Rosebush (22 page)

I reached out and took his hand. “Thank you.”

He shifted in his chair. “I don’t want to insult you, but I don’t think much of the decor here. Luckily I have an idea of how we can spice it up.”

Without letting go of my hand, he reached down and I heard him rustling around in the messenger bag he’d propped next to the chair.

When he came up, he was holding a snow globe with the Statue of Liberty inside it. “It’s even better than it looks. See—” He let go of my hand to wind something in the base and it started playing “New York, New York.” “And there’s no way to turn it off. Do you love it?”

“Yes.” I held it up in front of me and looked at him through it. “I do.”

“You have to get better so we can have a day like that again,” he said.

The weekend after my first date with David, a brisk October Saturday, Scott and I had gone to New York for what he called the Cloud Challenge. It was based on the concept that some people see faces in clouds, while other people see clouds in faces, that people’s perspectives condition both how and what they see. His idea was that we would spend the day in New York taking photos of the same things and that by comparing them, we’d learn something about our individual styles.

“Should we buy a map?” I asked as we got off the train at Penn Station.

“We don’t need one.”

“But what if we get lost?”

Scott laughed. “There’s no such thing as lost; there’s just adjusting your perspective.”

“I’m buying a map,” I said.

“Suit yourself.”

The air was crisp with a tangy bite like a good apple when we got off the train and made our way to the Met without the map. In Central Park the trees were starting to turn and we kicked leaves around as we walked over from the subway.

Inside the museum we got lost on our way to the photography section in a series of rooms filled with medieval altar paintings, saints, and Mary and angels all crouched together against lapis-blue or reddish-gold backgrounds, looking toward Jesus standing proud in the middle. That led us to a conversation about what it meant as an artist when you worked with really iconic subject matter. And I started to understand what Scott meant about never being lost.

From there we made our way downtown, without a plan, letting our feet and the traffic lights determine where we went. We ate roasted nuts from a cart on Fifth Avenue. We took self-portraits in the windows of Tiffany’s and Barneys. We photographed manhole covers, solitary flowers in planters, and a dog tied next to a sign that said WILL WORK FOR FOOD. I never once took out the map.

Around Union Square, Scott said, “Keep your eye out for those,” pointing to a black, red, and white sticker of a man’s face looking very stern with the word OBEY beneath it. “They’re all over the city, like an underground art show.”

“Who put them up?”

“Anyone who wants to. The idea is to get people to think about how much they obey, follow the rules, in daily life.”

“But the rules make civilization work. Without rules we’d all just kill each other.”

“That’s what everyone wants you to believe. But they’ve done these studies in Europe that show that in places with fewer traffic signs, people drive better. Because they pay attention to one another.”

“I don’t know. I feel like I already spend a lot of time thinking about other people.”

“You think about what they think of you. It’s different.”

“Do you think I’m self-centered?”

“There you go again.”

For our final set of photos we’d stopped at a stand on Canal Street where we’d each bought a snow globe with the most iconic thing about New York we could think of, the Statue of Liberty. We went away by ourselves to take pictures of it and agreed to meet half an hour later at a Chinese duck place in Chinatown Scott knew about.

I have to admit, I was feeling smug when I got to Great New York Noodletown. I thought my Liberty photos were smart and looked great.

I had taken the snow globe and put it near one of the OBEY posters that had a homeless man smoking a cigarette in front of it. The Statue of Liberty on one side and the word OBEY on the other were like a frame for the portrait of the homeless man. I named it Triptych of Modernity based on the altar paintings we’d seen at the Met that morning and I was really proud of how clever it was.

But Scott kicked my ass. He broke the snow globe open and photographed each piece separately. The statue, pieces of foam that faked snow, the music box, the black molded base, the empty plastic globe, the plaque that said LIBERTY and called it My Mistress at Her Bath or Patriotism Revealed.

Over duck and strong hot tea and water Scott told me about how he’d found Great New York Noodletown when he used to go visit his dad during his arraignment hearings at the courthouse nearby. Even though they both lived with their grandparents, I couldn’t help think about how different he was from Langley. But they both shared a steely core, the kind of thing I decided that makes you a survivor. And a great observer.

“You’re nervous about something,” he said.

“Have you heard about the Getty Images internship?” I scrunched up my straw paper into a worm.

“Yeah. I would kill to apply, but I have to work. You should do it. Without me in the running, you’re bound to win.” He winked.

“Modesty so becomes you.”

“Come on, I kicked your ass on this last photo.”

“Maybe. Do you really think I should apply?”

“What I think doesn’t matter. Don’t you want it?”

“I guess. I don’t know.”

“Hold on.” He got out his phone and held it toward me. “It’s the cop-out hotline calling for you.”

“I’m not copping out.” I dropped water onto my worm so it started to grow.

“You’re afraid. You’re afraid of trying and not succeeding. What’s the worst thing that happens if you apply and don’t get it?”

“I’ll be mortified.”

“By whom?”

“I don’t know. My friends?”

“Your friends will think it’s cool you tried. Or don’t tell them.”

“Sure. You’re right.” I pushed a piece of rice around my plate with my chopsticks.

“Chicken.”

“No, we’re eating duck.”

He pointed at me with his chopsticks. “You’re always waiting for approval from someone else. Why don’t you just do what you want?”

“It’s not like that.” He was getting that intense look.

“You know one thing that makes your pictures different than mine?”

I rolled my eyes. “Your hubris?”

“You use autofocus. You cede part of your vision to someone else.”

“But it does a good job. And if I don’t like it, I change it.”

“Always?” He swigged the rest of his tea and poured us each some more.

“What does that mean?”

“I just think that once you begin to see things the way the camera says is the average way, the way most people want to see them, it can be hard to remember to go back and find your own focus, your own point of view.”

“What are you now, the chair of the Extended Metaphor department? You sure seem to know a lot about me.”

“I’ve watched you. I pay attention to everything you do.” His voice had softened, but it got playful when he added, “Like I know you get sarcastic when you’re pushed.”

“And you get annoying when you’re pushy.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Maybe. But that’s why you like me.”

It wasn’t at that moment. In fact, I was relieved when my phone buzzed with a text from Kate and Langley.

In the city shopping
it said.
At Agent Provocateur then Intermix where ru?

“Hey.” I started gathering up my stuff. “Come meet Kate and Langley.”

“Now?” He looked confused and a little disappointed.

“Yeah, they’re in SoHo. This is perfect. I’ve been dying for you to meet them.”

“Oh, me too. Elsa makes them sound great. What was it, the one with no soul and the one with a heart of darkness?”

“Shut up.”

“So I guess this is it for the Cloud Challenge.”

“For today. It’s been amazing.”

Scott and I paid for our food and walked up to SoHo, shooting a few more photos. But it was different and I was busy checking the map every block to make sure we were going the right way. He came into Intermix with me to meet Kate and Langley, and it was fun to watch the way all the women shopping there turned to stare at him.

After he left, Kate said, “He’s even hotter than you said and he
so
has a crush on you.”

“No way. We’re just friends. And he thinks I live on autofocus.”

“Whatever that means,” Langley said.

“He’s got a girlfriend.”

“Have you seen her?” Langley asked.

“I’ve seen pictures of her.”

“Anyone can fake a picture,” Kate pointed out.

“Anyway, we’re right and you’re wrong,” Langley said. She raised her eyebrow. “Did you tell him about your date with David?”

I hadn’t. “It didn’t come up.”

“Right,” Kate said. “That seems probable since it’s the only thing you’ve been talking about all week.”

“Ha. Maybe Scott and I just have more important things to talk about.” I meant it as a joke, but it was also sort of true. I loved my friends, but I couldn’t have imagined having a conversation with them about art and obedience and traffic signs in Europe.

“Speaking of David,” Langley stepped in, “what are you going to wear when you see him next? If it’s only a rebound thing, you’ll have to make every date with him count.”

I didn’t think they were right about Scott having a crush on me or that Scott was right about me living on autofocus, but after that I was slower to respond to his calls and texts. In fact, I remembered, he’d called me the Thursday of the party more than once and I’d bounced it to voice mail.

“Scott, I’m so sorry I didn’t get back to you the other day. I—”

“Yeah, that is why I’m here. To get an apology. I revise what I said before. You
are
crazy.”

I laughed.

“Livingston High students certainly throw some party,” he said. “Did you hear what happened to Elsa?”

“I heard she got into a car accident.”

“And now she’s in the psych ward here. I wanted to see her, but they said she couldn’t have visitors.”

“Wow. Maybe I’m not the only crazy one.”

“I think it’s just that you rich white people have too much time on your hands. Run out of things to do, decide to go nuts.”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“Assuming just for a second that you’re not nuts, do the police have any idea how this happened? Any leads?”

I shook my head.

“They have no idea who could have hit you? There are no witnesses or anything?”

“No. And I’m useless. I can’t remember anything.”

“Not even leaving the party? What you were doing wandering around the streets of Deal?”

“No.”

He was gazing at my hands. “Your ring. The friendship ring you and Kate and Langley all wear.”

“What about it?”

He shook his head like he was trying to clear it. “Um, I was just thinking, didn’t it used to be on the other hand?”

He was right, I realized. I always wore my friendship ring on my left hand, but now it was on my right. That was weird. “The hospital staff must have moved it. I can’t believe you noticed.”

“You know I pay attention to everything.” There was a strange pause then, and I had the impression he wanted to stay something else, something more. But when he went on it was to say, “I’m sure you’re right about the hospital staff.” He stood up. “I’m afraid I have to take off. Those tables at Le Marcel don’t bus themselves and I’m due there at four.”

I smiled at him, rubbing the tip of my thumb against the ring. “Thanks for coming. I feel better right now than I have since I got here.”

“Don’t go getting any crazier.”

“I won’t.”

Please,
I thought,
let that be true.

Sunday