by J. Minter
The older man shook his head. Mickey couldn’t tell if the man was sneering or if that was just the way his face always looked.
“Now I know you’re a liar. But whatever. You want to tell me what the problem is?” Mickey could feel Philippa’s hand on his arm, telling him to go slow.
“Certainly,” the man said impatiently. “I’d like a sidecar. This young woman calls herself a bartender, yet she won’t make me one. That’s my problem. Which, incidentally, is none of your business.”
Mickey looked at the bartender, who winced apologetically. “It’s just that we don’t have hard alcohol tonight, just wine, beer, and …”
Mickey nodded at the girl. “Listen Mister,” he said turning to the man. “I’m not sure where you get off, but nobody talks to girls who serve me drinks that way. You’ll drink champagne like everybody else, and you’ll like it!”
The bartender poured a glass of champagne and handed it to the man, smiling sarcastically. The man had gone pale, but he just took his flute and stepped away.
“Two champ-pagnies,” Mickey said, now that he had the bar to himself.
“Thanks for that,” the bartender said, as she filled two flutes.
“Don’t mention it, sister,” Mickey said, taking the glasses and handing one to Philippa. As they clinked a toast she rolled her eyes affectionately. For a moment it was like they were a couple again and she was embarrassed by her jackass of a boyfriend. It was the sweetest moment Mickey’d had all week.
meanwhile, back in the west village …
“What do you think you want to see, Sara-Beth?” Hilary Grobart said patiently. They were standing in front of the Quad Cinema on Thirteenth Street.
Sara-Beth tilted her head and ruffled her hair. “I’m not sure, I guess. What movie do you think I want to see?”
“The Kate Winslet costume drama looks like a good movie,” Hilary said. “And she’s such a brilliant actress.”
Sara-Beth’s eyes got very large and dewy.
“But on the other hand,” Sam Grobart said quickly, “you’ve had a very difficult week, and there’s no sense in sitting through a long, boring movie set in the nineteenth century, am I right? How about the Brad Pitt action flick, eh?”
“Yes, that’s what I’d like to see,” Sara-Beth agreed.
David was half paying attention to this exchange, and half paying attention to the crowd of polite but curious onlookers who had gathered on the sidewalk.
“That’s an excellent choice, sweetheart,” Hilary said
“SBB, SBB,” one of the girls in the gathering crowd called, “what are you doing? Is this your family?”
Sara-Beth looked up at the Grobarts with a face of trepidation. David saw, again, that exposed helplessness and raw emotion and he was seized with a desire to take her home and cuddle. Then she turned, put on a radiant smile, grabbed David by one hand and Hilary by the other. She stepped toward her fans.
“Hey people!” she called, in a voice that sounded much more happy-go-lucky than anything David had ever heard her utter before. “What’s going on?”
“What are you doing here?” said a girl who looked about ten. She was staring in awe.
“Well, cute-stuff, I’m having a very low-key evening with my new adoptive family, the Grobarts. That’s Hilary, and that’s Sam—aren’t they just the nicest-looking ever?”
The camera phones started coming out, and everyone was taking pictures. Several girls passed celebrity weekly magazines up to Sara-Beth, and she signed them happily.
“Thanks, Suzy,” she was saying, and, “Oh, that’s so sweet of you. I’m so glad you’re my fan!”
The warm night and the adulation of the masses wrapped around the Grobarts. David eyed his parents, who looked a little awkward but mostly just proud. They were holding hands and watching quietly. With their matching windbreakers on they looked a little bit like body guards. David wondered if maybe this wasn’t one of those moments they were always talking about that brought families closer together.
“And this,” Sara-Beth said, drawing David forward, “Is my new boyfriend, David.” She made a thumbs-up motion at the crowd and said, “Isn’t he cute?!”
The crowd did seem to think David was cute. They called out to him to pose, and then several of them wanted David’s autograph, too. Sara-Beth put her arms around his waist and squeezed him; the crowd gasped with pleasure. David couldn’t believe this was happening to him, and he tried to take in as much of it as possible while he could.
Eventually, Hilary leaned in and whispered to Sara-Beth, “Is this getting maybe a little exhausting for you? Perhaps we should go in and find our seats.”
Sara-Beth looked up at her and nodded, although she didn’t move to do anything. She just held onto David’s hand and reached for Hilary’s.
“All right, thank you everyone,” Hilary said sternly to the crowd. “Sara-Beth appreciates all your good wishes, but we’re going to go be normal now. All right?”
Some of the girls called out for more autographs, but Sam gently told them no, and then ushered his wife, son, and newest patient toward the movie theater entrance.
As David reached the door, he saw his friend Patch zooming down Thirteenth Street on his skateboard, looking really … upset. David turned and watched him go down the wide street, and just before he disappeared, David saw what he thought was a cell phone getting hurled into the passing traffic.
“David,” Sara-Beth called, and he followed her clacking heels in to get seats for the new Brad Pitt action movie.
me and my demons
I’d been having bad dreams that I couldn’t remember upon waking, and by midweek, I was feeling pretty rattled. So I took myself to the movies.
There was a documentary about subsistence farmers in Guatemala playing at the Angelika, the art house theater on Broadway and Houston, so I went there and got myself a big popcorn and a small Coke and settled in.
Of course, just when you start feeling really introspective and low, that’s when New York comes crashing in on you like a small town. I had barely eaten my first pieces of popcorn when a girlish voice somewhere close behind me whispered, “Hey, Jonathan!”
I turned around, and there was Lily Maynard, with her moon face and shiny brown hair. She looked more happy than surprised to see me, which was a surprise. “Hey, Lily.”
“I’m so excited about this movie, aren’t you?” she said, giving me a kind of weird look.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s a topic I’ve always been interested in.”
She gave me a big smile and waggled her fingers at me, and then went back to her Junior Mints. But it took me the first half of the movie to forget that an actual do-gooder was sitting three rows behind me.
Eventually, though, the images of the lush fincas, the bright-colored clothes of the workers, and the soft but determined voiceover of the translator lulled me, and I stopped thinking about Lily Maynard, and I started thinking about my stalling efforts to recreate myself. What was my problem, after all? I knew what it was, deep down.
I was afraid of the community garden.
After all, I had fully intended to donate my clothes to the Salvation Army, and they were still sitting in the foyer doing nobody any good. And I had also meant to start donating money to homeless people on the street, but I was so used to ignoring them that I kept forgetting. What made me think that I would be any better at gardening?
The thing is, I’m finicky. I always have been, and even though I knew this was going to be a really great thing to be involved with, I was doubting my ability to get down in the mud. And the dirt. And work.
I thought about this for the rest of the documentary. Finally, it ended, with a helicopter shot of forests and the dramatic score rising and filling the nearly empty theater. I snuck out before the credits so as not to have to talk to Lily Maynard, and then I walked downtown in a hurry because I was afraid I might run into her again.
I thought and walked, moving downtown with my hands stuffed
into my pants pockets. And then I saw something that pushed my thinking in an entirely different direction.
There, in front of the Quad theater, was a crowd of screaming preteen girls. They were standing around gasping over a little starlet and a tall, dark-haired guy. The object of the crowd’s affection, I realized after a few beats, was Sara-Beth Benny, and the handsome dude at her side was David. They were climbing into a cab, heading back downtown, and one young girl had thrown herself in front of the car.
This was one of those scenes that makes the world you live in every day seem foreign all of a sudden.
Then I remembered seeing David and Sara-Beth together, as though in a dream, at a diner in Vassar. I realized with a chill that I hadn’t talked to David since last weekend, when we all drove up north, and that fact was so weird in and of itself that I couldn’t do anything but keep on walking.
the artist at school
Mickey woke up unusually early on Thursday morning, having slept just over two hours, because yet another irresistible invitation had been extended to him the night before at the Met. Porter Aronsky, the dashing financier and art collector, had invited him for a morning spin around the island on his yacht. He had actually called Manhattan the island, and he had actually referred to the proposed trip as a spin. Mickey admired that kind of flair and had said yes immediately. He dressed quickly and was almost out the door when he heard a familiar voice whisper, “Where do you think you’re going?”
Mickey hadn’t seen seven o’clock in quite a while, and he hadn’t anticipated anybody else being up in the Pardo house, either. But there was Caselli, ready for him at the door. Mickey smiled weakly at his minder, hoping he didn’t look as disheveled as he felt. “I’m going for a spin around the island,” he said, wondering as the words spilled out of his mouth if he were still drunk. “At least, I think I am.”
“Oh, no you’re not.” Caselli crossed his arms over his chest, looking all of a sudden very much like Mr. Clean. “Even art stars have to go to school.”
A shower, a change of clothes, and a pot of black coffee later, Mickey was being deposited from the back of Caselli’s Triumph at the door of Elizabeth Irwin.
“Thanks, man,” Mickey said.
“Bye, Mickster.”
Mickey watched Caselli ride off. Just as he was admitting to himself that it was too late to catch the spin around the island, his cell phone started buzzing in his pocket. He was surprised it still had juice, but even more surprised that Philippa’s name was in the caller ID box.
“I can’t believe you’re up already, too,” Mickey said by way of hello.
“Mickey?” Philippa said. The urgency in her voice socked him with a sudden need to be very close to his ex-girlfriend. “I need to see you now.”
“Whoa, sister,” Mickey said. “It’s going to take me at least five minutes to get to wherever you are.”
“I’m at Doma.”
“Give me five.”
When Mickey walked into the West Village café, it took him a moment to spot Philippa, because she was sitting in the corner and wearing a gigantic gray cashmere turtleneck that might also have been worn as a dress. Her hair was pulled back in a neat ponytail, and she wasn’t wearing any makeup.
Mickey kissed her on the cheek and sat down across from her.
“You were in rare form last night,” she said.
“It was really fun hanging out with you.” Philippa turned her face away from him, and gave the street a long, pensive look. “So what did you need to see me about so urgently?”
Philippa collected herself for a moment, and then said, “My parents heard about the pictures.”
“Which pictures?”
“Your pictures. The naked pictures. They haven’t seen them, but they know about them from their friends. They heard I was posing with a bunch of lesbians.”
“Well, that can’t really shock them now. Right?”
“Um,” Philippa tugged the neck of her turtleneck up around her chin. “I haven’t really told them yet. I know, I know. I seem all rebellious, but … I just couldn’t. I will, but I can’t yet.”
“They haven’t met Stella?”
“They think she’s my SAT tutor.”
“Oh. Wow.”
“Mickey, the thing is, you can’t show those pictures anymore. That thing you did at Vassar just blew up, and I know you were planning to do it again this weekend. But you can’t show those photos again. If my parents keep hearing these rumors, they’ll start thinking it’s true. And then they’ll know.”
Mickey looked at his ex-girlfriend and tried to deal with the fact that what she was saying wasn’t a prelude to asking if he wanted to get back together. For a moment he was afraid she might cry, but then she didn’t. She just said, “Do it for me, okay? Retire the naked pictures.”
Mickey saw his whole art career flash before his eyes. He stopped thinking about the fact that Philippa didn’t want to get back with him, and started thinking about the fact that all week he had been riding on one fluke accomplishment. “But what am I going to talk about at Sarah Lawrence?”
Philippa just stared at him with her wide, pale eyes.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. I won’t show the naked pictures anymore.”
“Good. And you never know, maybe this will lead you to do something even better.”
“You think I can start over again? With photography?”
Philippa gave Mickey a twisted, adorable smile. “Maybe you’re about to take the best pictures of your life.”
patch goes west, again
The balmy warmth of California made Patch feel better almost instantly, although as he approached the ranch he was still wracked by some pretty big emotions, like anger and confusion, that he didn’t experience very often.
After Greta had confessed to cheating on him with her ex-boyfriend and promised that it didn’t mean anything and that she still wanted to be with him if he could forgive her, Patch had said he was going to have to think about it and call her back in a few hours. He still hadn’t figured out how he felt about it, which was why he still hadn’t called her back.
As he walked onto the campus of his Uncle Heyday’s alma mater, he was struck by how different Deep Springs was from Vassar. The buildings weren’t grand, and they were mostly just one-story, but the chalky foothills rising up in the background were definitely impressive. It might have been that Patch had taken the red-eye flight from JFK, but the vastness of the sky and the mountains struck him as really awe-inspiring.
It was also weird how much activity was going on for such an early hour. Young men seemed to be dragging farm equipment every way he looked. As Patch approached the low-lying ranch building at the center of campus, he saw a guy about his age plucking at a banjo.
“Hi,” Patch said once he was close enough to be heard. He took off his Yankees hat and stuffed it in a pocket of his worn corduroys.
“Hi,” the guy said. He was tall and tanned, with broad shoulders and light blond hair that rendered his eyebrows and eyelashes practically invisible. There was something Viking like about him, and as he looked up at the visitor, he didn’t exhibit any signs of curiosity, excitement, or irritation. He didn’t look like a guy who got irritated about much.
“I’m here to visit your school,” he said. “My name’s Patch. I’m from New York.”
“Where’s that?” the guy said.
“It’s, um—”
“I’m just kidding, I know where it is. New Yorkers are sort of like Deep Springers, actually. We all think we live in the center of the universe.”
Patch nodded. “I’ll buy that. Man, it smells good here.”
“Yeah, takes the new guys a while to get used to it.” Patch turned to survey the ranch. There were a few, faint stars in the patch of lavender sky at the top of the mountains. “A lot of activity for such an early hour.”
“It ain’t easy, going to Deep Springs.”
“Doesn’t seem like a regular college at all.”
/> “But you come to love it. Me, I’m dairy boy this semester, so I have to be at work with the cows by six. But last night I was up all night reading Heidegger, so I haven’t slept much.” The guy plucked the banjo for emphasis. “Just waiting on breakfast right now. Mario’s preparing the fixings. Can you smell it?”
“Not really,” Patch admitted. “Mostly it’s just alfalfa and mud that I smell right now. But it’s all new to me, and I haven’t slept much, either. What did you say your name was?”
“Recently, people have been calling me Dairy Boy. I have a real name, too, but for now you can just call me Dairy Boy. I don’t really want a name to come between me and my identity as a worker.”
“Okay,” Patch said. It was weird how little this guy seemed to care about talking to him, although after all the unwanted attention he’d been getting in New York, he couldn’t say he minded. “Hey, I’m looking for the admissions office. Is it in here?”
“There’s no admissions office as such,” Dairy Boy said. “But most of the administrative stuff gets done in there, yeah.”
“Thanks,” Patch said.
“Hey man, you seem pretty far from home.”
“True enough.”
“Maybe you should come with us on our midnight hike tonight.”
“Okay, I could do that.”
“We’ll go up into the foothills and build a fire. I’m going to bring my banjo. Maybe we can talk about what kind of home you’re looking for.”
As Patch headed into the building, he considered calling Greta. But deep down he knew that he still hurt too much to do that.
i discover a little-known creature
called the penguin
It started innocently enough. At lunch on Thursday, I met up with Arno and we got hotdogs and walked down Fifth Avenue.
“Where’ve you been, man?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Around, I guess.”
“Seems like everybody’s been doing their own thing since we went to Vassar.”