Pass It On

by J. Minter

  Suddenly, a whole group of girls came into the living room. I could tell instantly that they were it—the enviable group that all these uptown kids talked about. Conversations quieted while they settled in. It was easy to see that they knew everyone was watching them.

  I finished my drink while I, too, watched them, and the dregs of that second glass of warm vodka hit my belly like an elbow-jam on the subway. I lurched and took a seat on one end of a black leather couch. The place was pretty modern looking, with a huge thing on the floor that was more of a mat than a rug and looked like an oil slick, and a lot of black and chrome furniture placed at odd angles throughout the living room.

  That girl Madison walked through with one of the smoking icy bottles of Absolut Peppar, and I held up my glass.

  “Careful.” She smiled.

  I sipped. It was like sipping water and then having someone snap a wet towel against your lips. I hit it again. Ow.

  “If you’re going to play old stuff, play The Band,” a voice said.

  “Whatever you say, Ruth.” I watched Froggy hop away to a hidden place where the stereo must’ve been.

  I looked up.

  There was a girl attached to the voice. She had long honey-colored hair, and she was wearing a short purple skirt. In the black and silvery light of that living room, she had a golden yellow color all around her.

  “The girl in the long gray coat,” I whispered.

  Froggy put on “Up on Cripple Creek” and she started to dance. Her other friends danced too. They didn’t seem to be drinking. I pushed my glass aside, but I didn’t feel like I could hop up and dance. How could I get to her?

  That’s when she threw herself down next to me and smiled.

  “I know who you are,” she said.

  “Yeah, I’ve seen you before, too.”

  “You’re best friends with Arno Wildenburger. Have you seen him tonight?”

  I shook my head. Not Arno. Once girls got Arno on the brain, it was like a disease in a horror movie. They turned into screaming monsters and could not be changed back until he hooked up with them and blew them off.

  She laughed. A tinkly tender noise that made me think that in order to hear it again, I’d do a lot. I’d do anything. And it was funny, because her laugh was a good contrast to her voice, which was sort of low and nasal—if a voice can be both those things at the same time.

  “I don’t want him. I just want to check in with Liesel.”

  “You’re her friend?”

  “We go to Nightingale together. We have one of those friendships where we’re close, but—whatever, I’ve known her forever.”

  “That’s how I am with Arno!” Some of her friends looked over and smiled. I’d been loud. I was drunk.

  “Where are you from?” I asked. “Tell me everything about you. But first—do you have a cold?”

  That’s when David walked up with someone almost as tall as him.

  “This is Risa,” David said. I looked up and David had a female twin: a big dark-haired girl who was clearly destined for the UConn Huskies and the WNBA.

  “Hey.” She held out her hand. I took it and it was like shaking with David.

  “I’m Ruth,” the girl sitting next to me said. I realized that, even though we’d been basically saying nothing, she and I had managed to sort of snuggle up to each other. She was warm. I had my hand slipped around her waist, and slowly we extracted ourselves from each other. How had that happened?

  “This is a good party,” I said. Ruth giggled.

  We heard a whoop from the kitchen. All of us wandered in there, since everyone in the living room was swaying to “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” and laughing.

  In the kitchen, the lights were off and Froggy was attacking the dry ice with a two-foot-long cleaver that his parents probably used to hack Thanksgiving turkeys to pieces. Bits of dry ice were skittering around on the tile floor and everyone was egging Froggy on while protecting their eyes. It was only a matter of time before the cleaver connected with the Grey Goose bottles in the middle of the ice, and then there’d be a real mess.

  “Why is he doing that?” Ruth asked. Her eyes were a little watery around the edges, and every time I looked at her, she was smiling. That made me smile too, that and her crazy voice.

  “Because it’s his house and no one can make him stop.”

  I realized I was holding Ruth’s hand. We edged into a pantry.

  “Can we spend some time together sometime?” I asked.

  “Yes. Yes, let’s find each other.”

  “Let’s definitely do that.”

  I reached to kiss her and there was an unbelievably loud crash that shook the whole pantry. Cans of overpriced vegetables from France rained from the shelves.

  “The dry ice didn’t do that,” I said, covering our heads.

  There was another crash, and then several smaller ones. Then quiet. We peeked out and saw Froggy drop the cleaver. Then he flipped the overhead lights on. The ice was still intact.

  “Hmm,” Ruth said. We crept through the kitchen into the living room. Someone had turned off the music.

  It was as quiet as it would’ve been if Froggy’s parents had walked in. Then we heard muffled laughter and some whooping noises coming from another part of the apartment. Froggy took off running down the hall.

  “Uh oh.” David turned to me. I nodded. We waited and then there was the sound of Froggy screaming.

  “My parents’ bed!” The Frog screamed as he came running back to us. “They crashed it through the floor!”

  He stood in the middle of the living room, swinging what appeared to be a large piece of his parents’ bed that looked like an unfinished section of an aluminum baseball bat.

  Behind him, Arno came out of the hallway. He was pulling up his pants. Liesel was wearing Arno’s jacket, a bra, panties, and no skirt. Her high heels were still on, though.

  “Cool it, Alan,” Liesel said. “We were only playing.”

  “Everybody out!”

  Arno zipped up his pants. He grabbed a glass that was sitting on an end table and took a sip.

  “Dude, that thing was so rickety—”

  “Out!”

  “Ruth,” Liesel screamed over Froggy’s voice. “You made it!”

  Liesel came over and the two of them hugged hello and everyone watched since Leisel was pretty much naked.

  “Out!” Froggy screamed again.

  “Froggy’s got a temper and he did ride,” some kid sang out. We scrambled around and figured out where the stairs were, since The Frog clearly didn’t want us waiting for the elevator, and then we streamed out of there like mice escaping a sinking ship.

  “We’ve got to get across town.” Liesel sounded like she could only hang out on the Upper West Side for so many hours before she started to melt. “We’ll see you boys very soon.”

  Ruth hugged me and kissed me on the cheek.

  It took about one second for a cab to stop for the two girls, probably because Liesel was still wearing next to nothing.

  “Call me,” Ruth said. “Get Arno to get my number from Liesel. Call me tomorrow.”

  “I will.”

  And they were gone.

  “Hey,” Arno said. “That girl liked you.”

  I looked up at the sky. Sure enough, I could see one star. That’s how you know it’s a good night in New York City, when you can see just one big star.

  david thinks he lives alone

  “I want you,” David said simply, to Risa. He’d grabbed a cab from the party, rather than hanging around to see what happened. They slipped into the lobby of his building. The night doorman, Jordy, was fast asleep. They got into the old elevator.

  “You’re sure about this?” Risa said.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” David asked. He’d turned his phone off so he wouldn’t get calls from Amanda and Jonathan. He knew he was still getting the hang of behaving badly, but he was determined to get there, to the bad place where he thought Arno lived. He told him
self that ever since Amanda had cheated on him with Arno, he’d been waiting for what he hoped was about to happen.

  “It’s your parents’ house. Do they mind you bringing girls home in the middle of the night?”

  “What? Oh yeah. No. They live like half a block down from me if you think about distance inside apartments that way, and they always go to sleep early. And I’ve been—I want you to come upstairs with me.”

  “Do you do this a lot?”

  “No way,” David said. “Only when I feel really into someone, like the way I feel about you.”

  “That’s sweet. Because I know you have one of those over-the-top relationships with Amanda Harrison Deutschmann …” Risa’s voice had a bit of bass to it, a thrumming noise that reverberated in the elevator. They were up against one wall, fooling around, like they’d been doing in the cab.

  “… and I wouldn’t want to ruin what you and her—”

  “No more words,” David said, and put a fingertip over Risa’s lips. She closed her eyes and kissed it. They were both wearing gigantic basketball sneakers that squeaked on the elevator floor. When the doors opened they lurched out to the hallway. David carefully took out his keys. He thought of Amanda, how much he loved her, the tiny cuteness of her, the amazing fall they’d had together. He’d been flirting with Risa after games for only a couple weeks and he had no idea why he was so compelled to cheat—except that now this crazy getting-engaged thing had combined with the fact that they were always breaking up, and that Amanda said he didn’t have enough class for her, and that she was always analyzing him like his parents did, and…He eased the door open.

  “We’re in,” he said. Risa giggled. Her thick black hair brushed his face as they went into the hallway. David had her around the waist. He thought, I hardly know this girl.

  “Which way to your bedroom?” she whispered.

  “Hold my hand.”

  “David?”

  A light went on in the living room to David’s right, and there was his father, wearing an ancient red wool bathrobe and cracked leather slippers.

  “Dad?” David’s voice was strangled.

  “I had something important …” Sam Grobart’s voice trailed off. He’d been fast asleep. “I had to see you as soon as possible. Who is this?”

  “Just a girl from, um, a party. She came over to borrow something.”

  Sam Grobart looked at the grandfather clock. It was two-thirty in the morning.

  “You have something she can’t get through the night without? Where’s Amanda?” David’s father asked.

  “I think I better go,” Risa said.

  “He’s talking in his sleep,” David whispered quickly. “He’ll go away in a minute.”

  His father opened his mouth, and then glared suddenly. “Take this girl down to the lobby and get her a cab.”

  “I’ll do it myself.” Risa turned around and went back down the corridor and out the front door.

  “Risa, wait.”

  “Don’t follow her,” Mr. Grobart said as the door of the apartment slammed shut. “If she likes you, she’ll call you tomorrow and you can both blame your old man. And in the meantime, you can break up with your girlfriend. Hmm? Anyway, come sit down with me.”

  “Now?” David asked.

  “You were planning on staying up late and talking meaningfully with her, weren’t you? Why not with me?”

  Sam Grobart raised the thick eyebrow that ran in a straight line over both his eyes and stared at his son. They went into the living room, where books covered every surface. In the few spots not covered with books, there were magazines and stacks of papers. Sam Grobart eased himself back into his black leather chair. He pointed to a spot on the couch across from him, and David sat down. David couldn’t believe it. Within minutes he’d gone from potentially having something really intense happen in his bedroom with a girl he didn’t know very well to the all-consuming familiarity of his living room and a forced conversation with his dad. He tried a yawn, but his dad wasn’t biting.

  “What I have to say is about your friend Jonathan.”

  “What about him? I was just with him.”

  “Starting now, he’s going to go through a very tough time.”

  “Yeah, he told me that his dad is getting remarried. That’s rough, I get it.”

  “Yes, that’s part of it. But there’s more. I should start from the beginning.”

  “Dad, it’s kind of late…”

  “Your mother and I went to Brown with Jonathan’s father, along with a number of our other friends. He was a very sweet man whom none of us expected to amount to much, and when we moved back to the city after college—”

  Sam Grobart stopped. David’s eyes had drooped.

  “Long story short?” Sam asked.

  “Please.”

  “His father was doing accounting for all our families. This was back in the eighties, when monkeys and children were making fortunes. So he began to invest for us, and for the Wildenburgers, and the Pardos, and the Floods, among others. But things went bad with his marriage, as you know. He fled to London. No one saw him after that. And now he’s getting married again.”

  “Right, I already know this.”

  “You know I feel that if something concerns you, you should know about it, so I’m going to tell you some things I learned from Jonathan’s mother. But I do think that what I’m about to tell you shouldn’t be shared just yet. Okay?”

  “I don’t get it. What are you trying to tell me?”

  “Howard—Jonathan’s father—he’s a thief. Ah, it feels good to say that. He stole a few hundred thousand dollars from us. Lord knows what he took from our richer friends. Anyway, the reason this concerns you is that I want you to be there for Jonathan for the next few weeks. Clearly his mother can’t be counted on to take care of him.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because she left town.”

  “Oh, right.”

  There was quiet in the living room for a moment, only punctuated with the ticking of a variety of clocks, all set incorrectly.

  “There’s more to the story, but—who was that girl?”

  “I’m beat, Dad,” David said. “I better hit the sack.”

  “Oh, me too. I’ve got to stop falling asleep when I’m with patients. They’re starting to resent me for it.”

  “At least you’re not leaving them bankrupt.”

  “Some would disagree.” Sam Grobart cackled to himself as he got up and shuffled down the dark corridor to the bedroom he shared with his wife. David stood in the living room, looking at the peeling paint and stacks and stacks of books. He couldn’t believe it. Jonathan was the son of a swindler. Then again, everyone said Arno’s dad was a bit of a con man. And Mickey’s dad charged outrageous amounts for the cars he destroyed and sold as art. And everybody said Patch’s dad had never put in an honest day’s work in his life. And then David remembered: Risa. Damn!

  wake up and crush!

  “She was amazing,” I said to Arno, who was not awake yet.

  Okay, first things first: my physical shape was bad. I smelled like old spilled beer. But damn! She was so beautiful. And the smell of whatever that retro stuff she wore. Patchouli? Mmm. I lay there and I was happy. I’d smiled at a girl on the street, and then just weeks later she was kissing me on the cheek. This was a major, major crush.

  I hadn’t totally had one on Fernanda, the Barneys girl, ’cause that would have been too much like falling in love with your addiction (I am addicted to shoes—my mother has forced me to admit this). And the thing with Flan was more like sweetness and avoidance. But this. I rubbed my knees together, and then I felt that I was still wearing socks. And then I realized that in addition to the socks, I still had on pants and my shirt.

  “Hey, dude,” Arno said. “It’s Tuesday.”

  And everything crashed together—like when I was sock-skating down the hall in my house when I was five and my mom swung open her bedroom door and the brass doorknob connected with
my forehead and floored me. My house was being painted by a complete weirdo, my dad was some kind of thief, I’d invited three of my four best friends on a trip when only one was allowed to come, and I suddenly had no doubt that my guys were about to start figuring it all out.

  “Oh man,” I groaned.

  “She was a cutie. Most definitely,” Arno said. So I knew that he’d misunderstood my groan and thought I was happy, which was definitely how I’d been all last night. Arno’s phone beeped; he picked it up, looked at it briefly, and then tossed the phone over to me.

  “It’s your girl’s information, from Liesel.”

  I forwarded the message to my phone.

  “I can’t wait to talk to her.”

  “I’ll bet,” Arno said. “You two were all over each other.”

  I scrambled around and tried to sit up in the bed. Wait, there was no bed. I looked up. Arno was in a bed. I was lying on the floor under a bright orange blanket that had been made by some Italian artist.

  I remembered her face. She’d been so sweet. Ruth.

  “Let’s go over to Florent and get some breakfast.” Arno stood up and stretched.

  “You sure you don’t want to hang around here? And then later, maybe go to school?”

  “Nah,” Arno said. “Lately I get miserable being anywhere near my parents. But yeah, we could go to school. Let’s just go to Florent for some eggs first.”

  He found some loafers and put them on. And then I remembered what was going on with his parents.

  “You’re right, let’s get out of here.” I struggled to stand.

  lovers quarrel over the shape of clouds in the sky

  Mickey and Philippa were hanging around Mickey’s house on Tuesday night, trying not to get into trouble again. Mickey had a huge desire to go out and do something insane, but being totally in love with Philippa was kind of squelching that feeling.

  “You have a way of making me want to sit home and drink milk,” he said.

  “That’s romantic,” Philippa said, and she sounded like she kind of meant it. “It’s the new, clean us—and if we stay this way, maybe my parents will even start being nice to you.”