Don't You Forget About Me (11 page)

“I always say,” Chips declared, “that all it takes to cure life’s woes is a bottle of good scotch and the open sea.” He chuckled and slapped the tabletop with one hand as if to punctuate his speech.

Nate nodded lamely as he leaned back in his chair, trying to get comfortable. He glanced around the room. He was the youngest person there by at least forty years—clusters of wizened old men were gathered at every single oak table, each man gruffer and stonier than the next. One of them had an actual eye patch. The old cyclops squinted in Nate’s direction with his one good eye. Before Nate could start to muse on what terrible sailing accident had caused him to lose his eyeball, the white-jacketed waiter returned and placed a glass of scotch in front of him.

“Thank you,” he mumbled.

“Cheers, my boy.” Chips lifted his tumbler and then took a huge swig. Nate quickly followed suit, gagging on the fiery amber liquid. The scotch was freaking strong—stronger than anything he’d ever had—and Chips was drinking it like lemonade.Who
was
this guy?

“You’re nothing like what I thought,” Nate blurted out, turning red and taking another small, tentative nip. From everything his dad had told him about Chips, Nate had thought he would be a total hard-ass who’d give him lecture on getting his shit together the second he sat down. But so far Chips couldn’t have been
less
like Nate’s father. He seemed almost
mellow.

“Ha!” Chips laughed, slapping his stiff-looking extended leg. “You though you were going to be meeting Captain White, didn’t you? Some cantankerous, salt-waterlogged old geezer who would read you the riot act? Maybe a hook for an arm? That it?” Nate nodded, blushing. He looked over at the eye-patch man, hoping he hadn’t heard Chips’s little outburst. He’d probably be kind of offended. Who knew what these old sailor guys were like when they got angry? “Well, uh . . . yeah. I mean, my dad’s pretty pissed at me right now and everything. I thought he’d send me to someone who knew how to . . . hunt.” Chips chuckled and drained his glass in one even swallow. He signaled the waiter for a refill. The waiter appeared at his side almost instantaneously, picking up the empty glass and whisking it quietly away. Nate couldn’t help but notice that for a place called the Grill Room, they didn’t seem to be serving much of anything grilled—or really anything to eat, period. Just booze.

Who’s complaining?

Chips turned back to him and began again. “Well, Nate, let me tell you—that
was
me—a long,
long
time ago. Back when I was your dad’s captain, I was the strictest, most serious sonofabitch you’ve ever laid eyes on. But it’s been a lot of years since then, and I’ve learned quite a few things.” Chips leaned back in his chair, his blue eyes twinkling. “There’s a certain kind of clarity that comes with old age.You really learn to put everything into perspective. You
have
to.” The waiter appeared and set a fresh drink down in front of him, ice cubes rattling. Chips drummed his fingers on the snow white tablecloth. His eyes scanned the room, and he lifted a hand and gave a small wave to an old man in full white military dress who looked about a hundred and fifty years old. “What are your priorities, Nate? What do
you
want from life?” Nate was silent for a moment and Chips continued. “For me, it’s the open sea—the sun on my face, the sound of waves.” He closed his eyes. “The simple things. The good stuff.” He opened his eyes and raised his glass. Nate took another burning gulp.

The simple things sounded good to Nate. In fact, they sounded
right
. He was so tired of everything being so . . . challenging.Why couldn’t things just be easy for a change?

Being the prince of the Upper East Side is
so
exhausting. Chips opened the large white menu and perused it thoughtfully, humming softly to himself.

Nate looked at him over the top of his menu and suddenly wished there were a menu for real life—one that listed all of his options, and how much they cost. “I don’t know what I want,” he admitted, his voice echoing in the cavernous room. The minute he said it aloud, he knew it was true. He looked around again at all the old sailors, each and every one a man who’d chosen a path in life and stuck with it. One had even lost an eye over what he’d chosen. Or maybe they were just a bunch of old seaworthy fuckups.

“I’ll tell you one thing.” Chips closed his menu and leaned across the table. “You’ve got to think with your balls, not your dick.” His breath smelled like applesauce laced with grain alcohol. “Because the men who think with their dicks are cowards,” he finished, leaning back and nodding sagely.

Nate felt himself nodding back, even though he had no idea what Chips was talking about. Had he been thinking with his balls or his dick? Was he a coward? It
was
kind of cowardly not to have told Blair that he hadn’t really graduated, that he wasn’t going to Yale with her. . . .

Chips summoned the waiter again. “Two hard-boiled eggs and a shaker of salt,” he commanded. “For both of us.” Nate surrendered his menu to the waiter. Chips seemed to think his “I don’t know what I want” was about the food. Nate hated hard-boiled eggs, and all this talk of thinking with his dick and balls had kind of taken away his appetite for anything but that strong, barely drinkable scotch, anyway.

Well, drink up, honey. It might help you grow some.

v’s tea party for two

Vanessa stepped through the doors of the Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn and looked around. The room was cavernous and densely packed with Williamsburg hipsters wearing striped shirts and sporting asymmetrical haircuts. Bar-height tables were sprinkled haphazardly throughout the room like croutons on a salad, and the grating sounds of three-chord punk blasted from the loudspeakers. Vanessa spied Ruby’s bandmates fussing with wires and plugs on a platform in the center of the room. The drum kit was adorned with the word SUGARDADDY, their band’s name, in garish red letters. She scanned the stage for Ruby, but her sister was nowhere in sight.

As Vanessa maneuvered her way to the front of the room, protecting her camera from dirty art boys and their Jack-and-Cokes, she spotted Piotr sitting at a table right in front of the stage, a full pitcher of Coke sitting in front of him. When Piotr saw her, he waved her over. Vanessa sighed, wishing she were more excited about filming her sister’s last gig as a single woman. She needed it to round out the Ruby

Retrospective she was making for her sister’s wedding present, but the reality of shooting the shit with her future
brother-in-law
, whom her sister would be
marrying
in just five days, was kind of unbearable. Vanessa kept forcing herself to say wedding-related words over and over again in her head to make it more real.

She got closer to his table and tried to smile. Droplets of water beaded on the cold pitcher of Coke. Vanessa licked her lips. She was pretty thirsty—maybe she could put up with Piotr for a few minutes while she loaded her camera and set up. If he was going to be family soon, she’d have to learn to converse with him, right?

“What’s up?” she asked, plunking her camera down on the table and almost knocking over the Coke.

“‘Allo, Vanessa.You made it,” Piotr said with an awkward, crooked-toothed smile. “You want?” He gestured to the glass on the table.

She took a seat, resisting her desire to push him onto the sticky floor and run. The guy could barely speak proper English and now he was about to be her brother-in-law? “That’d be great,” she replied tensely.

Piotr walked to the bar to get her a glass, and Vanessa noticed that even though he was still wearing those gross leather pants, he really wasn’t half-bad looking, with his shaggy blond hair and tight black T-shirt. Okay, so his crooked teeth and smoker’s cough weren’t exactly swoon-worthy, but at least they made him sort of . . . quirky.

Vanessa looked around the room, accidentally catching the eye of a frighteningly large man in a red T-shirt with cut-off sleeves that read GUNS DON’T KILL PEOPLE—
I
KILL

PEOPLE. His biceps were enormous and covered in tattoos. He saw her staring and gave a toothy smile, then started heading through the pack of people toward her table. Vanessa looked wildly around, hoping he was headed toward someone else. Just then Piotr swooped in and fell back into his seat, and the big guy scowled and backed off. Phew. Vanessa never thought she’d be so happy to see her sister’s fiancé.

“So . . .” Piotr filled her glass, apparently unaware of the fate he’d just saved her from. “You film show tonight, yes?” “Yes.” Vanessa nodded like a maniac. “I film show.”
Fuck
. It was hard not to talk like him once you got into a conversation. She took a sip of Coke, sputtering when she realized it wasn’t Coke at all but Guinness.

“I am also making Ruby gift.” Piotr moved his stool slightly closer to hers. “In my country,”—he tapped his chest with one finger—“it is customary for groom to give bride special gift.” Piotr paused and took a sip of beer, licking his lips before continuing. “I shop all day for something I think she like.” “What did you get her?”Vanessa asked, curious now.

Piotr smiled again, his whole face lighting up. “When we met, she tell me when she was—how you say? Small?” He gestured with his hands to indicate someone short.

Vanessa nodded, taking a sip of the dark beer. “You mean when she was a little girl?” “Yes!” Piotr said with relief. “Little girl. Anyway, she tell me how she and you”—he pointed at Vanessa with his full glass—”make tea party with apple juice?” She burst out laughing, trying not to spit a mouthful of

Guinness all over the table. That was
not
what she’d been expecting Piotr to say. She remembered how she and Ruby used to play dress-up in their mother’s closet for hours, putting together outrageous ensembles of feathers, beads, and long, tie-dyed hippie dresses before sitting down at the kitchen table to drink Red Cheek apple juice from their mother’s special china cups. They’d sit there for hours, talking in fake British accents and giggling as they said things like “Pass the bloody crumpets!” and “Hand me me bloomin’ bloomers!” even though that one didn’t even make sense.

“So, I look all day,” Piotr continued, refilling his and Vanessa’s now-empty glasses, “for antique tea set for her, and I finally find one this afternoon.” He looked up worriedly, his forehead a mass of wrinkles. “You think she will like?” Vanessa looked at the concern in Piotr’s blue eyes, the love that was so obviously there for her sister, and something inside her melted. He obviously loved Ruby—only a guy in love would run around New York all day to find a freaking tea set.

“Yes.” Vanessa nodded, raising her camera to her face and pointing it toward the stage to check the exposure, but mostly to hide the fact that she was touched. “I think she will like
very
much.” Seeing Piotr so obviously in love made Vanessa feel kind of . . . romantic. She closed her eyes for a moment and pictured Dan at home, sprawled out on the lumpy brown leather sofa, writing poetry in his beat-up notebook. She knew he’d been having a hard time with the poem for Ruby and Piotr’s wedding, and the idea of him trying so hard to find the right words for her sister warmed her chest.

You sure that isn’t the booze?

Maybe when she got home later they could really talk. She’d tried to be supportive of Dan when he’d come out, but seeing how uncomfortable he was at his surprise party, she still had her doubts . . . not to mention her hopes about his supposed gayness. Maybe she’d be able to tell him how she felt . . . and try to help him figure out what he was really feeling.

Yes, and just exactly how would she do this?
Naked?
Vanessa smiled as SugarDaddy took the stage in a clamor of guitars. Ruby wore her signature purple leather pants, her black, chin-length hair sticking out in every direction, like she’d blow-dried it upside down—or electrocuted herself with her blow-dryer. She spotted Vanessa and Piotr sitting together and waved. Then she stuck her tongue out between her pinky and pointer fingers. “What’s happening, fuckers!?” she yelled into the microphone, and the crowd cheered, wildly.

Vanessa smiled. Everything was going to be okay. Her sister was still her sister, her brother-in-law-to-be was weird and European but also sort of sweet, and she’d talk to Dan tonight. He’d tell her he was just confused, that he wasn’t gay, and that he’d been in love with her all along. And maybe someday, years from now, he’d be the one giving
her
an antique tea set.

She pointed her camera up at Ruby’s smiling face as she leaned into the microphone and began to howl.

“You stole my
soooooooul
, you fucking ass-
hole
!” Oh, how romantic.

Air Mail - Par Avion - August 17

obr den
Dan!

I’ve been waiting to write, because I didn’t want to ruin the surprise, but Mom must have gotten there by now and I couldn’t wait any longer. I hope you don’t mind that I told her about your recent gaylicious discovery. It was just so nice to get to know her again this summer—did you know that she and Dad met at a Russian bathhouse in Moscow!?—and I thought maybe she should know about you too. . . .

Anyway, Prague is amazing. Staying solo at Mom’s flat (how very European of me, right?) is super-fun but a little lonely. I’ll be back soon to pack for Waverly (yay!), but until then,
Na shledanou!
(That’s “goodbye.”)

I miss you guys and I miss New York. Have a cupcake from our favorite place on Amsterdam for me. Make it a pink one!

Love,

Jenny

this would be really funny if it wasn’t happening to someone we know and love

Dan lay on the bed in Vanessa’s room, his notebook open across his lap. The empty white page was practically blinding him. It was the same story every night—he would sit there staring at a blank page for hours, trying to write a poem about love for Ruby’s wedding, until, completely dejected, he’d finally just pass out. He started to scribble.

Love. Above. Shove.

I love to shove you from above?

Kiss. Bliss. Piss.