Invisible Boy Read Free Page A

ground for the village of Jamaica, starting in the sixteen
     hundreds.”
    “Are you guys still buried there?” I asked.
    “Oh, no,” she said. “It’s been derelict for decades. I only found out about it a year ago.”
    “Were you researching family history?” asked Sophia.
    “No,” said Cate. “Someone abandoned a couple of dogs inside the fence and a neighborhood woman rescued them. She saw the name
     Ludlam on the chapel by the front gate and started calling up any of us she could find listings for.”
    “What’s it like?” asked Sophia.
    “At that point it was four acres of jungle,” said Cate.
    “What about the chapel?” I asked.
    “Oh, the chapel…” said Cate with a dreamy little smile. “It was a stinking, sorry mess filled with garbage and crack vials,
     but my God, there’s still something about it…. The little place just
hooked
me, you know?”
    “The addictive poignance of the small, neglected ruin,” I said. “I know it well.”
    Cate laughed. “I’ve started rounding up volunteers to help with the brush clearing, Wednesday afternoons. Would you like to
     join us this week?”
    “I’d be honored,” I said, raising my cup. “And I think we should imbibe another shot in celebration of our newfound genealogical
     commonality.”
    “Hear, hear!” said Cate, taking another paper-clad portion from the tray.
    “To cousins,” added Sophia, lifting her own, “and the lapidary allure of tiny woebegone places.”
    We knocked back our gelatinous cocktails just as the kitchen door flew open and a half-dozen partiers tumbled into the room,
     demanding Jell-O themselves as the music blared up to an absolutely depilatory volume.
    I looked at Cate and Sophia and shrugged, pointing toward the living room.
    We threaded our way down the crowded hallway, slipping sideways and single file between knots of dancing bodies.
    I reached the stereo and eased off on the Velvet Underground’s volume, only to have Lou Reed’s voice overridden by a street-concerto
     of car alarms.
    Sue was out on the fire escape waving the bong overhead as she conducted a group-stoner cheer of “Die Yuppie Scum! Die Yuppie
     Scum!”
    Her gestural enthusiasm made her tip backwards and I shoved my way toward the window, arms outstretched as my heartbeat went
     bossa nova, but luck and the thin iron railing kept her from tumbling to the sidewalk below.
    “Perfect!” yelled Pagan into my ear. “It’s not a party until Sue falls down!”

3

    S unday we were all hungover as shit, stumbling out of bed for coffee well after noon. Dean and Sue and Pagan decided they wanted
     to go Rollerblading after a long, slow brunch at our local diner, the Hollywood. I decided they were crazy and stayed put.
    Some people’s bodies say “Go! Go! Go!” Mine counters with “Fuck it, let’s lie down with a book on the sofa.” And that goes
     double after a Hollywood bacon-cheeseburger.
    It was two hours before the exercise fanatics came home, but I wasn’t tired enough to nap. Sunday afternoon has always struck
     me as a horrible stretch of time to spend solo. If you made it into crayons they’d all turn out burnt sienna.
    I picked up the phone to see if I could find Astrid, another
    boarding-school pal. We were the kind of friends who got in touch once a year or so but always seemed to resume the conversation
     midsentence.
    My own social pretensions were of the shopworn poor-relation May-flower variety, but there wasn’t even a phrase in American
     to suitably describe Astrid.
    You had BCBG in French:
bon chic, bon genre
, but that’s rather like “classy” in English. Parisians of Astrid’s own ilk would’ve preferred
comme il faut
, though I figured “living on reds, vitamin C, and cocaine” more accurately described her life amongst that rarefied tribe
     of brittle-whippet polyglots who traveled by Concorde and gave me the bends.
    She was a British/Florentine beauty who hadn’t lived anywhere longer than three months