by Rona Jaffe
They walked down the street, thinking what a big city this was. If someone was wandering aimlessly in New York you couldn’t ever find him. He would have to have a pattern, and who knew what Pardieu’s mind would choose? Jay Jay stopped at a men’s store and bought a Sherlock Holmes hat. Wearing it made him feel a little better.
“If The Great Hall is a person,” Jay Jay said, “then The Two Towers is a place. Unless they’re two people.”
“Robbie only had one brother,” Kate said.
“I bet it’s the World Trade Center,” Jay Jay said. They ran down the street and darted into a cab, leaving two furious shoppers standing on the curb cursing them.
The rush-hour traffic was slow and noisy. The meter kept ticking at an alarming rate. “We should have taken the subway,” Daniel said.
“We’d get lost,” Jay Jay said. “I never take the subway. I hate the subway.”
“We have to get into Pardieu’s head,” Kate said. “Where would he go when he got to the World Trade Center?”
“Hang around in front and wait for The Great Hall to meet him?” Jay Jay said.
“Let’s hope so,” Daniel said morosely.
The two towers rose up ahead of them, dwarfing everything else by comparison. They were so enormous the three of them didn’t know where to begin to look. They walked around outside and then went in and scrutinized the lobby and restaurants. The hundreds and hundreds of office workers were hurrying home, away, except for people who were meeting for drinks after work. Robbie was nowhere to be seen.
“No one would let him into an office,” Daniel said. “Not acting like Pardieu. He has to be in the street somewhere.”
They wandered around the nearly empty streets. The sun had set and the arc lights were on. The caverns between the buildings in the downtown business area, now deserted, made Jay Jay feel as if they were sailing between icebergs. What must it seem like to Robbie? They kept turning corners hoping to find him; the tall, lean, familiar figure with blond hair.
“Let’s go back to the World Trade Center and go up to the top and have a drink,” Jay Jay said finally.
The bar at the top, Windows on the World, was so high up that they might have been in an airplane. It was a large room with windows that reached from floor to ceiling, affording a view of the entire city and the nearby boroughs. Millions of lights twinkled below them—from buildings, on bridges, from streetlights—a veritable maze. How could you even begin to find somebody? They sat at a small table in front of one of the huge windows, and Jay Jay ordered Bellinis for all of them. He had his fake identification at the ready, as always, so he would be served.
“This is champagne and fresh peach juice,” he told his guests. “It was invented in Venice, where I plan to go some day before it sinks into the sea.”
Kate took a sip. “It’s to die,” she said rapturously. “And look at that view!” Then she looked sad again. “I shouldn’t be sitting here enjoying this while he’s out there.”
“It’s a pit stop,” Jay Jay said. “We have to eat and drink, don’t we? I, personally, am starving.” An Oriental chef was performing flamboyantly at the hors d’oeuvres bar in the corner. Jay Jay ordered sushi for all three of them. He hadn’t had sushi in ages.
“I’m not eating that,” Kate said.
“Why not?”
“Raw fish?”
“You’ll love it,” Jay Jay said.
She tasted it gingerly and shrugged. “It’s not so terrible.”
Daniel was very quiet, deep in thought. “When I was on the subway,” he said, “there was a map on the wall of all the routes, and it looked exactly like a maze. What if Robbie’s riding the subway?”
“Then we’ll have to,” Kate said.
“Not at night,” Jay Jay said. “We’ll get mugged.”
“There are less people at night,” Daniel said. “He’d be easier to find. Also less trains.”
Jay Jay ordered another round and lit one of his thin brown cigarettes. He was terrified of the subway. He would rather go into the caverns alone than have to go there. But at least there were three of them, and Daniel was big. And Kate knew karate. He sighed. He felt like the condemned man eating his last favorite meal.
“We’ll protect you,” Kate said.
“Thanks a lot.”
Jay Jay paid the bill with the credit card his mother had gotten him on the family plan, and they left.
They rode uptown on the subway, walking through the cars, looking for Robbie. Jay Jay kept glancing around looking for potential maniacs. Would Robbie think the graffiti on the walls was familiar? Would he think it was runes? Someone had scrawled in black: MURDER, MURDER, DEATH, DEATH. “Maybe Robbie got mugged on the subway,” Jay Jay said. “Maybe that’s who he stabbed—the mugger.”
They changed trains and kept riding. Now there were very few people, and although most of them looked normal, Jay Jay could hardly wait to get out of there. He kept expecting a gang with switchblades to come rushing on at every stop, like a bunch of Gorvils.
“We’ll never find him here,” Kate said finally. “This is crazy.”
“Let’s go home and see if he called,” Jay Jay said, relieved.
They went back to the apartment. No one had called, and when they telephoned Covenant House they were told that Lionel Stander a.k.a. Robbie Wheeling had not appeared. The apartment seemed peaceful and safe after the streets. Jay Jay’s mother was out, as usual. Jay Jay fed Merlin, and then he and Kate and Daniel went into the kitchen and tried to make Bellinis in the blender. The Bellinis didn’t taste bad at all, and they brought a pitcherful of them into his wonderful room while they planned a list of places where they would look for Robbie.
“The Cloisters,” Jay Jay said. “It’s a former monastery. We have to go there first thing tomorrow.”
“On the subway,” Daniel said. “It’s like roulette—a wild chance but you never know.”
To that they added Times Square, because Robbie had been there before; famous churches; and the Lower East Side, because parts of it were right out of another, ancient time, and Jay Jay had an instinct about this. They could stay in New York only ten days, and then they had to go back to school to take their Final Exams.
“I hope he’s not sleeping in the street,” Kate said. “I can’t even stand to think of it.”
“Maybe it would be better for him if the police did find him,” Daniel said. “At least he’d be—”
“No!” Jay Jay said. “He’s ours.” He was astonished at the vehemence of his response. He had never admitted closeness with anybody, too afraid of being rejected—used to being rejected—and for a moment he was worried that Kate and Daniel might laugh at him. But Kate had tears in her eyes.
“He is ours,” she said softly. “And when we find him we must never, never play the game again. You realize that, don’t you? None of us can. Let’s take a vow.”
“I don’t have to promise,” Daniel said. “I don’t even want to think about that game after this is over.”
“I swear anyway,” Jay Jay said. He felt abandoned, as if part of the good luck charm that had made him popular, even loved, was slipping out of his grasp. M & M had been more than a game, it had been his way of having friendships. But he did have friends, didn’t he? Kate and Daniel … and Robbie when they found him … would still like him and want to do things with him, wouldn’t they? He wasn’t so sure. Their whole friendship was based on the game.
Kate and Daniel got up to go to bed. “See you in the morning,” they said to Jay Jay.
“Everybody up at seven,” Jay Jay said.
“Fecalite,” Merlin said.
“Not you, lazy pig,” Jay Jay said to him.
Jay Jay watched Kate and Daniel go down the hall to the guest room, go in, and shut the door. It was a strange feeling. He’d known he wouldn’t like it, and he didn’t. He wasn’t exactly jealous anymore; Kate and Daniel had been living together so long in the dorm, on his very floor, that he was used to it, but … th
is was his apartment, his turf, and his loneliness was more poignant here because it was in his own home. He wondered how many years he would have to wait until he got old enough to be interesting to anybody—not as a trickster or an eccentric, but like Daniel was.
He went into his bathroom and brushed his teeth, and put in his hated dental retainer. It was a good thing he didn’t have a girl friend; imagine having to sneak that thing into your mouth at night! That would be the end of romance.
“Good night, beloved Merlin,” Jay Jay said. He put the cover on Merlin’s cage and went to bed.
The next morning the three of them took the subway uptown and went to The Cloisters, wandering through the beautiful gardens and walking through the old stone halls that monks had trod in silent contemplation so long ago. It seemed such a perfect place for Pardieu that Jay Jay was surprised and disappointed not to see him turning a corner to greet them, complete to his rough brown robe. Instead a group of Japanese tourists came by chattering, taking photographs of each other.
They took the subway back downtown and meandered through the Lower East Side, where everything you could imagine was sold from pushcarts on sidewalks. Old men in long black robes, hats, and full beards and payess walked by talking their own language. Would Robbie feel at home here, or out of place? Kate bought a necklace of green glass beads, and then they took the subway back uptown again. Jay Jay was getting more used to the subway and hoped their luck would hold out and no one would attack them. They were very hungry by then, so they stopped at Central Park where they bought shish kebabs and pita bread stuffed with salad from a sidewalk vendor, and went into the park to eat them on a bench. It was a perfect spring day, soft and gentle. Small children ran around on the paths, and sweaty joggers came puffing through the trees on their way home. People were walking around carrying loud radios playing rock or salsa. It was all so normal. In spite of themselves the three of them were having sort of a good time—it made them feel guilty, but they couldn’t help it.
“Let’s go to the zoo,” Kate said. “Just for a minute. It’s right here.”
They went to the Central Park Zoo and watched the seals playing. “I love seals,” Kate said. “If I had a million dollars and could have any pet I wanted, I’d get a seal.”
“He’d be lonely,” Daniel said.
“I’d get him a mate.”
“What would you get, Daniel?” Jay Jay asked.
“Monkeys,” Daniel said. “I love monkeys.”
“We don’t have to ask Jay Jay what he’d get,” Kate said. “He has it.”
They went to the monkey house. “That one there looks just like Perry,” Jay Jay said.
“Exactly!” Kate squealed. They all laughed.
They went back to the apartment to see if there were any calls, but there weren’t. They wanted to have dinner in Chinatown, but they were too tired from all that hiking. They decided to go the next day; in fact, spend the whole afternoon in Chinatown. They added it to their list.
When the week was over they had been everywhere they could think of to go, including the Metropolitan Museum, where they went to see the medieval artifacts, including armor and weapons. It didn’t seem any unlikelier a place for Pardieu to be than any other they’d tried. Jay Jay took Kate and Daniel to the Museum of Modern Art to see a couple of old movies he was fond of, and they took him to Times Square to see a really gross porn film because none of them had ever seen one. They made him sit between them because he looked so young they were afraid some pervert might bother him. Jay Jay was rather moved—they really did care about him. In return he took them on the Staten Island Ferry, even though it was corny, and then Daniel insisted on riding on the Roosevelt Island Tramway because it looked interesting. One night they went to a disco.
The three of them were having dinner in a little Italian restaurant they’d found in Greenwich Village, talking and laughing and joking, when Jay Jay realized what had happened. This week was the first time the three of them had done anything together that wasn’t in some way connected to the game. Even the parties they’d had, like last Christmas, had been only token celebrations culminating in a game session. They had started the week in New York looking for Robbie, trying even though they knew it was almost definitely hopeless, and they were ending the week as good friends having fun together. They still worried about Robbie and felt heartless and guilty for enjoying themselves … but it had happened anyway.
The odyssey they had just been through had been their transition to real life. They didn’t need the game to be friends, or for anything else. Maybe they had once, but they didn’t need it now.
“Next term,” Jay Jay said, “I’m going to join the drama group and direct a play. Something morbid, with lots of props. Hamlet maybe, or Macbeth.”
“They could really use you,” Kate said.
“They sure could,” Daniel said.
His friends.
That night when they went back to his apartment and Kate and Daniel went to their room to go to bed, Jay Jay wasn’t jealous at all. He could see they really loved each other, and they seemed right for each other. He even hoped it would last forever. If they got married he would give a fantastic bachelor party for both of them.
The phone next to his bed rang sharply in the dark, waking him up. Jay Jay groped for the receiver groggily. “Unhh …”
“It’s Robbie,” Robbie’s voice said. “I’m at Covenant House. You said you would come and get me.”
“Robbie!” He was wide-awake. “Stay there! Stay there! We’re on the way.”
When Jay Jay, Kate, and Daniel ran into the reception room they were not prepared for what Robbie looked like. No matter what he’d said he had been through, he looked worse. He was skinny, as if he had been starving, and there were sores on his face. He had a scraggly mustache and beard, and his hair hung in his eyes. They could even have walked right past him in the street and not have recognized him. But the sweetness in his face was Robbie’s, and the sanity in his eyes was real.
They flung themselves on him, their wounded warrior, and bore him off to Jay Jay’s apartment in relief and joy.
“They said I was at that place once before,” Robbie said. “Is that true?”
CHAPTER 11
Robbie stayed with his friends at Jay Jay’s New York apartment for three days. He wasn’t so frightened anymore about having flipped out, because they kept telling him it was all right. He remembered bits and pieces: Jay Jay’s party at school; calling them from Times Square, terrified because he didn’t know how he’d gotten there; and waiting for them at the refuge they’d sent him to. He could tell from looking at himself in the mirror that he’d been through a lot, but Kate and Daniel and Jay Jay kept telling him over and over that anyone who’d been living on the streets without money for as long as he had was lucky to be alive at all. He knew that was true, and he began to realize that perhaps Hall was dead. If Hall had taken on another identity and was leading a normal life he would have written or called. No … Hall really was gone forever. It was so painful to accept that Robbie felt numb instead of grieved, but he was starting to accept it.
He had called his parents the minute he arrived at Jay Jay’s. His father had answered, and had actually begun to cry. Robbie was surprised.
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” he told his father. “I didn’t want to hurt you and Mom—I just had to take off for a while.”
His friends had told him what to say.
“Look,” Daniel said, “you were under unbearable pressure at school. It’s always hard the first year; college is so different from high school. And you were on the swimming team, and we all played the game too much.”
He hadn’t told his parents where he was the first time he called. His friends insisted he get his head together first, just in case other people upset him by asking too many questions too fast. Robbie agreed. He didn’t want to disappoint his parents any more than he already had. Pressure was the operative word. His parents used it to him, and Rob
bie used it back to them. Demands … career choices to be made, schoolwork, and of course the emotional tensions of his broken romance with Kate. He and Kate had been too young and too rushed for big decisions, and Robbie realized that when he mentioned “a difficult love affair” people immediately responded with understanding and sympathy. He didn’t feel sorry for himself, and he and Kate were the best of friends now, but it was so easy to say that love had been one of the things that had pushed him over the edge. In fact, she had suggested he might offer it as a contributing factor to his flight from school.
The second day, after spending every waking moment with Kate and Daniel and Jay Jay, Robbie called his parents and told him where he was. They wanted to come to get him immediately, but he told them he was afraid of reporters—it was too soon, and he was so tired. His mother wanted him to see a doctor, but Robbie said there was no need. He felt fine, just tired, and he didn’t want to discuss where he’d been and what he’d done. His friends would drive him to Greenwich the next day. That was better, wasn’t it? He’d already seen the newspapers, and there was an item about him. It said he’d called his parents and was “safe in an unidentified place.” There was also his old high school yearbook picture in the paper, next to the story, and he was afraid his parents would be shocked and upset when they saw how much he had changed. He didn’t tell them about the sores on his face, and with good food and a lot of vitamins they were going away.
“Should I leave the beard?” he asked his friends.
“I like it,” Kate said. “It’s sexy.”
“Then I’ll definitely keep it,” Robbie said, pleased and embarrassed at the compliment. He felt he had been starving for the kindness and love of his friends for such a long time he wondered how he had been able to survive. What could he have expected to find out there on his flight?
“What am I going to do about exams?” Robbie asked, worried.
He wouldn’t flunk out or even have to take makeup courses. His parents had called the school, and he could take the exams in the fall. Apparently he hadn’t been the first person to panic and run from the pressures.
