I always forget how much
I adore Albert. We don't talk for months, then
one of us makes a
phone call and we're back in it, seeing every movie, running all over town,
sneaking into things. He’s a great sneak. It was Albert who got me up
on the roof of the
lab, to spy on people and throw things off and whisper things to each other. It was almost dawn and chilly; he loaned me
his jacket and I told him all the stories I could think of that he hadn't already heard six times. I was making most of them up, which he knew. Later, he was pissed to hear Alison had taken me up to the top of the
Humanities building – it was taller than the lab, and he hated
Alison. Mostly he hated how much time I was spending with her, then. But he ended up winning.
It’s always a bigger compliment to be drawn aside by someone who has a lot of friends, when his crowd is the crowd you’re in and there are people everywhere but the only one he wants to talk to is you. When we went to the re-release of Star Wars I swear Albert knew everyone in the theater. He knew more than one boy with cinnamon buns on his head – that, I think, is special. Afterwards, he slung an arm around my neck and grazed my cheek with his crazy monster sideburn and whispered, “Come on.” He flung himself on the grass and handed me his glasses and talked and talked. I listened and watched him swim through the lenses that made things right for him.
Mostly, he wanted to talk about Adrienne. I did not say: All right, Albert. All right. We’ll just be friends. But you’re going to have to stop doing that thing you do, where you’re very good-looking, and laugh at all the right things, and you sit next to me in the booth, and you always want to read every word.