Pass It On (15 page)

“Wow. Thanks February.” I smiled at her.

“Don't thank me—I just get off on screwing up whatever my dad's up to. There's one thing I need from you, though.”

“What?”

“Guess.”

“Find your brother and make sure he's okay?”

“Exactly. I'm not my brother's keeper—you are. And if you don't find him, I'll unleash the wrath of my parents on you.”

“And I can't afford that.”

“Right again.” February smiled at me, and it was impossible for me to tell if there was a gleam in her eye, or if she was still high from the night before, or brilliant, or what.

“And for what it's worth,” she said, “I heard about your Caribbean sailing vacation and I think you should bring Patch. If you can find him, I mean.”

“What if I lose him there?”

“It'd be hard to lose him on a yacht.”

Then I said, “With Patch, you never know.” And we both nodded at each other.

“Tea,” Ruth said. We were in her bedroom, which I'd recently decided was my favorite place in the world.

I called her once I'd gotten away from the Floods, and we decided to ditch school. I'd talked with her late the night before and we'd been going on about ourselves. She told me about the car accident she was in with her big sister and her mom a few summers ago, and the year she spent in London when she was in eighth grade and the proper little English boy she made out with there, and the months she spent sailing with her parents in the West Indies, which actually got me pretty excited about this trip with my swindler of a dad. She was so incredibly cool.

“And look, aren't those scones? And jam? This is great,” I said. And then I laughed. I was nuzzling her neck and she smelled of the black currant tea and this kind of warm hippie-ish smell
that I was getting to really, really like. Even though up to now I'd always said I hated hippies.

“I'm so glad we ditched school,” Ruth said. “Especially because we're going away tonight. I would've really missed you.”

“You're going away? Where?”

“The Harvard-Yale game. My dad makes us go every year. It's at Harvard.”

“Shit! You're going to Cambridge?”

“My sister's a freshman there. We usually have fun when we're together.”

“So, you know other Harvard kids?”

“Yeah—Alan Ebershoff's sister is best friends with my sister. Actually I heard that Froggy's been fooling around with your friend's ex-girlfriend—Amanda something? Do I have that right? Describe her.”

“Extremely insecure and kind of short—lives in Tribeca?”

“That's her. Froggy will probably be there with his friends, too. They're going to fly up tomorrow morning and they're a lot of fun.”

“But I think maybe David wants to marry Amanda. That's why I've got to take him to the Caribbean, to get a cheap diamond.” That wasn't the point though. I looked at Ruth. I sighed. “I
can't believe she moved on so quickly.”

“Some girls are like that.”

“Not you, I hope.”

“Nope, not me.”

I didn't say anything, and for a moment a sharp needle of paranoia and jealousy poked me, even though it was three o'clock on Friday afternoon and we were in Ruth's bed, buried deep under her comforter that smelled like jasmine and hemp. We began to kiss and the Death Cab for Cutie CD on the stereo was like a quiet reassuring whisper,
calm down calm down she likes you she likes you
. And so I did calm down. And then time passed and we must have been sleeping. And when I woke up, I admit, it took me a second to shake off the feeling that sometimes when I was with Ruth, I was kind of pretending to be as laid back and relaxed as her, since no matter how much I wanted to be, I knew inside that I'm not really that way.

“I'm going to the bathroom,” I said. “Where is it?”

“Oh, go down to the first floor and use the one there.”

“Why?”

“The ones on this floor are these newfangled
kind—my parents discovered them on a trip to Dubai, so they had them installed. But they're weird and guys don't like them. Let's just say they get your private parts extremely clean.”

“I don't get it.”

“Don't worry about it. Go downstairs. I'll be waiting for you.”

“Mmm. I'm really going to miss you this weekend.”

She smiled at me. She was half asleep and I watched her. Her eyelashes were strawberry-blond.

When I got back from downstairs, I found some cream-colored paper on her desk and a bit of charcoal and I began to draw her. I didn't do a perfect job or anything, but I managed to get across that her eyelashes were really thick and she had freckles across the bridge of her nose. While I was drawing, she woke up and watched me.

“Is that for me?”

“Of course.”

“I made you something, too.”

She got up then, and she was wearing this long robe made of all sorts of pieces of silk, a crazy quilt of silk. She looked in a wicker
basket by her desk.

“Here it is.” She handed me a thick brown wool hat with a white pom-pom on top. It was a little lumpy in places, and the pom-pom flopped to one side like a dandelion by the side of the highway and had some odd straggly bits that made it look misshapen.

“It's for you to wear.”

“Really?” I took it from her.

“I knit it over the last couple of days.”

I pulled it down on my head and it was immediately warm and I'm sure it made me look ridiculous, but she'd
made it for me.
So it was beautiful. Not something I would ever normally wear, and it would totally not match my new Y-3 neck warmer, but still.

“I won't take it off,” I said.

By the time it got dark, we'd decided that I should probably go and she should get some rest before flying to Boston. There was a big dinner that night and she'd probably have to sit next to the president of Harvard. She didn't want to be sleepy for that, since she might want to go there in two years and it'd be worthwhile to try to impress him, even though she'd been told he definitely liked her already.

So I bopped out of her house and onto the streets of Nolita with my new hat on. As I walked toward Fifth Avenue and my apartment, I could feel the pom-pom struggling to sit still on my head.

When I got to my apartment building, there were several people in the lobby, talking. One of them was a short woman in a brown fur coat with a lot of gold jewelry. She was holding a purple folder in her hands and talking to a couple; a man and a woman who had a “just-married” look about them—they were all fresh-faced and scrubbed clean, and they both had pleats in their slacks and black loafers on. I recognized the woman's folder: Corcoran Real Estate.

“It's a classic eight,” the fur coat woman was saying. “Rare, very clean, and not even on the market.”

There was a shuffling then, as the three of them got closer to each other. And I shuffled too.

“Here's the inside scoop. The family's gone bad—I have that on good confidence from someone in my group therapy—so if we come in and make a hefty offer now, well, let's just say it's a done deal.”

“I think we're interested,” the man said. He
had that gross heavy-breathing sound that I always associate with new money. But I realized as I slid across the lobby and back out the front door, it was a whole lot better than my own breathing, which just sounded really, really nervous. So a young couple was about to buy the only home I'd ever known because my mom was probably so ashamed of my dad that we'd have to move to Brooklyn after all, just like I'd predicted. Great. I headed toward Patch's and tried to forget what I'd just seen.

“We don't know where he is either, but we're going to Greenwich in the morning, and we think all you boys should come,” Fiona Flood said to Arno. Unlike Mickey's mom, who was young and wild and possibly having an affair with Jonathan's painter, or Jonathan's mom, who treated them all like little adults, Fiona Flood was just rich and remote.

Arno stood in her kitchen with David and Mickey. They shifted around, waiting for her to set them free.

Fiona went on. “We heard from a neighbor that Patch is up there, and we're not exactly pleased about that, since this is a school week, but you know, we're used to it.”

Arno nodded uncertainly. Used to what? That even though Patch was sixteen, he pretty much moved about as he pleased? Or was it that they were used to not being pleased about things. He looked at her thin mouth, at the way her arms were folded over her
nonexistent chest. Must be that last one, he figured.

“We think that if we bring all you boys up there tomorrow, he'll show up too.”

“Great,” Mickey said.

“And with Jonathan already staying with us, it can't be too hard to round you all up.”

“Okay,” David said.

“Check with your parents, would you? But I'm sure they'll be fine with it. You all have been coming up there with us forever.”

“Yeah, since farther back than I can even remember,” Mickey said.

“Well, that's taken care of then. See you in the morning. Ten a.m. Why don't you all sleep here? That will make things easier. We're off to dinner at Bouley with…David's parents. David, no need to tell them about tomorrow, we'll do it.”

She reached for a spare set of keys and tossed them in the direction of the boys as she strode out of the room. Arno caught them.

“Let's go upstairs and make a plan,” Mickey said.

The three of them trooped up to Patch's room. When they got to the third floor, they looked around for Flan or February, but neither was home.

They filed into Patch's room, which had the still, delicate air of a place that is rarely occupied. Arno
looked around. It was a mess certainly, with a pile of skateboards in various states of repair in one corner and some schoolbooks sitting forlorn and ignored on a desk by the window. The twin beds were equally messy and anonymous. It was unclear which was used for sleep and which was for building boards and storage. The Nakamichi stereo was on, and a Granddaddy CD was playing, low, on repeat. Arno touched the amplifier and it was burning, so he turned it off to give it a rest.

“Maybe we should call Selina Trieff,” Arno said. “She might know where Patch is.”

“Didn't you hear his mom?” David asked.

“Oh, right.” Arno's voice dripped sarcasm. “We're going to Greenwich to be bait, and then maybe Patch will come home.”

“Right.” Mickey picked up a skateboard that had his name on it, and then dropped it. “God, so much of my shit is over here. Anyway. What about Jonathan? If he's staying here, where is he?”

Mickey and Arno looked at David. David looked out the window at a girl across the street, who was reading on her bed. He missed girls.

“Are we going to talk about Jonathan?” David said. “I think we should.”

Fido, the Floods' dog, came running and jumped up on Arno, who was sitting at Patch's desk. Arno hugged
Fido tightly until the dog was barking to be set free.

“Okay, let's.” Arno checked his watch. “But I've got to run in a minute. I'm seeing Liesel even though things are definitely over with her. I think we both need to make absolutely sure that we shouldn't be together.”

“Or you both want to make sure it wasn't all about sex, and if it was, maybe that's all right,” Mickey said. “It's okay, I'm over how she hurt my feelings. And yeah, I've got to see Philippa later at this party for a similar bunch of insane reasons.” He grabbed David's arm and checked his Swatch. “Or now, actually.” Mickey stood up to go.

“Okay then let's do this fast.” David stood up. “I think we need to tell him that he's got to choose who is coming on this trip. Yeah?”

“Fine,” said Mickey.

“Sure,” said Arno.

Then they all kind of looked at each other, sizing the others up as competition. Sure, Mickey was the most fun, but Arno would definitely find a way to meet girls down there, and David probably was actually closer to Jonathan than the other two. It was anybody's game.

“Well, I guess I better see Amanda again,” David finally said. “I know she's at home, because she has SAT prep in the morning. I'm going to try to get back together with her, even if means doing this crazy thing
that I haven't even told you guys about—”

But Arno and Mickey were already streaming down the stairs and they didn't hear him.

Out on the street, Arno passed Jonathan, who was headed toward the Floods'.

“I'll be back in an hour,” Arno said. “We're all going to Greenwich tomorrow to be bait for Patch.”

“Okay,” Jonathan said. “Where are you going now?”

“Me and Liesel broke up—but I need to go see her for a few hours and make absolutely sure it was the right thing to do.”

“Got it,” Jonathan said.

“I hear Jonathan's girlfriend's parents are international lawyers and that's kind of complicating things for them,” Philippa said. She was dressed entirely in cashmere, in various shades of dark brown. She looked like a cross between Elizabeth Hurley and the world's most beautiful seal.

“Enough with the rumors, baby.”

“Don't baby me.”

Mickey and Philippa were sitting on a couch at someone's party—a girl named Charlotte Brackett who went to Philippa's school and lived in a converted firehouse on the Bowery. The girl's father was an artist who'd had a fistfight with Mickey's father at a Whitney opening a few months earlier, so Charlotte kept walking over and talking abstractedly about peace and unity with Mickey, but of course he was oblivious and had no idea what her problem was. Charlotte had on a green felt jumper, so she looked like a bit of a Peter Pan character.