“Veselka. Where are you?”

“Doesn’t matter,” I say. “I’ll be at Veselka soon. In the meantime, can you pass on my message?”

I hang up before she can reply.

14. NORAH

That is so rude, hanging up on a person like that.

I refuse to believe that call just happened. I’m so sleepy I’m hallucinating.

Just in case, I go into the bathroom, splash some cold water on my face to wake the f**k up, finger through my hair to make it look tousled in an attractive way but not so attractive that it looks like I tousled it because I care what it looks like, and reach down inside my shirt to rearrange my boobs. Salvatore looks the other way.

When I get back to the table, it’s heaped with food: the bowl of hot borscht (better than my bubbe’s, but I’ll never admit that to her face), half a dozen pierogies, some kielbasa. The blintzes should be following soon. What can I say, I am very, very hungry, and I am craving meat bad. I can save the leftovers for the witch lady or some other street person outside.

I dive into the food like I have just been released from prison. I think I have borscht dribbling down my chin when I manage to look up from my quantum inhalation. He’s here. Holy shit. Memo to Merle Haggard: Miracles really do happen.

I am still embarrassed, but I also remember, I am renewed, destined for my certain future as a U.N. humanitarian. I am immune from throwing myself at him again, seeing as how I’ve committed to a future life of loneliness and celibacy. It probably won’t be so bad. I will never get an STD, I will never have to worry about a condom breaking again, and the lack of sex, or even having to think about it, want it, strive for it, will probably lead me to a higher plane of enlightenment, like the Dalai Lama. So it’s all good. Zero balance. Nick can relax. I won’t gobble him, too.

Nick doesn’t speak at first, he just sits down and butters a piece of challah toast and lays right into that, equaling my fervor. Between swallows, he asks, “How many f**king people did you order food for anyway?” He takes a sip of my Coke, belches, then repeats my last words to him back to me. “‘You are absolved’? What the f**k did that mean?” He sounds hostile but he’s got that f**king half smile laced back on his lips.

I am determined to sulk, but the truth is, I want to lick him all over. I cannot believe he is here. I want to do truly nasty things to him. With him.

I try to sound blasé. “It means, we met under kind of strange circumstances and spent a few kind of strange hours together, but just because I made an ass**le of myself doesn’t mean you have to go all Nice Guy and like try to push our whatever-it-was any farther. Anyway, we don’t even know each other and we’ve never even been properly introduced—”

Nick interrupts me by extending his hand, slick with traces of butter. “I’m Nick,” he says. “I’m from a swingin’ little hood called Hoboken. Where’s Fluffy were my favorite band until tonight. I write songs. I was dumped by a wildebeest but I’m working on getting over it. And you?”

I shake his hand and try hard to suppress a smile. I don’t owe him that. “I’m Norah,” I say. “From Englewood f**kin’ not-swingin’ Cliffs. Where’s Fluffy were also my favorite band until tonight. I love songs that are written. I dumped a wildebeest and he dumped me and it’s been this endless miserable spiral, but I’m also getting over it.”

“Hi, Norah,” he says.

“Hi, Nick,” I answer.

“Can I have my f**king jacket back?”

“No.” I deserve some reward for my rejection and for my future life of celibacy and good deeds.

“Why?”

“Because Salvatore wants me to have it.”

“He told you that?”

“He did.”

“But what if the jacket didn’t really belong to Salvatore? What if it wasn’t his to give you? What if it really belonged to his evil twin, Salamander, who only had Salvatore’s name stenciled on so people would mistake him for the good twin and then Salamander would be free to carry on with his nefarious mission in life?”

“What nefarious mission would that be?”

“You know, world domination, that whole thing.”

“World domination is exhausting and cliché. People ought to just focus on being individual responsible citizens of the earth instead of ass**les. And you can tell that to Salamander next time he comes asking you for his jacket. Tell him me and Salvatore are starting our own new world order. It’s called the Chill the Fuck Out and Let the Girl Have the Jacket movement.”

“Will there be T-shirts and pins for this new movement?”

“Probably. We’re looking into luggage insignia as well, maybe even some corporate product endorsements from Nike or IBM.”

I don’t realize I am laughing, or even moving, until Nick takes a strand of hair that’s fallen in front of my face and tucks it behind my ear and for a second I feel my breath on his arm. Because now we are looking at each other eye to eye and there’s possibly forgiveness in there, and it’s possibly mutual, and for that second my stomach feels this momentary lurch of hope, it’s the same feeling as dread, and because I am a f**king loser who never learns, I blurt out, “I sort of know you already, actually.”

“Huh?” he says.

The food rush has infiltrated my brain, made it hazy, unable to distinguish between flirting and saying too much. “I feel like I have kind of known you, through Tris. She and I aren’t friends exactly, only we’re not not-friends exactly, either. You made some amazing mixes for that bitch, wrote some great lyrics. I would see that stuff you gave her and always think, Hey, I wouldn’t mind knowing this guy. Not like I wanted to go after Tris’s boyfriend or anything, and I’m not a stalker, at least I don’t think I am, but I guess…” Oh, f**k it, why not just be honest? He’s not the one absolved—I am. “…I guess I just thought you might be a cool person even before I’d met you, based on purely circumstantial evidence. So you don’t think I randomly throw myself at just any guy.”

There is a silence, and in that silence I hate all boys, for never knowing the right thing to say. “Why did you leave?” he asks. Why did YOU stop?

“National security emergency. Salvatore and I got beeped. Turned out to be a false alarm.” Why do you think I left, beautiful moron?

And we’re at a stalemate. We eat.

“Where are your friends?” I finally say after a couple pierogies. Just to say something. Again. I’m sure his boys will be rolling through any moment to retrieve him, probably steal my blintzes. Nick must have found me only so he could get his f**king phone back.

Nick says, “Dev left with Ted.”

“Ted?”

“You know, Ted from Are You Randy?”

“There’s no Ted from Are You Randy? There’s Randy and a bunch of other guys, none named Ted.”

“Then who’s Randy?” Nick asks.

“The guy who was trying to get with Caroline!”

“Who’s Caroline?”

“For f**k’s sake, who’s TED?”

“The guy Dev hooked up with!”

“That’s HUNTER. From Hunter Does Hunter.”

“Oh,” Nick says. “I get it now.” He draws a map on the paper placemat on the table. “Dev’s with Ted, who’s also Hunter, but he’s not Randy, who wanted Caroline, who I guess is the girl in the back of the van with Thom and Scot?”

I place my hand over his fist. “YES!”

It’s almost like I’ve shared another dance with Johnny Castle, and I must be sleeping because this is not real, Nick is not real, this is not happening. I hope I don’t wake up too soon. I pinch his thigh to check, and he leans over to me, and we’re both smiling in anticipation and our eyes are meeting and something I think very natural and sweet is about to happen here, except…

A Beast stands over our table. It points at me. “I need to talk to you. Come into my office.” Tris whips around and heads toward the bathroom. I’m amazed that even with her thick black roots peeking through her platinum-blond hair, the eyeliner and lipstick on her face smudged from the night’s adventures, her eyes bloodshot from fatigue, she still manages to look hot. It’s so wrong.

I stand up from the table and wiggle my index finger at Nick. He’ll never get it, but I borrow from Heathers as I leave him to follow Tris. “‘A true friend’s work is never done,’” I singsong.

“‘Bulimia is so ’87, Heather,’” he answers.

HOLY SHIT squared. I think I just had my first orgasm.

Tris is peeing when I walk in. She is not a person who cares about privacy. But I close the door behind me anyway and say, “What the f**k are you doing here?” She gives me this great castoff, like a gift fallen from the sky, and yet she seems determined that I should not open it or enjoy it.

“I lost my date and I knew I would find you here, borscht bitch. I need cab money home. I figure you owe me. Fifty bucks ought to cover a gypsy cab back to Jersey and a Starbucks run.” She wipes, stands up, flushes. “So can I have it?” She shoves me aside to wash her hands at the sink.

“How do you figure I owe you?”

“You know, I’m giving you Nick.”

“Are you really?” I ask. Because we should get this clear once and for all.

“I really am,” she says, applying a fresh coat of lipstick. I believe her.

“I think I really like him,” I say.

“He likes you, too. Just don’t name your children after months or fruits. Promise me.”

“What?” I say.

She faces me. “Are you going to give me the fifty bucks or not?”

“Don’t you think Nick is worth more than that?”

“Bitch, I’m not trying to quantify the value of a human being. I just need to get home. And don’t cry poor because I know you have a secret stash of emergency money tucked in some pocket.” She leans over me and, honest to Allah, frisks me. “Jesus, you’re stacked! Why do you hide it under these huge shirts all the time?”

I thought I used up my emergency money when I gave my secret stash to the cabdriver who got me here, but then I remember the fifty-dollar bill Thom gave me earlier to take Nick out on a date intended to free the boy of Tris’s ghost. So much for that fund. Thom and Scot couldn’t have anticipated that the wildebeest herself would profit from their contribution to Nick’s night out.

I shove Tris away and reach inside the inner pocket of my flannel shirt. I hand Tris the fifty-spot. “Thank you!” she snaps. She turns to leave, but I pull her back.

“Tris?”

“What, bitch?”

“Am I really frigid?”

She sighs. “Of course you’re not frigid. Don’t believe all the propaganda Caroline and Tal have laid on you. I saw you kissing Nick earlier tonight. Looked to me like you two knew what you were doing.”

“But I don’t,” I say.

“Don’t what?”

“Know what I’m doing.”

Tris rolls her eyes. She walks over and points her index finger at me. “I’m gonna give you a little help here, but first you have to swear to me you didn’t know Nick before tonight and this wasn’t some…whadyacallit…streetlamp setup to trick me—”

“Streetlamp trick?”

“You know, to make me think I’m going crazy when really you’ve been plotting this all along.”

“That’s Gaslight, Tris. Not streetlamp. Remember that movie my mother made us watch at my eleventh birthday slumber party? And no, I never met Nick before tonight.” I raise my hand and make the Girl Scout honor pledge sign.