Hold On Tight (15 page)

“Or get laid in my own bed occasionally,” one of the other guys added.

Patch found himself rolling his eyes. “Come on, like you guys don't sleep late with girls in your beds now.” He paused and looked at his uncle, who didn't seem offended at all by what these guys were saying. He did seem amused by Patch's irritation. “It's just weird to me that you would want to go to college and keep being the same people you were in high school,” Patch said quietly. “College means you get to go to a new city and learn new things. You could make yourself into an entirely different person, but you just want to be the same snide, lazy kids you've always been. That seems so boring to me.”

Heyday raised his eyebrows and took a long sip of his tea. He appeared to be holding in a laugh. “Spoken like a true Deep Springs man,” he said into his cup.

Before Patch could respond to any of this, his cell phone went off in his pocket. He wasn't sure whether he should be more annoyed by these dumbasses he went to school with or by his uncle for getting him into the conversation in the first place. He pulled the cell out. “Excuse me,” he said, and walked over to the window.

“Greta?” he said, when he was far enough away to not be overheard.

“Patch?” Greta said in a very small voice. “Where are you?”

“At the Brown prospie event.” It sounded like she had been crying.

“Oh,” Greta said. She paused and took a deep breath. “Patch, there's something I did that I have to tell you about …”

“Mickey! Mickey! Mickey!”

The paparazzi were straining behind their ropes. Mickey paused for a moment on the impossibly grand steps of the Metropolitan Museum and made a show of waving and blowing kisses to the press. He was trying hard to behave himself, but he was growing irritated by the klieg lights' blaze already. Even though what he really wanted to do was yell, “I'm an artist not your circus monkey!” Mickey air-guitared for the pleasure of his audience and then hurried up the steps while their cheers still lingered in the air.

At the top, a familiar figure was waiting for him.

“You handled that well,” said Philippa, who was standing with Stella at the top of the stairs. She reached out and, with a motherly gesture, tamed Mickey's hair.

“Thanks,” Mickey said, “I'm so psyched you guys are with me. I think it's going to be a bunch of stiffs in there.”

It was the gala opening for some photographer or
other. Mickey wasn't even sure who it was, but he had promised Stella that he'd get them all invited to a big art event, and this seemed sure to be the biggest. Mickey's opinions had taken on a wild currency over the past two days. People seemed to hang on his every word and the invites were multiplying in his e-mail, being hand-delivered to his house, appearing just about everywhere.

“You girls look gorgeous,” Mickey said as they passed into the dramatic lobby of the Met. Stella was wearing a tuxedo that, like his own, was somewhat baggy and off, and Philippa was wearing a Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress that he had seen many times before. This touched him, for some reason. She looked beautiful in it.

The lobby was filled with well-dressed grown-ups who were chatting politely in small groups. There was a string quartet hidden somewhere, playing soothing music, and waiters hovered with trays of champagne.

“I could probably do this every night,” Philippa said as a waiter stopped by to give them drinks.

“You'd get bored,” Stella said dryly. She cocked an eyebrow and surveyed the crowd like she was looking for people she recognized.

“Ah, come on,” Mickey said, gulping his champagne. Even though he was growing leery of his role as an art world sideshow, he thought Stella's ennui was kind of
lame. “How can you not love a party at the Met? They have pyramids here, for crying out loud.”

Stella appeared to be considering whether Mickey's comments constituted a threat. She shrugged her shoulders and said, “You're right. What's to complain about? It's like every bright star in the art world is here.”

“Ahem,” Mickey cleared his throat.

“Of which you are the brightest,” Stella added, smiling with real affection this time.

They wandered through the antiquities collection and into the large glass-ceilinged room that housed the Temple of Dendur. The reflection mirror was dark and mysterious, and art world luminaries lingered around it drinking from champagne flutes and chatting in hushed tones.

“It's beautiful,” Philippa said, looking up at the dramatic Egyptian temple, transplanted to one of the Met's gigantic rooms.

“You know that represents a legacy of imperial exploitation,” Stella said.

“I know,” Philippa said quietly. “I still think it's pretty amazing.”

Mickey spotted a reporter approaching them from across the room. Like everyone else there, he was wearing a suit, although his long hair was tucked into his coat. Stella kissed the art guy on both cheeks and threw her head back in laughter.

“Stella already knows the photographer's work pretty well,” Philippa said, as she and Mickey drew back from the conversation.

“Oh, right. Well, she's the art critic and everything,” Mickey said. “Hey, they look pretty busy. You want to check out the buffet?”

Philippa looked back at Stella and then shrugged in agreement. They walked toward the laden spread, but they hit a snag halfway. Mickey had seen the bar.

“Let's get a little more champagne, whaddaya say?”

Philippa rolled her eyes like she'd seen it all before—because she had—and then nodded happily and said, “Okay, Mickey, it's your night. Order 'em up.”

They moved toward the bar but soon discovered that the bartender was distracted by a burly older man who spoke in a pretentious, nasally tone. His lips smacked together wetly to punctuate every word.

“Are you a barkeep?” he was saying. “And do you know your trade?”

The girl in the bow tie behind the bar was stammering something. It was a painful sight for Mickey to watch. If there was anything he hated more than waiting on a drink, it was watching a blowhard pick on working girls. “It's just that…,” she said timidly.

“Well, then, I don't understand why you can't make
me a simple, little cocktail. A
sidecar
. It's a very simple drink, really. Cognac, orange liqueur, lemon, sugar …”

“'Scuse me,” Mickey said, stepping in front of the guy. “I'm Mickey Pardo, art star. Maybe you've heard of me?”

The older man shook his head. Mickey couldn't tell if the man was sneering or if that was just the way his face always looked.

“Now I know you're a liar. But whatever. You want to tell me what the problem is?” Mickey could feel Philippa's hand on his arm, telling him to go slow.

“Certainly,” the man said impatiently. “I'd like a sidecar. This young woman calls herself a bartender, yet she won't make me one. That's my problem. Which, incidentally, is none of your business.”

Mickey looked at the bartender, who winced apologetically. “It's just that we don't have hard alcohol tonight, just wine, beer, and …”

Mickey nodded at the girl. “Listen Mister,” he said turning to the man. “I'm not sure where you get off, but nobody talks to girls who serve me drinks that way. You'll drink champagne like everybody else, and you'll like it!”

The bartender poured a glass of champagne and handed it to the man, smiling sarcastically. The man had gone pale, but he just took his flute and stepped away.

“Two champ-pagnies,” Mickey said, now that he had the bar to himself.

“Thanks for that,” the bartender said, as she filled two flutes.

“Don't mention it, sister,” Mickey said, taking the glasses and handing one to Philippa. As they clinked a toast she rolled her eyes affectionately. For a moment it was like they were a couple again and she was embarrassed by her jackass of a boyfriend. It was the sweetest moment Mickey'd had all week.

“What do you think you want to see, Sara-Beth?” Hilary Grobart said patiently. They were standing in front of the Quad Cinema on Thirteenth Street.

Sara-Beth tilted her head and ruffled her hair. “I'm not sure, I guess. What movie do you think I want to see?”

“The Kate Winslet costume drama looks like a good movie,” Hilary said. “And she's such a brilliant actress.”

Sara-Beth's eyes got very large and dewy.

“But on the other hand,” Sam Grobart said quickly, “you've had a very difficult week, and there's no sense in sitting through a long, boring movie set in the nineteenth century, am I right? How about the Brad Pitt action flick, eh?”

“Yes, that's what I'd like to see,” Sara-Beth agreed.

David was half paying attention to this exchange, and half paying attention to the crowd of polite but curious onlookers who had gathered on the sidewalk.

“That's an excellent choice, sweetheart,” Hilary said

“SBB, SBB,” one of the girls in the gathering crowd called, “what are you doing? Is this your family?”

Sara-Beth looked up at the Grobarts with a face of trepidation. David saw, again, that exposed helplessness and raw emotion and he was seized with a desire to take her home and cuddle. Then she turned, put on a radiant smile, grabbed David by one hand and Hilary by the other. She stepped toward her fans.

“Hey people!” she called, in a voice that sounded much more happy-go-lucky than anything David had ever heard her utter before. “What's going on?”

“What are you doing here?” said a girl who looked about ten. She was staring in awe.

“Well, cute-stuff, I'm having a very low-key evening with my new adoptive family, the Grobarts. That's Hilary, and that's Sam—aren't they just the nicest-looking ever?”

The camera phones started coming out, and everyone was taking pictures. Several girls passed celebrity weekly magazines up to Sara-Beth, and she signed them happily.

“Thanks, Suzy,” she was saying, and, “Oh, that's so sweet of you. I'm so glad you're my fan!”

The warm night and the adulation of the masses wrapped around the Grobarts. David eyed his parents, who looked a little awkward but mostly just proud.
They were holding hands and watching quietly. With their matching windbreakers on they looked a little bit like body guards. David wondered if maybe this wasn't one of those moments they were always talking about that brought families closer together.

“And this,” Sara-Beth said, drawing David forward, “Is my new boyfriend, David.” She made a thumbs-up motion at the crowd and said, “Isn't he cute?!”

The crowd did seem to think David was cute. They called out to him to pose, and then several of them wanted David's autograph, too. Sara-Beth put her arms around his waist and squeezed him; the crowd gasped with pleasure. David couldn't believe this was happening to him, and he tried to take in as much of it as possible while he could.

Eventually, Hilary leaned in and whispered to Sara-Beth, “Is this getting maybe a little exhausting for you? Perhaps we should go in and find our seats.”

Sara-Beth looked up at her and nodded, although she didn't move to do anything. She just held onto David's hand and reached for Hilary's.

“All right, thank you everyone,” Hilary said sternly to the crowd. “Sara-Beth appreciates all your good wishes, but we're going to go be normal now. All right?”

Some of the girls called out for more autographs, but Sam gently told them no, and then ushered his wife,
son, and newest patient toward the movie theater entrance.

As David reached the door, he saw his friend Patch zooming down Thirteenth Street on his skateboard, looking really … upset. David turned and watched him go down the wide street, and just before he disappeared, David saw what he thought was a cell phone getting hurled into the passing traffic.

“David,” Sara-Beth called, and he followed her clacking heels in to get seats for the new Brad Pitt action movie.

I'd been having bad dreams that I couldn't remember upon waking, and by midweek, I was feeling pretty rattled. So I took myself to the movies.

There was a documentary about subsistence farmers in Guatemala playing at the Angelika, the art house theater on Broadway and Houston, so I went there and got myself a big popcorn and a small Coke and settled in.

Of course, just when you start feeling really introspective and low, that's when New York comes crashing in on you like a small town. I had barely eaten my first pieces of popcorn when a girlish voice somewhere close behind me whispered, “Hey, Jonathan!”

I turned around, and there was Lily Maynard, with her moon face and shiny brown hair. She looked more happy than surprised to see me, which was a surprise. “Hey, Lily.”

“I'm so excited about this movie, aren't you?” she said, giving me a kind of weird look.

“Yeah,” I said. “It's a topic I've always been interested in.”

She gave me a big smile and waggled her fingers at me, and then went back to her Junior Mints. But it took me the first half of the movie to forget that an actual do-gooder was sitting three rows behind me.

Eventually, though, the images of the lush
fincas
, the bright-colored clothes of the workers, and the soft but determined voiceover of the translator lulled me, and I stopped thinking about Lily Maynard, and I started thinking about my stalling efforts to recreate myself. What was my problem, after all? I knew what it was, deep down.

I was afraid of the community garden.

After all, I had fully intended to donate my clothes to the Salvation Army, and they were still sitting in the foyer doing nobody any good. And I had also meant to start donating money to homeless people on the street, but I was so used to ignoring them that I kept forgetting. What made me think that I would be any better at gardening?