The Insiders (15 page)

We heard some high-pitched girlish yelling coming from the back porch.

“Sounds like Arno aggravated another girl,” I said.

Arno had been looking around for Kelli for the last ten minutes. She'd totally disappeared. Deep down, he was able to deduce that, based on his own similar disappearances at parties, she was fooling around with somebody. Though it was warm inside, his teeth chattered. He'd left his jacket somewhere and now he stood there in his suit pants, his white shirt hanging out, holding a bottle of Grolsch and shivering.

“Could I speak to you?” Liza asked.

They stood in the back parlor on the main floor, overlooking the lighted garden.

“Um, sure,” Arno said. He didn't look at her.

“You're really hot on that Kelli girl, huh?”

“I guess so,” Arno said. “Yeah. I am.” He glanced at her quickly to see if maybe—even though they'd practically crawled under the booth and had sex at the Corner Bistro less than three hours ago—she felt some sympathy for how intensely he was crushing on another girl.

“Not what I wanted to hear,” Liza said.

Then she poked Arno hard in the ribs.

“Ow,” Arno said. “Look, Liza, I'm sorry about what we … did. But I didn't mean to—”

“You called me!”

“Yeah, but—”

“And I fell for it. Do you know how that makes me feel?”

“I'm sorry,” Arno said. “I really am.”

Then Arno saw Jonathan and Mickey standing in the massive open doors to the living room. Behind them the room was pretty empty and quiet except for the sound system, which was pumping.

“You're a jerk, Arno Wildenburger!” Liza screamed. And then she kicked Arno right in what he and his friends liked to call “the gentles.”

She was wearing the black boots she always wore. Arno yelped, grabbed his suit pants, and crumpled to the floor like a half-empty sack of pinto beans.

“Oof,” Arno said.

“Liza—” Jonathan began to say.

“You shut up,” Liza yelled. But then she turned around and she was hanging around Jonathan's neck and crying.

Arno heard Jonathan whisper “five minutes” to Mickey, who was carefully helping him off the floor. “Then we go find Patch.”

“Yeah, let's find Patch,” Arno croaked.

Finally, the three of them made for the door. And sure, Mickey knew that Jonathan and Arno were as much running away from a whole bunch of girl problems as they were going to find their buddy, but that didn't mean the search was a bad idea.

Mickey had filled a thermos with what he was calling “Patch Punch.” Arno was having trouble walking so he'd borrowed a silver-tipped cane from Mr. Flood's umbrella stand. Each boy had his cell phone and some cash, courtesy of Mr. and Mrs. Flood. They'd helped themselves from the big laughing Buddha jar in the Floods' bedroom, which was where everyone knew to go to get money. They figured it was fair to use Flood money to find a Flood son, after all.

“Let's go,” Mickey said. He was wearing aviator goggles, and the pants of his jumpsuit were rolled up high.

“Ready,” Jonathan said.

“Ready,” Arno said. But he didn't sound that way.

“Let's go!” Mickey yelled again.

“Wait,” Jonathan said. “Where's David?”

And of course that was when all three of them figured out at the same moment that David had been missing and so had Kelli and that meant something. But nobody said it aloud—because it would be painful for Arno to hear and, after all, he'd already been kicked in the gentles.

They stood on the stoop. Nobody really wanted to go back in the house.

“February is going to kick out all those sophomores in about five minutes,” Jonathan said. “We don't want to be around for that.”

“Shit,” Mickey said. “I'll go.”

They weren't in the parlor, so Mickey hit the top floor first, but nobody was up there except for a pair of February's friends who were finishing their chicken dinner in the middle of Mr. and Mrs. Flood's massive four-poster bed.

“David,” he yelled. He tried the third floor, where people rarely went, because it was just the library and the maid's quarters and a family room that was basically used as storage space. Mickey sniffed around. Things were too quiet.

“Coming,” David said. Mickey heard this as a kind of muffled cry. Without thinking he pushed open the door to the library. A chair fell over. David and Kelli
were putting their clothes back in place.

“Ooh,” Mickey said.

“Hi,” Kelli said back.

David looked at Mickey and sort of bit his lower lip. Mickey nodded and said, “We have to go find Patch. You want me to make them wait for a few minutes?”

“No,” David said. He turned and kissed Kelli once on the cheek. She smiled at him.

“We've got to find our friend,” David said.

“That's cool,” Kelli said. “Is Randall Oddy still downstairs? I promised I'd hang out with him.”

Mickey rolled his eyes at David, who only shrugged.

“David …,” Arno began.

“Dude,” David said, “I don't want to deal with you right now. We have more important things to do.”

Their first stop was Local 13 on West 13th Street, where Patch sometimes went to score weed from a bartender called Tuddy. But the four boys couldn't get in because they didn't have any girls with them.

“No problem,” David said. “Let me take care of this.”

“What?” Jonathan asked.

Mickey and Arno were busy just then, ogling a model who was ogling them back. With Arno in his jacket and Mickey in his jumpsuit and goggles they looked like a Polo ad gone berserk.

“I'm going to slip by you and check in with Tuddy, for five minutes,” David told the bouncer, who was some kind of ex-pro wrestler.

“No,” the bouncer said. But David just stood there, a cool smile on his face. Waiting.

“Fine, in to see Tuddy.” The bouncer held the door open. David patted Jonathan on the back as he slipped into the club, as if to say, get ready for the new me.

Inside Local 13, David brushed against a girl who was dancing with some girlfriends. The place was entirely blue—blue walls, tables, chairs, ceiling, lights. They could get away with it because the people were so good-looking.

“'Scuse me, baby,” he said, just to see how it sounded.

“Don't worry about it,” the girl said, and ran her hand over his chest. David smiled. Yeah, the new me.

“No, I haven't seen him,” Tuddy said when David got to him. “But I've got fifty grams of something special I grew myself—”

“No, thanks,” David said. “Right now I'm high on life.”

“That's weird,” Tuddy said. He rubbed his shaved head for a second. David had met Tuddy once or twice before.

“What is?”

“You didn't sound like a total idiot when you said that.”

“Yeah, man,” David said. “I'm in a good place right now.” David smiled and began to go back the way he came.

“Hey, where you going?” the girl he'd brushed by asked when he attempted to brush by again.

“Where do you want me to be going?” David asked.

“Nowhere fast.”

“Sounds fair,” David said. He started to dance with the girl.

“I like your hoodie,” she said.

“You should see what's underneath.”

“You're bold,” the girl said. “I'm Chloe.”

She poked him in the chest while they danced and David grabbed her hand and bit the tip of her finger lightly.

“Ooh,” the girl said.

“You remind me of somebody when you say that.”

They kept dancing. David thought,
I'm tall and handsome
. And for the second time in his life, David forgot his friends.

“I don't think David's coming out,” Mickey said.

“You may be right,” I said. “What the hell is going on with him?”

“He got with that Ooh girl, and now he thinks he's the shit,” Mickey said. He was only looking at me when he said it, but I could feel Arno next to me. He was right there and then a second later, it was like
ppphht
. He'd deflated.

“He did it to get back at me,” Arno said. “No wonder he hasn't bothered to confront me. He's playing a complex psychological game with my feelings.”

“Um,” Mickey said. “I think maybe that wasn't totally nice of me to say out loud, but when I saw those two together, I didn't think they were thinking about your feelings at all.”

“I wish your cousin would go home,” Arno said. “I can't stand having her around and I love her so much.”

“If there was a person exchange somewhere, and we could go there and trade Kelli for Patch,” I said, “believe me, I'd do it.”

I looked around and there were twenty people or so milling around the velvet rope, and since they had nothing better to do, they were staring at us. Because, as far as I was concerned, we were younger and cooler than they were.

“Let's just go. I don't know what he's up to but it's been half an hour,” Mickey said.

So we began to walk east. I think we all knew one thing, which was that we had absolutely no clue where Patch was. Then I heard this sniffling noise next to me. I looked over and Arno was crying. Crying? Arno? I threw my arm around him.

“Dude, I'm going home. I think we should call the cops,” Arno said through his tears.

“Stop it,” I said. I mean, it was one thing for David to cry, but for Arno—that was too much. “Get a grip!”

“We're not calling anybody yet,” Mickey said. “We've got about thirty hours. And I'm going to find him. I've got some hunches.”

I looked over at Arno. Mickey was barely allowed back in school and he was still swinging around his cast. Maybe he did have some
hunches. But I couldn't imagine what they were.

“Well, I need to go to sleep,” Arno said. I checked my watch. It was about three in the morning. I yawned.

“You've hit bottom,” I said to Arno. “I promise things won't get any worse for you.”

“Thanks,” Arno said, and it sounded like he meant it.

We walked over to Fifth Avenue and just sort of stood there. Some cabs went by and I knew I should probably shovel Arno into one and call it quits myself. We'd find Patch tomorrow, for sure. There were people's houses we hadn't checked, kids at boarding school we hadn't called, ice cream parlors we hadn't visited.

Then a big black Chevy SUV drove by really slowly. Mickey saw it and before Arno or I could say anything, he jumped on the fender.

“I'm going to go home to get my Vespa and tool around,” Mickey yelled.

“Is that a good idea?” I asked as we watched him disappear around the corner. His goggles were on and his jumpsuit was rolled up at the wrists and ankles. He curled himself around his cast and he looked as if he were going to take off like some kind of superhero.

“Well, that takes care of him,” I said. “Let's get you home.”

“I'm sorry about what I've been doing,” Arno said.

“It's cool,” I said. “I'm sure you'll do something that will make everyone like you again.”

“Really?” Arno looked up at me. His black hair was sticking out in all directions and his eyes were dried out and puffy. But he was still a really good-looking guy. Anyone could see that. I really didn't believe he'd meant to do as much harm as he had.

“Well, if you don't think of anything, I'll make up something nice for you to do,” I said.

“Thanks.”

Arno was still sniffling when I packed him in the back of a cab and said goodnight to him. He said something I couldn't understand to the driver, who immediately smiled and began to chatter.

“What's that?” I asked.

“Farsi,” Arno said. “Kinda neat, huh? I learned it from David. I really hope we can still be friends.”

Mickey came to on a torn velvet couch in the back of Save The Robots. He'd have checked his watch if he'd had one. Save The Robots was a revival of an old East Village after-hours club where people went to do drugs and doze. And this was definitely after hours. He looked around him, and he knew the gray light that came in at the sides of the blacked-out windows was the dawn. He heard a scratching noise and checked his cast, which he'd been ignoring. A mouse was gnawing on it.

I should jump, Mickey thought. But he didn't. There was a brown drink cradled next to him on the ugly sofa. Guinness? Maybe. He took a sip and spat it out, whatever it was. Man, was his dad ever going to kill him. That is, assuming that his dad hadn't gone out to Montauk the day before, or the day before that. He wished he kept better track of these things. No, wait. He'd had dinner with his dad last night. Shit. Maybe they'd gone to Montauk after dinner?

He looked around him and saw little knots of people
talking, still awake, incredibly. And then he recognized someone. Randall Oddy was there with some guys and a few women and a young girl who had a lot more energy than anyone else. Ooh. Mickey stood up. If he could have connected the dots, he would have. But the last thing he remembered was hanging off the back of an SUV and making a sharp right into the East Village. Then … that was it.

“Hi!” Kelli said.

“Ooh,” Mickey said.

“Enough with that,” Kelli said.

“I didn't mean—” but Mickey stopped. He'd meant Ooh, there's a mouse on the floor near your feet. But he wasn't ready to explain that, not just yet. If Kelli was the kind of girl who could have a mouse nibbling on the fringe of her leather boot and not notice, that was her problem.