The Stand-In

by Steve Bloom

  “Couldn’t be better,” she says, motioning at her array of acquisitions. “Just returning from the City where you can see I picked up a few essential items for Prom.”

  “Franklin asked you to Prom?” I ask, astounded.

  “He read me a sonnet he wrote, then gave me a long-stemmed rose and everything,” she beams. “It was dippy, but quite sweet.”

  I’m speechless, totally floored. Franklin putting on the moves? Has the universe shifted that much? It can’t be.

  “We’re meeting up tonight to go to a zombie movie,” she giggles girlishly, disturbingly pleased. “What is it with guys and zombie movies?”

  “The same thing with girls and vampire ones.” My eyes narrow suspiciously as I reappraise her pile of cute little bags. Now that the picture’s clearer, I can just imagine what’s wrapped inside some of them.

  The train grinds to a halt. The doors open and close. We vibrate forward again. Next stop, Green Meadow. Celia rises and collects all her stuff.

  “Brooks, something will work out with Columbia,” she says. “It has to.”

  “Thanks,” I say, meaning it, but I know something won’t. “Don’t forget your book.”

  She blushes, turns around, scoops it up, and tucks it into one of her bags. I shuffle after her to the doors. We stand together, waiting. Then she looks up at me.

  “Brooks, there’s nothing wrong with being from Pritchard.”

  “You’ve never been there,” I say stonily. And she never will. Places like Pritchard don’t exist to people from places like Green Meadow.

  “Can’t be any worse than this barracuda tank,” she says softly.

  Through the windows, the impeccable hamlet of Green Meadow appears, laden with shops and wares way beyond the grubby grasp of the mere likes of me. A filtered world, populated exclusively by the well put-together and the well preserved. It’s like no human frailty’s allowed within town limits. I get that old familiar knot again in the pit of my stomach. She has a point.

  “If Shelby really cared about you, it wouldn’t matter if you were from Kathmandu,” Celia Lieberman continues. “Not that I have anything against Kathmandu. I mean, from what I’ve read, Nepal’s a very cool place. Extremely scenic. The entire Himalayas in fact, although you have to watch out about drinking the water . . .”

  She trails off, awkwardly. Up close, I can see that she’s wearing makeup. Not much, just a little bit to accent the amber highlights in her eyes. And is that a touch of gloss making her lips glisten so appetizingly?

  “So you think I should tell her?” I murmur.

  “You should,” she says, staring back at me. “That is, if you really, truly care about her.”

  The train shudders to a stop. Green Meadow. The doors whoosh open for us to disembark onto the platform. I hold up a warning hand, caution coming before gallantry.

  “I’d better go first,” I explain apologetically. “Shelby has this thing about you and me.”

  “I know,” Celia Lieberman says, mystified. “I just don’t get it.”

  “Yeah, me neither,” I say, but I actually kind of do.

  ---

  Shelby honks for me as I emerge into view. Illegally parked at the curb, behind the wheel of daddy’s cream-colored Bentley convertible with the top down. I don’t know which excites me more, her or the car—that’s how hot she’s looking. No joke. But somehow I manage to keep it together enough to saunter over to her without tripping or drooling all over myself.

  “Hey, you made it.” Shelby smiles dazzling white straight teeth, shaking her long silky tresses, which caress smooth tanned shoulders. She’s molded into a short, thin one-piece halter number, which would be oh-so-easy to untie and remove. I’m utterly captivated.

  “You had doubts?” I say.

  She leans over the passenger door, lifts two gold-bangled wrists, and pulls me down to her. She kisses me open-mouthed, with intensity and every indication of much more to follow, before breaking off, leaving me weak-kneed and breathless.

  “It’s a new sensation,” she admits. “I’m not sure I like it.”

  ---

  Shelby never asks me about Columbia. I guess she just assumes I’m going, that I had someone arrange it for me like she always has someone arrange it for her. Either that or she just doesn’t care. I prefer to believe the former.

  “The carpaccio and then the lobster ravioli,” she decrees, handing back her menu. “Thanks, Alfredo.”

  She’s insisted we go to Le Petit something, her favorite restaurant in Green Meadow, and the prices are heart-palpitating. Did she really have to order lobster? It doesn’t even have a number listed beside it, just the initials “MP” as in market price as in I don’t even want to think about it. We haven’t established who’s paying, but I’ve got a pretty strong hunch it’s me. And why not? She thinks I’m just like her, loaded. In her galaxy, everybody is. Needless to say, I order the chicken.

  Got to tell her. Got to tell the Truth. Got to.

  But how to do it? And when? Just the right opportunity never seems to arrive as Shelby chatters about her summer plans over most of dinner and all of dessert.

  “. . . Venice, Mykonos, a quick pit stop back in Paris again,” she says, barely touching her twenty-two-dollar tiramisu.

  Italy, the Greek Isles, France. Pictures in books to me, but not to her. I mean, I’ll be lucky if I make it to Atlantic City for a weekend. Now there’s a segue.

  “Then two weeks in Barcelona. I think that’s my favorite city on the entire continent. Then back to reality . . .”

  Reality, that’s a laugh. She’s living a fantasy. Mine. Got to tell her. Got to. Got to.

  “What about you?” she asks.

  I don’t answer. I can’t. Shelby misinterprets my silence.

  “Am I boring you?”

  “Not at all,” I protest, although she actually is a little. I mean, do I really have to hear an hour-long recitation of all the amazing places I’ve never been and most likely will never go? But that’s not her fault. Among the smart set, summers abroad are a post-graduation rite of passage, don’t you know.

  “Guess my level of conversation can’t match a mental giant’s like Celia Lieberman.”

  “Would you cut it out with Celia Lieberman?” I say, irked to be thrown off my mental stride. Why does she always have to keep bringing Celia Lieberman into everything?

  In a huff, Shelby gets up to go the ladies’ room, giving Alfredo his cue to discretely present me with the check. My eyes almost pop out of my skull at the final tally. I knew it was going to be bad. But $171! For that? A spoonful of pasta and a tiny piece of chicken, scrumptious though it was. We didn’t even have wine! Alfredo hovers. I furiously peel off twenties from my college bankroll.

  “I expect change,” I seethe.

  The valet fee’s fifteen bucks. I could have parked on the street for free, but that would be too déclassé. Fifteen bucks right out the window. Fifteen bucks is two hours mopping floors and cleaning toilets at The Gun. Fifteen bucks is a quarter tank of gas. Nevertheless, I fork it over. What the hell, just more ill-gotten gains I won’t be spending to go to Columbia.

  As we cool our designer heels for our uber-luxury mode of transport, the sales tax of which is more than most people’s mortgage, Shelby touches up her lips. As if those lips need enhancement. I can tell she’s ticked off at me for not fawning over her. A breeze blows her hair and sheer little dress, outlining the incredible curves of her figure. She looks like a supermodel on a runway. What am I doing with her? I am in so over my head in so many ways. Got to tell her. Got to. Got to. Now or never, boy . . .

  “Shelby,” I say. “I’m sorry if I’ve been so out of it. It’s just that there’s something important I need to tell you . . .”

  Before I can utter a single incriminating word, two large veiny hands clutch me from behind by the throat and lift me bodily until I’m squirming half a foot off the ground.

  “Nobody dumps Tommy Fallick!”

  I twi
st around. Tommy’s eyes are wild and bloodshot and he reeks of booze and cigarettes. Never good signs.

  “Tommy Fallick’s always the dumper, Tommy Fallick’s never the dumpee!”

  Even though he has me by at least four inches and can probably out–bench-press me by several hundred pounds, I’m pretty sure I can take him. I mean, I’ve been in a few scrapes in my time. Okay, two, and one was in kindergarten. Okay, I give me even odds.

  Barely.

  “Oh, Tommy, stop being so Jersey!” says Shelby.

  “I am not being Jersey!” bellows Tommy, applying tremendous pressure on my windpipe with his oversized thumbs, cutting off all oxygen intake.

  “You are too!” Shelby shouts, walloping him with her nine-hundred-dollar Versace purse. “You are being so Jersey!”

  Yes, folks, that is what they say. I only wish I was making it up.

  Twisting hard, I slip from Fallick’s soggy grip. And then I get up right into his face, ready to rumble. I’m seeing red. Stupid, rich, undeserving, lucky Fallick’s the living embodiment of everything that’s messed up in my world. His very name’s a personal affront to me. So what if he can pulverize me? Just one good punch, that’s all I’m asking.

  “And quit following us!” Shelby says, shoving him away. “I’m gonna call the cops. I mean it!”

  Tommy’s dull eyes glaze in self-pity. He steps back, goes slack, then meekly stumbles back to whatever rock he crawled out from under. Shelby coolly turns to me.

  “You were saying?”

  Jersey. So Jersey. The ultimate put-down. To say the wind has been knocked out of my sails would be a vast understatement since there wasn’t much wind to begin with. I will not be speaking the Truth anytime soon.

  “Barcelona’s mine too,” I say, meaning my favorite city on the continent.

  I’m bestowed with that radiant smile again, restored to good graces. The night’s young and so are we.

  ---

  Ragtop down, constellations shimmering above, overlooking a vast empty beach on the Long Island Sound. Untouched, undeveloped private beach, I might add, passed along for generations. The-Dream thumps softly on satellite radio from a state-of-the-art sound system. The weed’s kicked in—hers, heavy duty, better than I’m used to. I’m so buzzed. And the cognac, pungent and piercing, is not helping the old impulse control.

  Which I am in dire need of because, my friends, I’m dry humping the most beautiful girl in the world in the backseat of her father’s Bentley. Her flesh pressed against mine, supple, yielding. Our limbs interlocked, mine wandering, hers playing zone defense. Our lips and tongues partake in a torturously slow, multicourse feast of delicious sensation, parceled out by a master temptress. She knows how. And how. For a flicker of an instant, I actually sympathize with Fallick. To receive such divine gifts and then to be deprived of them forever. No wonder the dude’s falling apart at the seams. My loftiest expectations are exceeded, my wettest dreams surpassed, which, considering how warped I am, is pretty astounding. I can’t believe it’s really happening, that at last she—this—is all mine.

  “You’re perfect,” I whisper in awe.

  “Everyone says that,” Shelby responds, suddenly pushing free. “It’s super annoying.”

  Apparently I’ve struck a nerve without intending to. She sits up, hair disheveled, dress mussed, unaligned, an even bigger turn-on.

  “And it’s not true,” she says. Then she smiles coyly. “I have a mole.”

  A little bird tells me this is going to be good. So, despite my raging hormones and throbbing hard-on, I play along.

  “Do you?” I inquire innocently. “Do you really?”

  “Wanna see it?”

  “Oh, could I?” I say, pressing my palms fervently in prayer.

  Shoving me back on the plush leather seat, she straddles my hips. Her hands reach for the string bow behind her neck, the main target in my sights for the past half hour. She tugs one end, the bow unravels, and praise be, the pearly gates are swinging open. The thin straps so tenuously holding up what little there is of her halter dress slide down. She turns, giving me the full effect.

  “See?

  I not only see, I gawk, I gander. But mostly, I lo and behold. Decorum forbids me to tell of the twin glories that rise before me. Let’s just say remarkably firm, gravity defying, the size and shape of small cantaloupes. As for the mole. Well, for a mole, it’s perfect. It’s a perfect mole.

  She’s a drug and every ounce of my being craves a fix of her. I pounce. We lock mouths again. She clamps around me. Her exquisite naked mounds are pressed hard against my shirted chest. We roll off the seat to the thickly carpeted floor.

  “No, Brooks, not here,” she gasps. “Not like this.”

  “What’s wrong with this? This is good. This is excellent!”

  She’s topless in the back of a freakin’ Bentley on a friggin’ private beach. I ask you, am I missing something?

  “Prom night,” she whispers between steamy kisses. “We can get a room at the Ritz. Do it in style. Bubble bath. Champagne. Scented candles. An actual king-sized bed. Like the semi-adults we’re supposedly about to be.”

  Prom. The be-all and end-all. Deep in the swamp that’s my addled brain, I know I shouldn’t. To ask her is to ask for trouble.

  Then she reaches down. I whimper, putty in her slow, steady grip.

  “How about the Comfort Inn?”

  “Sorry, but you’ll have to do better than that,” she grins, thinking I’m joking. I’m not. She increases the tempo.

  “The Marriott?” I squeak, eyes lolling.

  “That is, if you’re not busy that night. You still haven’t asked me.” Her hand halts, leaving me hanging. She looks at me, all business.

  The Ritz. The Taj Mahal. At this pivotal juncture, I’d agree to anything.

  “Will you go to Prom with me?” I rasp, insane for relief.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  But then she sinks between my knees. Words fail me.

  The Big Night

  After serious deliberation, I settle on the Hilton. Not quite the Ritz, but the best place within a ten-mile radius of Green Meadow that takes AAA discounts. Even so, it’s a giant pain in the behind, since if you don’t have a credit card, which I don’t, they make you leave seven hundred dollars—yes, that’s right, seven hundred smackeroos—in either cash or a cashier’s check as a deposit before they’ll book it. Which means early one Saturday morning I have to drive an hour and a half to deliver their blood money.

  On the way back, I make a quick pit stop at a Bed Bath & Beyond, where I have a plethora of five dollar and 20-percent-off coupons. There, I purchase the most expensive bubble bath they carry and stock up on scented candles. There’s a whole section of them. Three full aisles. Morning Rise. Afternoon Surprise. Raging Sunset. I never before realized that there were so many olfactory moods to pick from. I select After After-Party Humpathon. Just kidding. Try a six pack of Deep Penetration. Waiting in the checkout line, I see they’re having a special on dried rose petals, so what the heck, I spring for a sack of them too. No expense spared for The Great Consummation.

  The Great Consummation. I have mixed feelings about The Great Consummation. Guilt, because The Great Consummation, if there is indeed one, will only transpire because I’m a lying piece of crud and complete tool. I all-too-fully realize that I can’t keep the balls in the air indefinitely and anything beyond Prom’s an impossibility for Shelby and me, but I figure where’s the harm in one measly night? One scorching hot, beyond incredible night. Okay, technically I’m using her, but in a twisted way she’s using me too so that means we cancel each other out, right? I mean, I still don’t get Shelby’s fixation with Celia Lieberman, but why look a gift horse in the mouth? Anyway, soon Shelby’ll be traipsing off to Barcelona and Mykonos and I’ll just be a beautiful memory. I hope. I pray.

  Because the other even stronger feeling I’m feeling is Lust, with a capital L. Our close encounter in the backseat of the Bentley hounds
my every waking second and haunts my most fevered dreams. We did everything. I mean everything. That is, Everything But. And lemme tell you without getting too specific, Everything But was earth-shattering. I can’t wait for what But’s going to be like. I am a man possessed.

  I can’t sleep the night before the Big Night. Besides the endless loop of erotic fantasies, I’m as nervous as a schoolgirl on her first date. Despite all the Homecomings, Winter Formals, Spring Flings, and Proms I’ve attended in the past year, in some ways this is a first for me. First time it’s mine. First time I’m going as me. Kind of. First time I’m paying out of my pocket, that’s for danged sure.

  ---

  I arrive at the hotel two hours before tee time. Park the Beast at the very top of like a ten-story garage, where it’s most out of the way. When I get to the room, it’s got twin beds. I practically have to pitch a hissy fit in the lobby for the promised king and end up with a queen with a view of the air-conditioners. I unpack the bubble bath, strategically arrange the scented candles, sprinkle the rose petals. Then it’s a quick shower and another shave. I lay out the trusty tux on the bed and then collapse in my boxers besides it. Everybody’s supposed to meet up at Cassie’s at seven sharp for assorted beverages and photos before we collectively embark in the super stretch limo. But that’s not for forty-five minutes and she lives like a three-minute cab ride away. Plenty of time to cool out. I switch on the Yankees. Top of the fifth, we’re up by two. I need to refortify. Truth be told, with all the preparation and anticipation, not to mention the constant white noise and angst about Columbia, I’m pretty beat.

  Next thing I know, I’m drenched in a puddle of my own drool and it’s the bottom of ninth, Yanks down by three, two outs, nobody on. I bolt up, peer into the shadows. What the hell? That game was in the bag. I realize I’ve nodded off. Question is, for how long? Holy crap! Seven sixteen! I’m late! So late! Maybe too late!

  I’m still yanking on my pants and misbuttoning my shirt as I streak from the Hilton. There’s only one cab in the cab line and five people waiting for it. I have to frantically debase and demean myself by begging and groveling and then bribing them each a twenty to butt in first. I scream at the driver to step on it. He doesn’t appreciate the attitude and I have to apologize before he’ll move an inch. Then, just to add salt to my gaping wound, he deliberately goes a full three miles under the speed limit the whole ride there.