She's never subtle.

  Whatever I'm doing, it works. She storms away, speechless. Phew. That was easier than I expected.

  I look at my watch. I believe my new boyfriend and I have about two minutes forty-five before we break up. I close my eyes and do the slight head turn, angling for another visitation from his lips.

  Caroline says I am frigid. Sometimes I think she's teasing me to repeat the party line of my Evil Ex, so I clarify: You mean I'm not easy? She clarifies: No, bitch, I mean you intimidate guys with a look or a comment before they can even decide if they want a chance with you. You're so judgmental. Along with frigid.

  NoMo must know this about me, because he doesn't come back in for more mouth-to-mouth contact. He says, "How the hell do you know Tris?"

  Then I remember. Tris called him NICK. Noooooooooo. That's him! NICK! The Hoboken boy! The guy who wrote all the songs and poems about her, the best goddamn boyfriend the rest of us at Sacred Heart never had, the band-boy stud Tris hooked up with after meeting him on the PATH train at the beginning of the school year and has lied to and cheated on ever since. Does NICK not think it's weird that he dated her that long and never once met any girls from her school? IDIOT!

  But of course Tris wouldn't introduce him to us. She wouldn't be worried we'd rat out her indiscretions to her boyfriend-she'd be afraid he'd fall for Caroline. Tris can have Caroline's rejects, but she'd never offer up one of her own to Caroline. Tris is so Single White Female, we like to joke that Caroline should get a restraining order against her, except Tris provides us too much amusement to completely let her out of our reach. It's like a love-hate thing we have going with her. We don't feel guilty about it because there's only a month of school left and I can't imagine we'll ever see her again after our "have a great summer, good luck in college" phony sentiment yearbook finales. And karmically, I have repaid my mean-girl debt to Tris many times over. If she passed Chemistry and Calculus this year, it's because of me. Fuck, if she graduates at all, it's because of me.

  I don't bother answering Nick's question about how the hell I know Tris. I've got to find Caroline.

  I stand up on the barstool. That's the only way I'll find her with all these people and this loud music and this stink sweat and this beer energy and this never-ending day that feels like it's only beginning in the middle of this night. I place my hand on Nick's head to steady my balance as I scan the crowd, and my hand can't help but rummage through his mess of hair, just a little.

  There she is! I see Caroline huddling with Randy at a corner table by the brick wall just off the stage, to the right of Hunter from Hunter Does Hunter, who is now taking the mic. I don't know what song his band had prepared but the lyrics Hunter sings are clearly being made up on the spot and have nothing to do with the fast and furious guitar chords: Dev, go home with me, Dev Dev Dev, I want you to fuck this man.

  I jump down from the barstool and take off toward Caroline, but Nick's hand clenches my wrist from behind me, pulling me back to him.

  "Seriously," Nick says, "how the hell do you know Tris?"

  His grip pinches the watch on my wrist, and the ow of the pinch turns my eyes from looking for Caroline to looking straight at him. I notice how lost he looks, yet eager for me to stay with him, his eyes kind and angry at the same time, and the noticing makes me remember a lyric from some song he wrote for Tris that she passed around in Latin class because she thought it was so lame.

  The way you're singing in your sleep

  The way you look before you leap

  The strange illusions that you keep

  You don't know

  But I'm noticing

  Fuck Tris. I would give body parts to have a guy write something like that for me. My kidney? Oh, both of them? Here, Nick, they're yours-just write more for me. I'll give you a start: boy in punk club asks strange girl to be his girlfriend for five minutes, girl kisses boy, boy kisses back, boy then
meets girl-what did you notice about this girl? Nick, let's hear some lyrics. Please? Ready. Set. Go.

  I want to stomp my foot in frustration-for him, and for me. Because I know that whatever Tris did or said to him, it's what's given him that haunted puppy-dog look of pathetic despair. She's the reason he will probably become an embittered old fuck before he's even of legal drinking age, distrusting women and writing rude songs about them, and basically from here into eternity thinking all chicks are lying cheating sluts because one of them broke his heart. He's the type of guy that makes girls like me frigid. I'm the girl who knows he's capable of poetry, because like I said, there are things I just know. I'm the one who could give him that old-fashioned song title of a thing called Devotion and True Love (However Complicated), if he ever gave a girl like me a second glance. I'm the less-than-five-minute girlfriend who for one too-brief kiss fantasized about ditching this joint with him, going all the way punk with him at a fucking jazz club in the Village or something. Maybe I would have treated him to borscht at Veselka at five in the morning, maybe I would have walked along Battery Park with him at sunrise, holding his hand, knowing I would become the one who would believe in him. I would tell him, I heard you play, I've read your poetry, not that crap your band just performed, but those love letters and songs you wrote to Tris. I know what you're capable of and it's certainly more than being a bassist in an average queercore band-you're better than that; and dude, having a drummer, it's like key, you fucking need one. I would be equipment bitch for him every night, no complaints. But no, he's the type with a complex for the Tris type: the big tits, the dumb giggle, the blowhard. Literally.

  You wanted easy-well, you got it, pal.

  I extract my wrist from his grip. But for some reason, instead of walking away, I pause for a moment and return my hand to his face, caressing his cheek, drawing light circles on his jaw with my index finger.

  I tell him, "You poor schmuck."

  3. NICK

  When Tris passes by me, it's like the world is no longer three-dimensional. The third dimension falls away, then the second, and all I'm left with is one dimension, and that dimension is her.

  But of course there's another dimension, too, and that dimension is time, and it keeps going and Tris keeps walking and all the other dimensions come back, and even though there are now more, it feels like a whole lot less.

  And I'm left with this girl, this Siren of Mixed Signals, this Norah. She's a fuck-good kisser, but clearly has some massive consistency issues. I ask her how the fuck she knows Tris, because that is leaving me completely confused, and at first she's looking at me like I'm this guy she didn't just start kissing out of nowhere, but then she's got her hand on my arm in a way that makes me really notice I have an arm, and then she's making to run away, and at the same time looking at me like I'm some cancer child. Then I take hold of her arm and she resists without really resisting. Finally she pulls away, only to touch my face in this way that reminds me exactly of her kiss.

  Then she calls me "you poor schmuck."

  And like some poor schmuck, I'm like, "Why?"

  I can tell she knows something, but she's not saying. Instead she tells me, "I've got to get my friend."

  "I'll come with," I volunteer. I know Tris is somewhere behind me, maybe watching. And it's not like I have anything better to do than follow a fuck-good kisser wherever she wants to go. Dev is climbing onto the stage now to be Hunter's dancer, and Thom and Scot are nowhere in my line of vision.

  "I'll tell you what," Norah says. "You give us a ride, and I'll give you two extra minutes on your original offer."

  "Seven's my lucky number," I tell her.

  And she just looks at me. Y. p. s.

  "But really," I say. "How do you know Tris?"

  "I fucked up her Barbies in fifth grade," she tells me. "And that's the way it's been ever since."

  "You're from Englewood?"

  "Englewood Cliffs. Englewood is the one with reasonable houses."

  She's pushing through the crowd now, and I'm following.

  "She was just here a second ago," she says.

  "Who?"

  "No one. Caroline. I mean, just shut up for a second so I can think, okay?"

  Like if I'm quiet, she'll suddenly be able to hear every fucking footstep in the club.

  While she's peering around, I make the idiot move of looking behind me, and see Tris and the new model making out. She looks so hot in her Ramones shirt and the gold stockings I always asked her to wear because they make her look like something out of a Marvel comic. I remember taking that shirt off of her, those stockings off of her-her yelling careful, careful! as I started to get past her thighs. And now it's some other guy's hands that are thumbing their way over Joey's face and down Dee Dee's chin and-oh, fucking hell-dropping down between the A and the M, going right for the V under the HandM-meets-SandM miniskirt.

  And she's looking at me the whole time. I swear she's looking at me.

  I turn away and Norah isn't there, but luckily she's only a few feet away. And the girl she's diving for looks kinda familiar. Not in a Didn't We Go To Camp Walla Walla Together? way, but more like, Didn't I Step Over You To Get To The Men's Room Last Night? Right now she's hanging on to the guy from Are You Randy? like she's auditioning to be a pocket on his jacket. And I can tell he's about ready to sew her on. Only my Seven-Minute Girlfriend stands in the way. She's saying Caroline's name like an older sister would say it, and from the resentment that flashes back in Caroline's eyes I'd believe they were sisters if Norah hadn't already called Caroline her friend. I also think for a millisecond that they might be a couple, but something in Norah's expression makes it clear that they're friends without benefits.

  Caroline's about to say something really harsh, but suddenly Hunter and Dev launch into a fucking Green Day cover, and we're all seven years old again and dancing like we spit out the Ritalin while Mom wasn't looking. We become this one flailing paramecium mass, fever-connected as the guitarist riffs electrons. Even Tris must be a part of this, and if we're both a part of it, then that means we're still in some way connected. Everyone in this room is connected, except Norah-she's the kind of statue they don't ever make, a statue of someone totally defeated. Caroline's dancing against the guy from Are You Randy? like God or Billie Joe Armstrong meant her to do it. I try to obliterate myself in the song, but there's something in me that just won't combust. I think my seven-minute girlfriend is standing on the fuse.

  "What's up?" I shout. And she looks at me like she's forgotten that I exist. This means she's also forgotten to guard herself from me, so I have a moment when I see the sentences behind her eyes. I can't do this. This is too fucking hard.

  I change my question. I say, "What's wrong?" And just like that, her sentences are shut behind a screen. But I'm curious. Yes, I'm damn curious.

  "Not a fucking thing," she says. "And I think maybe our time is up."

  "You don't need a ride anymore?" I ask. I'm not above using my wheels to angle for some more time with a complicated girl.

  "Fuck." The song's ended now and everyone is cheering. I barely hear her shout, "Wait right here."

  Dev and Hunter take their bows like they're already spooning, Dev curved over Hunter's back as they dip in unison. While the guy from Are You Randy? uses his hands to clap, Norah puts her hand on Caroline's shoulder and leans in to shout in her ear. What follows is one of those ropeless tugs of war, measured in centimeters of pull and pull away. I can't hear any of it until Caroline screams, "I am not trashed!" which of course means she is, because who the hell else would use such a completely wasted phrase? The guy from Are You Randy? is starting to catch on and is trying to catch up by catching hold. But his instinct totally defeats him, because his hand swerves somewhere near her breast, which isn't really the terrain he needs to keep his ground. Norah's yank trumps his hairy palm in this contest, and Caroline is soon stumbling in my direction.

  Before I really know what's happening, Caroline's tilting in
to me and I'm catching her. Then she's heaving down, and I'm sure she's about to puke all over me, but instead she rises and looks at me and says, "You have really ugly shoes."

  Norah's next to me now, saying, "Let's go." She leaves Caroline there for me to carry as she yells, "Get the fuck out of my way" to people, uncrowding them with her snarl. My heart understands the direction we're going in, because it starts pounding like it's got something really damn important to say, and by the time I'm out of my head enough to really use my eyes, there's someone in our way, and that someone is the girl who took the key to my heart and swallowed it with a smile.

  "I need your car," she says.

  And it's like I've forgotten that the word for "What?" is "What?" because I just stand there and look at Tris and think she's talking to me and somehow translate that into she's giving me a chance.

  "I need to go somewhere," she tells me. "I promise I'll bring it back."

  I'm reaching for the keys in my pocket. I'm thinking I'll go with you. I'm thinking of passenger-seat conversations and making song dedications in my head. Her face lit by that nighttime driving light-two parts dashboard, one part headlight strobe from the opposite lane. I am remembering that so much.

  Fuck, I loved her then. And then is blurring into now. I'm thinking why not? I'm thinking we're still the same people. And a voice outside of me is saying, "I'm afraid the car's already full. No room for you, Tris. Sorry."

  This Norah girl's grinning now, all transparent sweetness and light.

  "Excuse me?" Tris asks.

  "I'm sorry. I wasn't clear. Let me try again. FUCK OFF."

  "I think turning off to fucking is your department, Norah. Now why don't you take Drunkzilla here and go find some nice Weezer fans to rock-tease. I'm talking to Nick, not you."