Take It Off

by J. Minter

  “Um …”

  “Can I come in?” she asked, pushing past him. “I mean, this whole canceling of day trips is a bummer, but I think it’ll give us some time to hang around … in bed, and … Oh, I …” Stephanie stopped talking when she saw Greta pulling Patch’s sheets over herself. “Hi, Greta,” she said, sounding a little stunned and a lot confused. Greta’s hair was messed up, too. It was definitely bed hair.

  “Hi, Stephanie,” Greta said.

  Stephanie looked at Patch for an explanation. He shrugged.

  “Patch, can you explain to me why …,” Stephanie began, her mouth hanging open in disbelief.

  “Um, Steph—”

  “I mean, what is that little girl doing in your bed!”

  “I think you better go.”

  Something broke across Stephanie’s face right then, like she might cry. She threw the bouquet of flowers at Greta. They hit the wall behind her, and then broke apart and fell around her on the blankets.

  “Oh, no you don’t!” Stephanie shrieked. “Don’t think you can just dog me. There are rules against this sort of thing, you know. Any girl found sleeping in a boy’s cabin or vice versa will be kicked off the ship, and this looks pretty goddamned incriminating to me. I’m gonna send you where all your friends went, except somewhere worse. Way worse.”

  “Steph,” Patch said. He was frustrated, but not quite worried yet.

  “Don’t Steph me. We’re over, we’re over!”

  “Um, I don’t think, technically, we were ever together …”

  “Oh, yeah? Pack your shit! You’re out of here!”

  “Ms. Rayder?” They both turned and looked at Greta. She had stood up, and she was wrapped in a sheet with her reddish hair falling down her back. A few pale pink roses fell off the bed as she stepped toward them. She held up a card that she had taken from the bouquet. “This might be a teensy-weensy bit more incriminating. You want me to read? Okay. ‘Dear Patch. I’ve really enjoyed the blossoming of our friendship, and now I know I want my flower to blossom for you. Let’s have an early Valentine’s. Be mine, xo Stephanie.’” Greta giggled. “Incriminating, and cheesy.”

  Stephanie stamped her foot and put her arms over her big chest. She looked either like she was about to start spitting flame or pouting.

  “I think you’d better go,” Patch said.

  “Well …” Stephanie’s lips were trembling as she attempted some kind of last word. “Well … neither of you can expect any college recommendations from me!” She fled the room, slamming the door behind her.

  Patch looked at Greta and smiled. The sun coming through the porthole lit up her hair in this really beautiful way. He moved toward her and pulled her down into the sheets with him. They rolled around and got hopelessly twisted up and burst out laughing.

  “You, I’m not letting go of,” Patch said, and then he smiled.

  A heart-wrenching beachside reunion

  Angelina and her friends wound their way through the city like a charmed circus troupe, with Angelina as the leader. She carried a white parasol, and as she walked she rested her arm around Mickey’s shoulder. The rest of the group were dressed in their flowing, colorful bohemian threads, and they carried picnic baskets and blankets and big umbrellas. When they reached the beach, they walked along it for a long time, until they found a relatively uninhabited place, and then they set up. Everyone smoked up, and then Mickey ran around entertaining them with cartwheels and back-flips.

  One guy had brought a guitar, and he started playing an intricate flamencolike tune. A picnic lunch of olives and aged Manchego and red wine was passed around, and Mickey started feeling warm and lazy and good. He squirmed his way in between Isabel and Susana, Angelina’s two younger sisters. They looked like mini versions of her, skinny and tan with droopy dark eyes and long hair that fell below their waists.

  Other friends came in from the city, and Angelina kissed them three times on the cheek hello and insisted that they meet Mickey. One of them was wearing a huge crown of twigs on his head. Because of the crown, his blond hair, and long, thin features, he looked like Christ.

  “That’s Rhett,” Angelina told Mickey, by way of explanation. “He’s a performance artist.”

  “Oh.” Mickey shook the guy’s hand, then rested back between Isabel and Susana.

  That was when he saw the lone figure, sort of stumbling down the beach. The guy was dragging a suitcase behind him, and his hair was messed up, and he looked like he hadn’t had anything to eat or drink in a while. Mickey sat up and called out to him.

  The guy looked around blearily and dropped his case. It was definitely Arno, although he looked scrubbier than pretty much ever. Mickey was so happy to see him, he forgot they were fighting at all. He ran over and gave him a rambunctious hug, knocking him to the ground.

  “What happened to you? You look like shit!” Mickey yelled even though he was on top of Arno now.

  “They threw me out of the hotel I was supposed to stay in, and they stole my money,” Arno croaked.

  Mickey remembered how angry he had been, but Arno seemed so pathetic that it was hard to keep it up. He dragged him over to the picnic and introduced him to everybody. The girls immediately pulled Arno down onto the blankets and began feeding him with their hands and combing his hair with their fingers.

  Once he was feeling revived, Arno went with Mickey for a walk down to the water.

  “How did you find these people?”

  Mickey was drawing a blank, so he just said, “Through Angelina.”

  “She’s hot.”

  Mickey gave him a look.

  “Sorry, man,” Arno said. He hung his head, and Mickey knew he meant it.

  “Yeah, be careful, anyway. She’s a big flirt and she’s got a boyfriend.”

  “Oh. Anyway, I can’t believe I left you for twentyfour hours and already you have new friends.”

  Mickey rubbed his eyes. “Twenty-four hours? Is that it? I feel like I’ve been in that house for days.”

  “House?”

  “Yeah, we’ll stay there tonight. And then what do you say we split? I’m digging this whole Barcelona scene. But I feel like if I don’t get out soon I’ll be stuck here forever, drinking bitter coffee and having serious conversations about flirting or some shit for the rest of my life.”

  They both laughed. “I feel you. You just get us to the airport, and we can go stay at the Lober-Luccis’ in London until our flight back to New York. They’re these art dealers that my family has know forever. Sounds like a plan?”

  “Sounds awesome.”

  “And Mickey?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I really am, you know, sorry.”

  “Shut up.” Mickey put his arm around Arno and they walked back to Angelina’s party.

  When the sun started going down, they all went back to the house and got very drunk on red wine.

  Yeah, I slept on a beach once

  Suki and I watched the party at woeful distance. They were a bunch of hippie types, having a picnic on a beach, and they all looked like they were having fun. Plus, they were eating, and at this point we were pretty hungry. There were two guys that looked like my friends who came near us for a few seconds—a tall handsome one and a short stocky one with a shaved head—and that made me want to be a part of their fun even more. The Arno clone was pretty disheveled, though, and the Mickey one was pretty mellow. Both things were sort of opposite of the real Arno and Mickey, so I decided I must be suffering from hunger delusions, and I kept low until they started packing up to leave.

  When we were sure they were all gone, we ran down to where they had been sitting and looked through their scraps. This is something that really bothers me, and something I hope I never do again. But for the record, yes, there was a time and place where I went digging through other people’s garbage for dinner. And it was a good thing we did, because they had left some cheese and bread and wine and olives, and also a blanket, which we really needed if Suki was serious about slee
ping on the beach. Everything had a familiar smell to it, too, which I decided after a while had to be pot.

  We dusted the sand off everything and set ourselves up. Then we tore into our salvaged meal, which was actually surprisingly delicious. I have since realized that this was more because I was starving than anything else, but still.

  “I wonder who those people were,” Suki said wistfully.

  “Freaking hippies, from the looks of it.”

  “Wouldn’t you love to live like that someday? I mean, spend all day at the beach playing music and just talking about life.”

  This is the weird thing about Suki, I was realizing. She could be totally sarcastic and bitchy one minute, and then super hokey the next. I didn’t get it, so I just said, “Yeah …” kind of slowly.

  “I’m sorry that we missed the Savage again,” Suki said. “I feel really bad that I didn’t recognize him. I know you really want your watch back, but maybe it’s better you not get it. Like, maybe it’s bad juju or something.”

  I couldn’t believe that she’d used the word “juju,” so I just said, as nicely as possible, “It’s not like anything good has happened to us while I haven’t had it.”

  “That’s not entirely true.”

  “Suki, I don’t mean to be rude. But what the fuck are you talking about?”

  She smiled her vague little smile, and said, “Oh … I’ll tell you in a minute. But first, I want to take a swim.”

  It was dark by now, and the full moon cast a long reflection on the water.

  “No way.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s dark.”

  “So?”

  “It’s cold.”

  “It is not.”

  “Well, I don’t want to.”

  “Oh come on. You would hate for me to be right, wouldn’t you? About dudes being the ones who just want to be comfortable and the ladies being the brave ones.”

  “Okay, it is so not about that.”

  “What’s it about then?”

  I sighed, and figured I might as well tell her. I mean, I had just eaten garbage with her—I could probably be a little vulnerable. “You know the trip I took before Ocean Term? The one on my step-mother’s yacht—”

  She snorted when I said “yacht.” I ignored her.

  “Well, we were swimming in this little cove near this Venezuelan fishing town. And I swam out really far, and it was really deep, and it felt great. And then I felt this really sharp pain in my leg, and I looked down and I saw this purple blob swimming away. And then I started puffing up and I couldn’t breathe and they had to take me to this really filthy hospital in the middle of nowhere … that’s another story. But I’m not going back in the water. There are things out there.”

  Suki laughed. “Well, I’m going for a swim. And if you don’t come with me, I might drown, and then you’ll never know my secret.”

  I paused. “I wish you wouldn’t.”

  “Well, I’m going.”

  “I’ll put my toes in with you. But that’s it.”

  I walked down with her and I rolled my jeans up to my knees. We walked out a little way; the water was shallow and pretty warm from the day of sun. Suki took her dress off and threw it back on shore, and so I did the same with my shirt, since it seemed like if she took something off, I should, too. She waded farther into the water in her underwear, and then she dove under. She didn’t come up for a long time, and then I felt two hands around my ankles and before I knew what was happening I was under water. At first I was in total shock, and then I was worried about my jeans. But when I came up for air, Suki had her arms around my neck, and she kissed me. It was a really soft, wet kiss. And even though I should have been thinking only of Flan, touching somebody felt really nice and good after all these days of stress. So I kissed her back, and when she swam away I followed her and we swam around each other for a long time in the moonlight.

  When we came out of the water, we toweled off with the big fluffy Miramar towels. We lay down on the blanket and looked up at the sky. The whole city of Barcelona was probably out having a great time behind us, but we didn’t care. We looked up at the stars and started telling each other things. We talked for a long time, and when it was really late and we were both sleepy, she asked if I wanted to hear what her surprise was.

  “I thought that was it, when you kissed me,” I said, leaning over and putting my hand on her stomach.

  “Yeah, I guess I have another one.”

  “Okay, shoot.”

  “Well, you know how I was really shocked that my card worked at the hostel yesterday?”

  “Uh-huh …”

  “I found out why. When I checked my balance at the Internet café today, I found out that I have this thing called checking plus. It means that I can overdraw my account by five hundred dollars, and not be penalized. Which means that we have a way to get to your dad’s house in London!”

  I shot up and pulled my hand away from Suki. This was a surprise, and not a very nice one.

  “So what are we doing on the beach, then?!”

  Suki looked hurt, and she stuck her lower lip out.

  “And how stupid are you not to have realized this four days ago?!”

  I stood up really pissed. But then that moment passed, and I just felt physically wrecked by all the up and down emotions. It was intense. And then I thought that maybe Suki was right. Maybe I was trying to be all safe and warm, and what I really needed in my life was someone who surprised me. Everything seemed new right then, like I’d never seen any of it before, and my life could be totally different from this moment on.

  So I knelt down, and I told her I was sorry, and I kissed her. And then we started kissing more. It wasn’t, like, I’ve-wanted-this-so-long, now-we’re-a-couple kissing. It felt sort of like an experiment, and that seemed okay.

  I was on a beach in Spain with a girl who totally pissed me off. We were making out, on a full-moon night, with our toes in the sand, and I felt like a totally different person, and that feeling was really freaking good.

  A daring escape

  “Psssstttttt!” Arno hissed, trying to be as quiet as possible and still wake up Mickey. The big central room in Angelina’s house was filled with ornate couches and chairs and big velvet pillows. There were exotic plants, and really old-looking paintings on the walls. Many of the people he’d met at the picnic the day before had come home with them, and they had fallen asleep right there in the living room, amongst full ashtrays and empty wine bottles. Mickey had fallen asleep with his head in Angelina’s lap, and Angelina, who was snoring softly in her sleep, was resting against a big red and gold pillow. Arno shook Mickey until his eyes opened.

  “Where are we?” Mickey asked, a little too loudly.

  “We’re still in Angelina’s,” Arno whispered back

  Mickey bolted up. Angelina stirred in her sleep, but didn’t seem to wake up. “We’ve got to get out of here. I can feel my will crumbling with every passing moment.”

  “Uh, where’d you leave your stuff?” Arno laughed.

  “Can’t remember.”

  “Think.”

  “Maybe by the front door?”

  They went to the foyer, which was cluttered with coats and shoes and umbrellas and unopened mail. One of the partygoers from yesterday was sprawled across the bench in the foyer.

  “There it is!” Mickey said triumphantly. The sleeping guy’s feet were resting on his bag.

  “Hey, isn’t that the performance artist?” Arno said with a hint of derision in his voice.

  “Whatever,” Mickey said as he stealthily lifted the guy’s legs and extracted his bag.

  “How do you think a performance artist got a watch like that?”

  They both looked closer. “I don’t know, maybe they’re all rich.”

  “Isn’t that Tiffany? The kind of watch Jonathan wears?”

  “Weird.”

  “Very weird,” Arno said. He leaned over and slipped it off the sleeping guy’s wrist.r />
  “Yo. These people have been nice to us.”

  “So? And besides, this guy hasn’t.”

  “It’s not Jonathan’s watch. It’s just one like his.”

  “How do you know? Jonathan is lost out there somewhere, too.”

  “Fine.” Mickey could feel a fight coming on, and he was feeling weirdly peaceful. They grabbed their luggage and stepped outside, shutting the door very quietly behind them.

  Outside, the city was just waking up. They walked sleepily out onto the main drag. The street cleaners were coming through, hosing away all the debris of last night’s party. The bread trucks were making their deliveries, and the waiters from the outdoor cafés, in their long white aprons, were setting up the tables for breakfast.

  “Taxí!” Mickey yelled, and one of the passing little white cars shrieked to a halt.

  “It’s the same in Spanish?” Arno groaned, remembering his own difficulties yesterday.

  “Yeah. Except you say it kind of different.” Mickey said. When he got in, he instructed the driver in Spanish to take them to the airport. They both stared out the window as they left the old city for the broad avenues of Barcelona proper. Arno was very relieved not to be stuck alone in a foreign city anymore. And he could tell by how quiet and introspective Mickey was being that he felt that way, too.

  I get all nostalgic for something I never had

  “Ta-da!” Suki cried, throwing her arms up as she emerged from the weird train station ladies’ room.

  We had about an hour to kill before the 11:00 train that would take us from Barcelona to Paris, where we would catch a train to London. I had managed to get my hair pretty much into shape, and my jeans had dried from last night’s dip and actually fit better now. I had given up on making myself looking any cleaner, so I had just been waiting out in front of the bathrooms. Suki had somehow emerged from the bathroom looking pressed and rested and delicious in her pink sundress and her braids carefully redone.