My phone rang and I took the call.
“I hope you’re looking for my brother,” Flan said.
“We are. Where’ve you been?”
“That doesn’t matter. But if he’s not home by 10:00 A.M., we’re all going to be in a lot of trouble.”
“We’ll find him. Why haven’t I seen you?”
“Just get my brother,” Flan said. And clicked off. I arched an eyebrow, but said nothing. I didn’t want to hear more from anybody about how I should deal with Flan.
We spilled out onto the street in front of a steel door down at the bottom of the Bowery, at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge. The sidewalks smelled of fish and beer and people from outside the city who were finishing big dinners and slowly walking back to their cars. We looked up, beyond the restaurants, to the lofts that dotted the upper floors of the dark buildings.
“I can feel him,” I said.
“He is near,” Mickey said. He pulled out a rope and started to swing it up to a fire escape, but Arno grabbed him.
“This is somebody’s house—we need to go through the door,” Arno said.
Of course we didn’t have the exact address, so we had to wait and watch and see if we could follow anyone in. Sure enough, a couple of those teenage models who are freakishly thin and good-looking but have absolutely nothing to say wandered down the street and rang a buzzer on a door about ten feet from where we stood.
“You guys going to Graca’s?” one of them asked. She had on thick black eyeliner and she was wearing a blouse with a tadpole silk-screened on it.
“Yeah,” Mickey said quickly. We rode up with them in a rickety old elevator, the six of us holding a collective breath.
“What if he’s not here?” I whispered. Mickey, David, and Arno shook their heads, like don’t even think that.
“He’ll be there,” the other model said, even though there was no way she could know who we were talking about. “Everybody goes to Graca’s.”
We got out at the top floor and wandered into a loft that was eerily quiet. At one end, far down from where we were, under a skylight that bathed everyone in dark blue, there was a dinner party going on. Music played—some Eurotrash pop that I didn’t recognize—and slowly we made our way toward the group. Behind us, I could hear more people coming up the stairs.
“Wow,” David said.
“It’s cool,” I whispered. “They’re in that transition moment, between when a party is all about dinner and then it turns into a blowout, you know?”
“Dude, could you please not overanalyze,” Mickey said.
The table was long and wide, with at least twenty people sitting at it. At the far end, a woman was seated next to an empty chair. The models were saying hello to the woman, who had to be around twenty-one. Graca, they called her. She was Spanish or Brazilian or something, and totally stunning, with long black hair and big black eyes set wide apart. The four of us stopped and stood there, because we didn’t know a person in the place.
“This is awkward,” I said.
“It really is,” David said.
Then a door opened even farther back in the loft, and we saw Patch come out. He came over and kissed Graca, and he was weirdly beaming as he took his seat. He hadn’t seen us.
“Is there more Rioja?” he asked. Graca smiled and rumpled Patch’s hair. The music switched to the soundtrack from Y Tu Mama Tambien.
Then Patch looked up. We’d just been staring at him. It was hard to deal with the idea that he was missing when he was sitting in the middle of some dinner party.
“Hey …,” he said, and wandered over to us. “It’s you guys.” He was wearing the same khakis he had on when we’d last seen him, and a black T-shirt that didn’t fit him right and clearly belonged to a girl. No shoes. His hair was rumpled. He came up and hugged me.
“Where the hell have you been?” I asked.
“What?” Patch asked. “Oh, I’ve been here.” He smiled at the four of us and we surrounded him in a circle. “It was like, last week sometime, I forget when, I was skateboarding in Union Square and I fell, and this girl picked me up and it was Graca.” He glanced over his shoulder, and she waved. “And she took me home, and we’ve been here ever since. She makes leather pants for rock stars. Isn’t that cool?”
“We’ve been worried about you.”
“Really?” Patch said. “That’s cool.”
I looked around and just shook my head. A mirror propped by the door had claimed Arno’s attention, and Mickey, who’d found Patch’s skateboard, started to ride around the empty front of the loft. David was hanging back, probably uncomfortable among all the beautiful Brazilians.
“So you’re good,” I said.
“Uh, better than that, dude. But you’re right, I should check in with my sisters, at least.”
“They’ve been covering for you with your parents,” I said.
“Yeah, they’re good that way.”
And again, I just shook my head. No wonder some insanely hot Brazilian leather pants designer had taken Patch home. I mean, he was the most laid-back, good-looking kid in New York.
Patch and I went over to the table and he introduced me around. He handed me a glass of Rioja.
“You’ll love this,” he said.
I took a sip, and it was good.
“But you need to go home soon,” I said. “At least check in for brunch tomorrow.”
“I guess you’re right,” Patch said. A serious expression passed over his face, but then it disappeared.
“How’s Flan?”
“Good,” I said, and left it at that. I wondered where she was, and why she wouldn’t tell me. Some people started to dance. Graca drifted up from the table and began to dance in a circle with a few other women. She smiled over at us.
“Isn’t she amazing?” Patch said. “We kept meaning to do stuff. Like she should work and I should go to school, and call people, and all that, but we kept forgetting.”
Patch threw his arm around me, and we stood there, drinking wine and just sort of digging on the scene. I felt totally calm and then I realized that I hadn’t felt that way in a while, not since my cousin Kelli had come to town.
Then there was a noise at the door, someone knocking really loud and not realizing that the door was unlatched, so it suddenly flew open and banged against the wall with an ugly crunching sound. Randall Oddy came in with Kelli and five guys, who were all smiling and totally focused on Kelli. She scoped the scene and saw that she knew only me and my people, so she smiled wide, like we hadn’t been fighting for days and now she was happy to run into me.
“Jonathan!” Kelli yelled as she came running over to us.
“That’s my cousin,” I said to Patch.
“She’s … loud,” Patch said. I smiled. Patch wasn’t into loudness.
“Hey, who’s this?” Kelli asked. As usual, a couple of guys were trailing her. She grinned at Patch and her grin said, should I be sampling you?
“Oh no you don’t,” I said. “You already messed up two of my friends. I don’t even want you talking to this one.”
“Hey,” Kelli said. “I’m harmless.”
“No you’re not.”
“I’m Patch,” Patch said. And he shook hands with Kelli. He smiled at her. And Kelli smiled back.
“And I’m Graca,” Graca said. Her voice was like hot butter and she rolled her rs. She’d stopped dancing and walked over to us. Arno and David and Mickey had all made their way to us, too, and now we all stood there, staring at her. She was so beautiful. Patch kissed her.
“Do you all want some wine?” Graca asked.
“Yes,” we said. I emptied my glass and she went toward where the kitchen must have been.
“I’m in love,” Patch said. We all nodded at him. We could see why.
“Excuse me,” Kelli said. “I think someone’s calling my name.” But nobody paid attention to her, and so she walked away.
“You need to remember to go home,” Mickey said to Patch.
“Not till tomorrow morning.”
“But definitely then,” Arno said. “We’ll get you there. It’s good to see you, man, we really missed you.”
“But I thought you forgot about me.”
“Well, yeah,” I said. “We did for a while. But I’m still really happy to see you now.”
“Okay,” Patch said. He smiled the easy smile that had been keeping him out of trouble since he’d been born.