“Well, he was talking about the human condition,” Cassidy retorted. “And if, for our generation, that happens to be a collective longing for a world before smart phones, then so be it. There’s no sense in speculating on the enduring impact of the recently past; if popular culture was that predictive, everything would be obsolete the moment it came into existence.”
For a moment, no one said anything. And then Austin laughed. “Jesus, what are they teaching kids in prep schools these days?”
“Conformity,” Cassidy answered, as though Austin had been serious.
THERE WAS THIS hectic undercurrent to the shopping center. Everyone was staring at everyone else, wondering who was there to participate in the flash mob, and who was on an innocent shopping expedition.
We were slightly early, so we went into the Barnes and Noble. Toby and Austin headed for the graphic novels, and Cassidy and I wound up on our own in the art section, where we looked at a book on Banksy, this subversive graffiti artist I hadn’t heard of.
“What I love about him,” Cassidy said, her eyes bright and excited, “is how he printed up all of this fake money and threw it into a crowd. People thought it was real and tried to spend it in shops, and they were so angry when they found out it was fake. But now, those bills sell for a fortune on eBay. It’s simultaneously real and not real, you know? Worthless as currency, but not as art . . . my brother asked for one of those bills for Christmas a few years ago, and my mom assumed he wanted it framed, and he said he’d just stick it in his wallet because it was one of the few works of art you could carry in your pocket.”
Cassidy trailed off, closing the book.
“We should find Toby and Austin,” she said.
“They can wait,” I insisted, tilting Cassidy’s face up toward mine and stealing a kiss.
“Oh, really?” Cassidy murmured, her lips against mine.
When we came up for air, Toby was standing there, making a face. Cassidy and I shuffled toward the escalator, mildly humiliated at having been caught.
“Hey,” I said, reaching into my back pocket. “I brought you something.”
I handed Cassidy the iPod I’d borrowed off my dad, and she stared down at it, completely baffled.
“It’s a loan,” I explained. “I put on some songs.”
Cassidy’s lips curved into a smile.
“You made me a flash-mob playlist?” she asked.
“Sort of. You just hit play. I synched it to mine, so we can dance to the same songs.”
I’d had the inspiration around midnight the night before, and had stayed up until two deciding on the perfect tracks to use. I’d pictured it quite romantically, the two of us in the middle of a crowd of strangers, dancing to the same music. But Cassidy’s smile disappeared, and I had the impression that I’d disappointed her somehow.
“What?” I asked.
“Ezra,” she said. “It’s a flash mob. The point is that everyone dances to their own music, and it’s so beautifully random that it works. Hundreds of strangers, all choosing a different song to encapsulate their own experience. It’s a dance floor where every genre of music is playing at once, and no one’s supposed to know what anyone else is listening to.”
“Sorry,” I muttered, embarrassed.
She handed the iPod back to me with a reassuring smile.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “You didn’t know.”
“You could put it on shuffle,” I suggested. “That way it wouldn’t be the same music as mine.”
“That’s okay,” Cassidy said, her smile widening until it was genuine. “I’d rather dance to my own songs and watch you try and guess what they are.”
Toby and Austin had walked down the escalator, and were waiting at the door of the bookstore. Austin had bought a book and was zipping the plastic bag into his omnipresent backpack.
“Come on,” Toby said impatiently. “Two minutes!”
We all crowded into the central courtyard, where tons of high-school and college students were milling around, trying to look nonchalant. Everyone had their phones out, waiting for it to hit five o’clock exactly. A group of hipster-looking guys nodded at us, informing Toby that his bow tie was “quality.”
“See?” Toby said, grinning. “Bow ties are cool.”
We staked out a place near the fountain that Toby judged would be right in the middle of everything. The Grove was packed, which was unsurprising for five o’clock on a Friday. Families with strollers and tourists with fancy cameras wandered along the pedestrian paths, going about their business of shopping and sightseeing. For another agonizing minute, we waited in the palpable collective anticipation of hundreds of strangers trying to pretend they weren’t up to anything out of the ordinary, until Toby whispered, “Now.”
On an invisible cue, everyone put on their headphones and hit play. Teenagers began pouring out of shop fronts, running toward the central courtyard, joining the dance party.
It was fantastic, strangers smiling at one another, break dancing or rocking out or swaying to some mysterious beat that only they could hear. I turned up the volume on my headphones, dancing awkwardly to the Clash.
Cassidy was wearing a pair of expensive DJ headphones, gold-plated and glinting in the sunlight. She pressed them tightly around her ears, closing her eyes and dancing like no one was watching. The hem of her turquoise dress rose dangerously high, and the old pocket-watch necklace she wore bounced up and down over her chest, and she was so beautiful that I could hardly stand it.
Toby was dancing ironically, doing “the sprinkler” and “the shopping cart,” having the time of his life as he cracked himself up. And Austin was performing some complicated hand contortions to what I guessed was techno.
All around us, strangers paired up and danced together, laughing. I was overwhelmed by the number of people recording video of the event, unable to be present in the moment. There was an older guy in a banana costume doing pelvic thrusts, desperate for attention. I wondered what he did for a living, if it was some respectable bank job or something totally demeaning.
But the flash mob wasn’t about the banana-suit guy, or the people standing awkwardly with video cameras, or the gawking crowds that had come out of the stores to see what was happening. It was about being able to dance like Cassidy did, as though no one was watching, as though the moment was infinite enough without needing to document its existence. And so I closed my eyes and tried.
When I opened them, Cassidy was standing there, her headphones around her neck. She motioned for me to do the same, and when I did, the quiet of what was happening shocked me. I’d been so sure that my private soundtrack was a part of everything that I hadn’t realized what we looked like, hundreds of strangers dancing in absolute silence.
We’d danced for maybe half an hour, until it became more of a spectacle than a flash mob. No one wanted to head back quite yet, so we drove over to Santa Monica and had dinner at some old-fashioned burger place. We walked around the promenade afterward, making up hilarious and tragic life stories for the guy who’d worn the banana costume. Los Angeles seemed to change into a different city at night, a more vibrant and mysterious one. I was quiet, because we’d done a lot of walking, and I wasn’t sure how much more I could handle. It was getting pretty bad when Cassidy squeezed my hand and said, “Hey, let’s go sit on a bench and people-watch.”
“Sounds good,” I said, relieved.
Toby and Austin ducked into a bookstore to track down some graphic novel the other store hadn’t carried, and Cassidy and I sat down to wait for them. I thought I’d done a pretty good job of pretending I was okay, but something must have given me away, because Cassidy sighed and shot me a stern look.
“You could have said something,” she scolded.
“I’m fine,” I lied.
“No, you want everyone to think you’re fine. There’s a difference.”
I shrugged and didn’t say anything. Cassidy shivered, and I pulled her closer against me.
“Do you think they’re together?” she mumbled, her cheek pressing warmly on my neck.
“Who?”
“Toby and Austin.”
I was fairly stunned by the question, because things like that just didn’t occur to me.
“Why would you think that?”