The Insiders (17 page)

“Where's the bathroom?” Mariela asked. Arno pointed and they were kissing on his bed before he'd had time to put his hand down.

“It'll be easier to change,” Arno said, “if you've got your clothes off.”

“Mmm.”

“I've got to change clothes, too, actually.”

“Oh yeah?”

“You might want to take a shower,” Arno said, “before you have to work. I was going to take one myself.”

“That sounds good.”

There was silence for a few minutes. Arno felt his room transformed, floating away on a cloud.

“I'm back,” Arno said, mostly to himself.

“Yes, you are,” Mariela said.

“Arno!” His mom called out from somewhere down the hall. “One of the servers is lost! Is she in your room?”

“Yeah, Mom. She spilled something on her white shirt, so I'm giving her one of mine.”

“That's nice, dear.”

“I can't find my Vespa anywhere,” Mickey yelled. He was sort of shaky on his feet, since he'd had only about four hours of not-very-good sleep. He wandered around his dad's studio, looking behind sculptures and workstations, but the Vespa seemed to be lost.

“Where'd you see it last?” Caselli asked.

Mickey stared at him. Caselli had been working for Ricardo Pardo since before Mickey was born. He wore the same white jumpsuit that all of Ricardo's employees wore, but his had a black dot on the chest, which signified that he was the leader, the head guy. He was also kind of Mickey's godfather.

“Dude,” Mickey said. “I have no idea where it is, and my friends are coming over pretty soon, I think and … it'd be nice to have it.”

“You're in no condition to drive anything,” Caselli said.

“Dude … I found Patch.”

“What does that mean?”

But Mickey had already turned around and walked back to his room. He had about a thousand in cash stashed in the belly of a blowfish his father had brought back from a fishing trip off the coast of Japan. He went to find the blowfish, which hung by a piece of twine from a pipe above his head. But because he was standing under it, he couldn't see it. Instead, he found a thick envelope from American Express under several letters from school, which he'd really need to deal with, and soon. The letter had a credit card in it.

“Cool,” Mickey said. He decided to look for the cash later, took the card, and walked out of the house. “Tell my friends to chill here till I get back.”

“Wait,” Caselli said. “Where are you going?”

But Mickey was already out the door. He grabbed a cab and shot over to Crosby Street, where he went into Vespa Global.

“Hi, Mickey,” the manager said. “Come back to pick up your helmet?”

“I'll take the black one,” Mickey said.

“We have only white helmets.”

“And two gallons of gas.” Mickey was already sitting on his new bike. He drew out his new credit card and flipped it to the manager.

Mickey found his phone in his jumpsuit pocket and called Philippa.

“I found Patch,” Mickey said. “Meet me outside your place.”

It was all the manager could do to get the door open, get Mickey to drag a pen across the signature line on the form, and get out of the way.

Mickey adjusted his goggles and tied a handkerchief over his mouth so he wouldn't swallow any bugs. He tore down one-way streets the wrong way, popped curbs, and shot between pedestrians. At Philippa's house, he honked. It sounded like
Oooot, Oooot
.

She came outside. She was in a flowery dress and her hair brushed against her shoulders. She sat down on her stoop. He loved her.

“I love you,” he said.

“Then get off the bike.”

“No, I need it. I found Patch.”

“Where is he?”

“I think … somewhere in Chinatown.”

“Look, Mickey, I love you, too. But if you don't get off the bike and walk home, I'm not speaking to you. You're in no position to have an engine under your ass.”

“Come with me.”

“I don't think so. Listen, if you don't straighten up at least a little, we can't go out. You can't wind up in the hospital every weekend. It's too insane.”

Mickey looked closer and Philippa's beautiful gray
eyes seemed to be wet around the edges.

“I'll change,” Mickey said.

“Give me the bike.”

“After we find Patch and we get that Ooh girl back to Alabama or wherever she's from, I'll change. I swear I will.”

“Well, she does need to get out of town. I can't think of anybody who didn't get messed up by her and it's only a matter of time before she comes after you. But wait—”

But Mickey shot off, toward his house. His friends were there and he had responsibilities. He tore around corners, riding almost parallel to the ground. He shot down Seventh Avenue and weaved between the thick Saturday afternoon traffic headed toward the Holland Tunnel and New Jersey. Drivers honked and threw lit cigarettes and newspapers at him. He didn't notice.

Caselli stood in the doorway to his house, and he clearly was fretting. Mickey got off the bike and Caselli caught it.

“Your friends are here,” Caselli said.

Mickey pulled off the handkerchief and then groped in his pocket for a tissue or something to wipe his nose. Instead, he found a cocktail napkin. Something on it caught his eye before he put it to his face. An IOU written in lipstick, with the imprint of a kiss.

“Oh shit,” Mickey said. “I remember now. I gave my Vespa to this girl last night so she'd stop bugging me for a kiss.”

He started to laugh. Caselli did, too, but his laugh was a bit more concerned.

“Arno's in your room,” Caselli said.

Mickey made his way upstairs slowly. He knew it would be pretty hard to get that new Vespa away from Caselli.

“Mickey!”

Arno had been going through Mickey's CDs, looking for something to play.

“Let's go get Patch!” Arno yelled.

“What about David?” asked Mickey. “Where is he? And where's Jonathan?”

“I need to apologize to David, too, now that I'm feeling good,” Arno said. He was on one of Mickey's skateboards and he was tacking around the room, knocking into things.

“I can see that,” Mickey said. “Look, I've got a new Vespa downstairs. Why don't we race around on it and try to get those guys together and then we can go get Patch?”

“Let's do it!” Arno yelled. He popped Mickey's board into the air and it shot across the room and smashed a framed Andy Warhol print of Mick Jagger that Ricardo
Pardo had given to his son for his thirteenth birthday.

“Sorry, dude,” Arno said.

“Whatever,” Mickey said. “My dad's being a dick lately anyway. Let's roll.”

“Are you sure you didn't have sex with her?” Amanda Harrison Deutschmann asked. She had her arms folded over her chest and was leaning against the windowsill in David's bedroom, which didn't look a lot different than it did when David was thirteen—he still had the Nakamichi stereo he'd bought with his bar mitzvah money and old posters of Alan Iverson and Latrell Sprewell. Other than that the room was messy, with schoolbooks and sports clothes on the floor and a corner devoted to sneakers that Jonathan had said weren't cool.

“Yes,” David said.

“Yes, what?”

Night had fallen, but the sky was still bright, as it always was with all the lights in Manhattan. Amanda was wearing impossibly tight low-cut jeans, black suede high heels, and a black silk turtleneck.

David was slowly putting on the new sneakers he'd gotten with Jonathan. It was nearly seven and David
knew he had to go find his friends, but Amanda was having trouble believing that he'd done nothing with Kelli. This made sense to David. He was having trouble saying it.

“Yes, baby. I'm sure we didn't have sex.”

“Since when did you start calling me ‘baby'?”

“You don't like it?”

“No,” Amanda said, “I guess I do. It's just … there's something different about you. And if it's not because you fooled around with that skeez from wherever, it's for some other reason. Tell me the truth, David, what'd you do with her?”

“We talked. That's all. Ask her yourself.”

David sat back. He thought,
this is called lying
. Like what Arno and everybody else did. Maybe they'd fooled around. And maybe he'd fooled around with that other girl, too, for a second. But they were the first girls he'd ever, ever cheated on Amanda with, and now he was even with her, right? Assuming they really were getting back together. And he was feeling so cool that he wasn't even sure he wanted to. But after all, she'd called him.

“I'm so sorry for the way I treated you,” Amanda said. He wanted her to say that again, but he knew better than to ask. “Really, David. There's something … it's like … um, I want you.”

“Oh yeah?”

“David?” His mother opened his door and came in. Amanda glared at her.

“Oh, hello, Amanda.”

“Hi.”

“How are you?”

“I'm fine.”

Then nobody spoke. David slowly took the pins out of his new Paul Smith button-down shirt. He held it up, but at the last minute he decided not to put it on.

“Well, your dad and I are going out,” Mrs. Grobart said. “You understand, don't you? You won't feel that we're leaving you here alone, without guidance? Because we can stay in if you do feel that way.”

“We'll be fine,” Amanda said.

“Mmm,” Mrs. Grobart said. “We're having dinner with the Fradys.”

Nobody said anything. Hilary Grobart stood in the doorway, biting her lip.

“Have you two eaten anything?”

“We're okay,” David and Amanda said, nearly in unison.

Mrs. Grobart closed the door behind her and Amanda and David looked at each other.

“We're alone now,” Amanda said. She went over to David's stereo and put in a mix she'd been carrying around. It was mostly instrumental stuff and a bunch of
Radiohead and Rufus Wainright songs that were guaranteed to bring tears to just about anybody's eyes. The music got going and for a full minute, Amanda didn't turn around. David stared at her back and felt the prickly edge that he'd gained the night before soften. He wanted her.

“Amanda,” he said.

She looked at him. Her eyes were glistening. She walked over to where he was sitting on his bed and sat down next to him.

“I love you,” she said.

David took off his new shoes. They pushed the scratchy blanket off the bed and lay down. Later, after they'd dozed for a little while instead of really talking about anything, she said, “You need to go find your friends. I heard you're all going to look for Patch.”

“I know. I'm going to get up in a second.” It was nearly eight. His phone had rung a couple of times. They lay in his bed for a while longer, kissing. And he thought about all the crazy stuff that had happened the night before and all the crazy stuff that was going to happen as soon as he met up with his friends. He squeezed his eyes shut. He held her.

“You weren't nice to me,” he said.

“I was afraid of being vulnerable with you.”

“Why?”

“Because you're so unembarrassed to be in love. It's weird.”

“I'm sorry,” David said.

“No. I guess it's not that big of a problem.”

And then they got dressed and slipped out of his apartment. David raced over to Mickey's place, and Amanda went to find Liza. She was becoming a different person, David thought. He felt so incredibly lucky that he hadn't lost her. Not to Arno, and not to all the stuff he'd done the night before.

“Aren't you going to be late?” I asked. I was sitting at the dinner table in my apartment and I was seriously itching to leave. But I couldn't. My mom was at the head of the table, sitting next to her nearly identical sister, Kelli's mom. And Kelli was next to me. It was nearly eight. My mom and Kelli's mom were going to see
La Boheme
at Lincoln Center. And Kelli and I had been gathered up for a family dinner delivered by a special chef from Tomoe Sushi. I actually sort of knew the chef, who was hanging around in the kitchen, playing with our knives. Mickey used to buy pot from him.

“Probably,” my mom said. “But the first half hour is nothing special.”

“Actually the whole first act is nothing terrific,” her sister said. Both women laughed.

“And we've got Andy downstairs. He can get us there in ten minutes.” The sisters were
drinking huge goblets of red wine. Kelli and I were drinking wine, too, and we were seriously glaring at each other. Then my Blackberry went off. Arno:
Ten minutes
. I didn't know where everybody was but I did know that if I didn't get out of my house in less than that ten minutes my head would probably spin off my shoulders.

My mom and her sister were deep into their own conversation, which seemed to center around other people's divorces. They'd run into several of their friends at Canyon Ranch, and now they were picking them apart, one by one.

I watched Kelli. I kept shaking my head at her. She had rocked my little group awfully hard since she'd arrived. And I felt a little played by her. More than a little. Her phone rang and she checked the name, rolled her eyes, and let it go to voice mail. Now she had two phones and a pager, all given to her by different people who wanted to be able to reach her. At this rate, Kelli was going to have knapsack full of communication devices that she'd have to drag around so she could hear from all her suitors. It was nuts. And what was even more nuts was that her mom seemed to be pretending not to notice. Kelli was wearing a black velvet blazer and a ripped pink
T-shirt underneath that said
Lick Me
. Subtle.