NAOMI

CLOSETS

I’m not drunk or stoned.

I may be crazy.

I don’t care.

I find him in the supply closet.

Yes, doormen have supply closets. These closets, strangely, do not contain spare doors or spare doorknobs or even spare men (as far as I can tell). That’s okay. I don’t need a door or a doorknob. I only need one certain doorman.

Gabriel looks at me like I’m jailbait, like he already knows why I’ve decided to intrude on the doorman’s one sanctuary, where they go to sneak smokes or to escape the Building residents during their fifteen-minute breaks or simply to find a spare lightbulb.

He’s sitting at the workbench, wearing large headphones that still can’t obscure his big ears. When he sees me, he glances at the clock on the wall, then turns off the music player and removes the headphones. “It’s two in the morning, Naomi. What are you doing here?”

He knows the answer.

I take my stand under the lightbulb hanging from the ceiling.

Finally Gabriel says, “I could get fired for this.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I tell him. “I’m bound by the co-op board’s hatred of my family to tell you they’ll blame me, not you.”

He stands up, takes a step closer to me. “I’m bound by my own personal will to tell you I can’t not be this building’s doorman soon enough.” Even under the harsh light that exposes all facial blemishes (his dark skin reveals none), he’s so gorgeous my knees almost buckle from his nearness. But he doesn’t reach for me, though he’s close enough—he could. Perhaps he’s noticing the blackheads on my nose?

So what about the imperfections.

I tug the string hanging from the lightbulb over his head. Lights out. I close my eyes, angle my head, ready to make this happen.

But the light is back on. I open one eye to see: Gabriel is not in about-to-kiss-Naomi pose. His head is tilted, yes, but his confused expression seems to ask, What the hell is Naomi doing?

WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO TO GET A KISS OUT OF A BOY I LIKE, ANYWAY?

“The doorman code of conduct?” I ask Gabriel. What did I do wrong this time? Or is Gabriel one of those Madonna/whore guys who can’t deal with a girl who makes the first move?

“No, the gentleman’s code of conduct,” he says. “And, I don’t know, maybe needing better ambience? Like, not in a closet. Maybe dinner and a movie first?”

I really don’t know how to do this. When the stakes count. I am an idiot.

I turn around to leave, embarrassed, but he presses his hand against the door to keep it from opening. (He really is a bad doorman.) Then he places the softest, sweetest kiss ever on the back of my neck. “We’ll get there,” he whispers in my ear.

I got my kiss, I got my k-i-s-s.

We leave the supply closet to head back into the lobby. His pinkie finger intertwines into mine.

Awesome, as girl-Robin might say.

“Ely left something for you at the front desk.” Gabriel hands me a postcard of Buenos Aires, addressed to both me and Ely.

What I really wanted was an uno, dos, tres–threesome with both of you. Love and happiness, Donnie Weisberg.

I snort.

Damn. I really wish I wouldn’t do that in front of the guy I like.

But Gabriel must truly like me, because he ignores my near-snarf. He says, “Ely came down here, dressed all spiffy like he was going somewhere important, asked me to give you this like he knew I’d be seeing you tonight, and walked out like he was on a mission. Then he came right back through the door fifteen minutes later and hasn’t been back down since.”

Ely chickened out.

I am not having this. I took my stand. He was supposed to take his. That’s how we work.

I’m about to offer up an explanation for my sudden departure, but Gabriel just smiles at me. “Go,” he says, looking toward the elevator and pointing .

My key to Ely’s apartment is back under the doormat. I find him lying in his bed, staring at the ceiling.

A shiver runs through me, being back in Ely’s bedroom. It’s the same room as always, we weren’t apart that long, but still—it feels different. The expectation of what could happen here is gone.

The time will come soon enough when I arrive home, expecting to see Ely, but he will not be there, because Mom and I will no longer be here. It’s hard enough to imagine that Mom and I will eventually call some other building in this city our home; it’s harder to imagine a home could exist for me in a place removed from Ely; the hardest part is recognizing that the distance should happen.

I take Ely’s leather coat from his closet and put it on. I’m cold. And so not dumpy.

“He was totally in here the night we had that fight, wasn’t he?”

“Who? Where?” Ely mumbles. He looks comatose. Fearful. This isn’t an Ely I know. He’s a warrior. Isn’t he?

“Bruce the Second. In the closet.”

At the same time, Ely and I both exclaim: “With a candlestick!”

I pull the covers off him. “You’re getting your best suit all crinkly, lying around like that.”

“I ironed it,” Ely says. “Can you believe that?”

“Well, it must be true love, then, Ely. And you look beautiful in that suit.”

The timetable on the hurt is this: It still hurts. But less so. I can live with it. One day it may be gone.

He doesn’t say anything.

I try again. “Are you scared of being hurt?”

He thinks about it. Then: “No. I’m scared of hurting him. Like I hurt you.”

Somehow it’s a relief to hear him say this, for him to acknowledge the difference in our feelings for one another, even if we can’t seem to talk about that difference. I don’t know that I could if I wanted to, anyway. The space filling the hurt and disappointment is still too big.

The wall was always there; we just chose to ignore it. Mostly, I chose to ignore it.

“Get up, Ely,” I say. My new mantra. I might be a faith healer in my next life. For now, I’ll probably settle for taking a time-out on the school thing and just get a job at Starbucks until Mom and I have figured out our next move. I’m thinking I will look great in that green apron. Maybe sometime in the near future, after many dinners and movies (hopefully he’ll pay, because I’m a girl who can make the first move, but I am majorly broke), Gabriel will see me wearing . . . only that green apron?

Ely stands up. I want to smooth out the creases in his suit, but I don’t. Instead I tell Ely about the secret spot where he can touch Bruce the Second, the place on his back that’s so tender to him Bruce will profess his undying love whether he means it or not.

I’m sorry. I can make my peace with it. I don’t think that means I have to like it.

“You’re a bitch,” Ely says. “But it’s good advice.”

I have a feeling Bruce the Second will mean it with Ely.

“I love you,” I say. I mean it in the best possible way.

Usually I’d kiss him on the cheek at this point—perhaps with the expectation/hope of more. I don’t now. I’ll save that energy for the maybe of Gabriel. Or some guy who is at least straight “Now, go. Run to him.”

The moms took us to see Peter Pan on Broadway when we were in second grade. I hated it. I wouldn’t clap for Tinker Bell. That stupid fairy could die and I wouldn’t care. But other parts, I got. I used to wish that if Ely and I ran fast enough, hard enough, together, the force of our energy could transform us, like Wendy and Peter Pan. Our legs would intertwine as they lifted us from the ground. We’d away. Ely just had to want it as much as me.

“ U 2,” he signs to me.

I almost tell Ely that Gabriel qualifies for the No Kiss List^TM as much as Bruce the Second does at this point, but I don’t. I want to keep this one for myself, for now.

So I just say, “.”