Break Every Rule (18 page)

“Yeah, I'm trying. Can I tell you something, dude?”

David nodded.

“I went to Meow Mix—you know that lesbian bar way east on Houston—to try and get some lesbians in on the naked restaurant event. And Philippa was there. Making out with another girl.”

“Whoa,” David said. Somehow, he had assumed that he would be the first one of his crew to face the coming out of a girlfriend or recent ex-girlfriend. This was a pleasant surprise, but he tried to make sure that that didn't show in his face.

“Yeah, I guess it's really over between us this time. Philippa likes girls.”

“Weird that she was with a guy like you all this time,” David said. He hoped that sounded like a compliment.

“Mmm,” Mickey said. “Good point.”

“Yeah,” David said, at the same time as Mickey's phone rang.

“Whassup,” Mickey said into the phone. “Oh, hey Arno…. Yeah man, of course you're still invited to Fresh…. Just hanging with David… Passerby—of course you can come….”

Mickey and David looked up, and to their surprise, Arno was standing, waiflike, in the window.

It had sort of gotten around that something really bad had happened to Mickey in the Philippa department, and so on Tuesday afternoon, when he called and asked for my help, I figured I should probably say yes.

I went over to his house, which is kind of near Patch's on Perry Street. His dad's sculpture studio is there, too. In fact, when I rang the doorbell, it was none other than Ricardo Pardo who greeted me at the door. His signature shock of graying hair rose up from his forehead and fell to somewhere around his chin, and he was wearing denim overalls without a shirt underneath.

“Good, Jonathan,” he said gruffly when he saw me.

“Hey, Mr. Pardo,” I said meekly. I still feel a little weird around Mickey's dad, because last winter this thing came out about how my dad stole a bunch of money from Mickey's dad and all my
friends' parents, back in the eighties. He didn't seem to be thinking about that now, though.

“Talk some sense into Mickey, will you?” he said as I followed him through the big, spare first floor of their house. “All he can talk about is his art project. Tell him he doesn't want to be an artist. Art's a racket, and he'll just end up enslaved to other people's perceptions of him.”

This conversation seemed a little inappropriate to me, given our parent/teenager status, but I tried to nod in agreement as much as possible.

“Good,” Mr. Pardo said when we got near Mickey's room. He seemed to think that took care of things. “Stay for dinner if you want.”

I went into Mickey's room, which was the usual mess of clothes and CDs. Mickey was lying on his bed with his hands behind his head and his elbows in the air, chatting into the headset of his cell phone.

“Sweet, thanks Sandra,” Mickey was saying. “I'm so glad you want to do it. I'm going to put you down for a four-top, but you can fit five. You plus four, right? Awesome. See you there.”

Mickey jumped up from the bed and tackled me.

“Hey, man, I missed you, too,” I said when he stood up.

“Yup,” Mickey said, grinning. “Thanks for coming over, man. I have, like, eighty confirmation calls to make for the Fresh project Thursday night, and I was sort of hoping you could do it with me.”

“Totally,” I said. I love making phone calls. I still didn't know all the Philippa details, but I thought that if Mickey was hurting, then a distraction was probably good. I couldn't help but add, “Although I wish you'd called me back, at least once, last week.”

“I know,” Mickey said. “I was really distracted by shit with Philippa. I think it's really over between us, you know?”

“I know,” I said.

Then we hustled through the list. It was actually a pretty impressive roster of people, not boldfaced names or anything, but cool kids that we knew from being around so long. And everyone I talked to sounded really excited. I still didn't completely believe he could pull it off, but he certainly had taken this whole thing further than I thought he would.

When I looked at the seating chart, I noticed that the table next to us was populated by girls from Florence, including Mimi Rathbone and her sidekicks. I had seen Mimi making out with Danny
Abraham on Saturday, and I wasn't sure Arno would want to be sitting near her. But I decided Mickey probably didn't need more shit to worry about, and didn't say anything.

When we were done, Mickey said, “Thanks, dude. Don't know how I could have done that without you. Don't know how we did anything without you, actually.”

I didn't know quite how to respond to that, but it made me feel like some of my dignity might be recovered. “You wanna go get a beer or something?”

“Nah, I gotta keep a low profile, make sure I don't mess this thing up. But I set up a table for you, Arno, Patch, and David. And we should all hang out afterward. I had a beer with David yesterday, and Arno showed up pretty messed-looking. I think it would be pretty important, you feel me?”

“Yeah,” I said, and I did.

“And that Rob guy? We talked about that, too. He was bad news.”

“Yeah,” I said, but I hadn't even told them the worst of it. “Anyway, I guess I better get going. But I'll see you tomorrow?”

“You know it.” Mickey and I knocked our fists
together lightly and said bye. As I headed out the door, he called out, “Oh, should I put Flan at your table?”

I was once again flushed with panic. Moral quandary: Can you take your fourteen-year-old girlfriend to participate in an event where you and all your closest guy friends are going to be wearing absolutely nothing? Does the situation change if your last interaction was a big blowup fight? And what if she was very right about you and your insecurity, and underneath it all, you're afraid your guys might all look better naked than you?

After I left Mickey's, I wandered down Perry Street in the Manhattan night. It was misty and pungent, and you could really sense that a whole lot of people were living big, bright lives all around you. I didn't really know where any of this—Flan, my crew, the Rob fallout—was going, and for once that really didn't bother me.

I went to the Floods' and knocked on the door. A few minutes later, Flan poked her head out. When she saw me, she smiled sadly and came out and put her arms around my waist. We kind of swayed like that for a minute, not feeling the need to say anything. Flan was wearing flip-flops and a strapless cotton dress that looked like it was made from terry cloth. After we did our slow, funny little dance, we sat down on her stoop.

“I've been thinking a lot about Saturday night,” she said.

“Yeah, me too.”

“And I'm really sorry I made such a fuss in front of so many people.”

“I'm not mad about that. You were right, I was being a gigantic narcissist. I mean, I was just being freakishly insecure. And I'm sorry.” We were both talking really slowly, like we knew where this was headed but neither of us was quite ready to go there. The night was such a warm, get-crazy kind of night, too, and that made the sad talk all the more poignant.

Flan puffed out her cheeks, so that she looked kind of like the cutest monkey ever. Saddest
and
cutest.

“We have to break up, Jonathan,” she said, blowing the air out of her mouth. She sounded very calm, like a person far older than she actually was. I had kind of been expecting that, but that doesn't mean it felt good. “It's not that I don't like you, because I really like you. But you know what? Our lives are really different right now.”

“Like, how?” I said. I wasn't really sure why I was arguing this—she was obviously right. “I like going to parties, you like going to parties. We both like French films and ice cream. We both have great friends.”

“I know, but…” Flan threw her arms up in exasperation with herself this time. I think. Her eyes were glistening a little bit, too; at least, I think they were. “It's just that, when I'm with you, everything has to be so jaded all the time. I know it's kind of dumb, but I just want to do fun, silly stuff with my friends, and not be so worried about looking cool all the time.”

“I'm totally over being cool,” I said defensively.

“You are not, and besides, that's not what I mean. You've done all the things I want to do now, and I just want to do it and be excited about it and not be so knowing all the time. I don't want to miss the feeling of doing something for the first time, just because I'm with some cool older guy.”

“Yeah…,” I said, because there really isn't any way to argue with a speech like that.

“I know that's dorky, but…”

“That's not dorky,” I said, even though it hurt me to say so. “That actually makes a lot of sense. You should have fun, and be with your friends. They adore you, you know.”

“I know.”

“There's never been anything between you and David, has there?”

“No. In fact, I think Rob was maybe just trying to make you think there was.”

“Oh.” Rob was turning out to be pretty convenient, actually. I wondered what else I could blame on him. I picked Flan's hand up and said, “I'm always going to think you're pretty special.”

“Yeah, you, too,” she said, and smiled the sad, calm smile. I couldn't believe that after all this time I was going to lose Flan, and my insides felt heavy.

We stood up and kissed—a long, slow good-bye kind of kiss—on the stoop, and then I jumped down to the street and waved and turned toward home. My lungs got all full of that warm city air, and as I walked and thought about it, suddenly this news didn't seem so crushing after all. There was still the city, after all, and my friends. I started to feel really light and open.

And, I should admit, it didn't hurt to know that I wouldn't be hanging out with Flan—and all of my closest friends—in the nude tomorrow night.

“Don't get me wrong, I understand being attracted to chicks and all,” Mickey said. “What I don't get is why, if you're, like, gay and shit, you were with a dude like me all this time.”

Philippa rolled her eyes at Mickey, but it was a loving kind of eye roll. It was the day they were supposed to have their afternoon therapy session, but since they'd broken up they didn't have to go anymore. Which they both thought was awesome. They'd decided to celebrate with tea and cookies at Doma, this café down the street from where they both lived.

“Maybe I was too much, like, I turned you off men?” he went on.

“That is
so
something a man would say,” she laughed. “As though my liking a girl or not liking a girl could only be understood through my previous relationship with a man. Yeah, right. It's not like I wasn't attracted to you. And it's not like I wasn't your match, so don't pretend
like I should have been going out with some girly man all this time. I just realized that I feel more myself with another girl. Does that make sense to you?”

“Not really. But I'm trying.”

Philippa took a sip of her tea. “Are you doing okay?”

“Yeah!” Mickey said facetiously. “I mean, come on, it's going to take me a while to get over a girl like you. But I'll be all right. How 'bout you? You told your folks yet?”

“No,” Philippa said, grinning. “But I can't wait. Can you imagine? They are going to be so
goddamn mad
.”

They both cracked up at that.

“Steam's gonna come out of your dad's ears!”

“I know!” Philippa cried, practically choking on her tea. “And can't you just picture my mom? She's going to sob.”

“She's going to break down!” Mickey hooted. He calmed himself down somewhat and said, “You're not just doing this so that you can find bigger and better ways to make your parents suffer, are you?”

“No! Mickey, please believe me. I am a lesbian. Nothing to do with you. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Good. Now tell me, how's this nude thing going?”

Mickey shrugged. “I don't know if people are going
to go for it. It might just be me and the waitstaff, you know?”

“Well, I'll be there,” Philippa said.

“Really?”

“You bet.”

The day of the big nude art event, I decided I had to make that call. I sat down at my desk and looked out my window and dialed David's number.

He picked up after two rings. “Hey, man.”

“Hey, David?” I said. “I just wanted to say I'm sorry. I've been a real dickhead.”

“No you haven't… er, I mean, I've been out of touch, too.”

“C'mon David, I don't mean out of touch. Every time we've seen each other over the last week I've been downright nasty,” I said. This was surprisingly not that hard to say.

“Yeah, but I knew Rob was trying to make you jealous over me, and I really didn't try hard enough to stop it.”

“David, would you shut up and let me apologize like a man?”

“Okay.”

“I am really and truly sorry for all the mean
things I've said, and all the dumb ways I've acted over the week. I hope you still want to be friends with me.” I pounded my fist on the windowsill when I was done.

“Yeah, man. I still want to be friends with you,” David said.

“So, you wanna come over and have some beers before we go to this event of Mickey's?” I asked.

“Shit, is that tonight already? I guess I was sort of hoping it wouldn't come up so soon.”

“Yes,” I said, “it is tonight. And believe me, man, I hear you.”