The Insiders

by J. Minter

  “What are you doing tonight?” I asked. Her eyeliner was smudged and she looked deathly pale. I wasn’t sure if the look was intentional.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “Yeah, right.”

  “There’s a party in Chinatown,” she said. “But it’s a much older crowd. I probably won’t see you there.”

  “Wow, in the four or five years you’ve been here you’ve really gotten to know the scene,” I said.

  “Shut up,” Kelli said simply. “Some people were born to drive this town wild, and I’m one of them.”

  “You’re crazy,” I said.

  “You’re jealous.”

  “You’re leaving tomorrow.”

  “We’ll just see about that.”

  Kelli’s other phone rang. This was a Treo handheld computer about the size of a deck of cards. It looked like it cost a thousand dollars and it probably had enough power to direct air traffic. She took the call.

  “Yeah? … Mr. Chow’s? No, I haven’t eaten dinner, not at all. Send a car for me, can’t you?” Kelli stood up and walked out of the room. Neither of our mothers looked up.

  “Um,” I said. I pushed my hair out of my eyes. “How was Canyon Ranch?”

  “It was extremely relaxing,” my mom said as she speared a piece of yellowtail so fresh it was practically shivering and slipped it into her mouth. “Four days there and I can hardly remember why I felt all the nerves that forced me to go there in the first place, you know?”

  “That’s so well put,” my aunt said. “I’d been concerned about Kelli and college, but now I can see that’s ridiculous. She’ll go wherever she wants to go.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” I muttered.

  “I’m out,” Kelli called. The door slammed before anyone could say anything.

  “You know,” my mom said to her sister, “originally I was concerned about you two staying here. I was afraid of being overrun, so I booked a room at the Tribeca Grand for the two of you, in case we got into a spat. But I feel like we’re girls again and we’ve totally abandoned our responsibilities. Isn’t it fun?”

  “Next time, I’ll take the room,” I said. Both women giggled at me. They were eating off of everyone’s plates and clearly having the best time. I doubted they’d even make it to the opera.

  My Blackberry went off again. Arno: Time to go.

  “See you,” I said, and left them to their sisterliness.

  arno apologizes for real

  “Ow,” Arno said. Slowly, he got to his feet.

  Mickey had popped an inadvertent wheelie on the way down Greenwich Street and Arno had flown off the back and nearly been run over by a Hummer.

  When Mickey looked back to see what had happened, he’d swung around too quickly and the weight of his cast had made him lose control of the Vespa. It slid under the middle of one of those extra-long accordion buses, and the back tire had gotten crunched. Both boys were wide-eyed now and a little shaken. Mickey waved his cast around in the air.

  “How messed up is it?” Arno asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ll find out tomorrow,” Mickey said. He quickly grabbed the Vespa out of the street and leaned it up against the side of a building. A doorman came out and Arno knew him slightly, because he’d been a frequent visitor to a girl who lived there the year before.

  “Could you watch this?” Arno said to the doorman, and flipped him fifty bucks before the doorman said no.

  “I’ve got an idea,” Arno said. He hailed a cab, and they got in. “We’ll go to my parents’ house and see if there’s a car.”

  “Sounds good,” Mickey said. They got in touch with David and Jonathan. A few blocks later, they were in front of Arno’s house.

  Several limousines idled out front. They were all waiting for people who were having dinner inside. Arno scanned the drivers.

  “Hey, Ezra,” he said suddenly to a youngish guy in jeans and a T-shirt who was leaning against a black Cadillac Escalade. “Is that the cheesy piece of shit you’re driving the Currins around in these days?”

  Ezra nodded and winked at Arno. He’d been playing a computer game on his handheld.

  “It’s a lender,” Ezra said. “The electric car’s in the shop.”

  Arno nodded. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jonathan come up in a cab. Then David loped around the corner, on foot. Finally, the four of them were together.

  “You want to take us somewhere?” Arno asked.

  “What’s in it for me?”

  “There’s a black Vespa on Greenwich that’s a little fried but it’s yours if you can drive us for a few hours.”

  Ezra nodded, and the four boys hopped into the Cadillac. The inside smelled new and everybody rolled down their windows. They all took a deep breath and relaxed.

  “First things first,” Jonathan said. Arno nodded.

  “David, I’m sorry,” Arno said. “There’s no excuse for what I did.”

  “I’m going to keep going out with Amanda,” David said. “And this is the last time you do this, right?”

  “I swear I’ll never fool around with a girl you like again,” Arno said. “Hey, I’m happy for you and Amanda. She was just … she was just getting with me because she was afraid of the intensity of the thing she has with you.”

  “Now the two of you shake hands and we’re a group again,” Mickey said. And they did. Arno held David’s hand for an extra moment, and he looked him in the eye.

  “I really am sorry,” Arno said.

  “Just don’t do it again,” David said.

  “On to the next subject,” Mickey said. He checked his watch. Nearly nine. Everyone nodded. “Let’s go to Siberia first and get a cocktail.”

  “Where’s your new shoes?” Jonathan said to David.

  “Oh, I guess I forgot to put them on.”

  “And the shirt?”

  David shrugged. Jonathan frowned. David was wearing the same outfit he always wore.

  “He doesn’t need to dress cool to be cool,” Arno said suddenly. “Isn’t that right, David?” David stared at him.

  “Yeah,” David said slowly. “I guess that’s right.”

  “That outfit was important to me,” Jonathan said.

  “Dude!” Mickey said. “Do not say things like that.”

  “Yeah,” Arno agreed. “We’re all into clothes and all that crap, but the way you talk about what people are wearing, like it’s important. I mean, stop before I puke all over the place.”

  “If you do puke, watch out for your four-hundred-dollar alligator Gucci loafers.”

  “Fine,” Arno said. “But I don’t think about it. Just like David doesn’t think about how he’s been wearing the same sweatshirt for three years.”

  “Yeah,” David said. “Jonathan, after we find Patch we’re going to go to work on your values.”

  “Oh, shut up,” Jonathan said. But everyone else was laughing.

  Arno felt relieved. David didn’t hate him anymore. He was back, and his friends were into him. Nobody was going to hate each other forever.

  “Drinks are on me,” Arno said.

  “Cool,” Ezra said from the driver’s seat. “I called some people already.”

  They arrived in front of Siberia. It was dark out and cars flew by on the West Side Highway.

  “What happens if we don’t find Patch?” Jonathan asked.

  “We’re going to find him,” everyone else said. “We have to.”

  They all spilled out of the Escalade and of course Kelli was there, with Randall Oddy and a whole bunch of older people.

  “Damn,” Arno said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Jonathan said. “You’re over her.”

  “Yeah,” Arno said. But he knew that was only about 49 percent true. He closed his eyes and tried to remember the shower he’d taken with Mariela just a few hours before. Forget this, remember that. He said that to himself about a million times in one second, but then Kelli smiled at him.

  “Hi,” Kelli said. “I was j
ust leaving. There’s this party in Chinatown that’s supposed to be absolutely incredible.”

  “We’re going there, too,” Mickey said. “Remember, this came up last night?”

  Mickey had come out of nowhere. Arno was impressed. After falling off the Vespa, Mickey probably needed to go to the hospital again.

  “In fact,” Mickey said, “we’re friends with one of the hosts.”

  Arno snapped his fingers and winked at his good bud, as if to say thanks, man.

  “Whatever,” Kelli said.

  the object of our affection

  My phone rang and I took the call.

  “I hope you’re looking for my brother,” Flan said.

  “We are. Where’ve you been?”

  “That doesn’t matter. But if he’s not home by 10:00 A.M., we’re all going to be in a lot of trouble.”

  “We’ll find him. Why haven’t I seen you?”

  “Just get my brother,” Flan said. And clicked off. I arched an eyebrow, but said nothing. I didn’t want to hear more from anybody about how I should deal with Flan.

  We spilled out onto the street in front of a steel door down at the bottom of the Bowery, at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge. The sidewalks smelled of fish and beer and people from outside the city who were finishing big dinners and slowly walking back to their cars. We looked up, beyond the restaurants, to the lofts that dotted the upper floors of the dark buildings.

  “I can feel him,” I said.

  “He is near,” Mickey said. He pulled out a rope and started to swing it up to a fire escape, but Arno grabbed him.

  “This is somebody’s house—we need to go through the door,” Arno said.

  Of course we didn’t have the exact address, so we had to wait and watch and see if we could follow anyone in. Sure enough, a couple of those teenage models who are freakishly thin and good-looking but have absolutely nothing to say wandered down the street and rang a buzzer on a door about ten feet from where we stood.

  “You guys going to Graca’s?” one of them asked. She had on thick black eyeliner and she was wearing a blouse with a tadpole silk-screened on it.

  “Yeah,” Mickey said quickly. We rode up with them in a rickety old elevator, the six of us holding a collective breath.

  “What if he’s not here?” I whispered. Mickey, David, and Arno shook their heads, like don’t even think that.

  “He’ll be there,” the other model said, even though there was no way she could know who we were talking about. “Everybody goes to Graca’s.”

  We got out at the top floor and wandered into a loft that was eerily quiet. At one end, far down from where we were, under a skylight that bathed everyone in dark blue, there was a dinner party going on. Music played—some Eurotrash pop that I didn’t recognize—and slowly we made our way toward the group. Behind us, I could hear more people coming up the stairs.

  “Wow,” David said.

  “It’s cool,” I whispered. “They’re in that transition moment, between when a party is all about dinner and then it turns into a blowout, you know?”

  “Dude, could you please not overanalyze,” Mickey said.

  The table was long and wide, with at least twenty people sitting at it. At the far end, a woman was seated next to an empty chair. The models were saying hello to the woman, who had to be around twenty-one. Graca, they called her. She was Spanish or Brazilian or something, and totally stunning, with long black hair and big black eyes set wide apart. The four of us stopped and stood there, because we didn’t know a person in the place.

  “This is awkward,” I said.

  “It really is,” David said.

  Then a door opened even farther back in the loft, and we saw Patch come out. He came over and kissed Graca, and he was weirdly beaming as he took his seat. He hadn’t seen us.

  “Is there more Rioja?” he asked. Graca smiled and rumpled Patch’s hair. The music switched to the soundtrack from Y Tu Mama Tambien.

  Then Patch looked up. We’d just been staring at him. It was hard to deal with the idea that he was missing when he was sitting in the middle of some dinner party.

  “Hey …,” he said, and wandered over to us. “It’s you guys.” He was wearing the same khakis he had on when we’d last seen him, and a black T-shirt that didn’t fit him right and clearly belonged to a girl. No shoes. His hair was rumpled. He came up and hugged me.

  “Where the hell have you been?” I asked.

  “What?” Patch asked. “Oh, I’ve been here.” He smiled at the four of us and we surrounded him in a circle. “It was like, last week sometime, I forget when, I was skateboarding in Union Square and I fell, and this girl picked me up and it was Graca.” He glanced over his shoulder, and she waved. “And she took me home, and we’ve been here ever since. She makes leather pants for rock stars. Isn’t that cool?”

  “We’ve been worried about you.”

  “Really?” Patch said. “That’s cool.”

  I looked around and just shook my head. A mirror propped by the door had claimed Arno’s attention, and Mickey, who’d found Patch’s skateboard, started to ride around the empty front of the loft. David was hanging back, probably uncomfortable among all the beautiful Brazilians.

  “So you’re good,” I said.

  “Uh, better than that, dude. But you’re right, I should check in with my sisters, at least.”

  “They’ve been covering for you with your parents,” I said.

  “Yeah, they’re good that way.”

  And again, I just shook my head. No wonder some insanely hot Brazilian leather pants designer had taken Patch home. I mean, he was the most laid-back, good-looking kid in New York.

  Patch and I went over to the table and he introduced me around. He handed me a glass of Rioja.

  “You’ll love this,” he said.

  I took a sip, and it was good.

  “But you need to go home soon,” I said. “At least check in for brunch tomorrow.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Patch said. A serious expression passed over his face, but then it disappeared.

  “How’s Flan?”

  “Good,” I said, and left it at that. I wondered where she was, and why she wouldn’t tell me. Some people started to dance. Graca drifted up from the table and began to dance in a circle with a few other women. She smiled over at us.

  “Isn’t she amazing?” Patch said. “We kept meaning to do stuff. Like she should work and I should go to school, and call people, and all that, but we kept forgetting.”

  Patch threw his arm around me, and we stood there, drinking wine and just sort of digging on the scene. I felt totally calm and then I realized that I hadn’t felt that way in a while, not since my cousin Kelli had come to town.

  Then there was a noise at the door, someone knocking really loud and not realizing that the door was unlatched, so it suddenly flew open and banged against the wall with an ugly crunching sound. Randall Oddy came in with Kelli and five guys, who were all smiling and totally focused on Kelli. She scoped the scene and saw that she knew only me and my people, so she smiled wide, like we hadn’t been fighting for days and now she was happy to run into me.

  “Jonathan!” Kelli yelled as she came running over to us.

  “That’s my cousin,” I said to Patch.

  “She’s … loud,” Patch said. I smiled. Patch wasn’t into loudness.

  “Hey, who’s this?” Kelli asked. As usual, a couple of guys were trailing her. She grinned at Patch and her grin said, should I be sampling you?

  “Oh no you don’t,” I said. “You already messed up two of my friends. I don’t even want you talking to this one.”

  “Hey,” Kelli said. “I’m harmless.”

  “No you’re not.”

  “I’m Patch,” Patch said. And he shook hands with Kelli. He smiled at her. And Kelli smiled back.

  “And I’m Graca,” Graca said. Her voice was like hot butter and she rolled her rs. She’d stopped dancing and walked over to us. Arno and David an
d Mickey had all made their way to us, too, and now we all stood there, staring at her. She was so beautiful. Patch kissed her.

  “Do you all want some wine?” Graca asked.

  “Yes,” we said. I emptied my glass and she went toward where the kitchen must have been.

  “I’m in love,” Patch said. We all nodded at him. We could see why.

  “Excuse me,” Kelli said. “I think someone’s calling my name.” But nobody paid attention to her, and so she walked away.

  “You need to remember to go home,” Mickey said to Patch.

  “Not till tomorrow morning.”

  “But definitely then,” Arno said. “We’ll get you there. It’s good to see you, man, we really missed you.”

  “But I thought you forgot about me.”

  “Well, yeah,” I said. “We did for a while. But I’m still really happy to see you now.”

  “Okay,” Patch said. He smiled the easy smile that had been keeping him out of trouble since he’d been born.

  a little more from the social glue

  Toward four in the morning, Graca ran out of wine and I was having trouble keeping everything in focus. Patch hadn’t disappeared again, which was a good thing. He was dancing with Graca. And Kelli was dancing with Randall Oddy and Arno was sort of between the two couples, dancing with the model with the tadpole on her shirt.

  David came over to where I was sitting at the dinner table. I’d been picking at a plate of olives, and penciling a drawing of Flan on a napkin.

  “I’m tired,” David said. “I called my mom and said I was staying at your house. I hope that’s not a problem.”

  “Nope, so long as she knows that tonight my house is a suite at the Tribeca Grand.”