Chapter 1 #3
We sit in the front row of the balcony, so we can put our feet up when the usher isn’t looking.
I remember that I’ve brought some photos from first semester to share with everyone, since I finally remembered to take my film to Fotomat.
We still have a little time before the movie begins, so I take the envelopes out of my backpack and start passing the photos down the row.
There’s Noah faking an orgasm in a Sally-esque way in the cafeteria for a Secret Santa dare.
Margaret dressed as a witch for Halloween, her expression perfectly poised, because (like always) she was the only one at the party not drinking.
Six of our friends, including Andie, setting up chips and drinks for a surprise party for Paul in our second-floor lounge, and Paul’s reaction of complete displeasure.
Pictures of couples, partners switched and switched again, a square dance of relationships that has cycled through our friend group.
(I don’t even make the calls or play the fiddle at this particular square dance. I am the photographer.)
I watch as the photographs move from lap to lap in the Paris balcony, each friend staring most intently at the photos they’re in, then looking at the other people in the frame, mumbling, “Oh, you look good in this one” or “I really shouldn’t let people take pictures of me.
Promise me I don’t look that bad.” Or “When was this? Why don’t I remember this?
” (Margaret is never the one who says this.)
Andie lingers the most on the pictures, holding each one in front of her with still-life concentration. In the middle of the third envelope, she turns to me and asks, “Why aren’t you in any of these? You know you could hand over the camera from time to time.”
“It’s funny—I don’t think Eric’s in any of my photos either,” Pam says.
“Maybe I took your photos too,” I joke.
“Are you trying to be funny?” Andie asks. “You’re just being confusing. Those aren’t the same thing.”
She looks at the next photo, a shot of my roommate, Garrett, sleeping, his head buried in a book.
“This is a good one,” Andie comments.
“Thanks,” I tell her. “I pressed the button myself.”
She rolls her eyes, and I smirk.
I can’t say I particularly like Andie, but I do like getting on her nerves.
The lights dim; the coming attractions begin.
The photos pass through a succession of hands, back into my lap.
I watch Alice’s opening credits. Only words.
Then the story itself begins. I find myself drifting in and out—I’m absorbed by what’s happening on the screen, and then suddenly I’m aware of Margaret sitting next to me, Noah another seat away.
I am drawn to reality . . . and, even more than that, I am drawn to my expectations, exposing them, falling short.
I consistently curse myself for looking forward to things, daring them to be disappointing.
When I had pictured a day in New York City with these friends, what I had seen was more like the opening credits of a TV show than reality, a bunch of familiar people smiling on a sidewalk or laughing as they hail a cab.
I pictured a sunny day and have ended up in a room full of darkness, save for a luminous image of unreal people.
I had imagined conversations, confidences.
But now there’s no way to talk. And the movie had been my suggestion.
The film is, I think, related in some way to Alice in Wonderland.
I think about how lucky Alice was to have never heard of Wonderland, so she had no expectations of what it might be when she got there.
What if, at the end of high school, I’d found a Drink Me bottle that led to college without any time to think about it?
Would my life now seem like more of a wonderland?
I turn again and catch Margaret looking at me. She doesn’t turn away or seem bothered by being caught. Instead, she shares a slight smile, an inside-joke tilt of her head. I nod and return to the movie’s world for a time.
Suddenly there are closing credits. I have lost track of how lost I am. I realize that if I’m going to stay in the city for dinner, I have to call my parents to tell them which train I think I’ll be taking home. When I mention I need to do this, Noah says there’s a pay phone by the bathrooms.
“Bathrooms—sounds like a good idea,” Pam says. Margaret and Andie tell us they’ll wait for us outside. Noah says he figures he’ll call his parents too.
The phone is right by the ladies’ room, the entrances perpendicular, the lines intersecting. The women coming down to use the toilet are confused to see me and Noah hanging around.
When it’s my turn, I call my parents, talk to my brother, and make him write the message down because otherwise it will disappear.
Noah is next; I stand by the door of the booth, even though it incites a hostile glance from the man waiting behind me, as if I’m about to double-dip my pay phone privileges.
“Damn,” Noah says after about thirty seconds. “I got the answering machine.”
“Hey!” I exclaim, a little too loudly for my pride and a little too softly for my curiosity. “I know that machine!”
Noah dictates something into the phone, looking at me the whole time.
Pam comes up and taps me on the shoulder, which makes the man in back of me actually say, “Ahem.” Noah hangs up and Pam hurries us along.
“I figure we’ll walk down Fifth Avenue, see the shop windows,” she says when we’re back with Andie and Margaret. “Then we can make a pit stop at my apartment for a sec, which is about halfway. We can decide whether to take the subway or walk to Chinatown.”
We don’t get more than a block before Margaret’s eyes go wide and she says, “Wait—is that the FAO Schwarz from Big?”
“Oh boy,” Andie mumbles. “Here we go.”
“Yes, it is,” Pam says, patient tour guide. “Do you want to go see the piano?”
“Why are you asking?” Noah says. “Of course she wants to see the piano!”
Truth is, I’ve never seen the floor of piano keys that Tom Hanks and the guy who played his boss danced on in Big, and I’ve always been curious.
The shelves of the toy store seem like they’re still recovering from the Christmas crowds. The teddy bears’ smiles seem extra forced, and so do the salespeople’s. There’s a pretty long line to try out the piano, and I’m surprised when it’s Andie who navigates us to the end.
“What?” she says. “We’ve come all this way.”
“Fuck yeah,” Margaret says. I am jealous that she can get away with being so excited about something in a toy store.
“We’ll be right back,” Noah says. Then he pulls me out of the line. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“I don’t know. We’re in FAO Schwarz. Why should we all wait on line?”
There’s a big display for Transformers.
“I don’t get Transformers,” I say. “But my brother loves them.”
“What don’t you get?”
“I don’t know. When I wanted to play with cars as a kid, I played with cars. And when I wanted to play with action figures, I played with action figures. I never needed them to be, like, the same thing.”
“You’re so weird,” Noah says. It isn’t the same from him as it is from Andie.
“How is that weird?”
It’s so stupid, because the tone of my voice is actually challenging him. Like, Tell me why I’m weird, won’t you?
Instead of answering, he says, “I guess I can’t really be the judge of weirdness, can I? I like ‘Lovecats,’ after all.”
It’s a reference to an earlier conversation we had, and I’m flattered that he remembers it and thought to bring it up now.
Early on, he’d asked me if I liked The Cure.
And I’d said, “Yeah—everything but ‘Lovecats.’” Because “Lovecats” is my shorthand for when a band you love puts out a truly awful song, the track that’s an automatic fast-forward.
He hadn’t defended it then. But now . . .
“Holy shit,” I say.
“Don’t think less of me.”
“They actually sample a cat meowing. It’s so dumb.”
“You do think less of me, don’t you?”
“No. Yes. No.”
I am blushing in front of a display of Transformers. This is a low.
Luckily, Pam appears a second later and says it’s our turn.
The Big piano has keys the size of diving boards, and the idea is to jump from one to the other to make music. As the five of us approach, Margaret asks, “Do any of you know how to play the piano?”
“I can play ‘Chariots of Fire,’” I say. Then clarify: “Well, the beginning of it.”
“Guess we’re going free-form,” Pam declares, pouncing on a key and releasing a synthy high note.
We pounce on that piano like two-year-olds who’ve just been gifted a Fisher-Price baby grand.
Pam, Andie, Noah, and even Margaret are whooping and laughing and dancing around.
They are happy, and for some reason I can’t be happy, so I make myself pretend to be happy so my unhappiness won’t drag down their happiness.
It’s like they don’t hear the aural chaos we are making.
While for me it sounds exactly like what’s going on in my head.
I am positive they would be just as happy if I wasn’t here.
And these are my friends.
“Come on!” Pam says to me. “Our grand finale . . . ‘Chariots of Fire’!”
I don’t want to let them down, so I hit the first note.
Then I jump four keys to hit the next note.
More steps to the next three notes. It sounds like “Chariots of Fire” being played by a turtle .
. . but it is “Chariots of Fire.” I’m getting to the faster part when the FAO Schwarz employee says our time is up.
The four of them cheer for me when I’m done, which is just them being nice. Noah pats me on the back and says he’s going to learn how to play “Lovecats” for next time, just for me.
I tell him to shut up. But I don’t really mean it.
It feels like it takes forever for us to make it down Fifth Avenue. Pam and Andie want to look at the Benetton windows and the Gap windows and the Jordache windows. They don’t want to buy anything in particular. They just want to critique.