I could easily start to obsess (or, at least, stress) about this, but luckily another diversion soon joins me at the table. It’s Tony/Toni/Toné, dressed now as a priest. I mean, he’s dressed as a woman dressed as a priest.
“I’m on in ten minutes,” she says, to explain the costume change. “Is Norah still powdering?”
“She’s the lulu of the loo.”
“Perfect! Now us girls can chat.” She bows her head in my direction, ready to listen, but even readier to ask. “How long have the two of you been the two of you?”
I look at my watch. “About an hour, including transportation.”
Tony/Toni/Toné whistles her appreciation. “That’s four times as long as any of my relationships have lasted.”
“Well, this one might not be setting any new world records,” I find myself saying.
“No!” Tony/Toni/Toné exclaims. “I saw the two of you canoodling. You’re a regular Johnny Castle.”
I have no idea who Johnny Castle is, but I definitely approve of the name.
Tony/Toni/Toné places her palms together and looks at me with a kindness that has no sexuality. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.”
“How long has it been since your last confession?”
I look him right back in the eye and answer.
“Three weeks, two days, and twenty-four—fuck. Three weeks and three days ago, I guess.”
“And what was that confession?”
“‘I love you.’”
“That’s a serious one. And how was it received?”
“Vow of silence. And chastity, until the next guy came along.”
“So what do you have to confess now?”
I don’t know why I’m saying any of this, except that it’s the truth.
“I’m confessing that I don’t know if I’m ready for this.”
“What is ‘this’?”
Being open. Being hurt. Liking. Not being liked. Seeing the flicker on. Seeing the flicker off. Leaping. Falling. Crashing.
“Norah. I don’t know if I’m ready for Norah.”
Tony/Toni/Toné smiles, her teeth the same white as her collar.
“There’s no such thing as ready,” she says. “There’s only willing.”
She reaches over and puts her hand on top of mine. She’s not making a pass at me—she’s trying to pass something on.
“I have all the proof I need,” she says. “The proof is always in the dancing.”
Her glance escapes from me for a second. I follow it and see Norah emerging from the Laydies’ Room.
Tony/Toni/Toné stands up from her chair.
“One more thing?” I ask her.
She raises an eyebrow.
“Who’s Norah’s dad?”
The eyebrow slants higher, so it’s practically perpendicular to her eye.
“You really don’t know?” she asks.
I shake my head.
“That,” she says, “is brilliant.”
Norah isn’t looking over to the table—not looking over to me, I figure. She doesn’t see Tony/Toni/Toné slip away backstage. She doesn’t see me waiting for her.
I decide to check my wallet, to make sure I have enough money to pay for our cocktease cocktails (virginity sullied only by the umbrella’s reputation). But of course when she gets to the table, it looks like I’m itching to pay the bill. I quickly shove my wallet back in my pocket, only it gets tangled on its own chain and I end up spewing Washingtons all over the floor. I swoop them up before she sits down again, which only bumps me slightly lower on the spaz scale. Especially because it’s now I remember we’re being comped, so I didn’t have to take my wallet out in the first place.
She seems a little less rattled now.
“You look refreshed,” I tell her. Then I can’t help myself, adding, “Everything okay? Was it something I said? Or was my Johnny Castle impression just no good?”
She twinkles at Johnny Castle.
Thank you, Tony/Toni/Toné.
“Look,” she says, raising her Tina Colada, “I owe you a kind of explanation. I know you probably think I’m a horrid bitch from the planet Schizophrenia, but I’m honestly not trying to mess with your head. I’m just messing with my own head and I seem to have dragged you along for the ride. I think you’re nice to me and that scares the f**k out of me. Because when a guy’s a jerk or an ass**le, it’s easier because you know exactly where you stand. Since trust isn’t an option, you don’t have to get all freaked out about maybe having to trust him. Right now I am thinking about ten things at the same time, and at least four of those things have to do with you. If you want to leave right now and drive home and forget my name and forget what I look like, I wouldn’t blame you in the least. But what I’m trying to say is that if you did that I would be sorry. And not just sorry in an I-apologize-I’m-so-sorry way, but sorry in a sad-that-something-that-could’ve-happened-didn’t way. That’s it. You can go now. Or we could stay for Where’s Fluffy when Toni’s set is over. I think they’re playing a surprise show here tonight.”
Then, finally, she takes a sip of her drink.
A gulp, really.
And I take a deep breath. And I say:
“My jacket looks good on you.”
She puts the glass down. Stares at me. And I think, Fine, I’m a freak.
So be it.
“No,” I go on. “It does. And if I left, you’d probably want to give me my jacket back. And if you did, I wouldn’t be able to put it on, because the whole time I’d be knowing how perfectly it fit on you. How even though the sleeves are ridiculously too long and the collar is all f**ked up and for all I know some guy named Salvatore is going to come in this very club in two minutes and say, ‘Hey, that’s my jacket’ and strike up a conversation and sweep you off your feet away from me—even though all those things are true or possibly true, I just can’t ruin the picture of you sitting there across from me wearing my jacket better than I or anyone else ever could. If I don’t owe it to you and I don’t owe it to me, I at least owe it to Salvatore.”
There. I’ve said everything I wanted to say without actually having to use the words please stay.
“Pick up your drink,” Norah tells me.
I do.
She clinks her glass against mine.
“Cheers,” she says.
“Salud,” I reply.
“L’chaim.”
“Top o’ the morning to ya.”
“Sto lat.”
“May the road rise to meet you.”…and we go on like this, until Tony/Toni/Toné appears onstage to purr the filthiest “Do Re Mi” that Manhattan has ever seen.
People look at us every now and then. I guess some of them know Norah, or at least who she is. I’m the mystery. Or maybe I’m just the nobody. I don’t care. If I’m just The Guy With Norah, that’s cool. Right now, that’s all I want to be.
All the other things I am—they’re too complicated. I can feel them lying in wait, planning their return.
8. NORAH
“So say we’re at the Motel 6 on the other side of the Lincoln Tunnel and we’re having that threeway with E.T. Who gets to be the top and who gets to be the bottom?”
This question has actually escaped my mouth. Perhaps it’s not that I’m frigid—it’s that once I decide I like a guy, I turn into a raging idiot, unfit for public appearances. I wish Caroline could be here now, hiding out in a corner, feeding me lines, Cyrano to Nick’s Roxanne. Although Caroline-as-inspiration could easily land me right back in the bathroom, on my knees, and not in prayer. Which as a basic premise isn’t so objectionable, but now that I’m trying to get in sync with time, I need more of it than Caroline generally requires to reach room temperature with a guy.
Nick answers, “No-brainer. E.T. can’t take the heat and goes off to the motel vending machine for some Reese’s Pieces, and hopefully doesn’t get caught in the crossfire of some crack deal gone bad while he’s out there. I mean, really, Norah, Motel 6 off the tunnel? Couldn’t we class it up a little? Wouldn’t the devirginization of E.T. merit at least a Radisson, at least Paramus?”
The stage acts are over and nuns have converted to stagehands as they transform the set for the next show. We’ve hit the jackpot, because the Where’s Fluffy unannounced show is most certainly going on next after the stage is converted—widened, barricaded, made ready for the coming apocalypse sure to be wrought by the leathered and chained, tunneled, tattooed, and pierced punk crowd now streaming into this place. It’s got to be close to three in the morning, because it’s the die-hard wave coming in, amped from a night of power-punk club-hopping, ready for the ultimate nightcap. By all logic, I should be home now, sitting up in my twin bed and flicking through channels in the dark while Caroline heaves through her inebriated slumber in her bed across from me. I recognize several people that were at Crazy Lou’s earlier, and I know we’re all following the same yellow brick road, looking for that ultimate band, that ultimate night to remember. Crazy Lou himself has even arrived, I can see him at the bar chatting up Toni. I can only pray hard that Toni’s almighty powers extend to her denying Tal entrance should he follow Lou here tonight, or that Tal will be too jet-lagged for the infinite Manhattan night.
Or maybe prayer isn’t necessary and my moment of clarity was real and true and Tal is not a threat because I am wearing this jacket that says Salvatore and I am deep into this night with this Nick person and I am having occasionally really, truly p**n ographic thoughts about him. While Tal may not yet have wholly receded to the farthest reaches of my subconscious past—I can feel the present bitter taste of his nearness despite the sweetness of the Tina Colada I am drinking—I am here and I am now and there’s nowhere I’d rather be, only where did Nick go?
He said I wear his jacket better than he or anyone else ever could. So why isn’t he going for an encore Johnny Castle performance with me instead of sitting opposite me acting all casual, looking perhaps a little distracted? He could at least do me the courtesy of trying for some furtive cle**age views, or if nothing else, pretend that he’s as interested in learning as much about me as I’d like to know about him. Like, everything. Like, NOW.
If Caroline was here, she’d give me her Patience, grasshopper speech. But she’s not and I am left to wonder on my own: How does this work, the getting to know a new guy without revealing too much desperation for his undivided attention?
It helps that the club has gone from full to packed, because the energy and noise help drown out what is fast becoming a sinking ship between Nick and me, probably courtesy of me and the trying-too-hard conversation. I came back from the bathroom, we had virgin drinks along with toasted clinks, but I seem to have made the ultimate mistake. I try to learn something about him (isn’t that what you do?), dig a little deeper, and I’m getting sucked down fast into the vortex of Awkward First Date.
“So, where do you live?” I ask him, even though I know. Just to say something. And because E.T. tanked, and How long have you been in a band? and Are you guys serious or just f**king around? got me only Since the dawn of time and No, we’ve only been rehearsing together since freshman year, spent every f**king dollar we made at minimum-wage jobs to support this band, but no, we’re not f**king serious. I’m all for sarcasm but sometimes it’s tiring, especially when it’s near morning and I thought we were finally getting somewhere and I might as well be taking a nap at this point. Nick was so with me a while ago, but now without the diversion of a stage show, and with the (I think) mutual admittance of a mutual…something, it’s like the pendulum is swinging perilously in the wrong direction for us, and I don’t know if it’s that something changed, or I said something stupid again (fucking E.T.—I HATE you!), or I just dared to fly too close to the sun in my desire to thaw.