Hold On Tight

by J. Minter

  Arno realized he was having trouble seeing straight, so he started focusing and refocusing his eyes. For a minute he thought what he was feeling might be early-onset heart disease, but then he realized that it was actually a yearning for something far away. But he had definitely done it now. He had been in love with somebody else, and he felt sure that if he found Lara now, she would let him be in love with her.

  And today was the day he was going to Sarah Lawrence.

  “Are you okay?” Gabby said. “If you don’t want to go to the party …”

  “No, the party’s fine,” Arno said, standing up and pulling on his pants. He tried not to look at Gabby as he buttoned his black, slim-fitting collared shirt. “I’ll call you, okay?”

  She grabbed his wrist and pulled him so that he bent down and kissed her on the mouth. Incredibly, she still tasted like artificial watermelon.

  “See you,” Arno called as he was reaching the door. Then he hustled down six flights of stairs and over to Mickey’s house.

  if mickey pardo’s your guest, you send the limo

  “Where are you? Naw, I think my cellie’s screwed up. Would you just get over here?” Mickey gestured at Arno, who was pouring various liquids into a martini shaker, that he wanted one, too. Mickey was still wearing the white terry-cloth robe. “Because it’s my lecture weekend. And Sarah Lawrence sent the limo. We’re in it. So you’ll be here? Soon? That soon? Okay, bye.”

  “Jonathan?” Arno asked, shaking the martinis and nodding toward the phone.

  “Yeah, I thought he said he was gardening for a minute.” They both laughed.

  Mickey peered through the window of the limo and saw his father, who was sitting on the steps and glaring. He was chewing on the stump of a cigar and playing with a ball of clay.

  “Your dad still raw about your newfound celebrity?”

  “Yeah, he won’t really talk to me.”

  “He’ll get over it when he realises he’s just being a sore loser,” Arno took a sip of his martini. “You know my dad says they’ve had calls from collectors about your work? People who used to be desperate to collect your dad’s stuff.” The Wildenburger Gallery had represented Ricardo’s work since before Arno and Mickey were born.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, I wasn’t supposed to tell you. They’re working out the kinks before they come to you with an offer. But just don’t let the whole Ricardo thing bother you, you know what I mean?”

  “Cheers to that,” Mickey said. They clinked glasses.

  Around the time they were making their second round of martinis, there was a knock on the window. Mickey rolled it down. “Yes?”

  “Wow. No more puny rides from friends for you, huh?” Jonathan said.

  “Pretty sweet, right?” Mickey opened the door. “Get in, man.”

  Jonathan crawled in. “Well, there’s a lot more leg room in here than in the Mercedes, it’s got that going for it,” he said, settling into one of the plush bench seats.

  “Man, you really were gardening.”

  “Yeah.” Jonathan looked down at the brown spots on his knees and elbows and smiled. “I planted heirloom tomatoes.”

  “Do you need a change of clothes? I mean, we really gotta get this show on the road.”

  Jonathan shrugged. “Nah, it’s cool. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “I don’t mind, but you do,” Mickey cackled. Then he got on the intercom and told the driver to hit it.

  “So where are Patch and David?”

  Arno grinned. “Man, you didn’t hear about David? He’s got a new girlfriend. You remember SBB? Sara-Beth Benny? The official policy is, we just leave him alone and let him enjoy it.”

  “SBB?” Jonathan asked. “You think that’s a good idea?”

  “Yes. Hell yes. She’s hot.”

  “And now that you mention it … I haven’t seen Patch in a while,” Mickey said.

  “Well, it is Patch we’re talking about here …,” Arno said, tossing his martini glass over his shoulder and switching to Bud Light.

  “Thanks for reminding me about your lecture,” Jonathan said, accepting a Bud Light from Arno. “I feel like a jerk for missing your last one. And Sarah Lawrence—I mean, what a coincidence.” Jonathan smiled faintly to himself.

  “Yeah,” Arno agreed, smiling not so faintly. “It feels like fate, doesn’t it?”

  They all paused for a moment as the limo sailed uptown on the West Side highway, trying to locate just what the tug of fate feels like. Then, abruptly, the limo stopped.

  Mickey got on the intercom. “What’s the problem, Joey?”

  “Must have been an accident, Mr. Mickey. Highway’s blocked up far as I can see.”

  “Well, fine. Okay. Can’t we just drive over all those people or something?”

  “Hey, Mickey,” Jonathan said. “Don’t stress so much. Sarah Lawrence is like half an hour a way.”

  “How do you know?”

  “At the community garden I met this girl whose older sister goes to Sarah Lawrence, and—”

  “You know what J? You’re right. I’m not going to stress so much. Arno, man, would you open another bottle of beer for me?”

  Mickey rolled down his window and sucked in some breeze. That was when all of their cell phones buzzed simultaneously.

  “New text,” Jonathan said, taking his phone out of his pocket.

  “You too?” Mickey said.

  “Yeah,” Arno said, flipping open his phone. “It’s an S.O.S.”

  a daring escape

  “You need to come get me now,” David said into his cell phone as he hurried up Hudson.

  “We’d come back downtown,” Jonathan said. “Except right now we’re kind of stalled in traffic on the West Side Highway.”

  “Really? Where at?”

  “Um, just before the Seventy-second Street exit. Listen, what’s this about?”

  “Okay, don’t go anywhere, okay?”

  “David, I don’t think—” David put his phone back in his pocket and waved his arms wildly at a passing taxi.

  “I need you to take me to Seventy-second and Broadway as fast as humanly possible,” David said. The driver gave him an irritated look in the mirror, but David just kept talking. “Take the streets. There’s a traffic jam on the highway.”

  The driver took off up the avenues, and to David’s amazement they hit a string of green lights that carried them nearly fifty blocks in no time. At the corner of Seventy-second and Broadway, David tossed the guy a twenty and bolted.

  David jogged down the hill and by the time he passed through the dog park before the highway, he was at a full run. A small dog yelped at him and then was restrained by its leash. David ran on, trying not to think of the utter stupidity of what he was about to do, and more about his dire need to be far, far away from Manhattan. It didn’t take him long to reach his destination.

  At Seventy-second he took one cautious look up the exit ramp, and after determining that there were no crazy drivers coming down toward him, he made a dash toward the roadway, hanging as close to the safety wall as he could.

  When he made it up to the roadway, he saw that the traffic was indeed stalled and dense, with only a few cars moving a couple of inches at a time. But there was a breeze up there, and he could smell the Hudson. David felt sort of vulnerable and crazy, but also exhilarated, like he was the hero in a movie and he’d just outrun bad men driving Hummers.

  He looked south but couldn’t see the yellow Mercedes. A car horn blared ahead of him on the highway, and he followed its direction. A big, shiny white limo caught his eye. He paused, and the horn blared again, setting off all the other horns on all the cars on the highway. In the middle of the cacophony, Jonathan stepped out of the limo. “David! We’re over here!”

  David turned and trotted in the direction of the limo. Soon he was inside of it, where the AC was blasting and the drinks were cold.

  “What happened to you?” Jonathan said. David stared at Jonathan and tried to figure ou
t what was going on—his friend’s hair was all tousled, and his clothes were rumpled, and he appeared to have several grass stains on his clothes.

  “You want a beer?” Arno passed him a beer.

  “Thanks, man. Are you guys still going to Sarah Lawrence?”

  “No, we’re just sitting in traffic for kicks,” Mickey said. “Of course we’re going to Sarah Lawrence. It’s my lecture, yo.”

  “I know, I know,” David said. “And now I can come.”

  “What happened to you?” Jonathan asked.

  David took a swig of beer. Someone’s phone was ringing. After a minute they realized it was Jonathan’s. He held up his index finger and answered the phone with a low, “This is Jonathan.”

  “So where’s SBB?” Mickey asked.

  “Oh, man. It’s too crazy to even …”

  “What kind of charges?” Jonathan was saying.

  David looked at Jonathan, who was covering one ear with his hand and listening to his cellphone with the other. “It all started yesterday, when I got home from school, and my parents and Sara-Beth were doing the routine.”

  “The routine?”

  “Yeah, you know.”

  “From Mike’s Princesses? The whole I’m Millie, I’m Tanya, I’m Courtney thing? Christ.”

  “How much was charged to Greenpeace?” Jonathan was saying into the phone.

  “Apparently it’s part of her therapy. Getting out the bad feelings or something. Anyway, I got away from it and decided that if that’s what she needed I should just let it happen, you know? But when I got home today they were doing it and they told me—”

  “What, what?”

  “—that they needed a person to do Mike’s part. That this was something we had to do as a family.’

  “No way,” Mickey said. “The whole swinging-them-around thing?”

  Jonathan shushed them, so they lowered their voices.

  “You didn’t do it, did you?” Arno whispered.

  “No way.” David shook his head like he still couldn’t believe it. “Now do you understand why I had to run up a freeway off-ramp to find you?”

  Mickey and Arno nodded. “You can’t date your fake sister,” Arno said woefully.

  “I appreciate the call, but I think those charges are all correct,” Jonathan was saying. “I know, it was a big spending day for me. Thanks so much.” He hung up and rolled his eyes at his friends. “I mean, how much do I spend on clothes, and Chase needs to call me about a donation to Greenpeace? Sheesh.”

  The guys all gave him bemused looks.

  “So, David, what the hell happened, man?”

  David spread his long legs and leaned back in his seat. “Can I tell you later, dude? I just want to stop thinking about it for a minute.”

  “Okay,” Jonathan said. Then his phone rang again. “This is Jonathan,” he said into the receiver, waving apologetically at David. “Oh hey, Ted … Yeah, man, it was amazing seeing you too. Well, the thing is … do you remember this Lily Maynard girl?”

  “So how’d the new photos come out?” David asked Mickey.

  “Oh, they’re freaking awesome!” he replied.

  “I know. I know I shouldn’t have done that,” Jonathan was saying.

  “You gonna change up your lecture at all?” Arno asked.

  “Nah, freestyle worked last time,” Mickey said, confidently rearranging his robe. Finally the traffic had started to move.

  “No, I think I’m into this other girl… yeah, she’s a real do-gooder … well, you know, but I want you to meet her … so you’ll call her and straighten it out?” Jonathan was saying into his phone. “Man, you’re the best. I’ll call you soon, okay? Bye.” He let out a sigh and turned to his friends. “Can you guys not wait until high school is over and we can just be in college already or what?”

  networking, patch style

  Patch laid down his backpack in front of the office and knocked on the door.

  A few moments passed, and then he knocked again. Just when he thought he might have the wrong place, he heard a loud “Yuuuuup?!” from the other side of the door. Patch pushed it open and took a look inside.

  In the center of the small, blond-wood paneled office was a very tall man in a faded denim shirt. He was slim, but he had the kind of chest and shoulders that suggest a lifetime of athleticism. He had long fingers, which he laced together and positioned as a headrest as he looked up expectantly at Patch. “Yes, young man?”

  “Hey, are you Richard Sorrel? I mean, President Sorrel,” Patch said. He could see, through the office’s one large window, a lot of the guys from the hike last night doing their afternoon chores. Then sun was glinting like gold in the hay out there, and Patch felt sure he was going to take that image back to New York with him.

  “Dick! Call me Dick. Have a seat?”

  “Thanks, man. Um, I’m Patch Flood, and I’ve been visiting the school the last couple of days and …”

  Dick’s smile faded. “You seem like a very nice young man. But I just want to warn you, ours is a very tough admissions process.”

  “Oh, yeah. I know. I just wanted to introduce myself because I think this might be the right place for me. My uncle Heyday—Heyday Flood?—went here and …”

  “Deep Springs does not have a legacy program, young man,” Dick said sternly. He scratched the stubble on his beard and cocked an eyebrow as though he were trying to categorize Patch as us or them.

  “I know, I think that’s really cool,” Patch said, liking the dude and the school more every second.

  “It’s a lot of work, going to a school like this.” Dick rested his mighty elbows on the desk and looked deep into Patch’s eyes.

  “I’m down for a lot of work. My life in New York’s sort of coasting, you know? I’ve done that.”

  “Young man,” Dick said, craning back so that his chair stood on two legs, and propping his cowboy boots on the table, “when I was your age, I had already taught English in Japan and mined for gold in Africa. Life is an adventure, but that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be roots, a history of hard work in one place, friends who understand you and are as tough on you as you are on yourself. That’s what this school is about, so don’t apply if you just want something eclectic on your c.v., understand? Life should be about something,” Dick paused for effect and let the front legs of the chair come crashing down on the wood floor. “That’s what we teach.”

  Patch stood and nodded. He shook the guy’s hand. “That all sounds about right, sir.”

  “Well, there are applications on the table outside my office. I wish you luck.”

  “Thanks, man,” Patch said. Dick gave him a parting wink.

  As he headed away from Deep Springs and down to the road where he could hitch a ride to the airport, Patch felt, for maybe the first time ever, that there was one thing he really had to do. No choice about it. He was just a Deep Springs kind of guy.

  That realization filled him with a need to locate his New York dudes immediately. After all, if he was going to end up here without them, he definitely needed to get back to them. And now.

  i have to find that girl

  Sarah Lawrence looked kind of like Vassar to me—vast lawns, old stately brick buildings—except somewhat more modest in scale. The buildings were more like something you would find on a private estate, because that’s what it used to be. The entryway wasn’t as dramatic either, just a tasteful wrought-iron structure. By eight o’clock on Friday evening, we hadn’t made it much past that gate.

  The traffic was brutal, and when we arrived on campus our limo was mobbed by Sarah Lawrence kids eager to catch a glimpse of Mickey. Apparently Mickey was an even bigger celebrity here than he was in Manhattan. There was word of various naked art events planned for tomorrow night, after the lecture. Also, we heard a rumor that the security staff was freaking out because they didn’t know how they were going to keep the occupancy in the lecture hall from exceeding its maximum. That’s how big the interest in Mickey Pardo was.
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  When I got out to take a piss there were at least fifteen people in the car, and a kind of impromptu party had started happening around it, too. Arno called that he was coming with me, and by the time we had fully extracted ourselves from the mob, there was no way to get back to tell Mickey and David we were taking off. “I don’t think we’re getting back in there,” I said.

  “That’s better for me, anyway,” Arno said as we looked around for a discreet tree. “Hey man, I hope you don’t feel like I’m ditching you. But I think I’m going to take off and see if I can find Lara.”

  “Really?” I said, thinking about Gabby, who seemed kind of fun when I met her at the fundraiser. But who was I to judge? “That’s cool man. I guess I can’t really say anything, cuz I’m going to go find a girl, too.”

  “Yeah? That’s cool.”

  I looked at the Tudor-style building we were coming up to and saw a bunch of kids sitting at café tables on the terrace, watching a black and white movie that was projected onto a wall. “I think that’s where I’m going to find her, actually. She was telling me about this cinema club that meets on Friday nights, and how it’s one of the reasons she wants to come here. She said it was really neat.”

  “Neat?”

  “I know, but I think I really like her.”

  Arno tried to do his special handshake with me, but I couldn’t remember how to do it, and in the end we just knocked fists. “See you later, man,” he said, and walked off in the direction of the dorms.

  I stepped onto the terrace and surveyed the scene. It was mostly girls, maybe one or two guys, and everybody was dressed pretty casually. Somehow, the whole tribe thing seemed much less in evidence here. I was wondering why that would be when I heard someone whisper my name.

  “Jonathan, over here.” I looked, and there was Ava, sitting on a folding chair. She was wearing a stretchy black pencil skirt and a vintage T-shirt. I went over and sat next to her on the ground. “This is my sister, Jill,” she continued in a whisper. I shook hands with Jill, who was also sitting on the ground.