“How’s your father, by the way?” said Mr. Zorn.
Nat’s arm jerked convulsively, as though he’d lost all control of it. The cork popped free but his arm continued its wild gesture, striking the gift bottle on the table, knocking it over; the bottle rolled, fell, crashed on the stone floor. A muffled crash, the broken glass held inside the thick wrapping paper. Only the wine leaked out, forming a pink pool at Mr. Zorn’s feet.
“Looks interesting,” he said. “Too bad.”
Or some other observation that Nat, staring at Mr. Zorn across the table, barely heard. “My father?” he said.
“Is he still with those Silicon Valley people?”
“I don’t have a father.”
“You don’t?” Mr. Zorn stared back at him. “Weren’t you on Grace’s floor at Choate?”
“No.”
“Not the captain of the soccer team?”
“No. I… I think you’ve got me confused with someone else.”
Mr. Zorn’s gaze went to the spilled wine, then to the Romanee-Conti and the corkscrew with the impaled cork, still in Nat’s hands. He laughed. Nat laid the wine and the corkscrew on the table.
Mr. Zorn picked up the corkscrew. “A happy misunderstanding, then,” he said, unscrewing the cork, “since we got to have this nice little visit. Shall we rejoin the others?” He stuck the cork firmly back in the bottle of Romanee-Conti.
The door opened and Grace came in. “Time to go, Nat,” she said. “Paolo’s here.”
“Paolo?”
“Izzie’s boyfriend.”
“You don’t know Paolo?” said Mr. Zorn.
Nat lost his concentration for a few moments and somehow managed to track pink zinfandel on the oriental rug in the library. No one noticed; the colors were similar.
Paolo had a car with a driver and diplomatic plates. He sat in the back between the girls, his arm over Izzie’s shoulders; Nat sat in front.
“Paolo’s a count,” Grace said.
“That’s very silly,” said Paolo, opening a bottle of champagne. He had a slight accent that somehow made English sound better.
“But true, isn’t it?” said Grace.
“Grace,” said Izzie.
A difference right there: some character difference, but everything was happening fast, and Nat couldn’t put his finger on it.
“Come on, Paolo,” said Grace. “Show us some count ID.”
“Count ID?” said Paolo, drinking from the bottle and passing it to Izzie. “Have you ever in life heard such a concept, Nate?”
“It’s Nat,” said Nat.
“Not Nate?” said Paolo. “I am familiar with Nate as a typical American name, but not Nat.”
Izzie, glancing at Paolo, drank some champagne and passed the bottle to Grace.
“And kings have scepters,” Nat said, “so maybe the concept of count ID isn’t so crazy after all.”
Grace and Izzie both burst out laughing, spraying little jets of champagne.
“Fuck,” said Paolo, even making that word sound almost pretty. He spoke to the driver in Italian; the driver passed him a handkerchief, and Paolo dabbed at his pant leg.
Izzie kissed him on the cheek. In the rearview mirror, Nat saw Grace’s eyes narrow. “Sorry,” Izzie said.
“It’s nothing,” Paolo said. He dabbed some more.
Grace extended the bottle over the seat to Nat. Nat wasn’t much of a drinker, and had made a promise to his mom never to mix drinking and cars, so the reply no thanks formed automatically in his mind. But he hadn’t tasted champagne, and, what the hell, it was Christmas Eve. He drank. It was good, very, very good. He was alive and he knew it, like never before. The driver kept his eyes on the road.
Paolo took them to parties. There was more champagne, at first very, very good, later simply cold and fizzy, after that just wet.
Parties. A Brazilian party where Nat, wedged next to the conga drums, fell under the illusion that the drumskins were playing the drummer’s hands, and not the other way around.
A party in a dance club where they were ushered in past a long line at the door, and where he danced first with Izzie, then with Grace, then with an older woman who had an intense face and cords sticking out on her neck; he shared a frozen rum drink with her and she wriggled her hip against him. He felt immensely strong, strong enough to pick her up and set her on the bar in one easy motion, which he did. She threw back her head and laughed and laughed, the cords in her neck sticking out even more, her stiletto-heeled foot sliding up his leg; Izzie, no, it was Grace, he could tell by her temperature even before he checked the hair, drew him away.
A party in Greenwich Village where he found himself in a bathroom with seven or eight people, where a photograph of the party givers having sex hung over the bathtub, and where a Thai stick, something he’d heard of but never seen, went round and round, with him declining every time until Izzie spoke into his ear: “You’re pretty cute, you know that?” No: it was Grace. This time he had to look; their voices were identical, deeper than most girls’ and a little ragged at the edges, as though they’d been up all night, or had been singing at the top of their lungs, or were fighting some infection. Grace’s tongue tasted smoky.
But how did he know that?
Later, somewhere else, he and Paolo urinated side by side, a bottle of champagne perched on Paolo’s urinal. “Ah, Nat,” said Paolo, pronouncing the name with great care, almost adding a second syllable: Nat-te. “You know what is everyone asking me tonight, Nat-te?” Paolo said.
“Where your scepter is?”
Paolo regarded him from the corner of his eye. For a moment Nat thought Paolo was going to take a swing at him. But Paolo was in the middle of pissing-they both were-and it would have been messy, and Nat knew from the handkerchief episode that Paolo didn’t like messes. “What everyone is asking me, Nat-te, is which one dyes the hair. Because there is one way only to know for sure, if you are following.” Paolo winked at him.
Nat had heard a lot about diversity, had answered test questions about it and written his SAT writing sample on the subject, but he hadn’t understood how different human beings could be, one from the other, until that moment. He thought of Christmas Eve at home: Mom always made an oyster stew, a few friends came over, Patti and her dad the last two years, everyone opened one present, they drank eggnog from little clear-glass cups that appeared only at Christmas, Mom sat at the piano and they sang a few carols. With the time difference, it might still be going on. He turned his wrist to check the time and found his watch was gone.
“I am having a bad feeling you miss the import of the question,” said Paolo, shaking off. “Identical genes, therefore the hair must be identical, therefore one is an artificer. Do I say that right?”
“They’re two different people,” Nat said. “There are other ways to tell them apart.”
“Don’t be silly. Is there no biology studies in America? Even their father cannot tell-which is the reason why the hair color in the first place.” He zipped up. “So we have a big question, and everyone is asking the person in a position to know. To know beyond a shadow of the doubt. Useless to ask, of course, so don’t you bother, Nat-te. I am what used to be called a gentleman.”
“What’s it called now?” said Nat.
But too late: Paolo was gone. Nat went to the sink. It turned out that counts didn’t wash their hands. Maybe he said it aloud. “Counts don’t wash their hands.” He washed his, laughing to himself. Then he thought he heard someone crying, went still, heard nothing but the running water. In the mirror, he saw that now he did look different, a lot.
Nat was still staring at his image, kind of stunned, when one of the stalls behind him opened and Izzie stepped out. She didn’t look at him, either in the mirror or in life, but went out, not speaking.
“Izzie?” Nat hurried after her, but had trouble with the door, somehow locking it for a few seconds, or maybe a minute or two, and when he emerged into a hall swarming with people, she was gone.
