All You Never Wanted (7 page)

First into Grand Central, and then outbound again on Metro-North.

Super-duper. Easy-peasy.

As she walks to the subway, Alex speed-dials the NBC main switchboard and punches in extension 8817. Chuck “Tornado”
Gussman’s private line. Arthur’s executive assistant, Cheyenne, had found it. Access to Everything is part of the drill when you work for Arthur.

“Hello. This is another message for Mr. Gussman from Alexandra Parrott. I left you my number, but I’ll leave it again. With regard to my taking Leonard Huang to meet you. I’d love to hear back, sir. At your earliest convenience.” She recites her cell number and clicks off.

Stares at the phone.

Her third call this week. She’s putting too much on it. The horror of
Haute
won’t be voided on this victory. But maybe if she can make this happen, she can catch back a glimmer of her old self. When a challenge had winked at her. When it had meant something.

On the subway, Alex turns boneless in her seat. She’s light-headed but she’s empty, and that’s what counts. That’s what guards her against the surge of terror that comes with entrapment.

Closing her eyes, she pitches forward to rest her forehead against the cool support of the pole. She can almost hear herself giving Leonard the news. She imagines his grip on her hand. His red bow tie clipped at the base of his throat as they hurry together through the brass-and-marble lobby at Rockefeller Plaza.

Flashing their IDs and collecting their guest passes. Gliding to the elevator bank, then shot smoothly skyward to the Channel Four newsroom.

Where Gussman awaits with his own peppy bow tie and outstretched hand.

She lets her mind run it in a loop. Over and over.

Her body turns buoyant with unexpected calm.

Soon as I saw him, I could have tripped and fallen flat over my feet down the outdoor steps, sitcom style—
cue the scratchy record needle, cue the laugh track
. So I made myself take it extra slow. My legs moving through wet cement as I sent him a wide and looping Chinese ribbon dance of a wave. An oversized signal so other kids would see.

Because what was more platinum than the legendary Joshua Gunner picking me up from school?

Taking my time, I crossed to where he was leaning against the side of his illegally parked Chevy Silverado.

“I don’t need a ride.”

“Yeah, I know all about your fine automobile.” Last week, Joshua had given me and Alex his gospel of the German Car Boycott. Shock-studded with details about how you shouldn’t purchase anything from people who are descended from Nazis. Scrape Joshua’s surface and you’d often find fool’s gold. Mostly in the form of conspiracy theories. Alex said it was the borrowed wisdom of all those “uncles”—his parents’ ever-rotating circle of drifter-windbag pals. Which was a type that tended to roll up to your local bowling alley.

“So … why are you here?” I felt so shy I could hardly look at him. Joshua was knocking the cover off his own hotness today. Black jeans and a black long-sleeve T-shirt, tapered to fit.

“For what we’re doing, we gotta use my flatbed.”

“And what we’re doing is …?” As I hiked up into the passenger side. Kids were calling his name and a whistle cut the air. Joshua had been a god here, even if he’d also been a mystery. In fact, the mystery had helped. Built the myth. And the way he was taking his time, I had a feeling he probably missed it.

“What we’re doing,” he said slowly, unrolling the window and settling in, “is getting something for your sis.”

“You talk to her about the party yet?”

“Nope.”

“Aw, frick.” I slipped my sunglasses over my eyes as we rolled out slow, and then turned brightly west. “You do realize it’s tomorrow, right? I thought this was signed and stamped. You were with her all last night.”

“I said if it felt right. Which it didn’t. She was tired.”

“I’ve already done my key invites and I swear, Joshua, if I have to call it off, I’ll just about kill—”

“She’s not gonna say no, kiddo. But I want her to feel the yes. So now we gotta go get the get.”

Kiddo. I would have to ignore that. “Newsflash. Whatever it is you’re buying her, Alex doesn’t need it. I’d go so far to say she probably doesn’t need any of your dirtbag gifts.”

Thwop!
The heel of Joshua’s hand cuffed me hard and mean behind the ear. Like I was a dog. He hadn’t even taken his eyes off the road. “What the
hell
?”

“I said the get. Not the gift. The get. Who said I was buying anything?”

“For God’s sake, could you be more dickishly white trash about it?
Hitting
me? Are you for
real
? That
hurt
, Gunner.” Because
it honestly seemed way too far on the abusive side. No matter if he’d been aiming for one of those casual, rough ’em up, oldest-Gunner-brother moves. No matter how pissed he was about my calling him a dirtbag. Now I was pissed, too. I sulked. Then he felt bad—I could tell from how he cranked the radio. We drove in a harsh silence. My ear was humming.

I didn’t speak up until he turned onto Route 1. “Where are we going, anyhow? Now that you’ve kidnapped me?”

“Stratford Mini-Putt.”

“You’re joking.”

“Somewhere else you gotta be?”

“That’s almost forty minutes out. And right now I can’t think of anything worse than playing mini-golf with you.”

“We’re not playing anything. We’re stealing Brandon the Whale.”

I was still rubbing my head, although it didn’t hurt anymore. “Why?”

“Al’s and my first date was here. It’s kind of a private joke.”

Which flattened me. Instant deflate. Could I be more foolish? Could I be more pathetic? It took everything in me to find even a trace of Gia-blasé. “So glad I can be part of your time-consuming lovebird prank. Especially if it might mean getting arrested.”

“I need the extra pair of hands.” He smiled. Like it was perfectly fine to demolish my afternoon. Like I had nothing better going on with my life than aiding and abetting.

But he knew, of course. He knew I’d do it.

It turned out the Mini-Putt was closed two weeks for repairs. Which Joshua already knew. We loped around and checked it out through all different chinks in the chain-link. It was every bit as
cheeseball as I remembered, with the Dutch windmill and the freaky clown mouth, and of course Brandon the googly-eyed whale on the ninth.

Joshua jumped onto the fence, catching a toehold in his vintage Ballys. “The fence is too high to swing over. But they padlock it with a Master Lock number five and that’ll be cake. No alarm system, since there’s nothing in there to steal.”

“Right. Except the alarm system of everyone watching from the highway.”

“Nah.” He let go, dropping to the ground and brushing his hands against his jeans. “We’ll get Pizza Hut across the street and then come back here when it’s dusk—but before we get a glare off the streetlamps.”

“I don’t really like pizza. Especially not from the Hut.”

“Order a Pepsi, then. We need the soda can.”

“Pepsi’s not dinner.”

“Really? I thought for a girl it was. Diet Pepsi and a stale breadstick? Yum.” But he was hardly paying attention to what he was saying. In the theft zone.

I dropped back to signal my general irritation as I watched him swagger. That Cheerios-blond hair. That hard nothing butt. I didn’t have much choice but to follow him. Across the highway and into the Hut. We took a booth in the back. Its smell of cigarettes and burnt green peppers was insta-grease on my skin.

Joshua ordered and started texting like Mozart. Not to be outdone, I texted Lily Genovese—we’d been having a nice back-and-forth ever since I sent her an apology for not being sensitive about her brother and how hard it must be for her family. No need
to get stuck on Lily’s bad side, right? And I did feel bad about it. No fun to be had in making anybody cry about their dead anything.

The reward for my groveling was that Lily and her boyfriend, Adam, were coming to the party tomorrow. Which meant I’d now snagged Adam’s posse—aka the top hot guys of varsity wrestling.

“Ever hear from your dad?”

I looked up. I’d been at it so long, I hadn’t even noticed that the food had arrived and Joshua’d put down his cell. He was talking to me through a piping mouthful of the intestinal jihad that was his custom-order deep-dish.

“My dad?”

“Yeah. Alex never mentions him.”

“What do you mean? You mean my biological dad?” I was still confused. “As in, do I ever hear from my deadbeat, alcoholic, ran-as-far-as-he-could-go-geographically-without-leaving-the-continental-U.S. dad?” I was stalling, kneading up an alternative story so I wouldn’t have to share my cliché pain about what it meant to have your father decide he didn’t want to be attached to his wife and daughters—or to anything at all.

“I mean, Alex gave me his basic drill. That he’s lost touch. And he lives in some houseboat in Jacksonville. She said it was tough on you two and your mom, making ends meet. Pre-Arthur, obviously.”

“Yeah, yeah. It had sucked.” I squirmed. Tough, oh sure, it had been tough. Once upon a time, before that Wonka ticket of a two-week temp job had planted Mom in Arthur’s path. A.D. (after Dad) but B.A. (before Arthur) we’d lived in a world of
maxed-out credit cards and a near-empty fridge and Mom juggling seventy-, eighty-hour workweeks while Alex and I delivered all our babysitting and Topshop earnings into the cookie jar.

We’d known ShopRite circulars and Marshall’s layaway for winter coats and the wolf at the door at the end of each month when the bills came due. There’d even been a month we’d gone without electricity. Dinners and homework by candlelight. And no, it hadn’t been romantic. It had sucked. But it hadn’t one hundred percent sucked. There’d been good times. Movie night with salted caramel popcorn. Odds-’n’-ends Saturday dinners. The three of us in Mom’s bed on Sunday morning.

And we’d celebrated what we could, since there wasn’t much. That online writing contest I’d won. Alex making Topshop Employee of the Month. The Valentine’s Day when Mom’s heart-shaped banana bread pudding had turned out perfect. People point at divorce and call it a broken home, but it hadn’t been. We’d healed ourselves, a family unit of three.

“You’re smiling. Nostalgic for how much it sucked?”

“Sometimes it wasn’t so bad.” I was cracking my knuckles. “Not as bad as you might think. I miss it a little.”

Joshua gave me a look. “Meaning?”

“Meaning me and Alex and Mom were closer, we hung out more, back in those days. It was fun.”

The flat of Joshua’s palm smacked the table—I jumped. “If you miss being broke, Parrott, you’ve forgotten what it’s like. Nothing fun about it.” And from the way Joshua threw down those words, I didn’t want to pick them up and mess around with them.

“Well, as for my dad,” I said, doubling back to what was the
slightly easier subject, “we’re better off without him. Right now he’s probably sitting in some old-man dive bar. Making a dozen new loser friends to replace the old loser ones he made and lost last week.”

“Never feel like you need to visit him, ever?”

“I see him every morning in the mirror. I think of him as the ghost version of me. And who needs to visit your own ghost?”

Joshua liked that. I waited, my face open to whatever he wanted to say next. He was drumming his fingers. He had something to unload. “Listen, Thea, I gotta resell Brandon,” he said. “Some kid found me on Craigslist, he knows I can make shit happen. He needs Brandon for his frat-boy party. He’s paying me pretty decent.”

I pressed my back against the booth and looked at Joshua hard. “So stealing Brandon the Whale has got nothing to do with Alex?”

“No, no—it’s got plenty to do with her. Everything. She’ll fall down from joy, I swear, when we haul that whale into the house. But I’m gonna slide the truth a little. I’m gonna tell Alex that I’m putting Brandon right back at Stratford when …”

“When he’s actually being sold to a fraternity cookout.”

Joshua nodded. “Sunday.” He wanted me to say something else. When I didn’t, he added, “I wouldn’t do it, Thea, if I didn’t need the money. You know I’m not lying on that front.”

No, it was no lie. I didn’t doubt that. You could see Joshua’s troubles a dozen ways. How his wallet was as ancient as the Dead Sea Scrolls and always flat as a pita besides. And that extra-loving care he took of his truck, like it was some senile great-great-uncle that Joshua was scared would die on his watch.

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “Since Brandon the Whale is a
theft
instead of you just borrowing it, that’s why you felt obligated to confess to me?”

“Confess? Uh-uh.” Joshua looked almost bashful. “Maybe I just wanted to tell you because I can’t tell her.”

Words that made me tingle. He could tell me, because he saw me as the savvy sister. I could take it; I got it. I didn’t judge. My smile was pure Gia, with an accompanying tossback of my hair. “Obviously, I don’t care where that stupid whale lands.”

“So we’re cool?”

“Of course.” Did I actually mind about a piece of stolen property being resold for profit? Objectively, it was a little creepy. But as a story, I saw all the gray areas. The romantic part. The prank part. The needing-money part. And I was hanging with Joshua Gunner. Who was whispering his secrets to me. Disclosing them for me but not for my sister. Because he knew she’d judge and disapprove.

So let me ask you, was it really so terrible to enjoy it, in the minty-fresh rush of the moment?

It’s not like I was doing anything. Anything wrong, I mean.

She opens the front door on the third ring and it’s Palmer. She is instantly on guard.

“Hey you.”

“Hey you back.” Palmer pops an air kiss as she springs past. “You look sleepy. Am I interrupting important senior business? Reading
Us Weekly
? Drying your pedicure?”

“I wish. I just got in.” She’d had to call a taxi from the train station. What was it—six-thirty? Alex squints at her Rolex. The platinum hands are set on a platinum face, so it’s always a headache to tell what time it is. What Leonard’s household could have done with that cab fare. Or this Rolex. She tries to banish these thoughts. To live with the Big Money, you have to coarsen to it. And to everyone who doesn’t have it.