The Girl with the Wrong Name (6 page)

Chapter Six

At the time, I owned exactly two dresses. One was the vintage wedding dress I kept wrapped in tissue paper, creaseless and pristine, inside the cedar Glory Box at the foot of my bed. (I preferred the Australian term
glory box
to the more traditional
hope chest
. It just sounded ballsier.) The other was a little black cocktail dress—a sleeveless pleated funeral smock that my mom had forced me to purchase at Ann Taylor last year because she wouldn’t let me wear a black hoodie and matching jeans to Todd’s Distinguished Teaching Award ceremony at NYU.

I’d argued that nothing said “New York University” like a black hoodie and black jeans. I’d even thrown the words of her favorite American transcendentalist back in her face. “Didn’t Henry David Thoreau tell us to beware all enterprises that require new clothes?” But Mom said that no amount of transcendentalism could justify a black hoodie at an awards ceremony. Then she threatened to put me in therapy if I didn’t get over my issues with my “perfectly normal-size derriere.” I told her my fluctuating ass had nothing to do with my no-dress policy, but she had already won the war. Ann Taylor funeral smock, black tights, and clunky sensible pumps all the way.

I stood at the bathroom sink in my black bra, tights, and Beats headphones and stared into the drain. The Darkness’s “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” was blasting through my ears at max volume. It was loud, and it was funny, and I needed the distraction if I was going to make it through this.

It had taken me almost a month to perfect this, but I could now look in the mirror without actually looking in the mirror. The trick was to focus your eyes on an extreme close-up at all times and never zoom out to full frame. I could focus in and pluck an eyebrow, or trace my lips with lipstick, or smooth down a hair that had curled out of place. But one false move and I might catch a glimpse of my entire self—bony elbows, pale stomach, disproportionate ass, goose neck, and, of course, the red gash.

It could all be avoided in the daytime. Sweatshirts, T-shirts, and jeans could be applied mirror-less. The scar cover-up was more of an art project than a makeup job. But “pretty makeup” and evening wear were a completely different story. You can’t apply “pretty makeup” strictly in close-up; you have to see it in context. You think you’ve got the blush and mascara right, then you zoom out, and you’re staring at a Goth circus clown with Egyptian mummy eyes—or worst-case scenario: you’re that ninety-year-old lady at the diner.

The same with a dress. You can’t judge it all by feel. You have to look and see if it zigs where it’s supposed to zag, or if the tag is showing, or if the hanger straps are creeping out under the arms, and you have to look at the ass. You
have
to. No woman—not even one as allergic to mirrors as I—can leave the house without checking the ass.

A notification alert buzzed through my headphones: Max’s tenth consecutive text. He’d been texting me at fifteen-minute intervals since 7
p.m.
, and I’d been forcing myself to ignore them. He clearly needed me, but I knew if I answered even one, I’d get sucked into a long conversation, at which point I’d lose my nerve to go clubbing with Andy.

MAXCELL: Where u at? Need a session NOW.

MAXCELL: Dude, please don’t do the Invisible Theo routine right now. NEED emergency session.

MAXCELL: When I say NEED, I mean NEED. A session. Now.

MAXCELL: Hello? Fine, I’ll say it. EARTH TO THEO! MAYDAY, MAYDAY.

MAXCELL: Okay, u are beginning to suck now.

MAXCELL: Now u are fully sucking.

MAXCELL: Unprecedented suckage. Your suckage mocks me . . .

MAXCELL: Hello, Theo, it’s your friend Max. Might you have a brief moment to speak? Would be so greatly appreciated.


MAXCELL: Oh, the humanity

I yanked off the headphones and shoved the phone into the old-lady purse that Mom had made me buy with the dress. Then I checked my ass in the mirror, gasped with horror, grabbed my pumps, and tiptoed to the back door in the kitchen while Mom and Todd discussed Ayn Rand in the living room.

I knew there was
no way I could get past my doorman Emilio without a conversation, but I tried. I moved swiftly through the lobby—as swiftly as I could in my barely used, clunky pumps—and ducked my head like a movie star leaving a Hollywood hot spot.

“Hot date tonight?” Emilio grabbed the doorknob but wouldn’t open the door.

“Oh, please.” I laughed. “Emilio, have you ever
seen me go on a date?”

“First time for everything, right?” He smiled. “I’m gleaming with pride.” He was from Guadalajara and still carried an accent.
Everything
sounded like
every-sing.

We don’t live in a fancy building. Emilio doesn’t hail people cabs or wear one of those vaguely military outfits with tassels on the shoulders. He doubles as the building’s superintendent and maintenance man, and opts for loose-fitting khakis and a shirt that was always opened one button too many, revealing a dense forest of graying man-fuzz.

“I think you mean ‘beaming’ with pride,” I said.

“Oh, I’m gleaming and beaming.”

“Well, you shouldn’t do either, because it’s not a date.”

“Jew look pretty fancy.”

We’d worked through the accent-related “Jew” confusion a long time ago. When I was about twelve—and I had just seen
Annie Hall
for the first of my nine times—I told Emilio to watch the scene where Woody Allen describes an NBC executive’s unfortunate lunch inquiry:
Jew eat? No, not ‘Did you eat?’ but JEW eat? JEW?
Emilio thought it was so hilarious that we agreed to make it an essential part of any conversation.

“No, Jew doesn’t look fancy,” I said. “You’ve just never seen Jew in a dress.”

“No, it’s not the dress,” he said. “It’s a vibe.”

“A vibe?”

“Yeah, Jew have the vibe.”

“There’s no vibe, Emilio.”

“Vibe,”
he insisted with an all-knowing nod. “My daughter had this same vibe the night she met my son-in-law Estefan. Now I have two beautiful grandkids and counting. Trust me, I know the vibe.”

I started compulsively flattening my hair against my cheek. “There is no
vibe
,” I groaned. “It’s not a date, it’s, it’s a—I’m going to an awards ceremony, okay?”

“Oh. Well, I hope it’s the Vibe Awards, because Jew would win tonight.”

“Jew doesn’t win, Emilio. Jew never wins.” I swatted his hand from the doorknob and swung the door open, sliding by him as he laughed gleefully.

“Jew have a beautiful night, Teodoro!”

Outside, I searched the block for Andy.

When I heard him call my name, I followed his voice and found him rising from a stoop across the street. He had his backpack hoisted over one shoulder, and he was still in his jeans, but he’d swapped out the frayed white V-neck for a crisp white Oxford shirt, untucked and open at the collar.

I’d seen a thousand “dudes” crisscrossing the East Village on a Friday night in that exact same outfit. They traveled in teams of three, and they always reeked of desperation. That devil-may-care untucked shirt seemed so laughable to me, since they had obviously primped and gelled for hours, grasping at trends like thirteen-year-old girls. But as I clip-clopped across the street, wobbling my way toward him, I realized the man they were all trying to look like—the man they were all trying to be . . . was Andy.

If we had
been on a date, this would have been the moment when we shared a quick hug or a casual peck on the cheek. But there was no hug and no peck. Instead we just stood in awkward silence, which only brought more attention to the absence of the hug or the peck, which in turn only magnified the date-like nature of the non-date.

“You put on a dress for me,” he said finally.

“For Sarah,” I corrected him too quickly.

“God. Do you really think we’ll find her at that club?”

“I know we will.”

He took a small step closer, erasing the last bit of distance between us. “Theo, I’m running out of ways to thank you.”

I lifted my head to meet his, noticing for the first time that the pale beige freckles on his nose almost matched the color of his eyes. “You don’t have to thank me.”

I glanced back across the street and caught a glimpse of Emilio watching us through the front door. His easy smile had been replaced by a distrustful squint.

My cheeks suddenly flushed, but it wasn’t because of Andy; it was simply this: I’d never had a father around to give my date the once-over—that withering “touch her, and I’ll break your face” look. Having my overprotective doorman eye my non-date with fatherly suspicion was the closest I would ever come.

I couldn’t get this
comparison out of my obsessive head: If Emilio was my doorman father, then the bouncer at the Magic Garden was most definitely my doorman mother. Ice-cold. A master in the art of silence. Impervious to even the most heartfelt of pleas. I thought Andy’s Texan charm could work on any creature with a beating heart, no matter the gender, height, or pectoral size, but this bouncer was a six-foot granite statue in an Armani suit.

“Aw, come
awn
, man.” It was the first time I’d heard Andy exaggerate his drawl for effect (I suspected it was a secret skill all Southerners possessed). “Forty-five minutes? We been standing on this line for forty-five minutes. Now that just ain’t right, don’t you think?”

Zero response from Granite Bouncer.

Maybe he saw the same tragedy I did: a massive herd of drunk girls in heels and crotch-length skirts, lining up in the cold as if it were their lifelong dream to be funneled into a vast, thumping abyss. Their toxic fusion of designer fragrances was making me woozy. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could last.

Andy tried a new tack. “All right, look. I think you need to know the whole story here, man. The girl I love—I’m talking the love of my life, brother—I’ve been trying to find her for days, and I think she just might be inside that club right now. Only she doesn’t know I’m out here. So we just need you to let us in so I can tell her that. Do you feel me, brother?”

We got nothing.

“Really?”
Andy laughed, but the laugh was strained. I wasn’t sure how much longer he could last, either. “I don’t even get it. I was just here on Saturday night, and they let us through in two minutes. What the hell changed?”

I slammed my eyes shut. I knew exactly what had changed. It was the hotness level of his companion. Sarah had walked him straight through that door because she looked like Sarah. But a bottom-heavy troll in funeral attire? That was a much harder sell.

“Excuse me, sir?”

Miracle of miracles, Granite Bouncer actually turned to me. Apparently, he responded much better to
sir
than he did to
dude
,
man
, or
brother
. Maybe I had cracked his code.

“What up, girl?” he asked.

“Hi, yes—if I could just point out . . . your website states that we should ‘come on in without a fuss, because the Magical Garden is waiting for us.’ But we have actually been waiting for
it
for about forty-five minutes. Doesn’t that strike you as false advertising?”

When the bouncer smiled, he looked like a totally different person. Which is to say, he looked like a
person
.

“You’re funny,” he said. He said it as if his opinion had very deep and lasting significance. “I like funny girls.” With that, he leaned over and unhooked the rope. I was so shocked, I didn’t even move at first. “You coming in or not?”

“Yes, thank you, sir, yes,” I said.

“Theo, let’s go!” Andy called back to me, already through the door.

“Oh, and girl . . .” The bouncer grabbed my arm. “If I could also just point something out. This whole funeral brunch vibe you’ve got going—totally working.” He waved his hand over me from head to toe. “I like a girl with a look.”

I couldn’t decide if I was flattered or insulted. It didn’t matter. Andy and I were in.

I cupped my ears
like an elderly librarian. It wasn’t the bone-shaking bass drum or the screaming synthesizers—I liked my music set to “deafening.” It was that I’d spent weeks alone in a small bedroom, living with a mother and stepstool whose preferred entertainment was quietly debating the postfeminist merits of Susan Sontag. I’d blasted plenty of music in my room, watched more than two hundred movies, played more than forty Xbox games, so I wouldn’t have called it “sensory deprivation.” But nothing on earth could simulate the crush of human bodies. And that was the Magic Garden: a cavernous garden of arms, legs, elbows, naked shoulders, and perfectly toned asses. I think they’d set the thermostat to “Deathly Oppressive Humidity” for the sake of all the flowers.

And there were so many flowers. Mounds of fresh flowers and green leaves sprouting up from tall Lucite pedestals that anchored plush, circular banquettes. The pedestals were lit up from within like trees in the Na’vi forest, casting an ethereal, blue glow on all the Crest-whitened smiles and tan summer flesh. It was so ugly and so beautiful at the same time.

It was Blue Hell with flowers, and I wanted out as much as I’d wanted in, but I wasn’t leaving until I found Sarah and asked her at least one question:

Why on earth would you bring Andy here?
Why not a kick-back barbecue joint in the West Village? Or a romantic restaurant where you could actually hear each other speak? Did we meet the same Andy Reese? Sensitive country boy? Ridding the world of irony one boyish smile at a time? You’d just spent a whole day with him, soulfully walking and talking
Before Sunrise
–style. Why would you close it out with this soulless urban dungeon? Are you one of the Beautiful People? I mean, I know you’re beautiful, but are you one of them?

Okay, fine, that was nine questions.

“Andy,” I shouted, straining my voice to overcome the din of the crowd and the pulsating beat even though he was less than a yard away, “if I’m going to spot her in this hellscape, it might be good if I actually knew what she looked like. How about some specifics?”