Page 45 of Backslide
Today, Cara has a disposable camera and they’re posing for shots. As usual, it’s Nellie behind the lens. She is a believer in documentation. Also, the girls just like the thrill of picking the photos up from the twenty-four-hour photo shop and seeing how they were captured.
So, Nellie has taken her eye off Noah, forgotten to notice him for a minute, when she feels a tap on her shoulder. And she squints up from her crouched position to find him hovering over her, the sun beaming behind his head. He squats down to her level.
Two frogs.
“Wanna go hang out?” he asks.
“Just us?” Adrenaline rockets through her.
“Yeah.”
“Now?”
“Yeah.”
“Um. Sure.”
Nerves. Excitement. Rinse. Repeat.
She pushes herself to standing, brushing imaginary dust from the back of her sundress. Grabs her prized black Agnès B. Lolita mini backpack. Kisses her friends on the cheeks, studiously ignoring their raised brows. He gives his friends pounds—ignoring their hoots and hollers, ignoring Damien’sNellie and Noah sitting in a tree.
K-I-S-S-I-N-G
Which is not something they have done.
Noah gives the group the finger—in a good-natured way—as the duo starts toward the gate at the exit.
Perhaps this is why Noah and Nellie have kept this a secret.
And then they are alone. With eight million people. In New York City. Set free to explore manicured streets and dingy corners, upscale shops and downscale delis. And that’s what they do. They wander and soon start to talk like they do on the phone, laughing and disclosing in an uncensored way they don’t do with anyone else. Like the calls were a warm-up for this big game.
They knock into each other playfully, giddily, pretending not to notice the tension building between them. Feigning indifference to the reverberations from even that fleeting touch.
Something. Is. Happening.
The park spits them out on the Upper East Side. The Met appears before them like a welcome surprise, its grand steps an offer they can’t refuse.
“Should we go in?” she asks.
“Yeah,” he nods. “For sure.”
Inside it is cool. In all ways.Dopein these days. Maybebomb. Their shoes click and squeal against the marble floors as they continue to meander without a plan. It’s an adult kind of thing and a childlike thing, being in this museum without supervision with its mummies and paintings and suits of armor.
No teachers. No parents. No project partners.
Eventually, they explode into the brightness of the Temple of Dendur, blinding sun falling through its contemporary windows onto ancient ruins. They sit on a bench, make wishes while tossing pennies in the reflecting pool. Usually, when he’s hoping for something, he wishes for a pro career. She wishes for art school acceptance.
Not today.
The hours slip by like instants. And in no time Noah and Nellie are back outside in the softer afternoon warmth, perched on an enormous park boulder they have managed to scale with iced coffee for her and lemonade for him. They’re contentedly surveying their surroundings when he turns to her, a bit hesitantly, and says, “Can I tell you something?”
The way he says it, she thinks he’s about to break bad news to her. Like the truth is,I don’t like you. Or the truth is,I already have a girlfriend.
I am too good to be true.
Instead he says: “I like to draw, too.”
Like it’s an admission.
