Sex Kittens and Horn Dawgs Fall in Love (17 page)

The lights of the George Washington Bridge are strung in a perfect arch, like a thousand fireflies in a meticulously planned aerial ballet. I’m watching the lights get closer and closer when Randall, furious, finds me.

“There you are!” I say, trying to sound happy and not all “Where the
bleepsky bleep
have you been?”

But Randall isn’t here for chitchat. “Why couldn’t you tell the truth?” he asks, as if I know what he’s talking about. “I would have understood! But to pretend you liked me when you still like Matthew is just—mean! I was looking forward to tonight, Felicia, because I really liked you, and I still do, and now I feel awful!”

“What?” I say, bewildered. “What are you talking about?”

“I saw you together!” he cries. “You and Matthew! He’s the one you really want, right? So what does that make me? Another one of your goofy experiments?”

I’m flabbergasted by how upset he is. Remember, I still don’t know what he saw. I don’t figure that out till the next day, when Jess comes by my apartment to give me back my sweater and we compare notes and start screaming.

But it doesn’t matter, because right now Randall’s standing here, totally upset with me, and there’s more than a teaspoon of truth in his accusations.

“Randall,” I say weakly. “I don’t know what you mean. I’ve been in the cabin listening to Kat and Jacob play. And then I came out here looking for you.”

And of course, that’s when Matthew shows up, panting, wild-eyed, overflowing with feeling. He’s almost unrecognizable.

“Felicia!” he says with passion. “There you are! I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”

The look on Randall’s face is terrible.

Matthew sees his friend. “Hey, Randall,” he ventures.

But Randall, with absolutely no reason to doubt the evidence of his own eyes, is gone.

Randall! I call, on the inside. But my voice is frozen.

Matthew doesn’t notice, because he can’t stop talking. “Listen! Felicia, I feel like I have to tell you this right now before I forget what it feels like. I did it! I talked to Jess, I was open, like you said. I said everything! I mean, I’ve never talked to anybody before in my whole life like that! In a way it was awful, because—”

“She said no,” I say, tearing up. “I’m so sorry, Matthew. I knew she wasn’t interested, it was mean of me not to tell you—”

“Wait-wait-wait,” he says, wanting to finish. “In a way it was awful, and in a way it was, I don’t know. Cool. Just to say all those things to someone, and have my heart totally break, and still be alive, the moment after. Here, in this beautiful place. Like getting a second chance, or something.”

I wish I could follow his meaning, but I can’t just now.

“So that’s what I wanted to tell you,” he concludes. “That’s it.” I nod, sniffling in time to the waves, a moist, improvised duet.

The lights of the bridge are getting very close now. Soon we’ll be passing underneath.

“You—you knew she wasn’t interested?” Matthew asks after a moment.

“I should have told you before,” I say, sadder than sad. How can I explain? “But I was hoping your experiment might work.”

Which I was, more or less, when I still had a boyfriend and wished similar joy on all the world. That was a long time ago, though.

“Oh,” says Matthew, his euphoria slowly deflating like a dying balloon.

The lights of the bridge loom ahead. “How’s Randall?” Matthew asks.

“Fine,” I say, numb. “I think he just broke up with me.”

“Oh,” says Matthew. His mouth is O shaped. “Oh.”

It’s a long way round Manhattan by boat. There are no shortcuts. You can’t cut across Central Park or change your mind in Midtown and hail a cab to take you home early.

So there’s plenty of time to stare at the water, not talking, and think. Or to try with all your might not to think, of anything.

Matthew and I are alone on deck. Wherever Kat and Jacob are they’re playing music again, but together this time. I can hear their intertwined melodies faintly on the wind.

Once upon a time, I would have dreamed this moment. Me and Matthew, in the starlight, music playing in the background. The surface of the Hudson shimmers around us, lapping out the rhythms of all the great love poems of the world against the hull of our own private Love Boat. Lovers embrace, fade-out and happy ending guaranteed.

“I guess the Romantic Setting was a bust,” Matthew says, sounding glum. I know he’s thinking of Jess.

“Guess so,” I say, thinking of Randall’s hurt face.

“Felicia,” Matthew begins. It feels weird to hear him say my name. “You don’t still have a crush on me, do you?”

I search my heart.

“Not really,” I say. It’s mostly true.

“Good,” he says. “I hate to think you ever felt like I do now. It’s awful.”

“I know,” I say.

But the Romantic Setting has a fearsome and powerful mojo and will not be mocked. As Matthew and I stand there, half in the shadow of the bridge, with a thousand twinkling fireflies above and New Jersey to the west, we are unmistakably standing much, much closer together than we typically do.

“Look at the George Washington Bridge,” I say. It’s above us, sparkling like a jeweled runway.

“Yes. The traffic is terrible,” says Matthew, turning his head so it’s very close to mine.

Then, powered by starlight, nudged closer by music, as if our lips thought of it themselves, we kiss.

His lips are dryer than I’d always imagined they would be. My heart is calmer. The kiss is sweet. My kitten heels remain strangely unmoved.

“That was nice,” I say, reaching up and pushing his hair off his forehead, as I’ve so often longed to do. It falls back as soon as I move my hand away.

“I’m sorry about, you know,” he says. “The way everything’s turned out.”

“Me too,” I say, hiding in his arms against the salty wind that starts to kick up as we’re standing there. Jess still has my sweater. “I am, too.”

And I feel the last wisp of Matthew-X spread its wings and fly away from my heart, catching a ride on the salt breeze to who knows where.

That night I didn’t even bother to tell my mom why, because it was too big to tell. But I crawled into the Murphy bed next to her and I cried and cried till I fell asleep. She kept stroking my sticky, sprayed hair and I think, before I actually conked out, that I might have heard her crying a little bit, too.

16

An Unexpected Switcheroo Is Our
Fifth and Final Experiment

The Haiku of Why

Why why why why why?
In ev’ry season we ask:
Why why why why why?

W
hy?

Why can’t everything happen the way it’s supposed to?

Why can’t the Dawgs we love, love us back?

Why can’t X come when called, sit, stay?

Why, as Charles asked me once, on a romp with Moose at a park in New Jersey, where it seemed as if every single person in the world was walking a dog: why are all dogs cute?

The dog world has Great Danes and miniature collies, dachshunds and dingoes, and yet Charles is right, they’re all cute. I didn’t know what to tell him, except to say that all dogs, like all babies, seem to exude a lovable perfection that has nothing to do with their size or shape or color or breed, their length of tail or shape of ear.

Dogs never lose this universal lovability mojo, but we do. Like a baby tooth, it lets go at the root and one day it’s gone. Then the fun begins. Some people fall in love with us and some people don’t. Some people we can love back, some we can’t. And some couples grow closer over time, while many, too many, just grow further apart.

But before that happens? When X is in its newborn, elemental form? That’s the true stuff, the über-X, the X-peranto language of love that everyone can speak. The dogs in the park have it, bunnies and kittens have it, and Charles still has it, at four.

I don’t know exactly when it goes. Somewhere between four and fourteen, though.

But now for some happy news (insert pulsing theme music from Caucasian News Network’s evening broadcast here):

In an exclusive story, our sources report that Kat’s recital was a beyond-grande, beyond-venti, ultrasupersized success!

And Dmitri helped! But NOT by playing the piano.

What happened, believe it or
nyet,
was this:

Jess, like the true-blue Kittenpal she is, actually did spend part of her brooding yakfest with Dmitri trying to get him to change his mind about Kat’s recital. “And, boy, did he get agitated!” Jess told us afterward. “ ‘So what,’ he said, ‘another pretty girl with a violin! The record companies don’t care. All they want is a horse and pony show,’ but I think he meant dog and pony. Anyway, he was very bitter and said there is no music anymore, just a circus, and Kat would be better off learning to juggle than wasting time on a recital unless she came up with something nobody had done before, and what was he, just another failed Russian pianist, and so on. It went on like that for a while. But the POINT is,” Jess concluded, “you HAVE come up with something that nobody has done before, and it’s going to be GREAT!”

And that is how Kat finally decided to use Jacob as the accompanist for her recital. For her totally smokin’, completely unprecedented, classical-violin-repertoire-meets-sitar-jammin’ recital that came as near to blowing the roof off the recital hall as any performance Mr. Edgar Chorloff, legendary head of Argosy Records, could remember hearing in his fifty-year career of Making Stars.

“He told me he got his chill!” exults Kat after the recital is done and we’re all clustered around the stage, worshipping her and Jacob. Mr. Chorloff practically pole-vaulted to the front of the hall to embrace Kat before the rest of the receiving line could form. “That’s what Mr. Chorloff calls it. The chill he gets when he knows something is going to be big! He says we’re fresh and original and that’s what he’s always looking for and almost never finds. He wants us in his office on Monday!” She throws her arms around Jacob’s neck and hugs him, hugs him, hugs him.

Jacob, who claims to cultivate an Eastern sense of detachment, not getting too bummed about the bad things and not going too wild about the good, since everything’s always changing anyway, cannot resist acting just this once like he won the Mega Millions.

“Whooooooo!”
he cries, jumping up and down with Kat.
“Whooooooo!”

I’m happy for their happiness, but inside I’m lugging around a little suitcase of sad. And Randall is giving ME the invisible treatment. My mega-apologetic e-mail (written in haste and at great length after Jess and I figured out the et sweatera snafu!) is still Status Unread, and he refuses to even make eye contact at school. He came to the recital, as befits his position as Kat’s former pretend boyfriend, but sat by himself and snuck out during the applause, before I could even think of something useless and stupid to say to him.

Matthew came to the recital, too, and Trip and Deej, of course. Deej even lent Kat that knockout yellow sheath dress for the occasion. With her swingy, butter-colored hair and the creamy yellow dress, Kat looked gorgeous, like a shaft of sunlight on the stage.

And guess who else showed up? Jacob’s
maman,
the illustrious Mother Thespian herself. Her
Medea
had been extended and then she had a small independent film to shoot, so she’d been in Canada filming. They wrapped yesterday and she high-tailed it back to New York, coming directly from the airport to the recital hall. Jacob is used to her being away so much, of course, but you could tell he was tickled she made it.

A good thing she did, too! Before the recital, Kat’s biggest worry was how her dad would take the whole Rachmaninoff-with-a-sitar concept. Now that it’s over, Mr. Arlovsky is visibly struggling to say something nice. He certainly appreciates Jacob’s musicianship, as well as his excellent manners.

“But what about the composer’s intentions?” he starts in, unable to resist the argument. “No, no, Katarina, don’t roll your eyes! You must consider: when does creativity of interpretation stop and the destruction of centuries of musical tradition begin—”

But in that split second, as the crowd disperses and he gets his first eyeful of Jacob’s mother sitting in the auditorium, Mr. Arlovsky forgets all about centuries of musical tradition and pretty much everything else.

“Excuse me! But do you know who that is?” Mr. Arlovsky exclaims, clutching his chest. “That is Elizabeth Baxter! The greatest classical actress of our time!” He turns to Kat. “What is she doing here, Katushka?”

“Well,” says Kat, turning to her fellow musician. “I think Jacob should tell you.”

Jacob grins, a little bashful. “Easy to explain, sir. She’s my mom.”

“Elizabeth Baxter is your MOTHER?” Mr. Arlovsky struggles to keep his voice low.
“Bleepsky bleeping Streepsky
bleep!”
He kisses Jacob hard on both cheeks and strides over to where Mother Thespian sits with her luggage, patiently waiting for her son to gather up his accolades so they can, at long last, go home.

New Yorkers are funny about famous people. They’ll strike up a conversation with an ordinary stranger at the drop of a hat but believe the truly famous are entitled to some privacy. So, though there has been much pointing and whispering from a discreet distance, Elizabeth Baxter is sitting quite alone, fanning herself with her program and looking every inch the legend of stage and screen that she is.

Mr. Arlovsky clicks his heels together and bows. “Madame,” he says, in his Russian-inflected bass. “I saw your Nina in
The Seagull
many years ago, when you were on tour in St. Petersburg. It was impossible to believe that a non-Russian woman like yourself could capture, with such perfection, the beauty of this play! And in English, no less! Such a feeble language, compared to Russian! I have been your devoted follower ever since. Your Masha, Arkadina, Ranyevskaya—I have seen them all. You are—a divinity!”

“Not a bad speech, considering the feebleness of the language!” Kat whispers to me, giggling.

The greatest classical actress of our time has no doubt heard similar praise before. But she smiles with such delight you’d think she’d just opened her acceptance letter to drama school. “You are so very kind,” Elizabeth Baxter says, in those famously expressive tones. “And, you are Russian?”

“Da!”
says Mr. Arlovsky with pride.

The Divinity gestures for him to sit beside her. “May I ask you something?” she says irresistibly. “There is another of your countrymen here. I overheard him purchasing his ticket in the lobby, and that wonderfully attractive accent you share was unmistakable.”

Mr. Arlovsky starts to blush, red as the rubies in a Fabergé egg.

“I was hoping you might know who he was,” coos Elizabeth Baxter. “I’m eager to speak to him about an important professional matter.”

“Who?” cries Mr. Arlovsky. “I will bring him to you immediately! Only a fool would refuse such an invitation.”

“That man,” she says. She indicates the back of the hall with a toss of her photogenic head.

Slouched against the back wall of the auditorium, here out of guilt, or curiosity, or just to check out the competition, is Dmitri.

Sleepy-faced, tousle-haired Dmitri, with fire and melancholy in his eyes, his curved pouty lips pink against the hungover sallowness of his skin, with bone structure like Old European royalty and really, really nice buns.

Elizabeth Baxter’s voice is a soft, velvet purr, but her appraisal is cool and objective as the weekly box-office grosses in
Variety
.

“That man,” she says. “That man needs a screen test.”

“I love that we can share our clothes!” says Deej. “I always wanted to share my stuff with somebody, but all my girl cousins got too much—” Deej holds her hands out in front of her chest to indicate the magnitude of her cousins’ ample boobs.

Kat, Jess, Deej, and I are lunching at our favorite booth at the Moonbeam. It’s nice to be without Dawgs for a change. There’s been so much falling into, falling out of, wanting and yearning and pining lately, I almost forgot that just hanging out with the Kittensistahs is all that.

“A boyfriend”—I hear my mom’s voice, tickling in my brain—“a
boyfriend
is NOT the only golden road—”

But the tickle is interrupted as the Moonie delivers our cheeseburgers, flawlessly remembering that Kat’s has extra onion and Jess’s has Swiss instead of cheddar.

“Speaking of bosoms,” says Deej, “my cousin Norma”—at which point we all hold our hands in front of our chests and crack up laughing—“just got engaged, and I need something to wear to the party. Do you have anything full-length?”

“Tons!” says Kat. “A whole closet full of recital dresses, you have to come over and look. My mom sends one every few months from Moscow. I think she thinks that’s all people wear in New York. There’s a really pretty white one I’ve never worn—I’m afraid it’ll fall off when I play! Form-fitting and strapless. You would look so great in it.”

“That sounds cute!” Deej agrees. “But white is too bridey for an engagement party. I don’t wanna confuse the issue of who’s getting married. My cousin has everyone confused enough!”

As we consume our burgers like the ferocious felines we are, Deej tells us the saga of her (insert hands in front of chest) boobalicious cousin Norma.

“Norma,” she begins, “was hooked up with this guy Michael for like, two years. Michael’s sweet, not too bright, but they got along, except for one thing: all the time she’s complaining to him, ‘Michael, your best friend Travis is no good, I don’t like that brother, he is bad news, you should shake him loose.’ Why she talked like that nobody knows, ’cause Travis is a brother who’s got some GAME. There is NOTHING wrong with Travis, are you following me, people?”

We’re following. Deej continues. “Then comes her birthday, right, and Norma lifts up her bosoms and puts her hands on her hips and says, later for this, I’m giving myself a present I’ve been wanting for a long time. And she says goodbye, Michael, and that very week she announces her engagement, to be married, till death do them part, to none other than—”

“Travis!” we all yell, too loud for a restaurant.

“That’s right! And they’re crazy in love!” says Deej. “She and Michael were all right, but her and Travis are soul mates. You have never seen anything like it.”

“Definitely skip the white dress!” says Jess, chuckling and sticking a french fry in her mouth.

“Wait,” I say, my every well-honed reflex of scientific curiosity on red alert. “You mean she got engaged to her soul mate after dating his best friend for two years? And treating him—the soul mate, I mean—like, well, like she didn’t like him?”

“She treated him like a DOG!” Deej says, laughing. “It was painful to watch. But now she and Travis are hooked up Hollywood style, happy ending and fade out. They are together 4-evahmore.”

The Moonie scribbles something on a check and slides it onto our table, where it ends up in front of me.

But I don’t have to read it. I already know what it says.

Matthew and I are in the lab, literally hopping around with excitement at the insight offered by the story of Boobalicious Norma.

But we are up against the clock. Today is Wednesday, the science fair is Monday, and Saturday I’m supposed to go to Lauraville. Before then we have charts to draw, handouts to type up, and the required oral presentation to write and rehearse, so there’s hardly time for one more experiment. However:

Randall is still really, really mad at me. I don’t think he’s too pleased with Matthew, either.