Amanda Harrison Deutschmann and Arno Wildenburger were out in Patch’s backyard. A very light rain, like a mist, was falling.
“What’re you looking at?” Amanda asked. She was a short girl with very straight blond hair, gray-green eyes, and a killer body that she’d gotten from a lot of sailing and tennis.
“You, because you’re hot,” Arno said.
“Oh yeah?” Amanda said.
“Your eyes are like soft gray clouds on a Saturday afternoon.”
“Oh yeah?”
She put her arms around Arno’s neck and opened her eyes wider, at him. Arno took a pull from his beer and swayed Amanda back and forth.
Arno had come from a small dinner party his parents had thrown for Randall Oddy, a British painter who was having his opening the following night. He’d done several shots of Jaeger with Randall in the kitchen. Randall was only twenty-three, after all, and he’d made Arno swear to hang with him the next night at his opening. And then Arno sailed right out of that party and landed here, with David’s girlfriend, where he really was not supposed to be.
“Well,” Amanda said.
“Well what?” Arno asked. He sort of half-glared at Amanda. She licked her lips, so he glared some more.
“I want to talk to you,” Amanda said.
“About what?”
“About …” Amanda paused. “I’m upset about Meg.”
“Who?”
“You know, my friend from Brearley who passed out in a bathtub at the American Hotel at Sag Harbor last weekend. Her mom had to come all the way out from the city to get her and even now nobody knows how Meg got there. Meg can’t remember a thing and we’ve had to have all these meetings where we try to recreate her night.”
“Oh yeah, Meg.” Arno slipped his arm around Amanda and she gave in to him. With his other hand he sipped from his bottle of Grolsch. He wasn’t drunk. Physically, getting rocked took some work—he was almost as big as David, though he wasn’t any good at basketball, and hadn’t been since they’d been cocaptains of the middle school team at Grace Church.
He took Amanda’s hand in his for a second, and she moved it to his mouth. Did she want him to bite it? He did, and she moaned.
“When we were in sixth grade,” Arno said, “Mickey got kicked off the basketball team for biting the hand of some kid on the Saint Ann’s team, so David had to be the captain even though Coach Bank said he didn’t have leadership qualities. We ended up with a losing season.”
“Did you have to mention him?” Amanda asked. She’d slipped her hand underneath Arno’s shirt and he was trying to keep his goose bumps under control.
“It feels like you lost something inside my shirt and you’re desperate to find it.”
“Don’t make fun of me,” Amanda said. “What we’re doing is a big deal.”
“Sorry,” Arno said.
“I just want to talk to you about what’s going on with me,” Amanda said.
“Okayyy,” Arno said. “What is going on?”
“Right now, you are.”
“You’re beautiful,” Arno said. “You know that? You’re built like an eighties Playboy playmate—just like the ones my father has his bathroom wallpapered with. When I was a kid I looked at those all the time.”
“You looked at those and then what did you do?” Amanda whispered in his ear.
“Exactly,” Arno said.
Arno touched Amanda’s round shoulder. He looked around and saw that if someone happened to glance through the windows in the parlor, or in the kitchen, or even on the third floor, they could see what was going on in the garden really easily.
“You know what?” Arno said. “I need to go to the bathroom. I need to go use a bathroom upstairs and you need to come with me.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Okay, forget it,” Arno said.
“No … well, I’ll follow you up there.”
Upstairs and tucked safely away in the bathroom, Arno and Amanda got to fooling around pretty seriously. And it was as if she’d been hungry to do something really wrong with him for a while already. They leaned against the white subway tile wall and they both eased their shirts up, like exotic snakes, and then they pulled off their pants, like strippers.
They were trying to be really quiet. Because even though the party was loud, they were on the top floor, and they were in the bathroom that had doors leading to both Flan’s and Patch’s bedrooms.
During a lull, they heard a soft voice.
“That’s a cute story,” the voice said. It wasn’t Flan’s. Arno raised an eyebrow at Amanda, who’d been chewing on his neck. He pried her off, and she listened, too.
“And then tomorrow I’ll probably watch movies with my friends after we go riding,” a different voice said. That was Flan.
“That sounds nice,” said the other voice, which clearly belonged to a guy. “If I didn’t have to hang out with my cousin I could probably go up to the park and see you ride.”
Then the voice stopped.
“Jonathan,” Amanda whispered to Arno.
“Nah,” Arno said. They both put their ears up to the closed door.
“Don’t you go out with Liza Komansky?” Flan asked.
“No way—people said we were going out last year, but that was just because we spent a lot of our time together.”
“And fooled around constantly and didn’t go out with anybody else,” Amanda whispered. “And now look, Jonathan’s going after little Flan Flood.” Arno kissed her neck. She punched him in the chest. Then there was quiet from Flan’s room.
“It sounds like they’re fooling around, or maybe just cuddling,” Arno said.
“No way,” Amanda said.
Amanda and Arno started giggling then, and covering each other’s mouths. Most of their clothes were off and they were awkwardly leaning against the wall.
So they had to twist around and help each other stand when Jonathan opened the door to the bathroom to see what was going on. And they clearly couldn’t figure out what to say when Jonathan leaned in the doorway and stared at them, visibly shocked that Arno was in there with Amanda Harrison Deutschmann, their best friend David’s girlfriend.
“Shit,” Arno whispered. “I really wish you hadn’t been the one to see this.”
“Because I’m your conscience?” Jonathan hissed.
“That’s way too nice a way of putting it,” Arno whispered back.
“Jonathan?” Flan called out.
Jonathan pointed to Arno and Amanda and put his finger over his mouth to say shhh. Then he pointed to the bedroom behind him, and to himself, and did the whole quiet gesture all over again.
“Nobody can say anything about anybody else,” Jonathan whispered. “Get it?”
“Shhh,” Arno said, and fixed his eyes on the floor.
“Little Flan Flood,” Amanda said, and shook her head. “Jonathan, you are crazy.”
“She’s just a friend,” Jonathan said. “I’m not doing anything with her that could be construed as crazy.” But he smiled when he said it, and he went a little red.
“Bullshit,” Amanda said.
“We didn’t fool around,” Jonathan said, glaring at Amanda. “And even if we did, which we didn’t, I wouldn’t be cheating on somebody who happens to completely love me.” The lights in the bathroom were on a dimmer, and Jonathan touched the switch and made everything a little brighter.
They were all glaring at each other.
“Why don’t we all leave each other alone,” Amanda said, “and go back to what we were doing?”
“No,” Arno said. “I think Jonathan’s right.” He’d found his jeans and he sat down on the lip of the tub to put them on.
“Oh, great,” Amanda said, stooping over to gather her clothes. “I hate it when you guys stick together. Jonathan, would you get out of here? Can you not see that I’m practically naked?”