Toward four in the morning, Graca ran out of wine and I was having trouble keeping everything in focus. Patch hadn’t disappeared again, which was a good thing. He was dancing with Graca. And Kelli was dancing with Randall Oddy and Arno was sort of between the two couples, dancing with the model with the tadpole on her shirt.
David came over to where I was sitting at the dinner table. I’d been picking at a plate of olives, and penciling a drawing of Flan on a napkin.
“I’m tired,” David said. “I called my mom and said I was staying at your house. I hope that’s not a problem.”
“Nope, so long as she knows that tonight my house is a suite at the Tribeca Grand.”
“She doesn’t know that,” David said. “Did your mom sell your apartment?”
“I’m kidding,” I said. “But there is a room in my mom’s name at the Grand. It’s probably a suite. We can all crash there.”
“I guess that’s cool,” David agreed.
I saw Ezra the driver dance by.
He said, “Hey, you know Kelli? She’s cool.”
And I just shook my head and pretended not to hear him. Arno’s model was clearly sick for him, and I mean sick. She hung on him like they were lost at sea and he was a life preserver. But he was still looking around for Kelli.
“Jonathan?”
I turned around and it was Fernanda, from Barneys. That girl, she glowed.
I said, “Let’s dance.”
She was carrying a highball glass that she must have brought from another party and she was trailed by five or six people who were so well dressed they simply had to be her friends from work.
“You know Graca?” she asked.
“I know Patch,” I said. She smiled, as if that made everything okay, and we began a slow dance.
“Hi, Fernanda,” someone said. Kelli.
“Dammit, Kelli!” I yelled. “Your knowing everybody ruins everything for everyone else!”
“Whoa,” Fernanda said. She took a step back.
“Why are you so threatened by it?” Kelli asked.
“Because nobody learns New York in a week,” I said. Well, maybe I spluttered. David, who’d been furiously making out with Amanda, who’d showed up with Liza and Jane, looked up.
“It’s destiny,” Kelli said simply.
“Bullshit,” I said. “You turned all my friends against each other and made me lose sight of Patch!”
I immediately whipped around. Patch was nowhere in sight.
“You did it again!” I yelled.
“You’re ridiculous,” Kelli said. She turned to Fernanda. “How’s Barnard?” she asked.
And Fernanda frowned at me.
“Good. Do you have any additional questions, or did you feel like the tour I gave you was pretty comprehensive?”
“Oh,” I said. I’d been pretty loud. People were looking. Where was Patch?
Fernanda smiled gently. She said, “You two do something together?”
“We’re cousins,” I said.
“Kissing cousins?”
I took Fernanda’s hand and drew her toward me. She smelled faintly of Barneys. Or maybe what I loved about Barneys was the smell of her? Who cared? She was near me. I kissed her. Unfortunately, it lasted only about a second, till I felt voices calling my name.
“Did you lose Patch?” Mickey yelled. He was on the other side of the room, arguing with a bunch of Randall Oddy’s friends. He could be pretty smart when he wanted to be.
“Did you?” Arno yelled. He was dancing with that model he’d picked up, Elizabetta.
“It’s cool,” David said. “He went home to show Flan he’s okay. I saw him get in a cab.”
“You sure?” I asked.
“Call Flan.”
“No, not right now.”
Fernanda was starting to walk away from me, and I caught up with her.
“You’re not seeing me at my best,” I said.
“I hope not,” she said.
“It’s been a stressful week,” I said. “I had one of my best friends disappear, and my other friends all had some difficulties and it was really, really hard to keep track of everything. But if I could just see you some other time …”
“What?”
“You’re amazing,” I said.
“You know where to find me.”
“In shoes,” I said. And yeah, I sounded dreamy. She slipped away, and I let her go.
Then the weird thing happened when you’re at the party for longer than you’re supposed to be, and everything dissolves and it’s just a room full of people you don’t know very well, who all look kind of sweaty, and you need to run around and gather up your friends as quickly as possible, otherwise you’ll end up in a cab alone. And nobody wants that. So I started whispering around about the suite at the Tribeca Grand.
Kelli heard me and said, “That’s my suite.” I couldn’t totally disagree with her, since if she wanted to stay there, that was cool with me. I wanted her close right up to the moment when she walked onto the tarmac and onto United flight number Make-Things-Normal-Again.
Because the hotel was so close, the four of us and Kelli walked over and checked in. David fell asleep on a big white sharkskin chair. Kelli shared the sofa with Arno, and I listened to them talking about how strongly he felt and she sounded like she was being kind of patient with him about it. I took the big bed with Mickey, who was passed out before he had his shoes off. Outside, I could see the sun start to rise. I closed my eyes. But Mickey smelled so strongly of alcohol that I had to stuff tissues up my nose.
“Hey, Jonathan.”
“What?” I asked. It was Kelli. She gotten up from the other room and now she was standing over me.
“I know I was a little more than you’d bargained for but I guess … I want to thank you.”
“What for, idiot?” I said. But I sort of smiled up at her. Mickey smelled so bad. I wondered when he ever changed his jumpsuit.
“Thanks for letting me come out with you.”
“Well,” I said.
Kelli sat down at the edge of the bed. Her hair was sticking up in places and her new Helmut Lang pants were stiff, too. But her arms were kind of thin and innocent. She was like that—about the most innocent thing about her were her forearms.
“Sorry if I screwed up your life and made you lose track of your friend.”
“I guess it’s not really your fault,” I said. “Except for the part where you nearly totally destroyed all my friends’ relationships.”
“Kelli?” Arno said.
Kelli smiled at me. “He said he’d cry unless I held him tight.”
“You’re the first girl who ever said no to him.”
“Shut up,” Arno said.
“I say no to everybody,” Kelli said.
“Except me,” David said, and smiled in his sleep.
Kelli stood up then, and through the curtains, the city had begun to glow behind her. Then, just as I was falling off for a much-needed few hours of sleep, I heard Kelli go back over and lie down next to Arno.
“You’re a pain in the ass,” Arno said.
“You’re worse, rich boy,” Kelli said.
And then they went on and began arguing in that way that inevitably means you’re going to fool around, and pretty seriously, too, if nobody stops you, which I certainly wasn’t going to, because I was asleep by then, and the bed was comfortable. And if two people who were sort of made for each other but didn’t really like each other at all were going to get into something serious, who was I to stop them?