All You Never Wanted (16 page)

“Scary! I completely forgot you and Alex used to be, like,
sales​ladies
.” Mo cupped a hand to her morgue lips. Like it was just
sooo
funny. Like she herself would never be caught dead with a weekend job.

“Actually, sometimes I miss working at Topshop,” I said, fully engineering my new, yeah-I-said-“ganja”-and-so-what voice. “It
was fun to try on all the clothes. And I loved being with my sister.”

There was a silence and I dearly wished I could have chopped off that last sentence, with its giant whiff of pitiable.

“Idea!” Mo had bolted up. Snapping her long, pale fingers again. “Forget the movies. We should go dressed up to Alex’s party!”

Alex’s
party? WTF? It wasn’t Alex’s party, it was mine!

“Like a costume party? Except only the four of us know about it! Same as when the Blondes all showed up for the class picture in pajamas!” Palmer bounced up and down like a kid in church.

Okay, so they were going? For real? Relief splashed over me.

“My mom’s got this gold lamé tunic eighties disco-thingy. I have no idea how she ever fit into it. I bet I could rock it,” said Mo.

“If there’s not even going to be one single person from Arthur’s staff around, this could be the party of the year,” added Mo.

Jess made a dismissive grunting noise. She hadn’t forgotten that she was still the victim here.

In answer, Palmer leaned over and squeezed Jess’s arm. “You know Alex didn’t
want
to miss the dim sum, Jess,” she said softly. “She’s dealing with something major. She needs us. Let’s step up and show some sisterhood, right?”

Such hypocrites. They weren’t showing sisterhood. They just didn’t want to miss a good party. Where Joshua was dealing; where they could wander around Camelot unchaperoned.

But whew! They were coming.

Mo stood and refilled everyone’s iced tea, and nothing ever had tasted so magic as that peach-ginger sweetness down my throat. Being the new Thea, the Gia-infused Thea, kept me permanently
parched. I drained the glass in ten seconds, then slithered out of Mom’s dress to my bikini underneath, taking care to drape the dress carefully on the back of an empty lounge chair.

Then I assumed the coma position best for worship of the late-afternoon sun.

With my eyes closed and Alex’s core friends all around me, it was like I’d become my own big sister. Or her twin. Something just as good.

So who cared if they were calling it Alex’s party? One thing I knew. It would be remembered as mine.

The Bronx Charter West basketball court looks like an outdoor prison. Sunlight bounces its empty promise off the poured black Tarmac. Alex has never seen basketball hoops like this: thick iron pipes with chain-link nets.

There’s not a soul on the bleachers. But she can tell by the cast-off, mostly melted ice-cream cone and birds pecking over the foil chip packages that people have just left. She can almost hear the shouts of laughter over the heat of the game. Disappointment lunges through her.

She spies a little boy, flopped stomach over on a swing on a feeder wedge of playground behind the court. He’s dragging his sneakers back and forth. Stirring up a dust pocket. Though he doesn’t change position, Alex knows he’s alert to her approach.

“Hey,” she says. “We’re looking for Bronx Charter. The All-Stars.” Just on the hope. On the chance. The boy lifts his head.

“They played already. Jackals dominated. The Rockets got crushed, forty-six to two.”

“Oh.” Which is Len? A Rocket or a Jackal? Not a Rocket, she hopes. She imagines Len shuffling home along the cracked sidewalk. Her eyes are a sudden wellspring. She can hardly walk a straight line back to the car, where Xander is waiting.

She’s failed Len miserably. She can’t even get to his basketball game on time, or force that jackass weatherman Gussman to
return any one of her calls. She can’t propel Len’s life forward one inch, not one tiny peg toward better.

Too little, too late. She feels useless. But Xander is right here. Closer than she’d thought.

“Hey! Hey-hey, it’s cool, Alex. It’s just a basketball game. There’ll be other ones. A zillion other ones.” Xander’s got her, he’s holding her tight and she’s glad because she feels almost soggy. As if she might disintegrate and wind up like that lost ice-cream cone. Dripping away to nothing in this concrete heat.

“I think he was a Rocket,” she sniffles. “Yeah. I’m pretty sure.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Xander’s got her enveloped. “You’re just hungry.”

With her nose buried in Xander’s T-shirt, she can pick up the whole day in it. Sweat and sunshine and green lawn and mesquite chips and drinkable yogurt and asphalt. “I might be,” she agrees.

“And I know somewhere incredible. A Cuban diner. My friend Lucia works there. It’s only about ten minutes away. You in?”

She wants to say no. She wants to retreat. At Camelot she could hide in her bedroom with a graham cracker and her earbuds plugged in and the world locked out. But to retreat to her house would end the Xander part of the day. So, impossible.

She can’t possibly give up on this day if Xander is in the middle of it.

“I’m in.”

And that’s how she and Xander end up at Flores de Mayo on 168th Street. Midway down a block of liver-bricked residential buildings. Easy to miss if it weren’t for the easel propped outside, chalked with Early Bird Special items for seniors.

“Okay, Alex, do your best imitation of a little old lady.” On
the way inside, Xander holds the door. As she steps past, he drums his fingers lightly on the small of her back. “ ’Cause if we can get the half-off discount for the senior special, then your dinner’s on me.” Something about this joke tells her that Xander is picking up the bill.

Does that make it a date? Does she want it to be one?

The restaurant is darkly inviting. She’s glad to steal out of the sun into the thick-walled space inside. She tucks herself into the booth that the bartender has pointed them toward. Its chipped laminated table is crowded with condiment squeeze bottles that look like artist supplies. There’s a sun-washed tropical mural on the far wall. Arranged on the bar are brine-cloudy jars of pickles and eggs.

Xander knows this place. He waves at the bartender and cheek-kisses the waitress as she stops to greet him on her way to another table.
“¿Hola, Lucia, qué tal?”

“Momento, Xander.”
She trills the
X
in his name. Xander, Xander, Xander. Alex feels as if every molecule of herself is charged with the energy of the sun to this name. Crazy! Here she’s walked past this guy for months, in and out of Empty Hands, and now she can hardly breathe for the excitement of him.

Xander is fiddling purposefully with the napkin holder, the condiments, the saltshaker and pepper shaker. She watches.

“What are you doing?”

He stops. Then starts again. “Redesigning. Force of habit,” he says. “Once I see the disorder, I can’t leave it alone.”

She smiles, thinking about his room. “Yeah, there was that. For sure. The corkboard thumbtacks. Your desk. But your room looked neat. Not compulsive.”

“It’s more about …” For the first time all day, Xander actually seems bashful. He starts again. “It’s more about how everything has a hidden balance. All you need to do is find the equation. Don’t you think? Even a corkboard. Or a mess of ketchups and mustards.”

“Or a … me?”

She can feel Xander turning over an answer in his mind. He doesn’t speak it. Instead, he sinks behind his menu. When Lucia comes around with their waters, he orders in detachedly fluent Spanish for both of them. Then he chats with Lucia. From the cadence of her voice and the way her restless fingers ripple the air, something is bothering her—though Alex doesn’t understand a word.

“I wish I could do that,” she says when the waitress leaves to put in their order.

“What?”

“You know. Win friends and influence people in a foreign language.”

“I bet you do pretty okay in just English.”

“I’m serious. I get all A’s in French and can’t even speak it. Not meaningfully, anyway. Not to have a conversation like the one you just had. What were you talking about, anyhow?”

Xander checks to make sure the waitress is out of earshot before leaning in, his voice lowered. “Lucia’s husband is sick. He’s dropped his work hours to part-time. Three young kids plus Lucia’s mom are all living in a two-bedroom in Queens. One day in Lucia’s life packs five days of mine.”

Alex steals a glance at the woman, who is now stacking plates at the bussing station. Lindquist Temp Agency once had placed
her mother at a hostess job for a fancy restaurant in Manhattan. Alex never forgot watching her mom squeezing into that plunge-neck dress along with those high, pointy heels. Hooker shoes. No other way to describe them. By the end of her first week, her mother’s feet were seared with blisters. At night, she would sit in front of the TV, rubbing in the Corn Huskers lotion. Taping up the sores with fresh gauze or fresh Band-Aids.

“She must be so tired,” Alex murmurs. “On the go all day.”

“Lucia’s like the definition of grace under pressure,” says Xander. “Her name means ‘light.’ Isn’t that perfect? She has stand-up kids, too. They’ll all get through it together.”

“We were stand-up kids once, Thea and I.”

Xander looks amused. “Am I about to hear a poor little rich girl story?”

She colors. “Ha-ha. You’re making fun of me. But it’s diabolically easy to live shut up inside a castle and to forget what counts and forget who has real problems. My stepdad’s money is this toxic thing.” Ew, this
does
sound poor little rich girl.

“Is that everyone’s opinion? Or just yours?”

She thought. “I guess just mine. For my mom, the money’s pure protection. For Thea, it’s more like a weapon. For me, it’s …” She laughs. “A disease. Anyway. Change subjects. What was I thinking, studying French? I should have learned Spanish. Everyone in the real world speaks Spanish.”

“My Spanish has only truly succeeded if it turns you to putty in my hands.” Xander leans back, dropping his head into the net of his laced fingers. “Are you putty yet? I’d also be happy with some equally mushy putty-like substance.”

She taps her lips. Pretending to think about it. “I’ll turn to
putty if you ordered us a good lunch. But it could be a marshmallow-and-pineapple pizza that you just ordered in that excellent Spanish of yours.”

“Fried plantains,
ropa vieja
on mashed yuca, mango salsa, side of guac, side of brown rice. Lucia’s homemade flan. It all works, I guarantee. But my question for you is—are you really gonna eat?”

“Sure.” Her heart thrums. “Sure I am.” Is she lying? Her desire for Xander seems to be feeding her other appetites. But she’d better eat something if she wants to stay vital in this Xander-centered day.

Their eyes linger on each other. She’s already softening into that putty-like substance. She slides forward on her elbows. “Xander, I think we’re about forty-seven years younger than the youngest person here.”

He looks around. “Copy that. And possibly the only non-Cubans.”

“You don’t feel a tiny bit out of place?”

“Me? Nah.” Xander reaches for the basket that Lucia, sweeping past, has just dropped. Tucked inside are half a dozen squares of cornbread plus a paper cup of whipped and melting butter. “Comfort zones are overrated.” He takes his time buttering the cornbread as his gaze fixes on the live soccer game on the television screen above the bar. He’s not really watching, Alex knows. He’s turning over the next thing he wants to ask her. She braces for it.

“So what’s the deal with Gussman?”

Aha, easy one. Easy-ish. “No deal. He’s a jerk. I’ve called him six times in ten days, and he doesn’t ever return any of them.”

“Miss Parrott, that’s a lot of calls. Why’re you psycho-stalking him in the first place?”

“I need something from him. Something I’ll never get. Even though I’ve sunk so low that I name-dropped my stepdad. Just to see if that might force the situation.”

“And?”

“No dice.”

“What, specifically, do you need from our friend Weatherman Gussman?”

“I want to set up a newsroom visit for Leonard.”

“Aw, Len Huang?” There, the dimple appears. How ridiculously happy is one dimple allowed to make her? “Seriously? Our basketball boy?”

“Len wants to become a meteorologist. It’s his dream.”

“No way. He never told me that.”

“Yep. He’s got it bad. He always gives me the weather report before we start our study session. Bow tie and hand signals and everything.”

“Too much. Funny kid. I bet Gussman’d love that story, if you told it to him.”

“I
have
told him. And he hasn’t ever called me back to hear the rest.”

Xander could never play poker. His expression has instantly clouded. “But he’s got to meet this kid. How many little kids want to become weathermen? We should find him. Meet up with him face to face.” And then he’s all lit up in bright voltages again. In Xander’s elation, Alex feels herself reclaiming her original wish for some way,
any
way, of getting Leonard into that newsroom.

They talk about other things, but the relit hope glows inside her.

“Do you know where he lives?” Xander asks suddenly in the
middle of their discussion of which superpower they’d want most (Flying, Xander. Invisibility, Alex).

“Who, Gussman?” She knows he means Gussman.

“Yeah.”

She nods. “I’ve got his address from my stepdad’s assistant. He lives in Darien. The reason I wanted it is because I’m thinking about writing him.” Alex confesses it quickly. “See, I got this idea in my head that maybe he’d appreciate it if I typed up my request. Signed my name and licked a stamp, you know? Anyone who rocks an old-school bow tie seems like he’d be up for a letter.”

But Xander is shaking his head. “Salvatore Diaz would say a letter is too cold. He’s all about the personal. He’d say, ‘Go to his house.’ ”

Alex laughs. “Oh, yeah? Can you quote me the place in Diaz’s autobiography that’s about harassing people in their own homes?”