Take It Off (23 page)

“Well, princess, you're about to find out how
the people fly. Passports?” We handed them to her, and she looked them over. “You'll have to run.”

“Okay.”

“That'll be three hundred sixty dollars, then.” Suki handed over her card, and we waited breathlessly. A few moments later, the machine made an
Ehhhh
noise.

“Insufficient funds,” the agent said impatiently.

“Uh-oh.” I looked at Suki.

“I guess I finally ran out,” she said. “Those train tickets were kind of expensive.”

“Ahem,” the agent said, “Miss Davison, if you like, though I don't advise it, because you have an e-ticket, you
could
exchange the second leg of your trip, from JFK to SFO, so the young man can fly with you to New York. You'll have to figure something else out from there, though.”

“Okay,” I said quickly, and then I whispered to Suki: “When we get to New York, I promise I'll find a way for you to get home. I promise.”

“Right,” she whispered, rolling her eyes. Then she told the agent that that was fine. The agent printed our tickets and handed them to us with a good-riddance gesture.

The airport blurred by us as we hurried to our gate. When we got there, the stewardesses were just about to close the door. They ushered us on, saying, “You're late! All the way down to your left. You'll enter at row eleven, go all the way back and take a left and just keep walking.” We hurried through the corridor and into the plane itself. I looked around wildly, thinking maybe, just maybe, I'll recognize a stewardess or something and they'll move me up. But the entrance to the plane was in coach, so as we hurried to our seats I didn't even get a glimpse of the good life.

“Don't you just love first class?” Sara-Beth Benny was saying as the stewardess handed out mimosas to everyone in the cabin. She had been seated shortly after Mickey, Arno, Patch, and Greta, and she had been talking ever since. Subsequently, none of the guys had really caught up much. “I mean, free drinks for six hours! It's just like when I go to a bar in New York.”

Greta was staring at her with her mouth open. She took her mimosa and thanked the stewardess for it excessively.

“I mean, this is
so
nice after that awful trip, right? Wasn't it like
the worst
,” Sara-Beth went on.

“Uh-huh.”

“I mean, I don't think I left my room after that wild party of yours, Patch. I can barely remember a thing about it, which means it
must
have been good. I woke up with such a headache! And then I just, you know, read magazines in my room as much as possible the rest of the trip. I didn't I miss anything, did I …?”

“Not really,” Mickey and Arno said at once.

“Yeah, the last week or so was mostly tests. But Barker exempted me from all of them, so I had nothing to do,” Patch said. Then he shrugged and continued on to say, as though it were no big deal, “But I had Greta all to myself, so that was cool.”

“Uh-huh,” Sara-Beth said, oblivious to the fact that Greta was blushing like crazy, and that Arno and Mickey had straightened awkwardly in their seats. “Oh, hey,” she called to the stewardess, swinging around in her seat and waving her empty champagne flute, “could I get another?”

Outside my window, there was nothing but clouds and the occasional peek of ocean. Suki and I had been playing cards for like two hours.
The Incredibles
was on, but I'd already seen it, and besides, in coach you have to pay for earphones, and once again we had no money. I reflected, not for the first time on this trip, how quickly money seems to go when you don't really have it. Also, Suki had declared the movie “Trash that rots your brain,” even though it still looked funny to me, and that had basically closed the issue.

One thing that is free, no matter what, on international flights, is drinks. So I ordered us each a Bloody Mary and then we felt much better. We were sort of starting to have fun again, but something had definitely changed. It was like we were sidestepping each other, inasmuch
as you can when you are sitting very close to each other in very cramped economy airplane seats and playing gin. Suki wasn't even really gloating when she scored points. To be honest, I had been thinking about Flan ever since I got this new look into Rob's life, and I couldn't really take Suki seriously after that. Maybe she sensed this, somehow. When she won, she smiled at me faintly and said, “Good game.” Then she turned away from me, wrapped herself up in the airplane blanket, and went to sleep.

I realize I should probably have tried to talk to Suki right then, but I just couldn't. Instead I waited until I knew she was asleep, and then I went through her bag. I borrowed her bank card and used it to log onto the Internet on the little TV screen in front of my seat.

Watching the page open, I wasn't as anxious as usual, but I was filled with a more real kind of worry. Not surprisingly, there was nothing from Flan and one message from David and one from Rob. I decided to face the worst first.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Dear Jon: I am so apologizing I forgot to send you by e-mail your mother's number at the ranch. And now I cannot find it, oopsie! But I am sure that with the money I wired, you made it safe to my home in London, and soon will be coming home to New York. I am sure my butler mother you like crazy no? I love that man! New York is crazy. Why did you ever leave?! Your mother hasn't been back from the ranch yet, but I have been mostly at the Floods house. So much fun there. That girl is so sexy and crazy! She has really taken me to her bosom. –ROB

Her
bosom?
Who they hell was this guy? My anxiety level increased, of course, and I considered asking the stewardess if she could speed the plane up. I opened up the e-mail from David.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Hey man. I found Rob, but your mom's still out of town and no one can figure out the number to reach her. Sorry. I haven't heard from you in a while. You OK? When are you coming home? We should talk about some things. I've been talking to my dad a lot since I came home early from the trip. I know he's kind of a kook about feelings and stuff but I had a lot of issues after that. And I sort of talked to him about the thing you asked me about with Flan and Rob, just to see if it was like normal. And my dad made me see a lot of things. Anyway don't worry—I'm pretty sure that Rob isn't, like, interested in Flan. But maybe you shouldn't be either, you know what I mean? See you, David

I shut down my e-mail account and slipped Suki's bank card back into her bag. I was almost woozy trying to figure out what those e-mails meant. Clearly David was just trying to make me feel better: Rob had seduced my perfect
little Flan. I rang the stewardess for another Bloody Mary. Suki was still sleeping peacefully beside me, and as I looked at her I realized the one thing I wasn't going to do until I was back in New York: sleep peacefully.

The stewardesses in first class had finally gotten wise and cut Sara-Beth off. Luckily for them, it was right around the time that she fell into a champagne coma and began softly humming the
Mike's Princesses
theme song in her sleep.

In the two seats next to and opposite her, her former Ocean Term classmates were being served liqueurs. As they sipped them, Mickey talked about Angelina and the house in Barcelona, and the Lober-Luccis and how creepy it was that they had known Barker in college. And Greta told them how boring and uneventful the rest of the trip was, and how she had gotten sick and she and Patch had been excused from all the papers and tests they were supposed to have in the final week. She skipped over the part about them hooking up, though, and avoided entirely the nasty scene with Stephanie. The stewardess brought a second round, and then Arno said, “So, I guess Jonathan and Suki never made it back to the boat?”

“Yeah, it was weird,” Patch said. “I mean, weird because they didn't figure out to show up back at the boat. And weird because … well, I guess because it's Jonathan.”

“Yeah. He'll be fine, though,” Mickey said. “I mean, he probably just got his mom or his dad or PISS to wire him money, right? I mean, he's probably in New York already, buying back-to-school clothes or some shit.”

They all laughed a little bit and then fell silent. After a few beats, Arno said, “Oh, Mickey forgot to tell you this weird thing about Angelina's. We met this guy, who was, like, a performance artist supposedly, and he was wearing a watch just like Jonathan's.” Arno reached into his pocket and took it out so that they could all see. “I mean, isn't it just like J's?” he asked Patch.

“I guess …”

“Anyway, we took it as a souvenir. You never know, maybe it really is J's.”

Patch took the watch out of Arno's hand and turned it over. “Well, it does have his initials engraved on the back.”

“Oh …,” they all said at once, and then fell silent again.

Outside their windows, the sky and the Atlantic Ocean had gone dark. They all sunk back into the big, comfy, shark-gray leather first-class seats, and drifted
into their own thoughts. All the way up there in the air, at the mercy of stewardesses and weather, it was pretty hard to stave off thoughts of homecoming and what that meant. Patch wondered about that e-mail from David about Selina Trieff, and if he was even interested in her anymore now that he'd been with Greta. Arno wondered if he and Mickey were going to be able to maintain the closeness they'd developed over the last two days. Also, he wondered if his appeal to girls was totally gone, and what life would be like without that. Mickey wondered if Arno was going to be able to keep being decent to him, or if the rest of their friendship was going to be spent sparring over chicks. They all thought about Jonathan, and where he could be, and if they would all still be friends if something terrible had happened.

Greta wondered if Patch really liked her, and Sara-Beth twisted in her sleep and hoped in her dreams that, someday, she would have a career again.

They were heading back to New York, and for the moment none of them really knew what that meant.

As the plane began to come down through the atmosphere for landing, I checked the weather and my seat belt and whatever else I could to be busy. I was landing on home turf, but I had no idea what to expect. Plus, at this point I was pretty sure Suki and I were both feeling a little sheepish about our night in Mallorca. When the taxiing was done, and the lights were back on, I picked up Suki's bag and mine. It took us a long time to get out because we were all the way at the back of the plane.

Once we'd made our way out of the airport, I saw that the little screen in the plane had told the truth. It was a cold and crisp evening in New York. The sky was already dark, and the cars made orange streaks in the purple night.

“How is it possible that during the warmest winter on record in Europe, it is so freaking cold
in New York?” I asked.

“Global warming,” Suki said brightly. “It's a really huge problem, and nobody pays any attention. I mean, if you only knew how—”

“C'mon, let's get a cab,” I said, interrupting her and dragging her by the arm to the taxi line.

“But aren't we out of money again?” She seemed thankfully to have forgotten about her global warming speech.

“Yeah, but the doorman will front me. I've known him since I was five.”

We got in line and were sort of silent and introverted for a while, wrapping ourselves up in the coats that PISS's butler had lent us. They were too big, and they made us look like hobos, but I guess it was good that we had them because, according to the little screen, it was in the mid-thirties. That was when I heard some familiar voices up ahead.

A girl was saying, “… I'm really glad you asked me to extend the layover and stay. I mean, thank you, I …”

And then this guy's voice, which was kind of hoarse and slow, said, “Hey, stop worrying. It's going to be fun.”

Very near them, someone was talking into a
cell phone and saying, “Okay, Mom, love you, too. I'll see you tomorrow.” Then he hung up and said, “You'll never believe it, but I don't think they know. I don't think Caselli ever told them. And if they don't know now, they ain't never findin' out. Woooohhhhooooo!!!” That was definitely Mickey, and although I wasn't sure exactly what he was talking about, the context of Mickey sort of explained it all. And beside him, Patch and Greta and Arno.

“Hey!” I yelled. “Hey, it's Jonathan. And Suki.”

Everyone in line between me and my friends turned to look at us. “Don't think there's any cutting, because there isn't,” the woman in front of me said, wagging her finger.

“What are you, in kindergarten?” I snarled. I grabbed Suki's hand, and we hurried past the ten or so people in line between us and them. Everybody grumbled, but nobody did anything, which is totally typical New Yorker behavior.

When we got to Mickey and Arno and Greta and Patch, we all just stared at each other for a minute because it was way too weird. Then Arno raised his eyes slowly and strangely to mine, because Suki and I were holding hands again. I let go. To break the silence I said, “So … you
guys want to, like, share a cab?” And whatever the awkwardness was, that ended it. We started hugging and yelling questions at each other and everyone was talking at once. If there were people still pissed at us back in the line, we couldn't hear them now.

Suki and Greta sort of withdrew to the side and were whispering to each other. I looked at the guys and said, “Someone explain to me how we brought these two back with us …?”