by Federle, Tim
“ . . . and we’ve got a chimichanga that people are really responding to,” the waiter says, finishing up a pitch that he really oversold. His teeth are so white that he must be an actor.
“Thank you,” I say to him, waving the empty basket of chips in the hopes he catches my drift for a refill. “Let me pray on those dinner specials over another basket of chips. Carl.”
(I caught his name tag. Always good to address people by their names.)
“Nate, I’m really proud of you,” Libby says. “You not only made it to New York, you seem to be taking advantage of every loophole I ever taught you.”
“And a few new ones! I just stole a coat from a homeless bin.”
“Whoa.”
Carl returns with the basket of chips and another water (with only one lemon and no lime, which’ll make me feel better when I don’t order anything, or tip him) and I say, “My mom should be here any moment, Carl, just bear with me,” and he does a theatrical double-eyebrow bop and glides away to another table.
“The thing I can’t figure out, Libby, is why Anthony hasn’t sold me out.”
“Well, that’s the thing. In your absence, without the distraction of scene-studies and showtunes, I’ve gotten more self-reliant. One could say ‘resourceful.’” She sounds dangerous right now, but the fun kind.
“What kind of resourceful?” I say, swallowing seven chips at a time and licking a finger.
“There was an incident in your brother’s room,” Libby says, or huffs actually. She’s climbing up our favorite tree out back, I’m just sure.
“Yes—was this the thing where you were in Anthony’s underwear drawer?”
“You know about that?” she says, squealing, probably almost losing her grip on the tricky third branch from the top.
“Yes, my Aunt Heidi informed me. Anthony called her and spilled the beans, and she found me at the audition—which you must have told him about—and now I’m here. Though she doesn’t know it. You and me and my waiter Carl are the only people who even know I’m in New York, Libby.” He’s back. “Carl!”
“Mister Kid, is your mom ever arriving?”
“I’m hoping so. Yeah, she’s just down the block at Applebee’s, comparing appetizer pricing”—I can hear Libby sigh, probably marveling at how much sharper my improv skills have gotten since moving to New York—“but should be here any minute.”
Carl glides away again. Gosh his sideburns are manicured; it’s really something.
“Okay. So, Nate, I have to run in a second or it’s going to look suspicious to your parents. But I never approved an overnight.” The wind is picking up in Jankburg, and I can barely hear her. “This trip was to be a bus ride there and a bus ride back, with one hour popping your head into an audition and an important stop at a T-shirt stand, for me.”
“I know, I really trie—”
“We don’t have time for explanations.”
“You mean like what you were doing in my brother’s underwear drawer?”
“Okay, let’s talk about that. Okay, I was curious what the great star Anthony Foster wears underneath his jerseys.”
“And pole vault uniform and soccer shorts and—”
“Yes, exactly. But you don’t know the good part, because I’m sure he didn’t tell your Aunt Heidi this.” She pauses. Plays the opposite, just like I taught her. “I found beer in your brother’s sock drawer.”
“What?!” If I were on the tree next to Libby, I’d have fallen into the yard below.
“Yeah, a full-on six-pack of Iron City. And he had nothing to say. You know what your parents would do if they knew he was drinking.”
I do know. Dad lost a cousin in a drunk-driving accident in the fifties or seventies or whatever, and there is a zero-tolerance rule in our house. And Mom—well, Mom has her own sordid history with the bottle; we’re not even allowed to have root beer around the lady. This is unreal. Anthony the Fallen Angel.
“So you’re darkmailing my brother?” I say, now licking chip crumbs from the wax basket liner. They really are delicious.
“I mean, I told him I’d tell your parents he was an alcoholic if he didn’t cover for you until you got home from New York.”
“Yes, that’s darkmail,” I say.
“Blackmail, Nate. Besides, we came to an agreement. He screamed bloody murder and said he’d kill me if I outed him as a beer drinker, and I . . . made him take his shirt off and flex.”
“Libby.”
“What! I was curious about the male form. He rolled his eyes throughout, anyway. And all he’s saying to your parents, and the police, is that you went to my house for a sleepover and he hasn’t heard from you since. It doesn’t help, Nate, that you took the lucky rabbit foot.”
I’m rubbing it now, actually. Have been rubbing it since that audition, one hand stealing winter coats and eating chips, and the other, it turns out, not letting go of that frickin’ rabbit foot.
“Because,” she says, “everyone knows you don’t go anywhere important without that rabbit foot, and that you wouldn’t have taken it with you for a regular old overnight at your girl Libby’s.”
Usually it hangs on a hook by my bed, my version of a dream-catcher. Libby’s right; it is totally suspicious that the rabbit foot is missing from my room.
“So your parents showed up at my house tonight, and luckily my mom was asleep”—she’s always asleep, Mrs. Jones, because she’s always coming down from a chemo treatment—“and there I was, on my bed, doing a jigsaw puzzle of the Mona Lisa, and Facebook status-stalking, and in barge your mom and dad.” The Joneses never lock their doors.
“My God, even my dad showed up?” I say. For me?
“Yes. Like, evidently one second after Anthony lied and said that you were at my house, they arrived here. So you know it was your mom who drove them over.”
Carl the waiter is finishing up with a table across the way; I don’t have any more stall time. I’m up, unplugging the charger, and stuffing it into one of my wondercoat’s many pockets.
I bolt into the men’s room, whispering: “So what did you say to my parents?”
“That we’re playing an elaborate new-generation version of hide-and-seek where you get twelve hours to find a hiding space, anywhere in the neighborhood. And that it was your turn to hide.”
“Goodness God,” I say, ducking into a Chevys bathroom stall. “And they bought it?”
“Yeah,” Libby says, yawning, “I did the crying thing.”
“Of course.”
“So you have until tomorrow morning to get back home, Nate, before, like, the FBI is involved. The whole thing is actually like E.T., all these guys running around looking for you in the woods.”
I have another Reese’s Piece. “It’s not going to happen.” My voice echoes off the tile. “Me getting home tomorrow morning? I’m supposed to be on standby here; the casting people told me I might be getting a call to come back in or something.”
“Holy Gone with the Wind, Nate. Honest. This is so boss.”
“Libby, even I know Gone with the Wind was a monumental hit, even if it’s unwatchable now.”
“Not the movie, wise guy. There was a London musical of the same name, but it played when we were little. I wouldn’t expect you to know about any musical flop created before you met me. But, yeah. Huge-ol’ floperoo.”
I pee and finish up and practically scream when I catch sight of myself in the mirror, thinking I’m actually a midget sneaking up behind myself to murder me in the Times Square Chevys. Turns out a bright yellow and burgundy jacket can be quite an intimidating combo.
“So where are you staying tonight, then?” Libby says. “Let’s figure this out.”
I exit the bathroom. “My Aunt Heidi’s address is listed in Mom’s book in the kitchen. I can crash at her place, maybe. Definitely.”
“Too dangerous,” Libby says. “Much too. There are a thousand grown-ups in your kitchen”—I can practically hear her squinting to see across the lawn—“and on
e of the Kruehler boys is having an arm-wrestling competition with your brother, and—oh! Anthony’s winning.”
“Libby, stay with me.”
“Sorry. Any other ideas?”
I see an exit sign at the end of the bathroom hallway and make a hard left, passing a waitress holding a tray of calamari.
Of course.
“I have an idea, Libby.” How did I not think of this before? “Can you get in front of a computer?”
“Hmm, depends on if your dad finally broke down and got your family one, now that you’ve run away. Like, now your house can be officially fun.”
“He didn’t, I can assure you. I need you to run back to your place. Say you have to check on your mom. Run home and text me the address of something called Aw Shucks. It’s an oyster place downtown.”
“Oh, that’s cute, the play on shucks,” Libby says with some effort, clearly swinging her leg over the biggest trunk, climbing back down our tree.
“Watch that third branch,” I say, but she says, “Ow,” and then, “Too late,” and I hear her land in the yard.
“I have to hand it to you, Mom,” she’s saying to me, I guess—lying in front of the adults, sliding open our broken screen door and walking back into my house, everyone probably staring at her—“you’re really brave. You really are the bravest person I know.”
And she hangs up and probably starts to wail again for everyone, and I break through the Chevys back-staircase street exit just as Libby is probably skipping home.
Leaping over bushes as I leap potholes.
Passing stray dogs as I do clusters of garbage.
Each of us on our own journey tonight, in honor of me.
A neighborhood that never cared about me before, suddenly spinning into itself, looking everywhere but here.
A whole world revolving around Nate Foster, for once.
It’s practically embarrassing.
Practically.
Accepting Saviors
Momentarily full from chips and salsa—almost too full; I could regret this later—I’m back outside, making my way downtown, back toward the Ripley-Grier audition studios. It’s a flying guess that south is generally heading toward Aunt Heidi’s restaurant.
At any moment, Rex Rollins the casting director could call, so I’m clutching my dying Nokia in one hand and, no doubt about it, that lucky rabbit foot in the other. I probably look a little like Mom when she goes mall walking and takes along those silly purple three-pound weights, her double-fisted hands a-swinging.
She would throw those weights at my head, right now, if she saw where I was.
There goes Madison Square Garden again, and with it—with any arena, anywhere—an ocean of Anthony floods over me. Anthony the star? Him I know. Anthony with a calf tear? Anthony the alcoholic? There is so much about my brother that’s undiscovered, I guess, and not just what he sees in that high school girlfriend of his, with the tight sweaters and overreliance on Bubble Yum as a leading personality trait.
I pass a giant post office, across from Madison Square Garden, its mammoth stairway straight out of that triumphant scene in Rocky (Dad made me watch it once, hoping it’d butch me up; instead I cried throughout and referred to myself as “the Adrian of our family” for the rest of that week).
Next, a sign, taped haphazardly to an upcoming light pole, promises SOULS SAVED AND A FREE WAFFLE at some church in Harlem. Whoops. Happened this morning. There went my chance at a free waffle. And a saved soul.
And I’m taken back to the last time Anthony and I were anything even close to close.
He and I went away to a Christian camp, at Dad’s insistence: Youth Truth ’n Spirit, up in the Poconos Mountains. It was a thrill, Mom allowing us out of the house for more than a sleepover, allowing us farther than twenty minutes outside Jankburg. We loaded up on buses and it was the best day of my life, riding alongside the Anthony Foster, who was, even at thirteen—gosh, my age now—a budding community mascot, raising money for the kids’ library fund, having sports scholarships named after him.
Anthony and I shared earbud jacks, and he picked the whole soundtrack, narrating our ride up to the mountains with cool, older-kid music: Wilco and Santogold and Vampire Weekend, bands that I’d never even heard of, let alone played myself. I didn’t submit a single entry to our improvised playlist, because I wasn’t old enough to have an iPod and I only listened to Disney soundtracks at the time, besides.
This was pre-Libby, pre-showtune, pre-anything that I now look to as my true religion. Before she moved to Jankburg and changed my life.
Anthony and I got to the Poconos and bunked together, and he accepted Jesus Christ as his savior that weekend. And I thought I did, too, but I think I was just so wrapped up in the spectacle of it all—all the older boys playing acoustic guitar with their shirts off, for one; and the camp counselors dressing up as the Devil to scare us at midnight—that emotion overcame me, and I concluded that that feeling must have been Jesus. That maybe knowing Jesus was like crying and making new friends and being scared and not having parents around, all at once.
I stood onstage and declared my new Christianity, in front of hundreds of other kids. (Other than Vegetables: Just Do It, when I understudied the legumes, it was the first and last time I’d ever been on a stage, actually). The setting was this hollow outdoor bandshell, with Christian fireflies lighting the non-Christian tears on my face a shocking blue (somebody posted photos on Facebook, after). And I took a microphone and yelled out, “My name is N-n-nate F-f-foster, and this weekend I accepted Jesus Christ as my savior.”
I thought it would make me belong, somehow. To a club. Any club. Any club that would have Nate Foster as a member.
And that night, having just welcomed Jesus Christ into my regular cast of characters, I got beat up outside the camp cafeteria by Larry Motlie and his Motlie Crew (all of my bullies have great gang names), who politely informed me that “God hates fags.” Even though I had nothing against God, and wasn’t even—and am not even, now—sure what I was. A fag or a straight guy, or what.
And when I got back to our bunk, Anthony was sitting in a circle with a bunch of other boys. They were reciting Bible verses aloud, and I was so embarrassed at my own bleeding lip, at my own swollen-shut eye, that I immediately doubled back out into the community yard, before any of them saw me, and put a brown paper bag, from the garbage can outside the cement bunk, over my head. And pretended to come in and spook them. Pretended to be a ghost.
I just didn’t want anyone to see my face.
And Anthony leapt up and pushed me into the wall and told me I wasn’t being a very good soldier of Christ. And I hadn’t even taken the bag off. He just knew it was me. My underbite was probably jutting out.
I rinsed off in the group showers—thank (my complicated friend) God nobody was in there—and winced through the physical pain of all that tepid camp water splashing into my bleeding gums; delighted, still, that none of my brother’s bunk friends had to see my secret that night. That even with God on my side, everyone still hated me. I still wasn’t fast enough, not with an answer in Social Studies, not on the field with a football. I was still the kid who threw up back home on Tuesday nights, knowing Wednesdays were Shirts and Skins day in P.E., and what if I had to be Skins? And take my shirt off in front of the other boys? That even with God as a friend, I was still broken.
And on the bus ride back to Jankburg, Anthony must’ve sensed that I’d dropped the God routine as fast as I’d adopted it. And he didn’t let me sit next to him. I had to sit with the adult chaperone who smelled like Funyons.
And now, under this New York sky where nobody knows my name, I’m passing my fourth (fourth!) cupcake shop (if you’ve never been to New York, there are, I can report as an eyewitness, entire shops devoted only to cupcakes, and you can find these shops spaced about twenty feet apart splaying out into every direction). I never want to go home. I never want to ride another bus again, or see Anthony, or accept Jesus Christ as my personal anything.
My phone rings.
“Jesus Christ!” I yell, jumping, knocking into a Village Voice canister.
“It’s me.”
“Hi, Lib.”
“Where are you now? And I’ve only got a minute, because I need to patrol your house and make sure the cops never actually came.”
“Goodness, this is serious. Okay, I’m—let’s see—I’m in front of a really weird building that looks like a 3D triangle, or something.”
“Be more specific, Nate,” Libby says, clicking away at her computer. She’s so lucky. Her family has two computers, and Libby has her own, even.
“Well, to my left is a sliver of a park, like somebody’s yard in Jankburg, but I’m sure this is considered, I dunno, maybe The Central Park?”
“If you’re at Central Park we’re officially Flora, the Red Menace-d,” Libby says.
I don’t know that flop, and make a note to look it up if I survive the night; at least three people have already looked like muggers to me, though one of them was holding hands with another guy, which was kind of interesting.
“Okay, the street sign—let’s see—it looks like I’m at the point of Twenty-third and Fifth Avenue streets.”
“Oh!” Libby says, typing madly. “Wait! I think you’re at . . . the . . . Flatiron Building, it says.”
“Flatiron? Like the hair thing? That makes you go from frizz to fab in the summers?”
“I’ve trained you well,” Libby says. “Something like that. Google says the architect of the Flatiron Building ‘hanged himself after it was completed, because he forgot to put in a men’s restroom and was humiliated.’”
I guess I’m not peeing there.
“Oh my God!” Libby says, and I can practically feel her smiling. “I’m at Google Maps, and under Nearby Places of Interest there’s an entire— Are you sitting for this, Nate?”
“No, I’m literally opposite-of-sitting. I’m looking for a bathroom and avoiding muggers.” A cab honks and then another one does, but not at me: just at the air. Everything is so flipping jubilant here.
“There’s a Museum of Sex, like, two blocks away from you,” Libby says, and we howl for about forty minutes over that one. When I come up for air, passing (I’m not kidding) another cupcake place, I say, “A Museum of Sex. Good golly, I wonder what the entry fee is. Like, a kiss?”