Better Nate Than Ever (17 page)

“Wow, that sounds so small and far away. And
scary.” Luckily, I’m passing a Restoration Hardware, and Mom says rich families on the other side of Jankburg buy couches from there, so I’m probably safe for a few blocks, at least.

“I’m sending you down Fourth because you’re going to pass the Public Theater, and that’s where
A Chorus Line
played.”

“Your step-uncle’s all-time favorite show!”

“And that’s saying something, because he’s gayer than a Christmas flag in August.” Her voice is bouncing on itself, and I’m sure she’s filling a glass of water in the bathroom for her poor sick mom.

“And then I just stay there? Or I walk by
A Chorus Line
or what?”

“You
know
it’s not still playing, Nate,” she says, slowly, for the first time losing her patience. I know what this sounds like because it’s the
starting
tone that every teacher takes with me, and it only goes downhill from there. “Fourth Avenue’ll veer right. Just get to a place called Lafayette. Say it back to me, Nate.”

“Laf—Laff . . . aye . . .”

“Are you writing any of this down?”

“No,” I say, “you know how I feel about pencils.”

“Oy. Okay. Lafayette Street, or Avenue, I can’t tell on this map. Say it again, Nate.”

“Lafayette.”

“And stay on it, and just walk and walk past
something called Houston Street, just like Houston, Texas.” She says this like I’ve
been
to Texas; she says this like my Poconos escape with Jesus Christ isn’t the most exotic trip I’ve ever taken. “And you’re going to see it, Aw Shucks. Aw Shucks at two-seventy-seven Lafayette.”

“Two-seventy Lafayette.”

“Two-seventy-
seven
,” she says, sighing. “Here, Mommy. Here’s your water.”

I hear Mrs. Jones say, “Thank you, dear,” in a voice so fragile and small, it sounds the way a little bird looks, and I say to Libby, “Can I say hi for just a second?”

And a moment later, Mrs. Jones whispers, “Hello, is this Nate the Great?”

And this small act of humanity in the middle of my big act of craziness: It just gets me. I’m reaching Union Square, a promenade of Halloween vendors and restaurants and a Barnes & Noble the size of a brick cruise ship, all for the gawking. And all of this, all of this adventure and novelty, it would be nothing without somebody to share it with.

You just can’t have a scene without a co-star.

“I just want you to know, Mrs. Jones,” I say, talking fast in a race to get the words out before my tears come, “that you have the best daughter in the world, and have done one heck of a job”—and then I do cry,
because I know this is going to be Mrs. Jones’s legacy. That Libby is what she’ll have given this world, leaving behind a divorce and a little house in Jankburg, PA. “That Libby is like my sister.”

And my Nokia powers off, just like that. And I’m alone again, staring into this Union Square.

I have a Reese’s Piece. The almost-last one.

And I hum the evacuation scene from
Miss Saigon
but then switch gears, turning to the tenor part of that great
Ragtime
number, nobody here even noticing, filling this great square with a boy’s lonely voice. It boomerangs back, just slightly, off the blinking lights and stone buildings around me, and I’m just about to feel sorry for myself.

I kiss the rabbit foot instead, and imagine Libby giving me notes on my pitch issues.

And she’s with me, again.

And I’m off, again.

“I
’m trying to get to Houston,” I say.

There’s a brief interlude where I walk through Union Square (which is like a big, outdoor mall, but colder) and into the Whole Foods to use the bathroom (I mean
really
use the bathroom—holy literal S-word, those chips added up), and then I use my remaining dollar and penny to buy a piece of individually wrapped “artisanal caramel,” and flip through a magazine on modern decor at the register.

Moving ahead.

So I’m on Fourth Street or Road or whatever, now, and looking for this Lafayette Road.

“I’m trying to get to Houston,” I say to the most helpful-looking person I see, basically the only person I can find who
isn’t
texting somebody.

“Houston, Texas?” she asks. “Because you’re very far away from the airports.”

“Houston the Avenue, please.”

“Houston the . . . ? Oh. Oh, gosh.” She squats down so that her face is right in line with my furry hood. “I know it’s weird, but in New York we actually pronounce it
How
-ston, not
Hue
-ston.”

“Well,” I say, “
How
do you do,
How
-ston?”

It’s as horrible a joke as it probably reads, really shameful. “
Hue
do you do?” would have been the pun. I always think of the right punch line thirty seconds to three days after the setup; Libby’s working on my reflexes.

The lady stands, and her joints crickle-crackle, like Mr. Garret Charles the choreographer’s, and this reminds me that I haven’t heard anything from
E.T.: The Musical
—also that my phone is dead—and that I’ve got to get to my aunt’s restaurant, lickety-splits.

God, I wish I could do the splits.

“Houston,” the lady says, pointing, “is just that way, about five or ten more minutes.” Everything is five minutes from the other thing here. It’s so cool. “So good luck.”

And yet! Another fifteen minutes: my legs getting weak, that dollar-caramel losing its kick, my bookbag growing heavy. I haven’t seen a cupcake place in miles and years, by the way,
that’s
how long this journey is.

But I’ve got to get to Aw Shucks.

From a reporter basis, it’s important to say that
there are a lot of characters down here. That every two blocks the people have gotten incrementally more colorful, hairstyles shifting from basic buzz cuts (Union Square) to Mohawks (Astor Place), now to various shades of pink and lime, practically making me hungry for a popsicle if I weren’t so cold.

A man ahead of me is riding an electric scooter (a grown-up is!), and I follow him, mesmerized, and stop just as he’s going into a loud, thumping building with shaded-out windows. Another man, twice the size of the scooter guy, guards the door. He’s in a T-shirt (a T-shirt in October!) and asking to see the scooter guy’s ID. And when the door opens, electric lights paint the walls a garish, thrilling pink. The color of people’s hair down here.

I stop on the sidewalk for a sec, my throat aching in the cold.

At first I think there’s some kind of emergency inside the thumping building. Everyone’s hands are in the air, and the music doesn’t sound like music at all, it sounds like a public service announcement played on fast-forward, with sirens and some kind of pumping bass drum underneath it. But a passing ceiling strobe washes over a young guy’s face. He’s, what, five years older than me? Ten? The guy is surrounded by other people his age, all pulsing against each other, and my initial instinct is to yell, “Somebody help!” In
my experience,
that
many people encircling another guy usually ends in a trip to the nurse’s office, or worse, to the hospital for stitches.

(This happened once—I was singing “Phantom of the Opera” in the school bathroom, after Libby rented the movie. I thought nobody else was in the stalls, but turns out somebody was taking a two and started audio-recording me on his phone, and he posted it online and I got razzed for months: the Faggot of the Opera. The kid elbowed my head on his way out of the stall. He didn’t wash his hands after, by the way; it is a fundamental fact that bullies don’t wash their hands. And my lip split so badly, the nurse sent me to the hospital. I begged to go to the dinky clinic in Jankburg, but they drove me downtown to UPMC. Somewhere in my school file it said my dad was on staff there, but I just didn’t want him to see me like this. Didn’t want him to see the proof that I couldn’t defend myself, not with repeated
Rocky
viewings, not even with a YMCA class on jujitsu, none of it. Four stitches that day, not even a big, impressive number. Not even thirteen stitches, enough that I could have mumbled to my dad: “You shoulda seen the
other
sixth grader.”)

But enough about the old me.

Here I am now, holding my bag, standing on the sidewalk just past Houston on Lafayette. The fogged-glass
door to the club gets stuck in the wind, and the security guard is deep into a conversation on his cell phone, and I gain this perfect portal into a world I’m not even allowed into, not for so many years. For forever.

A world where guys who look like me and probably liked the
Phantom
movie, too, can dance next to other guys who probably liked
Phantom
and not get threatened or assaulted.

And this one young guy I’m looking at, who’s modeling an underbite just like mine, and a little earring? He’s smiling such a goofy smile that I’m afraid he’s asking for it. That someone’s going to snap, and punch him. And just when I gasp, when I see a black guy with big puffy hair coming at him, the security guard hangs up and kicks the door closed.

And just before it clicks shut, and I run to it, unaware where I am for a moment, like I’m watching a movie? The two boys kiss.

And nobody punches them.

And the door slams and the building thumps. And thumps. And so does my heart, just one beat ahead of the song inside.

L
ike a mirage, just when I might sit on the curb and inspect my tired feet to make sure my toes haven’t fallen off, I see it: a swinging lit sign, an illustrated oyster in roller skates with a big stupid grin on his face.

Aw Shucks, indeedly-do.

You’d think I’d burst through the door, hunting for an outlet to plug in my Nokia, begging for a glass of water, falling into Aunt Heidi’s arms as her long-lost (recently-lost-again) nephew. But I just stand here, staring through the storefront glass at a long stretch of marble counter. And I don’t know what I’m going to say when I get inside.

“Nate?”

Luckily, fate steps in.

“Oh!”

At this evening’s performance, the role of Fate will be played by my Aunt Heidi.

I whirl around in my coat, and she’s right beside me on the curb, her starched white shirt tucked into black pants. A ponytail makes her look simultaneously younger, like a schoolgirl in a uniform, and older, too, the severity of just a face framed by that swinging hair.

“What
are you doing here?”

I almost ask her the same thing. She stamps out a cigarette, and a friend of hers (I know because he’s in the same outfit as she is, other than the ponytail) is staring at us from against the painted-white walls of the building’s exterior.

“I—I missed my bus?” I try. Weak.

“Oh my God, Nate,” she says. She looks like she’s going to laugh or murder me. I’ve come to recognize this as the signature look people over the age of thirty give me.

“I—I . . .” But I’ve got nothing, actually.

She turns around to glance at her friend, dropping her hands to whap them against her thighs. “This is him.” She’s been talking about me.

“I figured,” the guy says, his eyes twinkling. “Though I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about his amazing, huge jacket,” and he strides past us and into the restaurant.

“Oh, yeah,” I say, looking down at my coat, “this is new.”

“I gathered as much,” Heidi says, but she looks like she’s in one of those Japanese terror movies, her mouth not syncing up with the words. She looks, in fact, like I’ve just burned down her house, or worse—that I actually
am
Godzilla.

“I know I have a lot to explain,” I say, “but could I use the restroom inside for a second?”

A moment later, I’m inside a very chic little bathroom with a porthole mirror and swing-arm bronze lanterns, just like we’re in a ship. A candle burns in the corner, and I see all sorts of newspaper clippings,
New York Times
write-ups about Aw Shucks. My aunt, of course, is the coolest person in our family and would only work at the kind of restaurant that gets reviewed. Back home, the only restaurants that get written up are those that violate health codes.

When I get out, her friend—the twinkly guy with a face of freckles and cool retro glasses—is standing by the bathroom door. “Your Aunt Heidi asked me to seat you at the far end of the bar,” he says, leading me right back to the entrance and pulling out a towering wooden stool for me. “She’ll be here in a second.”

Am I supposed to tip him?

But he’s gone, dashing to the other end of the bar and around the side, grabbing a fizzy drink for somebody.

The whole place is done up like a New England
fish shack (I saw
Jaws
at a sleepover once), with shipping maps on the walls and stuffed seagulls in the corner. It’s really cool, like a restaurant going as another restaurant for Halloween.

A moment later, Aunt Heidi’s freckly friend comes back to me. “Can I get you something to drink? It’s on the house.”

Whoa! “What was that person having, down there? Thank you, by the way. What’s that fizzy thing?”

He smiles. “That’s The Heidi. It’s named after your aunt. You can’t have that, unless you’re twenty-one. And just really tiny.”

He’d die if I showed him my ID. That would be such a good joke right now, but my bookbag’s on the floor and this stool is so high that I’d probably kill myself scaling down the side. “What do you recommend that I’m old enough for?” I say.

“Oh, wow. Mmm. You like Shirley Temples?”

“Only when she’s dancing on a staircase,” I want to say, but am worried it’ll seem sissy to this nice guy, so I just go, “Oh, I gave up Shirley Temples a couple years ago,” completely serious, and he laughs for some reason. “Do bars serve hot chocolate?” I’m thinking to ask, when he says: “How about a Sprite, then?”

“Okey-dokey.”

He puts it down in front of me and reaches below the bar, producing a beautiful bowl shaped like a shell
(they have thought of
everything
here; it’s so themey I practically expect a wave to hit me), filled with Goldfish pretzels.