I went home at four, after Mickey and I got ourselves fed, and I called around and arranged for all of us to meet for dinner at Man Ray at 8:30. There would be about eight of us: me, Mickey, David, Arno, Liza, Amanda, probably my cousin Kelli, and maybe Patch, though I hadn’t spoken to him in days. I wondered what he was up to. This was getting to be the longest amount of time I’d gone without talking to him, and I definitely missed him. He had a calming effect on us all.
After I’d made the dinner plans I got to feeling hyper. I was supposed to read some play by Eurypides but it was Saturday afternoon—not exactly homework time. So I called Flan, since I figured she’d be home from her riding lessons.
I live right by the Floods, in a big old apartment building on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Eleventh Street, with about a dozen rooms that lead around and into each other like some kind of weird labyrinth, so when I’m feeling strange I just creep around with my eyes closed and try to figure out which room or corridor I’m in. And then I felt like that might be a game Flan would like. We could whistle and be blindfolded and bump into each other. And then I remembered I hadn’t really had a chance to talk to her the night before.
“Let’s go get ice cream,” she said when I got her on the phone.
I was into that, because I love ice cream. So I slipped out of my Westons and into some very casual blue and white Prada boat shoes, and I wandered over to Otto, this new Mario Batali restaurant on Eighth Street, where they make ice cream by hand using old-fashioned butter churns. There she was, waiting in a booth by the window. And she was cute.
“Can we not sit by the window?” I asked.
“Are you afraid to be seen with me?” Flan teased. And then she stood up and reached across the booth and kissed me on the cheek. Which felt really good, and really, really wrong.
“Yes,” I said.
“Shut up.”
She kissed me again, and I could just see her looking at herself in the mirror, and it was like she’d rehearsed this moment at home this morning and that made my heart break a little more for her.
“How’s your house?” I asked.
“You want to come back there with me and clean it up?”
“Uh-uh,” I said. I got away from her and went to get our ice cream. I even knew her favorite flavor—cherry vanilla with chocolate chip cookies broken over the top. While I was paying I got a call from Liza.
“We all set for tonight?” I asked.
“Yeah, I got it. Man Ray, after nine. But I’m not sure how many of your boys can make it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I hear that some people have other plans,” Liza said.
“Who?” I asked. But she clicked off without answering, which is exactly the sort of thing she always does. I went back to our booth, juggling cell phone, ice cream, and change. Flan jumped up and took a cone from me.
“Jonathan,” she said, once we’d gotten settled. “Where is this going?”
“What?”
“You and me. Where are we headed? You’re so bashful, but if we’re going to go out, I need to tell people. For one thing, I’ll need to find Patch and ask him if it’s okay.”
“Are you kidding?”
“I’m sure he won’t mind, but I just want to tell him. Have you seen him?”
“No, and no. Look, Flan, this is like—I’m taking you out as like an interlude before I go out with my friends and stay out and party and do I don’t even know what else yet—probably all night long. This is like my super-hallowed and innocent time before that happens, you know. I mean, I like you but you’re young.”
“No!” Flan said. “It’s way more than that.”
“No,” I said. “It can’t be.”
She stared at me and her eyes got all full.
“Don’t cry,” I said.
“Why shouldn’t I?” Her inflection was so right and charming. There was a lot of stuff I wanted to do right then that would’ve been more honest than what I did, which was to feel nervous and say nothing. She licked her cone a couple more times and then very carefully set it on a napkin on the table. Then she started breathing very quickly like she couldn’t hold back real tears. Finally, she got up and ran out.
“Flan, wait!” I called. I whipped around and tried to follow her and immediately dripped ice cream all down my APC multistripe button-down. I ran out after her, but she was long gone—headed downtown, toward her house.
“Flan,” I said. “Flan Flood. What am I going to do without you?” I couldn’t believe I’d just said that. But there it was, and I had. I licked what was left of my raspberry peanut swirl and felt very sorry for myself, and all alone, and kind of pissed at myself for being completely unable to say how I really felt. And then I went home to change.