by Steve Bloom
“Brooks, you still there?” Gayle’s grating voice brings me back to my senses.
I tell her I’ll make an exception just this once. The regular fee.
There Again
Celia Lieberman is alarmingly calm and composed when I collect her.
There’s no big scene. No deafening displays of Lieberman family dysfunction, no embarrassing personal confessions, no vows of vengeance. No, strangely it’s all sweetness and sunshine, hugs and kisses.
“Goodnight, Mummy,” Celia Lieberman chirps, exchanging air pecks with Gayle in the front doorway. “Goodnight, Daddy Dearest. Don’t wait up!” she trills, fondly patting Harvey on his bald head. “Come along, lackey,” she says airily to me. I tag after her to the Prius, maintaining a wary distance, certain I’m the victim of a ruse that could well end in my violent death.
“Oh, Harvey,” Gayle sighs loudly after us, holding his hand. “It’s the youth we never had.”
“Only better,” he glows. “Because we don’t have to go through it.”
---
“I just want you to know this wasn’t my doing. It was my parents’ idea and I’ve decided to humor the poor, deluded darlings,” Celia Lieberman says as we begin our night’s journey together. “Hang a left at the corner.”
Celia Lieberman’s in this ugly-ass grannyish plaid number that ends mid-calf and starts at a neckline that is actually at the neck. She switches on the radio and turns the volume way up. Me, I’m on edge, I’m expecting the anvil to drop at any moment on my head—I’m finding Celia Lieberman’s civility that chilling.
“Woo!” Celia Lieberman sticks her head out her open window. “TAKE A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE! YEAH, BABY!”
“You’re in a surprisingly fine mood,” I observe when she pops back inside, keeping her fixed in my field of vision at all times.
“Yes, I am!”
“Dare I ask why?”
“I got in Early Decision to Stanford.”
The news slams into me out of left field like a ton of bricks. I mean, I’m completely blindsided. The shock’s so great that I veer out of our lane into the opposite one right in the path of onrushing traffic. A chorus of horns yanks me back in the nick of time and I wheel us sharply to safety. But it’s a close call and we’re both rattled.
“Jesus, you trying to get us both killed?”
“You got in Early Decision to Stanford?” I croak, gulping down air. Stanford! You know how Columbia’s acceptance rate is in the high sevens? Well, Stanford’s is even more impossible. Try low fives. That’s lower than even Harvard’s, the lowest in the country, probably in the whole world. And that’s not 5 percent of just-anybodies applying, but 5 percent of the very best and brightest, the ultra-achievers who have the stats and muscle to think they might actually have a realistic shot. I mean, to these jokers, schools like Columbia, Penn, and Northwestern are Safeties. But even supersmart, well-prepped, and well-connected as they are, most don’t get in. 95 percent will be crushed like bugs on a speeding windshield.
Celia Lieberman got in Early Decision to Stanford! It’s amazing to me that I could know anyone who got into Stanford. But Celia Lieberman? With the way she dresses? Stanford! Somehow it’s the ultimate cosmic joke on me.
“How could you already hear?” I bray, refusing to believe. “It’s the middle of November, and no one hears back until at least the first week of December!”
“Well, I did. Almost a week ago,” she says, smiling broadly, bopping to the music.
With my increased marginality thanks to my Personal Essay, I won’t hear from Columbia until the last possible second, like the late, late dog days of December when they can’t put it off anymore and then who knows what I’ll hear? Stanford. Fuck. Celia Lieberman!
“Do you know what this means?” grins Celia Lieberman.
“That your SATs were astronomical?” I squeak.
“No, it means that, come September 15, I’ll be more than three thousand miles away from my goddamn parents. That’s why I picked it!”
---
Green Meadow Country Club’s the size of a small principality and just about what you’d expect from a private playground for the mega-wealthy, only much more so. I pull up the Prius behind a caravan of arriving Audis, Infinitis, and Benzes. A parking guy in a uniform with epaulets swiftly opens Celia’s door. She prances out, pumping her hips and fists, howling.
“PARTY ON! LET’S ROCK, DUDES!!!”
The valet looks at her and then at me. I give the keys to the thoroughly startled fellow, along with an explanation since I feel he’s owed one.
“She just got in Early Decision to Stanford.”
We’re directed through the glittering lobby into a vast ballroom with high ceilings right out of some sort of English palace. There, beneath the crystal chandeliers, in their natural habitat you might say, in full regalia and glory, are the crème de la crème of Green Meadow Country Prep teenage society. The girls beautiful, sophisticated, thin; the boys tall, trim, handsome. Future shot-callers, string-pullers, movers, shakers. Dancing, laughing, joking. And why not? I would be too.
“God, I hate attractive, well-adjusted people, don’t you?” Celia Lieberman says. “Oh, almost forgot, you’re one of them.”
But I’m not, not by at least twenty turnpike exits. Then, like a vision, I spot the birthday girl herself from across the room. Shelby, in a short, sheer clingy dress with pronounced nipple outlines, gliding our direction through the crush.
“Listen, Celia, one thing . . . ,” I whisper to Celia Lieberman. “I kinda sorta told Shelby that I live in the City.”
Celia Lieberman turns to me questioningly. “Why in hell would you kinda sorta say that?”
“I, uh, didn’t think it’d look good for your image to be with somebody from Pritchard, New Jersey,” I stammer, increasingly nervous as Shelby nears.
Even though I look away, Celia Lieberman can see right through me. “Oh, how very considerate of you.”
“Just play along, okay?” I plead.
“God, you are such a phony!” she marvels.
Then Shelby’s upon us in beat to the throbbing music, overwhelming in her perfection. “Hey guys, you made it! I was hoping you would!”
“Thanks,” yells back Celia Lieberman. “I can’t believe you invited me!”
“Oh, it wasn’t you I was inviting!” Shelby hollers back, shooting a smoldering look past her. I turn around. Again it has to be me by process of elimination. Thankful for my continued unexplainable good fortune, I return Shelby’s look with the most meaning I can muster. I can see the whole sordid scenario slowly dawning on Celia Lieberman as she realizes she’s been had. Been used by both Shelby and me for our own selfish devices. I cringe like the sleazeball I am, certain that my cover is about to be blown.
“Celia, you don’t mind if I grab Brooks for a dance, do you?” Shelby asks, slipping her creamy arm through my clammy one.
“He’s all yours.” Celia Lieberman pinches my cheek really hard. “The poor boy could use some exercise after the long commute from the City.”
Blinking back tears of acute pain, I mouth a fervid “Thank you” to her as I’m led away.
“I’ll be in the bathroom throwing up,” Celia Lieberman remarks after us, instantly causing both me and Shelby to whip around back at her, freaked.
“Just kidding,” Celia Lieberman laughs, this time the one to do the leaving.
“That Celia Lieberman has such an interesting sense of humor,” Shelby notes, watching her go.
“Yeah, she’s a regular laugh-fest.” I rotate my jaw, the sensation just returning to the left side of my face where Celia Lieberman pinched it. “But enough about her. Shall we dance?”
Shelby knows all the moves and then some that can’t be taught. Smooth and sensuous, she coolly anticipates my every thrust and gyration and ups the ante with a few provocations of her own. Coming close, but never quite touching, we ride the cresting waves of electronic music washing over us. Her emerald cat’s e
yes fix on me, teasing, taunting. I want to grab her, devour her, consume her. I lust for her, for all this.
“So how’s it going with Celia Lieberman?” she calls above the din.
“Couldn’t be better!” I shout back, the music masking my bitterness. “She just got in Early Decision to Stanford!”
Shelby loses a step and we bump into each other. Stanford. Even she, she who has everything, is impressed. And envious.
“Nice!” she shouts.
Just the thought of Stanford and Celia Lieberman in the same sentence clause puts a damper on my disposition.
“Let’s not talk about Celia Lieberman!” I holler. “Let’s talk about you!”
Suddenly, I do a double take. For there, behind Shelby at the buffet table, gnawing on a giant lobster claw in each fat fist, is goddamn Burdette, of the blubbery Pritchard High starting front line, the first domino that started them all. My eyes jut out like in a cartoon, my throat goes dry. Before I’m discovered, I swiftly pull Shelby by the hips toward me and spin us dizzily around, deploying her as a visual shield.
“Boy,” she gasps, taken by surprise but not displeased. “And here I’ve been thinking you weren’t the type that messed around.”
My heart’s pounding like a bass drum as I furtively peer over Shelby’s bare shoulder at the buffet. Burdette’s no longer there. There’s no sight of him anywhere. Maybe it was just an illusion, I reason, a hallucination brought on by surging hormones, which mine definitely are since Shelby’s twirled around in my arms and is rubbing her tight little ass softly against my bulging groin. Can this really be happening?
“So, uh, how’s it feel to be eighteen?” I wheeze, trying to keep it together.
“Great!” she smiles, turning to face me again. “Now I can legally vote and fuck!”
This should get my attention in a major way, but it doesn’t because it is goddamn Burdette at eleven o’clock, double-dipping like the pig he is at the chocolate fountain. Again I swing Shelby around.
“That is great!” I exclaim, my brain misfiring on all cylinders, trying to plot escape.
“Which?” Shelby asks, confused. “Voting or fucking?”
“Fucking, then voting! Thanks for the dance!”
I dash off, leaving her high and dry. It’s a full-tilt disaster.
---
Scrambling about, I spy Celia Lieberman coming out of the women’s room, followed by Cassie.
“You must really put out,” Cassie says after once more appraising Celia Lieberman’s woeful outfit, trying to figure out the appeal. I motion urgently at Celia Lieberman, who sees me.
“Oh, I do,” Celia Lieberman proclaims loudly for my benefit. “I’m a total slut.”
“Really?” Cassie’s mouth drops, incredulous.
I’m trying to be cool and wait for their inane conversation to finish, but the risk of public exposure is just too immediate.
“C’mon, we’re leaving!” I command, tugging Celia Lieberman by the hand.
“But we just got here,” she protests.
“I can’t wait!”
I drag her away. Cassie’s floored, thinking the worst as usual.
“Man!” I hear her whistle to herself.
I rapidly steer Celia Lieberman to the front door. When we’re out of sight of Cassie, she pulls free of me.
“Hey, what’s with the caveman routine? You and the duchess have a spat?”
“No, I just had a close encounter with the cousin of my first client!”
She looks at me, still not getting it. “So?”
“So he arranged it. He knows what I do!”
The color drains from Celia Lieberman’s badly made-up face as she registers the potential implications, all catastrophic.
“I’ll get my coat!” she yelps.
“Meet you at the car!”
We dart off in separate directions. Ducking and pivoting like a tailback, I charge through the crowd. Just as I detect a sliver of daylight between me and the front door, my path’s blocked by the blond hulking form of Tommy. He bunches up my tie and pulls down, cutting off my wind. Way, way pissed.
“Listen, maggot, nobody disses Tommy Fallick and gets away with it!”
Tommy what? Could my ears, like everything else, be deceiving me?
“I beg your pardon,” I sputter, unwinding from his grip.
“No one poaches in Tommy Fallick’s personal preserve!”
“Your last name is Phallic?”
I’m intrigued, despite the extreme precariousness of my situation. Phallic. Adjective. Of, relating to, or resembling an erect penis. As in, what a dick. My night, indeed my year, has been made. Tommy Phallic! So pithy, so apt. I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help smiling ear to ear.
“With an “F,” Tommy burns. “F-A-double-L-I-C-K!”
“Even so, you’d think your family would have changed it,” I guffaw, losing control. “A long time ago.”
Just as Penis lunges to throttle me, I catch a glimpse of Burdette again and bolt. Outside, I ambush the same parking guy as before, shaking him desperately by the collar.
“Blue Prius! And for the love of Christ, hurry!”
He takes off like a rocket, whether to retrieve my vehicle or call the cops, I don’t know. I dart behind the shelter of a large Grecian urn, but alas, I’m a moment too late.
“Rattigan?”
I freeze. It’s over. Cringing, I poke out my head, which Burdette, behemoth that he is, immediately clamps in a crushing headlock. He chews on a leg of something in one hand as he smothers me under his sweaty armpit.
“Sack of shit!” he booms. “Thought it was you!”
I squirm and claw in his stinking death-hold, kicking in midair. My eyes begin to loll back from the stench and lack of oxygen. I’m rapidly losing consciousness.
“I . . . can’t . . . breathe . . .”
Burdette releases me but comes up with new abuse by heartily pounding my back. I almost collapse beneath the repeated blows.
“Hey, Burdette, what an unpleasant surprise,” I say, nimbly slipping from his reach. “What are you doing here?”
“This Shelby chick went to camp in France or some shit with some honey I’m trying to bang. What the hell are you doing here?”
“Just getting off!”
The Prius skids in front of us. I open the front door for Celia, who tears past and dives inside. Interlocking both hands, I club Burdette as hard as I can in the gut. He crumples in half. Tossing the valet guy a fiver from my bankroll, I clamber behind the wheel and floor the battery. As we slink off in a clean getaway, I watch Burdette’s hunched-over, shrinking figure in the rearview mirror.
“Go for it!” Burdette shouts after me, grinning. “Sack of shit!”
---
For the next twenty minutes or so, we drive in somber silence. Public exposure would have been ruinous for us both, but much more for Celia Lieberman, who, if word got out she had to pay to get it, so to speak, would be a social pariah, Early Decision to Stanford not withstanding. Me, because if Shelby ever knew who and what I really am, it’d be over before it could start, which it damn near had. She’d been in my arms, looked me right in the eyes, talked of fucking. The biggest come-on in history by the most desirable girl on the planet. And I’d given her the brush-off. It’s all too tragic. I think if Celia Lieberman weren’t there to gloat, I’d actually cry.
“Now what?” she asks.
“Now, you go home and I go drown my sorrows in copious amounts of cheap alcohol,” I grunt.
“What sorrows?”
Try never having Shelby Pace when I maybe might have. Try never knowing if it could have really happened. Try almost hoping that Shelby had just been a cock tease and toying with me and that it couldn’t have really happened. Because if it could have really happened, which deep down I think it could have, well, I honestly can’t imagine what it would have been like being with a girl like that. But I’m fairly damn sure it would have been beyond fucking amazing. I can’t go on, i
t’s just too painful. Indeed my sense of loss is so vast and voluminous that I’m pretty much incapable of expression.
“Not that it matters anymore,” I do manage to say. “But thanks for not letting on to Shelby about me back there.”
“No worries,” Celia Lieberman shrugs. “When it comes to Shelby Pace, all guys are idiots. You can’t help yourselves.”
Somehow I blame her. Somehow I blame Celia Lieberman for everything wrong in my life. If I could, I’d blame her for nuclear proliferation, world hunger, and the continued lack of decent health care. I know it’s irrational. For Celia Lieberman, Celia Lieberman has behaved impeccably, even admirably. But the fact remains that if it weren’t for Celia Lieberman, I never would have set eyes on the sublime experience that might have been Shelby Pace. And I’d be much, much better off if I hadn’t.
“It’s nine sixteen,” chatters Celia Lieberman, oblivious to my demoralized state. “After my last social triumph, you can’t take me home for at least another three hours minimum. The parental units would be all over me.”
“You shouldn’t put down your folks all the time,” I say, supremely annoyed. “They’re only wrecking your life because they care. I mean, at least they want what they think’s best for you.”
“Oh, and yours don’t?”
No, Celia Lieberman, they don’t. One took off right after I was born and the other doesn’t give a shit about anything, least of all me. But they don’t know about stuff like that in Green Meadow, where all the parents have the time and the means to be overly invested in their offspring. But it’s hopeless to try to explain, she’s hopeless, they all are, so I don’t bother.
Changing the subject, I ask, “What would you be doing at nine sixteen on a Saturday night if it weren’t for your parents?”
---