Last Stop This Town (13 page)

“Me, too.”

“Come on. Let’s get some more food.”

Walker was confused. “But you just said—”

Pike explained, “One more plate and we come out ahead.”

“That’s not nice. These people need to make a living.”

Pike pretended to cry, complete with over-exaggerated boo hoo tear wiping.

But Walker put his foot down. “I’m sorry. I’m not wasting food on purpose.”

“Fine. What a killjoy.”

So instead of going back to the buffet, the two took the bill up to the cashier, an elderly Chinese lady who recited from memory, “Two buffet, plus tax, twenty-one fifty-seven.”

Pike corrected her. “Oh, I didn’t eat.”

Walker flinched.
What the hell is Pike up to now?
He had that look in his eye.

The cashier was confused. “What you mean?”

Pike calmly explained, “He had the buffet, but I didn’t eat. I was just keeping him company.”

Walker was now in full-on panic mode. He was turning red, but of course he couldn’t say anything. He was just frozen there watching it unfold before him.

The cashier challenged Pike. “You ate. I saw you eat.”

Pike was confident. “No, you didn’t. I didn’t eat.”

The cashier looked at Pike suspiciously, then shouted out something in Chinese. A busboy came over and they argued loudly in Chinese.

Walker would have done anything in the world to get the hell out of there. He pulled out his money. “I ate a lot. Maybe I’ll just pay for two—”

But Pike stopped him. “No way. You’re not paying for me if I didn’t eat.”

The cashier argued some more with the busboy and became increasingly angry with him. After some time, the busboy, sufficiently chewed out, bowed and trudged away.

The cashier was pissed. The busboy must not have been able to offer any concrete proof on the controversy because the cashier just glared at Pike and said, “Okay. One buffet. Ten seventy-eight.”

Walker quickly peeled off a ten and a five and muttered, “Keep the change,” before hightailing it out of there with Pike.

Once outside, Pike started laughing his ass off but Walker was livid. “What the fuck was that?!”

“What?”

“We could have gotten arrested! Or worse! They could have been Triads!”

“Or ninjas!” Pike shot back. “You know, you worry too much.” He laughed.

“Come on,” Pike changed the subject, “let’s check in.” He reached for his cell phone but it wasn’t in his pocket. He checked his other pockets. Then Pike’s face went white.

“You have my cell?”

“No.”

Pike patted himself down. “Fuck me. I left it on the table.”

Walker saw he was serious and immediately burst out laughing.

“Ha ha, very funny,” Pike snarled.

Walker did the proverbial “answering the phone” motion with his hand. “Hello? Yeah, it’s karma calling. It wants to laugh its ass off in your face.”

But Pike was no longer in a mood for jokes. “Go in and get it,” he ordered.

“Uh uh. No way. Ditch meet digger. You get your own phone.”

Pike knew Walker would never go back in there for all the tea in China, so to speak. “Fine,” he said, and went back in.

Pike locked eyes with the cashier but didn’t stop, walking right past her to the table. But it had been cleared. No cell phone.

Pike spotted the busboy who had been chewed out and stopped him. “Hey, man. Did you see a cell phone? I left it on the table.”

The busboy barely spoke English and replied merely, “No phone.”

“Are you sure? It was a BlackBerry. Brand new? I left it right here on the table.”

“No phone.”

Pike crouched down and looked under the table. Not there.

He went over to the buffet table. No phone.

He went back to the cashier. He was going to ask her if she’d seen it, but when their eyes met once again, he thought better of it.

He walked out, dejected.

But as he was leaving, the cashier called out to him, “Next time,
phone
ahead, we give you best seat in the house.”

Pike stopped and turned around. The old lady was smiling, ear to ear. They had his phone all right, but there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

He walked out.

Outside, Walker asked, “You find it?”

“No.” Pike stamped his foot. “Fuck!”

Walker looked concerned. “How are we going to meet up with Dylan and Noah?”

“Well, if you had your own cell…” Pike chastised.

Walker reminded him, “My mom says I don’t need one.”

“And
that’s
why you never get laid,” Pike lashed out at Walker.

Walker was confused. “Because I don’t have a cell phone?” He wondered whether that could possibly be true.

M
EANWHILE, AT THE
Plaza, Dylan, Noah, and the five girls took the elevator up to the nineteenth floor. They didn’t talk much in the elevator; it was a slightly awkward moment where the guys didn’t want to jinx anything and the girls just wanted to get another drink in them to refuel their desire to be bad.

The elevator door opened and Leah led them down the hall to 1915. She swiped her key card and walked in just ahead of Dylan.

The suite was huge, with two bedrooms, a master bathroom suite, and a living room with a separate bar area. The Louis XV décor looked like it was from out of a Marie Antoinette movie. There were exquisite chairs, an antique writing desk, and sofas even the tidiest adult would be afraid to sit on. Dylan had no idea what a room like this cost but he knew it would be described as “a shitload.”

“Jesus, pretty nice graduation present. What’s your dad do?”

“Hedge funds,” Leah scoffed derisively. In just those two words Dylan knew she had daddy issues, and girls with daddy issues always sought to resolve those issues with Dylan. Between the sheets.

The girls headed straight for the bar. There was already a nice collection of half-empty bottles of vodka and rum on the counter, along with sodas and other mixers. The sumptuous accommodations apparently hadn’t deterred the girls from trashing the place. It was a mess, with clothes and shopping bags from Bloomingdales and Saks strewn all over the sitting area. Half-eaten room service still sat on the serving cart in the entryway, and there were liquor bottles everywhere. These girls were hard-partiers, and it occurred to Noah that maybe they were a little
too
degenerate, even if they were super hot. Noah had never felt like a yokel before until now.

Becky prodded her friends along. “Come on. Let’s get fucked up.” She poured a rum and Diet Coke into a crystal glass and drank half of it in one swig.

Chelsea had a crazy look in her eyes. She took out a bottle of prescription pills from her purse and unabashedly popped one down with a vodka chaser.

Dylan looked at Noah, grinning ear to ear. This was going to be too easy.

But Noah did not see these girls as simple prey; he was starting to get conflicted. He pulled Dylan aside. “Are you sure about this?”

Dylan wasn’t sure if Noah was pining for Sarah, freaked out by the quantity of booze and drugs, or just upset by the speed at which it all was going down, but Dylan knew it was now his job to ease Noah’s conscience.

“Listen to me. Do not blow this or it will haunt you for the rest of your days!”

“But—”

Dylan grabbed him by the shoulders and actually shook him. “Let. This. Happen.”

Noah realized the debate was over, and it wouldn’t hurt to be a little more adventurous. And who knows? This probably
would
turn out pretty memorably.

“Okay, okay.”

Pike and Walker walked down Canal Street trying to figure out how to get back in touch with Dylan and Noah without a cell phone.
How did people meet up with each other in the olden days?
, they wondered.

“Let’s just try to find them back in the Village,” Pike suggested.

Walker scoffed. “Yeah, good idea. New York’s pretty small.”

Pike frowned, seeing Walker’s point. Pretty unlikely to just magically run into Dylan and Noah in a city of thirteen million, compared to West Hartford where it happened all the time. Hell, in middle school, Pike used to just go to Bishop’s Corner and hang out in front of the drugstore until somebody from school walked by with an idea on how to pass the time.

Walker saw something. “Look.”

There, a little bit down the street was… a
pay phone
.

They walked up to it.

Pike stared at it for a moment. “How does it work?” he asked, as if it were a sextant.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Walker chastised.

Pike picked up the receiver and dialed Dylan’s cell number. He listened, unsure of whether this was going to work or not. Then he pulled the phone away from his ear and reported to Walker, “It says it’s long distance. How can that be right? He’s got to be within a couple of miles of here.”

Walker rolled his eyes. “Are you retarded?”

Walker grabbed the phone from him, hung up, and dialed again. He listened to the recording and explained, “We need a dollar seventy. Do you have any change?”

“No. I’ve only got twenties.”

“Maybe we can get change in there,” Walker suggested, indicating an all-night laundromat.

Pike shrugged and Walker hung up the phone.

In the laundromat, Pike and Walker spied a change machine. Pike put a twenty in and out poured a pile of quarters.

Walker shook his head. “Idiot, we don’t need twenty bucks worth of quarters.”

“I told you, I’ve only got twenties.”

“Well, I’m not carrying around ten pounds of quarters.”

It was odd. With all the guys, Walker was usually low man on the totem pole. He took a lot of shit for being pathetic with women, but he didn’t mind because deep down he kind of agreed with them. But around Pike, Walker was often in charge. Pike was, after all, kind of dumb, at least compared to Walker. And Pike was usually not possessed of great common sense, even when he wasn’t stoned.

Pike scooped up the quarters with two hands and looked around for a way to change them back into bills. Over in the corner was a cute older girl in her twenties waiting for her laundry. She was wearing a tiedye t-shirt and reading Camus’
A Happy Death
. Pike forgot about the quarters. He was usually fueled by impulses and one had just fired in his pants.

He turned to Walker. “I’ll take care of these. You go call Dylan.” He handed Walker some of the quarters and Walker rolled his eyes before heading out.

Returning to the pay phone, Walker dropped a quarter in the slot, but for some reason the phone just spit it out into the coin return. Walker tried again. Same result. He stared at the payphone for a moment, a little embarrassed that he couldn’t figure out how to use it. But then again, Walker had literally never used a payphone before. He picked up the receiver and actually read the instructions printed on the phone. This time he dialed first. He deposited the quarters as instructed and the line started ringing.