Break Every Rule Read online

  I think Patch was just trying to make me feel better. Which was nice, considering he seemed seriously bummed. But I couldn’t help being distracted by the idea of Flan and David. After all, they were probably at this very minute meeting in secret in some terribly cool place that only Arno and his entourage could get into. She was probably being very cozy and sweet to him, the way she used to be with me. And why not? I hadn’t even been to Ginger, and who knew if I would be able to get us into Freeman’s tonight.

  Patch was still saying something about that Justine person.

  “Do you think some friend of the Wildenburgers’ is editor-in-chief at New York or something?” I interrupted. “I mean, maybe Justine did pick me, but then they had to change it because of some insider politics.”

  Patch was shaking his head. “J, it doesn’t matter. Can’t you see that?”

  “But it does matter,” I said. I couldn’t even believe I was saying these things—this was not my usual good friend persona coming through—but I couldn’t help it. I just kept hammering away.

  “How? Give me one example,” Patch said.

  “Well…” I took a deep breath, and came clean: “I think… I think… maybe David and Flan are having an affair.”

  Patch shook his head, this time with a little laugh, but I kept on going. “I know it’s not totally related, but now he’s friends with Arno, and Arno’s hot, so his friends are hot. I just think, maybe David can do more for her at this point than I can, or at least, maybe it seems that way.”

  “But David isn’t Arno’s friend—we’re all friends, right? And besides, what would make you think that Flan is interested in David at all?”

  “I was just talking to Rob, and…”

  Patch dropped his fork on his plate like I had just said a bad word and like we were people who got offended by bad words. He got very intense all of a sudden, and said, “Listen carefully: Hottest Private School Boy is one big, bad, trumped-up lie. And Rob is, too.”

  arno makes fabulousness look so easy

  Arno was sitting in front of Café Gitane wearing sunglasses and sipping rosé. Next to him was Mimi, hiding under huge black Prada sunglasses and Arno’s white Sean John blazer, which was draped over her shoulders. Even though it was a stunningly warm spring afternoon, she had seemed to really want to wear his jacket.

  Since Monday, they had hooked up five times. That was two days ago, so they were getting to know each other pretty fast.

  Everyone who walked by them on Mott Street waved and giggled and wondered aloud if that was “really him.” A few of the girls put down their big white shopping bags and asked for Arno’s autograph. He was loving every minute of it.

  “Ah, for a little peace and quiet,” Arno said, after a few Florence underclassmen had finally left. He made a big fake yawning noise and stretched his arms over his head.

  “I know, baby,” she sighed, leaning over and snuggling him sympathetically. He couldn’t be sure, but she seemed not to have gotten that he was kidding.

  A car pulled up, and a balding guy in what looked like a safari jacket leaned out of the driver’s seat and started snapping pictures of them.

  “More paparazzi!” Arno said in disbelief. It was absurd, but kind of funny, too.

  “Get lost!” Mimi shrieked. She didn’t seem to see the humor in this little episode, either.

  “Hey, I’m just an average guy, nothing exciting, right?” Arno said nonchalantly to the guy with the camera. He didn’t really think he was an average guy, but it was hotter to shrug off his new celebrity and its encroachment on his privacy than to get all pissy about it, or to act too flattered.

  “Come on, Arno!” the guy said, and so Arno mugged good-naturedly for him a few times. The guy thanked him, and then the car pulled away. A few minutes later, Rob and David came walking down the street. David was carrying big shopping bags, and Rob had a huge cheesy smile on his face. They all slapped hands hello, and sat down. Mimi just waved, because by that point she was on her cell phone.

  “So what’s on for tonight?” Arno asked. David shrugged. “Man, do not be a mope. We’re going out, right?”

  “Sure,” David said, “I just bought all new clothes so that I could, you know, feel comfortable in clubs and stuff. So I have to go out for that reason alone.”

  “How could we not go out? We always go out!” Rob added loudly. “I was thinking we start at Freeman’s, you know, keep it downtown. Then Lit maybe? So important you don’t lose your downtown cred, so I am thinking we go there.”

  “Cool,” Arno said. He took another sip of his cold pink wine. Mimi ended her call and whispered in Arno’s ear that she had to go home and change for tonight. He told her that was cool, too, and she blew into his ear. Then she handed his blazer back.

  “I’m going to catch a cab on Houston,” she said, and wiggled her fingers at David and Rob. All three of them watched as her shiny exercised legs carried her swiftly up Mott. Mimi did not seem to have a lot of skirts that went below mid-thigh.

  “So, you two…?” Rob asked, pumping his eyebrows annoyingly.

  “Cut it,” Arno said. Why was Rob annoying him so much today?

  “She’s hot, that’s all!” Rob giggled.

  “So what did you get?” Arno asked David.

  David proudly showed him this orange Perry Ellis blazer and the Diesel jeans he’d gotten, as well as some faded designer T-shirts he’d found at this consignment store called Ina. “Nice, right?”

  Arno snorted instinctively, but he was actually glad that David was cooling out a little bit. “Nice choices,” he said.

  David looked relieved by Arno’s approval, and then relieved again that they didn’t have to talk fashion anymore; the waitress had appeared at their table. Rob ordered a bottle of “whatever Arno’s drinking” and some olives. When she had served them and disappeared again, he put his elbows on the table and clasped his hands. “So… have you given any thought to the Hot Boy party?”

  Arno popped an olive in his mouth.

  “Rob, I’m not sure it’s such a hot idea.”

  “Arno, baby, don’t be so brash. Let us celebrate you!”

  A group of girls walked by and, bizarrely, did not notice Arno. David looked after them in a weird way, like he recognized them but wasn’t sure.

  “I really don’t know if I have time these days. I don’t even have time to return my calls, you know what I mean?”

  Rob nodded understandingly.

  “I mean, this whole Hottest Private School Boy thing is great, don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. But it’s a lot of responsibility, too, and you guys can’t even get with that.” Arno smiled to himself, like he thought of a really good joke. “It’s like I’d need an intern just to manage my social calendar.”

  “That’s it!” Rob exclaimed. “That’s what we do! I be your intern. Hottest Private Intern.” He put on a very sober face and added, “It would be an honor.”

  “You’re going to be my intern?” Arno asked. Sometimes, it was really hard not to pity Rob—he so obviously didn’t get the meaning of Intern. Arno shrugged and said, “Why not. You’re hired.”

  “Bravo! As your intern, my first order of business is getting this party together. It’s going to be this Saturday, which is very soon, but luckily I’ve already started making arrangements. There will be the flyering to do, of course, and the beer…”

  “Rob. I don’t have the time, remember? So I don’t even want to know,” Arno said, laughing. God, he was in a good mood today. It was like everything was just funny to him. “Don’t ask, don’t tell, okay?”

  “Of course, Jefe.” Rob lit a cigarette, and crossed his legs. He looked extremely pleased with himself. David looked up and down the street, like he didn’t quite know where he fit in to all this.

  Across the street, a group of girls who went to Potterton were pointing and gasping at Arno. One of them looked like she was about to faint.

  “Duty calls,” Arno said. He loosened hi
s shoulders, stood up, and strode across the street to sign the girls’ T-shirts.

  David still looked distracted, and he was being a little quiet and introspective. Rob seemed to notice this, and he leaned over and put his arm around David’s shoulder.

  “You didn’t want to be intern, did you?” Rob said.

  “Um…,” David said.

  “Okay, I am intern, but you can be… assistant. Yay! David the assistant. Not as good, but still good, right?”

  Rob exhaled a nice cloud of smoke into David’s ear, and then turned around to watch the group of girls going crazy over their idol. As he watched and smoked, he seemed to be muttering something about a gold mine underneath his breath.

  sometimes new york is just way too small

  “They don’t take reservations here,” I said, after about half an hour of being jostled in the entryway of Freeman’s. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t have to wait like this.”

  Flan shrugged to let me know she didn’t mind all that much. Freeman’s is this quasi-secret restaurant at the end of an alley off the Bowery. Like all quasi-secret venues, it got hot immediately, and now it is overrun by celebrities and party kids and plenty of grown-ups trying to reclaim their youth. It’s decorated in a sort of neo-hunting lodge style, with taxidermied animal heads and things like that on the walls. I’m basically against this kind of ostentatious cruelty to animals, but then I do own many, many pairs of leather shoes, so who am I to talk? As usual, the restaurant was full of people getting happy and loud and confessing all the horror stories of their busy days.

  “Jonathan for two?!” the visibly stressed-out hostess called, and when I nodded she waved me over to a table in the corner. It was dimly lit over there, in a kind of romantic, hidden way, and I couldn’t help but say, as we took our seats, “See, even if we have to wait, they still always save me the best table.”

  Flan nodded and looked around, almost like she’d never seen so many people in one place before. Which of course she had. In New York even someone kind of innocent-seeming like Flan grows up quick.

  I leaned back, thinking maybe things were finally looking up, when I realized they definitely were not.

  The table across from us was filled with a particularly raucous party. It was Arno Wildenburger’s crew. Arno himself was nowhere to be seen, but there were Rob and David, and Mimi Rathbone and her girlfriends, and some other people I didn’t recognize, but who looked very, very hot. David was wearing the saffron Perry Ellis blazer I had contemplated buying that afternoon, and a faded black T-shirt that gave it a very downtown feel. That outfit was cooler than anything I’d ever seen him wear. He had his arm draped around that Sadie girl, and he looked hip and confident. He looked… Arno-ish.

  “David looks a little out of his element, doesn’t he?” I said dryly.

  “He looks like he’s having fun,” Flan replied.

  I decided I better go to the men’s room and make sure I looked sufficiently cool. I kissed Flan on the cheek and told her I’d be right back. Then I stood waiting in front of the men’s room, which was locked. After about five minutes, I pounded on the door and called out, “You want me to call an ambulance?”

  The door cracked, and I saw Mimi Rathbone’s friend Lizzie looking angry and a little flushed. “What the hell do you want?” she said.

  Then Arno peaked his head over her. In spite of the fact that I’d just interrupted him and a girl, he seemed happy to see me. “Hey, J!” he said, pushing past Lizzie and doing the guy handclasp thing with me. “You hold that thought, gorgeous,” he said over his shoulder. Then he closed the door behind him and stepped into the small waiting area. “What’s up, man?”

  I couldn’t help but say, “Weren’t you going out with that chick Mimi before?”

  “Uh, kind of. This Hottest Private School Boy thing is crazy, man; it’s like they can’t get enough of me. It’s all I can do to spread myself around.”

  “You mean you’ve been hooking up with Mimi and Lizzie all this time?”

  “And Sadie. Although, now that you mention it, we haven’t hooked up since yesterday afternoon sometime.” He looked genuinely concerned. “I wonder if she feels left out….”

  I rolled my eyes at that.

  “I’m planning a way to make it up to them all, though.” Arno had apparently not noticed my disgust.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah,” Arno said, lowering his voice. “Sometime early next week, when the issue is off the stands and everything has cooled down somewhat. My energy is just too in demand right now. But I think Monday night I’m going to invite all three of the girls to some hotel room. Those girls love each other. They love me. I’ll definitely make it up to them.”

  “Make it up to them?” I said, dumbfounded.

  “Yeah, you know, give ’em something to write about in their diaries.”

  “Oh,” I said. Arno winked at me. There was a banging from the other side of the bathroom door, and then Arno saluted me and slipped back inside the bathroom to fool around with Lizzie.

  I was so stunned by the level of ego craziness that he had achieved, that I forgot my original mission and stumbled back toward our table. When I saw that Flan was gone, I got that sick feeling all over again.

  After all, if Arno was commanding that kind of action, David could certainly… well, I didn’t even want to think about that. And there indeed was Flan, standing near Arno & Co.’s table, whispering something into David’s ear.

  I’d been pushed around enough that night. I marched over, and put my arm around Flan’s waist.

  “Excuse me,” I said, “I think this is my date. And David? You should really work on getting your own look. Everyone knows you’re just banking on Arno’s reflected glory, so the least you could do is have a little self-respect and not dress like him.”

  Then I wheeled Flan around and hurried her back to our table.

  another long night comes to an end for david

  David stumbled into the kitchen of the West Village apartment he shared with his parents, hoping to find a snack. They had spent many hours at Lit, so it had been a while since he’d had that wild boar entrée at Freeman’s. There had also been a lot of dancing since then. He was starving.

  He flipped on the light in the kitchen, and dove into the refrigerator. He came back out with a container of deli macaroni and cheese and some salami slices.

  That’s when he saw his dad.

  “Howdy,” Sam Grobart said. He was sitting at the kitchen table in his bathrobe, reading Psychoanalyst Weekly, which was weird, because until David had come in the lights had been off.

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “Where you been, son?”

  “Um, Arno’s house,” David said, lying instinctively even though he knew his dad wouldn’t care that he’d been out. To his dad, it was all just “experience.”

  “So… how’s everything going?”

  David sat down at the table with a sigh, and chewed thoughtfully on some salami. He knew better than to put off the emotional weather report. “Okay, I guess.”

  “Just okay?” Sam Grobart asked, putting down the paper.

  “Things are weird with my friends, I guess. Or, with Jonathan, really. Ever since that party at the MoMA, he’s been totally strange to me.”

  “How, exactly?”

  “He’s mean.”

  “Mmm, perhaps he’s jealous.”

  “But of what? That whole Flan thing blew over ages ago,” David said dramatically.

  “You know, David, this is probably difficult for you to believe, but sometimes men can be more jealous over each other than over the women in their life. After all, you have all been friends for years. The girls just come and go. Try and think about what’s making him act this way….”

  “Maybe he’s jealous that I’m hanging out with Arno so much?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “But that’s not even that perfect. I mean, at first it was fun to be sort of celebrity-like, you know?” David slumped down in h
is seat a little. “And to feel cool for once. But then… this strange thing happened.”

  “What kind of strange thing?”

  “Well, I don’t know, Arno’s a force of nature right now, I guess. And I worry that I’m, you know, just following him around.”

  “Mmmmm…”

  “And the girls we’ve been hanging out with…”

  “Yes, Mimi Rathbone and her friends. I was just talking to Mrs. Rathbone about this during our morning session. She is very relieved that the girls are in the tabloids for going out with boys their own age for once.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not all that wholesome. I mean, Arno’s basically hooking up with all three of the girls all the time.”

  “Ah, so you’re angry that he poached your mate?”

  “Huh?” This was why David hated talking to his dad when he was quasi-drunk. It could get confusing and bizarre. Plus, his dad always made everything sound so animal kingdom-y. “Um, not really. I actually didn’t care so much. But it’s kind of nasty. And Fl—someone told me this secret tonight. Those girls were just having this competition to see who could hook up with Arno the most while his face was still on newsstands all around town.”

  “That is untoward.”

  David shrugged. “I’m just glad I found out. Now I know not to hook up with Sadie. She wasn’t really my type, anyway.”

  “Perhaps there’s someone else?”

  David took a few spoonfuls of the mac and cheese. “Well, I did meet this girl last Thursday…”

  “Mmm-hmmm…”

  “She’s just different. Like, she looks like she walked out of a painting. She’s just nothing like the girls we’ve been hanging out with. But I haven’t seen her since then, and I guess I sort of gave up on ever seeing her again.”

  “This sounds like a very admirable goal, young man. Something different, something off the beaten path. Love transforms the soul, you know.”

  That was a bit much for David. “Uh, I think I just have to go to bed…,” he said.

  He tossed the remainders of his snack into the trash can, turned off the light, and hurried to his bedroom, leaving his dad to read Psychoanalyst Weekly in the dark.