Hold On Tight Read online

  “Not a chance,” Mickey said as he opened the canary yellow Mercedes door. “We’ve got places to be …”

  my guys and I move slowly, slowly northward

  “No way, you do not have to talk to your girl again …,” Mickey yelled. I was sitting in the middle of a back seat that was luxury, but not exactly luxurious, so I really heard that one. Arno, up in the front, added loudly: “Can’t you see our boy is whipped?”

  “I’ll call you back in a second …,” Patch said before hanging up and putting his phone back on the dashboard. Then he made a sudden turn and brought us into our third rest area of the afternoon.

  Secretly I was happy that we had stopped again, what with me somehow having been assigned the middle seat and all, although teasing Patch felt like the natural thing to do. Patch is kind of day-dreamy and the most elusive of my friends, which of course makes girls crush on him even more than they would in the first place. So now that he actually, no joke, cares about just one girl, it’s hard not to want to talk a little bit of good-natured shit.

  And his girlfriend, Greta, lives in California, so that only makes it more funny—Patch has never been one to abuse his cell phone minutes, you see, and now that’s all he seems to be doing.

  “Did you just want to check with her if it’s okay to go over sixty-five?” I asked. Patch shot me an Et tu, Brute? look in the rearview mirror, pulled up the emergency break, and got out of the car. Then we all tumbled out, too.

  The first time we’d stopped, at the very first gas station on the other side of the George Washington Bridge, nobody had said anything. We were out of the city, and that simple fact had tranquilized us all somewhat. Apparently Patch and Greta had had some sort of fight (although I couldn’t figure out who was apologizing to who), and Patch talked on the cell phone for a good half hour while the rest of us got big Cokes and watched the traffic go by.

  The second time, it was actually Mickey’s fault because he’d forgotten to piss before we got back in the car at the gas station, and only after we’d all gotten out to stretch our legs did Patch’s phone ring. Apparently, that time Greta was just calling back with her initial impressions of Stanford, where she’d just arrived.

  Now we were standing around our third roadside convenience store, with a lot of greenery surrounding us and some birds chirping. Patch walked away, talking on his cell phone, and stopped just as soon as he knew we couldn’t hear him anymore.

  “This is too weird,” David said. Arno and Mickey and I had sat down on a log, but David was standing up in this kind of rigid position. He’d tried on the clothes we’d all packed at the last rest stop, but all our worn T-shirts had fit his lank basketball-player frame like belly shirts, and now he was back in his black suit. Poor guy.

  “What?” Arno said. “You mean how Patch has gotten all Mr. Greta on us?” He looked wistfully over at Patch, who was talking and tugging on his Yankees cap like he was trying to psych out a batter. “It’s going to bite us all, sooner or later,” he added cryptically.

  “Hey man, are you getting hot or what?” I asked.

  David blinked at me in the bright sunlight. I instantly wished I hadn’t brought the suit thing up.

  “Do I look really stupid?” he asked.

  “Nah, just a little stupid,” Mickey said. “Or just a little bit little.”

  “Not even,” I said. “It’s sort of cool, actually. I was thinking of adding a little mod to my look, too, but it looks like you beat me to it.”

  David finally smiled, which was a relief. Sometimes you just have to lie—just a little bit—with your friends, you know what I mean? Although, to give him credit, David has this new confidence that is really working for him. He’s always been the guy with the nice face and the wrong hair—you see this all the time—but lately he’s been wearing his hair in a very trimmed, Luke Wilson style that really works for him. Even when he’s wearing a kid’s suit.

  “I’m going to go see if they have any of those red pistachios,” Mickey said, standing up and making a lip-smacking sound. “You guys want anything?”

  I shook my head and David sat down on the log in the space that Mickey had vacated.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have come,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” I said. “Of course you should have come. What were you going to do in Manhattan with all of us gone, anyway?”

  “Yeah, that’s true. I just haven’t really dated anyone since Amanda, and that Mia girl sounded kind of hot.”

  “Sounded hot?” I said. This was vintage David. “You don’t even know what she looks like, and you’re already moping about her.”

  “I am not,” David said, a little defensively.

  “Look, I just don’t want to see you get into another thing like what you had with Amanda, which was such an Exhibit A see-saw relationship. The reason she could bring you so low was the same reason she could bring so high. You were way too impressed by her. You’ve got to be careful on that see-saw, man.”

  There was a long uncomfortable silence, which I hoped indicated that David was taking in what I’d said, and then he changed the subject.

  “You excited to see Ted?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. And actually, I really was. I’d been so focused on getting my guys together for the last few hours that I’d almost forgotten about Ted and the fact that I was going to see him. Ted isn’t flashy or anything, and people forget about him a lot, but that’s too bad, because he’s a super-good guy.

  “Oh yeah, I forgot Ted went to Vassar,” Arno said. “Is he still writing letters to congress about a woman’s right to choose and shit?”

  “Hey, man, I know Ted doesn’t spend his nights like we do, and he listens to music from like 1995, but he’s my brother and he, um … he cares about stuff,” I said. The truth was, I hadn’t seen Ted all that much since he started college almost two years ago. He’d spent last summer doing Habitat for Humanity down near New Orleans, and there’d always been a party or something on the weekends he came home.

  “I didn’t mean that in a bad way,” Arno said.

  “I know.”

  “Your brother’s really cool,” Arno continued. This was when I realized that he must be feeling kind of wounded about something, because usually he wouldn’t even notice that he’d said something retarded.

  “Ted has always been really nice to me,” David said. Then, as though he could hear that reverberating uncooly in his brain, he added, “But isn’t he always nice to everyone? I could totally see him lecturing us on how to better understand the plight of pigeons, what with all the social injustices they’ve endured.”

  “Remember how he always used to tell us not to call each other ‘retarded’ when we did stupid things, because it was insulting to handicapped people?” Arno said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “He used to get all flustered and red, like really mad about it. He’d still be taking about it at home.”

  “That was so retarded,” Arno said.

  We all laughed at that, but I got psyched all over again to see Ted. After all, being cool around him was pretty effortless.

  “What do you think they’re talking about?” Arno said, abruptly changing the subject. We all looked. “I mean, I find this as freaking bizarre as the rest of you, but they must have something major between them to be going on like this, you know what I mean?”

  Patch looked over at us, and saw that we were all staring. For some reason, none of us looked away. He said something into the phone, and then he put it back in his pocket and started walking toward us. He was shaking his head, and kind of chuckling.

  “You guys look like you’re ready to hit the road,” he said as he approached.

  We all stood, and as we did we heard a skidding of gravel just behind us. I turned, slowly it seemed, and that’s when I saw Mickey, a ripped open bag of red pistachios hanging from his teeth and his bright red palms out in front of him, barreling in our direction.

  he’s not my little ted anymore


  “I still think that’s going to come off,” Mickey said for maybe the hundredth time. The light was fading from the sky as Patch steered the car slowly through the Vassar campus. David, who had two large, red handprints on his clean, white dress shirt, looked pained that the topic had come up again. “Come on, man,” Mickey continued, “I’ll buy you another shirt. A Vassar one. Your interviewer will flip for that.”

  “It’s cool,” David said, although he didn’t look like he meant it. He kept looking straight ahead, at all the big leafy trees and quaint brick buildings.

  “Or maybe,” Mickey continued, his eyes getting kind of glassy, “I could sign it, the way Picasso would sign his napkin doodles to pay for dinner …”

  I was relieved that at just that moment I saw Ted, standing at the edge of the quad with his hands stuffed into knee-length, cutoff jeans, and instead of saying, “Mickey, you are not Picasso,” I got to say, “There he is, pull over.”

  Patch pulled the Mercedes up onto the lawn, and then I got out and waved at my brother. Ted looks a lot like me, except a little bit taller and a lot sloppier: his dark blond hair was overgrown and flopping in his eyes, and he was wearing the kind of stretched and faded T-shirt that girls love to borrow to sleep in. As he hugged me and slapped me on the back, I couldn’t help but notice the jean cutoffs again. They were stylish, like something you would see on aviator-sporting dudes in Williamsburg. Was Ted rocking a hipster trend, or had he just cluelessly cropped some old pants? Clearly I was going to have to investigate further.

  “Hey Bro,” he said, throwing his arms around me. “It sure is good to see you.”

  Then he turned to my guys and started saying his hellos. “Nice suit,” he said to David. Then he added, without a hint of sarcasm, “Is that artistically embellished?”

  David finally cracked a smile at that one, and then he and Ted gave each other back-patting hugs. “Nope, though this one might have you believe otherwise.” He jerked his head in Mickey’s direction.

  “Mihickster,” Ted said, high-fiving Mickey. “I’ve heard some very positive buzz about your event tomorrow night, Bro. Looking forward, looking forward. Arno, Patch, good to see you. I think there’s some fun stuff going on tonight, so let’s go get you guys settled, and then we can hit the town, as it were.”

  “Hit the town” is a phrase I find incomparably dorky, but it wasn’t surprising coming out of Ted’s mouth. Back when Ted was in high school, he was always saying totally cringe-worthy things.

  We followed Ted toward a big brick building with a peaked roof and lots of gothic-looking windows. There were kids on the grass out front, tossing Frisbees and reading and chatting. There were a few couples very publicly making out, too, which made me forget where I was for a minute and yearn for Flan.

  “Wow, this really looks like college,” I said, remembering again why we’d come, and thinking it would be sort of cool to take a four-year time-out from the city and live in the country and read books about British history or the lives of insects or whatever.

  “Yeah, no kidding,” Ted said.

  As we walked across the field—the smell of grass almost overwhelming—people kept looking up at Ted and smiling, or waving at him and calling out his name. When I was a freshman at Gissing and Ted was a senior, I always got the feeling that nobody knew who he was and now it felt like people perked right up when they saw him.

  When we got to the big oak door of the building, he swiped his ID card and led us into a dark hallway.

  “Does it smell funny in here?” I asked, because it kind of did. Like old broccoli or something.

  Ted laughed gently and looked at Patch: “He hasn’t changed at all, huh?”

  “J? Nah,” Patch said.

  “Kid brother, this is what dorms smell like,” Ted said as we rounded the stairs onto the third floor. There was a generic, gray carpet spread all the way down the hall, and as we walked past the many identical doors, I noticed that each one had a white dry-erase board on it. They all had a few colorful notes scribbled on them, like “wanna study at 9?” and “check your e-mail would you?”

  Ted stopped in front of a door that had a lot of scribbled notes. I quickly surveyed the brightly colored writing—the notes appeared to be largely entreaties for a speedy call back having nothing to do with studying. In fact, a second board had been added below the first for overflow note-leaving. The area all around the dry erase boards was festooned with post-its with little notes encouraging my brother to come meet so-and-so. This would seem to give the impression that my brother had a lot—I mean a lot—of friends. Or maybe just … admirers?

  “You guys ready to be impressed?” Ted asked. “Except Jonathan of course. Jonathan, I don’t expect you to be impressed.”

  He opened the door and we walked into a narrow room with big cathedral windows at the end and two twin beds against opposite walls. In between the windows there was a browning Christmas tree decorated with empty PBR cans. Strung over one of the beds was a canvas hammock, and as we all crammed in behind Ted, we noticed that it was stirring.

  “Who’s that?” Mickey asked.

  “Oh, that’s Jed, my roommate.”

  “Jed Silbur?” I couldn’t help saying aloud. Jed was this really downtown kid who graduated from Gissing the same year Ted did. He’d started two bands that got record deals before leaving for college, although both of the deals fell through, supposedly because of Jed’s problems with authority. And alcohol.

  “Yup,” Ted said. “Hey Jed, you remember my kid brother, right?”

  A guy with a raven-colored mullet peaked out from the hammock. This was another surprise in a long day of surprises. My brother living with Jed Silbur was like Mike Brady rooming with Keith Richards. It was just unreal. It was also unreal how my brother kept referring to me as his “kid brother.” Doesn’t that sound so … assured?

  “Hey man,” Jed said. He had a really soft voice, but he seemed cogent. At least more cogent than I ever remembered him being in high school. “Hey, Pardo, what’s going on? You still playing bass?”

  “Nah, gave that up,” Mickey said. He was standing in the middle of the room with his arms crossed, and I could tell he was trying to comprehend the Jed-Ted connection, too.

  “Oh yeah, you’re a big artist now, huh?”

  “Or something.”

  “Hey, that’s cool. Listen, I’ve got to finish my nap, but we’re all rocking tonight, right?” Jed nodded at my brother, and then they bumped their fists at each other.

  I said yes along with everybody else, because otherwise I wouldn’t have known what to say. I was trying to remember if I’d ever witnessed my brother do anything you could call rocking. Who was this Ted guy?

  david adjusts his armor

  “That’s not what I would technically call a cottage,” David said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his suit pants.

  Mickey nodded his head in agreement, and let out a long whistle.

  They were standing at the bottom of a little crest of land, a short walk from the big neo-gothic buildings at the center of campus. At the top of the crest was a well-lit house covered in wisteria that looked like a miniature version of Vassar’s imposing main building. Just to be sure, they reread the placard posted at the bottom of the rise, which informed them that this mansion-looking place was, in fact, the President’s Guest Cottage.

  They had set up beds in the lounge of Lathrop, Ted’s dorm (Ted had borrowed sleeping bags from his friends in the Vassar Hiking Club), just in case, but this was looking a whole lot more promising.

  David followed Mickey as he leapt up the steps and snatched the note pinned underneath the ornate, rust-covered doorknocker.

  “Blah blah blah, sorry I couldn’t meet you, blah blah blah, please make yourself at home, blah blah … the campus’s newest athletic facility, an Olympic-sized pool, is located, blah blah blah …,” Mickey read. “Cool.”

  He pushed the door open and walked into a gigantic room with a peaked ceiling, mahogany de
tails, and a stone fireplace that was taller than David. There was a crackling in the fireplace, and they realized that someone had gotten a fire going for them.

  “Sweet jeez,” said Mickey.

  “You better not break anything,” David said.

  “Ah, man, you’ve got to get over all these neuroses. What you meant to say was that this is a house where we better not not have a killer party.”

  “Okay, you’re right,” David said. “If we don’t have a total blowout party in this house we should go back to New York in shame.”

  As he said it, he even felt himself mean it a little bit. Mickey had already gone up the stairs—David could hear his feet thumping around on the second floor—and David turned to survey their new accommodations.

  The couches and chairs—and there were many of them, set up across the room in various formations that looked conducive to very important sorts of discussions—were made of a dark reddish-brown leather, and there were white fur rugs thrown across several of them. David felt like he had unwittingly stumbled into a Ralph Lauren ad. He threw himself onto the couch closest to the fire—it gave gently and then held him with a reassuring firmness—and then he noticed the bar.

  Just to the left of the fireplace there was a collection of cut-glass decanters gleaming with golden liquid. David righted himself and sidled over to the bar, where he poured a healthy portion of something that smelled like burnt rubbing alcohol. He felt five years older just inhaling it, and when he examined himself in the mirror behind the bar, he discovered that it was true: In the red-hand-stained suit, with a tumbler of very old grain alcohol in his hand, he did look more sophisticated. Except, of course, for the fact that the hem of his pants was above his ankles, which reminded him that he wasn’t, in truth, very sophisticated at all.

  “Yo, Davey,” he heard Mickey yelling from somewhere inside the cottage.

  David gave himself one last glance in the mirror and climbed the stairs. After peeking into a series of immaculately made up rooms, he found the one Mickey was in. There was a large canopy bed with drawn curtains made out of red and gold brocade. On the wall next to the bed there was a plaque. He was stepping toward it when Mickey waved him away.