are? Me, too.”
My uncle dropped his fork, but I refused to look at him. He could’ve offered to get me a job in Lillith Allure’s art department, but he didn’t. Fuck him.
“Sorry,” Mark said. “Where were we?”
I wanted to change the subject. “I rented Casablanca. Their world was crumbling around them. Their romance was sacrificed for a greater cause.” I made air quotes around “greater cause,” even though people who made air quotes annoyed me. “I don’t get it. How does Casablanca prove that anything lasts?”
“Forget the movie. I told you to listen to the lyrics of the song,” Mark said. “People will always fall in love. The world always welcomes lovers. You did hear the song, right?”
“The world welcomes lovers if they’re straight. The rest of us they’d sacrifice right along with the polar bears.” When Mark opened his mouth, I said, “Don’t tell me I’m too young to be cynical.”
“Actually, only the young can afford to be cynical,” Mark said.
“Yeah, you old dudes are always swooning over romance,” I said.
Mark attacked me to prove how young and energetic he still was. By the time I finally left, I was feeling less cynical but no older, since I was bearing my permission slip for Benny the Whiner as if I was still in grade school. In a brighter development, Mark and I had scheduled a movie date to see How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days. I tried not to see the title as a bad omen.
Especially when I came face-to-face with another bad omen on my walk home.
Even though I shared an island with a million and a half New Yorkers, there were certain people I saw over and over. Sister Divine was one of them. The first time I spotted her, I was with my friend Fred, who’d just paused outside St. John the Divine to light a cigarette. A woman shrouded in layers of dark fabric that resembled a medieval nun’s habit appeared in front of us. She pointed at Fred and yelled, “Your body houses twenty of Satan’s lieutenants! Cast them out and do God’s work!”
I made an effort to act indifferent and not gawk at her, but Fred was the real thing. He didn’t even blink. I fell into step next to him as he walked away from her.
“What the hell was that?” I asked.
He shrugged and said, “Twenty cigarettes to a pack, I guess. Do God’s work. I wonder what God pays. If there’s overtime. Just think about calling in sick to a deity. God would be all, ‘You’re not sick. You’re hungover. Get your ass to work. Stop stealing Mrs. Vela’s newspaper. And I wasn’t joking about that masturbation thing, mortal.’”
The first boy I dated after I moved to New York was Pete. Pete was also the first person who broke my heart, when he had a fling with Fred. Not because I was in love with Pete. Because I wished I’d gotten to Fred first.
Although I’d jeered about romance to Mark, I wasn’t against the idea. I just wasn’t the kind of person who constantly sized up the boyfriend potential of every guy I met. I didn’t make mental lists of what I did and didn’t want. But if I did, it would be easy to think of reasons why Fred shouldn’t be a boyfriend.
He smoked too much. He was always late. He thought monogamy was outdated. Actually, he practiced serial monogamy. Fred treated boyfriends like most people treated fashion: seasonally. Hot summer love migrated south at the first nip from autumn. And the man who blanketed Fred’s bed in winter would melt away like snow in the spring.
Fred was one of my few friends who had no inclination to do anything artistic. A year ahead of Roberto, Pete, and me at BHSA, he’d gone there only because the tuition was free. His uncle was the headmaster. He’d sneered at the school’s creative programs. Fred’s classes focused on the technical: set design or sound or lighting. He managed BHSA’s photo lab, although he had no interest in photography.
Now Fred worked at Starbucks, which in itself wouldn’t disqualify him as a boyfriend—after all, I bleached people’s bathroom grout—except that he enjoyed brewing java for the evil empire. He said the benefits rocked. He liked leaving the job when his shift was over and not thinking about it again until he went back. And if he felt like it, he could abuse the customers. Fred said they expected it, because most Starbucks employees were miserable and looking for a gig as an actor, musician, model, writer, illustrator—anything, it seemed, as long as it was creative and far from the grind of coffee beans.
Fred’s disinterest in all things artistic could be conversationally limiting. And he didn’t atone for it by having a flawless face or a great body. He wasn’t ugly, by any means. Just an average guy, the kind who played the sidekick in movies or was friends with your girl cousin.
But Fred had one habit that turned me on, even when it wasn’t directed at me. In a place where you could see or hear anything, so you tended to tune out everything, Fred paid attention. No cell phone, headset, or handheld anything ever got between him and another person. When he spoke to you, he looked at you. When you spoke to him, he heard you. His ability to completely focus on someone was erotic in a way that was beyond sex.
I never made the mistake of thinking he was flirting with me. Fred was my friend the same way Roberto was. I’d never tell Fred or anyone else how much time I spent thinking about the way his hair sort of curled against the back of his neck when he needed a haircut. Or how sexy I thought it was when he was mixing a Venti-whatever-latte and bit the tip of his tongue in concentration. Or that I once lied for three weeks and said I couldn’t find a jacket he left at Uncle Blaine’s apartment. I liked having it in the room with me. Maybe that was obsessive, but it was my little secret, and it hurt no one.
After the day Sister Divine accosted Fred, she seemed to pop up everywhere. I saw her outside Lincoln Center. At Seventy-ninth and Broadway. Skirting Columbus Circle. I wasn’t sure whether or not Sister Divine was homeless. Maybe she was just crazy. Whenever I saw her, she was skulking along, the same layers of black cloth shifting and settling around her. Until she’d go rigid and fix her gaze on some unwary tourist. Or anyone moving slowly—like a predator assessing the weakest potential prey. Then it would happen.
“Forty-two generals and six thousand lieutenants of Satan are in your body…. two hundred field generals…. five hundred captains…Repent! Cast out your demons! Do God’s work!”
Most people ignored her. I regarded her with affection, because she gave me a reason to call Fred. He enjoyed the Sister Divine updates. He’d picked up a transit map and map pins to mark my Sister Divine sightings, sure that a pattern would eventually emerge. Friends began placing bets on it. So far, the face of Jesus was losing to the face of Donald Rumsfeld two to one.
I was a few blocks from Mark’s when I saw Sister Divine. Or worse, when she saw me. She stopped, pointed at me, and shouted, “Legions of demons inhabit your body! Drive them out! Find the silver cord. Get inside yourself before it’s too late. Do God’s work!”
No one paid any attention to her, and I whipped out my cell so I could brag to Fred that I was possessed by more demons than he was.
“Oh, good,” he said. “I was starting to worry about her. Where are you?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere near Murray Hill.”
“Wow, she’s spreading faster than West Nile virus,” Fred said.
“She’s not that far from the first place we ever saw her.”
“What are you talking about? She’s practically—” He cut himself off with a sigh. “You said Murray Hill. What address?”
I looked around and said, “I don’t know. Somewhere near 119th and—”
“Never mind. Right letters, wrong neighborhood. Morningside Heights, Nick. It frightens me how little geography you know after almost three years here.”
“At least I know Harlem,” I muttered. “How many New Yorkers can say that?”
“Everyone. Harlem’s