Take It Off

by J. Minter

  “You’re bangin’,” I said, and kissed her ear.

  “Hey, thanks. You aren’t bad yourself.”

  “So, let’s get breakfast.”

  We walked through the train station, which was very modern and cavernous and flooded with mid-morning light. Arrival and departure announcements echoed through the space. There were kids with backpacks sitting on the floor, sleeping or reading tattered paperbacks.

  There was a café near the entrance, and we ordered pastries and café con leche. Suki had taken forty euro out from an ATM and bought our train tickets with her bank card. She’d also bought a deck of cards, a pack of Gitanes, and an International Herald Tribune, even though I’d reminded her how boring it was when we got it in Mallorca.

  We read the paper over each other’s shoulders and then played gin. Suki had her big glasses on, and she looked very ladylike while she smoked her cigarettes. The whole scene had the illusion of some remote, glamorous time, when people were ambivalent about everything and drifted from one country to another. Eventually they called our train, and we took our bags and went down to the platform.

  We found our seats in one of the second-class cabins. The seats were all little and upholstered with fuzzy red cloth, and the baggage rack above our heads was tarnished brass. Everything felt very retro in there, too. We settled into our seats and Suki put her head on my shoulder. Other passengers came in, and pretty soon the car had fallen silent in anticipation of the trip.

  Everyone was very quiet as the train lurched into motion and began speeding out of the station. I thought about Flan, and how my urgency to get back to New York and to her had subsided since last night. I would deal with that when it came, I guess. Outside the window, the city had given way to country and there were hay bales and fields as far as I could see. We would be in Paris soon enough, and then to London, and we would go on to New York from there.

  “Do you wish you could go back? For your watch?” Suki asked.

  “A little bit. But maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s bad … luck.”

  Suki laughed and said, “You know what, Jonathan, I think you and I are going to get along famously.”

  “Yes,” I said, “wouldn’t it be pretty to think so?”

  And with that, Suki snorted at me.

  Mickey and Arno do some healing

  “Yeah, love you too, Mom,” Arno said into the phone, rolling his eyes at Mickey. They were sitting across a tea table in the upstairs drawing room of the Lober-Luccis’ London town house. Mickey snickered, then took a very affectedly snooty sip of his tea, slurping it at the last minute. “Yup,” Arno was saying, and “Thanks,” and “I know it wasn’t my fault, Mom. But that means a lot.” Finally, he put down the phone and let out a sigh of relief.

  “So she let you off the hook?” Mickey asked, shaking his head in mock disapproval.

  “Yeah, looks like it.” Arno smiled. “I just exaggerated how desperate I was in Barcelona, and her heart went out to me.”

  “Nice. I wonder if that’ll work with mine.”

  Arno looked at him seriously and said, “You should do it sooner than later. I think our parents are all totally still guilting over … you know.”

  “Nah. You’re probably right, but I’m not quite ready to deal.” Mickey picked up one of the tiny watercress sandwiches from the tea table and put it into his mouth. Chewing, he said, “So where are these people?”

  “I don’t know, man. But let’s hope they don’t show up. They’ll probably just want dirt on my parents if they do.”

  When Arno had called the Lober-Luccis from the Barcelona airport yesterday morning, they had told him he could absolutely stay with them in London for a few days. After all, the Wildenburgers had known them since the early eighties, when Marianne Lober and Carlo Lucci were just ambitious young things on the London art scene. They had said that they might be in and out to their country estate, however, and also that they had a few little cocktail engagements planned over the next week. “I do hope I get to see you, though, darling …,” Marianne Lober-Lucci had said, as she passed the phone to her assistant to give Arno directions to the house.

  When they arrived late last night by cab, the head maid ushered them upstairs and drew baths for them and got them settled into one of the upstairs bedrooms. When they went out for a walk the next afternoon (to eat a lunch that consisted largely of beer), she had called cheerily after them, “Don’t forget teatime! Mrs. Lucci will be so upset if I don’t make your tea.” As they walked away, she had added, “If she comes back this evening …”

  Arno got up and walked about the room. The walls were painted dark red, and there were several impressionist period paintings on the walls. “You want to take a look around the house?”

  Mickey followed him out of the drawing room and into the grand hall. They wandered through the private galleries, which were filled with Rembrandts and Titians and other famous artists. When they got to the contemporary gallery, they saw a big, abstract chrome sculpture in the center of the room, lit from above. It looked like a woman bursting out of the ground, sort of. It was an early Ricardo Pardo.

  “I think that’s one of your dad’s,” Arno said.

  “Yeah, but it must be from a long time ago. He hasn’t made anything that looks like that in a long time.” Mickey walked around it, looking at the art that hung on the far walls. “Hey, isn’t this your fam?”

  Arno came over and looked at the canvas Mickey was pointing toward. It was done in a photo-realist style, with bright colors. It showed Arno’s father standing behind his mother, whose arm draped protectively over a ten-year-old Arno. They all had placid expressions on their faces, and looked perfectly, beautifully, boringly real. Except that the artist had given them all animal hands: Arno had goat’s hooves, and his mother had cat’s paws, and his father had hawk’s talons. The effect was surreal.

  “Leland Morton. I remember sitting for that painting. It was so boring. We had to sit for him every day for weeks, and he was such a perfectionist. It sucked. And we had just met Patch, and you guys were all over at his house playing video games …” Arno paused for a long breath, “… and I thought you guys had replaced me.”

  “You do look pissed.” Mickey laughed.

  Arno laughed, too, and said, “Yeah, I think I was thinking, Fuck all of them if they leave me behind, you know?”

  “Aw, we’d never do that!”

  “I know,” Arno said, adding, “Shut up,” for good measure.

  They heard voices in the hall, and two people carrying martini glasses burst into the room.

  “Oh! Arno, you’re here!” It was Marianne Lober-Lucci, and a guy who was a lot younger than her husband. Her skin was very tan and tight, and she wore a clingy black long-sleeved dress and lots of gold jewelry. She had that same creepily preserved look that Arno’s mother had. She came over and hugged Arno and kissed him on either cheek. “My, aren’t you handsome. And you must be Ricardo Pardo’s boy.” She kissed Mickey’s cheeks, too. “Meet Rafik Merleau, the architect.”

  The guys all shook hands.

  “Thanks for letting us stay, Marianne. It’s really gracious of you,” Arno said, turning on his full charm.

  “Of course, you delicious thing. Now, what are you two doing up here? You must come play with the grown-ups.”

  As they walked down the back stairs, toward the chatter and noise of an elegant party, Mrs. Lober-Lucci called back, “Get yourselves some drinks, darlings. And then I want to hear all about your parents, Arno Wildenburger.”

  Arno never responds to e-mail he doesn’t understand

  From: grobman@hotmail.com

  To: arnow@gissing.edu

  Yo Arno. Thanks for keeping in touch, man, that’s really sweet. Just kidding, things have actually been really cool here. I’ve been having a lot of fun with Rob and some girls. Anyway, I was wondering if I could get some tips from you, about, you know, girls. I think I have a real crush right now, but I don’t want to blow it the way I always do.
Ha ha. Anyway, any like pointers on how to keep her interested, but not like overwhelm her, would be appreciated. I’ll see you when you’re back in NYC, right? Later, David.

  The dirt on Barker

  The party downstairs was just the sort of understated event the Wildenburgers might have thrown in their Chelsea town house. A mix of punky young artists and established, well-dressed art dealers mingled among servers who passed out raw tuna appetizers and fine wine. A piano was tinkling in the next room over. Marianne Lober-Lucci walked Arno and Mickey around the room. Mickey found an out pretty quickly, and wandered the room eating and drinking things. Arno was swept up into the tenth explanation for the party that evening.

  “Yes,” Marianne was saying, “we love the new gallery Rafik has designed for us. I wonder if you subscribe to the theory that art is better seen in a gallery that is in itself a piece of art rather than in a blank room, as I do.”

  “Well, it certainly sells better,” a man joked. Everybody twittered.

  Marianne took Arno’s arm and walked him around the room some more.

  A crowd had gathered around Mickey, who was holding a beer and gesticulating wildly. He was telling the story of their expulsion from the ship.

  “No!” Marianne said, when he was finishing up. “Roger Barker …? Why, Carlo knew him at Oxford. So that’s what the old bastard is up to.”

  “You knew Barker back in the day?” Mickey asked in disbelief.

  “Oh, yes, he was always very pretentious and none of us liked him much. He’s tried to do all sorts of things, you know, even tried breaking into the art scene for a while. But educational cruises! How middle brow. Wait till Carlo hears this. He is absolutely going to die.”

  Everyone laughed and drank some more. Mickey and Arno were forced to tell the story again and again, and it became more extravagant every time, with Barker becoming fatter and more evil with each telling.

  Later on, Marianne started recalling the Wildenburgers of the eighties, and then Arno and Mickey drifted away. Someone turned the music louder, and the crowd sort of shifted in age and style. The guys found themselves sitting on a couch, next to an artsy-looking girl wearing a designer dress with big combat boots and a ratty scarf, and another girl who had buckteeth and was dressed very proper, like she had just come from a tennis lesson. She was probably one of the collectors’ daughters. They talked about what kids did in London, and then Arno whispered to Mickey, “We’re going to have a good time tonight, and tomorrow we are definitely getting on that plane to New York.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And when we get there, we are never leaving Manhattan again.”

  “Gotcha.”

  I am that close to home

  I knocked on the door, fingering my dad’s card. When he’d given it to me, I’d thought it was strange and kind of cold for my dad to give me, his kid, his card, even if it was his personal home address one. “You’ll always have a home here,” he’d said, but that’s not really the kind of thing my dad says, so it sounded really forced and cheesy. But I had to admit now that it was a good thing, however weird, because we never would have found the house otherwise. Of course, it was the grandest on the block. I knocked louder.

  “I think there’s a bell,” Suki said after a few minutes. “Right there.”

  The weather had been steadily declining, and when we reached London we were met by driving rain.

  “Oh,” I said, feeling more than a little silly. I rang the bell, and a few moments later the door swung back.

  The long whiskered face of an old man peered out at us.

  “Yes?” he asked in a crisp British accent.

  “Is Lady Suttwilley, or her, um, her husband in?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Oh. Well, I’m sorry we’re meeting under these circumstances. But I’m Jonathan, PI … Lady Suttwilley’s new stepson.”

  The old man looked at me skeptically. He was wearing a plaid vest and very expertly cut black suit pants, and though he had obviously been a tall, lean man when he was younger, he now had a paunch visible beneath the vest. Or possibly accentuated by it. Finally he said, “You don’t look like Jonathan.”

  I looked down at myself. I was a little rumpled. My bag, which at this point was faded from sun and crusted with sand, looked like a backpacker’s; my lips were chapped; and my shirt had stretched so that it looked about two sizes too big for me. I guess he meant I didn’t look like the Jonathan that had been described to him. And I guess that sort of made me happy. “Yeah, you’re right. But I’ve just spent I don’t even know how many days and nights in trains and boats and hostels, and even one night on the beach. I just spent thirty-six hours riding in the second-class car of a slow train that stopped in every village in France. So I don’t really look like me at all. But my dad lives here, and I’m pretty sure he’d want me to stay. Even if he did see what I looked like now.” I handed the old man my dad’s card, and he looked at it.

  “You sure you’re not one of Monsieur Rob’s friends, then?” he asked, arching an already very arched, very gray eyebrow.

  “No, not at all,” I said quickly. As soon it came out of my mouth, I realized it probably wasn’t the tone to take. “I mean, yes, I know him a little. From the honeymoon. On Lady Suttwilley’s yacht. But we only met like a month ago.”

  “And mademoiselle, she’s not one of Monsieur Rob’s friends?”

  “No. This is Suki. A … friend of mine.”

  “Very good. I am Lady Suttwilley’s butler. Forgive me if I was rude; Monsieur Rob’s friends always muck up the house.” He ushered us in and shut the door behind us. The front rooms were filled with mirrors and great china vases stuffed with irises. He walked quickly through the opening halls of the house, talking to us over his shoulder. “… for some reason, they like to urinate on the family heirlooms. The girls especially. No offense, miss, I knew from the start you weren’t one of them.”

  “Thank you,” Suki said happily.

  “Now, you both need to get cleaned up. And then we’ll feed you. This is actually very well-timed, because I haven’t had a thing to do since Lady Suttwilley and your father went away.”

  “Where are they, exactly …?” I ventured.

  The butler stopped and turned slowly around. “Young man,” he said impatiently, “I know in your country young people are involved in everything a family does. But in this part of the world we are old-fashioned, and we like to keep some privacy. And for this reason, there are still some vestiges of romance. I have served Lady Suttwilley since her first marriage, and I have never once betrayed her hideaway in the Cotswolds.”

  With that, he turned on his heel, and led us through a complex series of servants’ staircases until we arrived in a hallway.

  “Now, this is the young monsieur’s wing. You can stay in his room while you are here. And you may stay as long as you like, and then I will have an excuse to make my famous welsh rarebit. I hope you like welsh rarebit. Now.” He disappeared into a room, and reappeared with two robes. He handed one to each of us. “There is monsieur’s room, and next door is a guest room for mademoiselle. Take your time cleaning up. And when you are ready, come down for supper.”

  He turned and was gone.

  “I feel like I’m in a movie.” Suki giggled. “You are so not related to these people.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said. “I’m really not.”

  I get a little peek into my new stepbrother’s life

  I finished bathing first and I went out into Rob’s room. It was eerily like my room, very spare and muted. He had a very tricked-out vinyl setup, and like a million records in a very complicated shelf contraption. His desk had a very different feel, though, polished and antique and really, really expensive. I sat down, and thought I’d try my mom again, just for good measure.

  Of course she didn’t pick up her cell or our house phone. I thought about calling the Flood house, but I had been feeling so sort of ballsy and come-what-may, I felt like a big, hard talk w
ith Flan right now would just be really misplaced. For a minute I thought about calling David, but his last e-mail seemed so judgmental. And at this point, I just wanted to get home without anyone’s help, and I knew if I got in contact with any of my friends, there would be a big rescue mission and everything would go on as before. So I sat at Rob’s desk and started going through drawers. For the record, this is never a good idea.

  First drawer: boring. Pens, ink cartridges, that sort of thing. Second drawer: nothing I wouldn’t have guessed. Lighters, various smoking paraphernalia, probably bought in Amsterdam or some other Eurotrash mecca. Third drawer: (seemingly harmless) a big stack of snapshots. But as I began to go through them I realized that they were all of Rob … with girls. Not the same girl, or two or three girls, but lots and lots of different girls. And some of the pictures I wouldn’t have felt comfortable showing Flan. And all of a sudden, I was thinking of Flan again. Fourth drawer: underwear, women’s, lots of it. Was he, like, some kind of panty thief perv, or had girls just given them to him? And if they had, how does one go about asking for something like that? And then I stopped asking those questions, because the fact was, he was in New York with Flan Flood, and I was in London.

  This is why I should never leave Manhattan.

  Somebody knocked at the door, so I slammed the drawer shut and turned around.

  “Jonathan,” Suki called through the door, “Are you decent?”

  “Hold on,” I said. I grabbed a T-shirt and jeans out of Rob’s closet and put them on. Surprisingly, they fit really well. “Come in.”

  Suki came in and threw herself down on Rob’s bed. She was wearing the sundress from Mallorca, and once again she had somehow gotten it to look clean and wrinkle-free. “This house is unbelievable,” she said. “You’re like gentry.”