The Insiders (16 page)

“Come and sit with me and Randall and the gang,” Kelli said. “We were just discussing the right place to get some food. I'm sick to death of Florent.”

“You're tired of Florent? You've been here a week and a half!” Mickey said. “Calvin Klein's been here for about ninety years and he still goes to Florent.”

“I know,” Kelli said as she shook the mouse off her foot. “I was talking to him about that last time I was there.”

Kelli had Mickey by the hand and she led him to sit down with Randall Oddy and his crowd. They were all discussing who'd been accepted into the Whitney Biennial art show. Mickey watched Kelli nod intensely, as if she had a clue what they were talking about.

“
Man
,” Mickey said. He'd looked down and he had a notepad with a bunch of information on it. This notepad told him two things—that he'd actually spent some time researching where Patch had gone, and that he'd done a lousy, drunken job of it. Because the words on the page looked like nonsense—they could have been in Farsi for all he could make of them.

“I'm sorry about last night,” Randall Oddy said. Mickey brought him into focus. Oh, he thought. This clown.

“It's cool,” Mickey said.

“What's that?” Randall Oddy asked. And he and his friends all gathered around to see Mickey's pad.

“Cool,” someone said.

“Look,” Mickey said. “I know all you art guys think these are like my little drawings and whatever, but the truth is my buddy Patch is missing. And clearly I wrote all these notes about it last night, but because I'm on, um, pain medication, now I see that they're gibberish. So it's not what you think.”

“Not art,” Oddy said.

“No.”

“What did you say your friend's name was?”

“Patch. Patch Flood.”

“Funny name.”

“So is yours.”

“You know something?” another guy asked. He had a high voice and his hair was all down in front of his face. “I think I've heard that name recently, at Graca's house.”

“Graca?” Kelli asked. Even Mickey could tell she didn't like the sound of another woman's name. A hush surrounded the group.

“If your friend is who I think he is,” the high-voiced guy said, “he's the luckiest guy in the world.”

“That's him,” Mickey said. “No doubt.”

I met David at his house on Saturday morning and we caught a cab to Barneys.

“This is crazy,” he said, but it was the fifth time he'd said it, so I ignored him. He kept staring out the window as if he were seeing Manhattan for the first time.

We got up to Barneys and of course I had to keep reminding myself that this shopping trip wasn't for me. It was for David. He'd called me around nine on Saturday morning. I was planning not to move till at least noon, but then he'd said he needed to get some cool clothes. That perked me up, I'll admit, but I still went back to sleep for a while. I was fairly sure that Kelli hadn't arrived home yet. Our mothers were away again, staying with old family friends, the Caufields, at their estate in Westchester.

“What you're looking for,” I said to David, “are clothes that give a nod to what a terrific, all-
American basketball-playing guy with a sensitive streak you are, but still say hey, I know how to put on a pair of pants. Do you see that?”

“The thing that I realized last night,” David said, “is that I'm still in love with Amanda.”

“Oh,” I said. I couldn't even remember when I'd last seen Amanda. Who had she gone off with? I could ask Liza, but no. Was Liza even my friend anymore? And Arno? My foot began to shake uncontrollably.

“I know that, deep inside. I didn't know it when I was fooling around with your cousin, but later, when I was fooling around with that girl at the club, I knew it. And she did, too.”

“What about Arno?” I asked.

“He's in love with Kelli, right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “He was last night, anyway.”

“Then maybe he's suffered enough.”

We were up at Barneys by then and we both hopped out, but we didn't go around the corner to the doors to the men's side. I like to go through all the women's stuff on the ground floor, because a lot of those women who offer you perfume and stuff are hot.

“How'd the girl at the club know you were in love with someone else?”

“We were kissing, and she said, ‘I can feel that you're thinking about someone else.'”

“Maybe you're just a lousy kisser,” I said, because we'd arrived at men's sweaters and I was suddenly distracted. It smelled like fall in there, of cashmere, of deep browns and leafy reds. The glass cases glittered at me like great chunks of rock candy.

“Shut up, dude. I need to change for Amanda. It's like, I can't always be brooding all the time and acting so, so self-indulgent.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. We were passing some new John Varvatos jackets and I couldn't listen to David anymore right then.

“So that's why we're here. So I can change.”

“I see.” I drifted onto the third floor, and we checked out the sneakers. David chose a pair of Miu-Miu slip-ons and asked for his size. We sat down on the squishy leather and rubber chairs and waited.

“You've really helped me to discover who I am,” David said. “Thanks for that.”

“Honest?” I asked. I squinted at him. I couldn't remember doing anything like that. I'd actually been sitting there wondering if I could slip away from him and go down and check out the new
Crockett and Jones slip-ons in the loafer area. But I wasn't sure that was such a good idea—considering I'd bought a pair of shoes
yesterday
.

“What about Kelli?” I asked as I stood up. “You didn't have sex with her, did you?”

“No—we didn't get very far either. She told me I was in love with Amanda, too.”

“Wow,” I said. “You are awfully sensitive.”

A guy was coming over with his sneakers and I left David then. I was pretty well amazed at what a good mood he was in, but fooling around with two girls in one night and waking up in love with your ex-girlfriend can have that effect. It was a very cake-and-eat-it-too kind of feeling, I imagine.

I went over to the Crockett and Jones display. So expensive. But also so cool. I shook my head and went for my credit card.

“Can I help you with that?”

I looked up from the display and there was this girl there. She was probably nineteen—and was clearly one of those girls who went to Barnard and worked two or three shifts at Barneys during the week, because the commissions are outrageous, and she was pretty in a pink-sweater-with-pink-cardigan-over-it kind of way. “Really, can I help you?”

“I don't know,” I said. She was shorter than me, and she had these great bangs, cut high over her wide almond eyes. I had this weird thing happen to my head then, as if somehow I was not just discovering this girl, but had always known her.

“I've seen you here before,” she said. “I'm Fernanda.”

“I'm Jonathan,” I said. We shook hands. She smelled of something really good involving daisies. The store got real quiet then, and I think the noise I was hearing was like a harp or a mandolin. At that moment, David moon-walked by us in his new shoes.

“I love these!” he yelled. The salesman who was helping him was clapping and doing a human beat box routine. But I was completely focused on Fernanda.

“You like shoes,” she said.

“Yeah,” I admitted.

“Sometimes after the store closes for the day, or early, before we open the doors, I like to come over to the men's section and just hang out. I bet you'd enjoy that.”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “I really would.”

We were totally grinning at each other like
idiots.
Soul mate
. And then, while David picked out a couple more pairs of cool shoes, Fernanda and I exchanged numbers.

“There's a party tonight,” she said. “I'll call you and let you know where it is.”

“Thanks,” I said.

David and I left, and went down to check out khakis for him.

My phone rang. Mickey.

“I know where Patch is,” Mickey said.

“You do? Did you just find out?”

“No, it was this morning, really early.”

“So why'd you wait till now to tell us?” I asked. David pulled on my shirt. I pointed at the phone and crossed my eyes.

“Because he's in a good place,” Mickey said. “And I just woke up. Why don't you guys come over here around six or so and we'll have some drinks and then go get him.”

“What about your dad?”

“I'm pretty sure he's in Montauk.”

“You want anything?” I asked, because I was suddenly feeling really happy. “We're at Barneys.”

“No, you freakish clothes-hound, I don't want anything from Barneys,” Mickey said, and ended
the call.

“Mickey found Patch!”

“That's good news,” David said. He held up a pinstripe running suit from Marc Jacobs. “I'm going to get the sneakers, but I don't think I'm going to buy this. If I do, they'll never let me back on the basketball team.”

Arno spent most of Saturday afternoon in his room, watching George Clooney movies. He knew he didn't have quite that kind of style, not yet anyway. But he liked watching
Ocean's 11
. He liked the attitudes and he loved the idea of being very smart in a criminal-minded sort of way.

He lay on the floor and did crunches, what felt like hundreds of them, and quoted Clooney's lines. He thought of Kelli. If only she'd return his pages and calls. He lay on his side then and squeezed his eyes shut to hold back the tears that he simply couldn't believe were coming.

His home phone rang. Jonathan.

“Mickey found Patch. We're meeting over at his house in two hours.”

“What about Kelli?”

“What about her?”

“Is she coming?”

“Um, no? I have no idea where she is. Mickey found
Patch, aren't you psyched?”

“Yeah,” Arno said. He went to his closet and pulled out a candy-striped button-down that practically glowed. Happy shirt.

“I guess I'll keep calling her.”

“Yeah, you do that,” Jonathan said. “And we'll see you before seven, got it?”

After Jonathan ended the call, Arno tried to reach Kelli again. Nothing. He knew she was leaving the next morning at eleven, with her mom. He could go to St. Louis. He'd have to rent a car and find a place to stay, and miss more school. Somewhere underneath his love for her, he felt as if she'd stolen his cool, and he was annoyed about that. He even wondered, if he hadn't seen her, would he have fooled around with Amanda and Liza?

“Arno?” his mother called. The Wildenburgers were having a dinner party, as usual, and his mother was stopping by on her way to the kitchen, where she had to supervise the staff. She stood in the doorway in black silk pants and a black cashmere sweater, not yet in her eveningwear. “Come and taste the soup, won't you, dear? It's lobster bisque.”

So Arno went with her, because he couldn't think of a reason to say no, or start a fight. They walked down the long hallway and halfway there his mother was called
away by a maid—Arno's dad was on the phone. But Arno kept going toward the kitchen. He figured he'd eat some of whatever they had—if he could get in there before they wrapped the prosciutto around the figs, maybe he could make a ham sandwich.

The kitchen was as massive as everything else, all white enamel and buffed steel and butcher block, and there were three cooks busily preparing dinner for twelve. Arno saw some medallions of veal and edged toward them.

“Those are for the guests, sir,” a woman said. Arno looked up, with a twinge of annoyance, thinking,
my kitchen
.

The girl who stared back at him was clearly a server and looked not much older than a college sophomore, probably at NYU.

“I live here,” Arno said.

“Oh?” she said. She stood in front of him, and she was in tight blue jeans and a hooded sweatshirt. She held her uniform, a white button-down shirt and black tuxedo pants, on a hanger. A Latina girl with sharp features and big black eyes. To Arno, she looked awfully precise. She was staring at him. He couldn't tell if she was annoyed or what. Meanwhile, the three male cooks were busily moving around, cooking. The girl kept staring at Arno.

“Yeah,” Arno said. “In fact, my bedroom's back down
that hallway.”

“Oh, it is?”

“Yeah, in case you need to get dressed and you want to get away from all these guys. I've got a bathroom back there and everything. I've got a big shower with this tiled chair thing in it.”

“That sounds nice,” she said. Her voice was low. He realized that maybe she was older. Twenty-four? Wow, maybe she didn't even go to college.

“You should see it,” Arno said. “Even if you don't want to change back there.”

The woman glanced back at the cooks, who were busily stirring the bisque.

“Coming!” Arno's mother yelled. She'd gone around the back way toward the kitchen. The cooks immediately looked up. One made bug eyes at the other, as if to say,
the crazy lady's on her way
. Immediately, all the cooks got to looking even busier. They started chattering in French.

“Let's go,” Arno said. “Before you have to deal with my mom.”

Arno grabbed the girl and a chunk of beef tenderloin with his other hand and they ran back down the corridor to his room. The girl was laughing. They got back to his room and Arno closed the door behind him.

“This is great of you to give me this place to change,”
the girl said. “I'm Mariela.”

“I'm Arno.”

They held out their hands to each other. Both Arno's home phone and cell phone were ringing. He ignored them. Dead Prez was blaring out of the stereo. Arno turned the music off.