Take It Off by J. Minter Read Free Book Online Page B

girl he thought he recognized from Potterton. Another girl, slightly round with a shock of bleached blond hair and wearing a much-safety-pinned wife-beater, approached David and put her arms around his waist. She looked up at him and smiled a wide, careless, dark-red-lipstick smile. Shedidn’t move very much, just sort of twitched her hips and kept her eyes down. David tried to follow her rhythm and let go a little bit.
    Finally the music stopped while a new deejay set up. The dancing mob dispersed, and David looked around at the room. The walls were paneled with fake wood, and the ceiling was strung with Christmas lights. There were plastic cups and beer bottles all over the floor, and the tracked-in snow was melting into the spilled drinks to make a dirty lake at their feet.
    â€œI’m Caroline,” the girl said, looking up, but not taking her arms away from his waist.
    â€œDavid.”
    â€œYou want to come over to our table?” she asked. He nodded, and looked around for Rob.
Where’d that dick go off to?
he wondered.
    Caroline dragged him to a booth crowded with glam-punk types who managed to look very bored despite the raucous crowd all around them. They squeezed in, and she began introductions: “David, this is Leo, Moira, Rex, Bill, Sandra, and February.”
    â€œFebruary?” David’s mouth hung open.
    â€œDavid Grobart,” Patch’s older sister, February Flood, said, tossing back her spiky hair. “What in the hell are
you
doing here?”

Is Arno going soft?
    â€œI don’t get it,” Patch said. He and Arno were lying on their bellies on deck, watching Suki and a bunch of other girls do sunrise yoga. Suki was executing a perfect dhanurasana. Although Arno hated anything remotely New Age—especially any stay-young-forever fad that his mother fell for—he was thinking that Suki’s contortionist pose was kind of pervy-hot. Patch sighed. “I mean, I sort of get it. But she’s totally not your type. Why are you and Mickey ripping each other over this girl?”
    Arno had really wanted someone to talk to, and he’d thought Patch would be perfect. After leaving Mickey’s room in a huff, and spending a lonely night trying to read
The Odyssey
, he was feeling a little alienated from his crew. Suki had mentioned the yoga class as an excuse not to spend the night in his cabin, so around five a.m. a sleepless Arno went to look for Patch. After he realized that Patch wasn’t in his cabin, he’d gone to Barker’s study and politely interrupted. Barker lookedup from his desk, where he had been enjoying a twenty-year-old scotch as Patch sipped orange juice. Patch twisted in his chair and gave Arno a save-me-now face. Arno smiled at Barker, revealing a mouth of dazzling white teeth, and reminded Patch about their dawn jog-around-deck date. The older man nodded approvingly and excused them. Arno had been psyched about his craftiness, and glad to have his friend back from the grown-ups. But he hadn’t expected Patch to get all Jonathan on him.
    â€œDude, she’s hot,” Arno said.
    â€œDude, how many hot girls do we know?”
    â€œDude, she’s
different
.”
    â€œDo you know what you sound like right now?”
    Arno paused, and pushed his hair, which he was wearing in a sort of mod mop these days, out of his eyes. “Look, I know I’m not sounding like myself, but I think all that bullshit between Mickey’s dad and my mom might have changed me. I’m really starting to think about how being with a lot of girls is just my way of wasting time. And about, you know, commitment.”
    Patch was silent.
    â€œI mean, Suki’s not like anyone we know in New York. I could have a totally alternative, bohemian thing with her that would be so polar opposite of all those art world lies.” Arno was almost convincing himself. Hecouldn’t help adding: “Besides, she would irritate the shit out