“It doesn’t matter if she responds,” Dubnicek said. “That message was perfect for the situation.”
“It was a good message,” they agreed.
I bit my lip. I’d count to twenty-five and then rip into them for being idiots and blowing my chances. I sat on the desktop and thought, trying to think of a conversation to pass the time. The incident with Ma Red would have some pretty serious—the Q vibrated:
‘nottin much how r u’
“She responded!” I said, “She responded!” I did a little jump in the air but stopped myself from getting carried away. I was plugged into life again! I was doing what it took to win. I shrieked, “What do I say next? What’s the next line of anti-poetry?”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
VICTOR AND EM
Dubnicek sat back down at his desk and gave himself to thinking. He scratched his head. He wrote and he erased like Einstein on the brink of Unification. He scribbled something. He turned toward me.
“Oh, I can’t believe I’m giving this one away for free,” he said.
“What is it?” I asked. “What am I supposed to text back?”
“Wait,” Wilfred said, “What did she text to you, again?”
I showed Wilfred her response on my Q: ‘nottin much how R u’
Dubnicek showed me the reply he intended for me:
‘Im the best Where R u’
I texted that to her and she replied.
‘Handleys The Mich ST game’
Dubnicek advised, I texted:
‘vs Michigan! I’ll be over’
She replied:
‘ok! c U soon!!’
“There you have it,” Dubnicek said, slapping his scratch paper into my chest. “You’ve got your first meeting.”
“Alright,” I said. “So, I guess I should just go over there then. But I’m not twenty-one. Do I need a fake?”
“Not to go to a bar in the afternoon. Jesus, is this the first time you’ve gone to a bar for a football game.”
“I get bored watching football,” I said.
“Just keep that to yourself,” Drake said.
“So should I just go, then?” I asked them.
“You can’t go yet,” Wilfred said. “She’s watching the Michigan / Michigan State game at a bar; she’s going to be fucked up. You gotta do a shot with us before you leave to coordinate with her drunkenness.”
Dubnicek had the glass neck of his Southern Comfort sliding over the rims of four dirty shot glasses before I could think of a response. We took our glasses. “Drake,” Dubnicek said, “give us our toast.”
“To Emily Green-Portsmith, the truest corruption of Victor Hastings imaginable,” Drake raised his glass for our four-way clink, “It’s been too long coming!”
“Here-here!” Wilfred said and we drank.
“Mmm,” I said. “That is comfortable. I guess I’m going to change and head over there.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Wilfred said. “But do yourself a favor, don’t be a boring pussy. Be surprising. Be direct. Do what she doesn’t expect.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll do those things.”
On the walk over there, my hangover was starting to catch up with me and the sunshine pissed me off.
Handley’s was a long-standing, local campus favorite. It was an Irish bar that had recently been remodeled and relit to look like an oak-veneered, family restaurant. I swear I had to circle the place three times like a vulture to find her and all the while she was just by the bar. But she was inside a group of about twenty people—mostly cocky guys in frayed baseball caps with inventive and bold sideburns that looked like Sanskrit numerals, leather sandals, index-finger rings, golden tans, winning smiles—those bastards.
She wore a white blouse with black trim and despicably-casual, light denim jeans with holes big enough to get some ideas about her skin. She was drunk. I recognized the game: The Power Hour: sixty shots of beer, one each minute, until you throw-up, give up, or… win. One of her men—he had bulging red cauliflower ears like overstuffed raviolis—he handed her a shot while she was on her cell phone. She was rocking and smiling. The shot glass slipped through her crippled hand and shattered on the ground.
“Haaaaay!” her crowd cheered and raised their drinks.
“Stanley, you idiot,” a big guy said with a huge grin, “Em’s The Crip, now. Put it in her good hand.” Everybody laughed on cue.
“Sorry, Em,” the cauliflower ear guy said and he opened his arms wide for the hug. She slapped her wobbling, grinning body against his and buried her face a little too hard into his chest as if to hide from something or lose herself.
I recognized some of the guys in her group as Epsilons and some of the girls as Omegas. There was a pang of feeling that they were The Winners in Life. This was a problem. I saw myself as The Winner of Life but for reasons other than the notches in my bedpost, my knowledge, or lack thereof, of recent Sportscenter highlights and the circumference of my arms. I needed something to reconcile these warring emotions so I snuck through them to belly up to the bar and order a tequila shot. As the cute bartender made eye contact with me, I remembered that I didn’t have a fake ID on me.
“What can I get you?” she asked.
“Um… nothing.”
“Nothing?” she asked. “You sure you don’t want anything?” She smiled a knowing smile. “You look like you want something pretty bad.”
“Nothing for now, thanks.”
Emily talked to one of her girlfriends not three feet behind my shoulder. She had to of seen me by now. So, then, was she ignoring me? Who the fuck was she to ignore me. God, I wished I had that tequila shot. But, this was all so pathetic.
“Emily,” I said and reached out to touch her forearm, “There you are. I was looking for you.”
Her eyes got big and she smiled. She told her friend, “The guy from the Alpha party… Victor.” She turned to me and crinkled her nose. “Victor, right?”
“Yes. That’s who I am.”
“Victor,” Emily said, “This is Patty. Patty’s one of my CAP friends from Omega.”
“CAP?” I asked them.
“It means I’m cute,” Patty rested her dimpled cheek on the topsides of her hands as she smiled, “and I’m popular. CAP: Cute and Popular. Not all Omegas are cute and popular.”
They laughed. They were drunk.
Emily lurched toward me. “I’m sorry, Victor. We’re buzzing. We just got done playing Power Hour. Have you ever played it?”
“No, I guess I haven’t,” I said.
“You should,” Emily said.
“Yah,” Patty agreed. “Gets you fucked up.”
“Was that you that texted me like a half hour ago?” Emily asked.
“Yes. That was me. I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Hmm.” Emily furrowed her brow. “It didn’t sound like me—I mean, you. It didn’t sound like you.”
“I bet he had his friends coach him,” Patty said while staring at me with her playful, blue eyes.
“That’s a strange thing to say,” I replied.
“See,” Patty said, poking her finger into Emily’s collarbone, “He’s not denying it. Told you. Told you.”
“What makes you girls so suspicious?” I asked.
“Oh, Patty’s just drunk,” Emily said.
“Emily,” I said.
“Yes?”
I grabbed her good hand and gave it a little tug toward an opening in her crowd. “Come with me.”
“Uhh?” She shrugged her shoulders as she looked back at Patty, “Okay.”
My heart raced. I grabbed her hand tighter as the cold sweat of our palms mingled. I was afraid that if I said anything I wouldn’t be able to get her to the empty table by the wall. It was all so unnatural and forced.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“To that table.” I said.
“Do you like holding my hand?” she said, a little annoyed.
“Yes,” I replied. “It’s fun.” This wasn�
�t working. I held our sweaty hands together a little longer as we walked. Some fifty-year-old guy in a tweed blazer leered at us.
“People are going to think you’re my boyfriend,” she protested.
“I know. You owe me big for this.” There! That was good. That’ll get her.
She giggled.
I motioned toward this oak bistro table and we sat.
“Am I in trouble?” she asked with a grin.
“Yes. Big trouble.”
“Aww.” She pouted. “I hate big trouble.”
“Okay, little trouble then.”
“Good, that’s better.” Her eyes and chin drifted like she might fall asleep and then the R&B beats of her ringtone jolted her.
“You don’t wanna answer that,” I said, forcefully.
“Just a second,” she said, digging in her purse.
I blurted, “I turned off my ringer to talk to you.”
She looked up and examined my honesty. “That’s so sweet.”
The R&B ringtone grew louder and the lyrics of some raspy MC accompanied.
“Don’t answer,” I said. “Don’t answer; don’t answer; don’t answer.”
She smiled and hesitated.
The raspy MC screamed, until the phone’s little piezo speaker warbled, rattled and popped, “ANSWER YO FUCKIN’ PHONE, GIRL! ANSWER YO FUCKIN’ PHONE!”
I tilted my head and tried to hypnotize her with my eyes: “Don’t, don’t, don’t,” I ticked my finger at her, “Answer, answer, answer. It’s important you don’t answer; it sets a precedent!”
“GIRL—! ANSWER YO FUCKIN’ PHONE! ANSWER IT! ANSWER IT!”
I threw my arms open and sang like a vaudevillian: “Don’t answer it!”
She pulled her phone out, flipped it open—
Her phone capitulated: “Man… this is some bullshit; I’m out.”
She frowned. “It’s going to my voicemail.”
“Yes!” I said. “Yes!”
One small victory.
“Emily, I want us to play a fun game.”
“Good!” She smiled and leaned forward. “I like games!”
“Let’s play the question game—”
“Boooring,” she said.
“No. It’s fun. You know that this is the funnest game that you’ve ever heard of. You know it!”
“I’m sure; right,” she said.
“I’ll ask you a bunch of questions and you’ll just blurt answers as fast as you can think of them. Faster than you can think of them!”
She bounced in her chair and leaned forward. “Okay. Go!”
“Why are you such an impatient person, Emily?”
“I’m not impatient,” she said. “I have patience. But when I deserve something I should just get it and not have to go through a bunch of bullshit and games and tricks. I don’t put up with what I don’t have to put up with. Sometimes people don’t understand that I’m a girl with options.”
“Do you like referring to yourself as a girl? What needs to happen before you can refer to yourself as a woman?”
“Being a girl is just more youthful and fun. You just need to lighten up and stop thinking so much.”
“What’s your best quality? How do you want the world to see you?”
“My tits. Kidding…”
Something was different. Who was this drunk girl? Where was the poised, articulate young woman I had met last night?
“I, um…” she continued, “I care a lot about my friends. It’s not easy to be my friend, but once you are, that’s a big deal—you know? Then, once we are friends we have a lot of obligations to each other. If one of us starts being caddy and jealous, the friendship has to end. I have friends that I’ve had since kindergarten. It’s hard. Because people change and people get jealous—you know?”
“What’s your favorite type of music?” I asked.
“I like all kinds of music.”
“That’s so fucking boring, Emily” I looked away, grinning in mock disappointment. “That means that you don’t know anything about music. Is that true?”
“I don’t know the names of things. But I know things when I hear them. I’m not a memorizer. That’s dumb. What’s the point of memorizing a bunch of names? I know what I like.”
“So, what do you like?” I pressed. Her countenance was starting to get that mix of being drunk and uncomfortable.
“I don’t have to tell you, I just know.”
“Okay,” I said and shook my head. I needed to come up with better questions than this—and faster. I needed to get her to admit something that we could bond over. “Who’s the last person that you killed?”
“What?”
“Just trying to get some kind of rise out of you.”
“You’re weird.”
“I’ve heard that so many times. What is it you need in a guy?”
“Confidence.”
“Why?”
“I like it.”
“Circular reasoning. Take two: why?”
“It makes me feel good.”
“Take three: why?”
“If guys are pussies, you don’t wanna be around them because it just causes all kinds of problems. They can’t deal with me. They can’t keep up with me. They’re boring. Boring, boring, boring. I hate what’s boring.”
“You want to be entertained?”
“Yes. Entertain me.” She bounced in her seat and buried her face in her hands. “I demand it!” She peeked up out of her hands to laugh and cover her mouth.
“What’s the magic spot on your body?”
“Magic spot?” She leaned back and frowned.
“The spot that drives you crazy?”
“Oh!” She smiled. “That magic spot. Well, uh… my armpits.”
“Your armpits?”
“Yah, if you take your thumb and rub it across my armpits and tell me I need to shave, I’ll want you forever. So don’t do it; okay? Because I don’t think I want to want you, right now.”
“Why don’t you want to want me?” I asked.
“You think too much. You’re not natural. Sometimes I wish that I was a Native American with teepees and everyone almost naked so they can’t hide so much but I still want there to be Starbucks. Would you be up for that?”
“Hell no.” I pretended to be mad. “Who’s interview is this?”
“Can I go? I’m bored. My cell phone’s rang like five times since I’ve been here.”
“It’s rang like one time. Stop acting so important,” I said. “Are your parent’s divorced?”
“I like to buy lacy underwear at Victoria’s Secret.” She cackled and looked over her shoulder for her friends.
“Are your parent’s divorced?” I repeated.
“No. But they might as well be. They both have… other people. They’ve been doing it ever since my sister and my brother and I left for college. My sister is a junior at CAL Tech and my brother graduated from Brown last year. He’s going to be a Lawyer. My sister’s going to be a whore because she’s fat. She thinks she’s so fucking smart. I don’t love her anymore. Opps—take back!” She pointed her finger at me, grinning and pressing her eyes closed. “I want a take-back for that, okay?” She started doing a couple seated snow angels on her chair. “I was a fullback in soccer when I was in high school.”
“Hot girls, like you, are natural fullbacks,” I said. I wondered if I should have admitted that she was hot.
“They are? Why?”
“They’re used to defending the goal from opponents.”
“Ha. Funny. Funny, stuff. No—I was tuff. No bitches could get past me. I liked to elbow girls in their titties. I got in a fight once. That fat bitch went down.” Emily began reliving some of the shoving and grasping motions of her fight and imagining her opponent with her eyes. “They had to pull me off her. I had some of her torn hair in my hand. It was curly, red, fat-bitch hair. She was scared. Fat bitch.” She straightened her long black hair and sat up straight. “Uh,” she grinned, “Sorry.”
&nbs
p; “Do you have any tattoos?”
“No. I don’t wear tattoos,” she shrugged her shoulders, “I’m not poor, okay Victor?”
“What’s it like having an injured hand?”
“People stare. Kids stare. That hurts. I’m more conscious of my body. Before, my body used to be invisible to me except for the good parts that guys used to notice all the time. I mean, like, all the time. Now I always have to notice this bad part. It hurts. I wish I could go back in time and take back the accident. I rented Back to the Future by myself and cried. That’s so fucking lame and stupid, I know. I’m stupid. I know. But if I don’t show my hand right away, I can still be that person I was before. I was wearing my leathers and my helmet when it happened, otherwise my skin would be all fucked-up right now and I’d be ugly and you wouldn’t be talking to me.
“I know how things work.
“I was on one of those windy roads by the coast in LA when it happened, visiting my sister. I rented this pimped-out black Ninja.
“A motorcycle’s the ultimate lover. Because you can control it. You can tap directly into its power and it gives its power right back to you, without taking anything from you or holding anything back. And, you know that it has more power than you could ever use and there’s something sexy about that.
“I floored the thumb thingy in fourth,”—she belched and covered it a second too late—“Sorry. I floored the thumb thing as I was coming up on this open cliff turn. I wanted to see how much my life could give me. I guess I found out. I was so thirsty that day—”
I watched her intently. She just started taking-off with her drunken rambling, not making eye contact, talking to a fixed point below my left shoulder: “I had had the best and the worst time that morning from this forty year old accountant dude with these stupid, Egyptian symbol earrings. He had a body like one of those decathlete guys on ESPN.
“Sex?” I asked her, “Did you guys have sex?”
“No,” she said, cringing and leaning back. She smiled and hiccupped, bobbing her head, “Yah,” she admitted, “That fucking dweeb was hung.” She grinned and covered her mouth. “He couldn’t talk to me before or after without sounding like some whiney four-year-old. I liked that. I was in control of him.”
“Why was it the best and the worst sex?”
“Jesus, I’m drunk!” She rubbed her forehead and looked around, aimlessly. “I’m drunk, Victor!” She shook her head and her black hair danced. Then, she continued talking to the spot below my shoulder. “I got… He took things too far and… It hurt but I wanted more. I was disgusted and,”—her drunken eyelids sagged with weariness—“I was confused. But I was hungry for some more.”
Growing Up Wired Page 18