Look.I'm...uh...When you told me you'd looked at my stuff.I didn't...I shouldn't have..."
What is it about those two words-I'm sorry-that makes otherwise articulate guys into babbling idiots? I mean, I love you, I get. That's a tough one, putting yourself so completely, nakedly out there. I haven't ever said that to a guy. A guy other than Frankie or my dad, anyway. But I'm sorry? I say it twenty times a day.To Nonna, when I just can't face a three-course breakfast at seven in the morning, to the half-dozen people I bump into on my frantic rush up those eight blocks to school. To Sadie, for having to copy her algebra homework for,like,the thousandth time, because I didn't get to mine.
I'm still waiting for Leo to apologize for totalling my bike three years ago. I forgave him eventually. Riding a bike in the middle of the city is a little like playing RUssian roulette with a bus. Still, it would have been nice t have gotten an I'm sorry instead of a litany of excuses. I figure I'll be waiting forever.
I was going to walk right into the hallowed halls in my battered Chucks and eans, to sit among first-edition Trollopes-assuming they'd restored them. Walk right up to whatever heavily armed security troll was at the door and demand admittance.
They wouldn't let me over the threshold.
I'm sorry I looked. Or saw, I guess. I didn't go digging through your book. The pages fell out."
"Yeah. I kinda figured that might have been what happened." He scuffed one heel against the cement. "The book fell out of my bag again...and,well..."
And,well, there he was,forgiven.
"Zippers," I said. "One of mankind's better inventions. Your bag has one; I've seen it."
"You see much, Grasshopper."
I blinked at him.
"C'mon. Kung Fu?" He let go of his knees and sliced both hands through the air in a choppy spiral. "Shaolin monk fighting against injustice while searching for his long-lost brother in the Old West?"
I shook my head. "Nope.Sorry.""
"Sad. I bet you wouldn't recognize 'Live long and prosper,' either."
"Nope."
"How did I know? My dad got me into seventies TV.It's awfully brilliant. Or brilliantly awful, maybe." He had relaxed and was looking monumentally pleased with seventies television or himself or something.
You're awfully beautiful, Alex Bainbridge.
I managed to keep that one to myself,but... "You're really good." That one got away from me. "Your drawing, I mean.
I couldn't think of any possible universe where wrapping myself around his knees to keep him in place would be construed as anything other than psychotic.
"Okay." He unfolded himself from the stoop, six feet of spendid, and actually held out his hand.
For a second, I thought he wanted to shake. I levered myself halfway up before realizing he was offering to help me up.What a gent.What a spaz. Me, that is. I crouched there, helpless, sat back down a little, then realized how incredibly stupid that must look,started up again. By the time I finally took his hand, I was almost upright,and if I haven't let go almost immediately, I would have looked even more ridiculous than I felt.
"So,Ill see you Monday, maybe," he announced. "On the floor somewhere."
"Not unlikely," I managed. "I can often be found on floors." Whatever that meant. I winced inwardly. Then compounded the idiocy. "I watched a Brady Bunch marathon once when I had strep throat."
He laughed. "Nice try, Grasshopper, but no dice.
You're really good." That one got away from me. "Your drawing, I mean."
He shrugged. "Not really. Besides, what difference does it make? It's not like I'm going to do anything with it. What's the point...?" He winced. "Jeez, I'm sorry.You're probably heading for MoMA via the Sorbonne and Bennington."
"NYU if I'm really really lucky." I smiled, letting him off the hook. I still couldn't quite wrap my head around the fact that I was bantering with Alex Bainbridge. "After that, not a clue. You?"
"Yale,then Powel Law." No With Luck or I hope or even If all goes as decreed.
"Wow.It must be nice to be so certain in your path." I didn't mean to snound snide.I really didn't. "No starviing artistry in your future,that's for sure."
Occasional stupid Mafia comments aside, Alex is no dummy. "It must be nice to be so certain in your convictions. No moral low road for you, that's for sure."
I felt myself blushing, felt that Blood Surge of Humiliation beginning.
After history, which I occasionally enjoy, and French, which I tres don't, I have double art. The art studio hasn't been changed in, like, a hundred years. The floors are battered and creaky and covered with so many layers of dried paint that if looks like Jackson Pollock Was Here, minus the cigarette butts.
Apparently, past generations of Willing Art Girls had tossed their cigarettes onto the tiled window well outside rather than onto the floor. "They were more ladylike," Cat Vernon told me once, pointing out the window beside her easle. The butts are gone, but there are burn marks, scattered like leopard spots,over the terra-cotta surface.
I hadn't wanted to explain the lipstick. Or the mascara. Or the skinny jeans I'd snagged from Sienna's laundrey and washed under cover of darkness and paired with a black turtleneck that a jaunt through the dryer had made, to ne honest, a size too small. But this news about the Willing Archive trumped all of that.
He gave me a careful once-over. "Well."
I sat down next to him, aiming for casual. I should have aimed my butt. I sat on his geometry book. "Well what?"
"Don't even.The day you become a good liar is the day I leave you for one of the Hannandas."
"I have an appointment at the Willing Archive."
I will say this for Frankie: He pays attention. "The utterly-off-limits, place-to-bury-your-face-in-Edward's-old-knickers archive?"
"Nice.But yes,that one.Mrs. Evers got me in."
"About time someone did." He bumped a shoulder against mine. "I really do hate to burst your bubble, Fiorella, but Edward is a century past appreciating the sight of you in tight jeans. So tell me whassup."
I squirmed a little.
"What sort of idiot do you think I am?" He sighed. "You look good, but I am concerned about the inspiration."
"It's not a big deal. It's some makeup."
"When I want a boy to look ta me, it's a day that ends in y. You, it's something else. It's a big deal.
Frankie had used one (reverently) to wipe his eyes.This specimen was old and soft,monogrammed with a J in the corner. "Makes it interesting," he told me once, after finding a box monogrammed with M for fifty cents at a sidewalk sale. "Was it Max or Michael? Maybe Marco..."
"Here," he said now. "You have lipstick halfway down to your chin."
Humiliated, I scrubbed at my face.
Frankie held out his hand, palm up. "Okay,let's have it." I pulled the tube out of my pocket. "Not really my thing, madam, but since I've seen what happens when you don't use a mirror..." I'm sure it helped that he was holding my face, but he read it like a pro. "You had a mirror."
"I did.I'm hopeless."
"Maybe.Open." He squinted as he filled in my upper lip. "I don't like this."
"The color? I knew it was too pink-"
"Quiet.You'll smear it.The color is fine. Better for Sienna, I'm sure..." He surveyed his handiwork. "I don't like that you're doing this for him."
"Don't start. I told you how nice he was."
"In excruciating detail."
Given, the post-Bainbridge family dinner e-mail to Frankie and Sadie had been long. But excrutiating stung, especially from the boy who'd used every possible synonym for hot in describing his Friday-night bookstore acquisition. No name, just detailed hotness and the play-by-play of their flirtation over the fantasy section.
He came to find me," I offered, a small indication, maybe,that this was a Phillite boy who'd grown into doing the right thing.
"I'll give him that. He could have just sucked down his spaghetti and gone." Frankie stuck the cap back on the lipstick. "You look very pretty in..." He flipped the tube over and read. "You've gotta be kidding. Poysonberry? Who comes up with this stuff? Anyway.I'm sure Alex Bainbridge will agree."
"Thank you."
"Anytime.Just keep this in mind, if you would, please. I know that you look very pretty every day, with or without the ridiculously named wax products."
"Saint Francis," I teased, feeling just delightfully poysonous enough in the glow of his approval. "Too good for this world."
"That's just what Connor said." Frankie's most recent boy. They met in a bookstore.
"Bookstore Connor of the fantasy realm?"
Behind us,the gong went. Frankie started to scoop his stuff together. "Careful.His fantasies do not involve one-dimensional Phillites or dead men."
I tapped him on the tip of his perfect nose. He hates that. "How do you know? He might have a thing for dead, one-dimensional Phillites.
I noticed that she left her office door open, too.So she could keep an eye on me, no doubt, in case I decided to grab the andirons and make a run for it.
I stood for a minute, taking it all in. Not what I'd expected at all. And Edward hadn't been any help: "Heavens, how should I know what's there? Whatever was left after my collective vulture of a family descended,I assume..."
The first thing I did was to sit down on the sofa. The old leather creaked loudly enough to make me flinch. But it was worth risking the return of Dr. Rothaus to sit where Edward had sat. Only, it didn't feel very significant. Just cold and little slippery.
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