All Adults Here(55)
“No thanks,” Nicky said, and the young man moved on to the next potential victim. Across the room, Nicky watched two young women murmur to each other—they were closer to Cecelia’s age than his, much closer. Cecelia, who’d been an adult all her life. Astrid had been horrified when he’d told her that they let Cecelia take the subway by herself when she was ten years old, but Cecelia was ready! She was cautious, she paid attention, she never fell asleep on the D train and woke up in Coney Island like he’d done in college. That’s why the whole thing with her school and her friends had been so confusing—as if, after so many years, he and Juliette had the blindfold pulled off and were shown that Cecelia was, in fact, only a child. They’d never thought of her that way before.
Nicky couldn’t say precisely what Cecelia had done. Her best friend, Katherine, had said that they’d met someone on the internet. She and Cecelia, together. That they had chatted with a man, who they thought was a boy. That they had gone to his apartment. Cecelia said she hadn’t but Katherine said that she had, and then Cecelia said she’d gone but waited outside, or picked Katherine up, and she had known, she had known all along, and just the fact that this could happen, that there were local men impersonating teenagers in a place (the internet) where they could interact with his daughter was too much. Nicky did what any parent would have done: He pulled the rip cord and got her out of there. Was that better or worse than leaving her in a toxic puddle, no matter who made it? You couldn’t ask kids to change. You could sooner change the weather.
Nicky knew better than to blame. You could expect only so much from anyone, even parents. Maybe even especially one’s parents, the people who cared the very most, and who saw themselves so much in every reflection. When the movie came out, Nicky had just moved into the dorms at NYU, as if his life had anything in common with the way it had been a year earlier, when he’d applied to schools. He was a boy about town, trying to fill the hole left by his father with whatever he could put into his mouth: with body parts attached to beautiful girls, with endless joints, with bullshit party small talk, shouting over the DJ at Don Hill’s while young actresses danced around him, all of them starring in a live production of This Is Fun, We’re Having Fun, staged around the city twenty-four hours a day.
The director of Jake George, a midwesterner with large, square glasses, had told Nicky that he wanted to introduce him to a friend of his, a director who made artsier films. The friend—Robert Turk, a legend already, though he’d made only three movies—had seen some early footage from Jake George and loved Nicky. Phone numbers were exchanged and Robert called Nicky on a Friday night and said he was having a small party, nothing fancy, just a few friends. Nicky changed his clothes three times before getting on the subway uptown.
Robert Turk lived in a doorman building on West End Avenue and Eightieth Street. The lobby was white marble, with one attendant at the door and another behind a desk, both wearing uniforms and hats.
“Hi,” Nicky said. “I’m here for the party? Turk?”
The men didn’t smile but nodded toward the elevator. “Sixth floor, end of the hall on the right.”
It was ten o’clock. Nicky could remember, only a year ago, when ten o’clock would be closer to the end of a party than the beginning. He had a couple of joints in his wallet, because he knew it was rude to show up to a party without anything, but his fake ID was for shit, and he didn’t know any of the delis uptown and didn’t want to risk it. It might not be a pot kind of party, but it might, and it never hurt to be prepared. When Turk had called, he told Nicky not to bring a posse, because it was an exclusive party, and so Nicky had come alone. He didn’t mind. Everyone was always alone, anyway, whether they realized it or not.
Nicky knocked on the door, 6E. Someone shouted to come in, and so he turned the doorknob and pushed. The apartment was more modern than he’d expected—low lights, spotless surfaces, framed movie posters on all the walls.
“Hello?” Nicky called. He took a few tentative steps down the hall.
“Hey,” Robert Turk poked his head out of a doorway. “In here.”
Nicky took off his backpack and set it down in the hall. He wrung his hands together. “Am I too early?” He got to the doorway and saw it was a narrow galley kitchen. The windows overlooked a courtyard and all the other apartments. They were all lit up like Christmas trees, and almost none had curtains, as if everyone in the building had tacitly agreed that light was more important than privacy. Robert handed Nicky a glass of wine.
“I know; it’s better than television,” he said. He clinked his glass against Nicky’s and took a long sip. “I’m so glad you came.”
There was no one else there, it was clear. Nicky drank his glass of wine and looked at the books on Robert’s bookshelves and tried to understand if what was happening was weird or not. His cheeks were feeling flushed already. Robert was walking around behind him, watching him, from two feet away, the way you sometimes walked the same path as an animal at a zoo, to get a better look, to see what they looked like from other angles. “Can I make a quick phone call?” Nicky asked. “I’m sorry, I forgot, I was supposed to call my girlfriend, she’s going to be so pissed, do you mind?”
Robert pointed toward a bedroom. “There’s a phone in there. Go for it.” He settled onto a couch and crossed one ankle over a knee.