The Insiders (8 page)

“Not coming. You want to have a drink? Who're you with?”

“I'm alone,” she said. We went over to the bar. A deejay had set up in the corner and he'd begun to spin a remix of the Humpty song. We crammed ourselves into a tiny space at the bar and Liza ordered cosmopolitans for both of us. I tried to find something to say to Liza that didn't include the fact that I was becoming obsessed with a kid who watched old TV shows with her friends on Saturday night.

“My group is falling apart,” I said.

“Where's Kelli?”

“I don't know. She was going to meet us here. I gave her a map and everything. Either she's lost or she got a better offer.”

“And Arno blew you off, too.”

“Yeah, those two are probably together somewhere, licking ice cream and chocolate sauce off each other.” I tried a laugh, which came out sounding like I was choking on a chicken bone.

“Or they're just having sex.”

“I was kidding,” I said.

“I wasn't.”

“Sometimes you're a little too blasé to deal with.”

“That's only 'cause you're so naïve.”

“Thanks a lot!” I said, and maybe I said it a little loudly because a table full of people looked over. But they were all old, past thirty, so who cared? I knew that Liza had much, much better things to do on a Saturday night than chase after me and my guys, and that led me to knowing that she expected something from me that I didn't want to give. But I couldn't change how I felt. I didn't want to be with her in the way I was last year, if it wasn't going to be genuine.

“This is one of those nights that's so awful that it makes me wonder why I live at all, you know?” I said. “Let's just go.”

“Fine,” Liza said. She'd barely touched her drink.

We began the slow walk home. Both our phones rang, but we ignored them. Saturday night was just heating up and the streets were busy. We passed Inca-Eight, a new club that had taken over the space where Suite Sixteen used to be, and even though the bouncers smiled at me and Liza, neither of us suggested that we should
check it out.

“I should get over you,” Liza said.

“Um,” I said.

“I know I sound matter of fact about it,” she said. “We were never wild enough together. And that was part of the problem, right?”

“I guess.” I was never sure, though, what the problem was exactly. Everyone else thought we made sense together.

We got to her street and she kissed me goodnight on the cheek and we stared at each other. Then she shook her head quickly and ran up her steps. And all I could yell after her was, “Let's talk later!” Which was pretty funny when you thought about it, because we'd already said everything we'd been needing to say.

“Now this is what I call a good time,” Randall Oddy said. He sat between Arno and Kelli on a black leather couch at Ringo, a new club on Little West Twelfth Street that was run by Ringo Starr's stepdaughter Francesca in the basement of her town house. There were only forty people allowed in the club at any one time, and right then there were forty-one, including Francesca, who was playing old Beatles songs on the sound system, drinking absinthe, and chewing on the sleeve of a shirt that belonged to an eighteen-year-old soap opera actor who was passed out next to her.

Kelli was drinking a pint can of Miller Lite that she'd bought at the corner store. She didn't appear tired, or bored, or anything. Arno was staring at what he could see of her from around Randall's sparrowlike chest. Randall was staring at her, too. They were both fighting back yawns. It was 4:45 A.M.

Kelli pouted her lips, which she'd painted a pinkish white in the bathroom an hour earlier when she'd run
into the model Jamie King, who'd bought Kelli's ankle bracelet off her for five hundred dollars. Now Jamie waved across at them from another couch on the other side of the room. But they could barely see her in the darkness—the whole place was done up in black leather and black velvet and all the lights were swathed in black silk. So except for the occasional flash of jewelry, it was really dark.

“I wonder where Jonathan's house is in relation to here,” Kelli said. She dragged her fingers through her hair.

“You don't need to go back there,” Arno said. She looked around Randall to see him.

“Why not?”

“You can stay with me,” Arno said.

“Or we can just stay out all night,” Randall said. “And we can all crash at my suite in the Mercer in the morning.”

“I'd really like to see the Mercer,” Kelli said.

“It's just a stupid trendy hotel,” Arno said. Then he stood up. He didn't mind competing, but he felt like Randall should back off. After all, Kelli was only seventeen and Randall was in his mid-twenties. “And I saw her first!”—that's what he wanted to say to Randall. And he also wanted to say that he was going to complain to his dad when he saw him next and then his dad
wouldn't give Randall any more shows and Randall wouldn't be a famous artist anymore. He was also considering punching Randall in the face. It was an awful lot of feelings, he knew, all for Jonathan's cousin from St. Louis.

“Hey, come sit next to me,” Kelli said. As Arno settled in, she said, “I could feel how you were wanting to go home. Please don't leave me with Oddy.”

She was warm and smelled like artificial fruit flavoring and baby powder. She held out her beer and Arno sipped from it.

“You won't leave me, will you?” she asked.

“No,” Arno said.

Kelli put her arms around Arno and Randall.

“You two're my favorite guys in New York so far,” Kelli said. “Except for my cousin Jonathan and that crazy guy Mickey and that quiet loser David who reminds me of the boys back home.”

She kicked her legs in the air and laughed.

“I'm going to South Beach in the middle of the week to do some press and attend my opening down there,” Randall said to Kelli. “Do you want to come?”

“I'm already taking her,” Arno said quickly.

“Whooo-hoo!” Kelli yelled. “South Beach, with both of you! This is the best trip out of St. Louis I ever had.” Randall and Arno turned and glared at each
other, their arms folded.

Arno's extra phone kept buzzing with calls from David and Jonathan and Amanda, but he didn't notice because the phone was in his jacket, which was crumpled up on the floor at his feet.

“Let's go to Florent and get some breakfast,” Randall suggested.

“Great, I love that place,” Arno said.

“Fun!” Kelli said.

Randall laughed and Arno thought the noise was maniacal, and he tried to catch Kelli's eye so she'd agree with him. But she was already following Randall up the velvet-covered staircase.

Arno leaped up and ran to catch them.

Sunday found me drinking black coffee in the kitchen at one in the afternoon and glancing at the already heavily picked-through Sunday
New York Times
. I hate the Sunday
Times
. It weighs about seven pounds and everything in it is dorky and wrong. Back before my dad moved to London, we used to read it together and he'd outline every single thing that the
Times
had misunderstood about business and the rest of the world. That was a little exhausting, but it was also pretty funny. So I went ahead and gave him a call to see if he wanted to talk about how stupid the paper was over the phone, but he wasn't home, or he wasn't picking up.

Then I spied something particularly insane and exciting.
Men's Fashions of The Times
. The magazine section. I knew for a fact that once I opened it my gut was going to hurt from laughing so hard at the assinine outfits those fools put
together and called fashion, so I set it aside and decided to call around and see what had happened to everybody the night before.

I started with Arno. He picked up, which meant he thought I was someone else.

“I really don't appreciate you not showing up where I invited you and then taking my innocent little cousin and doing who knows what with her.”

“Cool it, Jonathan,” Arno said. “I just got home and you sound like my mom.”

“Oh yeah? Well has your mom been asking you how far you got with my cousin? And did you see David crying on TV last night? He must've found out about you and Amanda.”

“Maybe he was just into the game.”

“Yeah, right. For your sake, you better hope that Amanda didn't tell him what she did with you.”

“Yeah,” Arno said slowly. “I guess I do hope that.”

“Now what about my cousin?”

“What do you care?”

“Um,” I said. And then I immediately realized that 1) I couldn't be jealous, because she was my cousin, and 2) Arno had fooled around with
Amanda and potentially destroyed David's relationship, thus violating the single pact we'd had going since we were tiny, or at least since fifth grade when Arno had French-kissed Molly, who had been passing love notes with David for practically the entire year. How was I going to keep us together if David found out what Arno did? Patch could probably mellow us out, but where the hell was he? I didn't have a clue.

“How could you do that to David?”

“Ask Amanda. It was her idea and believe me, I don't feel good about it.”

“Hmm,” I said.

“Listen, you're not going to tell David, are you?” Arno asked.

“No,” I said flatly. “It'd kill him.” And we hung up.

Then I called David, who didn't answer. I called Mickey, but he didn't answer either, so I gave up. The chances of Mickey knowing where his phone was were about as good as there being a decent pair of shoes on a model in the
Men's Fashions
section.

I sat there, spinning my phone on the kitchen table and wondering what to do with myself. Then I opened the magazine and started looking
at the pictures of bunches of guys wearing ugly Wall Street suits with boring old white button-down shirts.

That's when I heard a noise and remembered that my house had visitors. Kelli wandered into the kitchen. To say she was unsteady on her feet was an understatement. She gripped the kitchen counter like it was the side of a sailboat and our apartment was the sea.

“Need something?” I asked. I tried to make my voice surly, but it didn't come out right. Even hungover as she was, she was a pretty sexy looking character. Her lips were puffy and pink and her hair was pointing in all directions. She didn't have bed-head. She had orgy-head.

“Back to bed, going,” she said. “Mom?”

“Our moms are out shopping at Bergdorf's.”

“'s lucky.”

“Mmm,” I said. “Out late?”

“Till just now,” she said.

“Ready for your Barnard interview tomorrow? Coffee?” I asked. I poured a steaming cup and held it, just out of her reach.

“Mmm,” she said. She reached toward it. I handed it to her and she needed both hands to steady the cup. She let go of the counter and
trembled. When the coffee aroma reached her nose, she dropped the cup and vomited, instantly and heavily, all over our onyx Bizazza kitchen tile. Then she collapsed in a heap of platinum blond hair, makeup, and scuffed high-heeled boots.

She was asleep in a matter of moments. I grabbed a napkin and tied it over my mouth so the smell wouldn't kill me.

“What the hell happened to you?” Ricardo Pardo asked his son, Mickey. His assistants were just finishing unloading the black Mercedes wagon he'd driven back into the city, and he looked at his son with a mixture of appreciation and complete disgust. Mickey swayed in front of his father. He was in a black cashmere bathrobe and combat boots.

“I have to repeat myself?” his father asked.

Mickey considered a lie, but the truth always got his father off his back quicker. Ricardo stared at his son. They were about the same height and looked terribly similar, except that Ricardo had a big belly and a thick black and white beard that came down to his clavicle.

“I climbed off Patch's roof to get to Philippa and fell,” Mickey said.

“Say what?” Ricardo whipped around. Two of his assistants who were carrying boxes full of paint cans backed away in fear.

“You heard me,” Mickey said.

“Hello, darling,” his mother, Lucy, said. She'd taken her own Mercedes back from Montauk. She was a beautiful woman—a former model from Venezuela, and the fact that Mickey had inherited equal parts of his father's swarthy, froglike looks and his mother's stunning beauty was a source of amusement to everyone who knew the Pardos.

“Where's Philippa, darling?” his mother asked.

“Her dad won't let her speak to me.”

“You know,
mijito
,” his father said, “if hanging around with your buddies is going to get you nearly killed, then maybe that's over, you know?”

“Say what?”

“You heard me,
mijito desobediente!
”

“You're nuts, Dad!”

“
Chiflado?
You think so? No more Philippa for you,
hijo!
I agree with that Jackson Frady. You're driving us both
loco!
”

Ricardo and Mickey glared at each other. So Mickey jumped back and slammed the door to his bedroom, turned around, and threw himself on his bed. Or rather, threw himself where he
thought
his bed was. But as he felt the hard waxed concrete of the bedroom floor crunch against his elbow, he remembered that he'd rearranged the room in a fit of drugged ecstasy the day before. Taken all the rugs and soft things and put them in a big box in the corner.

“
Oww
,” he groaned.