Tell It to Naomi

by Daniel Ehrenhaft

> As A NOUN. PAPA GRABBED A NURSE WHO IS FLESHY AS A JOKE. THE NURSE DID NOT AGREE THAT THE JOKE WAS COMIC. I AGREE WITH NURSE. NOW PAPA IS MAD TO ME. HOW? I KEEP IT REAL. WORD TO YOUR MOTHER.

  SINCERELY YOURS ,

  HOSPITAL GIRL

  * * *

  Dear Hospital Girl,

  You keep telling me you “keep it real.” I have to ask you: is this true? As you say, it is difficult to tell. Because if your e-mails are pranks, they are NOT “comic.”

  However, since I am not American or evil, but only Naomi, I will give you the benefit of the doubt. I will assume that you are who you claim to be—and not, for instance, somebody who runs the lit club, who drinks coffee on 4th and A, and who thinks advice columns are lame.

  Sound familiar? If not, good.

  So …

  I am sorry about your dad. Believe it or not, I can relate. My own father was an alcoholic. So I know that this is a tough situation for you. Are you in touch with your mother? It’s important for you to have support, to have somebody to talk to about this. It’s never easy. There are no simple solutions. But you aren’t alone.

  And I will say this: your dad is wrong. Not all Americans are bad news. Some of them can actually be very good friends. They’re out there. If you make the effort, I know you’ll find them.

  He was also wrong to sexually harass his nurse. Sexual harassment is NEVER cool. It’s not a joke. It’s pretty much—well, EVIL, as you would say. It’s doubly evil that he sexually harassed a woman who is trying to take care of him. You should tell him so. Even if he does get “mad to” you.

  By the way, it’s “mad AT” you.

  Oh—and one more thing: in recent years “word to your mother” has been shortened to just plain “word.” At least, I think it has.

  Feel free to ask me any questions you want about slang. I will be sure to give you a variety of wrong and outdated answers.

  Catch you on the flip side, Hospital Girl

  —Naomi

  P.S. Do not use “catch you on the flip side” in conversation unless you happen to be talking to one of the original cast members of Superfly.

  * * *

  It was a toss-up between B.O.Z. and FONY, but I wanted to go with B.O.Z. I convinced Naomi that it was the right call. If we gave FONY two columns in a row—especially the first two—the other readers might think “Naomi” was ignoring their e-mails. (Which we were. But running a sophisticated Internet scam means tricking people.)

  First thing Friday morning, Naomi forwarded the e-mails B.O.Z. and I had exchanged to Joel so the daily installments of “Tell It to Naomi!” could start running that afternoon.

  I’d had a secret reason for picking B.O.Z., of course. I was hoping that some of my advice about her boyfriend would make my sister start thinking twice about her budding romance—or rekindled romance, or whatever the hell it was.

  I’d officially embarked on my anti-schmuck mission. I’d taken the first step.

  I knew I wouldn’t accomplish it overnight. But I had Hope.

  And as for Hospital Girl … I didn’t even bother sharing that little exchange with Naomi. I knew I didn’t want it printed in the school paper. Still, I have to admit I was curious. Was Hospital Girl for real? The more I thought about it, the less I hoped so. If she actually existed, she was in serious trouble. I kept feeling twinges of remorse. Maybe I’d been too harsh. What if it was true? I had no business pretending to be “Naomi” to a friendless Algerian with a dying alcoholic father. It put me up there in Evil Land with that kid from the Times magazine. Better just to skip over the truly disturbing e-mails. Right. Better to keep it light. Acne, smelly boyfriends, fat thighs—that stuff I could handle. (Sort of, I hoped.)

  Besides, Hospital Girl was most likely a fraud. Sure. She was Olga Romanoff. Or somebody … in which case, I hadn’t been harsh enough. For all I knew, I’d scared her off. Maybe she wouldn’t write in again.

  Although …

  Friday at school, a part of me wished she would. And this was troubling, because it meant that either a) I got a kick out of reading horribly grim BS, or b) I enjoyed wallowing in my own guilt. Yikes. Was I a masochist? Was I truly disturbed? What did Papa and his “banana hammock briefs” have to do with my mission, anyway? Nothing. So why could I only think about running home and reading the new batch of e-mails—Hospital Girl’s included?

  Actually, I knew the answer. It was because I’d become Clark Kent again.

  For the second time in a row, everybody was talking about the column I’d written. Everybody but me. Once again, I trudged from class to class alone. Once again, I stole glances at various people, wondering which one was FONY or B.O.Z. or the guy whose shorty thought her hooters were too damn small. Once again, I pictured Cheese at his school—holding court over his clones, the way Olga Romanoff held court over her bevy of lit-club chicks.

  I am a loser.

  The sorrier I felt for myself, the angrier I became with myself.

  It was ridiculous. I knew it was. If I wanted to snap out of the “Bad Funk” and depart the town of Loserville, Population: Dave, I had to make a move. I had to break my pact with Cheese, just as Cheese had broken it. I had to stop treating school as a job. I had to follow my own advice—to get out there and mix and mingle, to move beyond the world of “Hey, what’s up?”

  Moments after the final bell rang, I saw my chance.

  I was hurrying out the big double doors with the rest of the mob when a girl at the bottom of the steps caught my eye. She was a sophomore … Karen Wallace. She’d been in my chemistry class last year, along with Jed Beck.

  She stood on tiptoe craning her neck. She was obviously waiting for someone.

  She didn’t have a heard of zits—not even close—but she had a few here and there. And while she wasn’t fat, she wasn’t a stick, either. She was holding a school paper. (Ergo, she might be a Fan of “Tell It to Naomi!” and maybe even somebody who wrote in.) And she was wearing green pants. They looked like they were made of velour or velvet.

  She could be B.O.Z., I thought.

  Plus, the way she waved at her friends as they passed by—smiling apologetically, possibly not wanting to offend them because she was waiting for someone else (her smelly boyfriend?)—she could be, right? She radiated the same humorous, consciously insecure vibe that B.O.Z. did.

  I hesitated when I reached her step.

  She glanced at me.

  I couldn’t muster the courage to speak. I waited for the crowd to clear.

  “Yeah?” she asked finally

  “I … uh, I just noticed you’re, um … you’re wearing pale green pants,” I said.

  Her face soured.

  Now the vibe was different. It wasn’t so much B.O.Z. anymore. It was closer to a thug in a rap video or an armed felon.

  “Please,” she said with a sneer. “Don’t even try it.”

  “Try what?”

  “That same lame-ass line everybody else has tried,” she said.

  “Oh … that,” I said.

  “Yeah, that. Anything else?”

  “I guess not,” I said. “Have a nice day.”

  “My day will be a whole lot nicer once this conversation is over.”

  “Gotcha.”

  I continued on down the stairs to the sidewalk. If I’d needed any more proof that I was a loser … Nope. Not a whole lot of ambiguity there, at least as far as Roosevelt was concerned. But I’d just gotten proof of something else, too, something I’d suspected all along: the students here weren’t just meatheaded; they were stuck-up jerks. Who the hell did Karen Wallace think she was, anyway? A supermodel? I wasn’t interested in her. She was chubby and had pimples. I didn’t even want to be friends with her—or with anyone else at this stupid school.

  No. I had plenty of friends. Real friends.

  They were all waiting for me at home, inside Naomi’s computer.

  “Dave! There you are.”

  I’d forgotten I’d been worried about my sister’s mental health in re
cent days. But when I arrived home that Friday, standing in her doorway, it all came flooding back. She’d cleaned. Or maybe the word was reorganized. Her room wasn’t exactly neater. It looked more as if it had been turned inside out. The garbage had been bagged, the newspapers had been stacked—but all her drawers were open, and most of her clothes were sprawled in haphazard piles across her bed. The shades were still drawn, too.

  “So where have you been?” she said.

  “See, there’s this place called school,” I said. “It’s where I go to learn stuff. You might have heard of it.”

  “Ha, ha, funnyman. It’s almost six o’clock.”

  Worry began to turn to deep concern. “Uh … Naomi?” I said. “It’s not even four-thirty.”

  “Really?” Her eyes narrowed. She marched right past me, down the hall into the kitchen. “I lost my watch,” she muttered under her breath. “I just checked the …” Her voice dropped off. She laughed. “Oh! The clock in the kitchen is dead. No wonder. You know, you’d think with their raises, Mom and Aunt Ruth could spring for a new clock.”

  I stared at her as she sauntered hack into her room.

  “You haven’t started experimenting with drugs, have you?” I asked.

  Naomi began to examine a pair of black pants hanging over her desk chair. “Dave, I’m not in the mood right now. I’m feeling a little crazy.”

  “Yeah, I gathered that. But if you want to see what time it is, you can turn on your computer. There’s a clock on it. Or you can open your blinds. You vampires may not know this, but at this time of year, the sun at four-thirty is higher—”

  “Speaking of sun, what’s up with Cheese, anyway?” Naomi interrupted.

  I frowned. “What?”

  “He called me son. I saw him in the lobby yesterday, and he said— and I quote verbatim—‘Naomi! What’s the dilly, son?’ The dilly.”

  “You saw him yesterday?”

  “Yeah, before we went to Don Vito’s.” she said absently. “He was with some kid who was carrying a guitar case … but look.” She grabbed the pants off the back of the chair and held them up to herself. “What do you think?”

  “Wait,” I said. “You say that Cheese—”

  “Just look,” she said.

  Suddenly she broke out with a grisly, toothpaste-model smile. I flinched.

  “Do you think this is too close to what I wore the other night when I went to meet Brian?” she asked. She kept smiling as she spoke, so I could barely understand her. It sounded as if her jaw were wired shut. “I only have that one suit,” she added. “And all my nice pants are black.”

  Life had ceased to make any sense. I felt as if I were on drugs. “Naomi, you have to slow down,” I said. “I’ve had a bad day.”

  She stamped her foot. “Da—a—ave,” she whined. “Just tell me.”

  “What, if they look the same? Sure. I don’t know. Who cares? But you say that Cheese was with—”

  “You should care,” Naomi interrupted. She tossed the pants aside. “As a chick.”

  “As a … what?”

  “You heard me.” She flashed a wry grin. “You’re a female advice columnist now. You have to think like a chick. You said you could, Dave. Remember?” She sighed and began to rummage through the clothes on her bed. “Seriously, listen up. Chicks are gonna ask you about this. Clothing is of supreme importance. You can’t wear the same thing twice. Not if you just met somebody and you’re meeting that same somebody again. It doesn’t matter how much time has passed between your first and second meeting. It could be a day, a week, or a year. If you’re a chick, you have to wear something different. Remember that. Guys never—”

  The phone rang.

  “Screen it,” Naomi said.

  “Why?”

  “All right, fine—answer it.” She snatched up a blue dress and hurried out into the hall again. “But if it’s for me, I’m not here… She slammed the bathroom door behind her.

  “You aren’t?”

  “I have to get ready!” she shouted.

  It was official: Naomi had lost her mind. She never screened calls. She ran for calls. She dove for calls. What if it was the guy from the New Yorker? What if he’d changed his mind and wanted to hire her to infiltrate the seamy world of Mafia-controlled waste management? I hoped it was that guy. Then maybe she’d realize what a freak she was being.

  I darted for the phone in the kitchen.

  “Hello?”

  “Oh, hi!” a girl replied. “Is Naomi there, please?”

  Whoever it was, she definitely sounded too young to work for a high-powered magazine. I peered down the hall to the closed bathroom door.

  “No, she isn’t right now.” I said. “Can I take a message?”

  “Hey, is this Dave?”

  “Uh …yeah? Who’s this?”

  “It’s Celeste Fanucci. You know, from school?”

  * * *

  A quick aside:

  When I was six, Mom and Aunt Ruth took me to Coney Island against my will. I’d never expressed any desire to go. Riding an ancient roller coaster called the Cyclone in the far reaches of Brooklyn sounded terrifying, especially since Cheeses dad had recently taken us to the Brooklyn Children’s Museum and warned us that—contrary to what we saw—most neighborhoods outside Manhattan were “not safe for kids.”

  I didn’t have a choice, though. According to the Laws of Mom and Aunt Ruth, a day at Coney Island was a rite of passage, like a bar mitzvah. Naomhad gone; now it was my turn. To make matters worse, I had to endure this rite of passage alone, without Naomi or Cheese. “Cheese will fidget too much on the subway,” Mom had insisted. “It’s an hour’s ride each way, at least.”

  Anyway, when I saw the Cyclone, with its peeling paint and rickety wood, and heard the agonized screams of the people strapped into the cars … well, I turned green. I nearly vomited right there at the amusement park entrance. Mom and Aunt Ruth were too caught up in nostalgia to notice. “See that, Dave? Nobody makes wooden roller coasters like that anymore. Probably because metal is so much sturdier than wood.”

  Then I did vomit.

  Mom and Aunt Ruth must have felt bad, because they turned around and took me right home. It wasn’t even eleven in the morning, but I got straight into bed and hid under the covers until dinnertime.

  The point of this story?

  Now you have an understanding of how I felt when Celeste called.

  * * *

  “Hello?” Celeste said.

  “Yeah—hi. I’m still here. Sorry.”

  “Are you okay? You don’t sound so great.”

  “Oh, I’m fine,” I said, my voice cracking. I had no idea why I was jittery. I was never this jittery when I saw Celeste in school. On the other hand, I expected to see her there. Here, she’d caught me completer off guard. “How—um, how are you?”

  She laughed. “I’m okay. So your sister’s not home, huh?”

  “No! I mean … no. She’s out with a friend.”

  “Oh,” Celeste said. “Well, I just wanted to ask her advice about something. It’s not a big deal, you know? See, I’m going to this openmike thing tonight? It’s at a bar called the Spiral Lounge? Have you heard of it? On Avenue B? They have this thing—like, one Friday a month they let anybody who wants to, get up and perform? And you don’t have to be twenty-one? And I figured since I heard that a bunch of kids from school were going … ?”

  Whenever Celeste spoke for more than a few seconds at a time, I couldn’t listen. Her words floated right into the ether. My mind raced to a thousand different places, dreaming up madcap, romantic scenarios, imagining the conversations we should have been having. And this brand-new habit of mysteriously ending every single sentence as if it were a question … that didn’t help, either. It gave her speech a musical, hypnotic quality—like when you hear somebody running their fingers across a harp from the low strings to the high, again and again.

  “… was wondering if it might make a good story?”

  “Huh?�
� I said.

  She giggled. “I’m sorry. My fault! Like you care about a dumb story I want to write about an open-mike night!”

  Blood rushed to my face. “No, no. I mean, it sounds … cool.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, Dave,” she said, suddenly serious.

  I swallowed. “Mm-hmm?”

  “Can you please tell me if your sister writes the column?” Celeste whispered. “I won’t tell a soul. I promise.”

  “I—I—” My heart thumped. I should have screened this call.

  Celeste giggled again. “I know. It’s not fair of me to ask. But listen, if she gets back anytime soon, tell her I called, okay? It’s not, like, a big deal or anything. But if she could give me some feedback about this idea, that would be great. I’d feel better about going to Mr. Newbury with a story idea if I know that Naomi had given it, like, the thumbs-up.”

  l regained some of my composure. “No problem,” I said.

  “And if you’re not doing anything tonight, you should come check it out. Have you ever been? To the Spiral Lounge, I mean?”

  “Um …” I hadn’t but it was kind of ironic she’d asked.

  When Cheese and I first decided to become rock stars—the very same night Mom and Aunt Ruth had given me my electric guitar for Hanukkah—we hatched a plan to perform at open-mike nights at the Spiral Lounge. It would be step one on our rise to glory. After all, we knew that they let anyone play, even teenagers with zero talent. And we would show them zero talent. Oh, yes. We would tear the roof off the dump with our unique brand of post-Zeppelin, post-Strokes, post-music rock ‘n’ roll.

  Obviously, we never believed that this would actually happen. Even at that early stage we knew we were a band in names only. What mattered was talking about it. And laughing about it. And ragging on anybody who actually would get up and—

  “Okay, so maybe I’ll see you there?” Celeste asked.

  I laughed feebly. “Sure.” I said.

  “Oh, and remember Ezekiel? I introduced you to him the other day? He’s going to perform! Solo acoustic. Have you ever heard him play? He’s, like, a serious musician. His stuff is like unplugged Nirvana meets DJ Shadow. He sets up sequencing and loops with a laptop, then runs it through the soundboard and plays along to himself on acoustic guitar—”