Break Every Rule (14 page)

“You two look gorgeous,” he said.

“Thanks,” Flan said.

“I mean, you really just make such a gorgeous couple,” Rob repeated.

“Thanks, Rob,” I said, trying to slip Flan an apologetic he's-a-freak look.

“So, you too are coming to my—I mean, Arno's party tomorrow, right?”

“Oh yeah, of course we're—” Flan started to say, but I interrupted her and finished her sentence: “—probably going to be busy.” I almost felt bad. Rob was being so nice. But there was no way I was going to endure the humiliation of a party in the honor of that
other
Hottest Private School Boy. And especially not now that I knew David was going to try and steal my girl there. “Not that we wouldn't love to go,” I added.

“Well, I put you both on the list, anyway,” Rob said, making a sad-clown face. “You still both tell all your friends, right?”

“Yeah, sure,” I said.

“Yours, too?” he said to Flan.

“Yeah, all my friends are really excited about going,” Flan said. She seemed to say it more to me than to Rob.

“Bravo!” Rob said. Then he bit his lip like he'd thought of something bad. “Flan, you haven't had calls from David, have you?”

Flan's face got all cloudy then, and she said no, and excused herself to the bathroom really abruptly. Rob sat in her chair. “Brother,” he said, “remember our conversation the other night? About David?”

“Uh-huh…”

“Well, I don't know anything for sure, but…” Rob waved over my shoulder at someone. I turned and saw a girl I thought was Sandra Anderson sitting at the table Rob had been sitting at. “I must go. But be careful, Jonathan.”

And just like that, I knew that I wasn't going to be having any fun tonight.

Patch gave the woman at the Dollar Rent-A-Car his most winning smile, but she kept on shaking her head.

“I need a car, though, that's the thing,” he said.

“Honey-bunch, you are
very
cute. But I just can't rent a car to anyone under eighteen years of age.”

“I'll be eighteen in December.”

“Mmm-hmm, six months? I don't think I can work with that.”

Patch ran some fingers through his sandy hair and considered several options. He could say that his dad was right this moment flying in from New York and would be mostly driving the car, and that he, Patch, just wanted to impress Dad by picking him up in the car. He could pretend to call his mom on his cell phone, and pretend that she was in the hospital, or somewhere nearby, and pretend-promise to get there before she went under for an operation that has a thirty percent success rate. He could grab any random set of keys from behind the desk, and run out of there as fast as possible.

But for Patch, truthfulness and charm had always been the winning combination.

“Listen, the thing is, there's a girl…”

“Oh yeah?” The Dollar Rent-A-Car lady still had that cynical look on her face, but she was listening.

“She lives out here, and I live in New York. We met last winter, on a boat, and we were really into each other. We had the best time of our lives. But then we both had to go back where we belong, and…” Patch sighed. “Never mind.”

“No, wait… what happens?”

“Nothing. I guess the story ends there.”

“No, it can't. I mean… where is she?” Another woman had come up behind her and was now listening in.

“I don't know, that's the thing. She lives in Santa Cruz, that's all I know.”

“Well, you have to go find her,” the other woman said.

“But what if I can't find her?”

“You
have
to,” the first woman said.

“How can I without a car?”

“Well, you can rent a car!”

“But where?”

“Right here, of course,” the second woman said brightly.

“I'd really appreciate that.”

“How about a free upgrade? You like Range Rovers?”

Half an hour later, Patch was stuck in traffic on 101 South. It was still early-ish on Friday afternoon, but somehow there were more cars than freeway out here. And there seemed to be a lot of freeway—miles and miles of it.

Forty-five minutes later, he was lost in the redwoods. At least he had gotten away from the cars, but he still didn't know where he was.

An hour after that, he had somehow located the city of Santa Cruz, and stood looking at its boardwalk. He found a telephone book and looked up the O'Gradys. There were five of them in the book, but he had either forgotten or never known Greta's parents' names and so had no idea which one was the O'Grady he was looking for. He ripped out the page, and got back into his rental Range Rover.

It took him another hour to find four out of the five houses, ask for Greta, and be told that he had the wrong house. The sun was going down by the time Patch pulled onto a quiet street of craftsman houses pretty near the beach, and knocked on the last O'Grady door on the white phone book page.

No one answered, and after a solid ten minutes of knocking, Patch was ready to quit. Maybe Greta was just someone he'd made up in his head after all.

But that was when he heard a very familiar trilling kind of laugh, somewhere nearby. He spun around, but there was nobody to be seen, so he stepped lightly off the stone path that led from the street to the door, and walked along the side of the house.

He could smell barbecuing and hear laughter and splashing. When he got to the end of the house, he peeked around to see a backyard with a swimming pool and a bunch of kids running around it and doing cannonballs off the diving board. He stepped out onto the patio, and that's when he saw Greta.

She was sitting on a lounge chair, wearing vans, jean cutoffs, and a bikini top, and she was even prettier and more relaxed-looking than he'd remembered. There was a guy sitting on the chair next to her, and he was whispering something into her ear that was cracking her up. Patch realized all of a sudden that he had no reason to think that Greta had been waiting around for him all this time. He took a step backward, but it was too late. She'd already seen him.

“Hey, Patch,” she said with a calm, if slightly bemused, smile.

“Hey, Greta.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I just wanted to see you, I guess.”

“Well don't just stand there,” she said. “Come over here and meet my big brother.”

“
Wildenburger, talk to me.” BEEP
.

“Rob the intern here. Just wanted you to know that I took care of the—ahem—special night. There will be flowers and invitations sent to the apartments of the lovely ladies this afternoon. And do not worry, monsieur, I get girls just from being your intern! Plenty girls to go around! Ciao.”

“
Hello, you have reached Rob Santana Productions. Please leave a message.” BEEP
.

“Hiya, uh, Rob Santana? This is Larry from City Parties. I got you down for ten kegs, five mixed boxes of spirits, five cases of wine, ten cases of champagne. It's Saturday morning, I'm at the address you gave me, and, uh, there's nobody here…. Give me a call and let me know what's going on.”

“
Hello, you have reached Rob Santana Productions. Please leave a message.” BEEP
.

“Hey, Rob. It's Sandra Anderson, remember me? Anyway, you disappeared from the roof party at 66 Thompson last night, and I haven't heard from you since, which was weird. I'm still coming to the party tonight, with all my friends like you asked. But I just want to know: Am I going to be humiliated and feel like an idiot around you all night? Are you a user, Rob?”

“
Hi, this is Jonathan. Don't forget to leave your number if I don't have it.” BEEP
.

“Hey, J, it's Flan. So, after a night like last night, I'm afraid you're just going to have to take me to the Hottest Private School Boy party tonight. You know why? You dragged me around to all those miserable parties last night, and you stuck me with Liza Komansky for, like, half an hour of grilling about our relationship while you talked to some guy you aren't even friends with—thanks for that, by the way—and you were in a total mood all night. So tonight, we're doing something with
my
friends, okay? Be at my house at quarter of eight, and we can all go together. Love ya.”

“
Hello, you have reached Rob Santana Productions. Please leave a message.” BEEP
.

“Rob, it's Jonathan. Haven't seen you around the apartment lately. Guess I haven't been there much,
either. Just wanted to make sure I'm still on the list for the party tonight. I am, right?”

“
Hi, this is Jonathan. Don't forget to leave your number if I don't have it.” BEEP
.

“J.M., it's your mother, Saturday morning. Where are you, darling? Did you let anyone in the apartment this morning? I just noticed that my Rolodex is missing from the home office, and so I did a very thorough search of the apartment, and nothing else seems to be missing except my ATM card. Jonathan, I can't think why you would take these things. You have money, don't you? I'm calling the bank now, but call me as soon as you get this, and let me know if you know anything. I'm absolutely out of my head.”

I'm still not sure how I ended up agreeing to go to the Hottest Private School Boy party, against all my better judgment and also against my taste, although I know it had something to do with me being a bad boyfriend. As we all know, bad boyfriends can be compelled to do pretty much any crazy thing.

Flan told me to be at her house at quarter of eight, but I got there at half past nine, and all the girls in her inner circle were there already. Flan and I have talked a lot about how her clique is really similar to mine. They all go to different schools now, except Daria, whose mother is this quasi-famous real estate queen. Daria goes to Florence with Flan, and she's kind of haughty and entitled the way Arno is. And then there's Rachel—her parents work in publishing and she's very Upper West Side and seems to be at swim team practice all the time; and Gemma the wild
party girl, whose mother is a famous socialite and whose dad is a haunted classical conductor type; and Kendall, who is really into fashion and small animals and being a vegetarian. She holds everybody together, and nobody really knows where her parents got their money.

I've never thought of Flan as being anything like Patch, but I saw a little bit of it when I came in that night. For starters, all her friends were already in her bedroom, doing girl stuff getting ready to go out, but she was nowhere in sight.

Kendall came up to me, gave me the three-cheek kiss treatment, and asked where Flan was. Her hair was all frizzy from the rain (it was pouring outside), but it worked because she was wearing Michael Kors sunglasses, even indoors. I told her I didn't know, and then she started telling me about how she'd just gotten an internship with Imitation of Christ for that summer, which I had to admit sounded pretty cool. I gave the twelve-pack of PBR that I'd bought for them to Gemma, who happily started distributing them around the room. Then she told me that I rocked. I wasn't exactly sure whether it was a good thing to buy beer for a bunch of eighth-graders, but in the end it seemed like what Flan would have wanted me to do.

Daria asked me about Mickey's event at Fresh, which she said she had heard about from her older sister who goes to school with Mickey. She seemed kind of psyched on it, but I told her I didn't think it was really going to happen. The idea of taking Flan to a restaurant and being naked with a lot of strangers, and a lot of people we knew really well, kind of freaked me out.

When Flan came in, she seemed almost shy of all these people in her house, even though they were her best friends. But they all kissed her and asked her where she'd been, and when she showed them the vintage Balenciaga sack dress she'd just found at Tokyo Joe's on East 10th, they all made
ooo
and
ahh
noises. It even seemed sweet to
me.

“Isn't she just beautiful?” Gemma said, mostly to me, I think.

Flan pulled me aside, and we made out for a minute in the hall.

“You look nice,” she said.

“Thanks.” I'd gone for casual in a pinstriped A.P.C. blazer and these spectator loafers I've been into lately, but I was still glad that she'd noticed.

“I'm glad you agreed to go to the party,” she said.

“Me, too,” I said, although I was more just glad to see her. Going to the party, that part I was still dreading heavily.

It took us a while longer to get ready, and then we walked over to Seventh Avenue, hailed two cabs, and asked to be taken to The Awful Event. Especially if tonight was the night that David was planning on stealing Flan.

It was pretty obvious when we'd found the party. There was a line leading out the door, and upstairs, through big industrial windows, we could see what looked like a light show. Also, you could hear The Bravery playing at top volume, from what must have been pretty professional speakers, all the way from Eighth Avenue.

“Oh, I've been here before,” Daria said as we stood on the curb considering how we were going to get past that crowd at the door. Nearly everyone waiting to get in the door was shielded by an umbrella, but they all looked pretty soaked, anyway.

“You have not, you East Side snob,” Gemma said good-naturedly. She jumped up and down and clapped her hands when she said this.

“No, really. It belongs to a friend of my mom's.
He used to be in real estate, too. He bought this place when Chelsea was still cheap and built it out from scratch to be his apartment. But then he realized he could make way more just renting it out for parties. Mom says it's
obscene
what he gets for it.”