Principles of Love (22 page)

“Sure,” I say wondering if I will ever go home with Robinson. “I’ll tell you if and when it ever happens.” We sip our drinks. “When will you hear from Brown about the wait-list?”

Lila sighs. “Don’t know. Maybe a couple of weeks?”

We stand up and leave the table — both of us feeling like we are second choice, the alternate who moves up the list only when someone else drops off.

World hunger day. To show solidarity with struggling nations and teach the privileged students of Hadley Hall an ephemeral (SAT prep has begun — ephemeral = fleeting) lesson, the dining hall is split and segregated. Upon entering the room, we each draw a little piece of paper from a raffle box that informs us what world we’re a part of; first, second, third, fourth. Participation in the exercise is optional, but everyone does it (e.g. theoretically optional). You then get a meal (or lack thereof if you’re fourth world) that represents what you’d have if you lived anywhere but here. The actual numbers are eye-catching. Only a handful of students get a first world ticket — just like the real percentage of people who live in the US and Europe. Most people get third world and a scoop of rice or beans.

Of course, the anorexics among us are quite thrilled by this, as are the vegans — and there’s ample opportunity for ticket-trading. Most noticeable aside from the third world students sitting cross-legged on the floor, is the sheer disarray of the usual social patterns. Cliques are temporarily disbanded, jocks sit next to their stoner peers. The preppy girl with all things Burberry makes do with her beans, wedged between two members of the school Anarchy Society (no symbol — thus being even more about chaos) and the frozen yogurt machine.

I, however, am sitting drinking from a goblet — one of those plastic ones with the detachable stem — at the first class table. The few of us first-worlders are seated around a linen-draped lunch table. We tuck into our hot meals. Watching the mounds of rice and glop of pureed lentils on the plates nearby, I’m overwhelmed and guilt-ridden for eating the chocolate covered strawberries in front of me.

“Oh, who the fuck cares?” This from Colorado, who has a berry in each hand (miraculously, nothing up her nose).

“I do,” says one girl.

“This is so random,” one guy says and pushes his plate away. I kind of want to abandon my fancy table and go sit with Lila, who is eating rice with her fingers (utensils are for second and first world only). But I’m not allowed. There’s no mixing of worlds. And I’m right back where I was at the beginning of the year; alone. I shove a strawberry into my mouth and lick my fingers. Then I see Jacob sitting in a mass of second world eaters. I blush at the sight of him, my dream rushing back at me. As if on cue, he looks up and stares, then focuses on his lap-held plate. Across the room, Robinson waves and points to his meal with a thumbs up.

Later, he tells me it was just like going out for Indian food — minus the chicken tikka masala.

“Isn’t that the point?” I ask.

Robinson walks me to math where Patty/Thompson/stick butt has chosen today for a pop quiz. Students complain about their empty stomachs and say they can’t think straight for being hit with hunger pangs.

“Poor you,” she mock-sympathizes. And then, since she saw me at the first world table says, “Shouldn’t be a problem for you though, Love.”

Of course not. And it shouldn’t be a problem for you if I still wish you weren’t dating my dad. I roll my eyes at my lame inner-monologue comment and put the note from Robinson in my lap to read while trying to complete the quiz in the time allotted.

The note is a handmade coupon — good for one round trip ticket on Amtrak’s fast train from Boston to New York. On the bottom, like a disclaimer, Robinson has written in tiny print that this ticket comes with no expectations (expectations = Love looses virginity atop Empire State Building, etc.) just hopes for good fun, food, and a chance to hang out with him on his home turf. I notice there’s no expiration date — good until the end of time? Whoa. Slow down.

I prepare for the debacle of asking and pleading with my dad. I figure I will have to run him in illogical circles about why it’s so important to me to go to New York with my senior boyfriend for Memorial Day. I come up with several routes that might lead to yes. Among them, my chance to have a first-hand tour of the city with a person who grew up there, a chance to explore the cultural aspects of the place (and by cultural I mean the Guggenheim, MoMA, and CBGB’s where Blondie and The Clash played, not a walking tour of Robinson’s naked bod). If all else fails, I figure I can wink and say that it’s a chance for my dad to have the house to himself (even though what that implies makes me feel ill).

But I never have to pull out those stops. My dad, smiling after a phone call I can only assume was with Thompson, comes to the dinner table and sits down.

“Dad — look, I just want to tell you something that’s important to me. I got invited to go to New York for Memorial Day weekend, and I really, really want to go.”

“With Robinson?” He asks. I nod. “I don’t want you navigating the roads, Love.”

“No — I’d take the train.” This seems to satisfy him and he considers it.

“I assume the Halls will be there, chaperoning?” Um, this I’m not sure about, but I guess.

“I think so,” I say.

“I’d like to speak with them — but then I don’t see why not,” he says. “Sounds like fun.”

Why yes. Yes, it does. The parental negotiations prove easier than I thought it would be. But I know that if I asked unprepared for the worst, he totally would have needed to be convinced.

Now departing from track two at the Route 128 Station — Love Bukowski on her first real solo trip to see a boy in a city she doesn’t know very well. And maybe sleep with him. Or near him. Or not. With no chance of fire alarms and parental interruptions (Robinson has mentioned pointedly more than once than his parents are very mellow and won’t care where I sleep), I have game show-type fear. Will I pick the correct door? Will I spin the wheel of fortune in the right direction? Buy a vowel?

Landscape whizzes past — first city then the beaches of Rhode Island. Lila’s family house is near here in Newport. Wonder if I’ll ever see it — or if our friendship will give way to distance and circumstance. I’m sitting enjoying my view and a grossly large and overpriced chocolate chip cookie from the dining car, when I see a curly-topped head of hair I know to be Jacob’s. I’m at one end of the car and he’s at the other — his head bobbing slightly to the music coming through his earphones. He doesn’t see me. When he goes toward the snack bar, I go to his seat with the intent of dropping a funny note there. Gripping the seat in front so I don’t fall over, I first examine the CD on his tray table. Then, when I look at the liner notes inside, I’m too freaked out to do anything but bolt back to my seat. He’s got a copy of the CD Robinson made for me. Who knew Jacob would be a stalker. Or maybe it’s a dorm thing and Robinson handed out copies to whoever wanted one. No, that’s really lame. I debate whether I’d rather cool Jacob be a creepy stalker or find out that Robinson so doesn’t get the mix as a personal thing that he’d hand out copies to whoever wanted them.

There’s nothing like the feeling of being swept off your feet in the middle of a train station or airport. Okay, I don’t have the airport experience, but the train station part rocks. Robinson shows up with a little tacky snow globe of a mini-Manhattan and shakes it so I can see the snow glitter fall. We kiss for what feels like an hour and then run outside, my bag slung over his shoulder, and jump in a cab heading uptown.

I wish I’d paid more attention to Monopoly properties because then the Park Avenue value would have registered prior to my showing up at his doorman building and being greeted by name (name = Miss Bukowski). We don’t need keys because the elevator opens directly into the entryway of his apartment.

“It’s actually two apartments we combined,” Robinson explains on the tour. He points out where the division line used to be, where now there’s a double-length living room and a kitchen that looks like something of out a magazine.

My room — Robinson shows me this with a wink — is a mélange of creams, beiges, and blues, with ironed sheets and bolster cushions, heavy drapes that pull back to reveal a view of building tops and toy-sized taxis. I want to ask Robinson what it was like to grow up here; in Manhattan but also in this apartment. I want to know his memories and the meaning behind some of the framed artwork that hangs on the wall. But there’s no time to sit and chill out.

As soon as I drop my bag and wash my face Robinson whisks me into the library, a paneled room with an entire wall of leather-bound antique volumes and speakeasy-style club chairs that face an entertainment system worthy of a Coppola. And then I remember his dad
is
like a Coppola and I feel better.

“We can screen something later if you want,” Robinson says, noticing me noticing the full-size movie screen.

Rather than the family meal I pictured for tonight, I get a full five minutes with his mother, Belinda — Bissy — who casts a subtle, practiced eye over me and my casual-yet-put-together outfit.

“I gather your father is rather a well-known figure on campus,” Bissy says. She slides a tiny tray of sushi towards me like it’s a normal afternoon snack and I take a California roll to be polite. Then I try to speak intelligibly about Dad and my summer plans while chewing on seaweed.

“So, yeah,” I conclude, “My ideal world would be a Rolling Stone internship, but I’ll probably wind up babysitting or…”

Bissy interrupts and tilts her head to Robinson, “Who do we know at Rolling Stone? Does Marcus still work there? What about — what was that one with the long hair — Genevieve?” Robinson shrugs and eats another piece of ebi.

I’m about to be excited, maybe she’s a real connection to a summer that doesn’t suck. But then the glimmer of hope is extinguished when she drifts off towards the kitchen and forgets all about it. “Well, you kids have fun tonight and Love, you must come to the Hamptons this summer.”

“Will you?” Robinson asks when we’re waiting for the elevator to take us downstairs and way downtown to some club.

“Do you want me to?” I ask, knowing full well he does. He nods and does a fake puppy dog pant. We haven’t spoken much about his plans for NYU in the fall — I mean, I guess we could keep going long distance, but didn’t most senior-sophomore relationships end shortly after graduation? Right after a roll in the infamous sand at the Vineyard Cove party?

“Maybe,” I say. “If you play your cards right.”

Den of Cin (as in cinema) is this fun place downtown where you get to basically do karaoke but with movie scenes instead of songs. This is my introduction to the world of Movieoke. The person who started made a film in school where the main character could only communicate in movie lines (which I could totally relate to) — and now we all (all = me, Robinson, and his New York posse) write down scenes we want to do and wait for them to be cued up.

At the table, we pick at tempura vegetables, dipping them in spicy mustard and soy sauce. I take my time chewing so I can survey Robinson’s group. Paul is the nicest, an English guy who had retained only the slightest lilt after moving here when he was fourteen, Plant (whose name is something like Peter Ficus, but who has been deemed Plant forever), and a couple of girls. One Robinson doesn’t know — and sadly, she seems like the most down to earth. The other two — Kai (like Chai, only not as sweet, with cropped hair and a bright red mouth) and Lindsay Parrish, whose moniker sounds diminutive and possibly sweet and chaste but whose personality and form beg to differ. Lindsay Parrish introduces herself as Ms. Manhattan to Robinson’s Mr., and from there, I can tell it’s a battle brewing.

Not that I did anything except show up to inspire the claws and fangs I feel sprouting under the table from Lindsay’s long fingers and limbs. Everything about her seems stretched — wide smile with blinding teeth, her impossibly long jean-clad legs, her bangled wrists. She’s too cool for me; a flat celluloid image. Flat except for the boobs. Those are 3-D (literally).

“You’re up,” Robinson says. He ventures in front of the screen with me and, with his friends, we redo the scene from
The Breakfast Club
where Claire (me, even though it was obvious that Ms. Manhattan wanted it, but got the Alley Sheedy role and then pronounced it far more important anyway) puts lipstick on via sticking the tube of it between her breasts.

Well, I figure, I’ve certainly got the correct anatomy for the role, and the scene goes well. Maybe too well. With Robinson fake-clapping the Judd Nelson part and real lipstick (Kai’s red — a bad choice for me) smeared on my lips. I step down and wipe my mouth.

After a few more rounds, we head to some bar where Kai and Lindsay Parrish double-kiss a plethora of identical boys in black tee-shirts who wander in and out of conversation. Robinson makes sure I’m well oiled (his words, not mine) with martinis but leaves me periodically to chat with leggy women and guys from grade school or the Hamptons or wherever people like this meet. English Paul keeps me entertained with a running commentary of people’s downfalls and connections. For example; “That’s Billy Katchum, who used to date Lindsay, but who shagged that girl — the one with the obvious implants — last summer. And next to her is Sydney, who just got out of rehab, but who, from the looks of it, needs a roundtrip ticket.”

I’m amused, but hollow by the end of the evening. I want so much to hang out and just talk — eat pizza and chill at Robinson’s house, getting to know people who know his old stories — the non-Hadley Hall ones. Then, it occurs to me, as we’re split up for the ride back uptown, that this might be the non-Hadley Hall Robinson Hall. A mouthful — but not in a good way.

“You coming in?” Robinson, drink in hand, tee-shirt and boxers on stands in the doorway. He’s so gorgeous. I motion for him to come over to me. “So, what’d you think of them?”

“Your friends? They’re nice. Thanks.”

“That’s it?” he asks, let down. “Isn’t LP just the best?”

“LP?”

He rolls his eyes as if I’m clueless, which I am. “Lindsay Parrish. She’s been in my life since nursery school — you know, that girl that used to pull on my hair and I’d push her down.”