Afterparty(46)

Some days, there’s no news and if someone sends me a video of a dog that nods his head in time to jazz guitar, I watch it sixteen times. And other days, there’s too much news for a person to take in without sawing open the top of her head.

I say, “Dylan just broke up with his brother’s girlfriend?” (Which kind of makes the snide gossip fit together.) “Before Kimmy’s party. I just said. So he gets shitfaced, and he deigns to show up somewhere people are having fun—not that he has fun, except for being with me.”

I keep nodding my head and trying to look sympathetic.

She says, “That’s it. I’m so done with Dylan Kahane. I need somebody cooler and not boring. Wrong brother. Think about it: Aiden plays soccer at Saint Andrews. Prince William and Kate went to Saint Andrews. Dylan walks his smelly dog around the block in 90210.” She puts her index finger on her chin. “Hmmm. Hard choice.”

I say, “Maybe meet the guy before you get engaged.”

Siobhan says, “I did. I told you. Right after Nancy dragged me to L.A. last summer. The guy was everywhere. At Burton’s club; he plays tennis. Buff guy who doesn’t have some kind of a vendetta against team sports. Which, guess what, I play. Fuck Dylan.”

I say, “Even Kimmy says Aiden’s an *.”

“Can he help it if he attracts psycho clingers? Dylan scoops up the wreckage. To prove he’s so much better than Aiden. Never works out. So who’s the *?”

She shakes out her hair behind her, closing her eyes and shuddering a little, as if she’s trying to shed the last vestiges of Dylan.

“God,” she says. “You should see yourself. Like you feel sorry for him. I never said he wasn’t surprisingly nice. But you’re the one who liked him. I never even would have touched him if you hadn’t pointed him out. I need someone with more edge.”

It is impossible even to keep nodding my head after she says this.

The thing sandwiched between how nice he is and how he doesn’t have enough edge. The middle thing, the thing at the heart of everything.

She touched him because I pointed him out. Because I’m the one who liked him.

My desire to push her off the car is lost in my desire to go find Dylan.

? ? ?

But he finds me.

Because, in the realm where two negatives make a positive, where the girl code and common sense and what you expect is going to happen all float off past the horizon in the absence of gravity and reason, Siobhan has gift-wrapped him, tied him with a bow, and delivered him to me.

Dylan: Hey Juliet.

Me: Hey Kahane.

Me: You ok?

Dylan: I’ve been better

Me: Sorry.

Dylan: Not that I don’t enjoy all the updates about where Gart’s dick has been.

Dylan: Shit

Dylan: Do I sound surly?

Me: You sound kind of unhinged.

Dylan: Also stoned

Dylan: So baked

Me: If you’re somewhere with a bed, you should lie down on it.

A half hour later, my phone vibrates: Arif.

No phones at dinner.

I say, “Dad, it’s a kid from Physics. Would you mind?”

He says, “I bow to modern life.”

I run into my bedroom, out of range of the aroma of the flaky pie crust, and cheese, and dishes cooked from scratch without one single compromise to modern life.

“Did D.K. just text you?” Arif says.

In the background, Dylan is shouting, “Hang up the phone!”

This sounds a lot like a rhetorical question, but I say, “Yup.”

Arif sighs. “Did he make a fool of himself?’

“Sorta?”

In the background, Dylan again: “I’m still capable of hearing, asswipe.”

Arif says, “Shut up, D.K.”

I say, “Bye, maybe?”

There’s some sort of a scuffle and Arif says, “Emma. Come back in twenty-four hours. What’s the half-life of weed?”

I say, “Not covered in tenth-grade chemistry. And not a ton of personal experience.”

“Or it could be permanent brain damage,” Arif says.

? ? ?

It isn’t brain damage.

Three hours later—when I’m lying on my bed, obsessing about what’s going on—he’s back.

Dylan: So. Apparently I texted in a state of incoherence.

Me: Not that bad.

Dylan: Just so you know, not my m.o.

Me: Just so you know, I heard about you and the comp sci AP exam last yr. Baked and yet a 5.

Dylan: Just so you know, that was comp sci. I’m not planning to do that for physics.

Dylan: God my shirt smells like moldy weed Me: I hear there’s this thing called the washing machine.

Dylan: I heard Romeo is old news What?

Dylan: Rolled up in a ball in Uganda nursing his wounds.

Me:?

Dylan: For once good timing.

What?

Me: Rumors of Jean-Luc being eaten by leopards are greatly exaggerated.

Dylan: I heard you left him bleeding in a ditch Me: Maybe?

Dylan: Cutting to the chase. We should talk. You like the Griddle right? Siobhan says you do.

Dylan: She says you grade men there.

She grades men there.

Me: I always enjoy a nice pancake after hacking people up.

Dylan: So I heard. We should discuss your violent proclivities. Now that we’re in a mutual state of broken up.