Faux French

Not a fan of this open-ended comment situation. Conflicting advice—what am I supposed to do with that?

Well, first I tried to get to the bottom of things with Mark. In the days following I called him no less than 25 times, leaving at least 10 messages, and never got a response. I got so desperate I even called our parents to see if they had heard from him. Apparently Mark had called them on Sunday to report in on the show, but nothing since then. Finally, in a last ditch effort, I drove to his house before work, saw his car in the carport, and knocked loudly on his front door at 6am. A minute later Mark’s head appeared between the parted curtains of his front window followed by a grunt of displeasure.

“Hey Mark, what’s up? What’s new?” I asked, enjoying Mark’s annoyance.

“Cece, I swear to God…” Mark began. But I quickly shut him up.

“You know what, Mark? You suck. You rope me into your little play. I dress up in freaking footie pajamas. And the one time a guy likes me…and even two guys like me, you go and screw it up. So you’d better explain what your problem is or you and I are going to have a serious problem.”

“Have you talked to them?” Mark asked.

“Um, have I talked to Peter or Brian, the two totally nice guys who have left me messages and sent me texts? No, idiot. I’ve been waiting to see what your problem is because you’ve got me too freaked out to do anything!”

“Oh, good. Well, don’t talk to them. Look, C., I’m tired. Can we talk about this later?”

I know you don’t know me that well, and Mark even less. But this was really unlike us. We weren’t best friends or anything, but whenever anything did come up, it was always us against the world—the parents, school, any friend that pissed us off. Mark was my protector, and I was his biggest fan. And his sudden closed-off approach was making me mental. “Mark, I’m going to kill you! What is going on?”

“Cece, just please don’t talk to those guys. I would tell you the full story if I could, but I can’t. Just trust me as someone who has always had your best interest. I will tell you everything soon, I promise. And in the meantime, just trust me.”

Chlo was no help either. In pure Chlo fashion, while shopping at a flea market, she had been “discovered,” again… and was now shooting a campaign for Urban Outfitters. She called me after day one, already in the middle of a love affair with the photographer. Of course. It was a three-day shoot and we agreed to meet up on Friday to “celebrate.” I didn’t want to go to our usual spot and risk seeing Brian and Peter, so we decided to head downtown to this new music venue that had just sprung up from an old storage locker.

If I had ever needed a drink, it was Friday. In short, Friday sucked. The text book I had been editing was at the printer, so it was supposed to be an easy day. I had even made plans to have lunch at the beach with Anthony, the one person at work I actually liked. We were going to have fish and chips with our feet buried in the sand. Instead, I had chips from the vending machine. Can you think of a reason? Yeah, Joan.

So, like I said, the book was at the printer when Joan had “the most brilliant idea about the cover,” which involved changing the title from “Explorations in Science” to “Exploring the World of Science.” I’m not even kidding. And she was adamant. So my day involved stopping the presses, having the cover redesigned, and getting a new production cost to get the books that had already been completed reprinted. $25,000. Finally, at 7pm, we decided to restart the presses with everything as it had been. Then I found myself in bumper-to-bumper traffic with no time to change before going out to meet Chlo. If I hadn’t been so desperately in need of a drink and a companion to vent to, I would have blown the whole thing off.

The venue was fantastic, or fantastically hideous—exactly what an underground music venue should be. Dripping walls, exposed pipes, a bathroom that neither locked nor held toilet paper. It may sound strange, but I was in heaven. All types of kids were there—the early adapters from each scene: athletic socks pulled up past the knees on the little skaters, fanny packs and prairie dresses on the Canyon types, Karen O. mop tops, crested blazers with ripped denim shorts and every other hodgepodge fashion the Sartorialist http://thesartorialist.blogspot.com/ will capture in designer form soon enough.

I found Chlo inside, draped around a preposterously thin man whom I presumed to be the photographer. His name was Pierre, although he was blue blood American, a combination I found instantly annoying. But when he wandered off and returned, unprompted, with a drink my attitude—and opinion—improved.

“C., check it out,” Chlo said. “Pierre is in a band…with Peter!”

How did this place always manage to be one of the largest cities, and one of the smallest towns?

“Chlo told me you’re having some kind of trouble with Peter?” Pierre questioned. “I don’t get it; the guy’s a star.”

“Thanks Chlo. Not really public information,” I grumbled.

“No really, tell me what’s up,” Pierre continued. “I haven’t known him all that long, but I’d like to help if I can.”

So while I was looking forward to venting to Chlo, I ended up retelling the story from the very beginning to this lanky stranger, concluding by saying, “and it probably doesn’t matter anyway because I haven’t talked to either one of them in nearly two weeks and they have probably lost interest anyway.”
Pierre was sure I hadn’t totally blown it, agreeing with Chlo’s intuition that a disinterested girl will hold a guy’s attention almost indefinitely. He offered to do some digging with Peter to see if he could dig up what might have happened that night with Mark.