Brooklyn Girls
Page 17
CHAPTER 17
I can’t do it. I can’t stand up in front of everyone. My voice will disappear. I’m going to have a panic attack and/or crash and/or burn and/or collapse in a hysterical pool of sweat and vomit. I can’t do it, I can’t.…
“Go, Pia!” shouts Julia, pushing me through the crowd.
I somehow make it to the stage, painfully aware of how tiny the room is, how piercing the lights, how silent the crowd, and how hot and claustrophobic I suddenly feel. There’s a bilious fear-lump in my throat—or is it puke? Oh, crap … I glance down at the karaoke screen and can just make out the words “99 Red Balloons,” but the lyrics are swimming in front of my eyes. You and I in a little toy shop / Buy a bag of balloons with the money we’ve got …
My vision is too blurred to read it, but I can’t get down off the stage. I can’t back out now. I can’t—I won’t—fail.
I can do this.
The music begins. I still can’t read the words, but somehow, I open my mouth, remember the lyrics, and start singing. The first few lines come out as squeaky whispers, but gradually, I get louder and louder.
The crowd gasps and a split second later, I realize I’m singing the original lyrics … in German.
My father loved “99 Luftballons.” He played it constantly, from a German Best of the ’80s compilation CD. I couldn’t translate it, but I can sing it. I just need to hang on and get to the end of the song.
“Hast du etwas Zeit für mich…” I feel like my voice is coming from another person altogether, someone tiny and shaky. But when I dare to look up, people are smiling. I grin back, and then at the end of the first verse, the electro-rock kicks in and I start clapping along, the crowd joins in, and then I start singing again, more confidently this time.
“Ninety-nine Luftballons…”
The moment I finish the song, I’m covered in a light sheen of fear-sweat, but there’s no fear left. Only exhilaration. I feel euphoric, invincible, ecstatic! Karaoke: free MDMA!
I can’t stop smiling. It feels like the entire bar is roaring approval and I can hear Julia above everyone else. I do a little curtsey-bow, and then jump down and run over to the girls.
Before I can get to them, though, I’m picked up and twirled around.
By Mike. What the hell is he doing here?
“Put me down!” I’m wearing a tiny gold dress. Why do guys always want to pick you up when you’re not dressed for it?
“Pia! That was so amazing!” Mike looks less cute tonight than I’ve ever seen him: he’s had a bad haircut and his blue shirt billows in the wrong places.
“Thanks,” I say, edging away from him. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Coco and Eric making out at the bar. Yes! I fight the urge to punch the air. Good for her!
“You are so gorgeous when you smile, you know that? I got your text and I was, like, hell yeah, that’s my girl—”
I frown. My girl? “Mike … seriously, don’t.”
“Don’t what?” he says, putting his hand up to stroke my face and I realize he’s hammered. “You look worried, honey.”
Honey? “Okay, we need to talk,” I say, jerking my head away from his hand. “Come outside.”
He follows me out to the street, and I light a cigarette to buy some thinking time. How do you break up with someone you’re not dating?
“God, you smell good. What is that?”
“Oh! Thanks, it’s Kiehl’s Original Musk— Wait. Listen. I don’t know what you think is, um, going on between us? But I don’t want anything like that.”
“You have intimacy issues, I get it. Just friends. Friends with benefits, right?”
“Intimacy issues?” I can’t help laughing. “No, Mike. No benefits. I don’t like you like that. I didn’t mean for, um, us to happen.”
“You didn’t mean for us to happen?” He laughs, but there’s a hard edge to it. “Madeleine’s right, you’re an arrogant bitch. You just fuck with people and walk away.…”
They’ve been talking about me? I thought Madeleine and I were friends now! Suddenly I don’t want to be part of this conversation. “Are we done here?”
“No!” shouts Mike. “We are not fucking done here!”
“Mike, you’re drunk. This is a stupid conversation. There is nothing going on between us, and there never will be. Deal with it.” He grabs my arm, but I pull away, throw my cigarette down, and push past him back into the bar. What a cockmonkey!
Is he overreacting? Am I arrogant? And a bitch? I can’t tell anymore. I don’t care. I just want to forget the whole thing. Actually, I want to ask Madeleine what the hell she’s doing bitching about me to her brother when I thought we were friends again, but I can’t tonight. Not on Julia’s birthday.
I stop next to Angie and grab my drink. Then Mike strides in, whispers to Madeleine, and a second later they both head outside. At the door, she turns and gives me the biggest death stare I’ve ever had in my life.
Shit.
I drain my glass in one gulp as Jules bounces over. She’s hammered. “That guy just asked for my number! His name is Mason! But let’s get pizza! I am starving! Because, well, I just puked. But I’m good, I’m good. A well-timed puke can make the night, you know?”
“Where were you the night of the housewarming?” says Angie. “That Julia wasn’t any fun at all.”
“I was being responsible,” enunciates Julia loudly. “And being responsible sucks cock. Am I right?”
“Amen to that,” says Angie.
Julia mimes riding a horse. “Yeee-haw”
Angie turns to me. “Seriously. I fucking love this chick.”
“I have some friends over at Cipriani Downtown,” says Mani. “Shall we?”
“Bring it on,” says Angie, hopping off her barstool.
“No! I want something dirty and New York!” shouts Julia. “Pizza! Where’s my sister?”
“We’re going for a drink uptown,” says Coco, sidling over with Eric, with a cat-that-got-the-cream look on her face.
“Wooooooo!” exclaims Julia. “Luh-vers! C’mon, Peepee! You and me!”
So Julia and I walk up to Spring Street as Coco and Eric jump in a cab, and Angie heads off with Mani and Sirvan. A month ago I would have been with them: drinking champagne, dancing on tables, probably starting an unsatisfying short-term dalliance or two with someone inappropriate.
Now it seems more appealing to grab a slice with Jules and go home so I can sleep and get up early to do SkinnyWheels prep. Tomorrow’s Cosmo repayment day. I hope it’s as easy with Nicky as it was last Sunday. The less chitchat with that man-mountain, the better.
“Thanks for making tonight awesome,” says Julia, slurring slightly. “I had so much fun. A guy asked for my number and I didn’t even cry once, and I always cry on my birthday.”
“That’s awesome. See? Told you a makeover would work.”
“I feel like I can count on you. I never used to feel like that.”
“You can,” I say, trying to take it as a compliment. “You can always count on me, Jules.”
As we’re standing outside Pomodoro, waiting for our slices to cool down, we run into Tad and Wilcox.
“After-party, ladies?” says Tad smoothly, leaning over to take a massive chomp out of Julia’s pizza. She giggles and pulls away. “I know a secret all-night bar in the East Village.”
Everyone knows a secret all-night bar in the East Village.
“Can’t do,” I say. “Heading back to Brooklyn.”
“Screw that! I’m game!” says Julia. “Where are we headed?”
Wilcox is standing very close to me, staring at me.
“Down, boy,” I say. His eyes betray a gnarly drug-booze cocktail. Maybe Klonopin or Xanax to calm him after all the Adderall.
“Wilcox! Dial down the stalker shit, man,” says Tad.
“Yeah, c’mon, Wilcox,” says Julia. Tad takes another bite out of her pizza and she squeals and slaps his arm, looking delighted. Is that how I act when I’m drunk? Probably.
“Yeppers!”
I head toward Broadway, through the usual Saturday night party crowds. Funny: if I was alone on a deserted country road at this exact moment in time, I’d be petrified. Nature, silence, shadows … creepy. But in a big city, I feel safe.
Finally, I see a free cab half a block down. I sprint toward it, and just as I open the door, some guy gets in the other side.
“Mine!” I shout, in my best ballsy I’m-a-New-Yorker voice. “This cab is mine!”
“I saw it first!”
“Get out! Out!” I yell.
Then I have to stop myself from gasping, because with a stabbing feeling of recognition so strong that it almost hurts, I realize it’s him.
It’s Aidan.
The guy from the street. The guy from the Brooklyn Bridge. The guy that New York is clearly throwing across my path, as though trying to tell me something.
I think my heart has stopped beating.
I may die.
But that’s okay.
“You!”
“You!”
Aidan grins widely (perfectly, gorgeously, warmly, urgh, everythingly) and my chest does a strange pucker of excitement/fear.
“What are the odds?”
“Slim to nonexistent.”
“Heading to Brooklyn?”
“The one and only.”
“I’ll have him stop on the Brooklyn Bridge so you can jump on the roof.”
“Deal.”
Aidan leans forward to direct the driver while I frantically search through my bag for a breath mint. I bet I smell like pizza and cigarettes. Goddamnit. My chest has seized with a sort of fright, like when you slam your finger in a drawer. Aidan! Again! Oh, my God!
Aidan winds down his window, and looks over at me with a grin. Long legs in dark jeans and a dark shirt, no jacket, hair is messier than I remember, but in a good way, not in a uses-more-product-than-me way, am I gushing? Yah, I’m gushing. Sorry. What should I say? My stupid brain is empty. Oh, sheesh, I’ve never felt this nervous in my life.
“So,” he says. “You’re stalking me, clearly.”
“Clearly,” I say. I wonder how old he is. Late twenties? I quickly rearrange my legs so that there’s no chance of taxi-seat-induced cellulite (yes, it’s a totally normal thing to do).
“It just underlines my theory that New York is a village,” he says. “Sooner or later, you meet everyone.”
“That’s pretty deep.”
“I’m a very deep person. Profound.”
“Yeah, I can see that. You’re like a little philosopher in an Aubin & Wills shirt. How original of you, by the way. Do they hand them out with British passports, or what?”
“You hate the shirt? The shirt was a present from my sister. The shirt never did anything to you.”
“Yeah, but it’s planning something. I can tell.”
We lapse into silence. This flirty repartee is nerve-racking! I’m sweating, I can’t quite catch my breath, and my brain is jitterbugging from topic to topic. I wonder where his shouty girlfriend is, I wonder if he’s been thinking about me, I wonder where he lives, I wonder if my deodorant is still working, I wonder—
Suddenly, Aidan turns to me and grins, that little scar on his lip lit by the lights of the city outside, and all I can do is smile.
“So, talk me through your night.”
“Um, it was my friend’s birthday. Karaoke bar. I sang ‘99 Luftballons.’”
“‘Luftballons’? You mean you sang it in German?”
“Yes,” I say, laughing at the look on his face. “It was an accident. It’s my dad’s favorite song. He’s from Zurich and they speak Swiss-German there.…”
“I know. I’m smarter than I look.”
“Well, that’s a blessing,” I say. “Sorry. I’m just used to explaining it as part of the whole where-are-you-from thing.”
“I get it. My mother’s Argentinian. My dad’s Irish. We lived in L.A., B.A., D.C., and finally London, a city without an acronym, when I started high school.”
“I bet people think that sounds complicated.”
“Yeah, but it’s not. Not when you’re the one doing it.”
“Exactly!” I exclaim. Whoa, calm down, Pia. “I seem to have spent my whole life telling people that moving countries six times before you turn seventeen is really boring.”
“My sister and I have a saying: everything is normal when it’s normal to you.”
That’s the perfect way of putting it, I think to myself. He gets it, he really gets it.
Glancing out the window, I’m dismayed to see that we’re already on the Brooklyn Bridge. The journey is practically over. I wonder if I can jump on him and start kissing him between here and Rookhaven without looking like a psychoslut. Probably not.
I glance over at Aidan and catch his eye. For a second, I think he’s about to come out with another smart-ass remark, but instead, he just smirks at me, his eyes warm and steady and kind, and now I can feel my heart beating and my stomach squirming, oh, God, I can’t talk, this is agony.…
As we turn off the bridge, he clears his throat. “Are you hungry?”
“Almost always.”
“Okay, we’re making a pit stop.” He leans forward and talks politely to the driver. “Sorry, sir, change of plans—we’re headed to Park Slope, Fifth Avenue and Ninth Street, please.”
“Park Slope?” I repeat. “Seriously?”
“Daisy’s Diner,” he says, grinning at me.
I want to lick his teeth.
“They serve disco fries.”
“Disco fries?”
“Fries with cheese and gravy. I always get that, plus a grilled cheese sandwich and a banana and strawberry milkshake with double banana.”
“Double banana?” I love the way he says banana. Boh-nuh-nuh.
“A plain banana and strawberry milkshake isn’t bananary enough for me, so I ask them to put two bananas in.” He pauses for a second. “Or double the ersatz banana flavoring. Whatever it is.”
“Sounds totally disgusting. I’m in.”
“Are you one of those girls who eats only sushi? Please say no.”
“No, I’m one of those girls who pretends to eat like a man in order to impress one.”
“I’m one of those girls, too!”
“I guess you and I are going to be BFFs.”
“I guess so,” he says, and for a second our eyes meet and my chest goes thumpetythumpthump.
I’m just about to open my mouth, to say God knows what, when his phone rings. He looks at it and answers immediately.
“Em?”
I freeze, a ball of fear slamming into my stomach. A girl! The same girl from the street? The girlfriend? Ex-girlfriend? Wife? Ex-wife? I check quickly. He’s not wearing a wedding ring, but—
“Okay, Emma, calm down, sweetheart.”
Oh, God, he does have a girlfriend.… I can hear a woman’s slightly hysterical voice on the other end of the line.
“Right, fine, I’ll come now,” he says. He looks out the window. We’re almost at Park Slope. “Yes, yes, I’ll come now. Right now. I’ll be there in ten minutes. Yes, yes, yes, I love you, too.”
Aidan hangs up and leans forward to the driver. “Would you mind pulling over? It’s an emergency.…” He turns to me. “I’m so sorry, you must think I’m very rude.”
No I don’t, I think you’re gorgeous and taken and out of my league and not interested in me at all, I have never felt this right about someone before, and I don’t know what to do, I think numbly. But I don’t say that. Obviously.
Instead, I try to look calm, and say: “I understand. Another bridge-surfer, huh?”
He grins, then immediately looks distracted again.
“Please take her to Union Street, mate,” he says, quickly jumping out and closing the door after him. I slide over to the window, staring out at him as he quickly
texts on his phone.
Is that it? Isn’t he going to ask for my number? Should I ask for his? For a split second I contemplate the fact that he’s about to disappear from my life again and a feeling of utter dread clutches at my stomach.
But he has a girlfriend. I need to get a grip!
Aidan leans in and hands the driver a twenty.
“No, no, I can pay!” I protest.
Aidan shakes his head. “Not a chance, Pia. This is my shot to make up for bailing on you … but what are you doing next Thursday?”
“I—” What do I say? He’s going to meet another girl but he’s asking me out on a date? That’s the first time he’s said my name. It sounds so lovely.
“Meet me at Minibar at eight,” he says. “Please.”
“Um…”
“C’mon. You owe me for two cab rides now!”
“Um, let me think about it, give me your number.”
“No. No numbers, no e-mails, no texts, no excruciating pre-date Googling and Facebook repartee. Just … show up. And see what happens.”
We meet eyes. And I know there’s only one answer.
“I’d love to.”
Then the cab takes off, and he’s gone. Again.
Did I really just make a plan to meet up with a guy who’s currently on his way to see another woman? That’s like Stupid Chick 101! Okay, so I was paralyzed by nerves and excitement and good old-fashioned sexual attraction. But that’s no excuse.… Is he just some cockmonkey who thought I’d be happy to have a cheap and meaningless hookup over disco fries? It didn’t feel like that.
Then again, I bet it never feels like that. I bet every girl who accidentally becomes the other woman to a cockmonkey says it didn’t feel cheap and meaningless. I should ask Angie. She has the most experience in that kind of thing (I’m not insulting her, but you know, she kinda does).
Do I meet up with him next Thursday at Minibar or not? The idea of seeing him again in a formal date scenario makes me feel unbearably squirmy, my stomach buckling in … what? Excitement? Fear? Both. It almost makes me want to run away.
Flight risk.
Eddie.
But I’m not a flight risk. I can stick things out. And I am a new, improved Pia, so goddamnit, shouldn’t that mean that I should explore this thing with Aidan when it feels so different than anything I’ve ever had before?