Also Known As (12 page)

I immediately choked on my water and Jesse whacked me on the back. “You okay?”

“Ow. That’s not very helpful,” I sputtered.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” I wiped my mouth with my sleeve. (Somewhere, Angelo was clutching his heart and wincing.) “Okay, help me understand this. You threw a party?”

“Obviously.”

I made a face at him. “You threw a party that you wanted me to attend?”

“Another secret out of the bag.”

“And you didn’t even bother to
invite
me? Are guys always like this?”

“Um. Kind of?”

I threw my hands into the air. “This is why the world’s a mess!” I yelled. “Because no one can just say what they want to say!”

“I think that’s a John Mayer song,” Jesse pointed out.

“It is not. And don’t change the subject. Why didn’t you just invite me?”

Jesse looked around the room, probably praying that Roux would storm through it, doing her best whirling dervish impression, and get him off the hook. “Well, I mean, it’s not like
anyone
was invited. People just sort of show up.”

“But what if I didn’t show up? What if I stayed home and handed out candy or played Angry Birds instead?”

“You like Angry Birds? What’s your score?”

“Stop changing the subject!”

Jesse just started to laugh, though. “Were you an
interrogator in a past life? Calm down, everything worked out. You’re here, I’m here, it’s all good.”

I took a deep breath and leaned against the (really uncomfortable, oh my God, who designed this place?) stair railing. “It’s not going to be all good for Roux tomorrow,” I pointed out, “but wait. Why didn’t you say anything?”

Jesse shrugged and ran his hand through his hair in a way that was not adorable or charming. At all. “Well, um, you’re kind of intimidating?”

I was definitely intimidating, but not for any reason that Jesse Oliver would or should know about. “What do you mean?”

“Well, in class you’re always taking notes … and frowning?”

“Are you asking me or telling me?”

“See?” Jesse protested. “You’re really argumentative, too.”

(Is it weird that hearing him use a polysyllabic word gave me butterflies? Yes, that’s weird. Forget I said anything.) “But it’s kind of cute,” he continued. “You always get this little wrinkle when you’re taking notes.” He scrunched up his forehead in what was apparently an imitation of my notetaking face.

The butterflies had quickly turned into a teeming mass of electric eels, and I felt the heat creep into my cheeks. This was the first job I had ever had that made me blush. I didn’t even know I
could
blush! “Oh, um, okay. Thank you?”

“Are you asking me or telling me?” Jesse cracked up even as I swatted at his hair. “Hey, watch the ‘do!”

“Don’t make fun of me!” I cried. “No one’s ever called me cute before! I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.”

He kept smirking in his smirky way. “Do you always know what to say?”

I did.

And that was the problem.

But before I could say anything, right or wrong, I heard a commotion coming from the media room. Roux had gotten her hands on a red Rhone blend and had retreated there to watch a movie by herself.

And judging from the noise, apparently the movie had ended.

“Does Roux always drink like this?” I asked Jesse. “Or is it just a holiday thing?”

“It’s a party thing. Ever since we were twelve.”

“
Twelve
? Does she still have a liver?”

“Well, to be fair, she hasn’t really been at any parties lately. You know, the whole …” He waved his hand toward the library where the huge confrontation had taken place between Roux and Julia.

“Yeah, she told me all about that. I think she feels really bad about it.”

Jesse glanced at me. “I think she’s glad to have a friend again.”

I nodded. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Shoot.”

“Bang.”

“You are
such
a dork.”

“Am not. But it’s about Roux and Julia and that dude.”

Jesse snorted. “You mean Loser Jake?”

“
Thank
you!” I said. “The whole time they were arguing over him, I was just, like, ‘
Really?
’”

“He’s a tool. He cheats on Julia practically every week. But Roux used to be her best friend, so I guess that got everyone all upset.”

“So why does Julia stay with him?”

“Who knows?”

“Ridiculous,” I said. “So damn ridiculous.”

The commotion in the media room was getting louder, and I was pretty sure I could hear someone singing “Tomorrow” from the musical
Annie
, someone who sounded a lot like a drunk Roux.

I looked over at Jesse. “Please don’t tell me …”

“Oh, yes.”

“Oh, no.”

“Who doesn’t love karaoke?” he asked.

“I’ll give you twenty bucks if you go shoot her with a tranquilizer dart.”

“I’ll do it for ten,” he said. “Holiday sale.”

By the time we got the media room, there was a circle of people around Roux, who was clearly having a grand old time with the family karaoke machine. (And nowhere in the research did it say that Armand Oliver enjoyed a nice round of karaoke, by the way. That would have been good to know.) “Maggie!” Roux cried when she saw me. “This song is such a
metaphor
for
life
!”

Jesse nudged me. “Don’t you wanna go do orphan backup?” He grinned.

“After you, Daddy Warbucks.” Then I turned to Roux. “Roux, honey, this isn’t pretty.”

“I
knoooow
,” she said. She had the microphone in one hand and the empty wine bottle in the other. “But the sun, Maggie? The sun is going to come out! Tomorrow!” She pointed the wine bottle at me. “And do you know what kind of life it is?”

“A hard-knock one,” I answered. “Too easy.”

“Does she take requests?” Jesse asked, then ducked out of my reach.

“That’s exactly it!” Roux said. “Oh my God, where has this song been all my life?” She pressed a button and started the song again.

To be fair, even though she was drunk and barely able to stand, Roux didn’t have a bad voice. Her singing voice was actually beautiful, and she managed to hit every note even while slurring the lyrics. “This song is annoying,” Jesse muttered. “We get it, the sun is going to come out.
Jesus
.”

Once again, the spy had to save the day. I walked over to the machine, found the plug, and yanked it out of the socket. Roux got some scattered applause, and she gave them a wobbly curtsy. “I’m here all week!” she announced. “Residency!”

“Roux?” I said. “Let’s go home.”

She looked like one of those geckos you see on Animal Planet, the ones whose eyes go in completely different directions. “Is there more wine?” she asked.

“Not for you,” I said, then let her put her arm around my neck. “You’re done for tonight.”

“Okay. It’s important to pace yourself. Where are we going?”

“Home.”

“My home or your home?”

“Your home.”

“But you don’t even know where that is!” She giggled.

I looked over at Jesse. If he thought my wrinkled-notetaking face was cute, then he was going to love my puppy-eyes face.

“Oh, no,” he said. “Nuh-uh. No way. You’re on your own.”

“I can’t carry her by myself!” I protested. “Please? You said yourself that it’s good she has a friend.”

“There are, like, a hundred people here! In my house! How am I going to get them out?”

“Easy,” I told him, then poked my head around the corner. “Oh, shit, the cops are here!” I yelled.

And voilà, it was a teenage stampede out the door.

Jesse looked at me. “You are very lucky,” he said, “that you’re so cute.”

I helped him carry Roux down the stairs and to the front door, even as the electric eels continued to thrash around in my stomach.

The cab driver who pulled to the curb took one look at Roux and shook his head. “Got change for a hundred?” Jesse asked him, flashing the bill before herding me and Roux into the cab.

“I charge a fifty-dollar, cash-only cleaning fee if anyone pukes in the back,” the driver said, pocketing the cash even before Jesse had shut the door behind him.

“A bargain at twice the price,” I told him, but he didn’t
seem amused. Jesse laughed, though, then shoved Roux toward me when she started to loll toward him.

“Maggie?” she said.

“Yeah?”

She opened her eyes and smiled at me. “I think Jesse Oliver likes you.”

Jesse groaned and Roux turned to look at him. “Oh my God!” she cried. “You’re here, too?”

Chapter 11

The cab driver let us out across the street from Roux’s building, and it took both Jesse and me to get Roux back to the house, mostly because she couldn’t make up her mind about whether she wanted to walk next to Jesse or me. First it was me, then she decided I was too short, so she walked next to Jesse. Then she decided that he was too tall (“You’re crowding me!”), so she made us stand next to each other so she could walk between us. “I can’t be on the end!” she said, giggling. Then she waved the wine bottle as if it were a baton and sent Jesse and me scrambling for safety. An empty wine bottle is still really heavy, after all, and I wasn’t born into a family of international espionage experts just so I could get clocked by a drunk high school girl with bad coordination.

Roux’s apartment was across the street from Central Park. It took us thirteen minutes (Jesse timed it on his phone) to get her across the street to her building. That should give you an idea of what that experience was like.

The doorman eyed the three of us suspiciously as Jesse and I dragged Roux through the ornate lobby. “Harold!” she crowed when she saw him. “It’s me! Wait, wait, wait!”

Jesse and I came to a halt as Roux started digging around in her purse. Some lip gloss clattered to the floor, along with a MetroCard and what looked like a movie-ticket stub. I hoped Roux wasn’t going to the movies by herself. That would just be sad.

“Here!” she cried, finally producing a five-dollar bill. “For the swear jar!”

Jesse and I looked at each other, but Harold just produced an old glass jar that was filled with bills. “You have a swear jar with your doorman?” Jesse asked, incredulous.

Roux hung on a little tighter to my arm, wobbling on her heels. “Let’s just say that some neighbors and I had a little run-in three months ago.”

“And by run-in, you mean …?”

(Harold was now reading his newspaper like we weren’t even there.)

Roux grinned, the happiest drunk on the block. “I told this one tenant that he should—how can I put this?—have sexual relations with himself. And that did
not
go over well.”

“Wow,” Jesse said. “This might be a New York first.”

“So now I’m working on being a better person, which means I don’t get to drop f-bombs anymore. And I’m putting Harold’s grandkids through college!”

Harold just tucked the glass jar back under the desk, muttering something about rich kids. I’m not sure what he
said, though. It was hard to hear over Roux yelling, “Bye, Harold!”

I dug through Roux’s purse and found her keys while Jesse propped her up against the elevator wall, using his arm and hip to keep her upright. “Ow,” she kept saying, but she didn’t move, so we ignored her. The front door lock looked pretty basic—just a normal deadbolt—but Jesse and Roux were right there and there was no way I could open the lock without them noticing. Or Jesse noticing, at least. I was pretty sure that Roux couldn’t focus her eyes.

I finally found the keys and opened the front door while Jesse moved Roux inside. Everything was dark and drawn. It was sort of creepy to enter this huge apartment and not see a single adult, but Roux didn’t seem too put off by it, so I guessed it was normal for her.

“Okay, kid,” Jesse said to her as he steered her toward the stairs. “Here’s the plan. You’re going to drink some water and sleep it off and start fresh tomorrow.”

“I love water.” She sighed. “I love Maggie, too. Jesse!”

“Yeah, Roux?” His voice was muffled as Roux flung her arm around his neck, whacking him with her oversized coat sleeve.

“You like Maggie, too, right? She’s hot. Don’t you think Maggie’s hot?”

“Roux, I will murder you,” I muttered. “Well,
I
won’t, but I
know
people. They can do it without making a mess.”

“Hot like
burning
,” Roux continued, ignoring my death threats as she put one foot on the stairs. Then she stopped. “Whoa, spinning stairs. Terrible idea.”

Jesse looked at me over Roux’s head. “She’s so trashed,” he whispered.

“
So
trashed,” I said.

“You’d think she’d build up a tolerance at some point.”

“Hey, I have tolerance,” Roux said before lurching violently and nearly knocking Jesse and I back down the stairs. “I don’t hate
anyone
.”

“Of course you don’t,” Jesse said as I caught Roux by the shoulders and pushed her forward.

“People hate
me
,” she replied as we kept nudging her up the stairs. “But I have only love in my heart for those assholes. Ugh, swear jar! I owe Harold five more dollars now. Remind me tomorrow! Where’s my room? I need to puke.”

I looked at Jesse. Jesse looked at me. Roux’s suite seemed to be a very long hallway away, and she looked six shades of queasy. “Can I puke here?” Roux asked as she neared a potted plant that sat at the top of the stairs. “How about this? It’s a plant. Hi, plant!”

“Oh, boy,” Jesse said under his breath.

“Okay, Operation: Save the Plant and Move Faster is now in effect,” I announced, and the two of us got Roux down the hall in record time.

“Hold it for about thirty seconds, okay, buddy?” Jesse said. “Or I’ll never forgive you.”

“Yeah, you’re my buddy, Jesse.” Roux grinned. “My good buddy. You were and then you weren’t but now you are.” She shifted her glazed eyes to me. “It’s because you’re hot, Maggie,” she whispered conspiratorially.

“Oh my God, shut
up
,” I hissed at her. “If you have
even a
molecule
of sobriety in your body right now, you will stop talking.”