Take It Off (15 page)

So Suki took a bath, and I went out and took in the view from our terrace, which was pretty fantastic. We faced west, and all along the bay I could see the glittering lights of nightclubs and restaurants and promenades, and all the lovely people enjoying long, lazy nights. Or wild, adrenaline-filled nights, as the case may be. Out beyond the bay, I could see a little corner of open ocean and I imagined that that's where we were headed tomorrow, in a straight line across the water to Barcelona. The situation definitely called for something expensive and drinkable, so I opened the minibar and uncorked a bottle of champagne. I poured us each a glass, and when Suki came out in her white robe we drank it together in silence and enjoyed the cool ocean breeze and the uncompromised comfort of it all.

Then we did what anybody in our situation would do: We ordered American-style omelets with potatoes and toast and a side of pancakes from room service, and we ate breakfast for dinner on the bed in our bathrobes while watching cheesy Spanish television, and periodically making very dramatic accusations and ultimatums (like, “I know you have been making love to the one-legged priest,” and, “If you don't murder your lover I will be forced to have an illegitimate child with your father”) at each other in gibberish Spanish. As Suki delivered her over-the-top lines, she pulled at the collar of her bathrobe as though she were about to rip it off, and I couldn't help but notice the smooth, pale skin between her perfect little breasts. I wasn't leering or anything, but she was definitely hot, and I began to get why Mickey and Arno were so excited about her.

At some point, there was no more champagne, so we ordered more from room service, and then we danced on the bed and sang “November Rain” at the top of our lungs (she did the words, and I did the guitar solos) and when our champagne flutes were empty we threw them down on the ground and watched them shatter. We thought this was hilarious.

Eventually we collapsed on the very large, very soft bed, and fell asleep.

I wish I could tell you that the rest of our adventure was more of the same and end it here, but that would be a lie.

“What the fuck was that?” Arno had been sleeping fitfully for a few hours, but when he heard the yowl outside the tent, he was definitely awake. Greta and Mickey sat up, and they all peeped outside. Prowling the campsite were four or five mangy-looking dogs.

“Coyotes,” Mickey said.

“No, just wild dogs,” Arno said. He scooted out from the palm tent and grabbed one of the sticks they had been using to tend the fire. He thrust it into the remaining embers, so that the end caught into flame. He waved it back and forth at the dogs, who howled at him but didn't come any closer.

Arno grabbed one of the many pieces of leftover fish and threw it far into the night.

“Now
git!”
he shouted, sounding more cowboylike than he had meant to. Or than he thought was capable of. The dogs scattered after the fish. Arno took a seat by the fire, feeling revved. He stayed there, long after Mickey and Greta had gone back to sleep. He thought
about them in the tent by themselves, and how Mickey might be making a move. He thought about loneliness, and lots of other weighty topics that usually never occurred to him, or, frankly, ever touched on his everyday life. After a while, when he was very tired and convinced that the dogs weren't coming back, he crawled back into the tent and shut his eyes.

He felt beat and capable and much better about himself. As his mind faded into dream, he felt Greta turn in her sleep and curl up against him.
That's right
, he thought,
in their subconscious minds all girls, even the ones with boyfriends, dream of me
.

“All right, sailors, race begins in half an hour!”

The little group camped high above the rocky cove stirred but didn't fully wake for several minutes. Mickey snored lightly, and Greta was still wrapped up in Arno's arms. When Stephanie made her second bullhorn announcement, they all lurched up and quickly assumed some new position. Stepping out of the makeshift tent, they saw that it was still early dawn, the sky rosy and the air crisp and new.

The
Ariadne
was far closer to the island than when the survival test had begun. They could see Stephanie's motorboat circling the island and waking up all the other teams. The staff had collected all the dinghies
during the night, and they had to wake up quickly for the race back to shore. Arno felt like something had happened during the night, like he was more focused and competitive and inside his own body now. He also thought that Greta looked entirely adorable, stretching to wake herself up and combing her hair with her fingers.

He watched Mickey moving foggily around the camp. It didn't really seem like competition to Arno.

They stamped out the embers in the fire, collected their survival kit, and headed down to the shore. When Stephanie shouted through the bullhorn, “On your marks. Get set. Go!” They all waded into the water, gasping at the cold and cursing themselves for having signed up for the test.

Perhaps because it was still so early in the day, they concentrated on their swimming and didn't think about the depth of the water, or how tired they were. They swam harder for several lengths, and when the three of them reached the
Ariadne
, in unison, just as the rules instructed, they popped out and saw that they were the first team to arrive. The crew threw down ladders from the top deck and they climbed back up to comfort and safety. When they reached the deck, they saw Barker and his guests, and Patch, who looked deeply bored, behind them.

“Team fifteen!” Barker boomed. “An excellent morning swim! You come in first place for the final segment of the test. Now go get yourselves cleaned up. We have breakfast on the deck in forty-five minutes, and as soon as we get all the teams on board we set sail for Barcelona.”

They slapped hands with Patch, and Greta gave him a kiss on the check, and then team fifteen headed to their individual cabins to clean off the cold memory of Barker Island.

When they reached Greta's cabin, Arno put his hand on her waist and said, “You were great today. And you should know that you look gorgeous all wet and flushed like that.”

“Uh, thanks,” Greta said. Arno winked and started walking down the hall.

Mickey looked after him furiously. He quickly kissed Greta on the cheek and then followed Arno down the hall.

“What the fuck was that?” he shouted after Arno. He didn't turn around, and when Mickey caught up to him he shoved Arno's shoulder. “I said, what the fuck was that?”

Arno did the eyebrow thing at him, which always made Mickey crazy. He ran at the wall behind him, bounced off it, and launched himself into Arno, who
artfully dodged him. Mickey smacked into the opposite wall.

Arno continued to walk toward his room, but Mickey came after him growling. “Hey man! What's wrong with you? Why are you always after the girl I like?” he shouted.

“Maybe I
like
her,” Arno said, shrugging. He pointed at the door of cabin 164. “That's me. Thanks for keeping up with me in the race today—I was pleasantly surprised, actually.” He stepped inside, then waved at Mickey, who looked like he was about to detonate. “Oh, and Mickey? Try and behave yourself.”

“See? This is totally what I was talking about,” Suki said.

I looked down at the silver tray of croissant, café con leche, melon, and orange juice, and felt a familiar irritation spreading from the back of my neck. We hadn't really been talking about anything, and I was still wearing what I was then thinking of as the best bathrobe in the world.

“What? What were you talking about?”

Suki giggled, ripped off a piece of croissant, and threw herself back into the pillows, where she nibbled at the croissant slowly and thoughtfully. Her black hair fanned out around her head.

“Well, it's like when we went on road trips when I was a kid … We'd go up to Napa, and drive all those crazy backroads. That was before they got them all fixed for the East Coast wine tourists. Well, my dad and my little brother were
always
the ones who had to ‘stop for a breath' and throw up, and my mom and I were always fine and just impatient to get where we were going …”

Would you have known what she was talking about? I sure didn't.

“Or it's like that time in anatomy class when we had to dissect cats … My partner was a guy and he couldn't handle the smell at all—they keep them in formaldehyde, you know—and he had to go outside while I …”

“Okay, I get it. Women are stronger than dudes. So then who got us into this hotel?”

“
Exactly
. I mean, there are all these cultural stereotypes that women are materialistic, and they need to be coddled, and blah blah blah. But look at you!
You
need pampering and comforting, not me. All men really want is to crawl up someplace safe and warm. And women have been accommodating them since the beginning of time.”

She seemed to be satisfied that she'd won the argument. So we read the
International Herald Tribune
, which is just as boring as the
New York Times,
because all the articles are basically from the
New York Times
, except there are fewer of them and they're all the international interest ones
about how, like, some beer maker in southern Germany whose family has made beer the same way for thousands of years is finally going out of business because of globalization and how sad that is.

Then we got dressed in our old dirty clothes and Suki suggested we go out the back way, because maybe then we could avoid paying our room service bill, and it was probably smarter to save our money. I agreed, even though this seemed really wrong to me, especially since I had plenty of money, just not on me. And what if I wanted to come back here with a girl sometime, like Flan, and see what Mallorca was like when I wasn't all stressed? But Suki was being her old, bossy self again, so we went down the back way all shifty like she wanted to. Before we did, I snuck two of the nice big hotel towels into her bag, just in case.

That was when we saw the boutique. It was tucked into one of the back corners of the first floor, between the restaurant and the pool. A very short, older Spanish woman was sitting on a stool inside smoking and looking imperious. She was wearing an impeccable Chanel suit, and her hair was pulled back severely into a gigantic bun.
Her eyebrows were drawn on in dramatic coal, and her eyelashes were thick, black, and definitely fake. I nudged Suki, and she reluctantly followed me in.

As I looked over the couple pairs of designer jeans and T-shirts they stocked in the men's section, Suki charmed the saleslady in Spanish. I admitted to myself that there was no way to acquire a new outfit and tore myself away, but by that time the shopkeeper and Suki had decided that Suki looked absolutely
preciosa
in a dusky pink Prada sundress. I don't know how we pulled it off (mostly because it was transacted in Spanish), but somehow we convinced her to charge the Prada sundress, a pair of Allaia jeans, and a D&G T-shirt to our room. After excessive
gracias, gracias,
and
de nada
s, we went and changed clothes in the poolside change room, and slipped through the hedges on the far side of the pool.

Banquet tables had been erected on the deck, and a breakfast of eggs, sausage, toast, hot coffee, and juice had been laid out for the Ocean Term students once they cleaned up. Barker took his place once all the students had taken theirs. The minister of tourism and his deputy were at Barker's left, and Stephanie and Patch were to his right. He said a few quick words, congratulating everyone, and then told them to eat. The students loaded their plates and ate as if they had been starving for days. The
Ariadne
moved at maximum speed, and by the time the plates were being cleared she was coming into the port of Barcelona.

Patch had been to Barcelona a couple times. When his dad was in his architecture phase he had brought all the Flood kids there to see the Gaudi buildings, which were all very intricate and covered with mosaic and eccentric detail. But he had never approached it by water, and the city looked much more modern and industrial to him when he came at it this way. The
harbor was wide, and huge tankers were crowding up the docks. In the early morning, the whole scene was glittery and futuristic and Patch was caught up in staring.

He snapped out of it when Stephanie stood up next to him and said, “Now to announce the winners.”

Patch didn't really care about winners. He felt most comfortable in the limbo of travel, and he had liked the Ocean Term adventure for a while. But some of it was really forced and stupid, and the whole thing was losing his interest. He especially disliked the competitive aspect of it all, which seemed counter to exploring places in a real way. Stephanie announced the first- and second-place winners, and some of the teams in front of him were cheering for themselves.

He looked over to see where his friends were. For a minute he couldn't place them, but then he did and it wasn't pretty. Mickey was jumping up and down and shaking his head like a boxer about to start a fight, and Arno was strutting around him and saying something that didn't look cool. Greta stood up from the table and tried to step in between them, but Arno pushed her away.

“And now, for first prize,” Stephanie called out, “will group number fifteen, Greta O'Grady, Arno Wildenburger, and Mickey Pardo, please stand!”

Everyone looked over to where Arno and Mickey were squaring off. Mickey barreled forward, with his head into Arno's chest, knocking him over. There was a gasp from the crowd of students. Then Arno and Mickey were rolling around on the deck, hitting and yelling at each other.