Down and Across

by Arvin Ahmadi

  Fiora led us to the back of Saint-Ex, where we spiraled down a nondescript staircase into a basement of sweaty chaos.

  “I’m gonna get drinks,” Trent yelled. The music in the basement was even louder than upstairs. “Scott, come with me.”

  We squeezed through the crowd to the bar, where three layers of drunk customers separated Trent and me from our drink orders. I thought maybe Trent would use his bartending expertise to con our way to the front, but alas, we waited with the masses.

  “So what’s with this new lady?” Trent asked.

  “It was a dare,” I said. “Fiora offered me fifty bucks to pick someone up at the zoo.”

  “Classic Fiora.”

  “Sure, but now she’s acting weird around Jeanette. I don’t get it. She’s the one who invited Jeanette out tonight, and she’s practically ignoring her.”

  Trent kept his eyes straight ahead, focused on getting us closer to the bar. “Fiora might play dumb, but she knows exactly what she wants, man. She’s lookin’ for a show.”

  I wasn’t convinced it was that simple. Fiora had already gotten the show she wanted at the National Zoo; why take it this far? I wanted to believe Trent, but he had a tendency to simplify Fiora’s motives and misdoings. He’d assert himself on all matters Fiora like he knew the girl better than she knew herself. Sure, they had been friends for a long time and Trent was older and theoretically wiser, but Fiora didn’t come across as the kind of girl you could just put in a box.

  There was nothing glamorous about the basement of Café Saint-Ex. To an outside observer, it might have looked like the sort of college party you fetishized growing up. But if you truly looked at the basement crowd—girls swinging their hips and guys bopping their heads to the beat, void of real energy—well, it was a sad scene. Saint-Ex felt like a sweaty sex pool without the sexiness. No one was really committed to their moves. Instead, they were hungry for action. Eyes wandered the dance floor, ricocheting off each other. Move a little to feign amusement, but don’t forget to scan the room for a really good time. A new dance partner. A hookup. A fuck-buddy. The love of your night, at best.

  You can’t spell “Saint-Ex” without sex. But if you try, you get “aint.” And from early on I knew: ain’t nothing good comin’ out of this night.

  Fiora, Trent, Jeanette, and I huddled around each other in the middle of the dance floor, bouncing awkwardly to the music. Around eleven, Fiora checked her phone and left abruptly, pushing through the crowd and running upstairs. She showed up five minutes later with two tall, older-looking guys.

  “Everyone,” she screamed over the music. “This is Benji and his friend Quentin.”

  I ducked my eyes immediately. I recognized Benji: bald, bearded, bike-less. He was Fiora’s boyfriend—her TA. I was his accidental bike thief. Holy shit.

  The DJ played a remix of “Everytime We Touch,” and the beat rang through my body.

  It felt like someone had punched me in the stomach—which was a real possibility given the situation. Was Fiora trying to get me killed? That would explain everything: the stolen bike and the pickup challenge and the fake texts with Jeanette, all the way to her mood tonight. All those punches led to this one final knockout. Fiora was going to spill the beans to Benji and Jeanette, and they would rip me apart, right here, in the middle of the dance floor. This was the show she’d been rehearsing for all along.

  Sweat dripped down the back of my neck. Hell hath no fury like the basement of Saint-Ex, and it hath no devil like Fiora Buchanan.

  To my relief, Benji cared very little about meeting us. He gave a quick nod of acknowledgment, ignoring Trent’s excitement (“Finally, I get to meet Fiora’s man!”) and Jeanette’s extended hand. Instead he wrapped his arms around Fiora’s tiny waist and pulled her to a roomier, isolated corner of the basement. Quentin followed along.

  Trent turned to me and tilted his head. He must have just made the connection.

  “Isn’t that—”

  I nodded slowly, closing my eyes to reset my nerves.

  “Classic Fiora,” Trent said.

  The volume dropped from earsplitting to a more bearable loud when the DJ played a sultry, slower song. Some R & B mix I’d never heard before. Trent, in his infinite politeness, struck up a conversation with Jeanette. I zoned out quickly, peeking through the crowd for Fiora. I caught a flash of her dancing in between Benji and Quentin, swinging her hips to the music, creating ripples in her parachute pants until Benji grabbed on to her hips. I jerked my head back to Trent and Jeanette.

  “. . . we need to get our country back on the right track,” Jeanette said, poking into Trent’s chest. “We need to make America great again. Our Founding Fathers weren’t crazy. They had values. We are a great nation because of those values, not in spite—”

  “Scotty!” Trent slapped me on the back. “Another drink?”

  Jeanette announced she was going to the bathroom. Trent and I pushed to the bar.

  “Holy. Cow.” Trent’s eyes bulged. “Man, where did you find Jeanette? She’s . . .”

  I didn’t hear the last part of his sentence. I asked him to repeat it.

  “INSANE,” he shouted. He threw his arms to his side. “Gosh, I don’t know how we got down that slippery slope with the Founding Fathers and our nation’s values. Oh wait. I know how. Because she’s interning at the freaking Foundation for American Traditionalism. FAT. That organization’s got its head so far up its own ass that they never thought to come up with a better acronym. She’s a religious nut, Scott. A crazy, conservative, homophobic, xenophobic nutcase. I tried to be polite with her—you know, I’m a Christian and all for less government, so we’re not worlds apart—but good Lord. Jeanette is on another level.”

  “But how is she xenophobic if—”

  “I just know it. She’s gotta think you’re, like, Greek or Italian or something. That has to be it. You never mentioned the Iranian part to her, right?”

  I realized he was right, that it never came up. Most of my conversations with Jeanette until this point had been about zoo animals.

  “Good,” Trent said. “Don’t. Better yet, we could ghost on her right now.”

  For some reason, instead of worrying about my standing with Jeanette, I thought about Fiora, dancing at the center of Benji and Quentin’s universe. I was curious what her goal was for orchestrating this night. This puzzling plot. How the themes intersected and conflicted but didn’t actually make much sense together.

  “Nah,” I said. “Let’s get our drinks.”

  On the way to the bar, I noticed these two guys standing on the sidelines of the basement. They weren’t your usual wallflowers. Call them Backward Yankees Hat Guy and Washington Wizards Jersey Bro. They were clearly buddies, built and dressed like athletes, towering over a sea of girls. BYHG and WWJB stood shoulder-to-shoulder, their arms crossed like bodyguards. Every now and then, BYHG played ball. He’d scout out a girl he was interested in, eye his sidekick for approval, and then approach the girl and grind up on her. He was swiftly rejected three times in the short period of time that I watched.

  I couldn’t blame BYHG; I couldn’t even blame the male species. Everyone, and I mean everyone, in that basement was hungry for action. Especially Jeanette. Soon she started dancing with Trent, face-to-face. This was incredibly awkward to watch, because Jeanette was so into Trent’s face, and Trent’s face was less interested in hers . . . and neither of their bodies appeared to be into the dancing. So I swooped in and started dancing with Jeanette, which turned out to be a good call because our faces quickly got closer and closer with each swing until we were almost kissing. Kissing with our cheeks. Sexual tension escalating.

  Suddenly Fiora appeared out of the side of my eye. “Cigarette?” she said to us, motioning a puff with her two fingers and wrist.

  “Oh God yes!” Jeanette cried.

  What? I looked at her like she’
d admitted to being a Russian sex worker named Anastasia. Could Jeanette honestly have been so relieved to get out of dancing with me? Had I imagined our synchronized motion? Her hands on my hips? Her eyes and my eyes meeting until they couldn’t meet anymore because our cheeks were almost touching? All chemistry aside, I wouldn’t have pegged Jeanette as a smoker. Fiora, sure—but Jeanette was too practical, too smart, and according to Trent, too rooted in her values.

  Trent was down for a breath of fresh air, so we stepped outside, and Fiora offered the three of us cigarettes. I politely declined.

  Fiora smiled when she got to Jeanette. “I didn’t think you smoked,” she said.

  “Intermittently,” Jeanette replied. She couldn’t have sounded less cool with her word choice. “I’ve made the decision to rebel a bit this summer. We aren’t allowed to drink at Liberty, for example.” She smirked boozily.

  “Tsk, tsk. Liberty University,” Fiora said. “So you’re . . . Christian.”

  “Yes,” Jeanette said matter-of-factly.

  “You know he’s Muslim?” Fiora said, pointing at me. Killed. She was for sure trying to get me killed.

  Jeanette gawked. “No, I did not.” She paused, and slowly another smile crept up on her face. Jeanette rubbed my arm robotically. “I suppose I’m rebelling again.”

  I couldn’t help but puff my chest proudly. Trent was wrong about Jeanette. She might have been a conservative white Christian girl, sure, but she wasn’t xenophobic. She was an intelligent, reasonable human being. And she was into me. I glanced over at Fiora to make sure she noticed Jeanette’s hand on my arm.

  We stood outside Saint-Ex a little while longer, Fiora and Jeanette taking casual puffs of their cigarettes, until Benji popped outside. He scolded Fiora for “treating herself to a fine serving of lung cancer” and ushered her back into the bar. Jeanette blushed at the mention of lung cancer and threw out her cigarette.

  Honestly, that was how I saw it, too. These two girls bonding over a shared disregard for their health. “You want lung cancer, too? Same! Twins!” But the way Benji came right out with verbal punches . . . It was like he accepted Fiora and belittled her at the same time.

  Conflicting, crisscrossing, confused. The plot thickened.

  The bar was even more jam-packed when we reentered five minutes later, which meant only one thing: Café Saint-Ex was for sure made of some fourth state of matter. A special blend of solids (people), liquids (alcohol), and gas (body odor) came together in this hellhole to form a state where you could pack infinite twentysomething-year-olds into a confined space as long as they were drunk enough. And boy, were they drunk enough. On our way back down to the basement, I had beer spilled on me twice. Even the most revolutionary states of matter don’t protect against party fouls.

  Trent announced he was going to the bathroom, which I took as a cue to get back to dancing with Jeanette. It was all right, and this time we made out. I’d made out with exactly two girls before—my eighth-grade ex-girlfriend, and a few times with Annie Choi at some parties last year—and they both complimented me on my soft lips. The problem was Jeanette. She kept suction-cupping my mouth with her thin, fishy lips. She played tonsil hockey. She did not know how to kiss.

  Every now and then I’d stop kissing Jeanette and just nuzzle my face against hers. Not only was this a break from our exhausting make-out session, but it gave me a chance to peek across the room at Fiora. She kept alternating between dancing with Benji and Quentin; they were passing her around like a basketball. At one point she was sandwiched in the middle of them, their hands clasped together over her head. (I later learned this move was a variation of the “Eiffel Tower.”) Fiora didn’t look thrilled or sad or exhausted or any emotion in particular—she looked empty, as if dancing in between ghosts. To be clear, it wasn’t just me eye-stalking Fiora; our eyes met exactly twice. Both times I apologized profusely with my expression, and both times hers just stared right through me. We’d deflect eyes quickly, like two magnets of the same polarity.

  Then I lost her. I looked into the crowd, and Fiora was nowhere to be found. I told Jeanette I was going to the bathroom, and I went looking for her. I searched every corner of the basement, the area by the DJ booth, the upstairs bar—nothing. I knew I had no right to be annoyed that Fiora left without me. The past hour should have been forewarning enough.

  I just hoped she was okay.

  I came back to find Jeanette somehow drunker than when I’d left. The guys she was waving goodbye to had probably bought her shots while I was gone, because the ever-articulate Jeanette was now slurring her words. “Skuuhhh-hot,” she said. That was a new one. Admittedly, I was a little turned on. “Let’s get . . . outeff . . . here,” she said slowly, suggestively, but with full conviction. Drunk-conviction. That had to be a thing.

  Things were winding down at Café Saint-Ex anyway, so we pushed through the crowd and left. On our way out, I caught sight of BYHG and WWJB. I was happy to see that one of these players ultimately found success on the court. WWJB, the sidekick, scored big-time. He ended up dancing with a tall, beautiful Indian goddess while BYHG stood against the wall checking his phone. Alone. I chuckled. Only in the most special of sweaty basements can Robin prosper over Batman in a blaze of carnal glory.

  Outside, Jeanette asked in more or less words, “What’s your plan now . . . because you should come back to my place.” An ask-turned-suggestion. I politely declined, making up some excuse that involved my nonexistent roommate. Well, technically I had a few roommates, Swedish this time, but none of them were “sick and in need of my immediate attention.” Whether she believed me or not, Jeanette nodded, and we agreed to hang out again soon. I put her in a cab and made sure the driver knew exactly where to take her before I hailed one for myself.

  The cab cost me a lofty twelve bucks: eight for the fare and four for tip. I probably didn’t need to tip that much, but I did it for good karma.

  I fell asleep hoping Fiora was okay.

  THE MORNING AFTER Saint-Ex, I woke up feeling surprisingly alive. My head felt a little heavy and my breath could have used a toothbrush, but it was nothing like my first hangover, when my body ached like I’d rolled out of a drying machine. Maybe I was getting the hang of drinking.

  Trent had texted me to make sure I got home safe. He also had good news: he’d talked to his boss and gotten me a part-time job at Tonic. Success! I could help out behind the bar a few days a week, starting today.

  I didn’t hear from Fiora or Jeanette that morning. Not like Jeanette had my real number. But with Fiora, half of me just expected her to be there. You know—sitting on the other top bunk, waiting for my “hungover ass” to wake up and freak out about her intrusion. I smiled until I remembered the last time I had seen her, in the basement of Saint-Ex, trapped in the Eiffel Tower of Benji and Quentin.

  What did Fiora see in Benji? From what I could tell, he was more of a soul-sucking parasite than a boyfriend. I wondered if Fiora was curled up in bed now with Benji or if she’d decided to mess with him again. I thought about BYHG and WWJB, and I pictured Fiora wearing the backward hat, the basketball jersey, the backward hat with the basketball jersey. These images all flooded my mind—

  I stopped myself. Switch gears. I picked up my phone, scrolled past Fiora’s number to find Jeanette’s, and texted her:

  Hey it’s Scott, different number

  If Fiora was going to shove Benji in my face, I decided I might as well pursue Jeanette. After all, she was interested in me. How often did that happen? I added:

  Had fun last night! Let’s hang out again.

  A minute later, I went back and texted Fiora the same thing.

  I rolled into Tonic later that morning. The atmosphere inside was eerily calm. There was a family sitting in the back of the restaurant and a couple at the bar, picking apathetically at their omelets and roasted potatoes. It was a sleepy Sunday brunch scene. I couldn’t imagine why a
nyone would choose to have their first meal of the day—of the week!—at a place that’s usually packed with drunk, sweaty college students. I would rather eat at McDonald’s.

  Trent was cleaning up behind the bar. I walked up and slapped my hands on the bar top. “Ready for duty!” I shouted. The bar top was wet—the kind of wet that forms rivers between your fingers. I tried shaking the wetness off.

  “Hah, sorry, bud.” Trent chuckled. “Just cleaned the bar. Kind of a dirty rag, so you might want to wash your hands.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I came here to get my hands dirty.”

  “All right, my man, but you should still wash your hands.” He pointed at the sink behind him. “Here.”

  I slid under the bar’s lift-top entrance to join Trent on the other side. I felt powerful behind that bar, like when I used to be a patrol officer for my elementary school bus. All the patrols at Deer Valley Elementary wore neon belts with shiny gold badges, giving us full authority over nose-picking bullies and cliques of popular girls. I didn’t truly appreciate this power at the time. I mostly did it for the pizza parties.

  Bartending was hard work. Trent put me on dish duty, so I spent most of the afternoon picking up dirty glasses and washing and drying them. My palms were prunes by the end of it. Later Trent showed me how to serve a couple of drinks—simple ones, like beer on tap and the gin and tonics Fiora loved so much. We gave away my practice drinks, and I got solid reviews from my customers. Probably because they were drinking for free, but whatever.

  Just after closing, Trent and I started cleaning up. He took dishes, and I wiped down the bar top with the same brownish rag as before.

  “You know,” I said, “I always thought there was something sexy about working in the service industry. Don’t get me wrong, I worked hard today. But I feel good. My parents never let me get a job like this—they always wanted me to focus on school.”