The Insiders

by J. Minter

  “La la la la la, O mi corazon!” Kelli sang out. A couple of guys in a red BMW drove up close and sang along with her.

  Arno made eye contact with Randall in the rearview mirror. They glared at each other. Meanwhile, Kelli accepted a party invitation from the BMW guys.

  They arrived at Arno’s parents’ house, a Spanish-style stucco four-story mansion right on Ocean Drive, parked, and walked around the house to the backyard, where there was a pool with fadeaway edges.

  “I’ve got to get into that pool,” Kelli said. She dropped her bags and stared.

  “Me, too,” Randall said.

  “Guests are coming for cocktails at six,” Arno said.

  “They can get in, too,” Randall said. He pulled off his T-shirt and jeans. Arno stared at him. Was he going to jump in naked? Arno puffed up his chest. He started to take off his clothes, too.

  “Waitasecond, boys. I need my bikini,” Kelli said. “There’s no way I’m going skinny-dipping in the daytime.”

  “Aww,” Randall said. He stuck out his tongue, yanked down his boxers, and jumped in the pool. Arno and Kelli stared at him. Arno could hear his parents coming through the glass doors.

  Arno said, “What a hoser.”

  “Mmm,” Kelli said. Arno had the sickening feeling that Kelli liked what she was seeing.

  “Come on in! The water’s excellent.”

  “Not till later,” Kelli said. “Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Wildenburger! What a wonderful house you have.”

  And then, while Randall Oddy treaded water, fast, because the water was awfully clear, Arno’s parents talked with Kelli. His parents seemed willing to ignore the fact that their son was in his boxers and there was a naked artist in their pool.

  “Rrrr,” Arno said, and put his pants back on.

  david can’t even make a layup

  “Hey, crybaby!”

  “Shut the fuck up,” David said.

  The Potterton basketball team was in the middle of a freshman-varsity scrimmage. David was center, slapping down balls coming from every direction, and even dunking, desperately trying to think of nothing but basketball, and then Adam Rickenbacher, this handsome freshman Jonathan didn’t like for some reason, had started cracking wise.

  “Sorry, dude. I know you’re sensitive,” Rickenbacher said.

  “I’m going to kick your ass, Rickybashay,” David said.

  But his heart wasn’t in it. He went up and ripped the ball out of Adam’s hands, and Adam let him, but then some other freshman whipped around his back and whispered Waaa. David let another kid get the ball away from him and he walked off the court, slammed against the blue padded wall of the gym, and sat down.

  “David, get back in there!” yelled Vijay Singram, the coach. He was usually a pretty mellow guy, but there were some prospective parents and their kids watching, so he was trying to look fierce. That made everything worse for David—the coach yelling, and the freshman, and a bunch of prospective eighth graders who’d probably heard he was a good player all staring at him. Before he knew it, David had jammed his shirt up into his face and started to bawl like he was six and somebody had kicked him right out of the sandbox.

  “Everybody keep playing,” yelled Coach Singram. He went over to David.

  “Someone kill me,” David said under his breath.

  “What’s the matter? We need you out there.”

  “Just a sec.”

  “Girl problems? Is that what it is? ’Cause that’s what everybody’s telling me, you know?”

  “Please, could you leave me alone?” David said and peeked through his hands. He could see veins bulging in Singram’s neck and sweat drip down his forehead.

  “Me?” Coach Singram thundered. He looked around at the half dozen parents who were still watching him. Then the game slowly came to an end, and the freshman squad and everybody on the varsity team was watching.

  “Are you going to force me to make an example out of you?”

  “Force you?” David said. “What do you mean force you? I’m not forcing you to do anything.”

  David suddenly felt too ill to speak. He stood, slowly. He sagged a little, and Adam Rickenbacher walked over and held him up by the elbow. David didn’t like it, but he ended up leaning on Adam.

  “Now you listen here, young man, what you do in your free time is your business, but when you bring the sad fact that your girlfriend cheated on you onto my basketball court, then it’s my problem!”

  “Take it easy, coach,” Adam Rickenbacher said.

  “What’ve you got to say for yourself, David?” Singram yelled.

  “Thanks for the pep talk.”

  “Get out of here!”

  “I’m already gone,” David said. He pushed Adam away and slumped off toward the showers, with nothing but the sound of laughter and bouncing balls behind him.

  another oddy opening for arno

  “My parents’ house is so big,” Arno said to Kelli. “We can stay in a guest wing and they won’t even know we’re there.”

  “That’s nice,” Kelli said. “I just met the most amazing woman—she owns this nightclub in South Beach that’s not even open yet. Her name is Ingrid Casares and she says I should come by there later and we can dance and she’ll serve us drinks. But that’s not for a few more hours. What do you want to do now?”

  “Don’t worry,” Arno said. “I’ll think of something.”

  He stood with her outside his parents’ gallery on Lincoln Road. Even though the opening was officially over, there were still tons of people inside, all loving Randall Oddy’s work. This had been a good thing for Arno, because Randall had been more or less dragged away from Kelli by a bunch of collectors. Meanwhile, Arno had slowly made it out of the gallery with Kelli without anyone calling after them.

  “We could go back inside and look for Randall,” Kelli said.

  “Yeah, but is that the most fun thing you can think of?”

  “No,” Kelli said, and smiled.

  Just then a valet showed up in front of them with the white Cadillac. Arno hadn’t called for it. But here it was, and it had the keys in it.

  “Thanks,” Arno said to the valet, and hopped in. He beckoned to Kelli, who shrugged and got in the passenger side.

  “Let’s drive back to the house,” Arno said.

  “Wait!” someone behind them screamed. Arno saw the gallery manager who owned the Cadillac screaming and waving, but he just turned up the radio.

  At a stoplight, Arno turned to Kelli. She was smiling, so he kissed her, first on the neck and then on the lips. Her skin was hot from a day in the sun, and she laughed a little and kissed him back. Finally, Arno thought. This was by far the most work he’d ever done for a girl. A driver behind him honked his horn.

  A few minutes later they pulled into the white pebble drive at his house. It was quiet there, and he took Kelli’s hand and led her around the side of the house, to the pool.

  “Let’s go for that swim now,” he said.

  Kelli didn’t speak. They crept around the corner and there were candles set out near the swimming pool. A bottle of champagne was in an ice bucket that was bobbing up and down in the middle of a life preserver. Music played, a light samba rhythm. Arno sniffed the air: incense. He hadn’t planned any of this. He was instantly furious, and wondered if Randall had somehow gotten out of the opening and arrived before them. Where the hell was he? Arno gripped Kelli’s hand tighter, and looked around him. How had Randall moved so fast?

  “Oh my God,” Kelli said.

  That’s when Arno saw his parents come through the glass doors wearing nothing but towels. Like him and Kelli, they were holding hands.

  “Oh no,” Arno said. The towels dropped. His parents were making out. They were naked.

  He felt Kelli wrestle her hand away from his.

  “Gross,” she whispered. Arno’s parents started to kiss more intensely. Kelli and Arno watched, momentarily stunned, like witnesses to a car crash.

  “Too gross!” Kelli said
, and quickly ran back to the car.

  “No, Kelli, wait—” Arno said. He ran after her. He’d never been so confused in his life.

  “Please take me back to the gallery,” Kelli said. She sat in the passenger seat, with both her hands over her eyes.

  Arno pulled the big white car out of the driveway as quietly as possible, and he didn’t open his mouth, or look at Kelli, who was loudly chewing what looked like Blue Blowout Bubblicious and examining her nails. Arno drove slowly and did everything he could to delete from his brain the image of his parents embracing naked by candlelight in front of the family pool.

  mickey blows it big time

  On Wednesday morning, Mickey Pardo decided to go to school. He’d convinced himself that he was finally coming down from his painkiller cloud, and anyway he’d been sort of missing the place. So he showed up for second-period physics class and really enjoyed listening to Mrs. Alsadir go on about a load of trippy shit involving quarks. He couldn’t follow much of it, but it was all kind of cool anyway.

  “Are there any questions?” Mrs. Alsadir asked.

  “I just want to say I am totally loving this trippy shit!” Mickey called out.

  Mrs. Alsadir just smiled uncomfortably and went on with the lesson. Mickey didn’t have a textbook or a notebook or a pen. He sat in the back row, alone. And after a while he climbed up on the lab station in front of him and lay on his side. Still Mrs. Alsadir said nothing.

  Then he got a call from Jonathan, so he decided to take it, and shuffled out into the hall. He was wearing a brown jumpsuit, his combat boots, and he had some old necklaces strewn around his neck, along with a pair of black aviator glasses. His cast was huge and gleaming and white, except for the places where he’d spilled coffee and food on it.

  “Will you be returning?” Mrs. Alsadir called out. He ignored her.

  “Dude?” Mickey said to the phone.

  “Anything interesting happening?” Jonathan asked. “I’ve been looking for Arno—he should be back. Can you believe he went down to Florida with my cousin?”

  “Huh,” Mickey said. He smelled something good, like bacon, and looked around.

  “She had a day between her NYU interview and her Sarah Lawrence interview, so she went down to South Beach. I don’t even want to think about what they did down there. And I had to cover for her, and now she’s back. But Arno didn’t come in today. Have you seen David?”

  “He goes to Potterton, remember?” Mickey said. “I’m at Talbot.”

  “Oh yeah. Listen, I’ll check you later.”

  “Sounds good.” Mickey looked up and down the corridor. What was that good smell? A small eighth grader came down the corridor then, and he was eating something. A BLT. Mickey looked at it. Mmm.

  “Mickey Pardo,” a stern male voice said. But Mickey didn’t hear. He dropped the phone. The kid with the BLT kept coming.

  “Actually, why don’t I come by your house after school,” Jonathan said, to air. “We’ll go find Arno together.”

  Mickey spread his arms wide, like he was signaling that he was about to make a fair catch. He wanted that sandwich. The eighth grader tried to pass him on the left, then on the right.

  “Mickey Pardo!” the adult male voice yelled. Too late. Mickey had wrapped the kid up in his cast and the sandwich was up in the air.

  “Wait,” the kid said, his voice muffled by the fact that his head was jammed into Mickey’s chest.

  Mickey pushed the sandwich toward his mouth and heard voices all around him. He felt like he hadn’t eaten in days. As he closed his jaw, the sandwich shot into the air and Mickey closed his mouth on something soft that was still moving. Mmm, bacon, Mickey thought.

  “Aaah!” the eighth grader screamed, as Mickey bit into his hand.

  And then Mickey was slowly separated from his food. And phone calls were made. And he was being sent home for biting an eighth grader.

  david connects some of the dots

  “Have you seen Patch?” Jonathan asked. He and David were standing in front of Mickey’s parents’ building, waiting for somebody to let them in.

  “Not since I can remember,” David said. “I keep meaning to call, but I’m too upset to find him.”

  “I guess that means you haven’t seen Amanda?”

  “Not since I broke up with her,” David said slowly. He still couldn’t believe he’d done it, and he still had no idea who she’d cheated on him with—but that was okay, he knew he couldn’t have dealt with it if he had known.

  “Oh, right,” Jonathan said.

  “And I started crying again yesterday, during basketball practice. I may have to quit the team out of complete humiliation.”

  “Really?”

  “It was awful. Now everybody is calling me the Most Sensitive Guy in the World. And if it hadn’t been for that Adam kid, I might’ve taken a swing at my coach.”

  “Oh yeah, that kid’s lame,” Jonathan said.

  “He’s okay with me,” David said. “Anyway, I don’t know what I’m going to do, because the team is my whole identity besides Amanda. I walk by mirrors now and I can’t see my own reflection.”

  “You’re like a Lifetime movie,” Jonathan said. “You know that?”

  “I’m depressed.”

  “We’ll work on you this weekend. I got some ideas.”

  The door opened and they looked at Ricardo Pardo’s head assistant, Caselli. He wore a white jumpsuit and had a shaved head. Tattoos were visible on his neck and wrists. David could never figure out why all of Ricardo Pardo’s assistants were so tough.

  Caselli said, “You guys can’t come in. Mickey’s in big trouble.”

  “What’d he do?” Jonathan asked, and sighed.

  “Apparently he tried to eat a kid at school.”

  “Did he break the skin?” Jonathan asked. “He’s done this before and he won’t get expelled if he didn’t break the skin.”

  “Can we just see him for five minutes?” David asked. “We need to check in with him about homework.”

  “Except you don’t go to his school,” Caselli said. “But whatever. Don’t let his dad see you.”

  Jonathan and David crept quietly inside. The house was cavernous, with twenty-foot-high ceilings and enormous doors leading from room to room. Opera, L’Elisir D’Amore, blasted through all the speakers on the first floor. As they passed the studio, they could see Ricardo Pardo and about five helpers making huge art out of mangled car parts.

  They found Mickey in his room, lying on the cold concrete floor where his bed should have been.

  “Where’s your bed?” Jonathan asked.

  “I don’t know,” Mickey said. “What does it matter? Now I’m in trouble and I can’t see Philippa again.”

  “You should’ve never gotten off the phone with me.”

  “Yeah, Jonathan. That’s what it was.” Mickey sat up and looked at his friends. “Jonathan, I didn’t know you had to wear a blazer to school.”

  “We don’t,” Jonathan said. He tugged at the sleeves of his brown tweed blazer.

  “Then why are you wearing one now?”

  “I felt kind of serious today,” Jonathan said. “Unlike you.”

  “You felt serious, so you dressed up like a science teacher,” Mickey said. David and Mickey shook their heads.

  “Yeah,” Jonathan said. “And you think you’re a spaceman, so you always wear a jumpsuit.”

  “You tried to eat a kid?” David asked. He sat down in a windowsill, next to a pile of schoolbooks and a Macintosh notebook that was unplugged and covered in dust. The roomed smelled faintly of paint.

  “I thought he had a BLT in his hand.”

  “Did he?” David asked.

  “No, it was a copy of The Sun Also Rises. But it looked and smelled like a BLT.”

  “If it was the paperback, I can imagine it,” Jonathan said. “So you bit him.”

  “Yeah.” Mickey got up off the floor. He went over to his stereo and put on some Slayer. The music was pretty loud and
David didn’t feel like it was doing much to make any of them feel better.

  “Look, has Arno been in touch with you?”

  “No,” Mickey said. “But I heard from some kid in school that he took your cousin down to Florida and had an orgy with her. Man, that girl is impressive. I’m just glad I love my girlfriend because otherwise I’d hit on Kelli and that’d be no good.”

  “What’s so no-good about her?” Jonathan asked.

  “I can’t believe you’re defending her,” David said suddenly. He looked quickly at Mickey and then Jonathan. “You introduce her to us, and next thing I know, Amanda cheats on me and Mickey falls off a building.”

  “That happens every weekend,” Jonathan said.

  “Not really it doesn’t. I wouldn’t be surprised if Amanda cheated with Kelli. That girl is bad luck.” David pulled his hood over his head.

  “Oh come on, she’s my cousin.”

  “Liza thinks she’s a bitch, too,” David said. “Jane told me.”

  “You two are assholes,” Jonathan said. He stood up. So did Mickey. Then Mickey thumped Jonathan once on the chest with his cast and Jonathan fell on the floor with a thud.

  “Ow! What the hell’d you do that for?”

  “We’re trying to talk some sense into you,” Mickey said. “Your cousin is a demon from hell.”

  “She’s from St. Louis. And she may not be the classiest girl in the world, but she’s not a demon.” Jonathan stood up and dusted himself off.

  “Although,” Jonathan added, “if she were as bad as everyone says, it’d explain why she’s so into Arno.”

  “Even Arno is better than she is,” David said. “I mean, I trust him more.”

  Jonathan stared at David and said, “I think I’d better go. I’ve got to go home and read the screenplay of Donnie Darko for English.”

  “Should I not be trusting Arno?” David asked. He reached behind him, found that he was close enough to the wall, and leaned against it. A queasy feeling had come over him. “You stay here,” David said. “I’m the one who should go.”