Wise Young Fool

by Sean Beaudoin

  Chaos shakes his head. “You know what your problem is, Señor Sudden?”

  “No, man, I don’t.”

  “You’re like a rich kid complaining about the menu, and then leaving a lousy tip. It’s boring. I think you should consider, from now on, always leaving an overly generous tip no matter what you think of the world’s service.”

  In the distance a car revs its engine. Children laugh, riding bikes. A bird wheels and caws. Or maybe that’s Lacy.

  “You know what, dude?” I say.

  “What?”

  “I’m going to majorly surprise you here.”

  “Please do.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  He laughs and sparks another bowl. “Self-discovery is the most powerful intoxicant of all.”

  “Chaos, let me ask you something.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Your folks still together?”

  “No, sir. My pops split when I was, like, born.”

  “And mom?”

  “Divorced, remarried, redivorced. Playing the field at the moment.”

  “Any luck?”

  “Some guy name of Rodney stops by now and again, hangs out for breakfast, asks about my classes.”

  “Interesting, interesting.”

  “You doing a survey, Sudden? You the census man?”

  “Nah, just curious if all us products from broken homes got something in common.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a tendency to be awesome.”

  Chaos squeezes my shoulder in a poised and reassuring and totally manly way, like we’re two aging fraternity brothers meeting for Scotches after the funeral of a guy we never really liked.

  Then we both go back into the garage, ready to tear through the set one last time.

  Dad Sudden finds the Buick online, the thing low and slow and heavy, a total grandma ride, perfect for a girl inclined to pay attention to everything but what’s right in front of her. Like turning, braking, or signaling. The whole first week that it’s in the driveway, before it’s even legal, Beth’s turning the steering wheel and hitting the signals and making vroom vroom noises like a little kid. She picks out the perfect bumper stickers: BIEBERETTE (ironic), MONDALE ’84 (retro), and PERVERT THE SUBMISSIVE PARADIGM (no clue).

  She finally gets it registered on a Saturday. The insurance takes twenty-four hours to kick in. To prepare for the maiden voyage, she’s out in the driveway trying to get rid of the grime and smell and random stains the guy who sold it insisted were just a Formula 409ing away. I’m inside watching Behind the Music: Sammy Hagar, the episode where Sammy has decided jamming out is way more fun sober. He’s just replaced Diamond Dave, cock slinger and Jack Daniel’s guzzler extraordinaire, as lead wailer in Van Halen, and immediately gets busy talking the rest of the dudes into going Straight Edge. He talks about what a douche Diamond Dave was and how he, Sam, finally sees the true direction the band needs to head in, a direction that involves keyboards and songs about mountain biking. So instead of continuing to be this iconic LA strip-metal behemoth, Van Hagar starts recording horrible power ballads, the kind of insipid mall-chick chart rock that makes you want to eat your spleen and run screaming into the night. So, yeah, way to go, Sam. Forget drive, you can’t spell fifty-five, either.

  “Oh, crap, Ritchie,” Beth yells. I ignore her until she does it again, louder this time.

  “Help!”

  I sigh and pause Sammy.

  “What?”

  “Just come, asshole!”

  I jog outside, thinking maybe she’s been crushed under the back wheel after putting it up on blocks to clean the tire treads with an old toothbrush, but she’s just standing there covered in dirt, rags sticking out of her pockets, head bowed.

  “This better be good.”

  Beth holds out her arms like a spokesmodel on The Price Is Right. I lean over and take a closer look. The Buick’s paint job was hardly new and sparkling to begin with, but it was relatively rust-free and unmarred. Not anymore. The thing looks like it caught a bad case of Detroit clap. Big white splotches span from bumper to bumper, ugly swirls like polka dots run from front to back.

  “What the hell?”

  “I just polished it,” she says, gesturing with one of those big sponge buffing gloves. “I put the stuff on, and now it won’t come off.”

  “What did you use? Battery acid?”

  Beth hands me the can, yellow with a yellow top. I turn it over. Lemon Pledge. It’s furniture polish. She spread the stuff in layers and then let it roast in the sun while vacuuming inside.

  I try not to laugh. “Did you think the longer you left it on, the cleaner it’d get?”

  “I dunno. Maybe.”

  Apparently whatever toxic composition makes your mahogany sideboard look like it’s dipped in spit reacts poorly with auto paint, because swirls of Pledge are now baked into the finish.

  “Ritchie, do something.”

  I go and get the hose, hook it up, find a spray nozzle, and crank it on high, really scouring a two-foot section of the quarter panel. When I pull the hose away, it’s done nothing at all. Except make the disease look glossier. Shit is permanent.

  “Can you fix it?”

  I read the warning label on the can. It basically advises you not to huff the fumes if you have any intention of graduating from community college. Also that it’s a bad idea to spray it directly into your eyes. It says nothing about disfigured Buicks, which can only mean even the Pledge legal team didn’t think anyone would ever be dumb enough to soak down a car with their product.

  “You realize this is only for wood, right? Like, indoor furniture?”

  “It says wax! I was waxing the car!”

  Beth throws the giant sponge glove at me, kicks the passenger door, putting a nice dent in the center of it, and then starts to cry. There’re so many jokes I could make about dumb blondes and how many Beths it takes to change a lightbulb. I could really lay it on thick about how all the kids at school were going to laugh their asses off when they spot her spotted bucket pulling into the lot like a rolling measle.

  But I don’t.

  Instead I walk over and put my arms around her. I tell her it doesn’t matter. I lie through my teeth and say it actually looks sort of cool. That it’s art. That no one in the history of Sackville High has ever had a car anything like hers, which is true, and if nothing else, she’s a genuine original.

  Her bottom lip trembles.

  “At least now it has a nice lemony smell.”

  She laughs. The tiniest little bit.

  “I mean, it’s only a car, right?”

  “Right,” she says, laying her head down on my shoulder.

  We stand there for a very long time.

  Ring. Tone. Ring. I snap the phone open, Ian MacKaye going, “You tell me you like the taste, YOU! JUST! THINK! IT! LOOKS! COOL!” Three times.

  “Hello?”

  It’s Ravenna.

  “Who is this?” I ask.

  “Hi. It’s me. Calling from a pay phone in the dorm.”

  Ravenna has been at Killington-Holloway for five days.

  “Oh. Hey. Why a pay phone?”

  “My dad canceled my cell. Punishment. You know.”

  “Right.”

  “So, anyway, Ritchie Rich, why don’t you get in your little shit-brown Saab and come on up for a visit?”

  “You want me to visit you?”

  “Don’t sound so astonished.”

  “I have to admit I am fairly astonished.”

  She sighs. “Well, I still don’t really know anyone here.”

  “Give it a full week.”

  “Everyone thinks I’m a friendless loser.”

  “There’s no way they think you’re friendless.”

  “I miss you, Ritchie, okay?”

  “Um, okay.”

  “So I need Sackville to represent.”

  “To represent? Wait, remind me again. Am I talking to Salt or Pepa?”

  “Beside
s, you owe me one.”

  “Don’t you mean I owe you two?”

  “Okay, fine, I’m hanging up now.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “I’m not?”

  “Let me guess. You just called everyone else you know. None of them can make the drive. I’m, like, what, twenty-sixth on the list?”

  “Twelfth. But so what? I’m still calling, aren’t I?”

  “Hard to argue with that.”

  “So come already.”

  Mom and Looper are downstairs watching Mom and Looper movies, which means either a middle-aged lady thinks she’s too fat but hates to diet or some older dude almost has a coronary on Viagra and everyone in the ER makes nonstop boner jokes until the credits roll.

  They’re actually laughing down there.

  “Fine, but I’m bringing Chowus.”

  “Who?”

  “Our drummer.”

  “The Abercrombie boy? Why?”

  “Your various Killingtons and Holloways will recognize him as one of their own immediately. And thus, by association, I will feel less like a mere footman or commoner.”

  “Good thinking. Bring Chow Us.”

  In study hall I mention I’m heading up to Killington right after school. Meb Cavil says she wants to come. Fine with me. It seems wise to arrive in hostile territory with a woman in tow.

  Then Young Joe Yung says he wants in, too. He’s wearing overalls, a raincoat, and shit-encrusted rubber Wellingtons. His dreads are even dreadier than usual. I figure it’s never wise to arrive in hostile territory with an enormous grass-fed, free-range hippie in tow.

  “I dunno, big dog.”

  “Occupy Killington-Holloway!” he practically yells. “I’ll start a tent city on the quad! I’ll gather signatures! I’ll solicit donations! The one percent needs a taste of me!”

  Chaos, who now comes to Sackville practically every day and sits around with his feet up, not attending classes, has a huge grin on his mug.

  “They do, man. They seriously need a taste of you.”

  Young Joe laughs, and then Beenie Sloat shows up with a Tupperware full of quinoa and raw vegetables. They squat over it and go to town.

  “Ravenna’s gonna kill me,” I say.

  “Ravenna killed you a long time ago,” Meb says.

  Vice Principal Paste comes walking by, sees Chaos, and gives him a little salute.

  “Mister Bahm.”

  Chaos salutes back.

  “Morning, sir.”

  “Wait, how did you get in here again?” Beenie Sloat asks, ancient grains tumbling from his mouth and down his shirt.

  “There’s nowhere Adam Bomb can’t go,” I say.

  “True.” Chaos laughs. “But mostly I just use the door.”

  The windows are down because it’s nice out, and also Joe Yung smells like homemade yogurt. Meb tells us funny stories about all the creepy pervs who come into the lingerie shop she works at, Veronika’s Answer, pretending to buy sexy items for their wives but really dying to wear them under their Brooks Brothers at the big meeting the next day. Also about how all Veronika’s stuff is made in Indonesia with huge vats of ruinous chemicals that tend to give people rashes between their folds, who then are mostly too embarrassed to limp back in and ask for a refund.

  “Mostly?”

  “Those are the days I earn my minimum wage,” Meb says. “No doubt.”

  We all have to show ID to the security guard at the gate. He gives the serious eyeball to Young Joe Yung and insists we sign a “Guests’ Comportment Agreement” before he’ll let us onto campus. It’s definitely Chaos’s Beemer that put us over the top. If we’d rolled up in the Saab, Homeland Security would have had Young Joe hog-tied and waterboarded before you could say, They hate us for our freedoms.

  There’s a long, winding road through heavily pruned pines. Between them are animal-shaped topiaries, squirrels and swans and rabbits. At the head of a horseshoe is a massive Catholic basilica, all spires and crosses and trumpet-y cherubs. Fanning out from its sides are rows of dorms, immaculate brick and whitewash rectangles, each named after a president, general, or random carpetbagger who donated a few million to the research lab. All in all it’s like Harvard but smaller, nicer, and with fewer hedge funders clogging the quad with tweed.

  We find Ravenna’s dorm, but she’s not there. Her roommate, a tall, elegant redheaded chick with a French accent and calves you could slice bread with, has about four hundred books open across her desk. She says Ravenna’s out back in a way that you can tell she wishes Ravenna would stay there permanently.

  We head down the rear stairwell, which opens onto a concrete patio, and there’s Ravenna. Smoking a long, thin cigarette with about ten other kids puffing away in a circle around her.

  What a difference five days make, because Ravenna Woods is transformed. What once was mere Sackville überhotness is now something rarer and more refined. Her oddness has become pure exotica. She’s wearing clothes so fashionable they have no label. Like they’re made from some material you can only buy by appointment. Standing there full-smirk, arms crossed, blowing a plume of smoke up into the ivy and gables, she is now the most willowy-beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my entire life, and that counts TV. She looks like royalty. She looks like antiquity. She looks like you wouldn’t think twice about storming a castle, fording a piranha moat, and impaling half of Saxony on the tip of a rusty broadsword just for the right to throw her over your shoulder and spend the next ten years wrapped in tresses and trembling legs in the hopes of planting just the right combination of xx and xy to make a perfect crowned heir.

  Or something.

  Anyway, the posh school agrees with her.

  Ravenna spots us, lighting up like a bank of kliegs before realizing she should, in fact, play it cool. The new girl needs to tamp the townie past. Keep her utter trust-fundlessness on the down low. Even so, she’s all, “Dudes!” garnering looks from the harder-core prepensteins, who would never use a word like dude, even on a ranch. She sees Young Joe, frowns, blushes, recovers, hugs us all anyway. Everyone lights a new smoke. Even outside it’s like being trapped in the exhaust pipe of a ’72 Fiat sportster. Some people say hi, but pretty soon close ranks and start talking among themselves again. Chaos dives right into the middle, doing secret handshakes, the Skull and Bones, the show dog, the requisite Hilfiger-y ass-sniffing, immediately at ease. Meb and Young Joe stand to one side, talking to each other as if they were actually interested. I pull Ravenna into a slightly darker corner and give her a hug.

  She holds me at arm’s length. “Thanks so much for coming.”

  “Of course.”

  “And bringing… him.”

  Young Joe Yung laughs at something Meb says, big and horsey and raw. He’s wearing a homemade T-shirt that says, I’LL VOTE REPUBLICAN WHEN YOU PRY THEIR ENTITLED VACUOUSNESS FROM MY COLD, DEAD REASON.

  “How could I not?”

  She rolls her eyes. “You look good.”

  “It’s only been a hundred and twenty hours.”

  She laughs. “Seems like years. Like I’ve been out at sea practically forever.”

  I don’t tell her how different she looks. She knows I know. Her haircut is better, simpler, all style. Her makeup is so perfect it almost seems like she’s not wearing any. The anger is still there, but simmering way beneath the surface, smirk abated, knife dulled.

  She’s totally home. In the middle of a mausoleum to wealth and the unbearable whiteness of being.

  “How’re things back in Sackville?”

  “Widely unchanged. On a Level of Suck, I’d say holding steady at an eight-point-five.”

  “Good, good.”

  “How’s your roommate? She seems like a lot of fun.”

  “Oh, she is,” Ravenna says, but she’s no longer really paying attention, glancing over my head, worried that she might be missing something in the inner circle. She meets my eyes, but all her ambient energy is concentrated on whether the (right) Killington people are watc
hing her talk to The Mysterious Visitor. And if so, are they impressed?

  They’re watching, but they are not impressed.

  Which means I’m already a diminishing return.

  I squeeze her arm to bring her back to earth.

  “So you smoke now, huh?”

  Her eyes refocus. She stamps out her cig on the concrete and lights another.

  “Yup.”

  “And how are the twins?”

  She looks down at her chest and smirks.

  “Healing nicely, thank you.”

  With that, she drifts away. So much for the big reunion.

  “So what’s with you two?” a girl next to me asks. She’s thin and birdy, hair almost white, skin beyond white. She looks like a Russian princess who died of hemophilia a hundred years ago.

  “Who?”

  “Ravenna. The goddess. You obviously know her.”

  “Biblically? Is it that obvious?”

  “Ha. No, I was thinking more like peripherally.”

  Ravenna looks back over her shoulder at us, as if she heard but doesn’t care, imperious. Her smile is a masterpiece of giddy calculation.

  “I’m Sigourney,” the Russian says.

  “Hi.”

  “You might as well just give up.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You may have had the inside track in Smalltown or Hangtown or Farmtown or wherever you guys are from. But here? Her? Ha! Do you even want to know how many rungs down you already are?”

  “Yes.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Sigourney lowers her voice to a crude and dirty whisper. “Okay, she’s not even sleeping with a professor at Killington. No, that would be too cliché. She’s sleeping with a professor at the college across the river instead.”

  “In five days? No way.”

  “Way.”

  It sounds like the usual gossip, but I don’t entirely doubt it.

  Sigourney nods, enjoying the misery in my eyes. “The guy’s forty-five and has three kids. He picks her up in a Benz. They’ve gone to eat in the city twice already. He wrote a book about Teddy Roosevelt or something that was on the bestseller list.”

  “So boring,” I say. “So obvious.”

  Sigourney slips her arm into mine, like we’re about to stroll along the Thames. “But enough about her. Let’s talk about me.”