Hold On Tight (12 page)

“And I've been hungry.”

“I'm really sorry. Can I get you something, maybe?”

“I was so hungry I'm not even hungry anymore. So just don't worry about me, okay?”

“Oh, come on,” David said, drawing Sara-Beth's body—which had not gone anywhere—closer into him. “Don't be like that.”

“Just don't leave me alone again, okay?”

“Okay, I won't,” David said. “How about I make some popcorn and we watch TV?”

“No TV.”

“Popcorn and movies?”

“Okay, but only popcorn and old movies,” she said, looking up at him with her gigantic blues.

“Why?”

“Stop interrogating me!” she wailed as she threw herself into David's lap.

“All right, all right. Old movies. You stay right here while I make the popcorn, okay? And SB?” He smiled at her and put his index finger across his mouth, signaling quiet. She smiled back, winked, and made the same gesture.

While David was waiting for the popcorn to pop, he wondered if SB wasn't going to derail his whole Potterton career. But she was also so small and gorgeous, and she seemed to require his presence so much, that he was also wondering if she just might be worth it.

He was pouring two glasses of organic lemonade when his mother came into the kitchen.

“David,” she said.

“Oh, hey, Mom,” David said. “How was your day?”

“Exhausting, as per usual. It was client after client, and my energy is all depleted. But they all—they need me, you know? It's a good exhaustion. I'm tired, but I'm right with the universe.”

“That's cool.”

“So, your father says that you thought your interview went well.”

“Uh, yeah …”

“He also said that there was a subtext that he couldn't quite read.”

“Subtext?” David said. One thing he'd learned from his parents was how answering questions with questions could really deflect attention.

“David, I just hope you feel you can be honest with us. It's a stressful age.”

“Yeah, Mom, totally.”

“David, why are you having two glasses of lemonade?”

“Two what? Oh. Mom, I'm an athlete. Whatever portions of things normal kids need, I need approximately double that.” David picked up one of the glasses and chugged it. “See? But Mom, I'm really tired. I think I'm just gonna eat some popcorn and hit the hay.”

“All right David,” she said. “But if there's anything you want to tell me, you know where I'll be.”

David waited until his mother was back in the living room, and then he grabbed the popcorn from the microwave and the one glass of lemonade and beat it back to his room. As he shut the door behind him he saw that Sara-Beth was sitting cross-legged on the bed with the blanket thrown over her head like a tent.

“I didn't make a sound,” she whispered.

“I'm very impressed,” David whispered back.

“Get under here,” she said. And he did.

When Patch looked down he had a new text message. He figured it was probably from Jonathan, but when he opened it up he saw that it was from his Mom. This was weird—he hadn't known that she knew how to text. Also, she and his dad were in Greenwich that week, and she was usually too busy relaxing when she was at the Flood compound there to call the city.

The message read:
Heyday in town today please order dinner in and get him to talk. FF says hes been in silent period xx mom

Patch jumped on his skateboard, and as he rode out of Union Square in the direction of home he hit redial.

“Miss me already?” Greta said.

“Always.”

“Good. Hey, I was thinking, maybe we could get three pug puppies. Don't you think that would be better? Then, even if one is sleeping, the other will still have a friend.”

“Okay,” Patch said. “Hey, I've got news. My uncle Heyday is in town.”

“Heyday? What kind of name is that?”

“Well, you've noticed that my name is Patch and my older sister's name is February. It's a Flood kind of name, I guess.”

“Hmm, yeah, now that you mention it …”

“He's just spent six months in the Mojave by himself.” Patch came off Fourteenth Street and went flying down Eighth Avenue.

“Oh,
that
uncle Heyday. Is this the same uncle who sailed around the Indian ocean on a homemade raft?”

“Yup. But he's done a lot of time in your home state, so I thought he might have some good ideas about, you know …”

“Oh awesome. Does he know about me yet?”

“No, but he will soon,” Patch said as he turned on to Perry Street. “Call me later?”

“Heart you.” Greta said, and he could hear her squinch up her nose as she did.

“Yeah.”

Patch ollied onto the curb and coasted to the steps of his family's town house, where he was met by a welcome sight.

“So this is what civilization looks like,” Heyday Flood boomed from his perch at the top step. He looked like
an older Patch, with his tanned face and overgrown hair, except a little more leathery from his extra twenty-five years in the sun. He was wearing a white Baja pullover, pink swim trunks, and flip-flops, and he was sipping from one of the Flood's goblet-sized wine glasses. The bottle—clearly from the Flood's basement wine cellar—was sitting next to him.

“Mom said Dad said you weren't speaking,” Patch said with a smile.

“Six months in the Mojave, no talking. No people either. I'm still remembering how to do this, so forgive me if the volume's a little high.”

Heyday stood and embraced Patch, and then poured his nephew a glass of wine. “It's good to see you, dude,” Patch said.

“Likewise. Man, you don't know what a town house and a glass of Malbec mean until you've spent six months dodging the heat of day and cold of night.” Heyday took a reflective sip and continued in an even louder voice. “As T. E. Lawrence put it, ‘By day, the hot sun fermented us; and we were dizzied by the beating wind. At night we were stained by dew, and shamed into pettiness by the innumerable silences of stars.' ”

“That sounds intense.”

“Eh, kind of. Keeps you young. Reminds you who you are.” He did a quick back-cracking stretch move
and appraised two Manolo-clad women clicking down Perry Street in the direction of new bars. “Man, there are some pretty women in this city.”

Two generations of Flood men meditated on this for a moment, and then Patch said, “So what do you do now?”

“Well, that's a big question mark, isn't it? But before the Mojave, I was doing forest firefighting. It's a dangerous hobby, and I had to move myself away from that, quiet the mind a little bit—but it's also of huge importance. In some cases, you're saving trees that are older than baseball.” Heyday took a sip of his wine. “But there are other vocations, too.”

“Like what?” Patch loved his uncle. He was maybe the only guy in the world that made Patch look focused, not that Patch usually thought about such things.

“Oh, there's fishing in Alaska, for instance. There's a direct hit to the soul. Grape picking. I don't know if you know this about me, but I'm also a licensed nurse, and that might call me again.”

“Nursing?”

“Patch, we Floods are highly blessed. The family's system of trusts has allowed me to circle the globe I don't know how many times and break bread with
beau coup de
kinds of people. But we are all born to serve. We must all shape ourselves with work.”

“Huh. I guess this is going to sound really dumb, but I never thought about it that way …”

“Not dumb at all,” Heyday drained the last of the wine from his glass and then found that the bottle was empty, too. “Hey, kiddo, why don't you go see about another bottle. And then, like it or not, we're going to talk about you.”

A bottle and a half later, with the sun going down over Perry Street, Heyday rested an arm around Patch's shoulder and said, “So your mother says you've been doh-mess-dah-cated.”

“I don't know about all that.”

“Tell your uncle, kiddo.”

“Her name's Greta—she's beautiful and adventurous and she doesn't mind ruining her shoes.” Patch tried to think of the perfect way to describe Greta, but the right words escaped him. “She's just natural, you know?”

“There's a catch, I can hear it in your voice.”

“Well, we have this whole idea about going to college together.”

“Sounds great.”

“But the thing is, she wants to go to a West Coast school, and I want to go East Coast.”

“Why do you want to do that?”

“I don't know, because a landscape of strip malls doesn't interest me?” Patch sighed. “I guess it actually is
important to be on the same coast as my friends. I may not seem like the most clique-oriented dude, but it's important that they be near me, you know?”

“Well, I suggest you check out some places in California, anyway.”

“I know I should. And I will.”

“It will make your lady happy,” Heyday said. He took a breath. “And while you're at it, you should check out my alma mater.”

“You went to college?” Patch chuckled. “I have a hard time picturing that.”

“Well, it's not your usual lecture-hall-by-day, puke-on-the-lawn-by-night experience. It's near Mammoth, where your father and I took you skiing as a young dude, and it's also a ranch. Unlike most schools, an appreciation of labor is combined with intellectual pursuits—many of my mornings there began at six a.m., milking the cows and whatnot.”

“Man, that sounds just right for Greta and me,” Patch said with relief. He knew Heyday's visits always came with good advice, and he could hardly wait to call Greta and tell her. “What's this place called?”

“It's called Deep Springs, kiddo, and I think it might be your spiritual home.” Heyday paused to drink the last of the wine from the bottle. “But it would be impossible for you to attend with your
girlfriend, I'm afraid. It is, by Deed of Trust, a dudes only school.”

Patch turned away from Heyday, and looked down Perry Street toward the water. He couldn't look at his freewheeling uncle right then, because for the first time in his life, Patch Flood felt trapped.

I was really beginning to see how the world works sometimes, and after I watched Arno use our theater benefit as a way to pick up one girl so that he could fall in love with another (if I thought about this too hard, I would be thinking cynically, so I'm just not going to do it), I went home and folded up all the clothes I didn't wear anymore and put them in Garden of Eden bags to send down to the Salvation Army. Or up to the Salvation Army—wherever it is.

I called my mom to ask her, because I knew she's done that before. But she was about to be seated at Da Silvano, where she was having dinner with her business manager, so she said she was going to have to call me back.

In the meantime, I went for a walk outside. It was twilight, and there were people selling fake handbags in the streets. I walked all the way down to Houston, where the traffic was stalled in both directions, and then I walked back up toward my
apartment. On the way, though, I passed through NYU territory. That was when I started spotting all these flyers for different collegey activities. None of them sounded all that altruistic, but they triggered my memory.

You know how I mentioned my stepbrother, Rob? Well, when he threw this big, illegal party a bunch of weeks ago that was supposedly to celebrate Arno but was actually just a big money-making scheme, he did this crazy lame thing. He went around tearing down a bunch of flyers for this do-gooder event that was happening on the same night so that there would be no competition for his party.

Anyway, all these flyers around Washington Square Park reminded me of Lily Maynard at Barton Day and all her altruistic event-throwing. She had really, really cared about that night, whatever it was, and had been devastated about Rob's Machiavellian poster doings. So I looked through the phonebook on my cell and eventually, when I got down to the Ms, I found that she had somehow managed to get in there. Maynard, Lily, a 212 number. Of course Lily Maynard wouldn't have a cell phone. Cell phones were only useful to people who were concerned about their evening plans. I wasn't even sure why I had one anymore.

But as long as I still had a cell I could call Lily Maynard and ask her for some advice. As I walked out of the park, I listened to her home phone ring once, twice, three times. I was sort of relieved—this was one call that was going to voicemail. After all, I hadn't thought at all about how I was going to begin this conversation. I was listening to the sixth ring fade away when the phone picked up and a girl said, “Barton Day Homeless Outreach HQ.”

I paused. “Are you at school?”

“This is Barton Day Homeless Outreach. Do you need shelter tonight?”

“Um, I'm not homeless. I just wanted to talk to Lily.”

There was a prolonged silence, and then: “This is she.”

“Lily, this is Jonathan. From Gissing.”

“Oh, hey Jonathan. What's going on?”

“You are at school, aren't you?”

“Yes. I mean, who else is going to staff Homeless Outreach HQ on their off time?”

“Wow, that's really nice of you. I mean, you must really care.”

“Well, yeah, I do. But I also get a lot of homework done on nights like these.”

“Oh.”

“So what's up?”

“Well, see,” I filled my cheeks up with air and then let them out slowly, wondering how I was ever going to explain this. Lily Maynard is one of those soft-faced, shiny-haired people who have already rewritten their college essay about how they plan to end hunger in Africa by age twenty-five, three times. She got really excited about helping people, and she meant it. Why would a person like that take my plight seriously? “I went up to Vassar last weekend, you know, to see my older brother Ted, and—”