How to Behave in a Crowd Read online

  “A little while,” I said.

  “Did you run away from home?”

  I said I had. She opened her door and let me in before her. The house smelled strongly of fruit candy.

  “So what’s your plan?” she asked as she got rid of her coat and boots and backpack, tossing them on different parts of the living room floor. No one was home. “How many nights do you need to stay here?”

  “I don’t know.” I hadn’t even thought I would spend the night at her place. “I didn’t really plan anything.”

  “Well, how long have you been gone?”

  “Just a few hours,” I said. “This is my first stop.”

  The living room looked like a waiting area. There were multiple coffee tables with magazines on them. A glass cup with individually wrapped caramels. We never had magazines at home. I think that’s why we didn’t have coffee tables. We didn’t have family photos on the walls, either, the way Rose’s parents did. My mother’s stance on family pictures was that they were only sadness left behind after someone died.

  “You want to see my bedroom?” Rose asked.

  We went up the stairs to a door that said “Rose” in black wooden letters. She offered to sleep with me right away.

  “Maybe later?” I said.

  I knew people didn’t have to be in love to sleep together, but that’s how I wanted it to be for me. At least for my first time. Rose didn’t seem to take it personally. She told me to have a seat on her bed and that she would sit by me and that I shouldn’t freak out.

  “I’m not gonna rape you,” she said.

  “I know,” I said.

  She lit some incense and apologized for it.

  “My boyfriend is a smoker,” she said. “Whenever he comes over here, I light incense to cover the cigarette smell, ’cause my parents would lose it if they even believed for a second that I smoked. Which I would never do, by the way. But then it makes it suspicious when Kevin’s not around, if I don’t light incense. So I basically have to light incense all the time now. It’s a real bummer. That stuff stinks.”

  “It’s pretty strong,” I said.

  She shook the stick of incense in the air to get the tip burning steady. The door to her room moved almost imperceptibly and a cat walked in without paying us any attention. I watched it jump on the windowsill, wrap around itself, and fall asleep right away. The ease with which it did all this made me super body-conscious.

  “Did you ever run away from home?” I asked, trying to ease into the bed.

  “Yes,” Rose said, “but I was with a boy, so it doesn’t really count I guess. He took care of everything.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “He took me to his grandma’s in the suburbs. It was nice.”

  “How is it running away if you’re going to stay with a relative?”

  “He wasn’t the one running away,” Rose said, slightly annoyed. “I was. His grandma wasn’t any relative of mine.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “My parents had grounded me. I just wanted to teach them a lesson.”

  “What lesson?”

  “That where I go and what I do is entirely up to me?”

  I didn’t say anything more about it. I thought Rose’s attempt didn’t really count, but the way she talked about teaching her parents a lesson and the fact that she was allowed to have boys over, it seemed like she’d gotten what she wanted out of it.

  “Why are you doing it?” she asked me. “Your family is so chill, I don’t see why you would want to leave. I mean, I bet you’ve never even been grounded. Am I wrong?”

  “They’re not particularly chill,” I said. “They’re just busy with other things.”

  “Well that’s the best kind of family. Maybe they won’t even notice you’re gone.”

  “I think they will,” I said, and I looked at my watch. They would actually notice it in about four hours. Even if I turned around right this minute, assuming all train tables aligned to get me home as fast as possible, I wouldn’t be able to make it back for dinner. It was the first time I’d ever gotten as far in terms of the three phases of running away as I understood them (start running away/don’t go home before anyone notices you ran away/keep running away). I felt no pride or sense of accomplishment. Instead, I felt like something in my chest had deflated and disappeared, and I couldn’t tell whether it was pleasant or frightening.

  Rose’s parents came home together. We hadn’t had time to plan or agree on a lie about my presence in their house, but Rose took me by the arm and led me down the stairs to introduce me.

  “I totally forgot to tell you guys: Tom here is my pen pal this year, he’s going to stay here for a few days.”

  Rose’s parents both sized me up from over their magazines and then looked at each other as if to agree on believing their daughter.

  “Well I didn’t know they were eager to reiterate the pen pal fiasco this year,” Rose’s father said, getting up from the couch to shake my hand. “Wasn’t that crazy girl they set you up with last time enough? They decided to pair you up with a boy now, see if it works better? Jesus, these people.”

  “Simone wasn’t crazy,” Rose said. “She lost her father in the middle of the pen pal experience. The reason she didn’t come here is because she was mourning.”

  “Honey, that girl was crazy before her father dropped dead. That movie we rented because of her? Because she said it was good? The ugly kid with the drums? And the yelling? Jesus, what a piece of shit. What a waste of a movie night. That girl was disturbed.”

  Rose’s father was still shaking my hand as he spoke ill of Simone. I put some more strength into the shake to remind him his hand was there. It caused him to turn to me, but he still didn’t let go. “What about you, pal?” he asked me. “What kind of movies do you like?”

  “Star Wars?” I said. “Goodfellas?”

  He let my hand go and tapped my shoulder.

  “Well that’s better,” Rose’s father said. “That’s much better.”

  Simone had made me watch these movies.

  “Isn’t he a little short for the twelfth grade?” Rose’s mother asked. “They must pick on you quite a lot, dear,” she said to me directly, after no one echoed her first remark.

  I just smiled at her.

  “Where do you live, Tom?”

  “In Paris?” I lied.

  “Fancy,” she said. She could barely hide her disdain. “Well, you make yourself right at home, young man. This is not Paris, we serve real portions of food. We’re gonna cook something that will make you grow overnight.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Metzger,” I said. “Maybe I should call my mother before dinner though? Let her know I made it here all right?”

  I took the phone to Rose’s bedroom and Rose followed me.

  “Are you really calling your mother right now?” she said. “Are you gonna tell her you’ve been kidnapped or something? Try to make a little money out of it?”

  “Can you please pretend you’re one of my classmates’ mother?” I said.

  “Why?”

  “I just don’t want her to worry. I’ll tell her I’m staying at a friend’s for the night, and if she asks to talk to his mother, I’ll hand you the phone. Can you do an adult voice?”

  “Sure, but then what?” Rose asked. “You’ll go back? Or you’ll just call your mommy every night for the rest of your life to say you won’t be home for dinner?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  Rose sighed and looked at her cat.

  “You sure you don’t want to fuck?” she said.

  “Can we call my mother first?”

  “Sure,” Rose said. “Whatever you want.”

  I dialed our number.

  “What do I say if your mother asks where I and my son live?” Rose whispered as the phone was ringing home.

  I wrote Denise’s address on a piece of paper and handed it to Rose. I knew my mother didn’t know Denise’s parents.

  “It’s me, Izz
ie,” I said when she picked up. I hadn’t given up on people calling me Izzie. “Can I stay at my friend Dennis’s tonight? We have a ton of work for school tomorrow. He offered to help me out with physics.”

  “Who’s Dennis?” my mother said.

  “I told you about Dennis.”

  “I don’t think you have, Dory. In fact, when I ask you about it, you always say you have no friends at all.”

  “Oh, you know me,” I said. “Always dramatizing.”

  “Actually, I wouldn’t say that about you.” My mother paused there. “But maybe it’s puberty. Maybe you’re gonna become a whole different person now.”

  “I wouldn’t mind that,” I said.

  “Oh, stop with the nonsense,” my mother said. “You’re perfect just as you are.”

  Rose was pacing, looking down at the paper I’d written Denise’s address on and up at the ceiling, then down at the paper and up again, rehearsing a number and a street name as if they were a complex monologue.

  “What’s this Dennis’s parents’ phone number anyway?”

  “Why do you need it?”

  “I don’t know, just in case.”

  “Let me ask his mother,” I said.

  “Better yet, put her on the phone for me, Dory, I want to make sure she’s not a psychopath.”

  “Of course, Mom. Thank you. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I blocked the receiver and whispered to Rose to write down her phone number, which she did. I changed her area code to mine and gave her a thumbs-up with my free hand and she understood she’d have to give that number to my mother herself if asked. I handed her the phone. Rose cleared her throat.

  “Well, hello dear!” she said to my mother. She sounded like the horrible women on daytime TV shows who did nothing all day but drink and ask their lovers to leave their wives.

  “Oh, nonsense! It is such a delight and an honor to have Isidore over,” Rose said. I couldn’t hear my mother’s part.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “…”

  “Oh yes, yes, very much. My Dennis is so excited.”

  “…”

  “Ha ha.”

  “…”

  “Ha ha ha.”

  “…”

  “Of course, dear,” and then she gave my mother the address and phone number without a hint of hesitation.

  After she hung up, Rose started taking her clothes off and went to lock her bedroom door. The sound of the key turning in the keyhole raised the cat’s attention after the whole phone conversation hadn’t disturbed her at all.

  “Your mother sounds good,” Rose said. “Really happy for you that you have a good friend. Does she have a new husband?”

  “She doesn’t,” I said. “And she’s not gonna.”

  I thought Rose would find this sad, but she said that my mother probably knew best what was good for her or not.

  “What about your brothers?” she said. “How are they? Still good-looking?”

  “They look about the same to me. But I never really talk to them,” I said. “Do your brothers ever talk to you?”

  “If I want them to, yes,” Rose said, and then she asked if I was going to keep my clothes on. She was down to only underwear and socks.

  “I don’t know,” I said. I couldn’t believe her breasts were right there. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  Rose looked at me right in the eyes, which isn’t something that happened to me a lot. My siblings mostly looked around me when we talked, and I think I did the same.

  “You’re a virgin, right?” Rose said.

  I said I was.

  “Then what’s your problem?”

  “I don’t have a problem,” I said. “I just wonder why you would want to have sex with me. I mean, I could be your little brother.”

  “My brothers are disgusting human beings,” she said.

  “Are you a virgin too?” I thought maybe she wanted to practice on me before she started having sex with her boyfriend Kevin.

  “Of course not,” she said. “I just thought I could help you out with this. Get the being-a-virgin thing out of your way, so you can start thinking about things more important than sex all the time.”

  “I don’t think about sex all the time,” I said, and it was true. I did think about sex a lot, I won’t lie, but I also thought about death a fair amount, and about how impossible it was to know if everyone else thought about sex and death as much as I did. That last part may have been what I thought about the most, actually.

  Rose’s mother knocked on the door and said dinner was ready. “It’s not even eight yet,” Rose shouted through the door. “I know,” her mother said, “but your brothers are hungry.”

  Rose’s brothers were shaped like the brass weights on old counterweight scales. They were less fat than Rose had led me to believe, but their heads were so small it didn’t matter. They would always look overweight. We ate dinner watching the news. A jogger had been stabbed and her body found in some woods in the area.

  “Oh my,” said Rose’s mother. “What days we live in that an innocent woman cannot go out and exercise safely.”

  “Because you think it was better before?” Rose’s father said. His aggressiveness didn’t match the setting, the bamboo trays each of us had set like bridges over our thighs, the balanced meal, the wicker bread basket on the coffee table. “You think you didn’t go out for a run and get stabbed in the old days?”

  “It’s a way of speaking,” Rose’s mother said.

  “Well you did get stabbed before,” Rose’s father said, pointing his fork in his wife’s direction. “And quartered, and burned, and for way less than that. Sometimes even for no reason at all. People have to stop crying about how things were better before. I’d like to see them try living in the Middle Ages, hear what they have to say about that.”

  “I’m just saying, it’s hard to feel safe in this world.”

  “You don’t even jog, honey,” Rose’s father said. “If you jogged, it would be a different conversation.”

  Rose didn’t seem to care about her parents’ arguing. She kept staring at the TV like she could hear the next news bit about how Christmas was coming, but with her parents yelling like that, there was no way she could. I looked at her and tried to fall in love. People said it was details that made you fall in love, and so I looked for details in Rose’s face, but all I could see was a nose, two eyes, a mouth, and a chin. I looked at her earlobes carefully, her eyebrows. Nothing stood out.

  One of her brothers, out of nowhere, said that he thought Jewish people should be allowed to go to heaven if they wanted. “I think if you led a good and generous life,” he said, “it shouldn’t matter if you were baptized or not.”

  “We don’t believe in heaven and so on in this house,” Rose’s mother whispered to me apologetically. “But the boys have questions, so we sent them to Bible study. They should get over it soon.”

  “I mean, it’s unfair that Schindler cannot go to heaven,” the same brother went on, “after all he did to save those children. And it’s unfair that the Jewish children he couldn’t save from the camps couldn’t go either.”

  “Schindler probably went to heaven, honey. He wasn’t Jewish.”

  “He wasn’t?”

  “Of course not. He worked for the Nazis, remember?”

  The brother was puzzled by that piece of information. He looked at his potatoes awhile and brought his tray closer to the coffee table to help himself to more.

  “I think it is possible you didn’t understand the movie, sweetie,” Rose’s mother said.

  “Still,” the brother said, chewing his potato. “It’s not fair.”

  After that, we watched the movie that followed the news, something about a couple that seemed happy at first but realized they weren’t and then were for real, and no one made comments about it either during or after. In my head, I was able to predict most of the plot.

  Rose had one of these trundle beds I’d seen advertised on TV: you pulled o
pen the drawer under the bed and the drawer contained another bed. When she came back from the bathroom, I was standing in my underwear between the drawer where I would sleep and her desk. She had the map of France Simone had sent her pinned on the wall.

  “Did my sister send you this map?” I said, just for conversation.

  “It’s really useful,” Rose said. “I add things to it sometimes.”

  All she’d added were colored round stickers where Disneyland was, and the Futuroscope.

  “I think we should sleep together but I’m afraid it won’t be great for you,” I said. “Because I’m not in love with you yet.”

  Rose started undressing.

  “I’m not in love with you either, you know?” she said, and then she slid her right arm out of the right arm hole of her T-shirt. “And I know you’re probably thinking that I offer to sleep with boys and cheat on my boyfriend all the time, but I don’t. I’m in love with him, even if he smokes and all.” She was still mostly inside her T-shirt but the right arm and shoulder were there naked, and the right tit in its bra cup. “I know it sounds weird, but sometimes, I see people who look like all they need is to be hugged and fucked once in a while, you know, someone to love them, and usually they’re old and fat and kind of ugly but I’m never disgusted by them the way other people are. I just feel for them that they’re virgins. And it makes me sad that I can’t do anything for them. Because I’m not Mother Teresa or anything. I do want a good-looking boyfriend and cute kids and money, I don’t want to be with an ugly fat guy who seems very sweet just to be nice, but I’m very aware of their pain.”

  “So you’re saying I’m one of these sweet sad-looking fat dudes and you want to do me a favor?” I said.

  “No, I think you’re very cute,” she said. “But there’s a chance you might turn into one of the lonely fat guys, so I’m thinking maybe I can help you now, prevent it from happening.”

  She took the rest of her T-shirt off, and then her bra before the pants. I’d always thought that before sex, the bra had to be taken off last. She said if I lay on my back and she was on top of me it would be easier because she could help me get in, so we had sex like that. It felt really nice as it was happening, the short time it lasted, but the effects faded fast. It was like the first night I’d managed to wait for midnight. I’d been thrilled to see the numbers go from 23:59 to 0:00, I’d held my breath for the great change-of-day show to happen, but then it had gone to 0:01 and nothing had been altered.