Arno had been looking around for Kelli for the last ten minutes. She’d totally disappeared. Deep down, he was able to deduce that, based on his own similar disappearances at parties, she was fooling around with somebody. Though it was warm inside, his teeth chattered. He’d left his jacket somewhere and now he stood there in his suit pants, his white shirt hanging out, holding a bottle of Grolsch and shivering.
“Could I speak to you?” Liza asked.
They stood in the back parlor on the main floor, overlooking the lighted garden.
“Um, sure,” Arno said. He didn’t look at her.
“You’re really hot on that Kelli girl, huh?”
“I guess so,” Arno said. “Yeah. I am.” He glanced at her quickly to see if maybe—even though they’d practically crawled under the booth and had sex at the Corner Bistro less than three hours ago—she felt some sympathy for how intensely he was crushing on another girl.
“Not what I wanted to hear,” Liza said.
Then she poked Arno hard in the ribs.
“Ow,” Arno said. “Look, Liza, I’m sorry about what we … did. But I didn’t mean to—”
“You called me!”
“Yeah, but—”
“And I fell for it. Do you know how that makes me feel?”
“I’m sorry,” Arno said. “I really am.”
Then Arno saw Jonathan and Mickey standing in the massive open doors to the living room. Behind them the room was pretty empty and quiet except for the sound system, which was pumping.
“You’re a jerk, Arno Wildenburger!” Liza screamed. And then she kicked Arno right in what he and his friends liked to call “the gentles.”
She was wearing the black boots she always wore. Arno yelped, grabbed his suit pants, and crumpled to the floor like a half-empty sack of pinto beans.
“Oof,” Arno said.
“Liza—” Jonathan began to say.
“You shut up,” Liza yelled. But then she turned around and she was hanging around Jonathan’s neck and crying.
Arno heard Jonathan whisper “five minutes” to Mickey, who was carefully helping him off the floor. “Then we go find Patch.”
“Yeah, let’s find Patch,” Arno croaked.