Okay, I admit it. Even though I pretend I’m all good at keeping us together, I’m not a pro at it. I’m clearly not in control of everybody’s destiny, since Mickey had ended up in the hospital and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.
So I stood in the waiting room at Saint Vincent’s with Liza, who’d gotten bored at the party and had come to find us. She was on her knees, playing patty-cake with a five-year-old named Kevin whose mother had gotten out of bed and broken her ankle. I was on the phone to the Flood house, but of course nobody was answering. I tried Arno’s cell, but he wasn’t picking up either.
“I hope Kelli’s okay,” I said.
“What are you worried about?” Liza asked. “She’s a big girl.”
“You hate her?”
“That’d be like hating football season,” Liza said. “It’ll go away soon, so why bother? They’re keeping Mickey overnight?”
“Yeah. Let’s go.”
“Five minutes,” Liza said. “Kevin promised he’d calm down once we finish our game.”
So I had to wait while Liza finished with Kevin. And part of me wished she’d do the same for me, and another part remembered that Liza kind of had done that just last weekend.
We’d been at Patch’s and I’d been blown out and she’d just brought me up to one of the bedrooms on the fourth floor and basically put me to bed. And that was when I got to talking to Flan Flood. I’d been lying there, staring at the ceiling and wondering how everyone was going to handle the night without me, and sort of filling in the blanks of who was going to do what and who was thinking what, like I always do, when Flan peeked into the room. I pretended to be asleep, so she came in and stared down at me.
“You want me to take off your shoes?” Flan had asked.
“No.”
“Well, I don’t think my parents would want them on their bed.”
“These are pretty good shoes,” I said. I propped myself up on one elbow and looked at Flan. “I got them at Barneys. They’re Jasper Fords, from London.”
“Are you gay?” Flan asked.
“No. I’m just really into shoes. My friends are cool with it.”
“Because they’re gay.” Flan sat down in a big white chair on what seemed to be her mother’s side of the bed and she laughed.
“No they’re not,” I said. “Liza’s friend Jane is. But I’m not, and neither is your brother or Mickey or David or Arno.”
“The Insiders.”
“Yeah, in fifth grade that’s what I thought we were.” I couldn’t help sounding kind of nostalgic.
We ended up talking about how her clique wasn’t a whole lot different from my clique. And then we heard people headed for the roof and I got nervous that they’d come in, but they didn’t. So I tickled her for a while and then got out of there. But not before we kissed. Just once.
Back in the hospital, Liza finished her game. David had gone home a while ago. We’d called Mickey’s parents, but they were out in Montauk at the farm where Mickey’s dad made all his really big art. Nobody could remember the number out there, and I’d gone ahead and signed Mickey’s bill onto my credit card, so we didn’t have to worry about insurance or any of that complicated stuff.
Liza and I walked out into the night. It was nearly four and the air was cool, now that the rain had ended. The only cars on the streets were cabs and weaving sedans full of club goers headed down Seventh Avenue to the Holland Tunnel and back to New Jersey. I had to go east to my mom’s place on Fifth and Eleventh Street, and Liza had to walk west, to her mom and dad’s town house on Cornelia Street.
“I wonder how Kelli dealt with the party,” I said.
“When we left, she was with Arno.”
“I can imagine how that’s going.”
“Jonathan,” Liza said. She was staring straight forward, into the street. We were a normal distance apart, but I could feel how she wouldn’t have minded being closer to me. So I did get closer, but I didn’t put my arms around her. We hadn’t fooled around in six months or something. And when we did fool around it had just felt too appropriate, like that was something everybody expected us to do. I knew I wasn’t excited enough to keep doing it. But I’d never said that. We’d just stopped fooling around, but we never stopped hanging out.
“What?” I asked. Maybe it’s a double negative, when you know someone wants to say something, but you’re too preoccupied with something else to deal with it. So you kind of … don’t let them.
“Nothing,” she said. “I hope you find your cousin.”
I didn’t like the sound of that, but it was too late to do anything, so I hugged Liza good-bye, told her I’d be in touch about tomorrow night, changed directions, and walked back to the Flood house to get Kelli.