by Jason Starr
It was amazing how her dad could make up these stories; it was even more amazing that he actually believed them.
“I guess anything’s possible,” she said and lay down again.
“But look,” he added, “I just want you to know, there’s nothing to worry about.”
She thought, Yeah, nothing except that some maniac wants to kill you.
He continued, “You might’ve noticed the police car outside. The cops’ll be there all night and all day tomorrow. Twenty-four-hour protection.”
“What about tomorrow night?” Marissa asked.
“They’ll probably be out there for the next night or two. Mom wants to get private security, and maybe, just to make her feel better, we’ll do that. But there’ll probably be an arrest by then and this whole thing will be moot.”
He stood up, and she saw him noticing her bong, which was out in plain view on her desk, right next to her laptop.
“I threw out all my pot,” she said.
This was true. She’d thrown out the dime bag this morning. “So, did you have fun tonight?” her father asked.
She remembered Darren grabbing her arm, her screaming at the cabdriver to pull over.
“Yeah,” she said. “It was okay.”
“That’s good,” he said. Then, after several seconds of awkward silence, he said, “Well, good night,” and left her alone.
Marissa was still thinking about the cab ride, how she’d totally freaked. She stirred for a long time and finally fell asleep.
She dreamed about Prague. She had never actually been there, but she’d seen enough pictures of the cobblestone streets, the buildings, the castle, the Charles Bridge, to know that she was specifically in Prague and not some other Eastern European city. She was happy in the dream, hanging out, playing guitar, getting wasted. So what if she didn’t know how to play a single chord on a guitar—the dream still felt real.
She woke up, disappointed to be in her bed in her house in Forest Hills, and thought, Why not just pack up and go? What was stopping her from doing something radical like that? She had no job, no boyfriend, no responsibilities. And going to Prague would solve two problems: It would get her far away from her parents and all of their problems, and she’d be able to afford to live on her own. She still had about six thousand dollars left over from the trust fund her grandparents—her mom’s parents—had left her. That was two months’ rent at a decent apartment in Manhattan, but in Prague she could probably last six months or longer, especially if she lived in a hostel or some kind of cheap housing.
She went online and Googled “moving to Prague” and viewed pictures of the city—eerily, her dream had been almost dead-on—and read all about relocating, becoming increasingly psyched. She was so sure of her plan that she posted a blog entry entitled i’m moving to prague.
When she went downstairs, her mom was frantically vacuuming. It was obvious that her mom had a lot of manic energy today, but Marissa didn’t know if it was because she was worried about the break-in or if it had to do with her affair with Tony the trainer or both. When Marissa asked her if she was okay she mumbled, “Fine,” but barely made eye contact. Later on, when Marissa went downstairs to do some laundry, her mom was lying on a couch, covered by a shawl, watching a soap opera. With her dad acting so deluded and her mom acting so weird, Marissa felt like she was living with two mental patients.
She couldn’t wait to escape to Prague.
Marissa was still upset about Gabriela but was trying not to think about it too much and was resisting searching for information about the murder. She figured if there was any major news—if there’d been an arrest—her mother or father would let her know, and reading about it would only upset her even more. She also was afraid she’d stumble on some new embarrassing article about her father that would make her want to contemplate a name change. Instead she focused on happier things—Prague and, more immediately, her plans to go out tonight. Tone Def was playing a set at ten at Kenny’s Castaways, and there was no way Marissa was missing it. She was planning to meet Sarah, Hillary, and Hillary’s work friend Beth at the Bitter End for drinks at six. She’d also been exchanging text messages with Lucas, the bass player from Tone Def she’d hooked up with that one time, and Lucas had invited her and her friends to hang out at some place on the Lower East Side after their set. Marissa was looking forward to having a fun night out with her friends and then hopefully hooking up with Lucas, maybe going back to his place.
She left the house looking very sexy, very rock ’n’ roll, in pre-ripped skinny jeans, a low-cut T-shirt showing her angel tattoo, knee-high black leather boots, chunky tribal wood earrings, and dark, gothicky lipstick, which contrasted nicely with her pale skin. She met her friends for drinks, and then a few people wanted to eat, so they went up the block to some cheap Vietnamese place and then over to Kenny’s. Marissa had a nice buzz and didn’t want to lose it, so she suggested doing shots of schnapps to celebrate.
“Celebrate what?” Hillary asked.
“Me moving to Prague,” Marissa said like it was obvious.
Sarah and Beth wouldn’t do the shots, but Marissa and Hillary did. Now Marissa had a really good buzz going; she was even close to being drunk. An annoying retro punk band called I’m Bernadette was finishing their set, and the place was filling up for Tone Def, who had a big cult following. Marissa made her way through the crowd toward the stage, wanting to say hi to Lucas. Naturally there were a lot of Vassar people in the crowd—there was just no escaping them—and she stopped and had a short conversation with Megan, Caitlin, and Alison. Then she spotted Darren, sitting with Zach Harrison at a table off to the right. She couldn’t believe Darren was actually here—what a total asshole. She knew he only came because he’d heard she’d be here; he didn’t even like Tone Def. What was it going to take for him to get the freaking point?
She went past Darren’s table toward the stage, where Tone Def had started setting up. She wanted Darren to see her with Lucas and get jealous as hell.
“Hey, where’s Lucas?” Marissa asked Julien, Tone Def ’s drummer.
“Hey, how you doin’?” Julien said. “Dunno, he’s around somewhere.”
“I think I saw him going into the bathroom,” a guy plugging in an amp said distractedly.
Marissa went to the area outside the men’s room and waited. A few guys went in and out, but there was no sign of Lucas. Meanwhile, there was a line forming outside the women’s room. Marissa didn’t want to go back to the area in front of the stage, knowing Darren would come up to her, so she remained outside the bathroom.
A girl banged on the women’s room door, saying, “Come on already.”
Another couple of minutes went by, then Lucas came out of the bathroom with his arm around this drugged-out girl with long, messy red hair. His jeans were partially unzipped and her lipstick was all smeared, as if there was any doubt what had gone on in there.
Marissa would’ve walked away if she’d had the chance, but Lucas and the girl were walking right past her. Lucas’s eyes widened when he saw her, then he said, “Hey,” and he and the girl continued toward the stage.
Marissa suddenly felt lightheaded, like she might pass out, a combination of shock and the schnapps hitting her system. She had to actually lean against the wall for a few seconds with her eyes closed to stop the room from spinning. Then she opened her eyes and saw Darren coming toward her.
“Hey, what’s up?” he asked, smiling stupidly. Did he expect her to be, what, excited?
She tried to get past him, and he grabbed her arm like he had last night. “Hey,” he said, “where’re you going?”
“Just leave me alone,” she said, yanking her arm free. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“You’re what’s wrong,” she said, but he probably couldn’t hear her because she was walking away and Tone Def ’s set had started. Her friends, standing in front of the stage, waved her over, and she had to stand there, watching Lucas play bass. It was hard not to notice how
relaxed he looked post-blow-job. As soon as she got home she was so deleting all of the Tone Def tracks from her Mac and iPhone.
She was sick of looking at Lucas. She looked over to her left, but Darren was there, so she turned quickly to the right and saw this incredibly good-looking guy standing a few feet away from her watching the show. She thought she’d seen him somewhere before, and then she knew why—he looked so much like Johnny Depp. In fact, for a few seconds she thought he actually was Johnny Depp, but then she thought, Would Johnny Depp really be watching some lame band in the West Village with a bunch of people from Vassar?
She was checking him out more closely—he actually looked a lot younger than Johnny Depp—and then he looked in her direction and smiled. She thought he might be smiling at somebody next to her, but, nope, he was smiling at her. She smiled back at him and then looked quickly away toward the stage, where Lucas was doing a bass solo, making a face like he was having another orgasm. Did it really take that much energy to create such shitty music? She felt a tap on her shoulder, and the Johnny Depp guy was next to her saying something, which of course she couldn’t understand because (a) she was nervous as hell and (b) the music was so damn loud. Then he made a drinking motion with his hand, and she nodded and then walked ahead of him through the crowd toward the bar. She hoped Darren was jealous, watching them leave. She also hoped Lucas was noticing but doubted he could with the spotlights on him and the way he was busy fucking his bass.
When they got closer to the bar area, where the music was lower, the Johnny Depp guy leaned closer to her and said, “Hey, I’m Xan.”
He pronounced it “Zan,” but she didn’t think she’d heard him correctly and said, “I’m sorry?”
“Xan,” he said. “My real name’s Alexander, but people call me Xan.”
He had bright blue eyes, long sideburns, hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, and strings of greasy hair hung coolly over his face. His scruffiness and darkish skin somehow made his blue eyes seem bluer.
“I had a friend Scott in college and he called himself Scuh,” Marissa said. “I thought that was stupid, but Xan, that’s really cool.”
He smiled, looking into her eyes, and asked, “So what’s your name?”
“Oh,” she said, feeling like an idiot for not telling him on her own. “Marissa.” “Marissa or Rissa?” he asked.
She laughed and said, “Rissa, I like that.”
“Then there you go,” he said. “From now on I’m gonna call you Rissa.”
From now on. She liked that. And he was looking into her eyes again—when was the last time a guy had paid so much attention to her? Especially a cool, hot guy like Xan? She loved his lips, too—she could tell they were really soft. She was dying to kiss him, not just to make Darren and Lucas jealous but because she really wanted to.
Finally she was able to clear her mind enough to think of a good question. “So are you a big Tone Def fan?”
Okay, so maybe it wasn’t a good question, but at least there wasn’t dead air. “I’ve seen them a couple times,” Xan said. “What about you?”
Picturing Lucas coming out of the bathroom with the blow-job queen of the West Village, she said, “Actually, I think they suck. My friends wanted to come, so I kind of got roped into it. Are you in a band?”
“Do I look like I am?” “Yeah, kind of.” “Actually I’m a painter.”
“You’re kidding me.” She was excited. “What do you paint?” “Different stuff. Portraits, street scenes. Stuff out of real life.” “Wow,” she said, “that sounds amazing. I majored in art history.” “Really?”
“Yeah, at Vassar. I also worked at the Met for a while over the summer.” She left out that she’d rented headsets and had lasted barely a month. Let him think she’d been some important curator.
“Really?” he said, still smiling. “That’s amazing.”
God, She was dying to kiss him. He was so hot—and also she’d finally met someone in New York she had something in common with.
“So who are some of your favorite artists?” she asked, realizing too late how stupid this question sounded.
“Oh, man, there are so many,” he said. “I like a lot of different types of art, you know? I really like the Impressionists, like van Gogh, um, Monet, Cézanne, Degas, yeah, Degas’s stuff is really great . . . but I like other stuff, too, like, um, Edward Hopper—”
“Oh my God, I love Hopper. His work is so simple, yet so deep. I love twentieth-century urban Americana.”
“I also like Picasso, Warhol, um, Jackson Pollock—” “I can’t believe it. You just named my favorite artists.” “Oh, and I love Frida Kahlo, too.”
“Get out, I’m so into Frida Kahlo. I did this twenty-five-page paper on her senior year. I think she’s amazing. Do you know that painting Henry Ford Hospital?”
“Yeah, that one’s great, but I think my favorite’s Self-Portrait with Small Monkey.”
“I know, I love Small Monkey. The use of animals in that is so powerful and so resonant. It really is the quintessential example of the angst in Kahlo’s oeuvre.”
Angst in her oeuvre? Yikes, she wished she could shut herself up. She hoped she wasn’t sounding too pretentious, too much like a know-it-all.
He took a sip of his beer but didn’t stop looking right into her eyes. “So what kind of stuff do you paint?” she asked.
“Hard to describe it,” he said. “I’m into a lot of different, um, movements. I do some street-scene-type stuff, but I also paint mountains, people, a little of everything, you know?”
“Wow,” she said, impressed. “So, if you don’t mind my asking, do you do something else to support yourself or . . .”
“No, I’m just an artist,” he said. “I believe you have to find what you love to do in life and keep doing it no matter what. You can’t let money get in the way of happiness. You just have to do it, be passionate, follow your dream, you know?”
“I think that’s amazing,” she said. “I say the same thing all the—” Marissa spotted Darren with Zach at the edge of the crowd watching the band.
“What’s wrong?” Xan asked.
“Oh, nothing,” she said. “I just know that guy over there. He’s just some guy I used to go out with, and I’ve been trying to blow him off and he won’t get the message. It’s so annoying that he’s even here.”
Darren came over to Marissa and said, “Can we talk for a sec?” “I’m busy right now,” Marissa said.
“Excuse me,” Darren said to Xan, “but I have to talk to my girlfriend.”
“I am not your girlfriend,” Marissa said. “Can you just leave me the hell alone?”
“I just want to—”
“Hey,” Xan said to Darren. “She asked you to leave her alone.” “Am I talkin’ to you?” Darren said.
Xan put his beer down on the bar, then calmly grabbed a fistful of Darren’s jacket and pulled him away toward the front door. Marissa couldn’t tell what Xan was saying to Darren because he had his back to her and the music was still very loud. But she could see Darren’s face. At first he seemed angry, like he was ready to fight Xan, but as Xan spoke to him his expression gradually morphed. He looked confused, then concerned, then terrified.
Finally Xan returned to Marissa and said, smiling, “I don’t think he’ll be bothering you anymore.”
Marissa watched Darren go over to Zach. They had a very short conversation; then Darren rushed out of the bar without looking in Marissa’s direction.
“That was amazing,” Marissa said. “What did you tell him?”
“I just gave him a little lesson about the right and the wrong way to treat a woman,” Xan said. “Do you want to get out of here?”
Marissa thought, Uh-oh, he doesn’t want to sleep with me, does he? Please don’t be that kind of guy.
But then he added quickly, “I mean out of this bar. Someplace quieter, where we can talk.”
“Yeah,” she said, “that sounds great.”
Tone Def was still doing t
heir first set. Marissa went over to Hillary and said she was leaving for a while and asked her to text her if they wound up going someplace else.
“Where’re you going?” Hillary asked. “I met a guy,” Marissa said.
“Really? Who?”
Marissa looked back toward where Xan was standing, and Hillary looked over, too.
“Oh my God, he’s fucking hot,” Hillary said. Marissa smiled proudly.
Marissa and Xan left the bar and went down Bleecker to Café Figaro. They sat at a table outside and drank cappuccinos and had a great conversation about art and New York, and then he mentioned that he hadn’t gone to college but had traveled in Europe and used to live in Prague. He actually had lived in Prague. If that wasn’t a sign from the gods, what was? She told him all about her plans to move to Prague, though in the back of her mind she was thinking, Do I really want to go? Prague had sounded like a great idea before she’d met Xan. If this turned out as good as she thought it would, if she and Xan started dating, maybe she’d bag those plans.
Okay, okay, so she was getting way ahead of herself, but it was fun to fantasize.
Then they discovered an even bigger coincidence. He mentioned that he’d traveled in England, and she told him that she’d done her junior year abroad in London, studying at University of the Arts. Then they realized that they had been in London at the same time.
“Where were you staying?” Marissa asked. “With a friend in Hampstead,” he said.
“Oh my God, that’s where I lived the summer after the semester ended.
Where in Hampstead?”
“Um, lemme try to remember,” Xan said. “I think it was Kemplay Road.”
“I was on Carlingford Road,” Marissa said. “I can’t believe it, I was living right around the corner from you.”