Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen - Dyan Sheldon [59]
Ella squashed my fingers every time we crossed a street, as though we were about to fling ourselves over a cliff and into the cold embrace of the sea. This was slightly less distracting than the way she went rigid whenever anyone suddenly loomed out of the shadows.
“Will you please chill out?” I whispered. “We’re going to lose him if you keep slowing down like that.”
Ella was watching everything at once, but I was trying to keep my eyes on the tall, thin figure several yards ahead of us. The darkness and rain made him come and go like a ghost.
“I’d rather lose him than lose my life,” Ella muttered darkly.
Those were not idle words. Stu Wolff might not exactly be a man of the people at home – unless you mean the people who drive $50,000 cars – but let him loose in the wilds of the Lower West Side and he went straight for every blackened window with a Bud sign hanging in it.
Nonetheless, I barely heard her. My mind was leaping ahead to the moment when we finally caught up with Stu. Would he still be angry, or would the walk have cooled him off? Would he tell us what the argument was about? Would he ask for my advice? Maybe he’d take us for a coffee at one of his favourite cafés. I could see the three of us walking into a room filled with plants and mirrors and people wearing clothes with names (Gucci, Armani, Ralph Lauren…). Stu asked for his usual table. “Certainly, Mr Wolff,” cooed the waiter. A silence fell on the sophisticated New Yorkers as we passed among them. “Look who it is…” they whispered. “It’s Stu Wolff… But who are those girls with him?”
Ella moved even closer as we trudged across Sixth Avenue for the third time. I wasn’t sure if it was for warmth or protection.
“Where do you think he’s going?” she whispered nervously.
“God knows,” I whispered back. Which put God in the minority. Not only was it pretty obvious that Stu had no destination, it seemed pretty likely from the number of times we came back to the same places that he wasn’t always sure where he was.
I wasn’t always sure where we were, either. I’d recognized Chinatown (because of all the restaurants and Chinese people), the East Village (because we walked right past my dad’s building), and the West Village (because of all the out-of-towners), but not everywhere we went was on the tourist maps, or someplace where my parents used to take me to eat, or the street that was home to my father and his dog.
Stu lurched unexpectedly to the right.
“Let’s walk a little faster,” Ella whispered. “We don’t want to lose him.”
I couldn’t have agreed with her more. You wouldn’t think it was possible in a city that never sleeps, but once we left the bright lights and heavy traffic of Sixth Avenue behind, the streets were pretty bleak and desolate. Figures rustled in the shadows like rats. Every sudden noise sounded like a threat.
“We won’t lose him,” I reassured her – and me. “He can’t even walk straight.”
We turned the corner. And stopped.
“Where’s he gone?” whispered Ella.
I squinted into the darkness. There were cans and bags and boxes of garbage piled up along the curb and the wheel of a bicycle chained to a lamppost, but, aside from that, the narrow street of warehouses and lofts was empty. I wasn’t worried, though. It wasn’t the first time Stu had disappeared in front of our eyes.
“He must have gone in somewhere again,” I said. That was Stu’s trick, suddenly vanishing through a door.
Ella shook her head. “Where would he go? There aren’t any bars.”
“Well, maybe he didn’t go into a bar this time,” I said a little defensively. “Maybe he knows someone who lives here.”
When I used to imagine what the Greatest Poet Since Shakespeare did in his spare time, I always pictured him watching sunsets and gazing into the depthless sky, his mind filled with cosmic questions and universal truths, not fighting and drinking beer – but so far tonight he’d done nothing else.
Ella pressed her lips together.