“Are you okay?” I say.
“Yeah, fine, nothing,” she mumbles. She’s very drunk, I suddenly realize. Slurring. “You know how I invited this guy I met, uh, Andrew? He’s not coming.”
“Oh…” I say. “Bummer. Well, Angie’s friends are surprisingly sweet considering their Patek Philippes cost more than our house, or take your pick of Tad or Wilcox—”
Madeleine looks up and rolls her eyes. “I’m not interested, Pia! Jesus!” She staggers on the spot slightly. “Why are you forcing everyone to have fun?”
“Nice attitude,” I retort, and slam the stall door as she leaves. How rude. God, I hate it when people just take their bad moods out on you! I was just trying to make the evening work! Besides, if she’s not going to mingle, how the hell does she expect to ever meet anyone? The Internet can only do so much, you know?
I wash my hands, reapply my bronzer, and leave just in time to hear the opening notes to “Feeling Good,” the Nina Simone song. “Birds flying high, you know how I feel…”
Damn, the singer has a beautiful voice: deep, sultry, sad …
Then I see the stage and my jaw drops.
It’s Madeleine.
She’s so mesmerizing that the entire crowd is silent for the first time all evening. She sounds sad and soulful, earthy and honest. I’ve never heard anything like it.
And I never realized how gorgeous Madeleine is until now. She’s in an understated long-sleeved black dress that makes everyone else in the bar look pathetically overdressed, but really, it’s not the dress. It’s her. Madeleine is radiant.
When she finishes, the entire bar is silent for a few seconds. Then it rains, no, it
thunders
applause.
“Moomoo! I never knew you could sing like that!” exclaims Julia. “I chose that song because I thought we’d all join in with you!”
“Um…” Madeleine is smiling so much, she can hardly talk. “I took classes in junior high, but then in high school it clashed with mathletes, so…” She shrugs and hiccups. “Can I have another shot?”
The host comes on. “Next up … Pia Keller!”
Merde.
CHAPTER 17
I can’t do it. I can’t stand up in front of everyone. My voice will disappear. I’m going to have a panic attack and/or crash and/or burn and/or collapse in a hysterical pool of sweat and vomit. I can’t do it, I can’t.…
“Go,
Pia
!” shouts Julia, pushing me through the crowd.
I somehow make it to the stage, painfully aware of how tiny the room is, how piercing the lights, how silent the crowd, and how hot and claustrophobic I suddenly feel. There’s a bilious fear-lump in my throat—or is it puke? Oh, crap … I glance down at the karaoke screen and can just make out the words “99 Red Balloons,” but the lyrics are swimming in front of my eyes.
You and I in a little toy shop / Buy a bag of balloons with the money we’ve got …
My vision is too blurred to read it, but I can’t get down off the stage. I can’t back out now. I can’t—I won’t—fail.
I can do this.
The music begins. I still can’t read the words, but somehow, I open my mouth, remember the lyrics, and start singing. The first few lines come out as squeaky whispers, but gradually, I get louder and louder.
The crowd gasps and a split second later, I realize I’m singing the original lyrics … in German.
My father loved “99 Luftballons.” He played it constantly, from a German
Best of the ’80s
compilation CD. I couldn’t translate it, but I can sing it. I just need to hang on and get to the end of the song.
“Hast du etwas Zeit für mich…”
I feel like my voice is coming from another person altogether, someone tiny and shaky. But when I dare to look up, people are smiling. I grin back, and then at the end of the first verse, the electro-rock kicks in and I start clapping along, the crowd joins in, and then I start singing again, more confidently this time.
“Ninety-nine Luftballons…”
The moment I finish the song, I’m covered in a light sheen of fear-sweat, but there’s no fear left. Only exhilaration. I feel euphoric, invincible, ecstatic! Karaoke: free MDMA!
I can’t stop smiling. It feels like the entire bar is roaring approval and I can hear Julia above everyone else. I do a little curtsey-bow, and then jump down and run over to the girls.
Before I can get to them, though, I’m picked up and twirled around.
By Mike. What the hell is he doing here?
“Put me down!” I’m wearing a tiny gold dress. Why do guys always want to pick you up when you’re not dressed for it?
“Pia! That was so amazing!” Mike looks less cute tonight than I’ve ever seen him: he’s had a bad haircut and his blue shirt billows in the wrong places.
“Thanks,” I say, edging away from him. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Coco and Eric making out at the bar. Yes! I fight the urge to punch the air. Good for her!
“You are so gorgeous when you smile, you know that? I got your text and I was, like, hell yeah, that’s my girl—”
I frown. My girl? “Mike … seriously, don’t.”
“Don’t what?” he says, putting his hand up to stroke my face and I realize he’s hammered. “You look worried, honey.”
Honey? “Okay, we need to talk,” I say, jerking my head away from his hand. “Come outside.”
He follows me out to the street, and I light a cigarette to buy some thinking time. How do you break up with someone you’re not dating?
“God, you smell good. What is that?”
“Oh! Thanks, it’s Kiehl’s Original Musk— Wait. Listen. I don’t know what you think is, um, going on between us? But I don’t want anything like that.”
“You have intimacy issues, I get it. Just friends. Friends with benefits, right?”
“Intimacy issues?” I can’t help laughing. “No, Mike. No benefits. I don’t like you like that. I didn’t mean for, um, us to happen.”
“You didn’t mean for us to
happen
?” He laughs, but there’s a hard edge to it. “Madeleine’s right, you’re an arrogant bitch. You just fuck with people and walk away.…”
They’ve been talking about me? I thought Madeleine and I were friends now! Suddenly I don’t want to be part of this conversation. “Are we done here?”
“No!” shouts Mike. “We are not fucking done here!”
“Mike, you’re drunk. This is a stupid conversation. There is nothing going on between us, and there never will be. Deal with it.” He grabs my arm, but I pull away, throw my cigarette down, and push past him back into the bar. What a cockmonkey!
Is he overreacting? Am I arrogant? And a bitch? I can’t tell anymore. I don’t care. I just want to forget the whole thing. Actually, I want to ask Madeleine what the hell she’s doing bitching about me to her brother when I thought we were friends again, but I can’t tonight. Not on Julia’s birthday.
I stop next to Angie and grab my drink. Then Mike strides in, whispers to Madeleine, and a second later they both head outside. At the door, she turns and gives me the biggest death stare I’ve ever had in my life.
Shit.
I drain my glass in one gulp as Jules bounces over. She’s hammered. “That guy just asked for my number! His name is Mason! But let’s get pizza! I am starving! Because, well, I just puked. But I’m good, I’m good. A well-timed puke can make the night, you know?”
“Where were you the night of the housewarming?” says Angie. “That Julia wasn’t any fun at all.”
“I was being responsible,” enunciates Julia loudly. “And being responsible sucks cock. Am I right?”
“Amen to that,” says Angie.
Julia mimes riding a horse. “Yeee-haw”
Angie turns to me. “Seriously. I fucking love this chick.”
“I have some friends over at Cipriani Downtown,” says Mani. “Shall we?”
“Bring it on,” says Angie, hopping off her barstool.
“No! I want something dirty and New York!” shouts Julia. “Pizza! Where’s my sister?”
“We’re going for a drink uptown,” says Coco, sidling over with Eric, with a cat-that-got-the-cream look on her face.
“Wooooooo!” exclaims Julia. “Luh-vers! C’mon, Peepee! You and me!”
So Julia and I walk up to Spring Street as Coco and Eric jump in a cab, and Angie heads off with Mani and Sirvan. A month ago I would have been with them: drinking champagne, dancing on tables, probably starting an unsatisfying short-term dalliance or two with someone inappropriate.
Now it seems more appealing to grab a slice with Jules and go home so I can sleep and get up early to do SkinnyWheels prep. Tomorrow’s Cosmo repayment day. I hope it’s as easy with Nicky as it was last Sunday. The less chitchat with that man-mountain, the better.
“Thanks for making tonight awesome,” says Julia, slurring slightly. “I had so much fun. A guy asked for my number and I didn’t even cry once, and I always cry on my birthday.”
“That’s awesome. See? Told you a makeover would work.”
“I feel like I can count on you. I never used to feel like that.”
“You can,” I say, trying to take it as a compliment. “You can always count on me, Jules.”
As we’re standing outside Pomodoro, waiting for our slices to cool down, we run into Tad and Wilcox.
“After-party, ladies?” says Tad smoothly, leaning over to take a massive chomp out of Julia’s pizza. She giggles and pulls away. “I know a secret all-night bar in the East Village.”
Everyone knows a secret all-night bar in the East Village.
“Can’t do,” I say. “Heading back to Brooklyn.”
“Screw that! I’m game!” says Julia. “Where are we headed?”
Wilcox is standing very close to me, staring at me.
“Down, boy,” I say. His eyes betray a gnarly drug-booze cocktail. Maybe Klonopin or Xanax to calm him after all the Adderall.
“Wilcox! Dial down the stalker shit, man,” says Tad.
“Yeah, c’mon, Wilcox,” says Julia. Tad takes another bite out of her pizza and she squeals and slaps his arm, looking delighted. Is that how I act when I’m drunk? Probably.
“Take my pizza, Tad,” I say. “You guys have fun. I’m getting a cab back to Brooklyn. Jules, will you be okay?”
“Yeppers!”
I head toward Broadway, through the usual Saturday night party crowds. Funny: if I was alone on a deserted country road at this exact moment in time, I’d be petrified. Nature, silence, shadows … creepy. But in a big city, I feel safe.
Finally, I see a free cab half a block down. I sprint toward it, and just as I open the door, some guy gets in the other side.
“Mine!” I shout, in my best ballsy I’m-a-New-Yorker voice. “This cab is mine!”
“I saw it first!”
“Get out! Out!” I yell.
Then I have to stop myself from gasping, because with a stabbing feeling of recognition so strong that it almost hurts, I realize it’s him.
It’s Aidan.
The guy from the street. The guy from the Brooklyn Bridge. The guy that New York is clearly throwing across my path, as though trying to tell me something.
I think my heart has stopped beating.
I may die.
But that’s okay.
“You!”
“You!”
Aidan grins widely (perfectly, gorgeously, warmly, urgh, everythingly) and my chest does a strange pucker of excitement/fear.
“What are the odds?”
“Slim to nonexistent.”
“Heading to Brooklyn?”
“The one and only.”
“I’ll have him stop on the Brooklyn Bridge so you can jump on the roof.”
“Deal.”
Aidan leans forward to direct the driver while I frantically search through my bag for a breath mint. I bet I smell like pizza and cigarettes. Goddamnit. My chest has seized with a sort of fright, like when you slam your finger in a drawer. Aidan! Again! Oh, my God!
Aidan winds down his window, and looks over at me with a grin. Long legs in dark jeans and a dark shirt, no jacket, hair is messier than I remember, but in a good way, not in a uses-more-product-than-me way, am I gushing? Yah, I’m gushing. Sorry. What should I say? My stupid brain is empty. Oh, sheesh, I’ve never felt this nervous in my life.
“So,” he says. “You’re stalking me, clearly.”
“Clearly,” I say. I wonder how old he is. Late twenties? I quickly rearrange my legs so that there’s no chance of taxi-seat-induced cellulite (yes, it’s a totally normal thing to do).
“It just underlines my theory that New York is a village,” he says. “Sooner or later, you meet everyone.”
“That’s pretty deep.”
“I’m a very deep person. Profound.”
“Yeah, I can see that. You’re like a little philosopher in an Aubin & Wills shirt. How original of you, by the way. Do they hand them out with British passports, or what?”
“You hate the shirt? The shirt was a present from my sister. The shirt never did anything to you.”
“Yeah, but it’s planning something. I can tell.”
We lapse into silence. This flirty repartee is nerve-racking! I’m sweating, I can’t quite catch my breath, and my brain is jitterbugging from topic to topic. I wonder where his shouty girlfriend is, I wonder if he’s been thinking about me, I wonder where he lives, I wonder if my deodorant is still working, I wonder—
Suddenly, Aidan turns to me and grins, that little scar on his lip lit by the lights of the city outside, and all I can do is smile.
“So, talk me through your night.”
“Um, it was my friend’s birthday. Karaoke bar. I sang ‘99 Luftballons.’”
“‘Luftballons’? You mean you sang it in German?”
“Yes,” I say, laughing at the look on his face. “It was an accident. It’s my dad’s favorite song. He’s from Zurich and they speak Swiss-German there.…”
“I know. I’m smarter than I look.”
“Well, that’s a blessing,” I say. “Sorry. I’m just used to explaining it as part of the whole where-are-you-from thing.”
“I get it. My mother’s Argentinian. My dad’s Irish. We lived in L.A., B.A., D.C., and finally London, a city without an acronym, when I started high school.”
“I bet people think that sounds complicated.”
“Yeah, but it’s not. Not when you’re the one doing it.”
“Exactly!” I exclaim. Whoa, calm down, Pia. “I seem to have spent my whole life telling people that moving countries six times before you turn seventeen is really boring.”
“My sister and I have a saying: everything is normal when it’s normal to you.”