Chapter Two

“CHARLIE, WHERE ARE YOU going without your juice?” asked Angelina, holding out a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. For fifteen years she’d been juicing breakfast oranges for the Greens.

“I’m out of practice,” said Charlie. “At camp they gave us a can of fruit punch for breakfast.”

“Estupido,” said Angelina.

Angelina was from Puerto Rico. No kids of her own; a quick, snickering mouth; tight gray curls atop her head; fair skin. She contended that the original Puerto Ricans were all light skinned and all middle class: “Fishermen, servants, chauffeurs, shop owners. Work six days a week, sleep one day a week. The best people on earth. La Dignidad.”

“I have so much to do before tonight,” said Charlie. “Look at this list. Three full yellow legal pad pages. A record.”

“What happens tonight?” asked Angelina.

“I meant that I have so much to do before college tomorrow.”

“Ay Dios. Watch him get into trouble with some girl tonight.”

“No girl, just—

“Dios.”

Angelina didn’t like girls. She came to the Greens in 1970, just after Charlie was born. She was a house nanny at the San Juan Loews, where the family spent a Christmas holiday, and made the plane trip home with them, chastising the stewardess for the candy wrapper she’d found beneath the boy’s seat, and debriefing Mrs. Green about the exact type of juicer she’d require for the household.

Charlie shared Angelina’s love for the 1970s and her healthy mistrust for the 1980s. The former meant the Concorde, which the Greens flew once, the flight nearly empty except for them. Angelina cherished the experience. Charlie was shocked that she didn’t cross herself before takeoff.

“Dios is on the Concorde,” she’d said.

He’d timed her retelling of the adventure to her numb cousins in Brooklyn, the story coming in at two hours and fifteen minutes, the flight two hours and fifty-nine minutes.

Charlie believed that the 1970s were best represented by the Green family, at warp speed, wrapped in British Airways’ complimentary cashmere throws, while Angelina received a manicure from the in-flight beautician. That and when they saw Yul Brynner in The King and I, the preshow dinner at Adam’s Rib. It had been Charlie’s first time there. He remembered watching, his chin on the table, a pat of butter melting on a slice of pumpernickel bread.

Angelina was wary of the latter decade, though. Los eighties. The AIDS, the Iran hostages, and the black dye in Mr. Reagan’s hair. “A man should go gray,” she’d tell Charlie. “You remember this when you are old.”

“I won’t mind having gray hair. You’ll see,” he’d say.

“You write me a postcard about it.”

“You’ll teach my wife how to make banana bread, like you taught my mom, right?”

“Go brush your teeth.”

*

When Charlie thought about the Monica Miller date, he turned red with promise. Things would go well, with a skip in his step as he approached the restaurant’s famous burgundy canopy. Then he’d bring himself to the moment when she walked into the barroom, and the cheer vanished, in its place a wholly unpredictable night.

Keep to the list, thought Charlie. Your list will take you to the promised land of her bedroom, where you’ll be warm together under a crocheted blanket from her childhood. At the top of his list was a visit to the electronics store to buy Sony’s Boodo Khan Walkman, the world’s loudest and finest personal cassette player, complete with the largest consumer-class headphones. Deep into the afternoon, dressed and showered, he’d pop in the pre-date mixtape and sit on a bench on Fifth Avenue, outside Central Park, his eyes locked on the canopy of Adam’s Rib, a mere block in the distance. In the absence of his older brother John, the Boodo Khan would be his trail guide: a metal square with Japanese lettering, two splashes of color, a green Play button and a red Stop button, and a leaden volume wheel. Less a machine than a place.

“May I see it?” Charlie asked the electronics salesman.

He’d asked the same question on the other side of this summer, about the same Japanese packaging that remained on the highest shelf of GOING OUT OF BUSINESS, the decade-old signage that covered the original name of the local electronics store.

“It’s $970,” said the salesman, a surly Israeli who wore no fewer than three Stars of David.

“I know,” said Charlie. “I made the money myself.”

“How else do you make money? Are you a magician? Feel this,” said the salesman and placed the metal brick in Charlie’s palm. “This Walkman is like a tank. You couldn’t hear a war with these on.”

“Were you in a war?”

“Of course I was. I tell you what, I’ll throw in the batteries.”

He’d have $190 left for tonight’s date, the fruits of his fat-camp labors gone by tomorrow morning. John had said it was good to go to college penniless. Less is more. Pack lightly. Toss a single duffel bag onto your unmade bed. They’ll think you’re dangerous.

“$950,” said Charlie. “With the batteries.”

“Geez Louise. I’ve seen you in here with your nanny. I should charge you a thousand.”

“$950. You haven’t sold it all summer.”

“Okay, okay. You win. Next time we bargain, you let me win. That’s how the world works. You always get what you want?”

“No. Never.”

“It’s good to lose a lot. Makes you strong.”

Charlie watched the man fumble with the batteries and their compartment. It took him minutes. It would have taken Charlie seconds. The shopkeeper was equally inept in June. The backward Duracells had annoyed Charlie then, but the summer had made him sympathetic to all who stumble on their path.

“You must have to know how so many things work,” said Charlie.

“I fixed tanks in the army. In Israel. You should join. Bring your Sony Walkman.”

“Maybe I will. What are the uniforms like? I like countries who still equip their soldiers with swords. Somehow it’s less violent.”

“You don’t need a sword, my friend. You need a gun, and uniforms are crap. They are to be torn off in peacetime.”

I’ll miss this shopkeeper, he thought, and all of the shopkeepers who saw me at five years old, eleven, and eighteen. Thank you, shopkeepers. I’m sorry Angelina scolded you, and I’m sorry I stole lemon drops. I don’t think my college has a Madison Avenue. John said as much.

John also said Charlie needed a civilian uniform for college. After blasting “With or Without You” on his new acquisition and chasing Angelina around the kitchen with the leathery headphones, begging her to experience the booming sound, he settled into his room and called his older brother.

“You need to commit right now,” said John. “Choose your uniform carefully. Memorize it. Never waver. That way, people don’t have to think, they just know it’s you. And girls like consistency. To them it means you’ll last a long time in bed.”

John’s uniform at Princeton had been camouflage army shorts, a purple polo shirt, and sandals. Now a second-year banker on Wall Street, he rotated his suits but made certain the ties were always a shade of yellow. John had a crush on his supervisor, Shannon Chang, and believed that on the five hundredth or thousandth day of his yellow-tie streak she would ask him to a post-work cocktail.

“I’m going with my navy-blue blazer,” said Charlie.

“With just a smile and a navy-blue blazer, almost every door will open,” Charlie’s grandmother had told him, in the final months of her life, when terminal lung cancer allowed for an all-you-can-smoke existence that she described as a preview of heaven.

“Then at least rip off a couple of those shiny buttons,” said John. “You don’t want to come across as rich. That’s a huge detriment in college.”

“But it’s not in life?”

“Of course not. College isn’t life. It’s more like war,” said John.

In addition to the blazer (the two buttons removed), he’d selected a black Calvin Klein V-neck tee, pulled at the neck to suggest torso muscles that didn’t yet exist. For pants, he went with the stiff Brooks Brothers jeans that his mother called dungarees. Shoes were easy: penny loafers with buffalo head nickels crammed into the slots. He wore the same socks and underwear as his father, sourced from a pre-school shopping day at Saks Fifth Avenue, during which Rose Green bought a year’s worth of staples for her “boys.” Charlie put up a fight, but he actually liked the quality of the knee-high socks and the drawers. He tried never to imagine his father in them, on crinkly examination table paper, some doctor making small talk by commenting on the golden toes.

“I should wear the uniform to my date tonight, right?” he asked John.

“Of course you should. Break it in. Why are you taking her to Adam’s Rib? Least sexy place in New York.”

“It’s incredibly sexy.”

“If you’re seventy. You told Mom you’re staying with me?”

“Yes.”

“She’s not stupid.”

“Why wouldn’t I want to spend the last night with my brother?”

“You should want to, but you’re spending it at Adam’s Rib with a B-minus brunette.”

“Monica Miller, in the light of Adam’s Rib, is an A-minus.”

“By the way, losing your virginity isn’t really fun. It’s something you have to do before getting to the good stuff. Like how you have to run the faucet at home before the cold water comes out.”

John was shorter than Charlie, stocky like their French father, George Green—Jee-Jee for short. John had Jee-Jee’s smile as well—great dimples that girls loved. A fretted nose. A modest beer belly. He was comfortable. Easy. So many people called him their friend.

“I think I’ll be good at it,” said Charlie.

“Everyone thinks that. And wear a bag. I saw your girlfriend at a club downtown. Warhol was there. That means AIDS. That means wear a bag.”

“She didn’t sleep with Warhol, did she?”

“No, idiot. No one sleeps with Warhol. He’s only had sex once, and that was with Jackie O.”

“Then how did he get AIDS?”

“Immaculately.”

*

Charlie passed Jee-Jee’s blue and yellow entryway dish, a little bit of Provence chipped by car keys and loose change. He could usually make out the fawns and other garden creatures who lived on the bottom, but today it held a disposable camera, a University of Pennsylvania parking sticker, his father’s driving gloves with LE MANS stitched in red thread below the knuckle holes, and a Les Misérables cassette. Tonight is all, thought Charlie. Twelve, maybe fourteen hours till he’d hear his father ask, Allons-y?

“How are you feeling, Charlie Bear?” asked Rose Green, char-donnay no. 1 in her hand.

“I found a tape measure on my bed. John said you were planning to change my room?”

“Well, sweetheart, your father has always dreamed of a billiards room, but don’t worry. You’ll always have a bed here. Forever and ever.”

“In which room?”

“We’ll probably end up keeping everything just like it is today.”

I’m not going to sleep on a pool table, thought Charlie. It will mess up my back, which will mess up my sex life, if I have a sex life. Which I will, I pray to God.

Paint cans on the stairs. The goodbye-Charlie dish teeming with the end. They want me gone, thought Charlie. Fine, then. Maybe Monica Miller and I will stay at the Plaza Hotel tonight and never leave. Like Eloise but with bottles and sex.

“I’m staying at John’s tonight,” said Charlie. “For old time’s sake.”

“I have dried apricots for you, in case you decide not to sleep over.”

“No, I think I will sleep over.”

“It’s your last night, so you can spend it however you want, just be careful.”

“Why would I have to be careful at John’s?”

“Just know that the apricots are waiting for you.” She kissed his forehead. Charlie could tell she wanted more. A forever hug. Please don’t know about tonight, he thought.

“Have fun with your brother,” said Rose Green, touching his warm cheek with the back of her cold hand. “I love you.”

“Me too.” He sounded defensive. Does she know? He decided she didn’t. It was the only way to proceed.

“College,” said Rose Green. “Exciting.” She went into the kitchen to pour chardonnay no. 2, then out to the backyard to join Jee-Jee under the Japanese tea lights. Charlie watched them: his father with Le Monde and a cigarillo, his mother looking on lovingly, reverentially, wondering exactly when her husband’s better senses would prevail and he would pour himself a pastis.

“The shower you take before you lose your virginity is more important than the shower you take before your wedding,” John had said. “A new bar of Irish Spring. New razor. No cologne. Extra deodorant, but it has to be cheap. You should smell like a workingman. And don’t overdo it with the mousse.”

The shower had been a great one. Thirty minutes of hot water. Then a thirty-nine-cent deodorant he’d picked up at Woolworth’s. His uniform suited him: the missing buttons did the trick, and the Boodo Khan fit perfectly in his blazer pocket, the huge headphones around his neck.

“So, this is it,” said Charlie to his parents.

“This is just the beginning,” said Jee-Jee.

“You look very handsome,” said Rose.

“Thought I’d dress up, in case John takes us somewhere fancy.”

“You kids are so fancy,” said Jee-Jee. He’d grown up poor, in a happily crowded French countryside house where he wore hand-me-downs, no questions asked, and mended the holes in them, no questions asked. Each child came with a sewing kit. As Jee-Jee liked to say, “Growing up, we had no questions to ask. Everyone knew what to do.”

“There are worse things than fancy,” said Rose.

“It’s only the blazer that makes it fancy,” said Charlie. “And two of the buttons are missing. Girls appreciate that deficiency.”

“Well, you have fun tonight, Charlie Bear.”

He’d watched her fill a tumbler with half a bottle of wine. Now that glass was empty. He wanted better advice than have fun. Maybe something closer to home, like, don’t drink too damn much, too damn quickly, Charlie Bear.

*

The Adam’s Rib bar smelled like roast beef and asbestos, the frigid air born of huge whirring air conditioners, forced from shafts by old airplane propellers, Charlie imagined. And the amazing lighting, like sepia, straight out of a 1940s war movie. Like an Abbott and Costello movie. Abbott and Costello Join the French Foreign Legion. But before they’re in uniform, they’re at some swanky Egyptian joint, hanging out with the Andrews Sisters, served by portly waiters wearing fezzes. Potted palms and red leather banquettes. The pyramids might as well be in the distance. But before dealing with the Sphinx and its riddle, have a Yorkshire Pudding and an end cut of prime rib. The Adam’s Rib bartender will set you up. He might even answer the riddle with a wink and a smile: “They pour some of the roast beef juice into the Yorkshire puddings while they’re cooking. That’s the secret.”

John had told Charlie he should get there one-and-a-half drinks early. “Be caught writing something when she enters.”

“What should I write?” asked Charlie. “I could write another short story about the Adam’s Rib bartender.”

“It doesn’t matter. Just put it away quickly after she sees you. Some part of her will think it’s a note for another girl. And bring the fake ID I made for you.”

“People look at me like I’m cursed. You gave me JFK’s assassination day.”

“It’s plausibly implausible.”

“Monica Miller never gets carded.”

“Of course not. She’s always annoyed, which bartenders mistake for adulthood. Just bring the ID. That creepy steakhouse bartender can turn on you any second.”

“He’s not creepy. He’s wondrous.”

Charlie had never been to Adam’s Rib on a plain old Tuesday night. He’d been there on Fridays and Saturdays, Sundays, and once on a Thanksgiving Thursday. The pre-theater clamor was gone. A brunette walked in, and Charlie almost choked on an ice cube, but it turned out to be an older woman in black stockings.

“My parents told me they might want a bottle of Krug tonight,” Charlie told the Adam’s Rib bartender. The Greens had a house account that went unchecked. It was Jee-Jee’s job to look through all the credit accounts for overcharges and fraud, but according to him life was too short for double-checking anything under a hundred dollars, a fact Charlie knew well. A bottle of 1984 Krug was $94, and Jee-Jee’s eyes would glide right over it.

“And if for some reason that my parents don’t show,” Charlie said to the Adam’s Rib bartender, “I’m sure they’d be fine with my girlfriend and I having—”

The Adam’s Rib bartender stopped him. Held out a hand into which Charlie deposited his fake ID.

“Well, let’s see,” he said, straining to read. “I suppose that the numbers don’t lie,” the Adam’s Rib bartender said, but then he shook his head. “You know, it’s not the worst thing in the world to just be your age.”

Then he stared too deeply into Charlie’s brown eyes and the boy became five, in a playground, stuck on a slide. Pee in his pants.

“Sorry,” said Charlie.

”One bottle of Krug Champagne will be on its way,” said the Adam’s Rib bartender.

Thank you, thought Charlie. Please don’t hate me. Kids needs lies. You were once a kid, right, Adam’s Rib bartender? No, not you. Then he felt something warm near his cheek and spun around.

“It’s you,” said Charlie to Monica Miller.

He’d practiced saying, “A sight for sore eyes.” She was dressed up, looked grown up in a little black dress. John said that every guy wanted to date a girl who could do justice to the little black dress. Everything good emanated from it. Good nights, good sex, a good life.

“You’re tan,” said Monica.

“Camp.”

He kissed her shiny lower lip. Her upper lip was a small crescent, just like her parents’ upper lips, but the lower one was pulpy and red. Thank God for the lower lip, he thought.

“I sort of missed you,” she said and tugged his ear.

They’d begun dating in the spring, after they’d met during a school play, a bizarre Old West retooling of Romeo and Juliet. It was an integration of his all-boys’ school and her all-girls’. He’d gotten a part as a heard-but-never-seen narrator. Monica was the stage manager. Their first kiss was on opening night, in the infinite and infinitely soothing darkness of backstage, while the stage whispers of star-crossed cowboys and Indians bounced off of the gymnasium’s rafters.

“I missed you, too,” said Charlie. “I got Krug for us.”

“I can’t believe you’re going to college tomorrow. Are you sure you want to stay over tonight? You’re going to be so tired in the morning.”

How could she possibly think tonight was anything but a mandatory event? Her blitheness bruised his solar plexus, a place he perceived to be the temple of his soul. It was where alcohol went to cause or solve problems.

“I definitely want to stay over,” said Charlie, “and I definitely want to be tired. Who knows, maybe I won’t make it to college. Maybe you and I will take a trip instead. Some nights can last a lifetime.”

“That’s a sweet idea, but, as you know, I start NYU next week.”

NYU isn’t really a college, thought Charlie. It’s more like an intellectual experiment in Greenwich Village with too many pigeons.

“Don’t you wish NYU had a sprawling green campus?” asked Charlie. “I don’t want you to be stuck in concrete.”

“Aw, I’ll be okay.”

“John said grad students camp out in Washington Square Park, just waiting for a new crop of freshman girls.”

“Oh, speaking of grad students, my friend from my summer internship, this guy, Barry, I told you about? He’s having a party uptown at the bar he works at near Columbia. I thought we could stop by. He’s really cool.”

“I’m sure he is really cool, but I thought tonight it could just be us.”

Charlie had asked the Very-Brown-Eyed Counselor for advice about this Barry person. Monica Miller had ridden around town on the back of his Vespa, and Charlie wanted to know where her hands stayed during the ride.

“Just don’t think about it, Charlie,” she’d said.

“Barry really wants to meet you,” said Monica.

“But he doesn’t know me.”

“He knows you through me, silly.”

“You spoke about me?”

“Of course. You’re like my boyfriend.”

The Adam’s Rib bartender whistled “April in Paris” and refilled their flutes. “Nice night in the big city,” he said. “Or so they tell me.”

“God, this place is so weird,” whispered Monica.

“We love this place, don’t we?”

“It’s a little stuffy. I was almost going to say that we should buy a six-pack and sit on a stoop. Remember when we did that, and you told me a story about everyone who passed by, including the dogs?”

“I could tell you Adam’s Rib stories.”

She asked the Adam’s Rib bartender for an ashtray.

“Smoke ’em if you got ’em,” said the bartender.

“You’re smoking?”

“Sometimes. Barry and his girlfriend—well, ex-girlfriend, now—we all used to smoke, like, a cigarette or two after dinner. It’s not like it was a thing.”

“I guess there’s some sort of elegance to it.”

“I don’t know. I really like it when I’m drinking. I’ll probably quit in five or ten years. Or when I have kids.”

“Five years?”

Two Haircuts walked out of the dining room, to the bar. Haircuts was what Charlie called them. They were always kids in suits, with suspenders, horn-rimmed glasses, or yellow ties; kids who dressed or looked like John. All of them had gotten a haircut within the last twenty-six days. John himself had verified this: on Wall Street, anything less than fourteen haircuts a year was unacceptable.

The blond Haircut was an athlete in college but had let himself go, just like John and his beer gut. Although John had assured Charlie that girls actually liked beer guts: “It makes them feel safe and a little superior. They’ll pat it after sex.”

Blond Haircut was wearing Polo cologne, a lot of it. His friend was short, fat, balding. His wrist was adorned with a rope bracelet, an ID bracelet, and a preppy-looking striped Swatch.

Blond Haircut. Swatch Haircut.

The Haircuts were staring at Monica Miller because that was what Haircuts did. The blond one lit her cigarette with a pack of Adam’s Rib matches.

“Mind if I bum one of your smokes?” he asked her.

“Of course not,” she said.

Blond looked over at Swatch and raised his eyebrows.

“So, what are you guys up to?” Blond Haircut asked them.

“We’re on a date,” said Charlie.

“Lucky man,” Blond Haircut said, and Monica Miller smiled.

“What are you two up to?” she asked.

“Dinner with the boss while his wife is out of town,” said Blond Haircut.

“We should probably get back to the table,” said Swatch Haircut.

“Okay,” said Blond, smiling at Charlie’s date. “If you insist, although I like it better out here for some reason.” He put out his cigarette and touched her hand. “Thanks,” he said.

“Sure,” she said. “Bye.”

“Fucking Haircuts,” said Charlie.

“They were harmless preppies.”

“Haircuts.”

“Charlie, your little language can get a little annoying.”

“I just hope I never turn into one. If you ever see me wearing all sorts of crap on my wrist—”

“I like a watch on a man, or a bracelet, but definitely not both. You’d look good with a leather strap, like the kind Bono wears in ‘With or Without You.’”

“Our song.”

“I think it’s everyone’s song this summer,” said Monica Miller, peering back into the dining room.

“Doesn’t this place smell incredible?” asked Charlie. “Nixon could be back there. Sinatra!”

“You’re cute when you get excited. It reminds me that you can be normal.”

The champagne was working, thought Charlie. Monica Miller asked for a refill. Some nights she’d only have one drink, and those nights usually ended with a cursory kiss: “You don’t have to walk me home, Charlie, really.”

He’d end up at Mariella’s Pizza in the Ten O’clocks on a Saturday night, kids coating their stomachs with a slice before the clubs. To end one’s night amid others’ beginnings was for Charlie the definition of precocity. He could handle the sadness of eating pizza next to old men and their first few sections of the Sunday New York Times. He’d eat one slice at Mariella’s, get one to go, buy his own paper, then read the travel section in bed. Sometimes the phone would ring, and it would be Monica Miller apologizing for their flat ending. They’d make a date for the following weekend, and Charlie’s heart would swell.

“One day,” he’d say, “I want to share with you the Saturday night loneliness of Mariella’s. One day we’ll read the paper in there together.”

She’d try to understand, saying, “I know we will. One day.” Like Charlie, Monica Miller was Jewish; both her parents were shrinks. An only child, she was the captain of her life. No came easily to her, but so did the occasional sympathetic smile, and sometimes her hand through his hair. If only she had lighter eyes, thought Charlie. He didn’t want to be damned to a lifetime of mud. The dark mud in his eyes would combine with the hazel mud in Monica’s, one day producing more mud on the blue planet Earth.

“They’re really more green,” Monica would say. “Like your pretty name.”

“I guess I could see that.” But he could only see it when her contact lenses made her eyes red and teary; then, purely by contrast, there would be some green grass poking through the mud. Then he thought of another boy adoring her irises and panicked.

“I actually love your dark eyes,” said Charlie.

“They’re hazel, Charlie.”

“I’m sorry. That’s what I meant. Hey, let’s raise a glass to the Adam’s Rib bartender.”

“I feel bad for him. I think he’s too old to be doing this job.”

“He loves his job.”

“That’s crazy. Most normal people hate their jobs. My parents treat one or two blue-collar people each year for free. It’s called pro bono, but it’s not pronounced like Bono from U2.”

“I think the Adam’s Rib bartender is one of the happiest people I know,” said Charlie.

“You don’t even know his name. You only call him ‘the Adam’s Rib bartender.’”

“That’s one of the amazing things about him. He doesn’t need a name. Like how God doesn’t need a name.”

“Bartenders aren’t gods.”

“They are to me. At least this one is. There’s really something magical about him.”

The Haircuts had returned, this time with a bottle and wineglasses.

“Gentlemen,” said Monica Miller, spinning around slowly on her barstool, recrossing her legs. Charlie had seen her get this way before when she’d had too much champagne. John said some girls tried to act like old cabaret flirts when they were buzzed, and that the best thing to do was to wait it out and look the other way.

“My boss bought a bottle of Château Pétrus for the table,” said Blond Haircut. “You guys want to try some?”

“It’s the shit,” said Swatch Haircut.

“I’d love a taste,” said Monica Miller. “Sounds like a special wine.” She drank from Blond Haircut’s glass, then passed the glass to Charlie. He was going to refuse, but her lips had been where the Haircut’s had been, and he needed to erase the intimacy.

“Senescent,” said Charlie, handing Blond Haircut back his glass. It was what John said after tasting wine.

“We don’t want to crash your date or anything,” said Blond Haircut. “But you guys seem cool, and we’re going to a loft party downtown if you want to join us.”

“Loft party?” asked Monica Miller.

“Yeah. I mean, don’t get me wrong, we’re not a couple of creepy suits messing with your night, we just thought it was cool that here you were at an old man’s bar drinking champagne on a weekday night.”

“Thanks,” said Charlie. “We’re an old-fashioned couple.”

“Where’s the party?” asked Monica Miller.

“Down in Tribeca. Warren Street? I’m from California, still figuring this town out.”

“Oh, really?” said Monica Miller. “My uncle’s from San Diego. He took me to the zoo there when I was little.”

A photo collage to that effect was in the Millers’ kitchen. It looked like a hot day; Monica Miller’s white shirt stained with something red. An Italian ice, most likely. Monica Miller and stained white shirt with giraffe. Monica Miller and stained white shirt with zebra. Being an only child meant redundant collages, Charlie had decided.

“The zoo. Cool, cool,” Blond Haircut said, his California origins apparent in his mouth’s inability to finish up a word with a consonant. “Coo, coo,” was what it sounded like, but the rounded corners seemed to please Monica Miller.

“Love San Diego,” said Blond Haircut, “but I’m from up north. Tree country.”

“I guess, technically,” said Charlie, gesticulating to the Adam’s Rib bartender, in case he’d need corroboration, “everywhere is tree country.”

“Not the redwoods, man.”

“Oh my God, I’ve always wanted to see those,” said Monica Miller.

“You totally should,” said Blond Haircut.

Swatch Haircut flicked his adorned wrist and howled, “Big-ass trees.”

“Tell you what,” said Blond Haircut, “I’ll write down the address of the loft on the back of my card, and if you guys want to come, great. It’s supposed to be wild. This guy at work throws one every summer.”

“Last summer?” said Swatch Haircut. “The theme was James Bond. They gave all the girls vibrators shaped like golden bullets.”

“Okay, then,” said Blond Haircut, extinguishing his friend’s creepiness with his redwoodsiness. “We’ll catch you two later.” He handed Monica Miller his card.

“Friends of yours?” asked the Adam’s Rib bartender.

“No, absolutely not. We just met them,” said Charlie.

“City slickers,” sang the Adam’s Rib bartender. “City slickers in the rain.”

“They seemed nice, Charlie,” said Monica Miller.

“Sure,” said Charlie. “Blond Haircut was a handsome guy, don’t you think?” This too was from the Book of John. Put out a fire by starting your own.

“Not my type,” she said.

“Really? Huh. Interesting.”

“So, you think we should go?” she asked.

“Go where?”

“To the party.”

“Barry?” Charlie reminded her.

“Their party sounded really cool.”

“Downtown loft parties are a little overrated.”

“Have you ever been to one?”

“I don’t do overrated things.”

“Come on, Charlie Bear.” She kissed his earlobe. He pounded the rest of the champagne, hoping to outrace an erection.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I think I’m going,” she said and readied another cigarette.

“Alone?” Mariella’s Pizza loomed, but the thought of being in a room full of Haircuts, in a strange apartment, with a girl who had clearly developed a taste for older men over the summer? John would advise going to the party and letting Monica Miller roam the loft freely, separately. Sting sang “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free.”

Nonsense, thought Charlie. He loved his navy-blue blazer but wouldn’t dream of casting it up into the heavens on a windswept day in Central Park. No, you put it on a hanger and sleep well, knowing where it is. If you love somebody, you hang them up in your closet.

“You’re really thinking of going alone?” asked Charlie.

“I’m used to doing things alone.”

“Well, I’m not going to leave a perfectly happy night at the Adam’s Rib bar for a bunch of coked-out bankers and their overbearing watches.”

“They’re harmless, just boys dressed up like men. ‘Haircuts,’ as you insist on calling them, aren’t my favorites, either, but I like meeting new types of people.”

“I know, but I like meeting you. Over and over again.”

“Thank you, but sometimes I need for you to be just a little more normal. A little more eighteen.”

He could make out her bra underneath her silk blouse. He wished he could be normal for the bra, be normal for the blouse, for her whole grown-up outfit. She was probably wearing lingerie, too. An eighteen-year-old dressed like a thirty-year-old woman. He wondered if there was anything more enticing.

“How long would we have to stay for?” asked Charlie. She might never look as cute again. Just like John said, one or two long nights, and girls start to grow into their adult selves. Next thing you know, they’re wearing pearls at breakfast, like his mother did on the weekends.

“We’ll stay for a few hours, then we’ll go to my place,” said Monica Miller, staring down the length of her legs, admiring the gleaming shave.

John went to loft parties almost every weekend and described the atmosphere as progressively darker as the night became morning. Apparently, Haircuts after two o’clock on a Sunday morning grow desperate, snort a line of coke, and grab what they think is theirs. “It’s actually not the worst training for a career in finance,” John had said. “Doubling down is an art form. None of these guys ever want to go home alone.”

“We can create our own loft atmosphere at your place,” said Charlie. “I’ll flicker the lights and read you my latest story. It’s about a doorman I observed for many hours. Ironically, I depicted him as the least bored person in the world. He treats the building like his Rubik’s Cube and is just waiting for the right moment when every apartment is empty at the exact same time, you know, uniformly, so he can—”

“It won’t be the same at my place,” said Monica Miller. “Feel how smooth my legs are, Mister Rubik’s Cube.”

“Smooth,” said Charlie. “And shiny.” She’d put cream on them, and to Charlie they felt cool, barely perfumed. Blond Haircut had spent some time looking at her legs. He had probably made some sort of Haircut bet with himself, that his hand would feel her thigh, even with Charlie sitting right there.

“What would you do if that Blond Haircut put his hand on your leg?” asked Charlie.

“I don’t know,” said Monica Miller. “It depends.”

“On whether I go to the loft party?”

“No. Depends on my mood and how he did it. If he just wanted to see how smooth they felt, or if it was, you know, part of the conversation, then I’d probably be fine with it.”

“What kind of conversation? About legs?”

“I don’t know, crazy boy.” She mussed his hair.

All day long, some part of him had believed he’d end up at Mariella’s tonight, still a virgin. While getting ready, he was brave with that fate, but now it seemed so wrong. Home once again before midnight, pizza, and the Times. Maybe he was crazy, or at least not normal. A normal kid would go to the loft party and endure the night, even if it meant losing her to the Haircut’s advance. Things like that turned kids into men, thought Charlie. You lose something young and shiny-legged to a junior analyst, or whatever the hell was printed on his card, and go home alone. Skip pizza. Just get into bed and sleep it all away. He pictured 10,000 bedrooms in the city where fully clothed kids dove face-first after a failed night, their hearts hardened but more muscular after losing their girlfriend in the Haircut den. He knew he should say, “Loft party? Why the hell not.”

But he said, “I think I’d rather go to Mariella’s than stand by while a Haircut touches your legs.”

She smiled one of her thin-lipped smiles that occluded her plump lower lip. Her parents’ smiles were similarly kindly but all-knowing, pedantic.

“Charlie, I probably won’t let anyone touch my legs.”

“I bought this Boodo Khan with you in mind.”

“I so need a new Walkman.”

“No. I mean, it’s for tomorrow morning. I pictured us walking in the park at dawn. I made a tape for you. You’ll listen to the Boodo Khan with my blazer draped over your shoulders. Imagine that scene: we’re in love, with an hour left before college.”

“In love?”

“If you say it, I’ll say it back.”

“That’s not how it works. Listen, I’ve never been in love, and I doubt I’m going to start tonight.”

“Maybe you will be in the morning? In fact, I know you will. If I’m wrong, you can keep my Walkman.”

“What? No.”

The bottle of Krug had been emptied for half an hour, and the Adam’s Rib bartender was topping them off from some other bottle.

“Sorry, Monica, I’m a little buzzed,” he said.

“Me too. Why don’t we just go to the loft party and see what happens?”

“In the old days, a young couple such as us would make love the night before college, then never be apart.”

“These are the new days, Charlie.”

Even worse than that, thought Charlie, these are the in-between days. Everyone knows the new days start on January 1, 1990, and the old days ended in 1969, when I was born.

“Hey,” he said, “let’s order two Yorkshire puddings.”

“I’d like to get out of here. The deer heads on the wall are giving me the creeps.”

“Then stare at all the old trophies. I bet someone comes to polish them once a week, after closing. I wonder who he is? Let’s talk about the mysterious trophy polisher and his amazing craft.”

“No one earned those trophies. At least, no one here did.”

“Angelina would like that. She calls earning things part of the Dignidad.”

“She’s always mean to me.”

“That’s her way.”

“Charlie, you can be so sweet, but you’re putting too much pressure on everything. I sort of feel like going home now.” She stood from the bar, wobbling a little in her mother’s heels.

“I can’t believe you’re going to leave.”

“I don’t want to spend one of my last nights before college bickering like an old crazy couple at the steakhouse.”

“Don’t you remember what you wrote in July? That you could see us together for a long time? You bought lingerie. I bought a Walkman.”

“It’s September, Charlie. Your future starts tomorrow.”

“I want the past. I want it with you.”

“What time are you leaving tomorrow?”

“Early.”

“Look, if you want to come over for a little bit—actually, maybe we should just call it a night, you know?”

So this was the end of their time together: five movie dates, six dinner dates, thirty-seven phone calls, and eight letter exchanges, the last four about sex. Sex tonight. She put on a layer of lip gloss, vaguely minty, and softly kissed him goodbye.

“So, are we broken up?” asked Charlie.

“No. I don’t know. I just need to go.”

“But not to the loft party, right?” Charlie asked after her, but she was gone.

Soon, she might be sharing her Krug champagne buzz, tingly lip gloss, and clean legs with another boy. Future is just another word for pain, he thought, and couldn’t get to Mariella’s quick enough, where he could claim two slices for himself and himself alone. At Mariella’s, everyone had their own slice, and their own New York Times. There was no sharing. It was the old way, and it worked.