Break Every Rule (9 page)

To David, the word “sandwich” implied a kind of
grade school snack time innocence, while what had been going on inside the club had seemed increasingly… dirty.

“It's late,” said David with a sigh. What he wanted to say was, “Can we please go now?”

“I think Arno's unpleased with you,” Rob said. He clicked his tongue in disapproval. “It's because you are so downer like that. Who cares if it is late, whatever that means, anyway. We should be like vampires, and know the city only when it is late.”

“What?” said David. He had heard the word “vampire,” which he didn't like at all.

“Tell me why. Why you don't like those crazy, sexy girls?” Rob asked, making a pouting face.

David made the brave decision, and tried to be honest. “I don't know…,” he said. “They seem a little plastic.”

“Yes,” Rob said, nodding emphatically. “The plastic surgery is excellent on them.”

“Oh,” David said. That was pretty baffling. And yet, so fitting.

“So… what's
el problemo
?”

“I just think that Sadie might not be my type, exactly,” David said. He said it slower than he meant to, but Rob still looked like he was having trouble chewing on that one.

“Mmmmm… you don't feel love for Sadie?” Rob said. In fact, he was talking pretty slow as well.

“No,” David said. For the first time that night, he felt like laughing, “I don't feel love for her.”

“And you have a, how you say, different type?”

David nodded. “I think so….”

“I knew it!” Rob said.

“You did?” David asked. He was surprised, but also a little relieved. Maybe someone did understand him.

“You feel love for another girl!”

“Well, love, that's a big word….”

“It is hard to tell sometime.” Was this romance advice from
Rob
? “She is very beautiful, in a different way.”

“I know.” David was actually smiling now. “But I think that's why I like her. She's different, you know?”

“Yes! I get her back for you!”

“Back?” David was confused again. Rob looked like he was about to do a merry little dance.

“Yes, we get Flan back for you!”

“Flan?” David's mouth hung open. “No, I—”

“David, don't be shy. I have many powers….”

“I know, it's just that Flan's not—”

Rob held his hand up. “I know, she's not single. And Jonathan is your friend. But he's also not really, am I right?”

David paused. Jonathan
had
been pretty weird and
mean at his party. Which he hadn't even invited David to, which was also pretty weird and mean.

“And Flan, she is lovely, is she not?”

David nodded. He wished he hadn't had those three vodka crans back there. His head was sort of swimming, and Rob was confusing. From now on, he was definitely a beer-only kind of guy.

“Rob, the thing is…,” David said.

“No buts!” said Rob.

“What?”

“David, I'm making this my number one priority, right after the Hot School Boy party. Flan will be yours again!”

The sky was starting to turn purple, and tomorrow was Tuesday. It was a quarter past three in the morning, and school would be starting in a few hours. That was when David stopped trying to convince Rob that he didn't want to steal Flan away from Jonathan.

Because right then, thinking about the way Jonathan had completely abandoned him, and how he'd asked David to leave his house that night… well, David felt like that might be just what Jonathan deserved.

If Philippa didn't have to go through with it, too, Wednesday would definitely have been the worst day of Mickey's life—a life that included several emergency room visits, and a whole lot of time when he was grounded. Boredom, to Mickey, was more painful than pain, and where he had to be Wednesday afternoon was definitely going to be boring.

He'd spent all morning dreading it, and could hardly concentrate at school, which he had been attending reliably all week because his parents were on a crackdown. When he got out of school, he saw Caselli, the dude who ran his dad's studio, waiting for him.

“Ready for therapy?” he asked. Caselli was also Mickey's unofficial guardian. He was wearing the white coveralls worn by all of Ricardo Pardo's assistants, and his head had been recently shaved. He looked like Mickey's older, cleaner brother.

“Yeah, I'd rather be torn apart by sharks.” Mickey paused. “Actually, that sounds kind of cool…. But
seriously, man—you really didn't have to escort me. I wouldn't make Philippa go through this alone.”

“Dad's orders,” Caselli said, smiling only a little bit. “Get on.”

Mickey climbed on the back of Caselli's vintage Triumph. It hurt him to be a passenger, and not the runaway driver of the motorcycle, but at least the ride was something exciting on the way to Dr. Chivers's office.

Philippa was already there when he walked in. She was looking unusually tiny and Goth today, wearing an oversized mohair sweater, which she had belted at the waist, over a long black skirt. Her straight brown hair was parted down the middle, falling below her shoulders, and her lips were painted a deep red. She was also glaring at him.

“Welcome to couples' counseling, Mickey,” Dr. Chivers said. He had a kind of brittle, ingratiating smile that made Mickey feel uncomfortable. He was wearing a red shirt, pink tie, and mocha suit jacket. This also made Mickey uncomfortable. Dr. Chivers waved to the armchair next to Philippa's and said, “Please have a seat.”

Mickey leaned over to kiss Philippa on the cheek. She jerked her head away from him.

“Let's begin with that,” Dr. Chivers said. “My
methodology is: Start small, and grow the concept of your relationship, so that we can understand it as never before. So, Mickey, why do you think Philippa pulled away from you like that?”

“Because she's pissed she has to spend her afternoon talking about feelings…?” Mickey said as neutrally as possible.

“Mickey, could you shut up please so that we can just get this over with?” Philippa snapped.

“What'd I say?”

Philippa rolled her eyes, and Mickey sunk back into his chair.

“Okay,” said Dr. Chivers, “that might not be the best approach for you two. We could try a method that involves a special, malleable clay of my own design. You play with it and just see what flows out of you. You'd be amazed at how your subconscious reveals itself in the clay's form.”

Philippa and Mickey stared at him in silence.

“It has been remarkably effective with both sets of your parents,” he offered.

“No!” Mickey and Philippa shouted instinctively.

“Well, what do you say we go simple, then?”

“That would be best,” Philippa said.

“Whatever,” Mickey muttered.

“So… why do you think this relationship is so
plagued by fighting and betrayal? What is rotten in this union? Mickey?”

“Dude,” Mickey said. He tried to calm his voice, but only a little bit. “Nothing's rotten. Like, I'm an intense motherfucker, you know? We're
intense.
That ain't rotten.”

“That's an interesting interpretation. Philippa?”

Philippa shifted in her chair uncomfortably. She looked at Mickey, whose eyes were blazing in her direction, full of the hope that she would say to hell with this, and ask him to elope or something equally wild and intense. “I think the problem with our relationship is that I'm gay,” she said calmly. Then she put her face in her hands.

Mickey made a cackling noise. God he loved her! Philippa was definitely the only girl who could keep up with his games.

Dr. Chivers clapped his hands together in irritation. “Now, Philippa, many people deal with the discomfort of discussing their feelings by lying and employing the tone popularly referred to as sarcasm in our modern culture. But that's really not what this place—and this practice—is all about. So please, if you want to continue, check your games at the door. Mickey and I know perfectly well that you are not a lesbian.” When he said “lesbian” he made quotation marks with his fingers,
which seemed odd to Mickey. “Would you like to try again?”

Philippa made an exasperated noise. She looked up at the ceiling and seemed to be thinking. She examined her cuticles, uncrossed and recrossed her legs, and sighed. Then, in a voice that sounded both tired and very, very old, she said, “Well, Mickey and I have been going out since freshman year, and that's a pretty long time. At first, it was really wild and fun, and we just surprised each other all the time. But the shit Mickey does now doesn't surprise me anymore, you know what I mean? I just think the days when we excite each other might be… over.”

Mickey wasn't sure how the rest of the hour passed, or how he got home. But for the rest of the night all he could think about was the fact that he wasn't exciting anymore, even to his girlfriend.
Especially
to his girlfriend. It was not a fun feeling. It was the opposite of fun.

He looked so bummed at dinner that his parents didn't even yell at him much.

“How was therapy,
mijo
?” Lucy Pardo asked. She was a gorgeous ex-model, and Mickey got all of his good looks from her. When she was in the right mood, she thought Mickey was the most amazing thing to have happened in the history of man.

Mickey shrugged.

“How was school?”

“Whatever,” Mickey said. “Will you pass the empanadas?”

Ricardo passed him a platter covered with a dishcloth. “The reviews of the Vogel show have started to come out,” he said. “I didn't really think it was all
that
bad.”

Mickey looked up at his dad. That was
it.

He ran out of the slightly decayed formal dining room, down the hall, and into the library. The Pardos kept all their art books there, as well as bound copies of all the little art journals that Ricardo read obsessively for mentions of his work.

Mickey found the Vs (one of Ricardo's assistants had the weekly task of alphabetizing their collection), and pulled out the Luc Vogel monograph. He flipped through the pages, from one naked scene to another. Vogel had been right: not a restaurant in the bunch.

Mickey thought about how bummed Luc Vogel had been at the opening, and that cheered him up a little bit. That guy was an artist, and he'd been making sure that his career meant taking life to the maximum for years.
He
was exciting, and he could still feel low. Then Mickey remembered the dare.

That's when Mickey knew what he had to do to make
himself exciting again. He knew what he had to do to get Philippa back for real. He was going to take that dare. He was going to stuff a restaurant full of naked people, and he was going to photograph every minute of it.

My world was still pretty dark and cruel-feeling midweek, and on Wednesday, when I got home from school, I had the unpleasant surprise of finding Rob in my room. He was wearing a royal blue robe with gold piping that had been my dad's in the eighties, and his feet were up on my desk.

I realized that I hadn't seen him since my party, which was when I saw something weird happening between Flan and David, which had been unsettling my mind ever since. I sort of knew I'd blown it out of proportion when I'd asked David to leave, but also I kind of felt like all those guys had it coming for thinking they were so cool. Now, seeing Rob didn't make me feel any better. It just reminded me that he—and David—were in the Hottest Private School Boy club, and I was not. They must have been out doing fabulous things all week.

“Hey, Rob, it's cool that you stay at the apartment
now,” I said, even though it actually wasn't. “But this is still my room. Okay?”

Rob looked at me like I had suggested he get off my island—which actually would have been quite pleasant—and it looked like he took my comment pretty hard.

“Well I'm sorry, Jon, I only needed a surface to work on my scrapbook, and there is no desk in my room.”

Scrapbook
? I was ready just to pick up the whole mess and hurl it out the window, but the sad look on Rob's face stopped me. I went over to have a charitable look at the many snapshots that Rob had laid out on my nice, clean desk. This seemed to make him happy, and then something occurred to me. Maybe Rob, for all his bravado and all the weird ways he can smell, was giving me a clue about something.

“Want to see?” he asked. He was smiling now. And was that niceness in his voice? It sounded like nice. “You recognize some of these characters, no?”

And I did. There was Rob, in the Floods' house, making out with February. (Not so pleasant.) And there were Feb and Flan, sitting at the big butcher block table in the Floods' kitchen, drinking wine.
Same picture, plus David. The pictures kept going like that, with David getting closer and closer to Flan like a horrible flip book: David moving stiltedly across the room, Flan sitting on his lap, everyone lifting their wineglasses. Cheers! Then her arms around his neck, then kissing his cheek. Feb making a “Gross!” face at the camera.

Some of the color must have drained from my face, because Rob said—still sounding like he cared, a lot—“Are you fine?”

No, I really wasn't. David was in the HPSB elite crew now. He could probably have any girl he wanted, so why not take Flan? He'd obviously almost had her already while I was away.

I was going to lose my girl, I could feel it, and that really was not fine with me.

“Jonathan, does this bother you? I know you and Flan are together now, and I'm sure you wonder what happened between David and her over last winter.”

I shook my head, too vehemently, and said, too quickly, “Not really.”