Lunchmeat

by Ben D'Alessio

  “Victor, why aren’t you saying…”

  “Dude couldn’t even make the team, huh?”

  “What? What are you talking about? He’s the starting center fielder.”

  Baseball…

  Click: Exit Arizona State Sun Devils Football Roster. Click: New tab. Click: Favorites. Scroll, click: 2009 Arizona State Sun Devils Baseball Roster. Click: Alphabetize: Michael DeAngelis: Sophomore: CF: Seton Hall Prep: Cedar Grove, NJ.

  “What the fuck? He’s from Jersey?”

  “Yes… he’s friends with my cousins. I didn’t want to tell you because I knew you’d flip a shit.”

  “Okay, okay, okay, I’m gonna go. Bye.” I snapped my RAZR shut and slid it down the desk and wept as I cracked off to the two blonde Russian teenagers while being serenaded by Meat Loaf.

  I walked toward Maria, following the crisp white line that demarcated twenty yards from the end zone—a stretch of land so foreign to the Millburn Millers football team that we needed a passport to cross its threshold. Because of the multi-day workouts, my varsity jacket fit her as if it was her own and no longer had that baggy this-belongs-to-my-big-strong-football-player-boyfriend appeal. My heart thump, thump, thumped as we drew closer to each other; her fall break had finally started and she arrived from Arizona a few hours before my game. All of the fighting would be over and the suffering would end.

  “Tough one,” she said as she straightened out my smeared eye black. I looked up at the scoreboard: Millburn: 0 Visitor: 29. My dad yelled at the “box” last time for leaving the score up after the game was over.

  “Yeah… they outplayed us. We couldn’t get anything… ehh, fuck it.” I could still hear the hootin’ and hollerin’ of the victorious Irvington High School Blue Knights football team getting onto their buses.

  When we kissed it felt like a dream; not in the euphoric, ever-longing-to-have-you kind of way, but the kind of way where something once comfortable feels foreign and strange.

  Her hand was cold from the crisp October air and it took a moment for our fingers to interlock the way they’re supposed to.

  The sex was a display of teenage awkwardness and cringe, as if our entire sexual past had been erased. Maria lay on her back on the couch as I crawled atop her like some grunting, aching beast—I was fifteen again, thrusting at Diana like I was punching in the dark.

  “You’re still not in.”

  “Just flip over.”

  “No, we start with you on top, like always. Now kiss me here.” She tilted her face to the side, exposing her neck. As I kissed her, my conditioned hips, like one of Pavlov’s dogs, realigned and I hit the bull’s-eye. “Not so wet, Victor.”

  But that short October break became nothing but a blur of fighting and fucking and ended so quickly it felt like SWAT had busted in through my basement windows and pulled Maria out from under me—phlunk!—and airlifted her back to Arizona: “We’ve got her. Go! Go! Go!”

  The time-zone variations didn’t do us any favors either. When I’d be wrapping up a round of video games with Karl before bed, Maria would just be getting ready to “go out”—an insidious term you never wanted to see in a text message. And this was supposed to be the easier season, because Arizona, little rebel that it is, refused to observe daylight savings like the rest of us, so when spring came along, Maria and I were three hours apart instead of two, and I was awake in bed waiting for that reassuring buzz.

  Text from Maria <3 <3: We are pregaming and then going out

  Naturally I fired off a string of WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, and WHY texts like I was judge and she my clerk; she answered them all without any inconsistencies.

  Text to Maria <3 <3: Have fun.

  Text from Maria <3 <3: Sarcasm?

  But I wasn’t the only one who engaged in such suffocating, self-destructive behavior:

  Text to Maria <3 <3: Rosenblatt is having a party. Going with Silas.

  Text from Maria <3 <3: Girls?

  My darling’s concern was a complete focus on the WHOs. I’d rattle off the same handful of names, leaving off the ones I had accidentally disclosed were “hot.”

  Text to Maria <3 <3: Julie, Jenna, Jessie, Julie, Julie, Jen, and Carly

  Text from Maria <3 <3: What about Stephanie Hinkle?

  Stephanie had arrived fashionably late, and because of this, I had thought I would be in the clear, never having received instructions to include an addendum.

  Text to Maria <3 <3: She just got here. No point in lying, Facebook reveals all—Maria accessed the forbidden fruit through her cousin’s Facebook page, ostensibly to stay connected with family, actually to monitor my whereabouts and possible transgressions.

  Text from Maria <3 <3: OK GREAT.

  Text from Maria <3 <3: HAVE FUN.

  Text from Maria <3 <3: …

  My phone rang.

  “Hey babe.”

  “How many of them did you date, Victor?”

  “What? That was like, in middle school.”

  “Well, if Michaela Silves is there, she can suck your dick again!” Click. The first rule of getting blowjobs in Tank’s bathroom is you don’t talk about getting blowjobs in Tank’s bathroom.

  Text from Maria <3 <3: WHY DON’T YOU JUST FUCK THE WHOLE SLUT LIST???

  Ahh, yes, the text-immediately-after-hanging-up tactic—one we both used extensively.

  Text to Maria <3 <3: No No the girls here created…

  Delete. Delete. Delete.

  I refrained from explaining to Maria that the girls in my class weren’t on this year’s slut list but, in fact, wrote this year’s slut list, as they were now seniors. The discrepancy would’ve been lost on her during this particular fight. The only reason she brought up the list was because one of the seniors had been negligent with its distribution and it ended up falling into the hands of an AP Lit teacher.

  Uproar.

  And then the administration.

  Uproar.

  And then the New York Times…

  Uproar!

  I had seen the list, and it wasn’t even that imaginative, at least not for the graduating class of the top school in the state. I mean, Get me pregnant so I don’t have to go to Syracuse? How many times has that one been recycled since the ’90s? And I knew at least three of the seniors were already headed up to that desolate stretch of land next year.

  The principal had brought in a bunch of the freshmen and a bunch of the Julies, but like inmates, no one said a word.

  “What the… the hell… what the heck are these girls thinking, Vito?” my father said, standing at the kitchen counter as he pulled the mooligue (translation: nonessential bread that takes up space) out from the crust and tossed it to the side to enable maximum sausage-and-peppers capacity for his sandwich.

  “They’ve been making that list for years.”

  “Years?!?” The muffled shout sent oil cascading onto the counter.

  “Yeah, since, like, the ’90s.”

  “Oh, Madonne!” (Translation: Oh God! Oh Hell! Oh Jeez! Literally: Mother of God, Holy Mother, Holy Mary Mother of Christ, Jesus.)

  Text from Maria <3 <3: Oh okay don’t respond. Have fun with the sluts!

  And on it went until both of us were lying—white lyin’ by omission, I suppose—about our evening plans and acting as if the hordes of the opposite sex showed up unexpectedly and completely uninvited. Girls’ movie night ended up meeting baseball players at Chipotle; poker night included buying alcohol for the freshman girls—Pierce Stone had a lucrative business making fake IDs he adopted from his older brother—and drinking that alcohol with the freshman girls without ever touching the cards or chips.

  “Hey, Vic.” Julie Fischer plopped down next to me on Rosenblatt’s basement couch. “Ivanka, like, thinks you’re like, really hot.” I guess my metamorphoses into “hotness” predated my scheduled triumphant Th
anksgiving break return from college when I would descend into Rosenblatt’s basement with cheekbones up to my ears and a jawline that could sharpen a broadsword.

  “Oh yeah?” I peeked over my shoulder and saw the pretty blonde drinking vodka like water, her butt a perfect perk popping out from her black So Lows.

  The female contingent of the Jew Crew had done this every so often, where they would “adopt” a girl from outside the pack and include her in their rendezvous and soirees—yes, exactly like Clueless and Mean Girls—and what I could only assume to be late-night lingerie-clad, pillow-fighting slumber parties.

  I could have her if I was single.

  I watched as Pierce Stone laid his hand right on the small of her back, as if it helped him hear her better while she spoke into his ear.

  Text from Maria <3 <3: And a few of the football players showed up. Just an FYI.

  Text to Maria <3 <3: HOW THE FUCK COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME?!?

  Text to Maria <3 <3: What the fuck is wrong with you????

  Text from Maria <3 <3: VICTOR, OMG It is NOT a big deal.

  Text from Maria <3 <3: Just answer the phone.

  My phone rang. Meat Loaf’s angelic voice did nothing to soothe my rage.

  “What are you so upset about? I just sat with them at lunch.”

  “Oh, okay, so you think it’s juuuust that you sat with them, huh?”

  “Uh, yeah. That’s it.”

  “Oh my God, Ria! You really think that? It’s like, so much more than that. It’s that you sat with them just to, ya know, spite me.”

  “Maybe if you didn’t make such a big deal out of it, ya know? It wouldn’t matter that I sat with Mikey and Tyreek and…”

  “Tyreek was there?!”

  “Yes, he was there, Victor. He’s friends with us. Ya know what? I can’t deal with this right now. I gotta get ready for practice. I’ll text you later.”

  “Don’t hang…”

  Click.

  Knock, knock, knock. “Victor?” my mother’s muffled voice came through the bedroom door. “Vic? What are you two arguing about?”

  “Nothing, Ma!”

  “Well, come on, it can’t be that important. What could Maria possibly have done?”

  “Ma! Please!”

  “Okay, okay,” she said, walking away from the door. “But you’re gonna lose her.”

  My mother’s comment struck a chord. If I didn’t make some grand gesture of remorse, I would lose her. As if I were a troubadour in twelfth-century France, I rushed to my desk and began to click and clack away on my RAZR—my quill and ink—concocting an ode to my Maria.

  Text to Maria <3 <3: Pain he feels for his Maria, his muse, his faraway love. He longs for her, like a crackling fire, in the hearth, in the dead of winter. Saddened, he aches, imagining the plains and mountains, lakes and deserts that separate him from his faraway love.

  Chivalry is not dead! Chivalry is more alive than ever! I am Jaufre Rudel; I am the Yellow Knight.

  None are like her, none can match her grace, God’s perfect mold—Maria. Never shall he know a love like hers. No matter the distance, no matter the obstacles and barriers and sharp, crushing impediments. Never shall he—

  My phone unexpectedly went off. I answered with a big smile.

  “Hey babe.” I am the scribe of love.

  “Victor, we need to talk.”

  I could hear a whispering voice of encouragement on the other end of the line, a mysterious specter most certainly anti-Victor.

  “Kaley, I’ll be fine. Just… can you please go?” she said away from the phone.

  “Rie, what is it? What happened?” She started to cry—I knew the sound well, that choked-up dainty weeping I heard every day during the year before she left. “What the fuck happened? Who hurt you?”

  I imagined Tyreek Jackson’s massive hands curled around her throat. “I’ll kill him!”

  “Stop it, Victor! That isn’t why I’m upset.”

  “What is it?”

  Nothing.

  “What is it, Rie? What happened? You can tell…”

  “This is just… this is hard.”

  “Yeah, but we knew that. We knew this…”

  “No. Victor, you don’t get what… what I’m trying to say…”

  “Just say it.”

  “Victor this… isn’t…”

  “Say it!”

  “It’s over!”

  I dropped to the floor and leaned up against the bed, my legs kicked out in front of me, childlike. Heat was building in my face as my innards turned to a gelatinous mush. “Over? Maria, we’re in love.”

  “…”

  “Say that you love me.”

  “…”

  “Maria… do you love me?”

  “… No, Victor.”

  I was reduced to nothing. I was a beetle, a cockroach; send in my family to stomp me out. Perhaps I should’ve seen this coming and taken my head out of the sand during the approaching tidal wave, but hand to God, I thought that even throughout every fight and jealous spat, during each screaming match when we would hang up the phone on each other or text battle that reached capitalized threats, and every Saturday night that I imagined her out, gorgeous and radiant, as men from the West slowly tried to take her away from me, I thought that Hell was everywhere without her, still, and that we would be together forever.

  “Victor, can you say something, please?”

  All of the framed photographs of Maria and I had been removed from my dresser and the stuffed animals we exchanged right before she left for college taken from my bed. I sat at my desk, where a black-and-white printout of us at a Devils game, my arm around her back, her head resting on my shoulder, still remained, curling from the un-thumbtacked bottom—Mom had missed one.

  I took the picture from my tack board and tore it down the center like Sinead O’Conner with a photo of the Pope—it didn’t make me feel any better.

  Text from Karl: How are you doing?

  After Maria and I broke up, I texted Karl and told him that I loved him. He had been checking up on me periodically ever since.

  Text from Karl: Want to hang tonight?

  I deactivated my Facebook and maybe that was the tell, or maybe it was some other force that perpetuates rumors and gossip throughout the halls of high schools, but I was immediately peppered with questions of “What happened?” followed by “You guys were, like, perfect for each other. I thought you’d get married.”

  “She cheated on me!” I wanted to announce over the loudspeaker. “That’s right! She… she fucked her way through the Sun Devil roster”—football or baseball, I wouldn’t need to specify—“and got… got choked out of her mind!”

  But I didn’t have anything juicy or scandalous as ammunition to demonize Maria, so I fell back on old reliable, that artfully crafted excuse: “Oh, she just went crazy.” And the conversation would end.

  The pattern of noises—electric garage door open, humming humming humming of a V8 engine, door squeeeeak open, bump bump bump bump bump bump bump up the basement steps, knock, knock: “Victor, honey, you in there? Can I come in?” Swish. “How are you feeling, my prince?”

  “Victor.” Britney nestled her way around my mother in the doorway without skipping a beat. “Mom says that you and Maria broke up. I’m so sorry!”

  “Britney, go give your big brother a hug.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered in my ear as she hugged me in my desk chair.

  “Thank you, Brit.”

  “Awww. Okay, how are you doing?” my mother asked, trying to find her ringing phone in her pocketbook.

  “I puked.”

  “Where, at school?” asked Mom.

  “At lunch.”

  “Where did you go to lunch?”

  “The Deli.”

  “
You make it to a bathroom?”

  “Barely.”

  “Okay, honey, want some soup? Go take a hot shower and I’ll make you some soup.”

  My phone rang emitting the high-pitched vocals of the Four Seasons’ December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night).

  Click. “Hey, Dad.”

  “Hey pal, heard you got a little sick at lunch?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, take the day off from lifting. Or maybe go back and get a lift in. It might be just what you need. What’s that? Hold on, my friend. Who? Okay, well tell him I’ll call him back, but my hands are tied here. Okay, well tell him I’m in a meeting. Sorry, pal. Hey, we’ll hang and watch the game tonight.” He didn’t specify which one. “Nana made some manigawt (translation: manicotti). I’m gonna pick it up after work. Maybe I’ll swing by and get you. She’d love to see ya. What? Ahh, maanuggia! Okay okay. Hey Vito, I gotta run and deal with this. Ciao.”

  I started to feel better after my shower, uplifted even, like Maria had done me a favor by breaking up with me: Now I’ll be free to fuck my way through college and I even have a few months left to scum. Until I checked my phone.

  Text from 973-555-7767

  I was, once again, the cockroach.

  The towel dropped from my waist as I rushed to open the message: How are you doing? I sat on the toilet, already beginning to sweat from the steam, and I was mush, cockroach and mush, as I slid off the porcelain and back to the floor where I belonged.

  I eventually got to my feet as if re-learning to walk and click-clacked on my RAZR.

  Text to 973-555-7767: I’ve decided I want you back.

  I said it as if this entire schism had been in my control. As if I had, in fact, parted ways with her.

  Text from 973-555-7767: Please don’t, Victor.

  I threw on a pair of sweatpants and a grease-stained Star Tavern t-shirt and left for the kitchen to retrieve my soup and retreat back to my room or the depths of the basement. But as I approached the hall, I could hear my mother sniffling and see her wipe away tears.

  I knew she liked Maria, but I didn’t think it would…

  “Oh, hello, my prince. Your soup is in the microwave. Maybe nuke it for another minute if it isn’t warm enough.”