by Steve Bloom
---
The circular driveway to the Trask manor’s a jumble of valet parked high-end imports. I jump out without tipping and sprint, windmilling around to the back patio, where there’s a big circus tent under which everyone is gathered. Up front, obscenely well-to-do, normally with-it parents are elbowing and jostling each other like crazed paparazzi, grabbing shots of a long chorus line of their begowned, bejeweled daughters. Arm in arm, their pampered little princesses vamp, giggling and smiling bashfully as expensive digital cameras whir and flashes flash. They know they’re hot. Each more done-up, more gorgeous than the last. And in the center, the most ravishing, most regal of them all. Shelby. My date for the evening. Lucky, lucky me.
Or am I? Even though she’s grinning ear to ear like Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, I can tell Shelby’s not exactly a happy camper. I haven’t exactly helped my cause by leaving her to fend for herself for the past twenty-six minutes of phony pleasantries and rampant speculation about my whereabouts and then strolling in like the cock of the walk. It’s pretty much inexcusable. But then again, being a dick’s part of my inexplicable charm for her, so maybe I still have a shred of a chance at redemption.
“Okay, now girls and boys!” directs the hired professional photographer, the same annoyingly chipper gay guy in the pink bow tie who’s snapped me from time to time at sundry events on the senior year social circuit. I’m too relieved to be suitably alarmed.
For all is not lost. I haven’t missed the couples shots. That would have been irreparable. I’ve made it just under the wire, without a nanosecond to spare.
The guys in their tuxes take their places in the chorus line beside their dazzling dates. I take advantage of the frenzy to nimbly slide in beside Shelby.
“Sorry,” I murmur. “Death in the family.”
“Where have you been?” She smiles a frozen smile at me as the cameras continue to flash. “I thought you had stood me up!”
“Smile for the birdie, everybody!” yells Pink Bow Tie. Then he pauses, glances up from the view finder, and looks at me quizzically.
“Hey, weren’t you at the Prom in Bronxville last weekend?” he asks.
Actually, it was the weekend before and in Larchmont. But of course, I shrug like I don’t know what he’s talking about.
“Not me,” I demur, darting a look at Shelby. Fortunately, she’s too relieved that I’m there to take notice.
Scratching his head, Pink Bow Tie returns to his task.
“All right, boys and girls. It’s all downhill from here! On three!” he chirps. “One, two . . . !”
I bare my incisors and smile for posterity. One of them.
Instantly I’m swept in the mass migration to our awaiting carriage. Tearful parents stream in a herd after us. Their babies, all grown up, leaving the feathered nest and all that. Hunter and Gretchen Pace swoop at me from out of nowhere, beaming, wanting to converse, however briefly, with their daughter’s date for such a landmark occasion.
“Hi, Brooks, I’m . . . ,” Hunter gasps, thrusting out his hand.
“MUMMY, DADDY, WHAT DID I TELL YOU BEFORE?” thunders Shelby.
Whatever she’s told them before must have been a real doozy, because both titans of their respective fields immediately evaporate back into the ozone.
---
To rousing adult clamor and the deafening cannon-fire of confetti, we pile inside, eleven dashing couples, twenty-two stars and starlets in all. Although our motor craft’s about the length of a lap pool, it’s still a tight squeeze and Shelby has to perch on my lap. I don’t mind, not a bit. Primped, powdered, and perfumed, molded into a sheer backless, strapless designer gown, wearing Mummy’s diamond earrings, she’s never looked more glamorous—and probably never will. She’s at her apex. She is the apex. And she’s mine. All greedy mine. Or can be—if I can just manage to suppress my scruples and not to screw it up, which so far I seem bound and determined to do.
Honking obnoxiously, we pull away. Within seconds it becomes Party Central. Kanye’s blasting from surround speakers, colored strobe lights are crisscrossing. Yes, there’s a laser light show inside the limo. Flasks are produced, fatties the size of Cubans proffered. Gratefully and greedily I partake of anything that comes my way. So does Shelby. She brushes into me when we round a corner. I detect major wood forming. So does Shelby. She presses down against it—uh, me. All is forgiven. It’s fuckin’ Prom.
There’s only one large-sized fly in my ointment. Fallick. Busting out of a Valentino, he stares daggers at me from his seat directly opposite the rectangular compartment. Booze dribbles down his chin as he swigs, the sight of me with Shelby eating him alive. I mean, if looks could kill, I’d be dead meat a thousand times over.
Vicuna Munson, Fallick’s consolation date, strokes his heaving chest. And she’s some consolation, lemme tell you. Taut, tawny, bountiful where it counts. But nevertheless a distant second to Shelby—just like every other girl. The weird thing is, though, this Vicuna chick’s staring right at me too, like we know each other, like she’s trying to place me. What’s weird about that is I’ve never seen this Vicuna chick before tonight, because if I had, I definitely would have stored this Vicuna chick in the memory banks, her bounty is that bountiful. Anyway, I have no clue why she’s staring, but it’s kind of unsettling.
Suddenly, still glaring at me, Fallick lets out the terrible guttural cry of a wounded animal.
“AHHHHHHHH!!!!”
I mean, he just howls. The others interpret it as simple high spirits and join in. I know for a fact it’s simple homicidal rage and don’t. Guys, girls, everyone’s whooping, hollering, yowling. A rich, ever-ravenous-for-more pack. Totally unhinged.
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!”
Even Shelby’s howling. In her case, adorably, with her little button nose crinkled up. The air’s electric with expectation. For this is it. The final blowout. The end of an era.
And then I howl too. Part of it all, even though I’m not. And why not?
It’s fuckin’ Prom.
---
Fully baked and starving from the stimulants, not to mention the primal screaming session, we arrive en masse at Chez Five-Dollar-Signs-On-Every-Review-Site, where we’re stampeded by a particularly snooty maître d’ to our own plush private banquet room in back. Even in my stupor, it remains staggering how much one meal for two’s going to set me back. In the musical chairs scramble for cushioned seats, I momentarily and uncomfortably find myself next to this Vicuna chick, who continues giving me the eyeball.
“I know I’ve seen you before,” she says.
“I don’t think so,” I respond quickly, ushering Shelby to the far end of a conveniently long table.
“Westport!” she declares decisively.
Westport! Westport was the night with Gravity Dross, the night we mind-melded and I joined her some place remote on the spectrum. No wonder this Vicuna chick doesn’t register on the Rattigan Scale. That night I was so lost grooving in inner space, an alien invasion wouldn’t have.
“Never been,” I grunt haughtily, like Westport’s a teeming cesspool right on par with the Black Hole of Calcutta. Best defense is an offense, right? But my heart’s suddenly thumping like one of The Murf’s crazed solos.
She looks at me doubtfully, but not a hundred percent sure so she lets it slide for now, allowing Fallick to drag her away Neanderthal-style back to his drunken jock pals. Shelby looks at me like, what’s that all about? I shakily pull out a chair for her. What the hell’s going on tonight? First Pink Bow Tie Guy, now this Vicuna chick. I’m telling you, I’m living on borrowed time.
Shelby orders the Beluga caviar for starters. There is no chicken. Casting financial fate to the winds, I say fuck the pheasant and go for the steak. It takes both appetizer and salad courses for my nerves to settle sufficiently to digest Shelby’s ongoing conversation.
“So then Daddy says, ‘Honey, you sure you don’t want to go?’” she’s saying. “‘I’d hate to have you miss it.’”
“Go?” I ask absently, sawing into my grass-fed slab.
“To Prom, silly rabbit,” Shelby smiles, barely nibbling on her truffles. First the twenty-two-dollar tiramisu, now the thirty-one-dollar truffles. Why does she order the crap if she’s not going to eat it? “When I wasn’t sure you were going to have the balls to actually ask me.”
“Oh yeah,” I observe, infantilely titillated that she just said “balls.” Remember, I’m severely buzzed at this point.
“Anyway, for a while there it looked like I wasn’t going. I mean, nobody at school would dare ask since Tommy’s running around threatening certain death . . .”
I nod, chewing vigorously. Sixty-plus bucks and they can’t even cook it right. My meat’s overdone, tough as shoe leather.
“So my dad, get this, he tells me that at his office the other day,” she titters, finding it so hilarious that she can only speak in disjointed pieces. “At his office, he heard about this kid who could take me.”
I stop in mid-chomp. Somehow I know where this is going.
“Very discrete, he says. Great dancer. Comes highly recommended,” she guffaws. “A stand-in!”
“A what-in?” I rasp.
“A stand-in,” she says, cracking up more. “A professional escort. Can you imagine?”
Yes, I can imagine. That and many other things. Like being roasted alive on a spit over a bonfire in the town square of Green Meadow as hundreds of super-fit villagers with torches and shotguns cheer.
“So I tell him, please, I’m not that desperate,” she chortles, shaking with merriment. “Allow me some small semblance of pride.”
She laughs uproariously, the idea ludicrous to her. I chuckle along at the absurdity of my own existence. She’s way stoned too so we’re just chuckling like a couple of morons when suddenly sirens and red alerts are going off because a thick un-masticated hunk of overcooked beef has just lodged tightly in my narrow passageway.
The effect’s immediate, a jolt to the system. It’s like being trapped in one of Burdette’s headlocks, only there’s no Burdette to beg to stop. This blockage has a sense of permanence. I leap up, clutching my neck, thrashing and flailing. Dishes go crashing, chairs topple, Promees scatter as I, blue-faced and choking, jerk and spasm. It’s like the greatest death scene you’ve ever seen in a movie, except, unfortunately, I’m not acting.
“Oh my God, Brooks!” Shelby exclaims. “Are you all right?”
“Water. . . ,” I wheeze.
Gasping, I snatch a bottle of the bubbly kind and swallow it down. It does me no good. I just spout a stream of fizzy liquid back out. Next I tilt back and try shoving two fingers down my throat. No good either. I flop and flounder like a hooked fish. I’m staring into the Great Abyss. A lifetime of squandered opportunities and unrealized regrets pass in a flurry across my dimming vision. The travels and experiences I will never have. Vacations with the grandkids. Hell, vacations with the kids. Vacations, period. But most galling, the fact that I will never ever bone Shelby.
Good-bye, private dining room. Good-bye, long table. Good-bye, tasseled chairs. Good-bye, people just watching. Good-bye, Fallick smirking happily as I asphyxiate to death. At least I won’t be picking up the check. Oh, parting is such, such sweet sorrow. Good-bye, shiny chandelier. Good-bye, plush carpet. Good-bye, Celia Lieberman. Celia Lieberman!
As I crumple, she catches me from behind. Locking her arms around my midsection, she performs a rapid sequence of rib-crunching abdominal thrusts on me. The pain’s excruciating but somehow reassuring. The good ol’ Heimlich maneuver. A doctor’s kid, of course she knows it. The maneuver never fails. But it does on me.
While the brutal display of violence does what it’s designed to do, namely compress my lungs thereby exerting tremendous pressure on the meat plugging my trachea, I don’t expel it. Not that I don’t try my darndest. I hack. I gag. I slobber.
Then Celia Lieberman folds me in half like a wooden puppet and slams me with the heel of her hand on the back in the tender spot between my shoulder blades. Hard. A bunch of times. My eyes bug out and tear up from the repeated impact, but I remain plugged.
“Allow me!” Fallick bellows, rolling up his sleeves.
One sledgehammer blow would do the trick, but Fallick uses three, pounding me with all his mighty might with both interlaced fists. The offending obstruction ejects from my windpipe, out my mouth, and splats against a red velvet wall where it sticks, a glistening glob of goo.
Yes, brothers and sisters, existence, miserable as it is, has been prolonged by Fallick. Oh, the ignominy.
Gulping for air, grimacing from the multiple fractures I’ve most likely sustained, I nattily readjust my tie and lapels, mustering the shards of what’s left of my pride. Everybody’s gawking. Fallick, Shelby, Celia Lieberman, Cassie, Trent, and—look, there’s Franklin, dippy in black sneakers and black T-shirt stenciled stupidly like a tuxedo. I’ve put on quite the show.
And then fortune fortuitously intercedes.
The snippy maître d’ pops his shellacked head in, attracted by the furor.
“Everything satisfactory?” he inquires warily.
I draw myself up, puffed with indignation.
“No, everything is not satisfactory!” I announce, pointing at the gob on the wall. “You call this Chateaubriand?”
Collective snickers. Superior smiles. Nothing like putting the hired help in place to restore equilibrium.
---
How does that line in that book go? It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Or something like that. Well, that’s exactly how I’m feeling.
The Best of Times because it’s the Prom of all Proms, the Grand Soiree of Grand Soirees. We’re talking the Main Ballroom at the Four Seasons. A live major minor band, the kind with two or three megahits now pretty much forgotten. Tables heaped with delicacies of every persuasion. Fields of sushi, a suckling pig, mountains of tropical fruits. Absolute, unbridled, pointless, glittering Excess.
And I’m taking the Queen of it. I should be King of the World.
And I am. Only I’m not.
The Worst of Times because I’m ready for the shoe to drop and squash me any second. All survival instincts are whispering for me to inch my way to the door and hightail it out of Dodge while the getting’s still good. However, all primal ones are screaming at me to just fucking go for it.
Shelby shakes her ultra-tight bod to the wild, tribal rhythms, brushing against me, pulling back, brushing again, teasing. I corral her by her slender waist, lead her by the hand, and twirl her. She’s supple, responsive to my touch. We move as one. Graceful. Sinuous. Sensuous. Perfectly matched.
“Did you book the room?” she huskily breathes.
“The Hilton,” I smile confidently, envisioning Shelby and me in the bubble bath, our wet naked bodies bathed in the flicker of six artfully arranged scented candles and a blizzard of falling dried rose petals.
“The Hilton?” Her smoldering expression slightly cools.
“The Four Seasons was sold out,” I lie. “Hey, it’s within walking distance.”
“Sure, if you want to hike a mile along a turnpike,” she all-too-accurately notes.
I smile less confidently. Then my gaze falls on Celia Lieberman and Franklin clumsily box-stepping past. And I must say, now that I’ve regained a full supply of oxygen and most bodily functions, I can’t help registering that Celia Lieberman has jumped well into the Cute Zone. She fills out an old vintage flapper dress she’s had altered and must have picked up in the Village quite, quite nicely. She’s even showing a little cleavage, not to mention significant portions of leg. Her hair, cut short—at my recommendation, I might add again—is finally under partial control. I mean, I don’t want to get carried away here, a flapper dress is kind of a rather interesting—okay, dorky—choice. But still a mega-mega stride forward.
“Ouch!” I hear her squeal. “Franklin, quit stepping on my feet!”
“Quit stepping on mine!” he returns in kind.
>
I smile despite myself, feeling for poor Franklin. The guy’s clearly got no clue what he’s gotten himself into. Shelby goes rigid in my arms.
“Having second thoughts?” she says darkly.
“Celia never could dance for shit,” I explain lamely.
Shelby angrily jerks away from me. She really has a complex about Celia Lieberman. Go figure.
“Hey, the girl did just save my ass.”
“I have to pee!” Shelby announces, stomping off. Huh, I think. Abruptly and ignominiously stranded, I thread my way through the crush to the punch bowl, which has been heavily spiked, and dip myself a brimming fine crystal cup of much needed fortitude when I hear:
“You still haven’t told her?” accuses Celia Lieberman, grabbing my drink like I poured it just for her, wincing down the noxious brew.
Great, just what I need right now, an extra conscience. Like my puny one’s not pestering me enough. Deftly, I deflect the subject.
“Listen, thanks for rescuing me back there,” I say. “For a second, I thought I was a goner.”
“Anytime,” she shrugs nonchalantly, handing me back my own libation. Up close, I can observe that she’s wearing mascara, rouge, lipstick, the whole works, imperfectly applied, but effective all the same.
“Killer dress,” I blurt out, to my surprise.
“Thanks, I picked it out myself,” she says proudly, twirling around like a model, returning to me, beaming. “I did it, Brooks, I did it!”
“With Franklin?” I croak, alarmingly alarmed.
“No, my parents,” she announces. “I did it. I finally stood up for myself.”
And then Celia Lieberman lays out the whole story of her great personal triumph on me. It happened yesterday when Celia Lieberman was just getting back from pre-Prom mani-pedi . . .