Hold On Tight (17 page)

“That's awful,” I said. “I had no idea.”

As I signed the petition on her clipboard, she continued to rattle off facts about the plight of the penguin. I started to be genuinely touched by her cause. I mean, those poor, adorable penguins. They waddle, for Christ's sake.

“You really seem to care,” the girl said, after I had taken in her speech.

“Really?”

“Most people won't even stop to talk to me.”

“I mean, who doesn't care about penguins?”

“I know! But even the people who stop don't
listen like you do. Maybe you would like to make a monetary donation to Greenpeace? We can arrange to have a small amount—say, ten dollars—taken out of your account at the beginning of each month. Of which one hundred percent would go to saving endangered species.”

I agreed immediately and filled out the form, carefully writing down the numbers on my bankcard.

“You'll get newsletters and stuff, too.”

“Great,” I said.

“Thank you for caring so much,” she said.

Those words stayed with me as I turned away and headed uptown. I knew it wasn't much, but I felt like I had taken a few itty-bitty steps toward my redemption.

There were three more Greenpeace volunteers between Barneys and Gissing, and I signed petitions for them all. The last one was so impressed with my caring that she asked me if I wanted to become a “penguin buddy” by donating three hundred dollars to the cause. I agreed immediately. The best part was that all of the “penguin buddies” got front row seats for a lecture that night on the plight of the species. I was going to meet lots of other people who cared about penguins, too!

On Thursday afternoon, David didn't protest hard enough, and he was talked into a couple hours of pickup ball at the West Fourth courts. By the time he made it back to his apartment, he was feeling pretty guilty about leaving Sara-Beth with two middle-aged therapists for so long, and he wasn't even entirely sure why he'd done it.

Nobody seemed to have noticed his absence, though, and he was able to shower and get dressed without anybody paying attention to him. He could hear Sara-Beth and his parents talking giddily in the living room.

He waited in his bedroom for a little while, sort of looking at his homework and hoping that Sara-Beth would escape from his parents and come back and he could tell her about his day. Maybe she would ask him what kind of music she liked, and he would tell her that her favorite band was Arcade Fire because they were moody and refined, just like her. Finally he got sick of waiting and went to see what was going on.

Before he even set foot in the living room he knew it
was going to be strange, because the saccharine jingle of the hit TV show
Mike's Princesses
was playing from what sounded like an old, clunky cassette recorder. Cautiously, he peeked through the glass of the French doors. What he saw filled him with an icky, foreboding feeling.

They—his mother, his father, his girlfriend—were doing the dance routine that had opened each episode of
Mike's Princesses
. Of course, as far as David could remember, in the TV version, SBB and her costars had interacted with a bunch of animated flowers and bunnies and things. But the moves were distinctive enough.

“I'm Millie!” sang Sara-Beth, who was very much not six years old anymore. She did a twist, and a move with her arms, and then she came skidding in on her knees, singing, “I'm the youngest and the funnest and the one Mike loves the mostest!”

“I'm Tanya!” sang David's mom. Everyone always said that Hilary carried her weight well, and David had always thought this was true, too. Her curly hair was pulled back in a ponytail, but even so, doing a Charlestonlike move and smiling like a showgirl made her look old. And that made David sad. “I'm the smartest, most mature, the one boys on motorcycles pull over for!”

David realized simultaneously that this opening
sequence was geekier than most, and that he could not bare the sight of his father singing Courtney, the middle daughter's, part. Or Mike, the dad's, part, which would involved his swinging Hilary around and then kissing her on the forehead.

David walked in and hit stop on the cassette player, which he seemed to remember his father using to dictate portions of the unpublished novel he had been working on years ago. “What are you guys doing?” he asked.

“Oh, David!” his mother said, wiping a few beads of sweat from her face. David had to admit that she looked kind of exhilarated by whatever she had been doing. “Your father and I came up with this as an important step in Sara-Beth's recovery. You know, reliving ‘the routine,' as they called it on set.”

“But what about the day we met?” he asked Sara-Beth. “Don't you remember? You were so upset that those admissions people asked you to dance for them.”

Sara-Beth stood up and ran her fingers through her hair. She was wearing on old gray sweatshirt of his and jeans rolled to mid-calf. She shrugged and looked at Hilary.

“During our session yesterday, Sara-Beth told us that this sequence recurred in her dreams, that it in effect haunted her. Well, we are exorcising it, if you will. This is a way to rid the opening dance sequence of any
negative content. We are making it a happy thing, and we probably will have to do it many more times again before it loses its power over our young Miss Benny.”

“David, don't look so skeptical,” his dad said. Sam Grobart was wearing an old T-shirt and sweats, which made David feel even more icky for some reason. “The opening song and dance sequence is a metaphor for the entire show, of course, and maybe for Sara-Beth's whole career. This show-biz-esque routine really contains every wrong inflicted on a child actor.”

Sara-Beth nodded at him, and smiled. “Don't worry about me David, really. What your parents are doing for me is so wonderful and positive. I'm not as fragile as you think, you know.”

David nodded helplessly, as his girlfriend of a few days turned to his parents, clapped her hands, and said, “Let's take it from the top.”

Before he was exposed to any more, David retreated to his room. As soon as the door was shut behind him, he called Jonathan.

“Hey man,” Jonathan said, picking up after the fourth ring.

“Hey.”

“What's going on, dude?”

“Oh, I just … Well, Arno called me earlier. He said that we were all meeting at some dive bar off Union
Square to hang tonight. You going?”

“Um, maybe. Actually, I'll be there, but really late. Something's come up … I'll tell you about it later if I make it.”

“Oh … okay. Hey, can I ask you something?”

“Does it have to do with penguins?”

“No, I guess not.”

“Oh. Oh well. Fire away.”

“If a guy … say a guy, like, our age, had a girlfriend, let's say, like, a pretty new girlfriend, do you think it would be weird if that guy's parents took a really big interest in the emotional life of the girlfriend? Do you think that would make the whole thing a little … incestuous?”

“How new is the girlfriend?” Jonathan asked.

“Let's say under a week.”

“Huh. Yeah, I'd say that would be weird. You want to hear something tragic though?”

“Guess so.”

“There are nineteen species of penguins, and eleven of them are endangered. Doesn't that just blow your mind? Penguins, those adorable little tuxedo-wearing, waddling birds. They are birds, right?”

“Yeah, pretty sure.”

“Hey David, I gotta go. But I'll try to come by tonight … But you know, I gotta help those little
penguins.”

“Yeah, man,” David said. He really hoped he'd see Jonathan later—Jonathan was very good at undoing romantic entanglements.

“And David? Promise me that you'll send good thoughts to the penguins, okay?”

“Jonathan double-booked us?” Mickey said sadly.

“Yeah,” David said, still not quite believing it.

“Whatever,” Arno said. They were sitting in one of the dark booths, in the back of a skuzzy bar they usually only went to before going to shows at Irving Plaza. There was only one girl in the bar, and she was dancing by herself to the White Stripes song that had been playing everywhere for the last two weeks.

“What have you guys been doing?” David asked, lounging back in the booth and running his hand over his nearly bare head. “I feel like I've been trapped in my own little world for the last week.”

“What, you haven't read about your famous friend Mickey in the papers?” Mickey said, smiling devilishly. He was wearing a black poncho and his hair had grown as wild as his eyes. “Joking, man. I'm not that bad yet, referring to myself in the third person and shit.”

“That would be lame,” Arno agreed.

“Yeah. Anyway, you won't believe it, but I've been third-wheeling it with Philippa.”

“You mean Philippa has a”—David closed his eyes while he said it—“girlfriend?”

“Yup. Her name's Stella. She's okay, actually, and she writes about art for her college paper. We've been going to mostly art-related shit, for obvious reasons,” Mickey sighed. “Only problem is, I really started thinking Philippa and I were going to get back together.”

“What?” Arno said. “Man, you've got to stop thinking about your ex. I mean, we're going to Sarah Lawrence this weekend, right? Get a little more college in our lives? And you're giving another lecture, so girls are going to be all over you. Stop thinking about her
now.”

“Yeah …,” Mickey said, his eyes glazing over with either anticipation or regret. “Hey, speaking of Sarah Lawrence girls, don't you have a little lady waiting there for you, too?”

Arno sank back against the creaky wood paneling of the booth and brushed his bangs out of his eyes dreamily. “Lara … yeah. I haven't talked to her since last Saturday, but I've spent the week putting everything, like, in place for us to get together this weekend. She's just like everything I ever wanted, you know?”

“Mmm …,” Mickey said.

“I do feel a little bad,” Arno went on slowly, watching the other guys for a reaction, “cuz I've been seeing someone else.”

“So?” David said. Then he remembered Sara-Beth calling him Arno, and he was hit with a sudden wave of paranoia. “Who is she?”

“This girl Gabrielle. I met her on Monday when Jonathan and I went to this theater benefit.”

“Gabby Mercy?” Mickey asked.

“You know her?” Arno said dully. He realized he didn't even know Gabby's last name.

“Sweet Mercy Theater Company?” Mickey laughed. “She's a sophomore at Adele Biggs, dude.”

“Oh.”

“Listen, she's cute and everything, but she's a little …” Mickey made a circling motion by his ear, “cuckoo, you know what I mean? Listen, you were in L-O-V-E with this Sarah Lawrence person. You just said she was everything you've ever wanted. Why not hold out for the best?”

“Thanks man, I'm glad you think so,” Arno said, because that was exactly what he was going to do anyway.

“But listen, about this Sarah Lawrence thing? There's a hitch.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I can't show the pictures anymore.”

“You mean, the pictures that made David famous with the ladies?” Arno asked. Even in the reddish light, he saw David blush a little bit.

“Yeah, long story, but I promised someone important that I'd retire them.”

“Wow.”

“It's okay, though. I just have to take new photos. The lecture was pretty much freestyle last time anyway, so I'm not worried about that.”

“What are you going to do?” David asked.

“Tell me what you think. Be brutally honest. I'm going to do New York at dawn, with one, lone naked figure dashing through. You know, architecture of the city, architecture of the body. Brick and steel vs. flesh and bone. Man vs. industry. Plus, it's like a whole different way of looking at our urban landscape.”

“Oh, that's
cool,”
Arno said enthusiastically.

“Who's the one lone figure?”

“Oh, well, me of course.”

“I think that's awesome,” David said. “The first project was great, but a little too much like that Luc Vogel guy. This will be so much more personal.”

Arno nodded in agreement.

“Can we talk about this girl thing again though?” David said.

Arno raised an eyebrow, and Mickey finished his beer. Luckily, they had ordered two of everything.

“See, I met this girl at Vassar. And we've been dating since. Well,
living
together is more like it, I guess. And she has some problems. She was on this TV show when we were kids?
Mike's Princesses
? Sara-Beth Benny?”

Mickey spit out his beer.
“You're
dating SBB?”

“Yeah, we all know her. We hung out with her on that cruise ship, remember? Oh, wait, I guess it was after you got kicked off …” Arno looked uncomfortable. “What do you mean, living together?”

“I guess she was really lonely in her penthouse. So she's been staying at my place. And hanging out with my parents. A little bit too much.”

“Whoa,” Arno said. Then he clinked beers with David. “Way to go. That's hot.”

“But it's not that hot. I mean, it's like having a really cute sister sort of, because my parents are treating her now and it's like every moment we spend together is family therapy hour,” David paused. “I mean it's not
always
like she's my sister. But the parent thing … do you think it's a little weird?”

Mickey shook his head. “She's hot, man. Who cares if she's your sister?” When he saw David's face he added, “That was a joke, man.”

“Listen,” Arno said, “famous people are always
susceptible to group therapy and cults and stuff like that. She'll get over it, or maybe you'll get over her. But in the meantime, Mickey's right, she's hot, and she can get you in anywhere. You should go with it, you know? Have fun. She totally raises your stock.”