Charmed Thirds_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [68]
We headed down Amsterdam on foot, past the dusty ninety-nine-cent stores, the sketchy storefront lawyers, the anonymous delis. He was carrying a camcorder and a sandwich board that says, TELL US A STORY. I was carrying the fold-up beach chairs we will be sitting in, side by side, all summer long.
I cannot believe I'm getting paid to spend a long, hot season with this man. He is a man, not a boy. Not a guy. And Bastian's not my normal geek-cute type, either. He's too exotic, too experienced, his dark eyes bruised by a chronic weariness I've yet to know. His nose and mouth are so delicate they're almost feminine, yet his visage is rendered rough and untouchable by a five o'clock shadow no matter what time it is. Bastian usually lets his thick, shoulder-length black hair hang loose. But when it gets too sticky, he occasionally ties it back in what I guess would technically be a ponytail, which sounds really nasty when I call it that, but in truth, that's what it is, and on him it's not nasty at all. He wears his jeans tighter than American guys; lower, too, and almost always with gauzy shirts in pale swirly patterns that become translucent when the sun hits them in just the right way. And if the rays persist and the temperatures rise, a private, peppery scent radiates from his deepest skin, and I get dizzy with . . . what? Lust?
Yes, lust.
Why not? Hetero, homo, bi, and ambiguous—everyone in the program wants to fuck him. I could feel envious eyes on me when the Storytelling Project supervisors paired up the undergrad fellows with their grad school mentors. Jessica and Bastian. Bastian and Jessica. All summer long. Dios mio.
“Here?”
He stopped between 110th and 111th Streets, right in front of the red-and-white-striped awning of the Hungarian Pastry Shop. This is the “teensy little nothing of a pastry shop” where I had my momentous meeting with Paul Parlipiano, the one that convinced me that Columbia was the school for me. I had no idea at the time that it was a Morningside Heights institution, that dozens of poor students linger inside for hours, making the most of the only free refills on the Upper West Side, and as such, it would have been freakier if I hadn't bumped into Paul at the shop. If he weren't toiling at Kerry's campaign HQ (Paul, via e-mail, told me that he quickly shifted allegiances after Dean's “I Have a Scream!” debacle), I'm certain I would have seen him there today.
I didn't even realize that I was babbling about all this to Bastian until he held up a finger and said, calmly, “Callate, por favor.”
Shut up. Please.
“I am sure you have many interesting stories to tell,” he said, setting up the sign. “But we are being paid to listen to others, yes?”
I nodded, vowing not to say anything else until spoken to. It didn't take long.
We were approached by a bent old man wearing a straw fedora, white Bermuda shorts, a sky blue polyester short-sleeved shirt, black dress socks, and white orthopedic sandals. He read each word slowly, deliberately.
“Tell . . . us . . . a . . . story.” He raised a hefty, overgrown eyebrow. “Why should I tell you hippies anything?”
I wanted to crack up, but Bastian's stoic composure made me reconsider.
“Because everyone has a story to tell,” I said.
“Hooey!” the old man barked.
“We define ourselves by the stories we tell others,” Bastian added. “It is a revolutionary take on history, in terms of who is making it and who has the power to document it.”
“Hippie hooey!” he yelled as he hobbled away.
This time Bastian and I couldn't help but laugh.
“This is going to be difficult,” Bastian said.
And it was. New Yorkers are very wary, an instinct that has always been necessary for survival, now more than ever. Hardly anyone believed us when we explained that we were sponsored by the university and that their stories would be archived for educational purposes