Friend Is Not a Verb (3 page)

“Good for him,” I said.

“And, see, he wants to try to get his life back on track. He needs structure…a new purpose. Something positive. He says he wants to start teaching kids how to play bass. You remember that he plays bass, too, don’t you?”

“Nope. Can’t say that I do.”

“You remember Gabriel though, right?” she asked.

“I remember that when I met him, he said he liked the theme song from the TV show
Friends
. I decided to stop paying
attention to him after that.”

Sarah laughed again.

“I wasn’t trying to be funny,” I said.

“No…it’s just, Gabriel was in a
band
called Friends,” she explained, as if this somehow made sense. “They were a nineties nostalgia act. They opened every show with that song. But anyway, I was thinking, since you play bass, too, maybe you could be his first student? It would mean so much to him, and to me. Besides, Mom and Dad mentioned you were probably going to get some summer tutors, anyway. So why not make Gabriel your first? I bet your bass playing would get a lot better—”

“Sarah?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t know who you are. But I’d like you to leave.”

“Hen, please—”

“You don’t understand, do you?” I asked.

“Understand what?”

“Anything!” My face burned. I clutched the pillow. “How do you know I even need bass lessons, Sarah? For all you know, I could have become the next Flea in the past year. For all you know, I’m a superstar. For all you know, I should be giving
Gabriel
bass lessons.”

“I’m so sorry, you’re right.” She backed out the door. “Wait. Flea’s the guy from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, right?”

“It doesn’t matter.” I buried myself under the covers. “Forget it. Just—Please turn off the light on your way out.”

“Okay, Hen.” I could hear her shoes scuffling, then a pause. She flicked off the light switch. “I’ll let you sleep. Just one more thing: Gabriel is crashing in the East Village right now, so when you go to his place, be sort of careful, okay? The police or the FBI might still be looking for him. Everything is going to get cleared up soon; I promise. That’s why we came back. And I know Mom and Dad are waiting for me to tell you…but that’s another story. Just try not to attract so much attention to yourself at first, okay? It’s not a big deal; things are in motion…just, if you see something weird—like guys in black suits with wires in their ears—you know, go back home and call to reschedule the lesson. Okay?”

“Sure,” I replied, not knowing or caring what she was talking about. “Anything you say. Welcome to the Birnbaum house, whoever you are.”

When I awoke the next morning, I felt a surprising calm. I’d slept well. Miraculously well: It was a heavy, black, dreamless sleep. I yawned and stretched, refreshed. Not that I’d forgotten what had happened. Of course not. My first thoughts were of Sarah, then of Petra, and then of the horrible confluence of events, the great cosmic practical joke that had been played on me with the coincidence of Sarah’s reappearing and Petra’s firing, all on the same rainy night.

Still, I was okay. The proverbial arm had indeed been beaten senseless.

I felt
good
.

So. My sister wanted me to take bass lessons from a fellow
fugitive? No problem. Even less of a problem than that she couldn’t tell me why she’d run away or why she’d suddenly come back—or why my parents were still mysteriously silent on the subject. It was the opposite of a problem; it was a crisi-tunity. If I took bass lessons from Gabriel, then maybe
he
could tell me what happened, and I could also gain the necessary musical skills for Petra to rehire me for PETRA.

Look out, George Monroe!

I hopped out of bed and marched to the bathroom. I brushed my teeth and threw on some frayed old jeans and a plain white T-shirt. I packed up my bass in its case. With a broad smile, I sauntered downstairs, where—
how wonderful!
—my newly reunited family was silently eating a scrambled egg breakfast in our sunlit kitchen. All of them looked haggard, worse than the night before, Sarah worst of all. Of course, Mom and Dad always looked haggard. Both generally gave off a vibe of quiet, stooped suffering that was a lot more nineteenth-century Siberian shtetl than twenty-first-century Brooklyn brownstone. They were still wearing the same clothes. Good for them! I’d slept in my clothes last night, too. Only, I’d had the good sense to change.

“Hi, Hen,” Mom said, looking up from her plate of eggs. “Are you okay?”

“Never better,” I said.

“What’s with the bass?” Dad asked. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to take bass lessons from Sarah’s friend Gabriel,”
I said. “Didn’t Sarah tell you?”

“Excuse me?” Mom asked.

She and Dad exchanged horrified glances. My smile widened.

Sarah bolted up and grabbed me by the shoulders. She whisked me down the hall and out the front door. I didn’t bother fighting back. Her painful sisterly grip was just as unforgiving as I remembered. “What are you doing?” she said.

I shrugged, breathing in the morning air. Last night’s rain had cleared away the stickiness. The tree in front of Emma’s house was as green and leafy as I’d ever seen it.

“Hen?” Sarah pressed. “I’m not joking. What’s going on?”

“I’m going to my bass lesson,” I answered. “Wait, you
did
call Gabriel and set it up, didn’t you? You said it yourself. For reasons you can’t tell me, Gabriel needs to get his life back on track. And I definitely need tutoring. My grades sucked this year. It’s so funny: My college adviser said that taking bass lessons from a fugitive would increase my chances of getting into Harvard.”

“Shh.” Sarah peered back into the house, chewing her lip. “All right. I screwed up. I owe you. I’ll call him right now.”

“Who?”

“Gabriel,” she said.

I opened my mouth to stop her.

Was she really…? Yes, she
was
. She was calling Gabriel on her cell phone.

She ran downstairs to the sidewalk in front of Emma’s
house and engaged in a frantic, hushed conversation. The only word I heard clearly was: “Gabriel?”

I shifted my weight, wondering what I was doing.

“Sarah?” I whispered, but she didn’t hear.

Mom burst out of the door, holding a tinfoil cube.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I made you a whole-wheat egg sandwich for the road.” Mom shoved it into my hands. “You may be a vegetarian. I may have cooked you your own separate main courses for going on a decade now, even on the High Holidays—out of the goodness of my heart—but you’re not going to start skipping breakfast, like your sister did. You’re not going to do
anything
like your sister did. Somehow, somewhere,
somebody
has to make some rules. And somebody has to stick to them!”

What happened next was a little hazy.

There were flashes: Mom, slamming the door…Sarah, giving me directions to Gabriel’s East Village crash pad…me, gobbling down the breakfast sandwich…

My memory only sharpens with what happened when I stopped outside the Bergen Street subway entrance and dialed Emma.

“Wow, that’s so weird!” she answered.

“What is?”

“I was just going to call you,” she said.

“Why? What’s up?”

“I know we made a deal never to talk about dreams, but last
night, I went to bed early and dreamed that your sister came home.”

Without thinking, I hung up and shoved the phone into my pocket. I stopped, clutching a sweaty palm against my white T-shirt. I clung to the strap of my bass case as if it were a life preserver.

Seconds later, my phone rang.

I took a deep breath. Okay. No reason to freak out. This was Emma. This kind of stuff happened. It was nothing more than a bizarre coincidence. Maybe she’d seen my parents’ soggy note on our door. But even if not, why should I even care about what she dreamed? Dreams meant nothing—we’d
decided
that. Still, my hands began to shake as I fished the phone out of my pocket. I decided not to let her get the edge on the conversation. Instead I initiated and rambled, Emma style: “Hi, Emma—yeah, listen, I’m sorry I hung up on you. But I really can’t talk right now. Your dream came true, okay? Your dream came true. And I’m sorry if you have plans, but can you block some time for me this afternoon? I think I might be on the verge of…I don’t know. I see a lot of jabbering involved.”

She took a deep breath and spoke soothingly. “Of course. As long as you promise you’ll never hang up on me again. Bye, Hen.”

Gabriel’s East Village crash pad wasn’t quite what I expected.

For one thing, I expected the building to be a little more…well,
ghetto
—something closer to Sonic Rehearsal Studios.
But there wasn’t even any graffiti on the redbrick wall. The glass doors were relatively shiny, and there was a sparkling new intercom system. I stood outside for several minutes, debating whether or not to ring. Sarah told me he was in 1B, the only apartment without a name label. I’d come all this way, and I didn’t want to go home anytime soon, so…Screw it. I pressed the button.

The buzzer rang instantly.

When the door to 1B cracked open, I was even more surprised. Gabriel’s place wasn’t crawling with cops and FBI guys, which was what I’d been secretly hoping for. I guess it
did
look like a crash pad for fugitives. Either that or as if a movie set designer had been hired to create a “monkish, ascetic interior.” It definitely wasn’t the kind of place where a well-adjusted human being would want to spend more than a few days.

My eyes zeroed in on his bass, perched on a stand next to an unmade futon. Unfortunately, it seemed to confirm my suspicion that Gabriel Stern was a jackass.

A bass, like a high school locker, can say a lot about its proprietor. I own a cream-colored 1976 Fender Precision that I have chosen not to desecrate in reverence both for 1976 (the year the Sex Pistols and the Clash broke) and for how I bought it on eBay for only $250: the greatest steal of all time in the history of the world. It is not an advertisement for my personality, however. Gabriel owned a custom Ken Smith, for which he’d probably paid well over a thousand dollars. Everything about it said “I’m trying too hard.” The body was smothered in
stickers from the nineties, a clutter of grunge bands (remember Mudhoney?); not-quite-gangsta rappers (remember Naughty by Nature?); an official
Friends
cast photo (Get it? It’s kitschy!); and, what do you know, one big exception right between the pickups:
STEAL YOUR PARENTS
’
MONEY
.

There wasn’t any clutter in the apartment, though. Aside from the bass and bedding there was just a cheap practice amp, plus a two-foot-high stack of bound manuscripts next to the door. No dirty dishes or empty bottles or cigarette butts; no stereo, TV, or computer, or even (worst-case scenario) firearms…all of which I’d half expected to find given Gabriel’s postcollegiate meltdown (if that’s what it was). He looked awful, too. His blond hair was a mess, and he was about twenty-five pounds heavier than when I’d seen him last at that fateful graduation. He was wearing the same outfit I was: jeans and a plain white T-shirt.

“Hey, Hen,” he said. “I really appreciate your coming—”

“My sister thinks I need bass lessons,” I interrupted. “She’s right. I stink.”

He closed the door behind us. “So what else did your sister say?”

I was beginning to regret my decision to come here. What if the cops or FBI
did
show up? Would I be arrested, too?

“Nothing,” I grumbled. “Look, why did you and my sister run away?” I demanded, mostly out of nervousness. Best to get the important stuff out of the way.

He laughed. The puffy circles under his eyes twitched. “I’m
sorry. I can’t tell you that. Look, why don’t we jam a little? I’ll take the rhythm, you take the melody.”

I turned away from him. “I don’t feel like playing,” I confessed. “This was a bad idea. I just came here to piss off my sister in front of my parents. I should leave.”

“No, no,” Gabriel insisted. His voice was hoarse. “Stick around. Come on, you came here all the way from Brooklyn. We don’t have to play. We can just hang out. Ask me something. Anything…you know—aside from why your sister and I ran away.”

I glared at him. “Were you really in a band called Friends?”

“Yeah.” His face brightened. “Remember the show?”

“Sort of.” In truth: Emma and I sometimes watched
Friends
reruns when we were bored and nothing else was on—and, yes, sometimes we even laughed. There was no way in hell I’d tell
him
that, though.

“The band was more than a tribute to the show,” he said. “It was a tribute to the word itself. When we were little kids, ‘friend’ wasn’t a verb. You didn’t ‘friend’ someone. You
had
friends. It was only a noun. It didn’t multitask.” He sighed dramatically. “It was a simpler time, Hen.”

Jesus.
He looked at me as if he expected me to laugh. The silence between us stretched awkwardly.

“Um…anything else?” he said, clearing his throat.

“Yeah. Were you and my sister ever involved? Are you involved now?”

He smiled widely at the question. It was the same sort of
smile I’d given my parents this morning when they’d asked me what I was doing with my bass case. His bloodshot blue eyes didn’t waver. He looked at peace, like a grizzled statue of the Buddha. I wanted to punch him. “There’s no easy answer to that,” he said. “Have you ever had certain thoughts about a girl who’s just your friend?”

“No,” I lied.

“Interesting.” Gabriel shrugged. “In my experience, if you’re a straight male and you’re close with a girl, it’s a thought that crosses your mind, no matter what. It may be a fleeting thought, but it always happens. Maybe just once. Maybe a thousand times.”

“What are you, a shrink?”

He laughed. “No, but I could use one. You know of any? Kidding. Look, man, I know it’s early, but I’m going to fix a drink. You want anything? A Bloody Mary? I won’t tell Sarah.”

I watched him disappear around the corner into the kitchen. His bare feet slapped on the shiny wooden floor. My breath quickened. I had a choice: I could stay and endure this excruciating torture, or I could bolt. My eyes fell to the pile of manuscripts. The clear plastic covering reminded me of Sarah’s old term papers.

I snatched the top copy off the pile.

“Hen?” Gabriel called. “You sure you don’t want a Bloody Mary?”

“Actually, I think I do,” I said.

“Cool!”

I heard the refrigerator door open. And with that, I shoved Gabriel’s manuscript into the front pocket of my bass case and ran from the apartment. I didn’t stop running until I’d reached the nearest subway station, ten blocks away—my heart pounding loudly and even my normally obedient lungs disobeying the unspoken command to mellow out.

Only later at Emma’s, sitting on the edge of her bed next to her, could I confess to the theft—and only
after
I’d hashed out the drama of my sister’s surprise return and the ensuing madness of this morning.

“Hen!” she cried. “You’ve never stolen anything in your life.”

I hung my head in shame. “I know.”

Emma’s room is the kind of place that breeds confession. Or maybe “confession” is the wrong word; it breeds honesty. There’s no mystery, either. It’s a pure place. I’ve always liked her room more than mine, even before Sarah’s disappearance, because it never changes. She still has those same threadbare stuffed animals on her bed (the ones Sarah had threatened to slice to shreds), those same posters of forgotten boy bands on her walls, with their eyes and teeth blacked out and horns
markered on their heads.

“Hen, you need to bring back that diary now,” Emma warned me. “Don’t read it. It’s not yours. You might not like what you find out. Look, let’s make a pact—”

“No; no more pacts. I
have
to read it. Nobody will tell me why Sarah ran away. Not Gabriel, not my parents, and definitely not
her.
The way she’s acting…It’s like she thinks that if I find out, it’ll have some adverse affect on my mental health. As if my mental health could get worse. And if I don’t find out what happened, I really
will
lose it. I’ll read it all tonight, and then bring it back to Gabriel first thing in the morning. Better yet, I’ll call him as soon as I get home and apologize for bolting—I’ll make up some excuse; you know, it was too weird or too soon after Sarah got home or whatever—and reschedule the bass lesson for tomorrow. And as soon as I get there, I’ll just slip the manuscript back where I found it, right on top of the stack with all the others. He’ll never even know it was missing.”