the tobacco. I am out of practice with blunts. Pells kids put little nubs of pot in cheap glass bowls that they buy from head shops in Times Square. I cough until I’m red in the face and tears are pooling in my eyes, but no one cares, no one notices. The mood in the room is slowing down and speeding up at once. In one corner Dan Ligiano is falling asleep with a beer in his hand and in another corner two people I don’t know are making out.
A bunch of girls come over and sit on the floor in front of us. Most of them I recognize. Some of them I hooked up with in middle school or at the start of high school, when I still used to hang out in Yonkers on the weekends. Girls from Yonkers let you get away with more. The girls I hooked up with in Pells before Lindsay came along were more sure of themselves, more confident in their own goodness and worth. I could feel it the first time I kissed a girl from Pells. That she thought of herself as special. I look around now at the girls in this room and have sudden visions of some of them unclothed. I’ve lain on the grass in a park with some of them. I’ve been in a bed with some of them. I’ve put my hands all over them, all over their rib cages and breasts and legs and necks and, rarely, when I was feeling tender, their faces. I’ve taken off their clothing and they’ve taken off mine and we’ve acted out whatever rage or anxiety or lust we felt toward each other and then we got up off the bed—laughing sometimes, ashamed sometimes—and rejoined the party, subtly or unsubtly, depending. The weed is sinking into me and the rum and the beer and it’s bringing out something in me that I thought might have been lost. I feel powerful and bold. I’m trying to catch their eyes, now, the girls I’ve known in this way. I’m trying to will them toward me.
Kel, says Dee, you remember when we played at that court on Warburton all the time?
He’s talking about basketball. When we were twelve we played there after school every day. I nod. I am filled with happy certainty that I fit in here, that I am the king or the prince of something here.
A little blond girl comes up to Dee drunkenly and sits on his lap and I know her, I went to school with her once upon a time.
Sit on his lap, says Dee, who is trying to roll another blunt, and the girl obliges. She is light as a feather and swaying back and forth.
You remember me, she says, not asking.
Of course, I say.
I put my hand on her back, on the small of her back, unswervingly.
Peters comes into the room then wagging his phone. He looks happier or drunker.
Yo Kel! he says. Kurt’s on the phone. How the hell do you get to this place?
Toss it, I say, and Peters chucks it across the room dangerously.
Kel? Kel? Kurt’s saying on the phone.
I’m here, I say.
I’m so lost, says Kurt.
While I give him directions, the girl on my lap leans her head against my shoulder sweetly and casually and sort of pats my face. Her friends, three girls on the floor in front of us, fall over laughing.
Fuck you! she tells them, springing up, but it’s a joke, and then she tells them she’s sorry and she loves them too.
One by one the boys from Pells make their way into the living room and I see that they’ve found girls to talk to. The girls don’t know what to make of them. They are halfway between humoring them and liking them. One of them is Steph Callahan who was always the most popular girl when I went to school here. She’s strong and pretty and Matt Barnaby is trying to talk to her and she’s trying to talk to Stacey Cavalieri.
Park behind Trevor’s car, I tell Kurt. Drive till you see Trev’s car and park behind it. There’s a spot.
I hang up the phone. The girl on my lap kisses my cheek. A little murmur goes up from her friends.
I turn toward the girl on my lap and take her head and kiss it. I kiss her mouth. She takes my hand and I stand and we walk as if we are going toward