Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

16. NORAH

Nick and I have fallen silent again but I don’t think it’s the uncomfortable variety of silence. I think it’s dawn closing in and we’re both as sleepy as we are stimulated, and as Saturday rolls into Sunday, it’s almost mesmerizing to look up the canyon to the clouds, murky gray and yellow from the city lights, while on the ground the banking and secretarial types smoke outside the building lobbies as Lincoln Town Cars idle at the curb, waiting to take the overnight workers home. The scions of the financial world here do not appear to notice or care that time could stop at any moment, so why not obey that ‘on the seventh day ye shall rest’ thing? At least, go out and enjoy your life. Like I am now, watching you.

But I am so greedy to learn more about Nick that I can’t bear the silence, even if it’s a nice one. Maybe the way to find out more about him is to tell him more about me. So I inform him, “I get my flannel in the men’s department at Marshalls.”

“My mom loves that store,” he says.

“Your mom is smart.”

I wait. Will he tell me more about his mom?

While my mind plays through the information I’ve compiled about him so far on this night, my mouth is talking stupid fucking Marshalls because my head is still getting around Nick’s words about tikkun olam: Maybe it isn’t that we’re supposed to find the pieces and put them back together. Maybe we’re the pieces.

Because I am trying to put together the pieces that make up this guy. Let’s review. Straight-edge guy who survived a six-month relationship with Tris. Bassist in a queercore band, promising lyricist. Can get profound (at least for a goyim) in the matters of tikkun olam. And he’s a fucking great kisser—but one who said NO to the no-strings-attached sex that was basically offered to him by an idiot girl in a closet at a Where’s Fluffy show a couple hours ago, and yet somehow he still managed to pop up at Veselka for her later (pretty fucking sexy move); but then he didn’t make a move on her on the 6 train when opportunity and ambience were just so converging as the lights dimmed and the train lurched their bodies together. What am I supposed to do with this guy?

As I lean my head on Nick’s arm, I can smell him up close and personal without the club haze of beer and smoke, and he smells faintly of either a cologne spritz or like he had an aromatherapy massage at some spa before this night started, which strikes me as a disturbingly high-maintenance scent for a punk boy. His scent sends the pieces in my mind together, into finally making sense of him.

I may have to issue a retraction to Randy from Are You Randy?

There’s no fucking way this Nick guy is one hundred percent straight.

As if to prove my suspicion, Nick takes some Chapstick from his jeans pocket and rubs it on his lips. I’m a Blistex whore myself, so it’s not the Chapstick that alerts me; it’s the cherry flavor.

If he turns out to be gay, I will be furious. They get all the good ones! I will have no choice but to take it personally. The loss of Nick to the other team would be a huge blow, like, up there with the losses of Scottie “not-at-all” Gross, in whom I invested five solid years of preteen Sunday school crushing and who would have been my first kiss the night of my bat mitzvah if stupid fucking Ethan Weiner hadn’t gotten to Scottie first, and also babelicious George Michael, my ultimate tragedy-to-redemption Behind the Music icon, who in a just and good world would have been my older man–Lolita secret fling experience. SO NOT FAIR!

Then again. Maybe the simple diagnosis of either hetero or homo is misleading. Maybe there’s just sexuality, and it’s bendable and unpredictable, like a circus performer, which I used to want to be, and hey, that could be a good option worth pursuing now that I fucked up my college admissions and the kibbutz thing sure ain’t gonna happen. I’d like to be bendy like a circus performer. Maybe Tris would come see my show sometime and I could find out more about her groupie bitch skills.

Wherever Nick’s sexuality lies (lays?—whatever, same diff), the bottom line is: This Nick guy is too good to be true. He writes amazing songs. He is so fucking cute. He’s damn smart. And damn sensitive. He’s given me more adventure and confusion in one night than I’ve had in a lifetime. My heart is aching again, scared, because I want to know EVERYTHING about him now. The more he gives me, the more I want. I want to know about his plans for the future, about his family, about his music, his dreams, his sorrows, all that sentimental bullshit.

I wonder if he shares my feeling that the Fluffy track “Hideous Becomes You” is just the most beautiful love song ever, and would he ever sing that one to me sometime? Because I already sang his noticing song back to him, and I told him about tikkun olam, which seems like such a random thing but it’s really important and sacred to me, and I’m thinking if we name our first son Salvatore, that’s not the name of a fruit or a month, and lots of not 100% straight people procreate, right?

What’s of more concern: If I don’t shut down my brain soon, my imagination will take off so far about what could be with this guy, that nothing will ever be able to just be.

Nick is right, the Olsen twins do have a worrisome codependent relationship. I understand those bitches, though, I really do. Much as I want to learn more about Nick, I also want to take a time-out so I can tell Caroline about him. If Caroline were here, we could dissect Nick via My So-Called Life script/ Jordan Catalano moments.

Rayanne:I think part of him is partly interested in you. Definitely. I mean, he’s got other things on his mind.Angela:But that’s the part that’s so unfair. I have nothing else on my mind. How come I have to be the one sitting around analyzing him in like microscopic detail, and he gets to be the one with other things on his mind.Rickie:That is deep.

I feel like I could sit here on stupid fucking Park Avenue talking to him all night. And I hate Midtown, and I particularly hate the East Side.

Alas, wherever I’m going to figure this Nick guy out, it won’t be at this spot any longer. We’re two straight-edge B&T kids chasing a natural high, but apparently we’ve been mistaken for terrorists. Building security men have come outside to give us our marching orders—to anywhere that’s not sitting at the fountain in front of their building.

We stand up and walk, heading west. Maybe Nick is trying to figure out the pieces of me, too? He says, “Your dad, the record company executive who’s all about downtown. Is there a reason you haven’t told me his name? Would I know who he is?”

“You would,” I tell him. I need to determine which way Nick swings before I find out if he’s getting to know me just so he can pass on a demo. I can only let myself get so emotionally invested.

He lets the name issue drop, mercifully. “You must meet a lot of famous people.”

“Maybe when I was younger,” I say. “We went to music festivals and concerts all the time. I’ve lived in the same house in Englewood Cliffs my whole life, but I feel like I also partially grew up in Nashville, Memphis, New Orleans, Chicago, Seattle—anywhere that had a hot music scene, you know? I’m lucky, I have met a lot of incredible artists with Dad throughout my life, some of them legends. But something I figured out a few years ago is it’s better not to get to know them. Because if I didn’t get to know them, then I could still enjoy their music, without knowing about their exorbitant demands or careless lifestyles or how much I loved their breakout song until I found out their lead singer was making my dad’s life miserable and was the reason my dad missed my spelling bee or whatever.”

“That’s why I like Where’s Fluffy so much. They’re not like that, not about the whole star trip.”

“Maybe not, and I hope I don’t disillusion you, champ, but Lars L. is a total junkie, Owen O. is a raging alcoholic, and Evan E.’s just plain crazy. I know—my dad tried to sign them up. But Fluffy write great songs, make great music. That’s what’s important, right?”

Nick shoves against my side playfully. “You’re not disillusioning me. You can’t look at the band members and not know that. I mean, have you listened to the lyrics of ‘High Is Better Than Low’? Cuz it’s not about Evan E.’s love of stiletto Manolos.”

Damn, Nick knows designer shoe names. Bad sign.

Nick adds, “But that’s what I love about punk music. It has a sense of humor about itself, doesn’t pretend to be something it’s not. It’s kickass funk with a heavy-metal edge, but with a conscience.”

Good recovery.

“Wanna know my secret desire?” I tease.

Nick turns to me and lifts an eyebrow, like an old-time movie star. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t tweeze or wax, but he does have suspiciously beautiful eyebrows. Or maybe I’m just smit. “Of course I want to know,” he says.

“I have no songwriting talent whatsoever, but I would like to be a person who thinks up song titles, especially country music ones.”

“What’s your best one?”

“‘You Stole My Heart and Left It for Roadkill,’” I tell him. “Go ahead, feel free to come up with some lyrics.”

My favorite song title by someone who legitimately thinks up song titles would have to be “Something About What Happens When We Talk,” by Lucinda Williams, the song Mom and Dad are still slow-dancing to on their anniversaries (first date, first kiss, first let’s not even talk about that, engagement, wedding, etc.—yep, they celebrate ’em all), even though they’re way too old and should know better. I’m thinking about that song now, because it’s so easy talking with Nick. I have to suppress every stalker instinct in me not to sing to Nick like Lucinda sings, Conversation with you is like a drug. With Tal, discussion was always two parts confrontation and one part actual talking. I loved that Tal could at least say goodnight, and that he cared about something other than partying, but something about what happened when Tal and I talked was more like he manifesto’d and I listened.

As we approach Seventh Avenue, we both automatically turn south, and I realize Nick and I never discussed where we were going after Park Avenue. It’s like when Nick and I held hands tight at the club earlier as I led him through the crowd to the closet. Somehow we stay together. Times Square beckons us now in all its glory. Somehow our world is alive with possibility.

My cell phone is ringing again and it says Daddy-O and I have to take it, that’s the rule for out-all-night adventures. “Do you mind?” I ask Nick. I feel bad enough I didn’t answer Caroline’s call when Nick asked me not to.

“Go ahead,” he says, like he understands now that no call will dissuade me from this night with him. I stand under a building awning as Nick steps away to the curb to give me privacy, which I really don’t need, but I appreciate the gesture anyway, though I’m unsure where his good manners land him on the sexuality meter.

“Hi, Daddy,” I say into the phone.

Here I am at the crossroads of the world, with shining red-and-white neon lights and yellow taxis, humming with action and pulsing with music and people, danger and excitement, but hearing Dad’s voice, it’s like I am five years old again and he’s tucking his little princess into bed. “You okay, sweetheart? I’ve got a motley crew assembled here of two band guys and an inebriated Caroline, but no Norah.”

“I’m okay, Dad. Maybe I’m even great?”

“Are you going to tell me his name?”

“No.”

“Are you going to be home soon?”

“No.”

“Are you ever going to obey a command of mine again?”

“No.”

He sighs. “Please be careful.” I decide he’d probably rather not know I am standing in Times Square in the early hours of the morning with a boy I’ve only known for a few hours. “Mom and I will take care of Caroline. Mom’s making Thom and Scot scrambled eggs right now. Nice kids.”

“Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“I think I made a mistake turning down Brown.”

“No shit.”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do now. The Tal thing, you and Mom and Caroline were right, I can’t do that ever again. But now I don’t know what to do.”

“I’ll tell you what you can do. Go to Brown next year. Your old man took the card you posted turning down the admissions offer out of our mailbox after you left the house this morning. He replaced it with an acceptance and a deposit check.”

I should be grateful but I am indignant. “YOU HAD NO RIGHT! THAT IS LIKE A PERSONAL INVASION OF PRIVACY! AND IT’S A FEDERAL OFFENSE TO TAMPER WITH THE MAIL!”

Dad chuckles. “Too fucking bad. Don’t be home too late.” And he hangs up on me.

Maybe my dad is a fuckin’ corporate hippie, but I really love that old bastard.

I can’t think about what Dad did because the skies have suddenly opened up and it’s a hellacious downpour, but what is Nick doing? He’s dancing a jig at the curb, his arms outstretched, his face tilted upward to receive the splash. Joyful.

I don’t tell Nick my call is finished. I just watch him. A while ago when I looked at Nick, I felt inspired by the line from that Smiths song playing earlier at Camera Obscura where Morrissey sings about how what she asked of me / at the end of the day / Caligula would have blushed. I don’t know that I care anymore about piecing together whether Nick’s straight or gay or somewhere in between. I’m thinking I would like to dance in the rain with this person. I would like to lie next to him in the dark and watch him breathe and watch him sleep and wonder what he’s dreaming about and not get an inferiority complex if the dreams aren’t about me.

I don’t know if Nick and I are going to be friends or lovers or if he’s going to be Will and I’m going to be Grace, which will be disappointing along with boring, but whatever Nick and I are going to be to each other, it can’t be—it won’t be—just a one-night-stand thing.

I know this.