Текст книги "Dash & Lily's Book of Dares"
Автор книги: Rachel Caine
Соавторы: David Levithan
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Текущая страница: 1 (всего у книги 13 страниц)
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
This is a work of ction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used ctitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., for permission to reprint excerpts from “The Story of Our Lives” and “Keeping Things Whole,” from Selected Poems by Mark Strand, copyright © 1979, 1980 by Mark Strand.
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cohn, Rachel.
Dash & Lily’s book of dares / by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan. – 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Told in the alternating voices of Dash and Lily, two sixteen-year-olds carry on a wintry scavenger hunt at Christmastime in New York, neither knowing quite what—or who—they will nd.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89668-2
[1. Treasure hunt (Game)—Fiction. 2. Identity—Fiction. 3. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction.] I. Levithan, David. II. Title. III. Dash and Lily’s book of dares.
PZ7.C6665Das 2010
[Fic]—dc22
2009054084
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3.1
Special thanks to the Usual Suspects
Special thanks to the Usual Suspects
To Real Dash’s Mum
Contents
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgment
Dedication
Chapter One: –Dash– December 21st
Chapter Two: (Lily) December 21st
Chapter Three: –Dash– December 22nd
Chapter Four: (Lily) December 23rd
Chapter Five: –Dash– December 23rd
Chapter Six: (Lily) December 24th
Chapter Seven: –Dash– December 24th/December 25th
Chapter Eight: (Lily) December 25th
Chapter Nine: –Dash– December 26th
Chapter Ten: (Lily) December 26th
Chapter Eleven: –Dash– December 27th
Chapter Twelve: (Lily) December 26th
Chapter Thirteen: –Dash– December 27th
Chapter Fourteen: (Lily) December 28th
Chapter Fifteen: –Dash– December 28th
Chapter Sixteen: (Lily) December 29th
Chapter Seventeen: –Dash– December 29th
Chapter Eighteen: (Lily) December 30th
Chapter Nineteen: –Dash– December 30th
Chapter Twenty: (Lily) December 31st
About the Authors
one
–Dash–
December 21st
Imagine this:
You’re in your favorite bookstore, scanning the shelves. You get to the section where a favorite author’s books reside, and there, nestled in
comfortably between the incredibly familiar spines, sits a red notebook.
What do you do?
The choice, I think, is obvious:
You take down the red notebook and open it.
And then you do whatever it tel s you to do.
It was Christmastime in New York City, the most detestable time of the year. The moo-like crowds, the endless visits from hapless relatives, the
ersatz cheer, the joyless at empts at joyfulness—my natural aversion to human contact could only intensify in this context. Wherever I went, I was
on the wrong end of the stampede. I was not wil ing to grant “salvation” through any “army.” I would never care about the whiteness of Christmas.
I was a Decemberist, a Bolshevik, a career criminal, a philatelist trapped by unknowable anguish—whatever everyone else was not, I was wil ing
to be. I walked as invisibly as I could through the Pavlovian spend-drunk hordes, the broken winter breakers, the foreigners who had own
halfway across the world to see the lighting of a tree without realizing how completely pagan such a ritual was.
The only bright side of this dim season was that school was shut ered (presumably so everyone could shop ad nauseam and discover that family,
like arsenic, works best in smal doses … unless you prefer to die). This year I had managed to become a voluntary orphan for Christmas, tel ing
my mother that I was spending it with my father, and my father that I was spending it with my mother, so that each of them booked
nonrefundable vacations with their post-divorce paramours. My parents hadn’t spoken to each other in eight years, which gave me a lot of leeway
in the determination of factual accuracy, and therefore a lot of time to myself.
I was popping back and forth between their apartments while they were away—but mostly I was spending time in the Strand, that bastion of
titil ating erudition, not so much a bookstore as the col ision of a hundred di erent bookstores, with literary wreckage strewn over eighteen miles
of shelves. Al the clerks there saunter-slouch around distractedly in their skinny jeans and their thrift-store but on-downs, like older siblings who
wil never, ever be bothered to talk to you or care about you or even acknowledge your existence if their friends are around … which they always
are. Some bookstores want you to believe they’re a community center, like they need to host a cookie-making class in order to sel you some
Proust. But the Strand leaves you completely on your own, caught between the warring forces of organization and idiosyncrasy, with idiosyncrasy
winning every time. In other words, it was my kind of graveyard.
I was usual y in the mood to look for nothing in particular when I went to the Strand. Some days, I would decide that the afternoon was
sponsored by a particular let er, and would visit each and every section to check out the authors whose last names began with that let er. Other
days, I would decide to tackle a single section, or would investigate the recently unloaded tomes, thrown in bins that never real y conformed to
alphabetization. Or maybe I’d only look at books with green covers, because it had been too long since I’d read a book with a green cover.
I could have been hanging out with my friends, but most of them were hanging out with their families or their Wi s. (Wi s? Wi i? What is the
plural?) I preferred to hang out with the dead, dying, or desperate books—used we cal them, in a way that we’d never cal a person, unless we
meant it cruel y. (“Look at Clarissa … she’s such a used girl.”)
I was horribly bookish, to the point of coming right out and saying it, which I knew was not social y acceptable. I particularly loved the adjective
bookish, which I found other people used about as often as ramrod or chum or teetotaler.
On this particular day, I decided to check out a few of my favorite authors to see if any irregular editions had emerged from a newly deceased
person’s library sale. I was perusing a particular favorite (he shal remain nameless, because I might turn against him someday) when I saw a peek
of red. It was a red Moleskine—made of neither mole nor skin, but nonetheless the preferred journal of my associates who felt the need to journal
in non-electronic form. You can tel a lot about a person from the pages he or she chooses to journal on—I was strictly a col ege-ruled man myself,
having no talent for il ustration and a microscopic scrawl that made wide-ruled seem roomy. The blank pages were usual y the most popular—I
only had one friend, Thibaud, who went for the grid. Or at least he did until the guidance counselors con scated his journals to prove that he had
been plot ing to kil our history teacher. (This is a true story.)
There wasn’t any writing on the spine of this particular journal—I had to take it o the shelf to see the front, where there was a piece of
masking tape with the words DO YOU DARE? writ en in black Sharpie. When I opened the cover, I found a note on the rst page.
I’ve left some clues for you.
If you want them, turn the page.
If you don’t, put the book back on the shelf, please.
The handwriting was a girl’s. I mean, you can tel . That enchanted cursive.
Either way, I would’ve endeavored to turn the page.
So here we are.
1. Let’s start with French Pianism.
I don’t real y know what it is,
but I’m guessing
nobody’s going to take it o the shelf.
Charles Timbrel ’s your man.
Charles Timbrel ’s your man.
88/7/2
88/4/8
Do not turn the page
until you l in the blanks
(just don’t write in the notebook, please).
I can’t say I’d ever heard of French pianism, although if a man on the street (wearing a bowler, no doubt) had asked me if I believed the French
were a pianistic sort, I would have easily given an a rmative reply.
Because the bookstore byways of the Strand were more familiar to me than my own family home(s), I knew exactly where to start—the music
section. It even seemed a cheat that she had given me the name of the author. Did she think me a simpleton, a slacker, a numbskul ? I wanted a
lit le credit, even before I’d earned it.
The book was found easily enough—easily enough, that is, for someone who had fourteen minutes to spare—and was exactly as I pictured it
would be, the kind of book that can sit on the shelves for years. The publisher hadn’t even bothered to put an il ustration on the cover. Just the
words French Pianism: An Historical Perspective, Charles Timbrel , then (new line) Foreword by Gaby Casadesus.
I gured the numbers in the Moleskine were dates—1988 must have been a quicksilver year for French pianism—but I couldn’t nd any
references to 1988 … or 1888 … or 1788 … or any other ’88, for that mat er. I was stymied … until I realized that my clue giver had resorted to
the age-old bookish mantra—page/line/word. I went to page 88 and checked out line 7, word 2, then line 4, word 8.
Are you
Was I what? I had to nd out. I l ed in the blanks (mental y, respecting the virgin spaces as she’d asked) and turned the page of the journal.
Okay. No cheating.
What bugged you about the cover of this book
(besides the lack of art)?
Think about it, then turn the page.
Wel , that was easy. I hated that they’d used the construction An Historical, when it clearly should have been A Historical, since the H in
Historical is a hard H.
I turned the page.
If you said it was the misbegot en phrase
“An Historical,”
please continue.
If not, please put this journal
back on its shelf.
Once more, I turned.
2. Fat Hoochie Prom Queen
64/4/9
119/3/8
No author this time. Not helpful.
I took French Pianism with me (we’d grown close; I couldn’t leave her) and went to the information desk, where the guy sit ing there looked like
someone had slipped a few lithium into his Coke Zero.
“I’m looking for Fat Hoochie Prom Queen,” I declared.
He did not respond.
“It’s a book,” I said. “Not a person.”
Nope. Nothing.
“At the very least, can you tel me the author?”
He looked at his computer, as if it had some way to speak to me without any typing on his part.
“Are you wearing headphones that I can’t see?” I asked.
He scratched at the inside of his elbow.
“Do you know me?” I persisted. “Did I grind you to a pulp in kindergarten, and are you now get ing sadistic pleasure from this pet y revenge?
Stephen Lit le, is that you? Is it? I was much younger then, and foolish to have nearly drowned you in that water fountain. In my defense, your
prior destruction of my book report was a completely unwarranted act of aggression.”
Final y, a response. The information desk clerk shook his shaggy head.
“No?” I said.
“I am not al owed to disclose the location of Fat Hoochie Prom Queen,” he explained. “Not to you. Not to anyone. And while I am not Stephen
Lit le, you should be ashamed of what you did to him. Ashamed.”
Okay, this was going to be harder than I’d thought. I tried to load Amazon onto my phone for a quick check—but there was no service anywhere
in the store. I gured Fat Hoochie Prom Queen was unlikely to be non ction (would that it were!), so I went to the literature section and began to
scan the shelves. This proving fruitless, I remembered the teen literature section upstairs and went there straightaway. I skipped over any spine that
didn’t possess an inkling of pink. Al my instincts told me Fat Hoochie Prom Queen would at the very least be dappled by pink. And lo and behold
–I got to the M section, and there it was.
–I got to the M section, and there it was.
I turned to pages 64 and 119 and found:
going to
I turned the page of the Moleskine.
Very resourceful.
Now that you’ve found this in the teen section,
I must ask you:
Are you a teenage boy?
If yes, please turn the page.
If no, please return this to where you found it.
I was sixteen and equipped with the appropriate genitalia, so I cleared that hurdle nicely.
Next page.
3. The Joy of Gay Sex
(third edition!)
66/12/5
181/18/7
Wel , there wasn’t any doubt which section that would be in. So it was down to the Sex & Sexuality shelves, where the glances were alternately
furtive and de ant. Personal y, the notion of buying a used sex manual (of any sexuality) was a bit sketchy to me. Perhaps that was why there were
four copies of The Joy of Gay Sex on the shelves. I turned to page 66, scanned down to line 12, word 5, and found:
cock
I recounted. Rechecked.
Are you going to cock?
Perhaps, I thought, cock was being used as a verb (e.g., Please cock that pistol for me before you leave the vestibule).
I moved to page 181, not without some trepidation.
Making love without noise is like playing a muted piano– ne for practice, but you cheat yourself out of hearing the glorious results.
I’d never thought a single sentence could turn me o so decisively from both making love and playing the piano, but there it was.
No il ustration accompanied the text, merciful y. And I had my seventh word:
playing
Which left me with:
Are you going to cock playing
That didn’t seem right. Fundamental y, as a mat er of grammar, it didn’t seem right.
I looked back at the page in the journal and resisted the urge to turn forward. Scrutinizing the girlish scrawl, I realized I had mistaken a 5 for a 6.
It was page 65 (not the junior version of the devil’s number) that I was after.
be
Much more sensical.
Are you going to be playing—
“Dash?”
I turned to nd Priya, this girl from my school, somewhere between a friend and acquaintance—a frequaintance, as it were. She had been friends
with my ex-girlfriend, So a, who was now in Spain. (Not because of me.) Priya had no personality traits that I could discern, although in al
fairness, I had never looked very hard.
“Hi, Priya,” I said.
She looked at the books I was holding—a red Moleskine, French Pianism, Fat Hoochie Prom Queen, and, open to a rather graphic drawing of
two men doing something I had heretofore not known to be possible, The Joy of Gay Sex (third edition).
Apprising the situation, I gured some explanation was in order.
“It’s for a paper I’m doing,” I said, my voice rife with fake intel ectual assurance. “On French pianism and its e ects. You’d be amazed at how
far-reaching French pianism is.”
Priya, bless her, looked like she regret ed ever saying my name.
“Are you around for break?” she asked.
If I’d admit ed I was, she might have been forthcoming with an invitation to an eggnog party or a group excursion to the holiday lm Gramma
Got Run Over by a Reindeer, featuring a black comedian playing al of the roles, except for that of a female Rudolph, who was, one assumed, the
love interest. Because I withered under the glare of an actual invitation, I was a rm believer in preventative prevarication—in other words, lying
early in order to free myself later on.
“I leave tomorrow for Sweden,” I replied.
“Sweden?”
I did not (and do not) look in any way Swedish, so a family holiday was out of the question. By way of explanation, I simply said, “I love
Sweden in December. The days are short … the nights are long … and the design completely lacks ornament.”
Priya nodded. “Sounds fun.”
We stood there. I knew that according to the rules of conversation, it was now my turn. But I also knew that refusal to conform to these rules
might result in Priya’s departure, which I very much wanted.
After thirty seconds, she could stand it no longer.
After thirty seconds, she could stand it no longer.
“Wel , I got a go,” she said.
“Happy Hanukkah,” I said. Because I always liked to say the wrong holiday, just to see how the other person would react.
Priya took it in stride. “Have fun in Sweden,” she said. And was gone.
I rearranged my books so the red journal was on top again. I turned to the next page.
The fact that you are wil ing to stand there
in the Strand with The Joy of Gay Sex
bodes wel for our future.
However, if you already own this book
or would nd it useful in your life,
I am afraid our time together
must end here.
This girl can only go boy-girl,
so if you’re into
boy-boy, I completely support that,
but don’t see where I’d t into the picture.
Now, one last book.
4. What the Living Do, by Marie Howe
23/1/8
24/5/9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15
I headed immediately to the poetry section, completely intrigued. Who was this strange reader of Marie Howe who’d summoned me? It seemed
too convenient that we should both know about the same poet. Real y, most people in my circle didn’t know any poets at al . I tried to remember
talking about Marie Howe with someone—anyone—but came up blank. Only So a, probably, and this wasn’t So a’s handwriting. (Plus, she was in
Spain.)
I checked the Hs. Nothing. I went through the whole poetry section. Nothing. I was about to scream in frustration when I saw it—at the very top
of the bookshelf, at least twelve feet from the oor. A slight corner peeking out—but I knew from its slimness and dark plum color that it was the
book I was looking for. I pul ed over a ladder and made the perilous climb. It was a dusty ascent, the out-of-reach heights clouded with disinterest,
making the air harder to breathe. Final y, I had the volume in my hand. I couldn’t wait—I quickly turned to pages 23 and 24 and found the seven
words I needed.
for the pure thril of unreluctant desire
I nearly fel o the ladder.
Are you going to be playing for the pure thril of unreluctant desire?
I was, to put it mildly, aroused by the phrasing.
Careful y, I stepped back down. When I hit the oor again, I retrieved the red Moleskine and turned the page.
So here we are.
Now it’s up to you,
what we do (or don’t) do.
If you are interested in continuing this conversation,
please choose a book, any book, and
leave a slip of paper with your email address inside of it.
Give it to Mark, at the information desk.
If you ask Mark any questions about me,
he wil not pass on your book.
So no questions.
Once you have given your book to Mark,
please return this book to the shelf
where you found it.
If you do al these things,
you very wel might hear from me.
Thank you.
Lily
Suddenly, for the rst time that I could recal , I was looking forward to winter break, and I was relieved that I was not, in fact, being shipped out
to Sweden the next morning.
I didn’t want to think too hard about which book to leave—if I started to second-guess, it would only lead to third-guessing and fourth-guessing,
and I would never leave the Strand. So I chose a book rather impulsively, and instead of leaving my email address inside, I decided to leave
something else. I gured it would take a lit le time for Mark (my new friend at the information desk) to give the book to Lily, so I would have a
slight head start. I handed it to him without a word; he nodded and put it in a drawer.
I knew the next step was for me to return the red notebook, to give someone else a chance of nding it. Instead, I kept it. And, furthermore, I
moved to the register to buy the copies of French Pianism and Fat Hoochie Prom Queen currently in my hands.
moved to the register to buy the copies of French Pianism and Fat Hoochie Prom Queen currently in my hands.
Two, I decided, could play this game.
two
(Lily)
December 21st
I love Christmas.
I love everything about it: the lights, the cheer, the big family gatherings, the cookies, the presents piled high around the tree, the goodwil to al .
I know it’s technical y goodwil to al men, but in my mind, I drop the men because that feels segregationist/elitist/sexist/general y bad ist.
Goodwil shouldn’t be just for men. It should also apply to women and children, and al animals, even the yucky ones like subway rats. I’d even
extend the goodwil not just to living creatures but to the dearly departed, and if we include them, we might as wel include the undead, those
supposedly mythic beings like vampires, and if they’re in, then so are elves, fairies, and gnomes. Heck, since we’re already being so generous in our
big group hug, why not also embrace those supposedly inanimate objects like dol s and stu ed animals (special shout-out to my Ariel mermaid,
who presides over the shabby chic ower power pil ow on my bed—love you, girl!). I’m sure Santa would agree. Goodwil to al .
I love Christmas so much that this year I’ve organized my own caroling society. Just because I live in the gentri ed bohemia of the East Vil age
does not mean I consider myself too cool and sophisticated for caroling. To the contrary. I feel so strongly about it that when my own family
members chose to disband our caroling group this year because everyone was “traveling” or was “too busy” or “has a life” or “thought you would
have grown out of it by now, Lily,” I did some old-fashioned problem solving. I made my own yer and put it up in cafés around my street.
Hark!
You there, closet caroler!
Care to herald some holiday song?
Real y? Me too! Let’s talk.*
Yours sincerely, Lily
*No creeps need apply; my grandpa knows
everyone in the neighborhood and you wil
incur much shunning should you be anything
less than sincere in your response. **
Thx again, yours most truly, Lily
**Sorry to be so cynical, but this is New York.
That yer was how I formed my Christmas caroling troupe this year. There’s me, Melvin (computer guy), Roberta (retired high school choir
teacher), Shee’nah (cross-dressing part-time choreographer/part-time waiter) and his boi Antwon (assistant manager at Home Depot), angry Aryn
(vegan riot grrrl NYU lm student), and Mark (my cousin—because he owes Grandpa a favor and that’s the one Grandpa cal ed in). The carolers
cal me Third-Verse Lily because I’m the only one who remembers past the second verse of any Christmas song. Besides Aryn (who doesn’t care),
I’m also the only one not of legal drinking age, so with the amount of hot chocolate laced with peppermint liquor that my merry caroling troupe
passes round from Roberta’s ask, it’s no surprise I’m the only one who remembers the third verse.
Truly He taught us to love one another.
His law is love and His gospel is peace.
Chains he shall break, for the slave is our brother.
And in His name all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,
With all our hearts we praise His holy name.
Christ is the Lord! Then ever, ever praise we,
His power and glory ever more proclaim!
Hal elujah, third verse!
In al honesty, I should admit I have researched much of the scienti c evidence refuting G-d’s existence, as a result of which I suspect I am a true
believer in him the way I am in Santa. But I wil unhesitatingly, and joyful y, O-Holy-Night his name between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve,
with the mutual understanding that as of Christmas Day, once the presents are opened, my relationship with him goes on hiatus until I camp out
for best viewing of the Macy’s parade the fol owing year.
I would like to be the person who stands outside Macy’s during the holiday season wearing a cute red out t and ringing a bel to chime in
donations for the Salvation Army, but Mom said no. She said those bel people are possibly religious freaks, and we are holiday-only lapsed
Catholics who support homosexuality and a woman’s right to choose. We do not stand outside Macy’s begging for money. We don’t even shop at
Macy’s.
I may go begging for change at Macy’s simply as a form of protest. For the rst time in, like, the history of ever—that is, al of my sixteen years
–our family is spending Christmas apart. My parents abandoned me and my brother for Fiji, where they’re celebrating their twenty– fth wedding
anniversary. When they got married, my parents were poor graduate students who couldn’t a ord a proper honeymoon vacation, so they’ve gone
al out for their silver anniversary. It seems to me that wedding anniversaries are meant for their children to celebrate with them, but apparently I
am the minority opinion on this one. According to everyone besides me, if my brother and I tag along on their vacation, it won’t be as “romantic.”
I don’t see what’s so “romantic” about spending a week in a tropical paradise with your spouse whom you’ve already seen almost every day for the
past quarter century. I can’t imagine anyone ever wanting to be alone with me that much.
My brother, Langston, said, “Lily, you don’t understand because you’ve never been in love. If you had a boyfriend, you’d understand.” Langston
has a new boyfriend and al I understand from that is a sorry state of co-dependence.
has a new boyfriend and al I understand from that is a sorry state of co-dependence.
And it’s not entirely true that I’ve never been in love. I had a pet gerbil in rst grade, Spazzy, whom I loved passionately. I wil never stop
blaming myself for bringing Spazzy to show-and-tel at school, where Edgar Thibaud let open his cage when I wasn’t looking and Spazzy met
Jessica Rodriguez’s cat Tiger and, wel , the rest is history. Goodwil to Spazzy up in gerbil heaven. Sorry sorry sorry. I stopped eating meat the day
of the massacre, as penance for Spazzy. I’ve been a vegetarian since age six, al for the love of a gerbil.
Since I was eight, I have been in literary love with the character Sport from Harriet the Spy. I’ve kept my own Harriet-style journal—red
Moleskine notebooks that Grandpa buys me at the Strand—since I rst read that book, only I don’t write mean observations about people in my
journals like Harriet sometimes did. Mostly I draw pictures in it and write memorable quotes or passages from books I’ve read, or recipe ideas, or
lit le stories I make up when I’m bored. I want to be able to show grown-up Sport that I’ve tried my darnedest not to make sport out of writing
mean gossip and stu .
Langston has been in love. Twice. His rst big romance ended so badly that he had to leave Boston after his freshman year of col ege and move
back home til his heart could heal; the breakup was that bad. I hope I never love someone so much that they could hurt me the way Langston was
hurt, so wounded al he could do was cry and mope around the house and ask me to make him peanut but er and banana sandwiches with the
crusts cut o , then play Boggle with him, which of course I always did, because I usual y do whatever Langston wants me to do. Langston
eventual y recovered and now he’s in love again. I think this new one’s okay. Their rst date was at the symphony. How mean can a guy be who
likes Mozart? I hope, at least.
Unfortunately, now that Langston has a boyfriend again, he has forgot en al about me. He has to be with Benny al the time. To Langston, our
parents and Grandpa being gone for Christmas is a gift, and not the outrage it is to me. I protested to Langston about him basical y granting Benny
a permanent state of residence in our house over the holidays. I reminded him that if Mom and Dad were going to be away at Christmas, and
Grandpa would be at his winter apartment in Florida, then it was Langston’s responsibility to keep me company. I was there for him in his time of
need, after al .
But Langston repeated, “Lily, you just don’t understand. What you need is someone to keep you occupied. You need a boyfriend.”
Wel sure, who doesn’t need a boyfriend? But realistical y, those exotic creatures are hard to come by. At least a quality one. I go to an al -girls
school, and meaning no disrespect to my sapphic sisters, but I have no interest in nding a romantic companion there. The rare boy creatures I do
meet who aren’t either related to me or who aren’t gay are usual y too at ached to their Xboxes to notice me, or their idea of how a teenage girl
should look and act comes directly from the pages of Maxim magazine or from the tarty look of a video game character.
There’s also the problem of Grandpa. Many years ago, he owned a neighborhood family grocery store on Avenue A in the East Vil age. He sold
the business but kept the corner block building, where he had raised his family. My family lives in that building now, along with Grandpa in the
fourth– oor “penthouse” apartment, as he cal s the converted space that was once an at ic studio. There’s a sushi restaurant on the ground oor
where the grocery store once was. Grandpa has presided over the neighborhood as it went from low-income haven for immigrant families to
yuppie enclave. Everybody knows him. Every morning he joins his buddies at the local Italian bakery, where these huge, burly guys drink espresso
from dainty lit le cups. The scene is very Sopranos meets Rent. It means that because everyone looks a ectionately upon Grandpa, they’re al
looking out for Grandpa’s pet—me, the baby of the family, the youngest of his ten grandchildren. The few local boys so far who’ve expressed an
interest in me have al been quickly “persuaded” that I’m too young to date, according to Langston. It’s like I wear an invisible cloak of
unavailability to cute boys when I walk around the neighborhood. It’s a problem.
So Langston decided to make it his project to (1) give me a project to keep me occupied so he could have Benny al to himself over Christmas
and (2) move that project to west of First Avenue, away from Grandpa’s protection shield. Langston took the latest red Moleskine notebook that
Grandpa bought me and, together with Benny, mapped out a series of clues to nd a companion just right for me. Or so they said. But the clues
could not have been further removed from who I am. I mean, French pianism? Sounds possibly naughty. The Joy of Gay Sex? I’m blushing even
thinking about that. De nitely naughty. Fat Hoochie Prom Queen? Please. I’d include hoochie as a most un-goodwil type of curse word. You’d
