We Run the Tides(35)

I check my watch. It’s 6:50. I have two hours and forty minutes until I’m picked up at 9:30. I think of a three-hour job I had passing out flyers last summer. The flyers were for a camera store that would develop three rolls of film for the price of two. The flyer was your average flyer—black and white and the word “Special!” written in red. I was instructed to stand downtown, a block away from the camera store, and to give the flyer out to anyone who passed me by. “Except homeless people,” I was told. “They don’t have cameras.”

I stood on the corner and tried to hand out flyers. Most women ignored me. Most men took a flyer. But even fifty minutes into the job I could tell I was failing. My feet hurt, I was bored, and I still had three hundred flyers to go. I needed to pee, so I went into the closest hotel, the St. Francis, and took the glass elevator up to the top floor. After determining the restroom was empty, I stuffed fifty flyers in the trash can. I could have gotten rid of the whole stack, but I felt funny. So I stood outside the men’s restroom for ten minutes until I was sure it was empty. Then I stuffed sixty flyers in the trash can of the men’s restroom. What a relief, I thought. I walked out of there with sheepish pride.

That’s what I feel like at Maria Fabiola’s welcome home party, like I have to figure out a way to dispose of huge swaths of time. I carefully prepare myself a plate of food that I eat very slowly and then with abandon so that I can get another plate later, which will take up more time. I pause thoughtfully and at length in front of each of the framed paintings. These paintings are in a different price range than the paintings my father’s gallery sells. I even spot what looks like a Chagall at the top of the stairway, but I can’t get close. The stairway is cordoned off with a burgundy velveteen rope, as though the home is an historical estate offering tours.

For the first hour of the party I don’t see Maria Fabiola. I see girls from my class, who nod politely, dismissively, or else pretend they don’t see me. I speak to Ms. Livesey for a minute and wait for her to compliment my dress, but she doesn’t. Then Julia and Faith start talking to her and they act like I’m not standing there so I float away from them and toward Mr. London, who’s eating a chip filled with guacamole. I tell him I’m enjoying the Milan Kundera novel.

“More than Salinger?” he asks, dipping another chip, this time into a bowl of salsa. I nod, not wanting to get into Salinger with him again, and then excuse myself to use the restroom. I see boys from dancing school, which I dropped out of months ago, but I don’t see Maria Fabiola. I circle the party in a way that reminds me of the shark at the aquarium in Golden Gate Park, going around and around. Eventually, I’m sure everyone can see that I’m doing laps, so I fill my plate up with food for the second time. Most guests are congregated in the main dining room. I find a small and unpopulated study on the other side of the foyer.

I sit in the corner of a red velvet couch—it’s the kind of couch that makes you sit up really straight. The coffee table is glass and stacked with enormous books about fashion—Coco Chanel, Diane von Furstenberg, Carolina Herrera. I wedge my glass of seltzer between two large books and hope it won’t spill. The food is good—risotto—and I dig into it.

I smell him before I see him. Polo by Ralph Lauren. It’s Axel, and he sits next to me on the couch. He’s with two friends who follow him into the study and sit in the two chairs on the other side of the coffee table. They put their heaping plates of food on top of the coffee-table books. A roasted red pepper slowly droops onto a book about Bauhaus, but they don’t seem to notice. I recognize one of the boys—he was on the bus with Axel that day, but I don’t know the other one. The boy from the bus is just over five feet with fine features and tan skin. The other boy has light brown hair that’s gelled attentively, and acne only on the top of his face; the bottom half of his face is clear. I speculate that the hair gel might be causing the breakouts on his forehead and wonder if anyone has told him that. The pecking order is immediately clear: Axel is in charge, and then comes the tan guy then gel boy.

They don’t say hello to me and so I continue to eat. I have a forkful of risotto halfway up to my mouth when the gelled boy says, “Hey, that rice looks like my cum.” The other two boys turn to stare at me. My fork hovers midway between my mouth and the plate, but I know better than to eat it now. I put my fork down.

“Is it your cum?” says the tan boy.

“Yeah, maybe you saw Maria Fabulous and came all over the kitchen.”

Maria Fabulous, I think. That’s what boys called her. Of course.

“So are you going to eat it?” the gelled boy asks.

“Your cum, no?” I say. “The risotto, yes.”

Axel laughs and stares at me. He does that double-take motion where I can tell he’s just noticed that at a particular moment, from a specific angle, I can look pretty. “You’re the Swedish girl,” he says. I think of myself as Czech, not Swedish, so it takes me a minute to respond.

“Yep,” I say.

“I thought so,” he says, proudly, as though he’s just solved a mystery of great importance. “Our moms are friends.”

“Really?” I say, trying to be nonchalant. My mom talks about Axel’s mom in a reverential way. She’s so wealthy and does so much for the Swedish community (all of her good deeds are commemorated by polished plaques), but my mother knows better than to call them friends. This is something I admire about my mother: she never exaggerates a social connection.