Led Zeppelin III.
It was big—as big as the laptop—and the cover was a spiral of images: male heads with lots of hair, rainbows, blimps (I guessed those were the Zeppelins), flowers, teeth. The edge of the record stuck out a bit, like a tab on a five-subject notebook, and I grabbed it experimentally. It turned, and when it turned, the whole circle turned inside, and the images that showed through the little holes changed: rainbows into stars, blimps into planes, flowers into dragonflies. It was frickin’ awesome. One of the symbols that popped up looked just like the levels of Q-Bert, one of the best old video games—I didn’t realize Led Zeppelin had invented Q-Bert!
I looked up—Aaron and Nia were still at it. Now he had his hand in her hair and he was pulling her toward him like a gas mask. I held the album up to hide their heads. Heh.
I dropped the album. Aaron and Nia. I held it up. More images. It was like they were part of it.
The house filled up. People began getting in line to go into one of Aaron’s book-filled closets. They weren’t making out or anything—a kid named John had announced that he had sprayed pepper spray in there and people were going in to see if they could handle it. Boys and a few girls stumbled out going “Aggg, my eyes!” and tearing, and running for water, but that didn’t stop the ones lined up after them. It seemed like everyone at the party went except me.
I looked at more albums, like the Beatles’ White Album, which I never knew was actually white, and each time I looked up, Aaron and Nia were in a deeper state of entanglement. Suddenly I got really sleepy and warm, from the scotch I guess, and leaned against the album stack, just trying to rest my eyes for a minute. When I woke up I looked instinctively for Aaron and Nia; they had disappeared. I craned from behind my resting spot and looked at the clock above the TV; somehow it was 2:07 A.M.
ten
The house had thinned out.
Jeez. I got up. The laptop playlist had stopped. My night was over. All I had done was look at records and almost hook up with a girl, but somehow I felt accomplished.
“Uh, Ronny?” I asked.
Ronny was playing PlayStation on Aaron’s couch. The PlayStation cord stretched across the room. He looked up.
“What?”
“Where is everybody?”
“Having sex with your mom.”
Next to Ronny, a girl named Donna was balled up in a lump on one end of the couch. The guy with the Eight Ball jacket occupied a chair. Someone yelled to put on more music; Ronny yelled to Shut up, son. The house was full of cups—mugs and glasses everywhere, like they had been multiplying during the party.
“Does anyone know where Aaron is?”
“Pause,” was all Ronny could manage.
“Aaron!”
“Shut up, man! He’s with his chick.”
“I’m here, I’m here!” Aaron strode out from his room, adjusting his pants. “Jeez.” He surveyed the damage. “What’s up? You have a good rest?”
“Shoot, yeah. Where’s Nia?”
“Asleep.”
“You did her good, huh?” Ronny asked. “Asian invasion.”
“Shut up, Ronny.”
“Asian contagion.”
“Shut up.”
“Asian persuasion.”
Aaron yanked his controller out of the PlayStation.
“Suh-uhn!” Ronny scrambled for it.
“You want to go for a walk?” Aaron asked.
“Sure!” I got my jacket.
Aaron woke up Eight Ball jacket and Donna and got them out; he forced Ronny to leave too, over many protests. We all took the elevator down; Eight-Ball jacket and Ronny went uptown; Donna and two others slid into a cab; me and Aaron, instinctively, started toward the shimmering Brooklyn Bridge, which carved its way through the night about three blocks from his house.
“You want to walk across the bridge?” Aaron asked.
“Into Brooklyn?”
“Yeah. You can go home or we can take the subway back to my place.”
“When will it be light?”
“In three, four hours.”
“Let’s do it. I’ll walk home and get breakfast.”
“Cool.”
We walked in step. My feet weren’t cold at all. My head swam. I looked at bare trees and thought they were beautiful. The only way it could have been better was if it were snowing. Then I’d have flakes dripping down on me and I’d be able to catch them in my mouth. I wouldn’t be worried about Aaron seeing that.
“So, how do you feel?” I was like.
“About what?” he was like.
“You know,” I was like.
“Hold on a second.” Aaron spotted a Snapple bottle on the curb; it looked like it was filled with urine, which happens a lot in Manhattan—I don’t know why but homeless people fill up bottles with piss and then don’t even have the courtesy to throw them away—but then again it could be apple Snapple—did they have that? He lunged at it and sent it sailing across the street with a three-point kick; it landed on the opposite curb and shattered yellow under the streetlight.
“Rrnagh!” Aaron screamed. Then he looked around. “There aren’t any cops, right?”
I laughed. “No.” We came to the entrance to the bridge. “So seriously, what was it like?”
“She’s awesome. I mean, she likes everything—she really likes it. She likes. . . sex.”
“You had sex with her?”
“No, but I can tell. She likes everything else.”
“What’d you do?”
He told me.
“No way!” I pushed him as we climbed the bridge. Air from the frigid New York Harbor blew at us, and I put my hood up over my head and tightened the chewed cord. “What was it like?”
“It’s the craziest thing,” Aaron was like. “It feels just like the inside of your cheek.”
“No kidding?” I pulled one hand out of my pocket.
“Yeah.”
I stuck a finger in my mouth and pushed to the side. “That’s it?”
“Just like that,” Aaron said. He had his finger in his cheek too. “I’m serious. It’s hot.”
“Huh.”
We walked in silence with our fingers in our mouths.
“Did you hook up with anyone?” he asked.
“Nope. Julie wanted to, though.”
“Nice one. Did she slip you something?”
“What? No.”
“Because you crashed out pretty hard in the corner over there.”
“I was drinking my mom’s scotch and checking out your dad’s albums.”
“You’re a trip, Craig.”
“It’s cold out here.”
“Looks pretty cool, though.”
We weren’t even a tenth of the way up the bridge, but it did look cool. Behind us the walkway extended to City Hall, where the city had sprung for some spotlights to illuminate the dome of the building. It looked like a white pearl nestled between giants like the Woolworth building, which I learned in English class Ayn Rand had described as a “finger of God,” and that was about right—green and white at the top like the world’s most decorated mint. To our left were the other bridges of Manhattan, arrayed against each other like alternating sin and cos waves, carrying a smattering of late-night trucks whose tops trailed mist.
But to the right was the best view: New York Harbor. Mostly black. The Statue of Liberty was lit up, but it always struck me as a little cheesy, standing out there being all cute. The real action was on the sides: Manhattan had its no-nonsense downtown, where people made money, and on the other side was Brooklyn, sleepy and dark but with a trump card—the container cranes, lit up not for show or government pride but because there was work going on, even at this hour—ships unloading stuff that was famously unchecked for terrorist threats but somehow hadn’t blown us up yet. Brooklyn was a port. New York was a port. We got things done. I had gotten things done, too.