Break Every Rule

by J. Minter

  Arno stopped walking, right in the middle of the sidewalk. There was more, but Arno made a strict rule with himself not to remember anything more from last Saturday. He decided that he couldn’t handle the public right then, and hailed a cab that took him right back home.

  There were three white cards sitting on the steps of his parents’ brownstone. They were Tiffany engraved invitations, one for Mimi, one for Lizzie, and one for Sadie. The return address was his own. He had forgotten until that moment about the private party that night, and the invitations he had told Rob to send out. Each one was stamped with a big red, RETURN TO SENDER, and was still attached to a dozen wilted roses.

  If there had been a convenient wall to punch, Arno Wildenburger would have punched it right then. All he could do was collect the invitations and put them right into the trash, where no one could see them.

  farewell, my stepbrother

  When Monday morning rolled around again, I knew that one of the worst weeks of my life was over. But I didn’t have that nice warm feeling called closure, either.

  For one thing, I hadn’t talked to Flan since the big blow-up Saturday night. We’d said good-bye kind of tensely, and then she and her crew all crammed into one cab and drove home. And while the HPSB issue, around which my life and ego had been revolving like toy planets in a fake universe for the last seven days, had been revealed as kind of a sham anyway—and Arno’s status with it—I had been humiliated in a pretty public way.

  Oh, and there were some pretty weird messages in my voicemail from my mom, too, which I hadn’t had the strength to return.

  It was enough to make that whole getting-out-of-bed thing even more of a challenge than usual.

  When I walked into the kitchen, my mom was sitting there drinking a cup of tea. She didn’t look particularly mad at me, which was good, because I could just as soon do without a lecture on my late-night ways, or my limited ability to return stressful phone calls. Maria Callas was playing faintly in the background. Sometimes I think my mom has a little bit of a Maria Callas thing going on; she has very dramatic eyes.

  “Good morning, darling,” she said. “Would you like some tea?”

  I sat down at the long, industrial-looking table that Mom keeps in the kitchen. It looks like you could do gourmet cooking or advanced chemistry on it, and believe me, nothing like that has ever happened in our apartment. She poured me a cup of steaming Irish Breakfast from a teakettle full of actual leaves.

  “What’s up, Mom?” I said, because clearly something was.

  “Well, they’re going to have to deport your friend Rob,” she said, very carefully, like this news might wound me. “I know this might come as a blow to you, darling—we all thought he was doing so well. But I’m afraid the party he threw for Arno turned into rather a disaster—”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Yes, it seems he fancied himself something of a party promoter. Well, I spent all day with the police yesterday sorting this out, so I might as well tell you. But I wouldn’t spread it around. Rob stole my ATM card and my Rolodex, and he took out quite a bit of money to finance his schemes of nightlife glory. He also called nearly all of my professional contacts and invited them to the party. It seems nearly everyone who came was assured they would be on the list, when in fact very few people were. Only the bold-faced names, it seems. All the money has been returned, thankfully—Rob’s little event brought in quite enough to pay back what he stole from me and then some.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Then why is he being deported?”

  “Well, he’s not really being deported in the technical sense. But his mother and I have talked, and it seemed like the best thing to do. What with the serving alcohol to minors charges and all. She’s quite nice, really, this Penelope Isquierdo person….” When my mom said that last part, she instinctively balled up her hands into fists. My mom let out a little gasp of air, and released the fists. “You know, your friend Patch called me Friday morning and told me he wasn’t sure that I should have Rob living in my home.”

  “Patch did that?” I said. I hadn’t even been sure that Patch knew Rob lived in my apartment.

  “Yes, he did. He must have picked up on something the rest of us missed.” Mom shook her head, like she couldn’t believe such a person had been under her roof.

  “What are you going to do with the extra cash?” I asked.

  “Well, there’s a Homeless Outreach program that Rob apparently sabotaged. All of the people who were supposed to go to their benefit ended up at Rob’s event, so some of the surplus profit will go to them.” My mom sighed. “There are really so many distasteful things he did, I don’t know how the damage will ever be repaired.”

  I nodded slowly, trying to take it all in. “Hey, aren’t you supposed to be at yoga?”

  “Well, I’m afraid the stress of yesterday made me take up smoking again. I smoked a whole pack with the officers, maybe more, and I’m not feeling very holistic this morning, if you know what I mean.”

  I nodded in agreement. I wasn’t sure I’d felt holistic ever.

  “Well, what do you say we go down to Les Deux Gamins and have a little brunch, darling, just you and me?”

  What with the bizarreness of it all, I decided that a quiet little breakfast with Mom before returning to the real world of school and image maintenance and talking with people my own age was probably a good thing. Just so long as she didn’t want to talk about Flan.

  patch finds a savior

  Patch dug his toes into the sand and looked out at the gray-green Pacific Ocean. It was colder than the Atlantic, and a little bit rougher. But he liked it that way. People had always joked that Patch was more of a West Coast type, anyway.

  He was at Steamer Lane, the big surfer beach in Santa Cruz. It was late afternoon, and the waves were crowded with wet-suited dudes and a few girls. One of them was Greta. She was even better than he’d remembered. Greta had big red hair and soft pink skin, and, just as he’d remembered, she was quiet and brave and a lot of fun. She waved to him, and he picked up the board he’d borrowed from her dad and ran down to the water.

  The saltwater splashed in his face as he lay down on the board and paddled out toward where Greta and a bunch of guys were waiting for the next bunch of good waves. But he was wearing a wetsuit, too, and he didn’t feel the cold so much. When he got to where Greta was, she pushed the wet tangle of red hair back from her forehead, and gave him a kiss that was cold and delicious.

  He didn’t know any of the other guys out there—there were six of them or so—but from the couple of days that he’d spent with Greta, driving around Santa Cruz, going to barbecues and seeing bands, it seemed like she knew everybody.

  The next wave came up, and Patch went for it.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw a dark, wet-suited figure. But then there was just the exhilaration of rising up onto the board and riding the wave through the sea spray and biting air. He rode it almost back to the sand and then fell back into the ocean.

  When he stood up, he saw three big dudes standing over him. They all had buzz cuts and fading tattoos of Jesus and Mary, or hearts and anchors. They didn’t look particularly friendly, either.

  “Hey, man,” one of the guys said, “you dropped in on Flea.” He had a big photorealistic tat of a smiling baby on his stomach, which was pretty muscled. His teeth were rotting, too.

  Patch didn’t know which guy Flea was, so he didn’t say sorry right away.

  “You from the college?” one of the other guys said.

  “No,” Patch said. “I’m from New York. I’m with Greta.”

  “What are you doing with Greta?” the smallest guy, who did look a little flea-like, said.

  Patch smiled. “See, I used to think there wasn’t anything that I really needed, you know? Anyone I wanted …” The guys were nodding. “But then I realized that I felt that way about Greta. And so I had to come from New York to get her. So here I am.”

  Greta smiled.


  “Dude, that’s kind of deep,” Flea said.

  A few hours later, they were all drinking beers around a bonfire and watching the sunset. Flea and his two friends had gotten a little sauced, and they started racing each other up and down the beach. Patch took the opportunity to run his fingers through Greta’s hair, near the nape of her neck, and bring her face to his.

  They kissed for a few minutes, and then Patch leaned back in the sand and said, “I wish I didn’t have to go back.”

  Greta leaned back on her elbows and murmured in agreement. She had peeled her wetsuit down to her waist, and she was wearing a turquoise bikini on top. “Why do you have to?” she asked.

  Patch thought about that for a minute. “School, I guess?”

  Greta rolled over on her side, and bit her lip. “Maybe I could come with you?” she said.

  “Don’t you have school?” Patch said. Who was this pragmatic person speaking through him?

  “Yeah, but I have spring break all this week. Maybe I could spend it in New York with you,” she said.

  Patch had to laugh a little bit at himself. He must have a spring break too, but he had no idea when it was. He’d probably missed it entirely, hanging around downtown, skateboarding, not even realizing that he wasn’t cutting class.

  “I mean, if that’s too much too fast … I mean, we are just in high school, and long distance never works. Everybody knows that. I didn’t mean to …” Greta trailed off, and started fidgeting with the dead skin around a sunburn on her shoulder.

  Patch pushed himself up by the elbows, and gently hooked a finger at the waistband of her wetsuit. “Hey, Greta, I really, truly want you to come to New York with me.”

  david’s full of forgiveness

  David was taking a break from basketball practice when his phone rang for the first time since Saturday night. It took four rings to convince him that it was, in fact, his phone. He stared at it, and came to terms with the fact that it wasn’t the Modigliani calling him.

  He knew this because it was Rob’s name flashing in his caller ID.

  More out of instinct than anything else, he picked up. “Hi, Rob,” he said guardedly.

  “Daveed, my brother!”

  “Um, yeah?”

  “Well, I am calling to say good-bye. New York wasn’t ready for me, you see!”

  “Guess not.” David was liking the way he sounded when he spoke in terse, two word sentences. It felt tough.

  “They no getting my jokes, either,” Rob was laughing, but it was the desperate laugh of a very sick person.

  “How so?” David stood up and started to stretch. He plucked open the sports top of his Gatorade bottle with his teeth.

  “Oh, you know, the whole thingie with the police, and my whole joke telling them you had stolen the monies from Jonathan’s mother instead of me. And, calling all of her special friends with power and influence. So funny, I am thinking! But they don’t think that. But I am sorry I tell a joke like that that the world not understand. Do you forgive me, David?”

  “Sure, Rob,” David said. “I forgive you.”

  “Anyway, Mummie is sending me to a boarding school in England. So cold and boring there. No parties to throw. But no fear, David, I will be back.”

  “That’s great,” David said flatly. His teammates were starting practice back up again, and there was a lot of yelling and shouting in the gym.

  Rob was still blubbering about how sorry he was, and how much he loved David and Arno as brothers. David was so astounded by the bullshit level here that he just kept on listening.

  “Rob—what?” David yelled, as though he was going into a tunnel. “You’re breaking up. I can’t hear you.” Rob continued to speak, but David just kept shouting like he couldn’t hear him. “Okay, I’m hanging up now. If you can hear me, call later.”

  David tossed the phone back in his gym bag, and to his total shock it started ringing again immediately. He picked it up, fully intending to send Rob’s call straight to voicemail. But it wasn’t Rob calling. It was Mickey.

  “Hey, man,” he said.

  “David, what’s the latest?” David didn’t really know where to begin. Luckily, Mickey kept right on talking. “So, I know things got sort of crazy Saturday night.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “But the good news is, when I got the citation from the cops, there were some tabloid people hanging around.”

  “You got a citation?”

  “Yup, public nudity. But more importantly, I got in the Post, dude!”

  “The New York Post?” David asked idiotically.

  “Totally. And the caption mentioned how I was advertising the naked restaurant event at Fresh. Isn’t that awesome? Anyway, I just wanted to give you the info.”

  “For the naked thing?”

  “Yeah, remember you told me you were in on it Saturday night. Do not punk out on me, man.”

  David paused and looked at all his teammates running around on the court. They were all pretty straight. He wondered what they would think of him taking part in a nude group photo shoot.

  “Yo, Grobart, you want to get in on this game or what?” The coach yelled irritably.

  “Yeah, I’m in,” David yelled back at his coach.

  “Great,” Mickey said. “So, I’ll see you at around six, this Thursday at Fresh, right?”

  “Grobart, now is not the time to plan your social calendar!” Coach yelled. Some of his teammates laughed. David had been catching a lot of flack for the way that magazine had portrayed him as a loafing party dude.

  “One second!” he yelled back. “Hey, Mickey, do you maybe want to hang out before then? It’s been a long time.”

  “Okay,” Mickey said. “But I’m going to have to be making a lot of phone calls. This naked thing has taken over my life.”

  “It’s cool,” David said.

  “Okay, meet me at Passerby at eight, and we’ll have a beer.”

  “Sweet.”

  This made David so happy, he really didn’t even care that all his teammates were laughing and calling him a girl and asking if he’d take them with him when he got his next manicure.

  “So what’s been going on, Mickey?” David asked, when they were comfortably settled into the corner of Passerby. It was Mickey’s second-favorite bar, both because it had a disco floor (and Mickey liked all things loud and unnecessary), and because the owner was a crazy British gallery owner who could out-drink Mickey and who treated him like art world royalty.

  “Mostly planning the naked restaurant thing,” Mickey said. “It’s really taking off. It’s like everybody wants to know about it. It’s going to be huge.”

  “That’s great,” David said. Although he was feeling pretty wary of all things “huge,” he instinctively wondered if Modigliani might be there. “You seem really busy.”

  “Yeah, I’m trying. Can I tell you something, dude?”

  David nodded.

  “I went to Meow Mix—you know that lesbian bar way east on Houston—to try and get some lesbians in on the naked restaurant event. And Philippa was there. Making out with another girl.”

  “Whoa,” David said. Somehow, he had assumed that he would be the first one of his crew to face the coming out of a girlfriend or recent ex-girlfriend. This was a pleasant surprise, but he tried to make sure that that didn’t show in his face.

  “Yeah, I guess it’s really over between us this time. Philippa likes girls.”

  “Weird that she was with a guy like you all this time,” David said. He hoped that sounded like a compliment.

  “Mmm,” Mickey said. “Good point.”

  “Yeah,” David said, at the same time as Mickey’s phone rang.

  “Whassup,” Mickey said into the phone. “Oh, hey Arno…. Yeah man, of course you’re still invited to Fresh…. Just hanging with David… Passerby—of course you can come….”

  Mickey and David looked up, and to their surprise, Arno was standing, waiflike, in the window.

  i start pic
king up the pieces

  It had sort of gotten around that something really bad had happened to Mickey in the Philippa department, and so on Tuesday afternoon, when he called and asked for my help, I figured I should probably say yes.

  I went over to his house, which is kind of near Patch’s on Perry Street. His dad’s sculpture studio is there, too. In fact, when I rang the doorbell, it was none other than Ricardo Pardo who greeted me at the door. His signature shock of graying hair rose up from his forehead and fell to somewhere around his chin, and he was wearing denim overalls without a shirt underneath.

  “Good, Jonathan,” he said gruffly when he saw me.

  “Hey, Mr. Pardo,” I said meekly. I still feel a little weird around Mickey’s dad, because last winter this thing came out about how my dad stole a bunch of money from Mickey’s dad and all my friends’ parents, back in the eighties. He didn’t seem to be thinking about that now, though.

  “Talk some sense into Mickey, will you?” he said as I followed him through the big, spare first floor of their house. “All he can talk about is his art project. Tell him he doesn’t want to be an artist. Art’s a racket, and he’ll just end up enslaved to other people’s perceptions of him.”

  This conversation seemed a little inappropriate to me, given our parent/teenager status, but I tried to nod in agreement as much as possible.

  “Good,” Mr. Pardo said when we got near Mickey’s room. He seemed to think that took care of things. “Stay for dinner if you want.”

  I went into Mickey’s room, which was the usual mess of clothes and CDs. Mickey was lying on his bed with his hands behind his head and his elbows in the air, chatting into the headset of his cell phone.