Take It Off

by J. Minter

  The fastest way to make Jonathan freak out is…

  From: santananumerouno@yahoo.com

  To: jonathanm@gissing.edu

  My Dear Jon:

  I know we hate each other on Mama’s yacht, but I want to write you and tell you it is done. I am sleeping in your brother Ted’s room, and is very nice and your mother is treating me like sun. David is my friend now, he show me total the city. I show him other things about the city to him he no no yet. Also we meet Patch’s sisters February and Flan. (Flan is sweet as flan! Ha ha!) Now we are good friends too. We all in the bed last night and so much fun. Understand?

  Hasta la vista,

  Rob

  My head hurts really, really bad

  There were bells ringing—church bells? And it sounded like a lot of them. Ten? Eleven? Could it be that late?—and the morning light was slicing through the windows. Thinking about the light caused an instant and awful pain to shoot through the left side of my head, which made me realize that, during the night, my head had been forced into some medieval torture device. That’s what it felt like anyway. I sat up, and then had to hold still to keep myself from puking. I was forced to assess my situation. It was not good.

  The original wine bottle was sitting on the windowsill, along with numerous cigarette butts. There were beer bottles and many mini liquor bottles strewn across the floor and the chest of drawers. It all started coming back to me—either Suki or I, and I had as yet no memory of which, had stormed out at some point and returned with a couple backpackers from the lobby to back up their point. (Somehow, I suspect this wasn’t me.) This turned into many more backpackers, and before long, a whole room of smelly people were debating the gender issue and getting wasted. Not pretty. Luckily, though, only Suki and I were in the room this morning. Suki was beside me, breathing normally and sound asleep.

  I went to the bathroom and guzzled tap water (not tasty). What could be done about my hair I did, and what could be done about my clothes, was, well, not a lot. I put them on and slipped out of the room.

  I wanted to see if there was any word from Flan by myself, without Suki hovering over me, and I figured I could go down and check my e-mail before she woke up.

  I tiptoed down to the first floor, where the same woman was sitting at the desk with her back to me. She didn’t turn to look at me, so I just walked into the Internet room. While small and nicotine-saturated, there did appear to be several computers hooked up to the Internet. An attendant-type guy waved me in. So I figured it must be free, and took one of the computers.

  I surfed casually for a minute—a couple New York blogs I like to keep up with, whatever. When I was feeling a little warmed up and more myself, I decided to check my e-mail and see if Flan had written me. But what I found was way worse than no e-mail from Flan. In fact, it was worse than I could have imagined, in a really confusing, hard-to-explain kind of way.

  Remember that e-mail from the address I didn’t recognize? You guessed it: Rob. He’d written me this e-mail that basically said he was going to get all Single White Female, or, whatever, Single White Male on me, and that he liked Flan, or he thought she was sweet or something, and then he signed off with this dumb threat from an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. Also, something had happened in a bed, and that threw me into a panic. I seriously considered trying to swim to New York, and I was filled with so much adrenaline and fear that I think I maybe could have, too.

  This had to be some absurd form of torture. I was stuck on the other side of the world, with no immediate out, and fucking Rob was writing me illiterate e-mails about being friends with my friend and being into my girl. I pictured sweet, big-eyed Flan with skeevy Rob, and regretted the image instantly. I gripped the keyboard and tried to think of what to do. A furious e-mail from a remote location seemed impotent, so I decided the best thing I could do was e-mail David. He could tell me what was going on. And maybe he could sort of watch Flan for me.

  I fired off a pleading e-mail to him, my hands hammering out the words without any conscious control. Just as I clicked the SEND button, I heard someone calling my name.

  I turned and saw Suki standing in the doorway, her braids carefully redone. She looked irritatingly radiant. “What’s the matter? You’re pale as a ghost …”

  She pulled up a chair next to me. Why was she being all nice? This was weird.

  “Oh, it’s just that … I didn’t tell you this, but, before I started Ocean Term I was on this yacht, with my dad and new stepmom. Me and all my friends went on a trip on my new stepmom’s yacht for their honeymoon. And my new stepbrother, Rob, who is like this total Eurotrash sleazer, came with us too. And now he’s in New York, and I just got this e-mail from him and he’s living in my apartment and it’s just weird is all.”

  “Oh,” Suki said, looking confused. “That is weird. But is that all? You look, you know, spooked.”

  “Well, you know my friend Patch? His little sister, Flan—she’s like, so, um, sweet? Like family, you know, and Rob mentioned her in the e-mail. I think he likes her. I asked my friend David to keep an eye on her for me, so … I just, um … I mean, I would feel responsible is all if anything happened to her.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Fourteen.”

  Suki shook her braids off her shoulders and laughed. “Oh, Jonathan, I think she can probably take care of herself. Let’s go. We’ve got lots of things to figure out.”

  Which was pretty much what I should have expected her to say. She grabbed my hand and dragged me out into the city.

  Patch wakes up with Greta

  “Fuck me. What time is it?”

  Patch looked up from the foot of his bed, where he had been sleeping, to see who had spoken. It was Arno, who was leaning against the wall behind the bed. He looked both bored and beat, like he had been half awake for a while. Mickey, lying next to him, snored. On the other side of Patch, Greta was twisted up in a comforter. Her wild, reddish curls were all they could see of her.

  “Hey, dude, you know what time it is?” he repeated, seeing Patch stir.

  Patch stood up and went into the bathroom for a piss. When he came back out, he picked up the alarm clock and said, “It’s eight o’clock, dude. You’ve been up this early possibly never.”

  “Easy for you to say. You’re exempt from survival hell. We have to leave at, like, ten o’clock.”

  They smiled at each other faintly, both savoring Patch’s absurd luck. “True. That sucks man,” Patch said. Then the slow pieces of the here-and-now started coming together in his head. Instead of deciding what to do about Jonathan the night before, they’d all stayed up playing drinking games. Patch’s head hurt pretty bad, and he didn’t even have to take a survival test. “When do you guys have to be there?”

  Greta pushed back the covers and turned toward him. The guys—Mickey, who had been snoring until that very moment, included—all sat up and looked at her then, but she appeared to still be wearing her tank top and conservative boy-short underwear. They all looked away quickly to disguise the blatant stare. Greta cleared her throat and said, “We have to report on deck by nine thirty.”

  Patch nodded. Then he said remorsefully, “We never figured out what we should do about Jonathan.”

  “Or Suki,” Mickey and Arno said at the same time.

  “Or Suki.”

  “I really hope they’ll be able to figure out that they should get to Barcelona,” Greta said.

  “Not so sure J will, actually,” Arno said.

  “Well, the only way to get in touch with them is e-mail, really, and the Internet was still down last night. We could go check, I guess …”

  After a discussion of who should prepare for the survival test (since Greta, Mickey and Arno constituted the remaining members of their group), Mickey and Arno gallantly volunteered to do the boring work of packing their “Survival Kit,” and Patch and Greta went to try to send a message to Jonathan.

  The lower levels of the ship were abuzz with the other Ocean Term studen
ts getting ready for the survival test. As they passed by, the guys nodded at Patch with a sort of distanced respect, and the girls shot weird, competitive glances at Greta. She seemed not to notice them. When they got to the computer lab, they saw a big OUT OF ORDER sign on the door.

  “Shoot,” Greta muttered as they tried to think what else they could do.

  “Maybe Suki called her parents. Do you think we should try and, I don’t know, call them?”

  “Um … they’re sort of unavailable right now. Why? Are Jonathan’s parents really strict?”

  That made Patch smile a little, because strict wasn’t really how he’d describe any of their parents. “Nah. She’d be cool—J’s mom, I mean—I just can’t remember her phone number.”

  “You don’t know your own best friend’s phone number?”

  “Yeah, I don’t really spend that much time remembering stuff like that. I mean, I know his cell number by heart, and the rest of my guys’. But I guess I haven’t called him at home in a really long time …”

  “Oh.”

  “I guess we could try to find his mom, though.”

  “How are we going to figure out her number?”

  Patch shrugged. “He might have that written down in his room somewhere?”

  “Okay, let’s go look.”

  When they got to Jonathan’s cabin, they saw that it was spare and pristine as ever. Definitely nobody had slept there the night before. Patch walked in first, and Greta closed the door behind them.

  “Check for his Palm Pilot. I’m sure he brought it with him.”

  They began looking around for it. There were a pile of papers on the bed, and Patch started going through them. After a few minutes Patch decided they should give up, and he almost got it out of his mouth, too, when he was interrupted by a loud knock and a voice at the door.

  “Jonathan?!”

  Greta and Patch froze, and stared at each other. A very long moment passed and then Patch called out, in an affected voice, “Ye-es?” It sounded more girly then he’d meant for it to.

  The voice continued: “Jonathan, it’s Stephanie. Are you okay? The test is today, you know, and your group members say they haven’t been in contact with you about it since yesterday morning. They’re worried that they need to find a last-minute replacement for you, since the other member of their group is Patch and we all know our hero will be judging instead of competing. Are you still planning on taking the test?”

  Patch moved closer to the door, and continued in the ridiculous falsetto that sounded nothing like Jonathan.

  “I feel really, really bad. Like, um, seasick. I do want to do a survival, but I’m just not … emotionally prepared for it. And I don’t think I have the right … clothes. Is it too late to sign up for the written exam?”

  They heard a twittering laugh through the door. Patch watched as Greta’s eyes involuntarily rolled to the back of her head.

  “Well, Jonathan, I have to admit I was sort of expecting it. I’ll sign you up for the written. You just get your rest.”

  “Thanks, Steph …”

  “What?”

  “Uh, thanks, Ms. Rayder.”

  “No problem, Jonathan.”

  Greta and Patch crept to the door and listened to her footsteps descend down the hall. When they were sure she was gone Patch laughed.

  “I didn’t know I had any of him in me.”

  “You really don’t,” Greta said.

  The old keep-an-eye-on-her-for-me

  From: grobman@hotmail.com

  To: jonathanm@gissing.edu

  Hey dude. Got your e-mail. Bummer about missing the boat. That sucks, man. Yeah I know Rob’s not so good at English. But he’s pretty cool. Since we’ve been hanging out it’s been a really good time. For once I feel like I’m good with girls. Its weird it’s like I meet them, and I can talk to them and they seem to want to talk to me. And you’re not going to believe this, but we went to this wild Eastern European dance place in Chinatown and it was this wild crowd and everybody was dancing and, this is the weird part, I danced too. It felt good. February was there and after that we went to the Floods and hung out some more. That’s how Rob met Flan, it wasn’t like he just called her up, so stop writing in all caps, okay? I saw your mom again. She’s had a lot of sessions with my dad and she seems really good. Actually, she seems really manic but maybe that’s good. She said she’s decorating the Fradys and that they gave her all this freedom to do whatever, which is cool. Basketball’s sort of ruining my life, but at least it keeps me out of trouble. Ha ha. Anyway though, I understand how you feel about Rob. And don’t worry man: I’ll keep an eye on Flan for you. See you, David.

  P.S. Don’t worry about that bed thing. After we went out, we all went to the Floods and watched movies in Flan’s bed but it wasn’t anything you know dirty. Don’t trip.

  Trouble follows me around

  Of course my mom would be impossible to reach at a time like this.

  I had been walking around all afternoon with Suki, and getting increasingly irritated by her self-consciously sassy attitude toward everything. I tried to talk as little as possible, which seemed to fit her fine since she evidently loved talking. She was still wearing the funny short shorts and the floppy hat, which I’m not even going to go into.

  Ordinarily, this would be a really lovely kind of day, but I was so stressed out about how I was going to get myself out of this situation, and also about Flan, and what Rob was doing in Flan’s bed, that I couldn’t even really enjoy it.

  We finally found the ferry for Barcelona, and when Suki came back from talking to the ticket agent she said that we had just missed one ferry, and that there was another one at eight. The tickets were sixty euros each, so Suki’s cash wasn’t going to get us on the boat. We decided to go buy a phone card and call my mom and try to get her to wire us money quickly, so we could get on the boat to Barcelona that night.

  But my mom wasn’t picking up at home, or on her cell, or on her work cell. And when I tried my dad’s house in London, the butler just said that he and Lady Suttwilley were in the Cotswolds, staying in a bed-and-breakfast that didn’t have a phone, and wouldn’t be reachable for another ten days. So it was my mom or nothing. It had to have been like three o’clock when I started trying to call her, and it was seriously like six or something when we finally trudged back to the hostel sort of stunned and without any clue what we could do next. My throat was sore from pleading so much on her various voicemails.

  And that was when I got this weird e-mail from David, which was comforting in theory but was, in actuality, so not comforting. It seemed like maybe he was mad about getting kicked off the trip or something, which made me feel bad, but there was nothing I could do from where I was right then so I just e-mailed him like ten times asking where the fuck my mom was.

  Suki and I sat in the hostel’s Internet room for hours. Suki stared at the cracks in the wall and braided and unbraided her hair, and I quit and reopened my e-mail account about twenty thousand times, hoping for some better news. It goes without saying that I hadn’t gotten anything from Flan.

  And that’s when some big mean dudes tried to pick a fight with me.

  “Aye!”

  I turned around and saw a huge dude wearing a fishing hat and a gigantic pack on his back. “Aye! Do you think you own this place, mate?” His voice was loud, and he had an Australian accent. We peeked around him. It seemed that there were a whole bunch of other Australians waiting behind him. “How about giving somebody else a go?”

  “Look, we’re in sort of a situation, and it’s imperative that I keep checking my e-mail, okay? So just wait for one of the other computers, and we can all be friends.”

  “Impair your ass! Who do you think you are?” the Australian muttered. Another one of them took a look at us and said, “New Yorkers—they think they own the whole world.”

  “Actually, I’m not from—” Suki was cut off by the Australian front man stepping aggressively toward us. The guy was really i
n my personal space now. As I contemplated a way to explain this to him without sounding snippy, the guy reached between Suki and me and quit my e-mail program.

  “That was unnecessary!” Suki said.

  “Not as unnecessary as pretty boy playing on the Internet for two hours.”

  “Cool it. The kid’s finished when he’s finished.”

  The Australian froze, then looked over our shoulders to see where the voice had come from. “Says who?”

  We all looked. Smiling maniacally, and sitting in an elaborate, cross-legged swami pose at the computer next to us, was the Savage. The tribal tattoo body paint was mostly wiped off now, but there was still some on his face, and he was still wearing the loincloth and crown of twigs. He was even taller and skinnier than I had realized the other day when I’d found Suki yelling at him. “Says I!” he exclaimed dramatically, and bugged out his eyes.

  The Australians were evidently impressed. They stepped back and made gestures with their hands that seemed to indicate that I could take as long as I wanted.

  “Um, thanks,” I said.

  “Yeah, sure,” the guy said with a bored American voice. “Those guys are dicks.”

  “Oh, my God, it’s the Orientalist,” Suki said.

  “Uh, are you on your way to work?” I asked, hoping that if I spoke soon enough the Savage would ignore Suki and maybe not realize that she had been the one screaming at him in the street the yesterday. The Savage looked down at himself and cackled. “No, coming from, actually.”

  “Do you live here?”

  “Nah, I’ve been traveling all over for a lot of years. I’m from West Orange, New Jersey, originally, but I’m sort of a wanderer, if you know what I mean.” The Savage caught Suki staring, so he added: “This is just something I do for spare coin, little lady, so don’t you worry your pretty little head about it.”

  “I’m Jonathan,” I said, again trying to distract him from Suki, who I’m sure was warming up for some words about that “little lady” comment.