by Sarah Miller
"I'm Gideon," he says when he feels he has been stared at too long to not speak. "I live with Nicholas."
"Oh, Gideon!" She clasps Gideon's hand. The dog turns in excited circles. "You must be so thrilled to be in New York!" She bends down and ruffles the dog's head. "Who's Mommy's baby? Who is Mommy's baby bear!"
Dinner is order-in Chinese food. Gid stuffs himself. There are two different kinds of noodles, shrimp with broccoli, spare ribs, and, for Nicholas, some wet, unappetizing tofu thing. His mother's filled up the refrigerator with distilled water and jugs of green tea. She just sits there beaming and watching her son eat, now and then picking a few strings of vegetable from the crevice of an egg roll. Gid can't remember when he's seen someone look so happy.
And parental love is a powerful thing, because Nicholas seems happy too. The relaxed glow on his face is something new.
Afterward they go into a little paneled room dominated by a flat-screen TV. Nicholas lets him man the remote. "Where did your mother go?" Gid asks. He flips past the Powerpuff Girls, beefy-faced guys in suits, squirrels running up a tree.
Nicholas shrugs. "She takes the dog out. She wanders around."
So she's in training to become one of those old people that walks around the Upper East Side.
"She looks so young," Gid says. What he really means is, she looks weird.
Nicholas nods. "She works out for, like, three hours a day," he says. "She wants to get married again."
"Do you think she will?"
Nicholas walks to the door and shuts it carefully. "No," he says quietly, as if his mother could hear him in the streets. "No one wants to marry an old lady."
"She's not old," Gid says.
"She's not young either," Nicholas says. "I mean, she has wrinkles and she has to take calcium. And Metamucil."
Gid can't argue with this. They watch a show about tuna-fishing off of Japan. Some old British guy interviews Japanese fishermen, and one appears to get angry with him. There are subtitles. "We are not trying to do anything wrong. We are just doing what we know how to do. What we must do. What other option do we have?"
Gideon nods sagely. "This is their world," he says. "They live under these terms."
Nicholas smiles. He seems to understand.
"Hey," Gid says suddenly. "Show me a picture of your sister."
Nicholas's sister is at boarding school in Switzerland. She's not coming home for the holiday. Nicholas pulls out a couple of drawers, leafs through some albums, and hands Gideon a short stack of photographs. God. She is
beautiful, a girl version of Nicholas. Electric blue eyes (scary husky!), dark hair, a ripe, naturally red mouth. She's prettier, actually, than he is good-looking.
"So level with me," Gid says. "Does she like Cullen?"
Tm sorry to say that she does. I am the sole reason they haven't gotten together yet."
Gid smiles inside. If he wins the bet, he will become part of an important historical moment in their friendship.
Gideon gets his very own room. Mrs. Westerbeck shows it to him with much fluttering apology. "It's very small, but I think you'll be comfortable. At least I hope so!" The room isn't large, but Gid finds the Danish modern sofa bed, Japanese prints on the wall, and giant windows overlooking the median of Park Avenue completely luxurious.
"Now, shall we leave these drapes open?" She opens them. "Or closed?" She closes them. "What do we
think?"
"It's okay," Gid says. "I can figure it out."
Mrs. Westerbeck's whole body deflates.
"Why don't you open them, then?"
Her body inflates again. "Fine," she says. With a flourish, she sends each drape sailing off to the edges of the window. Gid smiles at her, sharing in her small delight.
It's so cute how sweet he can be. And so sweet how cute he can be. I make myself sick. But seriously, he could tell that she wanted to fix the drapes for him, and he let her. Most guys wouldn't have picked up on that, and if they had, they would have thought she was just a lunatic. But Gid understands. She's in her element. And he knows how much he likes to be in his.
Gid notices a black-and-white photo sitting next to his bedside table of a man who looks like Nicholas. It must be Nicholas's dad. He looks away from it, but Mrs. Westerbeck grabs it up. "Tom," she says. "Nicholas's dad. Right after we got married. I met him on a blind date, my very last month at Vassar. 1 remember thinking, Oh, my, what a catch! What a wonderful man."
God, Gid thinks, maybe I should set her up with my dad. But he would be so uncomfortable here. He'd feel like he was going to break something.
No, Gid, he would just fix things.
"I guess he didn't turn out to be so much of a catch," Gideon says.
To his surprise Mrs. Westerbeck smiles fondly at the picture. "No," she says. "He was a catch. How do you think I got all this? Working?" She makes a wide gesture to include her large, well-appointed apartment. "The wonderful-man thing, well, I guess Lucy, that's Nicholas's stepmother, she might think so, but I..."
Gid wants to wrap this up. "It must have been very hard," he says.
Mrs. Westerbeck laughs a little—this time a little less kindly. "Don't believe everything Nicholas tells you," she says. "He thinks just because I miss him so much that I want a husband. I don't. I work out to fit into my clothes."
"I can relate to that," Gideon says. "I used to be skinny fat. In fact, I have your son to thank for getting me in shape."
Mrs. Westerbeck smiles with recognition. "Ah, yes. Skinny fat. Nicholas always says that about his stepmother. He thinks he needs to make me feel better. But I'm fine." She closes the door with a wistful half-smile on her face.
Gideon lies awake for a long time. He's never slept this far off the ground. What if there were an earthquake? Most people think there are only earthquakes in California, but Gid read once there could be a giant earthquake almost anywhere. What would he do if there were an earthquake? Would he call his mother first or his father? Would he appreciate life more after it, because he knew he could die at any time, or less, because he knew there might not be any point? He wonders if Molly could forgive him if she knew how much of a chicken he was.
I like it when Gid and I are both lying awake. It used to get a little exhausting listening to him, when everything was new, but now that I know him well, I can follow him a lot better. Now I almost don't notice the difference between our thoughts.
Gideon feels himself being gently shaken. He thinks he's back at school. "Cullen, leave me alone," he says reflexively.
"It's not Cullen, douche, it's Nicholas. Hello, you're in my apartment." Gid opens his eyes, his heart beats fast, and for the split second when he still doesn't know what's going on, he thinks he's a scared little kid. Then he acclimates himself to the room, the giant windows, the towering bookshelf. When his eyes fall on the black-and-white photo of Nicholas's father, he finally knows what's happening.
"We're going out," Nicholas says.
"But I don't want to go out," Gid mumbles. This is a really comfortable bed. Mrs. Westerbeck explained to him it was some special mattress from Sweden. Gid thinks it feels like he's lying on a giant piece of bread. When he finally fell asleep, it was with the image of an entire special Swedish mattress full of Swedish girls. It was a little unpleasant, but I got used to it. It was kind of like watching a spring-break movie where all the actresses have blonde braids piled on top of their heads.
"Whatever," Nicholas says. "I just can't sleep, and Liam and Devon called me."
No reason to leave this Scandinavian heaven. None at all. Gid can most certainly make it until Sunday without seeing those guys.
"And they're with some girls, at a bar that's not far from here. Madison, Mija, Pilar, some friends of theirs."
Pilar in New York. In her natural habitat. In a bar. How exciting was that!
To you, Gid, extremely. Me, I just wish we were still asleep.
Pilar did say she wanted to hang out with him here. Her number is floating around so
mewhere in his duffel. He hadn't dared think he'd have the courage to use it.
Gid says, "I have Pilar's number written in lipstick in my bag, and I was thinking that's the only way I will ever get her lipstick to touch my underwear." He laughs again. "Oh, Jesus," he says, "is life ridiculous or what?"
Then he sits bolt upright. The amazing Swedish bed barely moves underneath him. "Wow," he says.
"Look," Nicholas says, "are you coming or not?"
"Just be quiet for a second. I have to tell you something. Something weird just happened to me. I...did you notice that? When I just said, Is life ridiculous or what?'"
Nicholas nods slowly, with mock patience.
"Well, I really did think it was funny. The idea of Pilar not liking me, because I'm lame, or too short, or not cool enough, well, usually when I think that, I get sad. But this time, I actually laughed about it." He pauses, thinks. "Okay," he says, "it went away. I just thought about how I was a dork and she would never really like me, and as usual I felt bad about myself. But for a second there, it didn't matter. None of it mattered. I felt good. Isn't that incredible?"
Nicholas stares at him. "I think that maybe what you're saying is beautiful. Can we go now?"
A few minutes later, they're stealing down the service entrance stairway of Nicholas's building. "The doorman and my mom are tight," Nicholas explains. "At least when it comes to my behavior." At the bottom of the stairs, they pass through a grim hallway crowded with garbage cans and pause at a heavy steel door with a sign that reads:
BUILDING PERSONNEL ONLY.
"Just wait." Nicholas whips out his cell phone. "Cullen? Hey. Yeah." He laughs and covers up the phone for a second. "He's in a bar in Denver, trying to pick up some woman who has three kids." He talks into the phone again. "I'm sure she is. I have a proposition for you. Okay, full disclosure: Pilar wrote her phone number for Gideon in lipstick. Did you know that? Yeah, neither did I. It's not, like, the biggest deal in the world. It's not like automatic sex. But it's good. Okay. Here it is. I say, Gid and Pilar, tonight. No, I haven't changed my mind about Gideon. I still think he's a giant loser." He smiles at Gideon. Gideon likes Nicholas's calling him a loser—likes it the same way he liked it when Molly told him he was clueless. "I just have a hunch. I like the way Gid's representing himself tonight. I think he's really tapping into something."
After he hangs up, Gid says, "The bet's not really real, is it?"
They've changed the rules enough times that Gideon's finally figured out: There are no rules.
Nicholas mashes his lips together and puts the phone into the pocket of his blue fleece jacket.
"I mean, it's as real as it is not real. We are all kind of watching me try and get something because, you know, what else is there to do? But the car...you're going to give me the car at the end of the year regardless, because
you drive it whenever you want to anyway, and it's not worth a lot even though it's a Beemer—I looked it up: Blue book's only, like, three grand."
"I don't know what a blue book is," Nicholas says haughtily, "but the car's worth four grand."
They step onto Ninety-third and start to walk east. Again they're sharing the sidewalks with old people and little dogs—there are just fewer of them. "It's not that the bet's totally bullshit," Nicholas says carefully. "It's just that we don't really care how it turns out. Let's say Cullen wins. He may sleep with my sister, he may not. If I still don't want him to—and I would never tell him, he would just know—he wouldn't. And if I won, well, would I really make Cullen go out with some girl for a whole year? I don't know. We might do that anyway next year, whether Cullen sleeps with my sister or not. That's going to be fun, by the way. Thank God we didn't get kicked out."
Gid's hovering somewhere between anger and relief. The relief is pretty strong. That bet is, was, such a ball and chain, a constant reminder that he didn't quite own his own time. But he put so much into something that wasn't even there. "I fucking...! kind of hate you," he says. Nicholas whitens. Gideon immediately regrets this, but he doesn't stop. He deserves to say this. "I tortured myself over that bet."
"Oh, come on," Nicholas says. "Are you really that miserable?"
A fair question.
Gid hugs himself and looks up, feeling cradled by tall buildings on both sides of the street. The air is cool but not uncomfortable, and he's wearing a jacket of Nicholas's that smells like a fireplace and, if you get close, a little like Nicholas's mother. He's still full of Chinese food, and he's going to have a drink in Manhattan. No, he's not miserable. "I'm not," he says. "My life is not bad at all."
Nicholas appears relieved. "The bet wasn't...isn't...nothing," he says. "We are serious about it in a way."
"It's just in another way, you're not serious about it," Gid says. "Right?"
"Well," Nicholas says, "we were kind of trying to distract you from your virginity."
God, that hadn't occurred to me. But the bet did have that effect.
"No way," Gideon says. "It worked."
"Please," Nicholas says. "Don't tell me what I already know."
Gid and Nicholas smile at each other, though Gid shakes his head to let Nicholas know he's never going to be as innocent as he once was. Then, suddenly, he says, "Shit. Molly. I knew there was a reason this wasn't all okay."
Nicholas stops, letting Gid talk. It's the least he can do.
"I think I really hurt her."
"Well," Nicholas says, "I don't want to be flip, but she did say it wasn't the bet."
Gideon scowls. "Of course she's going to say that." He starts walking again. "What else is she going to say?"
"From what I know of Molly McGarry," Nicholas says, "she usually says what she means."
"So if it's not the bet, then it's me, of course. That's worse," Gid says helplessly.
"I don't know what you're so upset about," Nicholas says.
I have some ideas. But I'm not entirely sure.
"Molly McGarry's in Buffalo, and she's fine. And Pilar Benitez-Jones, she's fine too. And she's here. In New York. Waiting for you."
please don't talk about love tonight
Gid always imagined any bar in Manhattan would be really stylish. He imagined walls made out of fish tanks. The men would be wearing suits, and the women would all be in tiny dresses holding martini glasses carefully as they navigated light-pulsating walkways in spike heels. But this is just a bar, with Formica tables, ugly, low-hanging lights with faux stained-glass shades, and a neon beer sign.
New York isn't all that, he thinks, but he's not disappointed, he's comforted. He can totally deal with this.
Gid has planned that he's just going to hang back and wait to make his move. He steps up to one end of the bar, edging himself between a blonde in a scarf, drinking white wine, and a freckly black-haired girl drinking beer out of a bottle. "We were having a chat," the black-haired girl says. She's Irish.
"God, I'm sorry," Gid says, backing away. They both burst out laughing. Gid smiles nervously, not sure if they're laughing at him or laughing because they just want to look happy in front of him. He thinks girls are capable of this. Even older girls.
He's right. And that is what they're doing.
Nicholas studies the jukebox with sober focus.
The blonde pats her chest and pulls the clasp of her pearls around to the back. "Go ahead, go ahead," she says. "We were just laughing because you're so polite." His brown eyes narrow, and she leans in, whispering, "That girl at the end of the bar is looking at you."
Gid leans past her to see Pilar, seated four or five stools away. She's holding a martini glass containing something pink and festive, and a group of older guys, uniformly handsome, surround her in almost perfect symmetry. She softens her eyes and moves them a little to the left. At Gideon. She smiles now, slowly, her expression sexily suspicious but playful. Like, "Well, well, well, what are you doing here?" Although of course Madison, her friend, called them to come. She touches the glass to her lips.
So cheap! Eff
ective. But so cheap.
"Damn," says the Irish girl. "I wish I looked like that."
"Not me," the blonde girl says, lifting and dropping her pearls. "What a giant pain in the ass. Seriously, though." This to Gideon: "Let her come over here. A girl like that has to come to you. Trust me."
The Irish girl laughs out loud.
I like these girls. They could be my friends. I think Gid likes them too. Why, he thinks, can't Cullen and Nicholas be more like them? Friendlier in their harshness?
Gideon's radically insufficient age is no impediment in procuring a beer from the thin-lipped, unsmiling bartender. He gets a Guinness for Nicholas, who is feeding dollar bills into the jukebox. Madison appears, raking through her hair with her fingers. "Hey, doofus," she says to Nicholas and bumps him with her hip.
I wonder what Madison's going to be like as a grown-up. I think she'll just marry a rich guy and do Pilates all day.
Nicholas ignores her. He presses B16, "Get Off of My Cloud."
"So cool with the classic rock," Madison says. "You know, Erica was going to come, but she didn't, because of you."
Nicholas continues to punch in selections: R12, "Teenage Wasteland."
Gid speaks up. "I feel bad for Erica. I think she's a nice girl, and," he adds, because he knows that this will increase his credibility of the controversial viewpoint he's about to offer, "an excellent soccer player. However..."
"Oh, God," Madison says, "I am going to need more alcohol for this one." She sips. "Okay, go ahead."
"How long has Erica known Nicholas?" he asks.
"Forever," Madison says, thrilled to be in the know. "They've known each other for years. Nicholas went to Dixon's, and she went, with me, to the sister school, Saint K's, which is, like, the best girls' school..."
Gid and I wonder simultaneously what it might be like to parade around with Madison's severed head on the end of a stick.
The music's loud, so Nicholas either can't hear them or can get away with pretending he can't.
"My point is," Gid says, "Nicholas's mother stares at him when he eats. She sits there and pets him. Now, I love Nicholas." He pats him warmly on the back. "And Mrs. Westerbeck is a nice woman. But my point is, simply, if you know that a guy's mother pets him when he eats, all I'm saying is his behavior is totally predictable."
