Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

15. NICK

While they’re in the bathroom together, I try to distract myself by coming up with a list of things that could be worse than having your vehement ex drag your current she’s-so-frickin’-cool girl away for some cubicle camaraderie (or conflict). I come up with the following:

• Having your pubic hair trimmed with garden shears.• Having your pubic hair trimmed with garden shears by a frat guy who’s had twelve shots of Jägermeister.• Having your pubic hair trimmed with garden shears by a frat guy who’s had twelve shots of Jägermeister during an 8.6 earthquake.• Having your pubic hair trimmed with garden shears by a frat guy who’s had twelve shots of Jägermeister during an 8.6 earthquake with lite jazz playing.

I have to stop there. It’s just too horrifying.

It’s amazing how little I trust Tris, considering that I like to pay lip service to the fact that trust is an essential ingredient to love.

Best case scenario:

She’s saying, “Really, he was just too good for me, and I always felt like he could do better…like with a girl like you. And, man, is he hot in bed.”

Worst case scenario:

She’s saying, “There was this one time, we were flipping through the channels, and he stopped on Pocahontas, and the next thing I knew, he had a total hard-on.” (She will not mention where her hands were at the time.) “And, man, he is one lousy fuck, in more ways than one.”

Deep breaths. I am taking deep breaths.

Composure. Which, for me, means composing.

Why the fuck does my fate get decided in the ladies’ room? Sitting tongue-tied as I get derided in the ladies’ room.

Employees must wash their hands of me in the ladies’ room Lock the door and throw away the plea in the ladies’ room.

Maybe this is my way of creating the illusion of control over something I have no control over. Like, if it’s just a story I’m telling or a song I’m singing, then I’ll be okay because I’m the guy who’s providing the words. Which is not the way life works at all. Or at least not when it’s unfair.

I guess the cool thing is that I really wasn’t happy to see Tris. For the first time in what seems like ever. She walked in the door and my heart sank to hell.

It was strange enough to think that Norah knew who I was before I knew who she was. That she’d been in Tris’s orbit without me noticing. But I guess you don’t see the planets when you’re staring at the sun. You just get blinded.

The fact that she knew me makes this more real. I made my first impression without knowing I was making an impression at all. She knows at least a little of who I am, and she’s here anyway. Hopefully for longer than the next two minutes.

The waitress probably thinks I’m the worst kind of perv, because I can’t stop staring at the bathroom door.

Finally it opens, and Tris comes out alone. And my first thought, honest to Godspeed You Black Emperor!, is What the fuck have you done to Norah? Where is she?

But Tris isn’t staying long enough to be asked any questions. She just pushes past the table, yelling to me, “I told you that you’d find her someplace! Good job! And good luck with that one. You’re gonna need it. I almost feel sorry for you.”

And all I can think to say is:

“thanks.”

But I don’t say anything more. I let her leave. I mean, I don’t want her to stay. And yes, that makes this the first time I’m off of her without still getting off on the thought of her. I believe some cultures call this progress.

Norah’s looking really flustered as she comes back to the table, her face flushed, her pulse clearly up a notch or two. It must’ve been one hell of a confrontation.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

She nods absently. Then she looks at me again and it’s like our conversation kicks back in. She’s with me again.

“Yeah,” she says. “She just needed some money.”

“And you gave her what she wanted?”

“I guess we have a lot in common, don’t we?”

“She’s a fucking force of nature,” I say.

“She certainly is.”

“But to hell with her.”

Norah seems a little startled.

“What?” she says.

“I don’t know what she said to you, and I probably don’t want to know. Just like I don’t want to know why you ordered all this meat, or where you got your flannel—not that there’s anything wrong with it. That’s not what I want to know.”

She defiantly spears a piece of kielbasa and, before putting it in her mouth, asks, “So what do you want to know?”

What the hell are we doing here?

Is this incredibly foolish?

Am I even ready to have this conversation?

“What I want to know,” I say, “is which song you liked the most on the mixes I made Tris.”

She chews for a second. Swallows. Drinks some water.

“That’s what you want to know?”

“It seems like a place to start.”

“Honestly?”

“Yeah.”

She doesn’t even have to think. She just says, “The noticing song. I don’t know its name.”

Whoa. I mean, I thought she would name something from Patti Smith or Fugazi or Jeff Buckley or Where’s Fluffy. Or even one of the Bee Gees songs I put on, to be funny. I didn’t think she’d choose something I wrote and sang. It wasn’t even supposed to be on that mix. But one night I was just so wired from being with Tris that I had to stay up until I turned the evening into a song. I recorded it onto my computer, than stuck it on as a hidden track for the mix I gave her the next day.

Tris never mentioned it to me.

Not once.

“‘March Eighteenth,’” I say.

“What?”

“That’s the name of the song. I mean, it doesn’t really have a name. I can’t believe you remember it.”

“I loved it.”

“Really?” I have to ask.

“Really,” she says. And from the tone of her voice, I can tell it’s a real “really.” Then, to my amazement, she leans in and starts to sing the refrain. Not in a full voice, so everyone in the restaurant can hear. But like a stereo turned low, or a car radio on a lonely night. She sings me back to me:

The way you’re singing in your sleep The way you look before you leap The strange illusions that you keep You don’t know But I’m noticing

The way your touch turns into arcs The way you slide into the dark The beating of my open heart You don’t know But I’m noticing

And I’m moved, it’s so beautiful. Not what I wrote, but to have it given back like this. To have her remember the words and the tune. To hear it in her voice.

She is blushing furiously, so I don’t clap or do anything like that. Instead I shake my head and hope my amazement is translating.

“Wow,” I say.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Although, in all honesty, the first time I heard it, it caught me on a really bad day.”

“I can’t believe you—”

“I promise I’m not a stalker or anything. I promise I’ve forgotten all the other songs.”

“Really?”

“Can we change the subject?”

And I find myself saying, “It wasn’t really about her.” And finding it’s true.

“What do you mean?” Norah asks.

“It was about the feeling, you know? She caused it in me, but it wasn’t about her. It was about my reaction, what I wanted to feel and then convinced myself that I felt, because I wanted it that bad. That illusion. It was love because I created it as love.”

Norah nods. “With Tal, it was the way he always said goodnight. Isn’t that stupid? At first on the phone, and then when he’d drop me off, and even later when we were together and drifting off to sleep. He always wished me a goodnight and made it sound like it really was a wish. It’s probably just something his mother always did when he was a kid. A habit. But I thought, This is caring. This is real. It could erase so many other things. That simple goodnight.”

“I don’t think Tris ever wished me a goodnight.”

“Well, Tal sure as hell didn’t inspire me to write songs.”

“That’s too bad,” I say. “Tal rhymes with fucking everything.”

Norah thinks for a second. “You never put her name in any of the songs, did you?”

I go through the entire playlist, then shake my head.

“Why not?”

“I guess it didn’t occur to me.”

Norah’s phone rings and she pulls it out of her pocket. She looks at the screen and mumbles, “Caroline.” I see she’s about to answer it, and find myself saying, “Don’t.”

“Don’t?”

“Yeah.”

Another ring.

“What if it’s an emergency?”

“She’ll call back. Look, I want us to take a walk.”

“A walk?”

Ring number three.

“Yeah. You, me, and the city. I want to talk to you.”

“Are you serious?”

“Not as a rule, but in this case yes.”

Ring.

“Where will we go?”

“Wherever. It’s only”—I look at my watch—“four in the morning.”

Pause.

Silence.

Voice mail.

Norah bites her bottom lip.

“Thinking about it?” I ask uneasily.

“No. Just thinking about where to go. Somewhere nobody will find us.”

“Like Park Avenue?”

And Norah tilts her head, looks at me a little askew, and says, “Yes, like Park Avenue.”

And then she utters a word I never in a zillion years thought I’d ever hear her utter:

“Midtown.”

It’s ridiculous, but we take the subway. Even more ridiculous, it’s the 6 train that we take, the most notoriously slow local in all of Manhattan. At four in the morning, we’re on the platform for a good twenty minutes—the time it would’ve taken us to walk—but I don’t mind the delay because we’re talking all over the place, hitting Heathers and peanut butter preferences and favorite pairs of underwear and Tris’s occasional body odor and Tal’s body hair fetish and the fate of the Olsen twins and the number of times we’ve seen rats in the subway and our favorite graffiti ever—all in what seems like a single sentence that lasts the whole twenty minutes. Then we’re in the weird fluorescence of the subway car, sliding into each other when the train stops and starts, making comments with our eyes about the misbegotten drunkards, business-suit stockbroker frat boys, and weary night travelers that share our space. I am having a fucking great time, and the amazing thing is that I realize it even as it’s happening. I think Norah’s getting into it, too. Sometimes when we slide together, we take a few seconds to separate ourselves. We’re not to the point of deliberately touching again, but we’re not about to turn down a good accident.

We get out of the subway at Grand Central and walk north on Park. It’s completely empty, the skyscrapers standing guard up and down the avenue, sleeping sentries of the important world.

“It feels like we’re in a canyon,” Norah says.

“What freaks me out is how many of the buildings still have lights on. I mean, there have to be thousands of lights in each building that are left on for the night. That can’t be very efficient.”

“There are probably still people working. Checking their e-mail. Making another million. Screwing someone over while they sleep.”

“Or maybe,” I say, “they just think it’s pretty.”

Norah snorts. “You’re right. That must be it.”

“Does your dad work around here?”

“No. He’s all about downtown. Yours?”

Now it’s my turn to snort. “Not employed at the present,” I say. “Definitely for lack of trying.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No worries.”

“Are your parents still together?”

“In the sense that they live in the same house, yeah. Yours?”

“They were high school sweethearts. Married twenty-five years now. Still happy and still doing it. Complete freaks of nature.”

We sit down on the edge of one of the corporate fountains, watching the headlight show of passing traffic.

“So, do you come here often?” I joke.

“Yeah. I know, I’m so bridge-and-tunnel—for as long as I’ve been able to catch the train, I’ve been sneaking into the city to go to Midtown. Hang out with the bankers, merge some mergers and acquire some acquisitions. The whole thing just reeked of sex and rock ’n’ roll to me. Can’t you feel it in the air? Close your eyes. Feel it?”

I do close my eyes. I hear the cars passing, not just in front of us, but on streets throughout the grid. I hear the buildings yawning into space. I hear my heartbeat. I have this momentary fantasy that she’s going to lean over and kiss me again. But enough time goes by for me to know this isn’t going to happen. When I open them, I find her looking at me.

“You’re cute. You know that?” she says.

I have no idea what to say to that. So it just hangs in the air, until I finally say, “You’re just saying that to get me to take off my clothes and frolic in the fountain.”

“Am I really that transparent? Fuck!” Her look is quizzical, but I don’t feel like this is a quiz.

“We could go break into St. Patrick’s instead,” I suggest.

“With our clothes off?”

“I’d have to keep on my socks. Do you know what kind of people touch the ground there?”

“I’ll have to say ix-nay on the athedral-cay. I can see the headlines now: ‘RECORD EXEC DAUGHTER FOUND PLAYING PORNISH PRANKS IN PATRICK’S. “We thought she was such a nice Jewish girl,” neighbors say.’”

“You’re Jewish?” I ask.

Norah looks at me like I just asked if she was really a girl.

“Of course I’m Jewish.”

“So what’s that like?” I ask.

“Are you kidding me?”

Do I look like I’m kidding her?

“No,” I say. “Really. What’s that like?”

“I don’t know. It’s just something that is. It’s not something that’s like.”

“Well, what are your favorite things about it?”

“Like the fact that there are eight days of Hanukkah?”

“Sure, if that means something to you.”

“All it really means to me is that I was slightly less bitter about not having a tree when I was a kid.”

“So what about the real things?” I ask. I want to know more.

“The real things?”

“Yeah. Try.”

She thinks for a second. “Okay. There’s one part of Judaism I really like. Conceptually, I mean. It’s called tikkun olam.”

“Tikkun olam,” I repeat.

“Exactly. Basically, it says that the world has been broken into pieces. All this chaos, all this discord. And our job—everyone’s job—is to try to put the pieces back together. To make things whole again.”

“And you believe that?” I ask. Not as a challenge. As a genuine question.

She shrugs, then negates the shrug with the thought in her eyes. “I guess I do. I mean, I don’t know how the world broke. And I don’t know if there’s a God who can help us fix it. But the fact that the world is broken—I absolutely believe that. Just look around us. Every minute—every single second—there are a million things you could be thinking about. A million things you could be worrying about. Our world—don’t you just feel we’re becoming more and more fragmented? I used to think that when I got older, the world would make so much more sense. But you know what? The older I get, the more confusing it is to me. The more complicated it is. Harder. You’d think we’d be getting better at it. But there’s just more and more chaos. The pieces—they’re everywhere. And nobody knows what to do about it. I find myself grasping, Nick. You know that feeling? That feeling when you just want the right thing to fall into the right place, not only because it’s right, but because it will mean that such a thing is still possible? I want to believe in that.”

“Do you really think it’s getting worse?” I ask. “I mean, aren’t we better off than we were twenty years ago? Or a hundred?”

“We’re better off. But I don’t know if the world’s better off. I don’t know if the two are the same thing.”

“You’re right,” I say.

“Excuse me?”

“I said, ‘You’re right.’”

“But nobody ever says, ‘You’re right.’ Just like that.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

She leans into me a little then. Not accidental. But still somehow it feels like an accident—us being here, this night. As if she’s reading my mind, she says, “I appreciate it.” Then her head falls to my shoulder, and all I can feel is her fitting there. I look up, trying to find the sky behind the building, trying to find at least a trace of the stars. When I can’t, I close my eyes and try to conjure my own, glad that Norah’s not reading my mind just now, because I don’t know how I’d react if anyone knew me like that. As we sit in that city silence, which is not so much silence as light noise, my mind drifts back a few minutes, thinking about what she said.

Then it hits me.

“Maybe we’re the pieces,” I say.

Norah’s head doesn’t move from my arm. “What?” she asks. I can tell from her voice that her eyes are still closed.

“Maybe that’s it,” I say gently. “With what you were talking about before. The world being broken. Maybe it isn’t that we’re supposed to find the pieces and put them back together. Maybe we’re the pieces.”

She doesn’t reply, but I can tell she’s listening carefully. I feel like I’m understanding something for the first time, even if I’m not entirely sure what it is yet.

“Maybe,” I say, “what we’re supposed to do is come together. That’s how we stop the breaking.”

Tikkun olam.