Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

by Rachel Cohn

  I was dead inside then, my hand cramped from the motion. Tal didn't protest when I left the hallway to step into Lou's office. He knew where I was going. He liked to be kept waiting for his release. I found the Jergens in Lou's office. I had intended to finish what I started, but stepping out of that moment, however briefly, changed my mind. I thought, I can be up on my straight-edge high horse because I don't drink or smoke or do drugs, but what does that all matter in comparison to this new low I am stooping to with Tal? He's kind of a creep; he doesn't even like me. I wondered-was it that I was frigid or that we just had no chemistry?

  I placed the Jergens bottle back on the desk and snuck out the rear office door to the alley to release myself. I hadn't seen or heard from Tal since, until tonight. She talks a great game, but when you actually get to the field, you realize it's fucking empty. Maybe I shouldn't be so mad at Tal's review of me to Nick earlier tonight. I did last leave him with blue balls.

  I am curious how Tal came to be back in my world, but getting out of this cab to ask Tal the question- Why did you come back to Manhattan? — may be more of a waste than the meter I am allowing to run through my time and money while I sit in this backseat. Why does anyone come here? Mere words defy that answer. The question is too big.

  Whatever Tal came back here for, I'm sure he didn't come back here for me. But if he did, he's even stupider than me. How is it that two people with near-perfect SAT scores could have so little intelligence when it comes to each other?

  Patsy's finished falling to pieces, and now it's Merle Haggard's turn to taunt me from the radio. The song is "Always Wanting You," a favorite of Dad's, where cynical, heartsick Merle croons about always wanting but never having his love, and about how hard it will be to face tomorrow cuz he knows he'll just be wanting her again. Doomed.

  If I could have stayed in that closet with Nick, I might have figured out new degrees of wanting, tried out new moves, ones Tal never inspired in me. With me and Tal, it was straight Up/Down or In/Out. If Nick had me pinned against a wall right now, I'd be more imaginative than I ever was with Tal, stroking instead of pulling, kneading and threading, groping along with grazing, two hands instead of one, the soft scratch of fingernails included. Maybe I could inspire Nick to be a little imaginative with me, too. When Tris broke up with him, she said she knew she'd broken his heart, but she'd done him a favor, too. She'd sent him back out into the world with skills the women of his future could thank Tris for, because he certainly didn't have them when she discovered him. Fuck Tris and her Tantric knowledge.

  Tomorrow is already here and I'm truly feeling Merle's bittersweet song. I shouldn't, but I do. I still want Nick.

  I should have trusted him.

  A gush of tears streaming down my face have replaced the light sprinkle Patsy's song inspired.

  Fuck him. Fuck me.

  Happy endings don't happen. Merle Haggard knows it, and now I know it.

  Okay, I know one thing I want, something that I can have. I want to conclusively end the Tal regression spiral. So maybe I lost out on Nick. But at least now I know. There are Nicks out there.

  I also really want some borscht about now. "Could you please turn the lights back on?" I ask the driver. I direct him to the 24-hour Ukrainian restaurant in the East Village that's the one place Tris, Caroline, and I ever agreed on. Since we first started coming into the city on our own to hear music-as we've successively stretched parental boundaries until the restrictions and curfews have not only been lifted but banished, because we're big girls now, we might fuck up but we'll figure it all out, eventually-the three of us sometimes cap off our nights out, at least those that don't end in fights or hooking up or passing out, at the restaurant with the great borscht and the clean bathroom. I wonder if we three will ever go to this restaurant together again, or if that era is over, like mine and Tal's, and Nick and Tris's.

  "Good choice," the driver tells me. He's been watching Tal's sweeping motions from the window.

  I consider taking a catnap for the short drive over to the East Village but my chest is ringing. What the fuck? I forgot I was wearing Nick's-I mean my-jacket. I reach into the chest pocket to pull out a crumpled ten-dollar bill and a small, flip-up cell phone that has a photo-booth sticker of Tris stuck on it. I wouldn't have figured Nick to be the cell phone type, but then I remember, Tris gave him the phone at Christmas. When she wants to keep tabs on a boy, when she's in that mode with him, she means it. I remove the Tris photo sticker from the phone and place it on the city map beneath the taxi's back plastic divider, above the Empire State Building image, in a position so that the building appears to be giving Tris the finger.

  I don't know if I should answer Nick's phone. The name flashing is "tHom."

  I am a terrible person. I let two strangers take off with my sistah-girl. For all I know, Thom and Scot are the power couple of serial killers, the Ted Bundy and Aileen Wuornos of the garage-band New Jersey punk-rock scene. What if Caroline has woken up and is looking for me, like after her mom died and her dad checked out for a younger model, and Caroline would wake up in the middle of the night, scared and alone, and creep over the fence to my house? No, I shouldn't worry. My instinct may have been wrong that Nick was attracted to me, but it wasn't wrong that his friends were good guys. They'll get her home.

  I answer. "Thom? Is Caroline okay?"

  "Finally!" he says. "Yes, she's still asleep. Seems happy. Keeps mumbling something about cartoons and Krispy Kremes in the morning. But I've been trying to call Nick for the past hour. Didn't you guys hear the phone? Scot and I got lost coming off the parkway and then, er, we got distracted at the rest stop and the directions on my hand kinda got rubbed off. We're sitting in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven. I have no idea where we are or how to get to your house."

  I try to talk Thom through it, figure out where he is, but he confuses me more, and I'm lost all over again. The taxi driver slams on his brakes again. I think we're near St. Marks Place now. "Give me that," the driver says, pointing to the phone. I like that he is law-abiding and does not try to use Nick's cell phone while the vehicle is motion.

  I hand him the phone and the driver talks to Thom, figures out where he is and how to get him home to my place in Englewood Cliffs, then hands the phone back to me. "Here, Thom wants to talk to you again."

  "Hi again," I say into the phone.

  I hear Thom's giggle. "So how is it going? How was the date with Nick? You love him, right?"

  "It's been great. We're getting married."

  "Really? Can I talk to him?"

  "No."

  "Why not?"

  "I have no idea where he is." I click off the cell.

  We're at the restaurant. "You coming in?" I ask the driver. "Borscht and pierogies are on me."

  He smiles at me. His daughters must have some really nice family portraits from Sears hanging in their house. "Thanks, but I'm a working man. Got to keep working. You keep the Kleenex, though."

  I take the box of Kleenex out of the car and give the driver my hundred-dollar bill, the whole of my emergency cab money Dad placed in the secret crevice of my wallet. I only have enough money left in my wallet for something to eat and to take the bus back to Englewood Cliffs, so I'll have to hang out at the restaurant for a couple hours until the bus service is running again.

  A crazy lady stands at the restaurant entrance, holding a Chock full o'Nuts tin can, the Wicked Witch of the Stank. She eyeballs me, zeroing in on my chest area. Maybe she knows something about those vitamin supplements. She tells me, "Salvatore is looking for you."

  I reach back into the jacket pocket for the crumpled ten-dollar bill. I donate Nick's tunnel money into the witch's can.

  "No, he's not," I assure her.

  13. NICK

  Life fails. Songs don't always.

  I'm on the curb. Taking it all in, including the nothing. Where I am, how I am, who I am, what I'm not.

  It starts to come to me.

  on Ludlow

  the wo
rld goes so slow

  all the things I don't know

  closing in

  on Ludlow

  the sidewalk shadow

  keeps pleading don't go

  but you won't hear

  Alright, Nick. Louder.

  WHO WILL APOLOGIZE FOR HOW

  WE ARE?

  WHO WILL NAVIGATE WHEN WE'VE

  GONE THIS FAR?

  ANSWER ME

  ANSWER THIS

  ANSWER ALL THE QUESTIONS THAT

  I'M TOO AFRAID TO ASK

  ON LUDLOW

  YOU LET ME KNOW

  AND I LET YOU GO

  AND WE WERE WRONG WRONG

  WRONG

  ON LUDLOW

  THERE'S A SHADOW

  THAT LETS THE TRUTH SHOW

  AND WE WERE WRONG WRONG

  WRONG

  NEVER AGAIN

  IS WHAT I ALWAYS SAY

  NEVER AGAIN

  IS WHAT I ALWAYS SAY

  NEVER AGAIN

  IS WHAT I ALWAYS SAY

  Take it back down.

  on Ludlow

  it's just a stone's throw

  from where we could go

  to where we are

  on Ludlow

  find me on Ludlow

  on Ludlow

  find me here-

  "Dude! That's pretty kickass!"

  Dev slaps me on the back and sits next to me, his hair a ball of dance-induced sweat, the moisture making his shirt fit even tighter than when it began the night.

  "You're not in there for Where's Fluffy?"

  "Nah. Needed to take a break. You think it's easy being the cutest damn underage lead singer on the queercore scene? I can't work it all the time, man."

  "Where's Randy?"

  "Who?"

  "Randy."

  "Huh?"

  "From Are You Randy? You were, uh, with him before?"

  "Oh! You mean Ted! He'll be out in a few. Wanted to dance off the last song. Isn't he high voltage?"

  Dev's got his mischievous, smitten gleam in his eye, so I nod in agreement. Sometimes Dev only has the mischievousness, and none of the smittenosity-that's when I usually worry about the other guy's heart. But when Dev gets bitten by the swoony bug, I know it isn't just sex that he's after.

  "So where's Tris?" he asks now.

  "Inside. Why?"

  "I dunno. I figured you two would be together."

  "Dev-Tris and I broke up like four weeks ago."

  "Fuck! I totally forgot. Sorry, man."

  "No problem."

  Dev looks at me for a moment, then smacks his forehead.

  "Wait! There's another girl tonight, isn't there? I saw you, like, groping."

  "You could say that."

  "I just did!"

  "What?"

  "Say that. I could, and I did."

  This, for Dev, is what usually passes as genius.

  Now he puts his arm around me, snuggles in. He loves to do this, and I never really mind. It's not sexual so much as comforting.

  "My poor straight-edge straightboy," he says. "Nobody should be alone on a night like this."

  "But I have you, Dev," I reply, trying to lighten things up.

  "Ain't that the truth. At least until Ted comes back."

  "I know."

  "You know what it's all about, Nick?"

  "What what's all about?"

  "It, Nick. What it's all about."

  "No."

  "The Beatles."

  "What about The Beatles?"

  "They nailed it."

  "Nailed what?"

  "Everything."

  "What do you mean?"

  Dev takes his arm and puts it right against mine, skin to skin, sweat on sweat, touch on touch. Then he glides his hand into mine and intertwines our fingers.

  "This," he says. "This is why The Beatles got it."

  "I'm afraid I'm not following-"

  "Other bands, it's about sex. Or pain. Or some fantasy. But The Beatles, they knew what they were doing. You know the reason The Beatles made it so big?"

  "What?"

  "'I Wanna Hold Your Hand.' First single. Fucking brilliant. Perhaps the most fucking brilliant song ever written. Because they nailed it. That's what everyone wants. Not 24-7 hot wet sex. Not a marriage that lasts a hundred years. Not a Porsche or a blow job or a million-dollar crib. No. They wanna hold your hand. They have such a feeling that they can't hide. Every single successful love song of the past fifty years can be traced back to 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand.' And every single successful love story has those unbearable and unbearably exciting moments of hand-holding. Trust me. I've thought a lot about this."

  "'I Wanna Hold Your Hand,'" I repeat.

  "And so you are, my friend. So you are."

  He closes his eyes now, fingers still folded into mine. Even Dev's breathing is rock 'n' roll, full of kicks and sputters. I angle my head on top of his. We sit there for a second, watching traffic.

  "I think I blew it," I say.

  "With Tris?"

  "No. With Norah. With Tris, I didn't have a chance. But tonight, with Norah-it might've been a chance."

  "So?"

  "So what?"

  "So what are you going to do about it?"

  "I don't know-sulk?"

  Dev removes his hand from mine and squeezes me lightly on the shoulder.

  "You're damn pretty when you sulk," he tells me, "but in this case, I think a more active course might be advantageous."

  "Where the hell are you getting these long words from?" I have to ask.

  "You, stupid. 'If you act courageous / it could be advantageous / to make me act outrageous / all over your blank pages'-did you think I was, like, learning these songs phonetically?"

  "'My love ain't hypothetical / or pronounced for you phonetical / so it might just be heretical / if you don't love me back,'" I quote in return.

  Dev nods. "Exactly."

  "Where do we come up with this shit?" I ask. "I mean, where do these words all come from? I sit here on this sidewalk and they just appear to me."

  "Maybe they're always there and you just need to live enough life to get them to make sense," Dev says.

  Someone whistles a birdcall behind us. Dev and I both turn, and there's Ted just out of the club, shining like a diamond under a spotlight. He's keeping a respectful distance, but I can tell he's waiting.

  "You gonna go hold his hand?" I ask Dev playfully.

  "Hell, yes," Dev says, sitting up now. "Don't get me wrong-we're totally going to make the beast with two backs tonight. But if we do it right, it's going to feel like holding hands."

  There's no way Ted could've heard us. But when Dev walks over to him, Ted offers his palm. I watch them walk down the street, hand in hand. I don't think they notice, but their legs are in perfect rhythm. Before they round the corner, they both turn as one and wave a goodnight to me.

  I'm on my own again. I decide to check my messages-and realize that not only have I lost my fucking jacket, but I've also lost my fucking phone. So many indignities and I start to feel indignant. But that's nothing compared to trying to find a pay phone on Ludlow Street at three or so in the morning. I walk all the way back to Houston before I find one on the corner of a deli. The receiver feels like it's covered with pond scum, and the dial tone seems to be coming from North Dakota. The first three quarters are returned to the drop slot. I am about to lose my shit entirely, but then the next two quarters stay put and the volume button amps things up enough that I can actually hear the call start.

  Norah answers on the fourth ring.

  "Who the hell is this?" she asks.

  I mean, I knew she would answer. But still I'm dumbstruck.

  "Is Nick there?" I finally ask.

  "No," she says. "He's out defeating a minor threat. Do you want to call back for his voice mail?"

  It's like I can't help it. I am absolutely falling back into conversation with her.

  "Can you give him a message?" I ask.

  "Do I
need a pen? Cuz if I do, you're so fucking out of luck."

  "No. Could you just tell him that he totally blew it when he let Norah get away in that cab?"

  There's a pause. "Who the fuck is this?"

  "And could you let him know that I'm really fucking relieved that he has finally unshackled himself from that Tris bitch?"

  "You're kidding, right?"

  "And could you pass on the message that it's not enough to be sitting alone on a sidewalk writing a song for a girl if you don't have the guts to at least try talking to her again?"

  Another pause. "Are you serious?"

  "Where are you?"

  "Veselka. Where are you?"

  "Doesn't matter," I say. "I'll be at Veselka soon. In the meantime, can you pass on my message?"

  I hang up before she can reply.

  14. NORAH

  That is so rude, hanging up on a person like that.

  I refuse to believe that call just happened. I'm so sleepy I'm hallucinating.

  Just in case, I go into the bathroom, splash some cold water on my face to wake the fuck up, finger through my hair to make it look tousled in an attractive way but not so attractive that it looks like I tousled it because I care what it looks like, and reach down inside my shirt to rearrange my boobs. Salvatore looks the other way.

  When I get back to the table, it's heaped with food: the bowl of hot borscht (better than my bubbe's, but I'll never admit that to her face), half a dozen pierogies, some kielbasa. The blintzes should be following soon. What can I say, I am very, very hungry, and I am craving meat bad. I can save the leftovers for the witch lady or some other street person outside.

  I dive into the food like I have just been released from prison. I think I have borscht dribbling down my chin when I manage to look up from my quantum inhalation. He's here. Holy shit. Memo to Merle Haggard: Miracles really do happen.