Break Every Rule

by J. Minter

  Forty-five minutes later, he was lost in the redwoods. At least he had gotten away from the cars, but he still didn’t know where he was.

  An hour after that, he had somehow located the city of Santa Cruz, and stood looking at its boardwalk. He found a telephone book and looked up the O’Gradys. There were five of them in the book, but he had either forgotten or never known Greta’s parents’ names and so had no idea which one was the O’Grady he was looking for. He ripped out the page, and got back into his rental Range Rover.

  It took him another hour to find four out of the five houses, ask for Greta, and be told that he had the wrong house. The sun was going down by the time Patch pulled onto a quiet street of craftsman houses pretty near the beach, and knocked on the last O’Grady door on the white phone book page.

  No one answered, and after a solid ten minutes of knocking, Patch was ready to quit. Maybe Greta was just someone he’d made up in his head after all.

  But that was when he heard a very familiar trilling kind of laugh, somewhere nearby. He spun around, but there was nobody to be seen, so he stepped lightly off the stone path that led from the street to the door, and walked along the side of the house.

  He could smell barbecuing and hear laughter and splashing. When he got to the end of the house, he peeked around to see a backyard with a swimming pool and a bunch of kids running around it and doing cannonballs off the diving board. He stepped out onto the patio, and that’s when he saw Greta.

  She was sitting on a lounge chair, wearing vans, jean cutoffs, and a bikini top, and she was even prettier and more relaxed-looking than he’d remembered. There was a guy sitting on the chair next to her, and he was whispering something into her ear that was cracking her up. Patch realized all of a sudden that he had no reason to think that Greta had been waiting around for him all this time. He took a step backward, but it was too late. She’d already seen him.

  “Hey, Patch,” she said with a calm, if slightly bemused, smile.

  “Hey, Greta.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I just wanted to see you, I guess.”

  “Well don’t just stand there,” she said. “Come over here and meet my big brother.”

  rob’s on fire

  “Wildenburger, talk to me.” BEEP.

  “Rob the intern here. Just wanted you to know that I took care of the—ahem—special night. There will be flowers and invitations sent to the apartments of the lovely ladies this afternoon. And do not worry, monsieur, I get girls just from being your intern! Plenty girls to go around! Ciao.”

  “Hello, you have reached Rob Santana Productions. Please leave a message.” BEEP.

  “Hiya, uh, Rob Santana? This is Larry from City Parties. I got you down for ten kegs, five mixed boxes of spirits, five cases of wine, ten cases of champagne. It’s Saturday morning, I’m at the address you gave me, and, uh, there’s nobody here…. Give me a call and let me know what’s going on.”

  “Hello, you have reached Rob Santana Productions. Please leave a message.” BEEP.

  “Hey, Rob. It’s Sandra Anderson, remember me? Anyway, you disappeared from the roof party at 66 Thompson last night, and I haven’t heard from you since, which was weird. I’m still coming to the party tonight, with all my friends like you asked. But I just want to know: Am I going to be humiliated and feel like an idiot around you all night? Are you a user, Rob?”

  “Hi, this is Jonathan. Don’t forget to leave your number if I don’t have it.” BEEP.

  “Hey, J, it’s Flan. So, after a night like last night, I’m afraid you’re just going to have to take me to the Hottest Private School Boy party tonight. You know why? You dragged me around to all those miserable parties last night, and you stuck me with Liza Komansky for, like, half an hour of grilling about our relationship while you talked to some guy you aren’t even friends with—thanks for that, by the way—and you were in a total mood all night. So tonight, we’re doing something with my friends, okay? Be at my house at quarter of eight, and we can all go together. Love ya.”

  “Hello, you have reached Rob Santana Productions. Please leave a message.” BEEP.

  “Rob, it’s Jonathan. Haven’t seen you around the apartment lately. Guess I haven’t been there much, either. Just wanted to make sure I’m still on the list for the party tonight. I am, right?”

  “Hi, this is Jonathan. Don’t forget to leave your number if I don’t have it.” BEEP.

  “J.M., it’s your mother, Saturday morning. Where are you, darling? Did you let anyone in the apartment this morning? I just noticed that my Rolodex is missing from the home office, and so I did a very thorough search of the apartment, and nothing else seems to be missing except my ATM card. Jonathan, I can’t think why you would take these things. You have money, don’t you? I’m calling the bank now, but call me as soon as you get this, and let me know if you know anything. I’m absolutely out of my head.”

  but i’m always on the list

  I’m still not sure how I ended up agreeing to go to the Hottest Private School Boy party, against all my better judgment and also against my taste, although I know it had something to do with me being a bad boyfriend. As we all know, bad boyfriends can be compelled to do pretty much any crazy thing.

  Flan told me to be at her house at quarter of eight, but I got there at half past nine, and all the girls in her inner circle were there already. Flan and I have talked a lot about how her clique is really similar to mine. They all go to different schools now, except Daria, whose mother is this quasi-famous real estate queen. Daria goes to Florence with Flan, and she’s kind of haughty and entitled the way Arno is. And then there’s Rachel—her parents work in publishing and she’s very Upper West Side and seems to be at swim team practice all the time; and Gemma the wild party girl, whose mother is a famous socialite and whose dad is a haunted classical conductor type; and Kendall, who is really into fashion and small animals and being a vegetarian. She holds everybody together, and nobody really knows where her parents got their money.

  I’ve never thought of Flan as being anything like Patch, but I saw a little bit of it when I came in that night. For starters, all her friends were already in her bedroom, doing girl stuff getting ready to go out, but she was nowhere in sight.

  Kendall came up to me, gave me the three-cheek kiss treatment, and asked where Flan was. Her hair was all frizzy from the rain (it was pouring outside), but it worked because she was wearing Michael Kors sunglasses, even indoors. I told her I didn’t know, and then she started telling me about how she’d just gotten an internship with Imitation of Christ for that summer, which I had to admit sounded pretty cool. I gave the twelve-pack of PBR that I’d bought for them to Gemma, who happily started distributing them around the room. Then she told me that I rocked. I wasn’t exactly sure whether it was a good thing to buy beer for a bunch of eighth-graders, but in the end it seemed like what Flan would have wanted me to do.

  Daria asked me about Mickey’s event at Fresh, which she said she had heard about from her older sister who goes to school with Mickey. She seemed kind of psyched on it, but I told her I didn’t think it was really going to happen. The idea of taking Flan to a restaurant and being naked with a lot of strangers, and a lot of people we knew really well, kind of freaked me out.

  When Flan came in, she seemed almost shy of all these people in her house, even though they were her best friends. But they all kissed her and asked her where she’d been, and when she showed them the vintage Balenciaga sack dress she’d just found at Tokyo Joe’s on East 10th, they all made ooo and ahh noises. It even seemed sweet to me.

  “Isn’t she just beautiful?” Gemma said, mostly to me, I think.

  Flan pulled me aside, and we made out for a minute in the hall.

  “You look nice,” she said.

  “Thanks.” I’d gone for casual in a pinstriped A.P.C. blazer and these spectator loafers I’ve been into lately, but I was still glad that she’d noticed.

  “I’m glad you
agreed to go to the party,” she said.

  “Me, too,” I said, although I was more just glad to see her. Going to the party, that part I was still dreading heavily.

  It took us a while longer to get ready, and then we walked over to Seventh Avenue, hailed two cabs, and asked to be taken to The Awful Event. Especially if tonight was the night that David was planning on stealing Flan.

  It was pretty obvious when we’d found the party. There was a line leading out the door, and upstairs, through big industrial windows, we could see what looked like a light show. Also, you could hear The Bravery playing at top volume, from what must have been pretty professional speakers, all the way from Eighth Avenue.

  “Oh, I’ve been here before,” Daria said as we stood on the curb considering how we were going to get past that crowd at the door. Nearly everyone waiting to get in the door was shielded by an umbrella, but they all looked pretty soaked, anyway.

  “You have not, you East Side snob,” Gemma said good-naturedly. She jumped up and down and clapped her hands when she said this.

  “No, really. It belongs to a friend of my mom’s. He used to be in real estate, too. He bought this place when Chelsea was still cheap and built it out from scratch to be his apartment. But then he realized he could make way more just renting it out for parties. Mom says it’s obscene what he gets for it.”

  I wondered, not for the first time, how Rob had pulled this off.

  We walked closer, and the girls stood at what seemed to be the end of the line.

  I try never to wait on lines, so I told the girls to sit tight, and that I would see what I could do. All the soaked kids with their dangerously jutting umbrellas shot me foul looks as I pushed my way up to the door. When I got there I saw that the line went all the way up the stairs to the second story.

  “Hey, man,” said a guy who I’m pretty sure wasn’t in high school anymore. He was wearing a dirty jean jacket over dirty jeans, and he had longish stringy hair. I think he might have been one of the Backseat Rockstars, like the bassist maybe. He blocked my way and said, “There’s no way you’re cutting into this line.”

  This pissed me off, but what was I going to do, fight with a Backseat Rockstar? I went back to where Flan and her friends were, shivering under umbrellas, and told them that the place was at capacity and—for legal reasons that had nothing to do with our relative hotness—they were letting people in slowly.

  Forty-five minutes later, when we got to the top of those stairs, we were all a little bit cranky and a little bit soaked. There was a big guy taking money at the door, and maybe I let a little too much of my crankiness show.

  “Hi,” I said curtly. “Jonathan M. plus two, Flan F. plus two.”

  “Both plus two, huh? Everyone thinks they’re on the list tonight,” the door guy said, chuckling to himself. He took a long time looking up and down his clipboard. “Yeah,” he said, “I’m really not seeing your names here.”

  “Well, look again,” I said. Then I added, idiotically, “I’m Rob Santana’s brother.”

  “Now there’s one thing I hate, and it’s a liar,” the door guy said.

  “Excuse me?” I said, “What’s your name again?”

  “It’s Chino,” he said. “And that’s the truth. Wanna know something else? You sure ain’t Rob Santana’s brother.”

  I could hear Gemma behind me, giggling. “Jonathan, just pay him, okay?”

  “That’s going to be twenty dollars for you and all your little friends,” Chino said.

  “That’s outrageous!” I said.

  “Jonathan, can we just go in?” Flan said.

  Daria stepped up to Chino and opened her wallet. She pulled out seven twenties and handed them over. “Don’t ever call my girls ‘little friends’ again, got that?” she said, pointing a French-manicured fingernail at Chino. “Oh, and one of those is for you, tough guy.”

  Then somehow we got ushered into this big room that was full of noise and music and people who weren’t wearing a whole lot of clothing. It was happening in there, but pretty much all I could think about was how embarrassing getting into the party was.

  “What was up that guy’s ass?” I said loudly enough that Flan’s crew of girlfriends heard me above the blaring music. “Can you believe we weren’t on the list? I mean, who wants to go to this lame party, anyway?”

  They all stopped and stared at me, and then turned to Flan with faces full of… pity, I think it was.

  “I mean, don’t they know who I am?” I added, pathetically.

  “Hey, Jonathan,” Kendall said. “Maybe you should relax and try to have a little fun, okay?”

  arno doesn’t even know how wild his party is

  When Arno had woken up at around one on Saturday, he had more messages than he really thought he could listen to, and Mimi had already left. His room still smelled like her, though—she was working on developing her own fragrance, tentatively called Mi, and so she had been trying out a different sample every day. This one smelled kind of like jasmine and sex.

  He stood in front of the mirror, twisting his retro Confederate cap to just the right angle, and then he heard a car honking downstairs. It was probably time to head over to West 20th Street and see what Rob had come up with. He leaned out the window and saw that Mimi was waiting for him in her parents’ town car. He walked out of the house without grabbing anything. What did he need? He was Arno fucking Wildenburger.

  “Hey, Mims,” he said when he got to the car.

  “It’s Lizzie,” said Lizzie. She was wearing perhaps the coyest smile that Arno had ever seen, and a black suede skirt that was even shorter than Mimi’s black suede skirt. Her hair was pulled back tight into a high I Dream of Jeannie-style ponytail. “Get in,” Lizzie said.

  Arno got in. Lizzie poured them each a rocks glass of Alize. “Here’s to your party,” she said. Arno hadn’t realized until right then that Lizzie had the same soft, fuzzy voice that Mimi had. He raised his glass, and they made a little clinking noise.

  “Did you get the invitation?” Arno said.

  “Uh-huh. You’re pretty hot, Arno Wildenburger. We’re considering it. But in the meantime, I was hoping you’d take me to your party tonight,” Lizzie said.

  “Good thinking,” Arno said, “Otherwise, who knows whether you would have gotten in. Wearing an outfit like that and all.”

  Lizzie giggled at that and slapped Arno’s thigh in mock protest. She told the driver to take the long way to West 20th Street, and then she pressed into Arno and started kissing him breathily on the mouth. He put his hand on her stomach. He’d discovered that he really liked doing this—it was taught as a drum. He could tell she was totally excited about the special night with the four of them and was just being a little coy. Clearly, he was irresistible.

  Arno listened to the rain falling on the roof of the car and decided that whatever was going to happen, he deserved it.

  *

  They arrived late, and Arno was unsurprised to see that the place was packed. Lizzie was hanging languidly from his arm. A cheer went up through the crowd when the people caught their first glimpse of Arno, and he waved at them dutifully before he and Lizzie headed over to the V.I.P. area.

  Rob had actually done a good job picking out the space. It was huge, and it had big factory-style windows looking out on West 20th street, but it kind of looked like an apartment, too—smaller rooms had been built out at the back, and there were swinging doors, through which he could see a kitchenlike space, that looked like they had been salvaged from a painter’s studio. The loft was in the right neighborhood, and it looked just arty enough.

  Everyone he knew, sort of knew, or had passed on the street since he’d agreed to sign on with the whole party idea had wanted to know all about it. He was satisfied to see that they had all come, and then some.

  Danny Abraham was there.

  The bassist from the Backseat Rockstars was there.

  Literally hundreds of people he didn’t know were there. There were also a lo
t of people who looked older, like his parents’ age, but everyone seemed to be drinking and dancing and having a good time.

  Billy the DJ was there, too, DJ-ing for him, apparently for free, even though he usually charged thousands of dollars a night.

  Arno sat in the banquette, basking in all the adoration in the room. Lizzie was leaning against him, her white fur jacket slipping off her shoulders, and her bra straps with them.

  He felt like the king of the world.

  Rob came pushing through the crowd to get to them. He had a grin on his face that was so big and permanent he looked like the Joker.

  “Terrible good news,” he shouted over The Libertines, which DJ Billy was now blasting through the speakers. “We’ve already admitted four hundred people, and there’s a line around the door!”

  “That’s great, man. Sweet party,” Arno said. He was trying to appear blasé, but he couldn’t help but smile a little bit, too.

  Rob was nodding excitedly to himself. “And the monies! I—I mean me—I mean we have made so much of the monies tonight.” A few bills fell out of his pockets, which he picked back up. He quickly added: “Which means we break even, of course.”

  Arno and Rob nodded to each other, and looked out at the great sea of coolness before them. Lizzie burped, and asked for another glass of champagne.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Arno saw Jonathan with Flan and a bunch of her friends. Even with the loudness of the music, and the density of the crowd, he could feel the bitterness of Jonathan’s stare.

  david and party don’t mix

  David had arrived at Arno’s big Saturday night party way too early, and by one in the morning, when the thing had really gotten going, he was feeling pretty tired and not too into it anymore.

  His big plan had been to get there, avoid Rob, find Modigliani, and take her away with him. If she had been at the MoMA party, surely she would be at this thing, too. And if he could arrange it, he was going to straighten things out with Jonathan. The first part of the plan had been easy. Rob had been running around maniacally all afternoon, barking orders at the servers he’d hired, the security, the beer delivery person, and whoever else would listen. But many hours of the party had now passed without a sighting of the girl with the deep voice and the mole on her back.