Don't You Forget About Me (15 page)

Good point.

As he looked up from the blank white page, he saw Greg stroll around the corner, wearing a white button-down shirt and stiff white jeans. Oh God. Greg stopped when he saw

Dan sitting there and smiled. Then he smiled and hurried over.

“Hey.” He touched Dan on the shoulder. “Where’ve you been? I’ve been wanting to talk to you.” His voice sounded genuinely concerned.

Dan looked at the cement. He could feel his T-shirt sticking to his back with sweat. “I’ve been sick,” he mumbled, coughing into one fist and looking away. He noticed a group of tourists approaching en masse and he wondered if he could duck in with them and make his escape. “Really sick.” His gaze shifted tentatively to Greg, who was staring at him with something like amusement, his blue eyes creasing at the corners. “I just didn’t want to give it to you—I think I’m still pretty contagious and—” Greg cut him off with a wave of his hand. “Listen, I really wanted to talk to you about something.” He sat down next to Dan on the sidewalk.

Dan stayed silent, fiddling with the pen in his hand. The throng of tourists came and went, but he knew he had to sit there and stick it out. He dreaded the words that were sure to fall from Greg’s lips any second now.
Let’s do this thing. I want you to meet my parents. I want to show you things only another man can.

Greg cleared his throat and continued. “I thought that me and you had a pretty good thing going.” He stopped, his words hanging in the air above their heads. “But . . . I’ve kind of met someone else.” Huh? Dan stared at Greg, his mouth open. He felt like he’d just been smacked in the head with a two-by-four. Two girls dressed all in black stepped around them, practically trampling them with their combat boots and giving them a dirty look for blocking the sidewalk.

“I met this amazing guy at . . . um . . .” Greg looked down at the pavement, his cheeks flushing bright red, and ran a hand through his hair before continuing. “A party . . . and, well, we kind of just had this really intense
connection
.” He put his hand on Dan’s forearm, squeezing hard—but in a brotherly, reassuring way. “I’m sorry.” This time, Dan didn’t squirm at his touch. “Don’t worry about it.” He patted Greg’s hand. “It’s totally fine.” He sighed, breathing in the heavy August air, which suddenly felt a whole lot less oppressive.

A look of relief swept over Greg’s face. “I know you’ll find somebody special,” he declared in a rush, removing his hand from Dan’s arm. “And I hope we can still be friends,” he added, pushing his glasses up on his nose.

“Absolutely,” Dan enthused. “Totally.” He looked out at the bustling city traffic and wondered briefly whether his “somebody special” could be right here, before his very eyes, among the masses. Two girls sat at an outdoor table in front of the Così restaurant across the street, sipping lemonade as they surveyed the passersby from behind huge sunglasses. Across from them sat a guy in a baseball cap, iced coffee in hand, reading a magazine. He looked up and caught Dan staring, and Dan quickly averted his eyes.

“Soooo . . .” Greg looked over at his closed notebook. “What are you working on? Another future
New Yorker
poem?” “Hah.” Dan snorted, opening the notebook and holding up the blank page. “I’m supposed to be working on a poem for Vanessa’s sister’s wedding, but I can’t think of a thing to say. I mean, what do I know about marriage?” Greg wiped his hands on his jeans. “All you have to do is envision the person you love most in the world—the person you want to wake up with in the morning and go to sleep with at night.” He paused, blushing deeply and running his hands through his hair. “Even if you haven’t met that person yet—you just have to
imagine
them! I mean, with me and . . .” Greg looked sheepishly at the ground. “I can’t imagine wanting to do those things with
anyone
else, you know?” “I guess.” Dan stared at the cracks in the cement. “I just don’t know if there’s anyone I feel like that about . . . any-more.” He closed his notebook and tucked it back inside his messenger bag.

Looking at Greg’s feet, Dan noticed he was wearing black socks with little white Paul Frank monkey faces on them. Dan didn’t know exactly what his type of guy—er, person—was yet, but he was pretty darn sure his soul mate didn’t wear monkey socks.

“I mean,” he started again, looking over at Greg, who was listening intently, “how will I know when it’s the right person?” Greg held Dan’s gaze for a moment before standing up. He slapped the back of his white jeans with both hands. “You’ll just . . . know,” he said quietly. “You’ll know when you know.” Dan looked out again at the sea of people on the street—the wide-eyed tourists with their cameras, the skater kids who flocked to Union Square in the summer, the NYU students who were moving into their apartments a few weeks early, lugging hand-me-down furniture, arms loaded with boxes. In the few minutes that he and Greg had been sitting here, hundreds of people must have walked past. If he stayed a little longer, those hundreds would soon be thousands. How could you find one out of thousands? Wouldn’t it take forever?

Greg stuck his hands into his pockets. “You’ll know when you can’t imagine seeing anyone else after the day’s over, and even though you just saw them a few hours ago, you can’t wait to see them again that night.” Dan nodded mutely, still dizzily watching the crowd on the sidewalk as if it held all of life’s answers.

“Well, I’d better get back to work,” Greg said, pushing his glasses up on his nose. “I’m not even on break yet—I just snuck out to talk to you.” Dan remembered himself and stood up, slinging his messenger bag over one shoulder. He grabbed Greg’s arm before he walked away.

“Hey,” he said, moving closer. “Thanks . . . for everything.” Greg smiled. He wrapped his arms around Dan’s back and squeezed tight, clapping him on the shoulders before they both pulled back.

As Dan watched him walk away, he couldn’t help feeling a little sad. Not about Greg, but about love in general. He wanted what Greg had described: someone to sit around and drink coffee with in the morning. Someone he could do all those dopey, ridiculously romantic New York things with before he left for Evergreen—like watch every Woody Allen movie filmed in Manhattan, or take a carriage ride through Central Park under a full moon. Someone to wake up with every morning, the light covering their bare skin like a golden blanket . . .

Pale fury.Why did you leave me?

He pulled out his notebook and scribbled furiously, unsure of what he was writing.

Eyes closed, our bones ache.

This isn’t chemistry or geography.

It’s physics. Pure physics.

Dan still wasn’t sure what he was trying to say, but it was something to do with friction, and friction caused heat, and when he thought about heat he couldn’t help but think about a certain prickly-headed girl lying next to him in bed. His hands began to sweat as he continued to write.

Not feeling so gay anymore, eh?

maybe a leopard can change her spots

“Watch where you’re going, man!”

A yellow cab swerved on the shimmering black asphalt, almost grazing Vanessa’s arm as she crossed Broadway, squinting into the annihilating afternoon sunlight. The cabbie’s rude, grating voice lingered in her ears. Did he say
man
? Vanessa smiled smugly to herself.
Well
, she thought, picking up the pace,
that’s what you get for having such a sleek, aerodynamic hairstyle.

Doesn’t she mean androgynous?

She’d gone downtown around noon to film some of Ruby’s East Village hangouts in the daylight, but now, faced with the sweltering heat of the day, she was ready for a break. She rubbed her stubbly head with one hand as she waited for the light to change.

The Strand bookstore was half a block away, its carts of moldy discount books parked out front. Vanessa wondered if Dan was working—she’d been avoiding him the last few days after the whole romantic-gay-poetry incident, but maybe she’d just stop by and say hi. She watched the little red hand warning her to stay put.

College was just around the corner, and soon Dan—along with just about everyone else—would be gone. Well, Ruby would be around, but it wasn’t exactly the same between them anymore—now that she spent every waking second with Piotr. Vanessa couldn’t help feeling kind of . . . obsolete. Maybe it had been a mistake to stay in the city, but she’d wanted to study film at NYU for as long as she could remember, and now she finally had her chance. Plus, she loved New York. The trouble was, it was going to be a whole different city without Dan.

The light was taking forever to change, and she could feel the sweat running down the insides of her legs and into the black patent-leather platform Mary Janes on her feet. As she shaded her eyes from the glare, she suddenly noticed Dan across the street, standing near the carts of used books, with Greg.

They were talking, and then Dan opened his arms and Greg stepped into them, squeezing tightly. Even from where she was standing Vanessa could see that Dan’s eyes were closed as he hugged Greg, his body totally relaxed in a way she hadn’t seen him in ages. She’d seen them talking at his coming-out party, but Dan had looked so uncomfortable it had been hard to believe they were actually together. Now it was more than obvious that they were a happy couple, totally in love.

Vanessa turned around and began walking quickly back down Broadway, pulling a pair of vintage white sunglasses from her battered army bag to cover her eyes—which were rapidly filling with tears. The poem had been one thing—after all, Dan’s poems were always a little strange—but to actually see him embrace another guy was something else—it was
real
. Had he always been gay? How had she never known?

She wiped the tears from under the dark lenses and ran her hands over her head the way she always did when she was upset. As her fingers touched her prickly scalp, she stopped dead in her tracks. The most disastrous thought of all bubbled up in her brain, and before she could stop it, it spilled out. Did Dan only go out with her in the first place because of her shaved head? Was it possible that he only liked her hair because it made her look . . .
manly?

Vanessa suddenly felt like she was going to be sick all over the corner of Eleventh and Broadway. Almost before she knew what she was doing, she grabbed her cell and began punching keys in total panic. She needed to feel feminine and sexy immediately, and there was only one person who could really help her.

“Helllllooo?” Blair’s voice sounded like it was trapped in a wind tunnel or something.

“Hey Blair—it’s Vanessa.” There was a pause in which Vanessa could hear the sound of giggling in the background, and then a loud whooshing noise. “I need . . . help.” Vanessa took a deep breath, wondering why the next words were so hard for her to say. “I need . . . a makeover,” she blurted out, putting her index finger in her mouth and gnawing violently on her nail.

“Actually, you’ve got perfect timing. I’m at Warren

Tricomi getting extensions right this very minute” Blair responded enthusiastically. Vanessa realized that the wind was the sound of hair-dryers in the background. “Come on over immediamente.” Twenty minutes later Vanessa sat in a stylist’s chair next to Blair, watching as a thin Frenchman named Louis with a pointy nose and sleek chin-length black hair threaded strands of golden brown hair into Blair’s already thick mane.

“Iz like a buuuuutiffffful mermaaaaid,” Louis told Blair, who looked back at him in the gold-framed salon mirror approvingly. “
Et pour ton ami
”—Louis pointed at Vanessa with a long, skinny finger—“vee vill make mageek! I vill return!” Vanessa looked around. The spa looked like a European palace, its dark oak floors covered with Persian carpets and walls with filigreed gold mirrors. The chair she sat in was plush burgundy velvet. She crossed her legs uncomfortably, placing her hands on her calves to hide their prickliness. Light streamed in through the giant plate-glass windows at the front, and a row of copper sinks and shampoo chairs lined the far wall. The salon was filled with tanned, manicured, designer-clad ladies-who-lunch types, reading
Vogue
or leaning back with their eyes closed as stylists pampered them with head massages. Places like this always made Vanessa feel like she had three heads—all of them begging for a makeover. Blair, of course, looked right at home as she sat there, a stack of magazines on her lap, her tanned legs crossed high on her thigh, barking orders to the assistants flitting around her.

“So what
happened
?” she turned to Vanessa as soon as Louis walked away.

“I just need to look more like a girl.” Vanessa mumbled, slouching in her chair.

“Well, obviously.” Blair wrinkled her perfect little nose and gestured at Vanessa’s slumped form with her perfectly pink fingernails. “Finally you realize you
are
a girl.” Vanessa looked in the mirror at her sweaty bald head and dusty black boots. Then she looked over at Blair’s completely feminine form: her pink toes peeped out of a pair of light aqua espadrilles and gold bracelets tinkled on her slender, graceful arm. Vanessa sighed heavily, slumping down even further in her chair. She was absolutely hopeless.

“I
know
I’m a girl,” she finally answered. “But I need to be a girl that’s more like . . .” She gestured at Blair’s body. “More like
you
.” “Done and done.” Blair smiled. She was starting to feel more like herself again. After Nate’s little announcement, she had come to the one place she knew would make her feel better—the salon. And it had worked, of course. The only thing that had kept her from losing her mind was Louis’s soothing murmur as he threaded new long locks into her roots and told her how lucky she was to have such healthy, strong hair. There was just something totally calming about sitting in a stylist’s chair. It was like Audrey Hepburn said about Tiffany—nothing very bad could ever happen to you there.

Now that she had calmed down, Blair wanted to talk to Nate and make sure he didn’t do anything stupid, like think they were broken up and throw himself off the Brooklyn Bridge or take some poison to end his suffering—although to be honest, Nate had never been much of a Romeo.