I raise my head. Margaret looks like she’s ready to call a doctor. Noah just looks confused.
“Never mind,” I say.
“No,” he tells me. “What do you mean?”
Just as I am about to explain that it really isn’t worth explaining, Andie and Pam appear.
Andie asks, “Why is he on the floor?”
A little more friendly, Pam asks, “What did you do? Get in a fight?”
“Yeah,” Noah answers for me. “With the air.”
“The air won,” I add, as if that wasn’t obvious.
I’m ready. I hold out my hand, and Noah helps me up.
It doesn’t feel personal. He would’ve helped anyone up. He’s that kind of guy.
I haven’t even noticed that Pam is holding a bag, but now she reaches into it and says, “I have presents for you all.”
We all protest—none of us brought presents, you really didn’t have to, it’s not even Christmas anymore.Pam blows right past them.
Andie’s box is the smallest. When she opens it, she makes what I can only call a happy seal noise. She pulls out a necklace, and Pam helps her put it on. I know nothing about necklaces—why would I?—but from Andie’s reaction I can tell it’s exactly what she likes.
Margaret’s gift is wool for her knitting, which might sound kind of boring, but the wool is Technicolor vivid andfeels super soft when she passes it around for us to touch. She’s now beaming too.
Noah’s present gets a big “WOW”—not from him, but from me. Somehow Pam has found a Sinéad O’Connor T-shirt with the cover ofThe Lion and the Cobraon it.
“It’s from St. Mark’s Place,” Pam tells Noah. “It made me think of the poster on your wall.”
Then it’s my turn. I remove the wrapping and find ... a blank book. I open it up and find a receipt from the day before.
“Oops,” Pam says, pulling out the slip of paper and throwing it back in her now-empty bag. “I figure you can write in it!”
“Thank you,” I say. “That’s awesome.”
“Great—let’s go.” Pam gives the bag to her doorman and leads us outside.
“Do you even journal?” Noah whispers to me.
“No,” I answer. “But maybe I’ll start?”
On the street, it’s Andie who asks, “Does anyone know the best way to Chinatown? Should we take a cab?”
“It’s a nice night,” Pam answers. “Let’s walk.”
Indeed, the day has cleared into night, and the cold is falling gently down to earth. Andie doesn’t appreciate it, though. She suggests the subway.
“I don’t like subways,” Pam says. “They used to scare the hell out of me when I was little—not a good thing for a city kid. I just figured that was where the monsters went—this is before sewers became all the rage for turtles and whatnot. The noise that the subway car makes—I thought it was a roar. All very sinister. And when the lights inside the car would pop out from time to time—I was sure I was going to be killed, that something had cut the power and would take me. God, how Icried! It’s a miracle that my parents didn’t try to send me back for a refund.”
“Kid fears,” Andie mumbles, looking down, then up. “Did you hear anything about the Gulf when you were in your father’s room? I heard the TV on.”
“It’s not looking good.”
“That’s what scares me. I never ever thought there’d be a war, all of a sudden.”
“I know what you mean.”
