She arrived sophomore year, a phoenix rising from the ashes of the Towers—or, that’s how it must have looked in Michael’s mind. Michael’s high school friend Ricky was bitchy about it, and Broder was lonely, and the city was apocalyptically drinking, awash in song: hipsters arm in arm, earnestly belting Sinatra over the jukebox.
So while Michael chased romance in the cheaper bistros of Upper Manhattan, the unlikely alliance of Ricky and Broder hit the West Village dives, and the Chelsea meat markets, and the Meatpacking clubs. They spotted celebs at downtown hotspots—Christina Ricci at B Bar dousing her french fries in ketchup, Parker Posey smoking weed outside Bungalow 8—and made a point to ignore them. They drank happy-hour margs in Murray Hill with young Jewish Republicans, drank Bloody Mary oyster shooters in Tribeca with WASPs. They came armed with gram bags of weak cocaine that they bumped in bathrooms off dirty dorm keys, or laid out in lines on toilet lids for small groups of friends or attractive strangers. At Pravda, they pretended to be Russian, and drank quail egg martinis, and Broder hit on models who could somehow tell that, despite his cokey confidence and vintage track suit, he was not a talent scout. They hit the midtown sports bars, and the Hell’s Kitchen gay bars, and the Bushwick roof parties, and the Lower East Side gallery openings, and, once, a Williamsburg loft, where they snorted Molly off a frisbee that was being passed around while a keytar player and an electric violinist performed covers to an indifferent crowd. They drank Jack and gingers at Ricky’s apartment, swallowed Klonopin and rolled around on the floor. They waited for the coke guy to call back. Sometimes they waited for hours, watching Simpsons reruns and Seinfeld reruns, filling Ricky’s ashtray, blowing up the coke guy’s pager 911. And they talked about the Towers—who they knew in the Towers: a dude from Ricky’s stats class, interning somewhere; a friend of a friend of Broder’s dad’s—but mostly they didn’t talk about the Towers, and the empty space in the conversation was as gaping as the space where the Towers had stood. They smoked a joint laced with PCP and went to see the first Harry Potter film at Loews Lincoln Square, and Broder had to hold a hand over one eye in order to see, and that night he lay in bed and pictured marrying Hermione Granger, his proud mom walking him down the aisle.
And sometimes he went back to women’s apartments, though it rarely went farther than muddled fumbling. Other people talked about the Towers, didn’t talk about the Towers. And Broder threw up in toilets, and he threw up in bathtubs, and he threw up off a friend’s third-story balcony and watched the vomit splatter in the street below. One night he threw up in a cab driver’s hair and was left on the West Side Highway to walk. He peed in his closet, and in his laundry basket, and in his bed. Outside Scratcher, he peed on the side of the building rather than waiting in the bathroom line, and he was fined $50 by the City of New York.
Self-reflection wasn’t Broder’s forte, but even he could see that he was seeking something—oblivion, euphoria, an antidote to loneliness. Though maybe these were aspects of the same elusive need: to feel himself akin to other sympathetic humans, their separate solitary daydreams fleetingly joined in a vague and all-encompassing warmth. And one 5 a.m., he found himself in a Chinatown apartment above a fish market, watching a hipster with a braided rattail hold a Bic to the bottom of a spoon. Broder thought it would be brown, but it was more like the color of sand. He watched through slatted blinds as the rising sun lit the East River in a million silvers, and in the beauty and fish stink, he opened a vein.
Here’s where Broder loses time. Here’s where time loses Broder. The clock still ticks and the heart still beats, but they move at different tempos, make different music. He’s at school and he’s high and he’s home. He’s high and he’s home. He’s at school. He’s high. His grandma is sick and she’s dead. He’s home.
Broder’s dad has moved into the local Marriott with a woman who works at the bank. Broder has emptied his bar mitzvah savings. He’s sold his Minimoog and drum machine. He’s run out of veins in his feet, so he shoots into his arms, and now everyone knows, he thinks they know. He’s long-sleeved at the shiva, reciting the Kaddish. He’s on the lawn in a snowstorm making an angel. Michael never seems to return Broder’s calls.
It is winter it is summer it is spring. Inside the house it’s always sixty-eight degrees. Broder’s mom has adopted a rescue French bulldog. She calls it Gimel, after the first Hebrew letter of his grandma’s name. She’s too distraught to potty-train. Broder scrubs piss out of the carpet with a special shampoo. His mom eats nothing but Taco Bell, refried beans and plump cheesy burritos. She eats chalupas, whatever the fuck those are. She wears men’s undershirts and spandex bike shorts. The shirts are guac-stained. She eats chalupas and cries. Broder stands in the doorway and watches. He pages Michael and Michael doesn’t call back. Broder’s dad keeps inviting him to meet his new girlfriend. Her name’s Patty and she’s a good cook. And she’s black, he always adds, African American, as if that makes leaving Broder’s mother okay. He asks if Broder’s okay. Broder hangs up. He is angry and he’s not. He’s copping outside the dry cleaner, shooting in an alley
