Take It Off (19 page)

I woke up feeling really great. But that was before I opened my eyes, of course, and once I made that mistake, I remembered that I was in a smelly room with linoleum floors. I still had a taste of my dream of Flan, though, and that felt good, and also gave me resolve to get the hell out of here. Suki wasn't in the room, either, and that was a relief. Waking up next to her over and over was making feel a little tawdry somehow.

I got myself together and went downstairs. I took my bag with me, just in case—this place was probably full of thieves. Someone was playing guitar in the second-floor lounge, and when I got there I saw that Suki was chilling with a lot of dirty backpackers. There were about five guys, four of them with dreads and layers of weathered clothes, and the other blond and pretty clean-cut. They were drinking espresso from the automatic espresso machine and smoking, again. She
didn't notice me, so I slipped downstairs and tried to put a collect call through to my house, but nobody picked up, so I tried Flan's again, but nobody picked up there, either. So I went back upstairs and stood in the doorway until Suki looked up at me.

“Isn't it a little bit early for smoking?”

“Oh, that's my friend Jonathan,” she said blandly.

The guys sort of half waved.

“I'm glad you're up,” she said. “I had to return the key, since we don't have enough money to stay another night, and we were supposed to be out of the room by eleven. It's twenty of noon, you know.”

“Great,” I said sarcastically.

“Um, yeah.” Suki matched my sarcasm, and then glared at me.

“Well, I just tried my mom and stepbrother and they're not picking up. So I don't know what to do, except go check my e-mail and see if my stepbrother sent a number where my mom can be reached.”

“Fine,” Suki said with a little impatient cough. She stood up and went around in a circle kissing everyone on both cheeks and saying good-bye in
Spanish. Every time she did this, she leaned over and stuck her butt up in the air in my direction. It was too pathetic for me to watch. When she got to the last—the one blond guy, I think it was—I heard her smacking the two kisses, and then she made this little murmuring noise that made my stomach turn. Why would she put on this show for me? He said good-bye in American-accented English, and he told her to take the rest of his cigarettes with her. When we were outside, she said, “The guys said the Internet café was on Las Ramblas, about four blocks down.”

“‘The guys'?”

Suki smiled. “Are you jealous?”

“Yeah, right.” I had to laugh at that one.

Outside, I realized that Suki was right. It was past noon. The whole city was out, sitting at the cafés and strolling slowly. It was a lovely, breezy kind of day without a cloud in the sky. We found the Internet place pretty easily. It was about the cleanest place I'd been to in all of Spain. It was all chrome and white walls, and I happily used the last of my coins to get us some time on the computers.

My heart fluttered a little bit as my e-mail account opened up, but there was nothing from
Flan. There was nothing from Rob, either, which was both annoying and confusing. A) If he really felt all brotherly with me, how had he not found time to e-mail me my mom's number at Canyon Ranch? and B) Why had he even pretended to be buddies with me in the first place? We were so obviously not. There was one e-mail from David, which basically said nothing except sort of question my interest in Flan, which was definitely not what I wanted to hear from David. Was he on Rob's side or what?

Suki was typing away next to me, and smiling to herself, which seemed inappropriate, so I looked back at the screen and tried to think of something else I could do. I looked at my ghostly reflection in the screen—very gaunt, very Lower East Side. I didn't even look like myself. Which was when I started thinking of the guy Suki had made little murmuring noises at not long ago. And as I thought about his gaunt, snarky face I realized I'd seen it before.

“Oh, my God, what was that guy's name?”

“Which guy?”

“The blond guy you slobbered on this morning.”

“Watch it.”

“You know who I'm talking about.”

“I dunno, Tony, I think he said. I didn't slobber on him, he just bought me an espresso and bummed me a few cigs.”

“Tony? Like …
Anthony
? As in,
Rhett Anthony Turner.
Oh, my God. You know who that was!?”

“Who?”

“The Savage.”

“No.”

“I mean, he wasn't a Savage this morning. But that was the Savage.”

“Oh, my God.” Suki looked genuinely upset. I almost felt bad about the slobbering comment. “And you know what his initials spell?”

We looked at each other and said “Rat” at the same time. “How appropriate,” I added.

We ran out of the Internet café and back to the hostel. When we got back to the lounge, we saw the four dreads sitting around. Suki talked to them in Spanish for a minute.

“They say they don't know who he is or where he went,” she told me.

We went into the reception area and I went up to the clerk. “Have you seen a Savage?”

“Cómo?”

“A Savage. But he doesn't look like a Savage
now. A tall—”

Suki interrupted me to explain to the woman. But she just shook her head.

So for about half a day we ran around the city looking for him until we were exhausted and sweaty and panting and in a complete state of despair.

We were on the dock at this point and the sky was turning rosy as the sun went low over the buildings behind us. On the other side of the dock, the beach began and it ran north along the edge of the city as far as I could see. Suki was looking at it, too, and eventually she said, “We might as well walk down there and find a nice place to rest. Because we got zero dollars, and there's no way we're getting another hotel room for the night.”

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Hey man. This is weird, me sending you an e-mail, huh? Anyway, I went shopping with your sisters on Ludlow Street yesterday. Did you know that a pair of girl's jeans goes for more than $100 these days? Apparently, we're talking a pretty average everyday pair of jeans here, according to Feb. Can you believe that? Oh, and I saw Selina Trieff, too. She was walking around with that girl Liesel who Arno used to be with and I don't think she recognized me. Selina wanted to know where you'd disappeared to. How's life on the open seas treating you? Miss you dude, send me a shout out when you get a chance. David.

“Pa-atch,” a voice came through the door, “are you there, handsome?”

Patch shot up in bed and looked around him. His hair was roughed up in a million directions, and he wasn't wearing a shirt. It was past noon.

“Hold on,” he yelled, and looked around for a shirt.

“Pa-atch, where have you bee-en?” singsonged the voice. “I
missed
you.”

Patch found a rumpled white T-shirt on the floor and pulled it over his long, tan torso. He seemed to still be getting taller every day, and he had that long, lean skater look to him. He smelled himself before he went to the door to make sure he didn't smell too incriminating. Which he did. He pulled open the door, and saw Stephanie standing there with a big bunch of flowers and a huge, toothy smile. “Where've you been?” she whined flirtingly.

“Um …”

“Can I come in?” she asked, pushing past him. “I mean, this whole canceling of day trips is a bummer, but I think it'll give us some time to hang around …
in bed,
and … Oh, I …” Stephanie stopped talking when she saw Greta pulling Patch's sheets over herself. “Hi, Greta,” she said, sounding a little stunned and a lot confused. Greta's hair was messed up, too. It was definitely bed hair.

“Hi, Stephanie,” Greta said.

Stephanie looked at Patch for an explanation. He shrugged.

“Patch, can you explain to me
why
…,” Stephanie began, her mouth hanging open in disbelief.

“Um, Steph—”

“I mean, what is that
little girl
doing in your
bed
!”

“I think you better go.”

Something broke across Stephanie's face right then, like she might cry. She threw the bouquet of flowers at Greta. They hit the wall behind her, and then broke apart and fell around her on the blankets.

“Oh, no you don't!” Stephanie shrieked. “Don't think you can just dog
me.
There are rules against this sort of thing, you know. Any girl found sleeping in a boy's cabin or vice versa will be kicked off the ship, and this looks pretty goddamned incriminating to me. I'm gonna send you where all your friends went, except
somewhere worse.
Way
worse.”

“Steph,” Patch said. He was frustrated, but not quite worried yet.

“Don't
Steph
me. We're over, we're over!”

“Um, I don't think, technically, we were ever together …”

“Oh, yeah? Pack your shit! You're out of here!”

“Ms. Rayder?” They both turned and looked at Greta. She had stood up, and she was wrapped in a sheet with her reddish hair falling down her back. A few pale pink roses fell off the bed as she stepped toward them. She held up a card that she had taken from the bouquet. “This might be a teensy-weensy bit more incriminating. You want me to read? Okay. ‘Dear Patch. I've really enjoyed the blossoming of our friendship, and now I know I want my flower to blossom for you. Let's have an early Valentine's. Be mine, xo Stephanie.'” Greta giggled. “Incriminating,
and
cheesy.”

Stephanie stamped her foot and put her arms over her big chest. She looked either like she was about to start spitting flame or pouting.

“I think you'd better go,” Patch said.

“Well …” Stephanie's lips were trembling as she attempted some kind of last word. “Well … neither of you can expect any college recommendations from
me
!”
She fled the room, slamming the door behind her.

Patch looked at Greta and smiled. The sun coming through the porthole lit up her hair in this really beautiful way. He moved toward her and pulled her down into the sheets with him. They rolled around and got hopelessly twisted up and burst out laughing.

“You, I'm not letting go of,” Patch said, and then he smiled.

Angelina and her friends wound their way through the city like a charmed circus troupe, with Angelina as the leader. She carried a white parasol, and as she walked she rested her arm around Mickey's shoulder. The rest of the group were dressed in their flowing, colorful bohemian threads, and they carried picnic baskets and blankets and big umbrellas. When they reached the beach, they walked along it for a long time, until they found a relatively uninhabited place, and then they set up. Everyone smoked up, and then Mickey ran around entertaining them with cartwheels and back-flips.

One guy had brought a guitar, and he started playing an intricate flamencolike tune. A picnic lunch of olives and aged Manchego and red wine was passed around, and Mickey started feeling warm and lazy and good. He squirmed his way in between Isabel and Susana, Angelina's two younger sisters. They looked like mini versions of her, skinny and tan with droopy dark eyes and long hair that fell below their waists.

Other friends came in from the city, and Angelina kissed them three times on the cheek hello and insisted that they meet Mickey. One of them was wearing a huge crown of twigs on his head. Because of the crown, his blond hair, and long, thin features, he looked like Christ.

“That's Rhett,” Angelina told Mickey, by way of explanation. “He's a performance artist.”

“Oh.” Mickey shook the guy's hand, then rested back between Isabel and Susana.

That was when he saw the lone figure, sort of stumbling down the beach. The guy was dragging a suitcase behind him, and his hair was messed up, and he looked like he hadn't had anything to eat or drink in a while. Mickey sat up and called out to him.

The guy looked around blearily and dropped his case. It was definitely Arno, although he looked scrubbier than pretty much ever. Mickey was so happy to see him, he forgot they were fighting at all. He ran over and gave him a rambunctious hug, knocking him to the ground.

“What happened to you? You look like shit!” Mickey yelled even though he was on top of Arno now.

“They threw me out of the hotel I was supposed to stay in, and they stole my money,” Arno croaked.

Mickey remembered how angry he had been, but
Arno seemed so pathetic that it was hard to keep it up. He dragged him over to the picnic and introduced him to everybody. The girls immediately pulled Arno down onto the blankets and began feeding him with their hands and combing his hair with their fingers.

Once he was feeling revived, Arno went with Mickey for a walk down to the water.

“How did you find these people?”

Mickey was drawing a blank, so he just said, “Through Angelina.”

“She's hot.”

Mickey gave him a look.

“Sorry, man,” Arno said. He hung his head, and Mickey knew he meant it.

“Yeah, be careful, anyway. She's a big flirt and she's got a boyfriend.”

“Oh. Anyway, I can't believe I left you for twentyfour hours and already you have new friends.”

Mickey rubbed his eyes. “Twenty-four hours? Is that it? I feel like I've been in that house for days.”

“House?”

“Yeah, we'll stay there tonight. And then what do you say we split? I'm digging this whole Barcelona scene. But I feel like if I don't get out soon I'll be stuck here forever, drinking bitter coffee and having serious conversations about flirting or some shit
for the rest of my life.”