Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. Rachel Cohn

the need for oxygen. My mouth wants to go back to the place it just left.

      Unfortunately, Tris is standing right in front of us, hanging on to her latest slobber victim, who is near enough now that I can positively ID him as one of Caroline’s recent rejects; he’s buddies with Hunter from Hunter, whose band, Hunter Does Hunter, is scheduled to play next (you’re welcome, Hunter, for the introduction to Lou). Tris clutches her arm tight around the guy’s waist, probably squeezing out whatever remaining life that soul-sucking skank hasn’t yet gotten out of him in the three weeks or so since Caroline gave him the heave-ho.

      Tris says, “Nick? Norah? How do you two, like, know each other?”

      That bitch should not be in a club like this. As if her language is not enough indication, there is also the matter of her Hot Topic mallrat outfit: short black leather skirt with buckles up the side, mass-produced “vintage” Ramones T-shirt, and piss-yellow leggings with some horrible pair of pink patent-leather shoes. She looks like a neon sign bumblebee by way of early Debbie Harry rip-off.

      I’m going to need another talk with Uncle Lou about standards vis-à-vis owning and operating a club. The guy can snag great new talent – the raw, hungry kind who are ready to bleed their intestines or other useful body parts onto Crazy Lou’s stage for the opportunity to perform on it – but he doesn’t know shit about how to run this business. Look at the underage Jersey riffraff he lets in! He probably even comps the beers for the band members! LOU! Why do you think so many of these assholes are alcoholics and junkies? They’ve got the music right. They can play the core punk songs with conviction – hard, fast, angry – but they haven’t wised up yet to the fact that the real punk goes down now with a straight edge: no alcohol, no drugs, no cigarettes, no skanks. The real punk now is the only punk left after all the madness: the music, the message.

      Well, dudes, drink up, because when I get back from South Africa next year and take over managing this club as Uncle Lou has promised instead of reapplying to Brown as I promised my parents, there’s gonna be a new sheriff here on the Lower East Side, my friends. Have your lecherous, skanky fun now, because the clock is running out on you.

      I may reconsider the future make-out ban, however. The making-out part is nice, it has possibilities, with the right pair of lips.

      I don’t know why, but I do that thing Caroline does to her male victims, where instead of taking the hand of NoMo, I place my hand at the back of his neck and scratch the nape softly, possessively, while Tris watches. My fingers scan the buzz cut of his hair back there, and I feel goose bumps rising on his neck. I likee. There is some satisfaction in seeing Tris’s bottom lip nearly fall to her chin in shock. That’s the thing about Tris: She’s never subtle.

      Whatever I’m doing, it works. She storms away, speechless. Phew. That was easier than I expected.

      I look at my watch. I believe my new boyfriend and I have about two minutes forty-five before we break up. I close my eyes and do the slight head turn, angling for another visitation from his lips.

      Caroline says I am frigid. Sometimes I think she’s teasing me to repeat the party line of my Evil Ex, so I clarify: You mean I’m not easy? She clarifies: No, bitch, I mean you intimidate guys with a look or a comment before they can even decide if they want a chance with you. You’re so judgmental. Along with frigid.

      NoMo must know this about me, because he doesn’t come back in for more mouth-to-mouth contact. He says, “How the hell do you know Tris?”

      Then I remember. Tris called him NICK. Noooooooooo. That’s him ! NICK! The Hoboken boy! The guy who wrote all the songs and poems about her, the best goddamn boyfriend the rest of us at Sacred Heart never had, the band-boy stud Tris hooked up with after meeting him on the PATH train at the beginning of the school year and has lied to and cheated on ever since. Does NICK not think it’s weird that he dated her that long and never once met any girls from her school? IDIOT!

      But of course Tris wouldn’t introduce him to us. She wouldn’t be worried we’d rat out her indiscretions to her boyfriend – she’d be afraid he’d fall for Caroline. Tris can have Caroline’s rejects, but she’d never offer up one of her own to Caroline. Tris is so Single White Female, we like to joke that Caroline should get a restraining order against her, except Tris provides us too much amusement to completely let her out of our reach. It’s like a love-hate thing we have going with her. We don’t feel guilty about it because there’s only a month of school left and I can’t imagine we’ll ever see her again after our “have a great summer, good luck in college” phony sentiment yearbook finales. And karmically, I have repaid my mean-girl debt to Tris many times over. If she passed Chemistry and Calculus this year, it’s because of me. Fuck, if she graduates at all, it’s because of me.

      I don’t bother answering Nick’s question about how the hell I know Tris. I’ve got to find Caroline.

      I stand up on the barstool. That’s the only way I’ll find her with all these people and this loud music and this stink sweat and this beer energy and this never-ending day that feels like it’s only beginning in the middle of this night. I place my hand on Nick’s head to steady my balance as I scan the crowd, and my hand can’t help but rummage through his mess of hair, just a little.

      There she is! I see Caroline huddling with Randy at a corner table by the brick wall just off the stage, to the right of Hunter from Hunter Does Hunter, who is now taking the mic. I don’t know what song his band had prepared but the lyrics Hunter sings are clearly being made up on the spot and have nothing to do with the fast and furious guitar chords: Dev, go home with me, Dev Dev Dev, I want you to fuck this man.

      I jump down from the barstool and take off toward Caroline, but Nick’s hand clenches my wrist from behind me, pulling me back to him.

      “Seriously,” Nick says, “how the hell do you know Tris?”

      His grip pinches the watch on my wrist, and the ow of the pinch turns my eyes from looking for Caroline to looking straight at him. I notice how lost he looks, yet eager for me to stay with him, his eyes kind and angry at the same time, and the noticing makes me remember a lyric from some song he wrote for Tris that she passed around in Latin class because she thought it was so lame.

       The way you’re singing in your sleep

       The way you look before you leap

       The strange illusions that you keep

       You don’t know

       But I’m noticing

      Fuck Tris. I would give body parts to have a guy write something like that for me. My kidney? Oh, both of them? Here, Nick, they’re yours – just write more for me. I’ll give you a start: boy in punk club asks strange girl to be his girlfriend for five minutes, girl kisses boy, boy kisses back, boy then meets girl – what did you notice about this girl? Nick, let’s hear some lyrics. Please? Ready. Set. Go.

      I want to stomp my foot in frustration – for him, and for me. Because I know that whatever Tris did or said to him, it’s what’s given him that haunted puppy-dog look of pathetic despair. She’s the reason he will probably become an embittered old fuck before he’s even of legal drinking age, distrusting women and writing rude songs about them, and basically from here into eternity thinking all chicks are lying cheating sluts because one of them broke his heart. He’s the type of guy that makes girls like me frigid. I’m the girl who knows he’s capable of poetry, because like I said, there are things I just know. I’m the one who could give him that old-fashioned song title of a thing called “Devotion and True Love (However Complicated)”, if he ever gave a girl like me a second glance. I’m the less-than-five-minute girlfriend who for one too-brief kiss fantasized about ditching this joint with him, going all the way punk with him at a fucking jazz club in the Village or something. Maybe I would have treated him to borscht at Veselka at five in the morning, maybe I would have walked along Battery Park with him at sunrise, holding his hand, knowing I would become the one who would believe in him. I would tell him, I heard you play, I’ve read your poetry,