19 Love Songs

by David Levithan

  Once Infinite Darlene and Cory get their menus, they are faced with the essential, elemental decision that comes with going to a Thai restaurant—namely, they have to decide whether to order pad thai or not. Infinite Darlene can’t resist. Cory orders a basil dish, although he does admit that pad thai had been his other choice.

  They ask polite questions, and discover that Rumson isn’t a bad school, but Infinite Darlene’s is probably better. Cory has three sisters; Infinite Darlene is an only child. Cory loves basketball, but Infinite Darlene has resisted it all these years, because it is too obvious an option for a girl as tall as herself.

  “You’d be such a natural!” Cory says.

  “I used to play, but…,” Infinite Darlene replies, trailing off.

  “But?”

  But. Infinite Darlene has talked herself into a corner. She decides to get out of it by telling him the truth.

  “But…our high school has two basketball teams, neither one of them coed. And while nobody in my town minded me playing on the girls’ squad, some of the coaches from other schools had other thoughts. So I decided to stick with football and charity work, which have always been my two biggest interests.”

  She hates bringing up the times when her choices have hit the wall of other people’s small-mindedness. Because every time she has to talk or think about it, it’s like hitting the wall all over again. And she has to watch the reaction of the person she’s talking to, to see if it’s another wall in the making.

  “That’s just wrong,” Cory says. “Totally wrong.”

  “Not as wrong as that woman’s choice of footwear,” Infinite Darlene says, nodding to her left, where an eavesdropping woman wears something that looks like a pump that’s mated with an Ugg.

  The eavesdropper, knowing she’s been caught, drops away from the eaves.

  “How long have you been—” Cory asks.

  “So remarkable?” Infinite Darlene chimes in.

  Cory smiles. “Yes. So remarkable.”

  It seems almost neurological, the way that his smile and his tone can alert Infinite Darlene’s brain to send out the charm brigade. It’s her own brand of endorphin, her own microbrew of adrenaline.

  “At the risk of sounding immodest,” she says, leaning in as if she’s confiding, “I must declare that I have been remarkable from the very moment of my birth. The doctor took one look, and instead of saying It’s a girl or It’s a boy, he proclaimed, ‘My heart, it’s a star!’

  “I was a bundle of joy. And I’ll admit—over time, some of my joy fell out of the bundle, and other things got knotted up in there. I found myself forgetting to be remarkable. It stopped seeming like an option, and more like a dream. I wasn’t denying the truth—I knew what the truth was—but I was denying myself the power to express it. One morning, I said, Enough. I didn’t have to say it to anyone else, only to myself. Because I knew that once I said it to myself, I would be remarkable enough to make everyone else fall in line. And if they didn’t, they weren’t worth the hair on the floor of a beauty parlor.”

  Infinite Darlene pauses and looks at Cory, who’s been following. “And you?” she asks. “How long have you been so remarkable?”

  Is he blushing? Yes, Infinite Darlene thinks he blushes for a moment.

  “I can remember the first time I did a perfect cartwheel,” he says. “I was ten. I’d done plenty of cartwheels before—I would head out to the backyard and do cartwheel after cartwheel, to the point that there were handprints all over the grass, and my mother made me stop. But this cartwheel—every part of it worked. Everything in my body was in balance. My legs were straight in the air, then back down to earth. Heels over head, head over heels. It lasted only a few seconds, but when it was over, I knew that I had touched on something remarkable, and that I myself, for those few seconds, had been remarkable.

  “That was the start of it. What’s remarkable to me—what’s truly remarkable—is the ability not only to find something you love doing, but to be able to share it with other people. As soon as I got on that track, things felt right.”

  “I want to prove things,” Infinite Darlene says. “I want to prove people wrong. I want to prove myself right. But the remarkable thing was when I realized this isn’t my actual reason for doing anything. If it happens, all the better. But who wants to live a life trying to prove things? I want to enjoy it, too.”

  This is an unusual conversation for the forty-second minute of a first date. But both Infinite Darlene and Cory are going with it. They aren’t smiling at each other now—they’ve gotten to the point beyond that, when the twinkle in their eyes and the mischief of their grins are mere decoration for the thoughts and feelings that travel from body to body, mind to mind, heart to heart.

  * * *

  —

  Because it is a Thai restaurant, the food arrives quickly.

  Infinite Darlene tries to eat like a lady. Not a girl, not a woman—a lady. There is something in the challenge of it, the precision of it. It is like paying homage to a civility that has long lost its hold on the world around her.

  He watches her, but not critically. He watches her, but not intrusively. There are some dates when all the other person wants to do is erase your story and write you into his. This is not one of those dates.

  Infinite Darlene watches back, just as uncritically, just as widely.

  When you exist as your own creation—that is, when you have worked so hard in creating yourself—it is sometimes difficult to let other people get close enough to see the seams, the flaws, the parts of you that aren’t quite done yet. Infinite Darlene feels this about herself. She has yet to experience the flip side—the knowledge that by not letting the other people get too close, you also miss out on seeing their own imperfections, their own seams, their own craftsmanship.

  They are two teenagers sitting at a middle table in an above-average Thai restaurant, trying to navigate their own creations in order to construct something that could contain both of them. Cory is joking and laughing and playing out some of the music from his thoughts, but he’s also nervous, so deeply nervous that it’s like he feels every single blood cell moving through his body, demonstrating what an ever-shifting, never-stable body he is. Infinite Darlene is tasting peanuts, tasting lime, tasting a combination of things you would never think to combine if they weren’t ingredients, and she is worrying that maybe she is too tall, or not quite funny enough, or has a peanut stuck in her teeth.

  Is it possible, she wonders, to have a beautiful boy in front of you without thinking, You are surely too beautiful for me?

  Is it possible, he wonders, to be filling the air with so many words without feeling that you’ve hit on a single one that matches what you want to say?

  Shyness, it seems, is the reason Cupid needs arrows.

  Cory is too shy to tell Infinite Darlene about the moment he decided he wanted to ask her out. She had just been hiked the ball, and was scanning the field to see where to throw. The linebackers were headed her way. She had two seconds, maybe just one. And she would not let that bother her. She looked around the field with such serene concentration, and then when she found what she wanted—an open receiver, about twenty yards away—a knowing smile played across her face. Cory was mid-cheer, and he stopped cold. The syllable caught in his throat as he watched her smile and calmly release the pass. Even as the ball soared through the air, even as the linebackers blocked his view, he kept watching her. He wanted to know her. He wanted to know everything about her.

  Infinite Darlene is too shy to tell him that while she has many, many friends, she hasn’t had many, many dates. She is too shy to admit that while there are many moments when this doesn’t bother her, there are a few moments when it does. Her friends always say they don’t understand it, but deep down inside, she worries that she understands perfectly. She made her choices in order to survive, and she has indeed
survived, even flourished. But she wonders if, by creating the person she wanted to be, she missed out on creating a person that someone would want to fall in love with. She knows it’s possible. Truly, she does. But she also knows it isn’t certain.

  “How’s your food?” Cory asks.

  “It’s good. Yours?”

  “Very good. Very basil-y.”

  “Basilesque.”

  “Basilican.”

  “Basiltastic.”

  “Basilriffic.”

  “Basiletic.”

  “Basilous. My dish is rather basilous.”

  Infinite Darlene wraps some noodles with her chopsticks. “I’m glad we’ve gotten that settled.”

  Cory pauses. Cupid aims his arrow. Hits. Now it’s up to Cory to realize that the arrow isn’t meant to sit there. It’s meant to be used in conversation.

  “Can I ask you another adjectival question?” he ventures.

  “Adjectival questions are my favorite kind!” Infinite Darlene replies.

  “It’s personal.”

  Infinite Darlene smiles. “I think I know where this is going.”

  “Do people ask you all the time?”

  And the funny thing is that, no, they don’t ask her all the time.

  “Why infinite?” Infinite Darlene poses.

  Cory nods.

  “Because,” she explains, “at a certain point, I realized that I was living a very finite life, and I didn’t want that anymore. I know that finity is ultimately unavoidable—I mean, we all die, none of us can walk to the moon, and so forth. But I still want to live my life infinitely. I want to live as if anything’s possible. Because it’s just too boring, too colorless to live finitely. I know I won’t go on forever, but I want to be able to go in any direction that seems right.”

  Maybe Cupid’s arrows aren’t arrows at all. Maybe, in the right hands, they’re keys. Because in answering the question, Infinite Darlene realizes she’s been acting finitely. She has let her insecurity lock up her desire.

  “For example,” she says, “a finite person would sit here and make polite conversation about the appeal of Thai food as opposed to, say, Vietnamese. A finite person would try to disguise how much she likes you, Cory, because she wouldn’t challenge her own self-doubt—which can be considerably limiting, in occasions such as this. A finite person wouldn’t reach over and hold your hand. But look at what I’m about to do.”

  He has been holding his glass of water, about to raise it to his lips. But he puts it down. He lets go. His hand is there when she reaches for it.

  “You’re infinite, too,” Infinite Darlene says. “I can tell.”

  Cupid’s key is in her palm, and she is slipping it to him.

  “I am,” he says. “I am utterly infinite.”

  * * *

  —

  At this moment, something shifts in Infinite Darlene. For once, it is not something she controls. In her life, there have always been two competing forces. Her friends have been the bastions of yes, telling her she’s deserving, telling her she’s a wonder, even while members of her family, members of her community, total strangers have tried to trap her with their no, have tried to restrict her, have tried to tear her down. It’s been a constant struggle, a constant push and pull.

  Now she’s found the tiebreaker.

  * * *

  —

  Something shifts in Cory as well. Because he’s never thought of himself as infinite. And now he wonders if it’s possible.

  He is grateful for the thought.

  * * *

  —

  When a first date really works, it works like this:

  You feel the thrill of opening to the first page of a book.

  And you know—instinctively, you know—it’s going to be a very long book.

  * * *

  —

  Just as Cory and Infinite Darlene didn’t notice the stares they were getting when they sat down, they don’t notice the couple now sitting in the corner. They are in their sixties, and it is the wife who is facing them who notices what is happening. She gestures to the wife whose back is to them, and the second wife turns and looks. When she turns back, the two wives smile at each other for a moment. They know exactly how that feels. They are in a later chapter of a very similar book.

  * * *

  —

  “Thai food is divine,” Infinite Darlene proclaims, “but Thai restaurants really drop the ball when it comes to dessert, don’t they?”

  Cory, in no mood for halfhearted ice cream, has to agree.

  “So where do we go?” he asks.

  “Where don’t we go?” she replies.

  * * *

  —

  There are so many places to consider. They could stop off at Spiff’s Videorama and see which video they agree on the most. They could go see Infinite Darlene’s friend Zeke gig at the nearby coffee shop, where every cappuccino comes with a heart on top. They could head to the new Sock ’n’ Bowl and slide shoeless across the glazed floor, caring more about the joy of it than the score. They could get milkshakes and play pinball at the local diner, or wander through the cemetery and trawl for stories there. They could head to Rumson and revisit the football field, lying in the empty bleachers, searching the sky for constellations.

  But those are places they’ve already been. They are places where their friends might be. They are the well-traveled, well-lit paths.

  Neither of them wants that. There will come a time that they will introduce their friends into their story, but not now, not yet.

  They get in Cory’s car and drive.

  * * *

  —

  Infinite Darlene has an idea. A somewhat insane idea.

  She shares it with Cory. He smiles. He says it’s an insane idea. But that’s not going to get in their way.

  It’s a place neither of them has ever been.

  * * *

  —

  It takes them an hour to get into the city, and will take them another half hour to get through Manhattan.

  They’ve been talking nonstop—gossiping, joking, telling stories. As they’re waiting on the helix to get into the Lincoln Tunnel, Infinite Darlene tells Cory how much she’s always loved this view.

  “Seeing the city like that,” she says, gesturing over the traffic, toward the bright lights, “it’s always taken my breath away. But once I became Infinite Darlene, it had this added element. Before, it had always been about how big it was, how grand. I’ve always loved shiny things, and the city was the shiniest thing of all. But after—well, it was something more than that. I know this may sound silly, but it started to feel like not only was I driving into the shiny, big city, but I was also driving into the future. I love my town, but I am much bigger than my town. The city is my future. And look, there it is.”

  Cory has never been as confident about his future, and says so. But he also tells her it doesn’t matter.

  “Sometimes the driver’s along for the ride,” he says.

  He also appreciates shiny things. Like grace. And confidence. They offer their own beacon, often in the form of a person you come to love.

  * * *

  —

  It is very easy to find the Brooklyn Bridge, but not so easy to find parking by the Brooklyn Bridge. Eventually, though, Cory deftly squeezes into a spot a couple of blocks from the water, right on the fringes of Chinatown.

  “Come on!” Infinite Darlene says. She grabs his hand and carries him forward. They are quite the couple, the quarterback and the cheerleader, but no one in New York City seems to notice. A few of the Chinatown merchants squint as Infinite Darlene glides past, but it feels like just another part of the evening, just another piece of the metropolis.

  As they get closer to the pedestrian walkway, Infinite Darlene confides, “I’ve been
curious about this ever since I was a little girl.”

  Cory pictures her—he actually pictures her as a little girl, perhaps in town for the Easter parade. He sees her in a dress and bonnet. And even though he knows this wasn’t really what the picture was, he goes along with Infinite Darlene’s construction of the past, because it’s so heartfelt and so convincing.

  He doesn’t tell Infinite Darlene that he’s afraid of heights. But when they get on the bridge—when they are standing over an actual river, with all the traffic whooshing by—his steps become a little less sure. He wasn’t expecting so much wind, and neither was she. Her hair is flying everywhere…but she likes the feeling. She likes it when the world loosens up a little, when it moves with some freedom.

  He feels a little wobbly. The traffic isn’t helping. He knows the bridge has stood for over a hundred years. But he can’t help but wonder if this is the night it will finally give up, say it’s tired of doing this for a living.

  She sees. He is putting on a brave face, but brave faces are among the easiest for a student of human nature to spot.

  “Oh dear,” she says. Then she amends it to: “You poor dear. What have I done to you?”

  But he doesn’t stop. He holds her hand and keeps going. They make it to the middle.

  The web of suspension cables rises on either side of them, tracing back to the towers that look as old and immortal as anything the city has to offer. Headlights and taillights stream below them. The river undulates darkly, and the moon peeks around a cloud.