“Oh my God,” I said. “Look at the TV.” I stood up fast and part of my drink spilled down my pant leg.
On TV, a Flyer had been checked hard and the Rangers had basically blown the game. We’d watched this passively. I couldn’t care less about hockey and Mickey seemed to have left the planet. But then there was a full screen shot of one very unhappy fan, who had gone from a shocked look of anger to a bout of tears. The camera lingered for a solid one, two, three seconds. The boy was bawling.
“That’s David,” Mickey said. He looked as if he were trying to slap away the cotton balls that were swirling in the air around him.
“Yeah, that’s David, and he’s crying. On TV,” I said.
“I guess he’s not coming to meet us,” Mickey said.
“I wonder what the hell happened.”
“He must’ve forgot.”
“No, idiot—to make him cry like that, on TV.” But of course I knew. And I snarled inwardly at Arno and wondered how I was going to fix what he’d done. And Patch? Where was he? But there wasn’t time to worry about him then, not with David crying on ESPN.
I sat there next to my doped-out friend, my arms folded over my chest, and I puffed out my cheeks and blew hot air. I glanced at Mickey. He was making a kiss-me face and the bartender, incredibly, was responding with a kiss-me face of her own. Or she was making fun of him. It was difficult to tell. Mickey unzipped his jumpsuit and he had nothing on underneath. Some girls who’d just come in with dates stared and Mickey stood up and tried to dance for them, but he was too messed up, so he sat back down, more on me than on the bench. I pushed him off.
Sometimes I forgot just how much girls could get into Mickey. They liked him because he was shocking and exciting. Because he was crazy. I wondered why girls might like me. Because I know the difference between cordovan leather and calfskin? Probably not.
“This night is thrashed,” I said. Mickey’s head was doing a first-rate imitation of a bobblehead doll.
“You should go home,” I said.
“Why?”
“Look at you, you need rest. Otherwise you’re going to miss school all week. Where’s your Vespa?”
“I don’t know … at Patch’s?” Mickey smiled at me.
“I’ll call you a cab.”
“No,” he said. “I can walk. I had no idea David was so into the Rangers.”
“Yeah, me neither.”
I glanced around and saw Liza come in the door, alone. She was in her usual all-black outfit, and her hair was pulled back. The older guys in the bar gawked at her. When Mickey saw her, he rose unsteadily to his feet and used the hug he gave her to keep himself up. She grabbed his face in her hands and looked in his eyes.
“Look, it’s your girlfriend,” Mickey said.
“No she’s not,” I said, too fast. Just because Liza and I hadn’t gone out with anyone else last year, and had made out sometimes and talked on the phone most nights, people assumed we were going out.
“Go home,” Liza said. “Please.”
Liza took Mickey out to put him in a cab, and I used the time to call Flan Flood.
“Jonathan?” Flan asked.
“Are you doing anything?” I asked.
“Watching My So-Called Life DVDs with Laura and Rebecca. We know all the lines by heart. But we actually flipped by the Rangers game for a second and saw your friend David bawling like a little baby.”
“Listen, I’m sorry about today.”
“Oh, that’s okay. Whatever.” And I could hear her quickened breathing, and I knew she was just saying that because she had two friends over.
“Do you want to come and meet me?” I asked. But I saw the door open, and Liza was headed my way. And what was I asking Flan to meet me for anyway?
“I don’t know if I can,” she said, in her mature voice.
“You’re right. You shouldn’t. That was crazy of me. Look, I’m being really crazy. I’m sorry. You should ignore me.”
“Call me tomorrow,” she whispered, and ended the call. I looked up at Liza, who was standing over me.
“Where’s the rest of your crowd?” she asked.
“Not coming. You want to have a drink? Who’re you with?”
“I’m alone,” she said. We went over to the bar. A deejay had set up in the corner and he’d begun to spin a remix of the Humpty song. We crammed ourselves into a tiny space at the bar and Liza ordered cosmopolitans for both of us. I tried to find something to say to Liza that didn’t include the fact that I was becoming obsessed with a kid who watched old TV shows with her friends on Saturday night.
“My group is falling apart,” I said.
“Where’s Kelli?”
“I don’t know. She was going to meet us here. I gave her a map and everything. Either she’s lost or she got a better offer.”
“And Arno blew you off, too.”
“Yeah, those two are probably together somewhere, licking ice cream and chocolate sauce off each other.” I tried a laugh, which came out sounding like I was choking on a chicken bone.
“Or they’re just having sex.”
“I was kidding,” I said.
“Sometimes you’re a little too blasé to deal with.”
“That’s only ’cause you’re so naïve.”
“Thanks a lot!” I said, and maybe I said it a little loudly because a table full of people looked over. But they were all old, past thirty, so who cared? I knew that Liza had much, much better things to do on a Saturday night than chase after me and my guys, and that led me to knowing that she expected something from me that I didn’t want to give. But I couldn’t change how I felt. I didn’t want to be with her in the way I was last year, if it wasn’t going to be genuine.
“This is one of those nights that’s so awful that it makes me wonder why I live at all, you know?” I said. “Let’s just go.”
“Fine,” Liza said. She’d barely touched her drink.
We began the slow walk home. Both our phones rang, but we ignored them. Saturday night was just heating up and the streets were busy. We passed Inca-Eight, a new club that had taken over the space where Suite Sixteen used to be, and even though the bouncers smiled at me and Liza, neither of us suggested that we should check it out.
“I should get over you,” Liza said.
“Um,” I said.
“I know I sound matter of fact about it,” she said. “We were never wild enough together. And that was part of the problem, right?”
“I guess.” I was never sure, though, what the problem was exactly. Everyone else thought we made sense together.
We got to her street and she kissed me goodnight on the cheek and we stared at each other. Then she shook her head quickly and ran up her steps. And all I could yell after her was, “Let’s talk later!” Which was pretty funny when you thought about it, because we’d already said everything we’d been needing to say.