The Girl with the Wrong Name

by Barnabas Miller

  I tug on the sleeve of Max’s black suit. (Yes, he wore a suit for my premiere—though he stuck with Pumas and white socks.) “You want to take a walk?” I whisper.

  “Now?” he whispers back, surprised. “Your movie just started.”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen it about a hundred times,” I say. “Let’s walk.”

  We begin to stand, but Lou stands up with us. “Where are you guys going?”

  It’s an awkward moment. One we’d been working on for the last few months. I see the look in Lou’s eyes, and I think of Emma Renaux in her bridesmaid’s dress at age eighteen. There’s a hint of that in Lou’s eyes. The look of a girl who has lost the love of her life to her best friend. We could never be the same threesome we were again. Not really. But we did our best to approximate it.

  “We’re taking a quick walk,” Max whispers.

  Lou forces a smile. “Cool,” she mumbles.

  “We’ll bring you back some popcorn,” Max adds.

  “Right on,” Lou deadpans. “You’re a prince among men, Max.” She sniffs and turns away. “I swear, I’ll get better at this. There will be, like, a hundred dudes way better than Max at Oberlin.”

  Max laughs. “Thanks, Lou.”

  “Shhhh.” Todd stops snacking from his bag of dried pumpkin seeds and gives us a stern look. He has a point. It is, after all, my movie.

  “Go, go, go,” Lou whispers. “I promise I’ll have this down by the time you guys get married.”

  “Whoa!” Max coughs nervously. “Who said anything about—?”

  “Lou, will you stop with that?” I whisper.

  “I’m joking,” she whispers. “Go walk already.”

  “Still bringing you back some popcorn,” Max says as we climb over the backs of our folding chairs.

  “Hell, yeah, you are,” Lou says.

  I twirl slowly in place, shooting a panoramic view of Parker Street, then the West Side Highway, and then Max. He smiles for the camera.

  “Okay, I lied,” I say. “I didn’t really want to take a walk. I just wanted to come down and see it again. It makes me happy.”

  “Like I didn’t know that’s why we came down,” Max says.

  “Would you?” I hand him the camera.

  “I’d be honored,” he says.

  He takes the camera from me as I lead him to the corner of the K.O.P. building, where a small blue placard with white writing has been nailed high on the wall. It looks identical to the blue street placards in Paris. Max kneels down so he can get a good angle of me pointing up to the sign with a joyous smile on my face.

  cyrano lane, the sign reads.

  The small alley that runs adjacent to Parker Street now has a name. A permanent name. Now Cyrano Lane is a name and an address. And no one will ever forget her again.

  “Come on,” I say, grabbing the camera back from Max, beckoning him to join me for one last picture.

  Max puts his arm around me and leans in for a selfie. “Wait,” he says.

  “What?”

  “Your hair’s in your face.” He grabs the strands of my long hair and tucks them back behind my left ear. “There,” he says. “Beautiful.”

  “Thanks,” I say as I snap a few shots. But Max starts to crack up for the last few. “What? What’s so funny?”

  “No, nothing,” Max says. “Just Lou with her whole ‘married’ thing. She’s freakin’ hilarious.”

  “I know.” I roll my eyes. “Like that will ever happen.”

  The New York Times,

  “Weddings and Celebrations” section, page ST22

  June 3, 2022

  Theodore Lane, 24, daughter of Ryan and Margaret Lane of Brooklyn, N.Y., and stepdaughter of Todd Simpson of Norwalk, Conn., will marry Maximus Fenton, 24, son of Bernard and Mona Fenton of New York, N.Y., on Saturday. The reception will be held at lower Manhattan’s Battery Gardens.

  The couple first met as eighth-graders at New York’s Sherman Preparatory School when Ms. Lane was reluctantly enlisted as Mr. Fenton’s algebra tutor. They stayed the best of friends for many years before Mr. Fenton finally proposed.

  He popped the question during one of their Sunday morning walks, kneeling suddenly on the corner of Parker Street and Cyrano Lane, her favorite spot in all of New York. He presented a uniquely shaped ring that held deep significance for Ms. Lane, which he had secretly procured from a close friend of hers, and he offered what he termed his “very wordy” proposal:

  He asked Ms. Lane if there was any possible way she’d consider marrying him, even though it would absolutely evoke all the clichés of guys asking girls to marry them, and would be blatantly romantically suggestive in every way, and would, in fact, become even more romantically suggestive fifty years from now when they would be very old but still very much in love.

  Ms. Lane needed a moment to thoroughly consider the question. Ultimately, she concluded that, yes, she could in fact do that.

  Acknowledgments

  I am deeply indebted to Daniel Ehrenhaft, Bronwen Hruska, and the entire team at Soho Press for making this book possible.

  For their wealth of knowledge, support, and professional acumen, my sincerest thanks to Edward Necarsulmer IV, Robert Scharf, Jennifer Grossman, and Robert S. Perlstein, Esq.

  Special thanks to Lawrence Alexander, Jane Huyck, and Carole Demas. You turned my humble quest for reprint permission into the most unexpected gift. Thank you, too, to Alton Alexander and George Kayatta. Apparently, the creators and custodians of The Magic Garden were and are just as soulful and welcoming as the garden itself.

  For keeping me sane in the darkest hours, thanks to Arthur Miller, Barbara Miller, Jed Miller, Heidi Miller, Holly Hemingway, Martha Plimpton, and the founding members of Tiger Beat: Libba Bray, Natalie Standiford, and Daniel “Knuckles” Ehrenhaft. There are few wounds that “Whole Lotta What’cha Want” cannot heal.

  Bobby Weissman and Theo Cohen, I thank you for the inspiration. You will never be forgotten.

  Thank you twice, Ms. Libba Bray, for being Ms. Libba Bray.

  Dan Ehrenhaft, you are a scholar, a saint, a brilliant editor, and quite possibly the hardest working man in the YA business. Thank you thrice, Mr. Worthy, for all of the above.

  And thank you, John Starks, for “The Dunk.”