by J. Minter
“Ow!” Simone said, and fell against a gigantic Matthew Barney photograph of a satyr.
“So we broke up because we’re so in love but we’re just really different,” Philippa said to Simone as she helped her stand up again.
“Do you really believe that?” Simone asked, while she rubbed her bruised head.
“I keep trying to. Does it sound sensible at all?”
“No. Could you get me some ice?” Simone stumbled to the couch.
Meanwhile, Mickey was backing away from Liesel, who was demanding more shots.
“Help!” Mickey ran out of the kitchen, swinging Ginger Shulman into Liesel’s path. It was around eleven and the party was coming into its own. Mickey knew he was at the center of it. He could do whatever he wanted in Ginger’s house. It was almost as good as Patch’s house that way. And there was Patch! By the window, talking with Selina Trieff and some other stunning girls in short skirts and black tights and tall boots. David was with him, but he was off to one side with Amanda, their heads bowed in toward each other like a couple of nesting birds.
“Let’s do a slammer,” Mickey said to Patch once he’d gotten Liesel off him.
“A popper.”
“Call it whatever you want, they’re in the kitchen.” Mickey grabbed Patch and David, who only fought briefly before giving in. They paraded toward the kitchen and the music got big—it was old White Stripes, White Blood Cells.
“Arno’s on his way?” David asked.
“Yeah, and Jonathan?” Patch asked.
“Jonathan’s right there,” Mickey said, because Jonathan was. He was on a couch with Ruth, who Patch and Mickey hadn’t even met yet. Jonathan was in a black T-shirt, jeans, and black boots. He looked, Mickey thought, tougher than he was supposed to look.
“Hey guys,” Jonathan stared up at them, as they surrounded him. Neither he nor Ruth got off the couch.
“Popper?” Mickey nodded at the kitchen.
“Yeah, in a minute.”
And even to Mickey, it was apparent that things were not well between Jonathan and Ruth.
“You want us to bring you out something?” David asked.
“Just give us a few minutes.” Jonathan and Ruth were sitting close on the couch, but they weren’t touching each other. The room was thick with people, and the music was keeping conversations loud, but it was pretty obvious that whatever they were talking about wasn’t good.
The guys strode into the kitchen. Mickey pushed aside some younger guys who were doing slammers on their own, and he took over operations.
“What’s the matter with Jonathan?” David asked Patch.
“The thing with Jonathan is he can get pretty emotional about things. That’s why I like him, I guess.” Patch accepted a foaming slammer from Mickey.
“Yeah,” David said. “He’s definitely emotional. We should talk with him later. Clear some stuff up about—” But before David could finish he had a slammer under his nose, and as he tried to get it down he sneezed and tequila and ginger ale went all over Selina Trieff’s shirt, and she slugged him. Then David’s eyes started to water and it looked like he was crying.
“This party’s killer!” Mickey screamed. He leaped up on the counter and tried to slam one over his head on the ceiling. He was making a huge mess, but of course Ginger Shulman was nowhere to be found.
the bathroom of my destiny
“I think I should go,” I said to Ruth. But I didn’t stand up.
Before the party we’d tried to have dinner together at Brasserie in midtown because my mom was friends with the owner, but as it turned out he was also a former client of my dad’s and he wouldn’t give me a table, so we ended up walking up to Ginger’s in the cold. We’d been on the couch for two hours. And Ruth had taken most of that time to slowly and carefully break up with me.
“I’m sorry,” she said. She still looked beautiful. She had on these stiletto highheeled boots, black pants, and a tight little Michael Stars T-shirt. She sipped at the glass of white wine she’d poured herself when we came in. She wasn’t much of a drinker.
I kind of felt like I’d been listening to Ruth for too long. But her point, that I’d come on too strong and now she felt pressure from me, was a good one. I couldn’t deny that. And she wanted to think about Harvard and how pretty she was and the great life she had. Of course she didn’t see it that way. But I did. And me? I was thinking that if we ended the night apart, I’d be really low—as low, and this dawned on me quickly, as the low of how it feels to have a bucket of cold water dumped on you when you’re at camp and sleeping naked because it’s so hot and they’ve dragged you and your bed into a field and gotten some icy water from the kitchen and thrown it on you so you’ll pee all over the place and wake up screaming. I would be as low as I’d ever been since that happened.
“I used to go to camp with Ginger,” I said, because Ruth was being so quiet. “Boy did we ever play practical jokes on each other at that camp.”
I stood up. My new boots were a little slick on the soles and I shimmied for a second on the slick wooden floor.
“I may not be here when you get back,” Ruth said. I took her hand, suddenly, and kissed it.
I turned then, and walked toward Ginger’s parents’ bedroom, but then I caught a glimpse someone who was so out of place here but somehow set me immediately at ease. Flan. She saw me, too, and she waved and smiled in a really quiet, warm way.
I sighed. I can’t quite describe the feeling I was having as anything but relief. She was just who I needed to see. I started walking toward her, but then I saw that she was talking to that Adam kid, and she made a little sign with her hand that said one minute, and I realized it sort of looked like she was giving the same talk to Adam as Ruth had just given to me. I nodded at her and kept going toward Ginger’s parents’ bathroom. On the way I passed Arno, who’d just arrived. He was deep in conversation with one of Liesel’s cute friends, and he barely noticed me.
It was still early enough in the night that no one was using Ginger’s parents’ bedroom to hook up. I strode through and went into the bathroom, where it was very quiet. Once inside, I flipped the lock and took a deep breath. The bathroom was big and new, with two sinks and a tile shower stall enclosed with thick slabs of glass. The floor was white marble, with pink and red veins running through it. Speakers embedded in the ceiling played the same music that everyone at the party was hearing, but the temperature was different in here—it was warmer, and I could feel the hushed vents pulling out the bad air and pumping in good air.
There was a new steel tub on a platform, too, and a comfortable chair in one corner, under a window. I looked out the window as I undid my belt, and saw the moon. I felt like apologizing to it. I’m sorry I screwed up my life, or let it get screwed up, or whatever.
I checked the lock again and sat down on the toilet, which was as new as the rest of the room. The toilet faced some kind of African sculpture of a boy peeing. Great, we were going to watch each other. And we did.
My pants were down around my ankles, and I stared at my boots and took care of what I needed to take care of, and then I just sat there. I was the boy at the party who stays in the bathroom. And that’s not cool. But Flan was here and even though I could say objectively that maybe she was too young to be at this type of party, I also sort of knew she was the coolest girl here. Maybe even cooler than Ruth, and that gave me a reason to stop being the boy in the bathroom. I reached around me, then, and tried to pull the handle. But instead there were buttons. So I pushed them.
The toilet flushed in near silence. I didn’t move. Then there was a gushing noise and, well, something hit my ass. Something hot and wet. I shot forward the moment I felt that, because it was like nothing I’d ever felt before and it was totally freakish, and as I started to go forward, my new boots weren’t able to get traction on that marble, and it was like I was getting shot into the air by a geyser at a hundred miles an hour toward that pissing African boy, thinking only one thought, what t
he hell is happening to my ass?
And since my balance was long gone, my head hit the boy’s midsection. The sculpture was made of something surprisingly hard, like bronze. And he didn’t move. Then everything went black.
arno worries first
“It can never be,” Arno said to Liesel, for about the twentieth time. He was getting really bored of having to break up with her, but she just wasn’t going away. They were in the living room on a couch, and Liesel was practically crouched over him, stroking his hair. He sat there, looking up at her.
Around them, the party was starting to fall apart. There was a couple fighting furiously in one corner and a bunch of seniors from Trinity in another, smoking pot and talking quietly about how they thought it was cool to be Republican. Some girls had passed out on the couch opposite Arno, and he looked vaguely under their skirts, but he felt so glum about the girl on top of him that he didn’t even feel that sleazy about it.
“We are going to make this work,” Liesel slurred. She puckered her lips at him and he knew she was about as good-looking as people get, but all he saw were the lips of a camel, about to slobber all over the side of his face.
“I’m sorry Liesel—you’re just—you’re too good for me.”
“Bullshit,” Liesel whispered, “I’m never letting you go.” She licked his ear. And inside, a voice said to him you should’ve let her break up with you. And he knew the voice was right, that if he’d just done nothing, she would have gone away, but he’d played the power card of ending it first and she wasn’t going to let him get away with that. And obviously, the inner voice belonged to Jonathan. She needs to be the one to walk away. Don’t you know that? Now wait a second, where the hell was Jonathan?
“Could you excuse me for a second?” Arno had to slide down onto the floor and actually crawl away from Liesel. The Trinity people laughed, and Arno did nothing to stop them. He straightened his pants and went into the kitchen. Mickey was in there. The ginger ale had run out, and now he was making tequila shots with Tabasco sauce and smoked oysters. Music continued to blast: Now it was “Ramblin’ Man,” by the Allman Brothers.
“You want one of these?” Mickey held up a shot glass filled with red liquid, the oyster bobbing in the middle of it.
“No, listen to me—” Arno said, watching Mickey slam back the shot as David wandered in. David had found a fisherman’s hat with lures stuck in the brim and he was wearing it pulled low over his eyes. Somehow, Arno thought, it worked perfectly on him.
“Bleah!” Mickey screamed. But he didn’t puke the shot.
“What’s up?” David asked. He poured himself a glass of orange juice. They stood together, and a couple of girls and some guys he didn’t know who probably went to Dwight all seemed to look to see what they’d do. Then Patch wandered in.
“This is fun,” Patch said. He’d found a piece of chocolate mousse cake and he was eating it with some peppermint stick ice cream. He was always much more into dessert than drinking.
“Has anyone seen Jonathan?” Arno asked. The four of them looked at each other. It always, always felt weird when they were together and Jonathan wasn’t there. And this was the third time in a week and a half that it had happened.
“I saw him go to the bathroom,” one of the girls said. Arno looked at her. She was probably a sophomore, not really sure of herself yet. Those kinds always went for Jonathan.
“Which one?” Arno asked.
“I don’t know,” the girl was suddenly shy in front of all the guys looking at her. “Maybe I’m wrong.” And she disappeared into the living room. The four of them watched her go.
“How weird of him to disappear.” Patch grinned. “I mean, isn’t that my job?”
“He’s been pretty depressed lately,” David said.
“I think I heard that that Ruth girl doesn’t even like him anymore,” Arno said.
“Well what the hell? Let’s go find him,” Mickey said. But nobody moved.
“Did I tell you guys that my dad flew to London today to see Jonathan’s dad?” Arno asked. Nobody said anything.
“You know why, right?” David asked.
“Something about money?” Arno said. He shook his head. Beyond that, he didn’t have a clue. His dad and what he did was a mystery to him. Arno kind of knew he was gay, but he’d known that for so long that it was no longer a big deal to him.
“Well, I guess I have to say it: His dad stole money from all our parents. It was years ago, but I guess he wanted to come clean about it before marrying PISS,” David said. “It’s been freaking Jonathan out.”
“I thought it was just that his Dad was getting remarried,” Mickey said, “and that he had to pick one of us to go on the honeymoon.”
“Wow,” Arno said as he suddenly realized why his parents had been acting like assholes that night and how awful Jonathan’s time at his house must have been.
“I think he thinks we’d all hate him if we knew,” David said, this time looking around at all of them.
“Because his dad’s a dick?” Patch asked. He scratched his head. “My dad’s a dick, and you guys don’t hate me.”
“It’s different—your dad never stole anything. Where the hell do you think Jonathan is now?” Mickey asked.
“Hiding somewhere,” David said. “Hopefully he didn’t hop out a window—especially if Ruth broke up with him. I think I heard she did that.”
“Well, Jonathan can get pretty dramatic,” Arno said. “And if he lost a really cool girl and he thinks we all hate him…”
Then the four of them were tearing through the hallways of the gigantic Shulman apartment, looking for him. They passed little Flan Flood, who had her coat on and looked like she was leaving but who said she’d only seen Jonathan for a second. Patch paused for a second to ask if she was really supposed to be there, but then he stopped when he remembered what all of them had been doing in eighth grade and realized Flan was way more mature than most of the upperclassman there anyway. They pulled open the door to Ginger’s bedroom and looked in, and it turned out she’d been in there for the entire party with the freshman from Yale who David had stuffed in the student/alumni game. After they said hello to her, they went through all the public rooms and checked all the bathrooms. No Jonathan.
Then everyone followed Arno down to the master bedroom. The door was locked. So they dragged Ginger Shulman out of bed and she yelled through the door. A girl nobody recognized opened it. She was in there with Adam Rickenbacher, who turned pale when he saw them all. But still no Jonathan.
“There’s no key to the bathroom,” Ginger said. “Try popping the lock with a credit card. Clean up whatever you find.” And Ginger went back to her Yalie.
“Give him a minute to come out. He must’ve heard us,” David said.
The four of them stood and looked at the blank door.
“Shhhh,” Arno put his head to the wood. Silence and the sound of gushing water.
“Don’t say it,” David said.
“If he—”
“Pop the lock!” Patch yelled.
Then Mickey, who was good at that sort of thing, got down on his knees with an American Express Platinum card. He popped the lock, but the door still didn’t open.
“That’s it!” Mickey screamed. “Launch me.”
So Arno got on one side of Mickey and David got on the other. They threw Mickey at the door like a human battering ram. The door flew open and Mickey sailed through.
“OH NO!” Mickey yelled.
mickey knows a dead man when he sees one
“He’s dead!” Mickey screamed. He knocked the bronze pissing-boy out of the way and knelt in front of Jonathan.
“With his pants down,” David noted.
The four of them stood around Jonathan. Mickey knelt and touched his neck. He was still warm. A thin stream of water shot from the toilet and sprinkled Jonathan’s backside. The water had pooled around him, but it was by no means a flood.
“What the hell is that?” David stared at
the water shooting from the toilet. Mickey slammed down the lid. “It’s one of those brand-new toilets with the ass-cleaner in it. It works like a car wash. Everybody’s getting them.”
“Weird.” David opened the lid, but the toilet had stopped spraying.
“I don’t think he’s dead.” Patch felt Jonathan’s pulse. “Nope. He just knocked himself out.”
Mickey yanked up Jonathan’s pants. Patch wet a hand towel in the sink and put it over the ugly red bump on Jonathan’s forehead. They got him to his feet.
“Ow,” Jonathan said.
“See? Alive.” Patch looked at the toilet, and then the pissing boy. “I get it.”
“What?” Mickey asked.
“That warm jet of water on his ass. He must’ve felt it and shot forward, and then he knocked himself out on the pissing boy’s penis.”
“It’s like a nightmare come to life,” David said, stroking his chin. “Wait’ll I tell my parents.”
“No,” Jonathan shook his head. He was leaning against the sink.
“Oh. Right, I won’t.”
Jonathan said, “I thought you guys—when I wasn’t conscious, I was in this dream state and you guys hated me.”
The four of them were quiet. Ten seconds passed.
“Well, we were saving your life while you were thinking that,” Mickey said.
“I’d hope my best friends would do that for me. Even if they did probably figure out by now that my father is a thief who robbed all their parents blind.” Jonathan’s voice was thin.
Everyone stared at the spot on the floor where Jonathan had spent the last half hour. It looked hard and wet and cold.
“There’s got to be an empty room around here somewhere,” Arno said. “Let’s go find it and talk.”
arno sums it all up
“In here,” Arno said. He stopped in what appeared to be a screening room, since it was just a bunch of unbelievably comfortable-looking brown velvet armchairs loosely set up in front of a plasma screen television that was hung on a wall above a fireplace.
