It’s the kind of dream that makes me glad I don’t believe that dreams predict the future anymore. The future this dream predicts is highly inappropriate for a girl who won’t even watch R-rated movies.
It’s the kind of dream I never had about Zan.
THE MORNING AFTER
“Hey, Sleepyhead,” Noah
says as I stretch awake.
Has he been watching me sleep? The thought makes me excited, but is too weird to contemplate further. Besides, if he
has
been watching me sleep, he’s been doing other things, too. He’s already fully dressed, with his stuff packed up and his extra pillow put away. He’s swirling his key chain around his finger while he smiles at me.
“What time is it?” I ask. I’m afraid he’ll see my body reacting to him. I look away for good measure, glancing at the readout on the digital clock.
“Eleven fifteen?” I bolt out of bed, forgetting that I’m braless. “Why’d you let me sleep so late? We’re supposed to be out of here by now. I’ve got to get dressed and finish packing and call a cab.” I step to the right, then the left, unsure of what to do first.
“Calm down.” Noah takes me by both wrists—definitely not helping me to calm down any. It’s a new day, and Noah is touching me again. His hands are warm, and just the right not-quite-rough-not-quite-smoothness.
“Don’t worry.” He’s still smiling. “Checkout isn’t until noon, so you have plenty of time to change and pack up. I thought you deserved to sleep in. And we don’t need to call a cab, remember?” He holds up his key chain as proof. “It’s already taken care of. Needed a new fuel pump.” By the way he keeps grinning, I’m guessing a fuel pump is one of the less expensive things that can go wrong with a SAAB 900.
“So, we’re . . . good?” I ask.
“We’re good. Go get ready. I’ll watch
SportsCenter
while you’re gone.” Noah smiles again, releasing my wrists. “Okay?”
I nod. “Hey, Noah, thanks for . . .” I’m not quite sure how to finish.
Thanks for taking care of all this
is too strangely intimate.
Thanks for everything
is too generic and greeting-card-esque. Nothing is right. “Thanks for waiting until I’m out of the room to watch
SportsCenter
.”
TRIBUTE
“I have a
surprise for you,” says Noah, after we’ve gotten in the SAAB and resumed our driver/navigator roles.
“You do?” I fiddle with my seat belt. It’s already so unbelievably bright that I lower my sun visor.
“Yeah. I felt really bad about yesterday. About freaking out on you about the car and stuff. I wanted to make it up to you.”
“Seriously? You’ve made it up to me like a hundred times already just by going with me on this trip.”
He smiles.
“Besides, you’re talking to a girl who once freaked out after she accidentally put her paperbacks on the same shelf as her hardcover books. I’m used to freak-outs. I mean, think about it. My whole life is a freak-out.”
“Maybe I’m trying to change that,” says Noah.
“Maybe you are changing that,” I say, and I think my words come out a little flirty, even though I don’t want them to. Or at least, I wish I didn’t want them to. “When do I get to find out what the surprise is?”
He sails past the corner where we’re supposed to turn right and get back onto the freeway. “Right now. You see, we’re not going home. At least, not yet.”
“Okay.” It’s more like two words: Oh. Kay. Where could Noah be taking me? Only one thing comes to mind. “Wait, are we going to church?” Mormon chapels are all over the place, and it usually isn’t too hard to find one. But we’re both seriously underdressed. “I don’t have any church clothes with me.”
“We’re not going to church,” says Noah. I expect him to be sad about it, but I’m detecting the beginnings of a smile. “I don’t have church clothes, either. Don’t worry, the Lord knows our hearts. Today we’ll worship Him in our own way.”
A week ago I would have been shocked if Noah Talbot said something like that. Noah Talbot, letter-of-the-law obedient. I know better now. No one’s that easy to figure out. No one’s a cardboard cutout. No one will always act the way you expect them to.
“We are going to see firsthand the talent with which God has blessed His children.” Noah taps his fingers on the steering wheel in some unknown rhythm. “We are going,” he says, his grin getting wider with each word, “to see Barry Manilow.”
The first thing I think is: You didn’t have money for two hotel rooms, but you have money for two Barry Manilow concert tickets? Then I think how the show must have sold out weeks ago. Then I think about how it’s the middle of the day. “What do you mean? See him like see where he performs or something? Because really, as surprises go, that’s a little on the lame side.”
“Good thing that’s not it, then.” Even in the sunlight, Noah’s not wearing sunglasses. His eyes are beautiful in this light. In this light, they literally twinkle.
“So are you going to tell me or what?”
He brakes for a red light, opens the glove box, and hands me a brochure. “I picked it up at the front desk yesterday.”
I look it over. On the front is, indeed, a picture of Barry Manilow. Upon closer inspection, however, I realize that it isn’t Barry Manilow. Bold yellow lettering reads: RATED BEST TRIBUTE SHOW IN VEGAS!
The Barry concert is in a fairly big name Strip hotel, so I have high hopes that it will be a decent show. I figure the theater will be big enough to stand out, too. But that’s where I’m wrong. Looking at the “You Are Here” map in the casino, I see that the place is designed like a castle from the Middle Ages—the moat that runs the perimeter is actually a mall, and the fortress, where the “entertainment venues” are, is deep inside. We pass every bath-and-body store known to man, lingerie stores I haven’t even heard of, and windows advertising sale prices higher than I’d spend on splurges.
It takes about a dozen turns and fifty or so switchbacks to get where we need to be. The entertainment area is a cavern designed to look like the outside, so we can see a pale blue sky and puffy white clouds while we stand in line for general admission. Apparently the Barry show is shoved in between “Esmeralda, the Kid-Friendly Hypnotist” and some presentation of amazing pet tricks.
“This is kind of a dive,” says Noah. “I was thinking it’d be . . . cooler.”
“You thought a Barry Manilow tribute show would be cool? What’s wrong with you?”
We’re in Vegas, and we’re standing in a line that looks like the check-in counter at the airport. It isn’t a cool, Vegas-style line—there’s no bouncer, no velvet rope, no security guy to joke around with. We’re in Vegas, and we’re standing between two gigantic ladies with fanny packs and a geriatric couple with matching walkers.
This is how Noah and Joy do Las Vegas.
The thing is, I don’t mind. Not even a little.
The theater itself isn’t any better. It’s not even a theater, really—my middle school auditorium had a nicer setup. A bunch of padded folding chairs are set up in bleacherlike rows.
“Seriously?” Noah looks around in dismay. “Good thing I got these tickets half off.” He sits down gingerly and whispers to me, “I feel bad for the poor suckers who paid full price. I can’t believe they have the nerve to charge forty-six bucks a ticket for this.”
“Forty-six dollars? How do they sleep at night?” The lights are already starting to dim—I guess Barry needs to get over and done with quick-like, before the performing beagles do their thing. “This better be a dang good show.”
I can’t get over the math, though. Half price on forty-six dollars means he spent twenty-three dollars on me. Forty-six, if you factor in how he probably didn’t even want to go. I can’t decide whether I’m touched at his sweetness or, once again, baffled by his stupidity.
“Uh, Joy?”
Noah whispers to me uncomfortably as the strains of some synthesized Barry medley start playing overhead.
“Is it okay if I get kind of. . . cozy with you?”
“What?”
I don’t mean to sound as startled as I probably do.
“It’s just . . .”
Noah is leaning in closer to me now, and I can smell the root beer barrel in his mouth.
“You know how these chairs don’t have any armrests? Well, the woman next to me is taking up her chair, plus two-thirds of mine.”
I glance over, and there he is, looking all tight with Fanny Pack Lady. I can tell he’s trying to take up as little room as possible, sitting up straight and crunching his arms near his chest, but her midsection oozes onto him anyway. I can’t help shuddering.
“Yeah, no problem. Cozy up to me all you want.”
I have a decent amount of room on my other side, since the old man next to me parked his walker at the entrance. He’s a pretty small guy, so I scootch over as far as I can and feel Noah exhale on the other side of me.
“Thanks,”
he whispers again. His breath tickles from the top of my cheek to my bottom lip. I can feel the warmth of him next to me. His warmth is more than warmth: It’s the warmth, and it’s the pressure of him against me, and it’s knowing he’s there, so close to me. All of it swirls together to make this fantastic, better-than-warm feeling wrap around my insides. I’m all about to get caught up in it when Barry takes the stage, and I just get warmer and warmer.
I mean, it’s not Barry, obviously. It’s some guy made up to look like Barry, but as impersonators go, this guy is incredible. He has this ageless face—kind of plastic, like the faces of the animatronic statues in Caesars Palace. It’s a face that makes it impossible to tell how old he really is. His hair is cut spiky-short, and he’s wearing Barry’s signature swanky white jacket with satin lapels.
“Spooky,”
whispers Noah, mesmerized. His breath tickles my ear and makes me laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
Noah says low into my ear. There’s laughter in his voice.
“Nothing,”
I say, soaking in his closeness, his warmness, the Barry before me.
I can’t remember the last time I felt this kind of good. I’m not sure I’ve
ever
felt this kind of good. It’s not excited anticipation. It’s not something as vague as hope or as inyour-face as delight. It’s just pure good.
I am hyperaware of Noah next to me, our bodies touching from shoulder to thigh. Each place he touches zaps and sizzles with this all-natural kind of electricity. It’s this amazing electricity I’ve never felt before, and if we could only figure out how to run the world with it, going green wouldn’t be hard at all.
And I know this man on the stage isn’t Barry Manilow, but it’s easy to forget as he launches into “It’s a Miracle,” with a dead-on Barry smile. And I know this boy next to me isn’t my boyfriend, but it’s easy to forget as the natural electricity dissolves any trace of ice-blood from my system.
BARRY SONGS THAT REMIND ME OF NOAH
“Could It Be Magic”
“I Made It Through the Rain”
“Ready to Take a Chance Again”
READY TO TAKE A CHANCE AGAIN
I know what’s
going to happen even before I unfold my arms and rest my left hand on my thigh. I don’t have any practice at Haven-style flirting, but somehow it comes as natural as breathing. I move my hand about a centimeter toward Noah.
He moves his hand about a centimeter toward me. Then he covers my little finger with his. We’re not holding hands yet—we’re holding pinkies. But it’s enough to send a fresh surge of natural electricity though my body, stopping to energize all my core areas. After about thirty seconds, when he moves his entire hand over mine—his entire not-too-soft-not-too-rough hand—it feels warm and perfect and right.
I look up, and Barry’s crooning away, and he starts up with “Mandy.” My favorite. In fourth grade, when I had to grow a spider plant for a science project, I named mine Mandy and played her nothing but that song, over and over. It’s a song I know better than by heart. It’s a song that’s inside of me, and hearing it here, live, all around, I drink it in.
Then it happens. Barry pauses just a few beats too long between the third and fourth measure of the first verse. It startles me so much that Noah looks over at me, worried. “Are you okay?” I see his mouth move more than I hear his words. He starts to move his hand away from mine, but I lead it back to me.
A million thoughts are swirling in my head and I can’t finish thinking any of them. But I nod. I nod because I’m better than okay. I nod because this, just now, this is a revelation. And maybe, just maybe, this was the reason God left me stranded with Noah in Las Vegas.
This man up onstage is not Barry Manilow. He has made me believe that he is Barry Manilow so fully that it is only when he makes a mistake that I realize he isn’t. In this performance he’s a Barry Manilow cardboard cutout. But in real life, when this show ends, he will go back to being himself—whoever that is. Maybe sometimes we’re all impersonating someone, trying to be a cutout because it’s less complicated than being who we really are.
Maybe Zan was right, in a way—not about everybody else, but about me. Maybe it was easier for me to be a cutout of Zan’s girlfriend—hating Haven, hating the Soccer Lovin’ Kids, for no real reason other than Zan hating them, too.
This man in front of us is more than a guy who’s a Barry Manilow cutout five afternoons a week. I am more than Zan’s girlfriend. Noah’s more than a Soccer Lovin’ Kid. We’re all just us, just people, free to make our lives as real and as complicated as we want to.
I curl my fingers around Noah’s fingers. I relax into him. For the first time I can remember, I can think my thoughts all the way through.
For the first time I can remember, I relax.
CLOSURE
When we get
up to leave the theater, Noah doesn’t let go of my hand. I don’t know why holding hands while standing up feels different than holding hands while sitting down, but it does. It makes me tingle with that pure happiness. I feel another tingle, too, though—one I recognize. It’s not from Noah. I need to go to the bathroom.