by Lisa Freeman
One of the little Mar Vista skateboarders whizzed by me and somersaulted into the pool, skateboard and all. When he sprung up, he shouted my way, “You’re a fox.”
Nigel flipped him off.
He flipped Nigel off.
All was well.
Smelling hash made me brave. I felt good. It was like I was in my dad’s mind. The Jimmy Star groove. Clean, cool, and confident. Smelling Dad’s hash made me feel like I’d never have to say goodbye and in a weird way it was like he was still with me, in the background cheering me on. The party was beyond bitchin’.
III
‘Awkake
August 1972
Virgo
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Christmas in July
I was the only one who wasn’t in the pool. At least I didn’t have to meet Nigel’s folks. Mr. McBride was in Texas with his old hunting buddy, the coach of the Dallas Cowboys, and Mrs. McBride was up in Santa Barbara with her staff, planning a fundraiser for The Crippled Children’s Society. In other words, the place was ours.
Word had gotten out that there was a party at the McBride’s. People showed up from everywhere. Nigel pointed out guys he called Weird Wayne, Snap, and Dominator. These weren’t just haoles with cute nicknames in Birdie trunks. They were living, breathing photo layouts from Surfer magazine. Of course, they weren’t alone: following them at a respectful distance were Miss Weird Wayne, Miss Snap, and Miss Dominator.
Only the escorted and babes-in-training got past Lord Ricky at the gate. Once inside, girl games were in full swing. The sun hadn’t set yet, but the place was already maxed out. It was going to be a huge night that separated the real Honeys from the wannabes.
With so many goddesses in a closed off area, the smart move was to stay with my own pack. The lineup was all smiles when I walked over. I ranked right up there at the top after driving in with Nigel. I was as good as in with everyone now, except for Rox. Something just wasn’t right with her; she was so uptight.
But Claire was loving me. While the kegs were being set up, she showed off her hostess skills by opening giant bags of Doritos, Fritos, and pretzels then dumping them into bowls. As I walked by, she stopped and took me aside.
She leaned in and spoke confidentially, “Nigel is totally in love with you.”
I blushed.
“You’re so cute, Nani,” Claire said as she wrapped her arms around me. I lay my head on her chest and took a deep whiff of her Avon Lady Charisma perfume. For that moment, everything in the world was perfect until my stomach growled.
“Was that you?” Claire asked.
I buried my face in my hands. I was so embarrassed.
“Well, do something about it, quick,” she insisted and turned away.
Mary Jo came to my rescue. She handed me a beer to wash some pretzels down. Somehow that combination was supposed to settle my insides. I took the plastic cup of beer as a peace offering, raised it up, and made a toast.
“To friends.”
“To friends,” she said happily.
I wanted just a sip, but Mary Jo held onto the bottom of the cup so I had to keep drinking. She wouldn’t let go until all the beer was gone.
“Okay?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said, still smiling.
“I’m really sorry about what happened. It’s been kind of weird lately.”
“Bygones,” she said and waltzed into the crowd.
On an empty stomach that beer hit me right between the eyes.
Nigel strolled back over, holding a giant slice of pepperoni pizza.
“Hungry?” he asked.
I was starving and it smelled so good, but I shook my head from side to side. A rule’s a rule. No eating around guys.
“Good, I wanna show you something.”
He grabbed a six-pack, took my hand, and started running. With clogs on, it was hard to keep up with him. He stopped and gave me a piggyback ride. We galloped along what seemed like football fields of perfect rose beds. There were these hedges on each side of the path, two tennis courts, more flowers than I had ever seen in one place, and a line of giant cypress trees marking the property line. Finally, we stopped at a small cement building. “This is the fort,” he said.
The fort overlooked the Pacific, which was flat as a pancake. It must have been at least a three-hundred-foot drop to the sand. No waves, no surfing, which meant the party could go on for days. I slid off Nigel’s back while he turned the combination of a padlock on the front door. There were snorkels, fins, and wet suits hanging on a clothesline drying out.
“03-06-55 … that’s my birthday,” he said.
I’d never forget those numbers. March the sixth made Nigel McBride a Pisces. That meant he was trusting, spiritual, and a bit slippery. Not easy to catch. Not easy to hold on to.
“Only me, you, and Shawn know that combo.”
He pushed against the steel plate door. It sounded like fingernails scratching a chalkboard. It was pitch black inside and as cold as a meat locker. But, like a full-on gentleman, Nigel took my hand and led me down a bunch of stairs.
“There’s a light in here somewhere,” he said, leaning over me and lifting my chin with one hand. His skin was moist and his breath was hot and smelled like mozzarella cheese. I could feel him coming closer. Then, in total darkness, he kissed my eyeball.
“Okay, onward,” he said, returning to his search.
Patting the wall with the palm of his hand, he began whistling “Layla” by Derek and the Dominos. I told him that I loved that song even though I had only heard it once.
“Ah, here it is,” he said.
The room lit up in a flash.
Tiny red and green lights intertwined with tinsel blinked on all around us. There were Styrofoam snowflakes on the walls and plastic reindeer on the floor. It was kind of romantic.
“My grandfather built this as a bomb shelter during World War II,” Nigel said as he moved aside cardboard boxes marked FRAGILE with the side of his foot. “But as you can see, it’s a storage room now.”
This was the notorious fort that every girl dreamed about? From the way Claire and Rox talked, it sounded like a castle, not a dump yard for holiday decorations. I wondered if there was another room hidden behind a door or something.
During the holidays, Jean always decorated the Java Jones. It drove my dad crazy. She’d put Santa hats on the mounted pufferfish that hung over the bar and make me and the hostesses wear muumuus with the words MELE KALIKIMAKA and MERRY CHRISTMAS written on them. We didn’t have a chimney, but every year Santa left me chocolate-covered macadamia nuts and toys in my stocking. But nothing Jean did had ever come close to what was going on here.
Nigel explained that his mother was famous for her decorations and that it took two trucks to move all the ornaments into their main house in Hancock Park. All I heard were the words “main house.”
“This isn’t where you live?” I said, immediately sorry for asking such a stupid question. Why did I have to talk so much? Naturally, there was a rule:
Guys like to be listened to, not talked to.
Nigel played with my hair, scooping it into his arms like water, and bumped his hip into mine. He was patient as he explained that this house was used for holiday parties, political fundraisers, and garden club meetings. He made a point to let me know that he and Shawn stayed out here during the summers.
As he talked, he pushed aside boxes to make a place for us to sit on the floor. He made me feel special. Nigel was so cute. He had the sweetest grin on his face when he handed me a box marked BROKEN.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Guess.”
Nigel didn’t wait for an answer. He was excited like a little boy with an unopened present. Inside was a giant Tupperware bowl like the ones my mom used to keep fruit salad in. Nigel popped open the lid to show me hundreds of buds, and I’m not talking rosebuds. He said it was his secret stash. This was big time. Guys just didn’t do this. He may as well have asked me to marry h
im or hold his surfboard, showing off his stash was that special. It smelled homegrown, but I didn’t dare ask him something that personal yet.
Nigel pulled a bamboo bong out from under an elf’s red fleece pants. I smiled, watching him perform surgery on each little hole of the bong bowl, removing hash resin with a toothpick, but not spilling the stinky bong water.
“I made this in shop class,” he said.
I wondered if Nigel was expecting me to smoke with him or maybe get into touchy feely stuff below the belt. Screwing was out. Any girl who did that stuff with a guy who wasn’t her full-on boyfriend got the reputation of being a slut. And I didn’t want to end up like Suzie, who really blew it, if you catch my drift. My heart was pounding when I thought of the unbreakable rule:
No sex.
Nigel looked directly in my eyes as he lit the bong. He drew a long, hard hit, making the water in the bottom bubble loudly.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” I said back.
Nigel looked instantly high. His face was magenta, his body went all rubbery, and his eyelids got heavy. He handed me the bong and slowly exhaled an endless stream of smoke into my face.
“Whoa,” Nigel groaned.
He curled up and laid his head in my lap. He looked up at me with droopy blue eyes. It was my turn. I had seen Dad do this a thousand times. How hard could it be? I tried to look cute as I sucked what was left in the bowl. The pot felt like tickling powder in my lungs and corn kernels popping out of my head. I thought my skull would split wide open. This was the kind of bud my dad would have called primo. I had to hand it to Dad for being able to smoke this stuff first thing every morning and still function all day. I was fried after one hit but didn’t cough.
I tried to prop myself up, but I felt like I was melting. Someone who sounded like me was laughing somewhere in the room. My eyes were squeezed shut and tears were rolling down my face. The closer Nigel got, the harder I laughed. He was sprawled out on top of me, biting my neck while he tried to untangle ornaments that had gotten wrapped around my ankles like seaweed all knotted up on the ocean floor. He poked my ribs and tickled me under my shirt. My hair was everywhere. I was laughing so hard I almost peed.
Then Nigel took off his shirt and things got totally quiet. Too quiet. But I actually felt more comfortable with Nigel with his shirt off. He looked familiar, and I got a tingle when his skin touched mine. It was just our shoulders, but everything was electric until he took a giant gulp of beer, burped, then leaned in and kissed me. I cringed, but then I thought about how Nigel McBride looked in the ocean, all liquid and Jesus-like, barreling into a wave.
He wiped his mouth and handed me the rest of the beer. I pretended to drink his backwash, no problem. He lay down next to me so stoned I thought he was going to fall asleep.
“You’re gnarly, Nani,” Nigel said, all stoked, but with his eyes still closed.
He reached up, searching for me with his hands, and gently pulled me down to his face. We kissed again for a long time. His tongue darted in and out of my mouth. We rolled around on the floor until a stack of boxes fell on top of us. Luckily it was only wrapping paper, not glass ornaments. We stood up and started laughing again. Nigel leaned me against the plastic reindeer. Then he backed up very slowly and told me with great concern, “Wait. Here.”
I watched Nigel spread out a red tree skirt on the floor. THE MCBRIDE FAMILY was embroidered in gold thread. He tossed a long green banner over it and pulled down the cover like a bedspread. Then he sprayed Cedar Enhancement from something like a hairspray bottle to get rid of the moldy smell. I tried not to panic. Did he think we were going to do it? I wondered if I should tell him I was a virgin, but that was lame. We lay down next to each other. He rolled me over onto my back, and I screamed. Hanging from the rafters just above me was a giant glow-in-the-dark Santa Claus.
Nigel thought I was so funny. “Santa likes to watch,” he giggled and started kissing me again. I tried to look sexy and Barbarella-ish, but it was hard. Making out this intensely took a lot of concentration. It was sort of like rubbing my stomach and patting my head at the same time. How the heck did any girl look good doing this? We kept getting twisted in my hair and once or twice he had to totally reposition me. But things were going smoothly until my stomach growled really loud. Nigel sat up and touched my belly button.
“Was that you?” he asked, talking to my stomach like it was a person or something. He patted it gently and placed his ear to it and said, “I’m trying to see if we can get K Earth 101. Oh man, you got a storm in there.”
He tore open a candy cane wrapper with his teeth and stuck half of it in my mouth. The peppermint tasted a thousand years old but I didn’t care. I’d never been so embarrassed in my entire life. I had to distract him. I started to kiss him again, but this time he pulled away. I held my stomach, forcing it to be silent.
“You know what, Nani? You should be my girlfriend,” he blurted out.
Oh my God. Wait until Claire and Rox hear about this. Better yet, wait ’til Jean finds out I’m going steady with Nigel McBride. This was better than becoming Little Miss Aloha or winning the Hawaiian Village Hula Contest. I smiled because everything was going to be alright. I was going to be Nigel McBride’s girlfriend. There was absolutely nothing to worry about. Every rule was covered now.
“Yeah, that would be cool,” I said.
He dug into his pocket and pulled out an aqua blue Saint Christopher medal and fastened the necklace around my neck. “I really like you,” he said, playing with my hair. “You’re my girlfriend now, right?”
I felt a giant gurgle starting to erupt from my stomach. As it growled, I kissed him full-on. I had to do something to distract Nigel from the sound. Then I covered up the noise by saying, “Oh, oh.” Nigel took that as some kind of girl sign and kissed me more.
The more noise I made close to his ears, the more turned on he got. Every time a growl, gurgle, or rumble rolled out of my stomach, I moaned a bit louder. I moaned so loud, we couldn’t hear the band in the distance. I felt kind of silly and to stop myself from laughing again, I had to think of something sad like the way Oahu looked from the window in the airplane, disappearing into the sea.
We weren’t doing it, but the way we moved and touched with our clothes on sure made Nigel sweat up a storm. I felt like I was in a double class of PE. It just went on and on. I was getting tired. I tried to imagine what people were doing at the party. Suddenly Nigel got all stiff and still, and just like that it was over.
I tried to sit up, but he got all lovey dovey with me. He curled in really close, held my hands, and stared deep into my eyes. I told myself to look happy even though I was feeling claustrophobic and creeped out by the Santa’s glowing eyes above us and his wide plastic grin.
“I love you, Nani,” Nigel said.
I was so tired. I wanted to say: you taste like bong juice and make-out sessions are totally overrated. If you weren’t a surfer and pretty as a girl with long blonde hair, I’d probably never do this again.
But instead I said, “Love you too.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Dancing Poodles
I was glad to be out of Santa’s make-out dungeon. The sun was setting, and there was a strong, warm breeze. Nigel told me the winds were called Santa Anas. I liked the idea of wind having a name. The whole sky was changing, and it felt like I was being swallowed by the color pink. My skin felt prickly and electric. I wondered how women could screw every night, and even in the mornings. Is that what marriage was all about? Pleasing your man? Having a baby, driving carpool, and getting a hobby?
Nigel and I walked back to the party hand in hand. I deliberately stepped on pockets of Mrs. McBride’s blue pansies. I know this sounds weird, but it looked like they were laughing at me. They had tiny shaking stems with leaves that pinched my ankles when I kicked through them. The kumquats in the trees lining the tennis courts were turning toward us when we strolled by even though the wind was blowing in the opposite d
irection.
My hair smelled like mildew and the cedar spray. I was starting to feel funky. Then I remembered another rule:
Never look angry.
I thought of the happy face sticker. A yellow circle with two dots for eyes and a U-shaped smile. All I had to do was put on a happy face and stroll back into the party.
Claire raised her eyebrows when she saw us. Nigel and I crunched through the crowd toward the lineup. Honk was getting a standing ovation. Girls were squealing and guys were spiraling up, clapping their hands. The place was packed shoulder to shoulder with blondes. Claire yelled over the music to Rox, “Does she smell like cedar to you?”
Rox zoned in on me and sniffed, “Have you been in the fort?”
The Lisas winked and Suzie slid a beer into my hands.
“No hard feelings,” she said.
I was just about ready to tell her I wasn’t thirsty when Rox grabbed the beer.
Suzie looked like she was going to have a hissy fit when Rox put the drink to her mouth and started to chugalug. At the same time, Mary Jo ran past her. It looked like she deliberately plowed into Rox. The beer went flying into Claire’s hair, and if I hadn’t been standing so close to the edge of the pool and grabbed Rox, she would have fallen in. Rox was furious. No one ever grabbed or bumped her.
Mary Jo turned back and said, “Oops, sorry.”
Rox mimicked, “Oops, sorry,” and pushed her into the pool.
That triggered a few other jumpers doing cannon balls.
“Has Mary Jo gone mental?” Claire asked Suzie.
Annie Iopa would be so proud of how well I was doing. But she had warned me that after I scored, it would be all about maintaining my status. How hard could that be, I wondered, looking up at Nigel. He was still grinning ear to ear. I had this thing licked. There were no more worries. It was time to enjoy myself. Finally I could relax.