The shelves of the toy store seem like they’re still recovering from the Christmas crowds. The teddy bears’ smiles seem extra forced, and so do the salespeople’s. There’s a pretty long line to try out the piano, and I’m surprised when it’s Andie who navigates us to the end.
“What?” she says. “We’ve come all this way.”
“Fuck yeah,” Margaret says. I am jealous that she can get away with being so excited about something in a toy store.
“We’ll be right back,” Noah says. Then he pulls me out of the line. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“I don’t know. We’re in FAO Schwarz. Why should we all wait on line?”
There’s a big display for Transformers.
“I don’t get Transformers,” I say. “But my brother loves them.”
“What don’t you get?”
“I don’t know. When I wanted to play with cars as a kid, I played with cars. And when I wanted to play with action figures, I played with action figures. I never needed them to be, like, the same thing.”
“You’re so weird,” Noah says. It isn’t the same from him as it is from Andie.
“How is that weird?”
It’s so stupid, because the tone of my voice is actuallychallenginghim. Like,Tell me why I’m weird, won’t you?
Instead of answering, he says, “I guess I can’t really be the judge of weirdness, can I? I like ‘Lovecats,’ after all.”
It’s a reference to an earlier conversation we had, and I’m flattered that he remembers it and thought to bring it up now. Early on, he’d asked me if I liked The Cure. And I’d said, “Yeah—everything but ‘Lovecats.’” Because “Lovecats” is my shorthand for when a band you love puts out a truly awful song, the track that’s an automatic fast-forward. He hadn’t defended it then. But now ...
“Holy shit,” I say.
“Don’t think less of me.”
“They actually sample a cat meowing. It’s so dumb.”
“Youdothink less of me, don’t you?”
“No. Yes.No.”
I am blushing in front of a display of Transformers. This is a low.
Luckily, Pam appears a second later and says it’s our turn.
TheBigpiano has keys the size of diving boards, and the idea is to jump from one to the other to make music. As the five of us approach, Margaret asks, “Do any of you know how to play the piano?”
“I can play ‘Chariots of Fire,’” I say. Then clarify: “Well, the beginning of it.”
“Guess we’re going free-form,” Pam declares, pouncing on a key and releasing a synthy high note.
We pounce on that piano like two-year-olds who’ve just been gifted a Fisher-Price baby grand. Pam, Andie, Noah, and even Margaret are whooping and laughing and dancing around. They are happy, and for some reason I can’t be happy, so I make myself pretend to be happy so my unhappiness won’t drag down their happiness. It’s like they don’t hear the aural chaos we are making. While for me it sounds exactly like what’s going on in my head.
I am positive they would be just as happy if I wasn’t here.
And these are my friends.
“Come on!” Pam says to me. “Our grand finale ... ‘Chariots of Fire’!”
I don’t want to let them down, so I hit the first note. Then I jump four keys to hit the next note. More steps to the next three notes. It sounds like “Chariots of Fire” being played by a turtle ... but it is “Chariots of Fire.” I’m getting to the faster part when the FAO Schwarz employee says our time is up.
