The Expectations

by Alexander Tilney

“So where do I go in Boston?”

  “Where?”

  “Yeah, like is there an easy place?”

  “Little Benny boy, trying to get wet!”

  “Shut up,” laughed Ben.

  “Lemme see…Yeah, right, there’s a good store on Beach Street. Hold on.”

  Teddy told him how to navigate once he left South Station.

  “Just act like you fucking own the place, man. Think to yourself that it’s yours the entire time you’re in there, while they watch you choose stuff, just think that you’re doing them a favor by letting them be in the store while you’re in the store too. You already own the vodka, they’ve just been keeping it for you. It’s your fucking store. They only get to be there because you say so.”

  Ben nodded there in the basement, wanting to soak in this confidence and prevent it from draining out again.

  “How’s it been going out there?” Ben asked quietly.

  “What, now that we’re broke?”

  Ben laughed.

  “Yeah, now that we’re broke.”

  “It’s good, I guess. I’ve found some cool guys.”

  “Cool.”

  Teddy heard through the phone that Ben was missing the opportunities for life hidden in the curtains of St. James.

  “So how are you dealing?” said Teddy. “They put you on aid, right? And you’re still not going back to squash?”

  “Nah. I mean, you stopped playing, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  Ben let the silence go on. “I mean,” Teddy said finally, “Price wanted me to keep playing, he made the pitch to me so many times, but I just had other things I wanted to do.”

  Ben felt protective now. He wondered if his brother had made himself believe it.

  “Just—” Teddy went on, “by the time sixth form came around, if I had been up the night before scoring beaver and getting wet, I always wanted to be able to take a nap before Seated. That’s how I wanted to arrange my afternoons.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “So—”

  “So how did you work it out there? Did Kenyon put you on aid?”

  “No, dude.”

  “Then what?”

  “They paid Kenyon.”

  Ben wanted to ask him to say it again, but he didn’t speak.

  “They had to pay Kenyon. I mean, Kenyon doesn’t know who we are. You know? We are SJS, but here, I’m just another…” Teddy remembered the basements of the quad dorms, sitting there alone talking to their parents. “Put yourself in their shoes, Ben. What would you do?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How do you think they’re doing?”

  “Hey, Teddy, someone’s been waiting for the phone.”

  “Good luck in Chinatown, little cub. You own that store. It’s been in our family for generations.”

  * * *

  On the map, Chinatown looked like every other neighborhood. They sat on one of the long wooden islands in South Station, Ben holding the tourist map in front of him, Hutch and Evan looking on from either side. It was strange for Ben to be in a place with so many people suddenly, and under the high ceilings of the station it sounded like an aquarium.

  “All right, so Teddy said Beach Street, which is here…” Ben ran his finger down the street to show them. They hadn’t realized how close Chinatown was to the station.

  “All right. All right, cool,” said Evan. “So like, do we go in all at once or do we each go in one after the other?”

  Ben went to answer but Hutch answered first. He thought the store would get more suspicious about the sheer volume of alcohol if the three of them had everything on the counter at once.

  Ben said, “I think they’ll catch on by the third fifteen-year-old in a row who comes in to buy five handles of vodka. Let’s just go in and get it done. I mean, we’re college kids buying for a party, right?”

  All day they had been checking incessantly to make sure they had their IDs, and now they checked again. Ben had borrowed the ID of a fifth-former in Woodruff, Jamie Mason, and he thought that he actually did look a lot like the picture. They headed out. Just this much farther south the air contained the clammy hopes of spring now.

  Right away they saw the concrete gate to Chinatown with the green pagoda roof. They passed under the arch and saw nests of signs in Chinese on every building all the way down Beach. Ben wished the sidewalks were full enough to conceal them. They passed a couple neon restaurants, but then there was a Subway, too, and Chinatown seemed not all that different from the rest of the city.

  Almost immediately they were at the place. Ben had worried that he would be leading the other two around for hours, but now he somehow wished it had been more of a search. A yellow sign with red letters announced PACIFIC LIQUORS, with red Chinese characters underneath that presumably said the same thing. Three boxes of Veuve Clicquot were faded to yellow in the window display, and the glass of the door was clouded with adhesive and paper residue from dozens of stickers attached and removed. They all checked to see if they still had their IDs.

  Hutch pushed the door open and brass bells on a string clattered, and they all walked in with their heads up, each of them with his empty duffel bag over his left shoulder. Ben tried to exude his ownership of the store. He tried to wear Teddy’s body as he looked at the person behind the counter—a Chinese boy almost their age, it seemed—and got a bad feeling; kids left in charge of things follow the rules.

  Ben remembered the different times he had been into liquor stores with his dad, and there was almost the same smell now—a high, slightly sour cork odor, but he could tell that a cat also lived in this store. The different kinds of liquor were grouped together, whiskey and gin and vodka and rum and tequila, each with its own bright wire shelving unit, various brands from top to bottom, and then two shelves with a scrum of liqueurs and other nonsense. Along the other two walls and on a small island in the middle of the store were various kinds of wine. Ben, Hutch, and Evan focused on vodka, their backs turned to the cashier, and Ben could feel how, with no one else in the store, the full weight of the cashier’s scrutiny lay over them.

  So. They looked at the different kinds. Brand names and prices in black marker on notecards taped to the metal shelves. English on top and then Chinese characters underneath—Ben wondered whether the characters on each label just listed the price, or whether they were transliterations of the words “Smirnoff” and “Absolut.” Those brands were off the table, obviously. Quickly they arrived at Randolph’s, which came in a plastic bottle with a hand grip molded into the back, and whose label featured a horse-drawn stagecoach. $8.99 per.

  They had money for fifteen bottles. They had promised five different guys that they would buy for them. In Hutch’s room as the others watched, Ben had taken out his own three twenty-dollar bills—the check for his new balance cashed at the bookstore—and slid them into the envelope. But here at Pacific Liquors there were only twelve bottles on the wire shelf. In two loads each, they brought all the bottles up and set them on the counter, white melamine worn down in patches to the dark brown underlayer. The floor behind the counter was slightly raised like a pharmacist’s platform; the boy looked down at them.

  “Hi,” said Evan, “do you have more of the Randolph’s in the back?”

  “There’s no back.” Ben had expected him to barely speak English. Around his neck were the biggest pair of headphones Ben had ever seen, with plush leather earcups that reminded Ben of Ahmed’s couch.

  “Sorry?”

  “There’s no back room in the store. Our deliveries come through this door and we stock the shelves with the cases still on the floor.”

  Hutch said, “But do you have any more of the Randolph’s?” Ben heard a pleading in his voice.

  “Because there’s no back, that would mean that we only have what’s on the shelf.”

  Hutch said, “Are you sure?” and the boy looked at him with ancient boredom.

  “We can just get another kind,” said Evan.

  “
All the other kinds are more expensive,” said Ben, not turning away from the Chinese boy. “We said we’d get fifteen.”

  “It’s fine,” said Hutch, “we’ll just go somewhere else for the other three.”

  “But this is the place,” said Ben. The two of them turned and looked at him. “This is the least expensive place.”

  Evan said, “Listen, we’ll get these twelve and two Beefeater, and so we get fourteen, not fifteen, it’s fine.” He retrieved the two additional bottles and put them on the counter. They turned back to the cashier. The boy’s hair was so black and smooth that it looked polished. “So we’ll just take these.”

  “Can I see your IDs?” It arrived in Ben’s mind with the authority of a closing gate: one of them should have come in and bought it all.

  They all handed up their IDs. The kid looked straight at Evan.

  “When were you born?”

  “Nineteen seventy-two.”

  “What month?”

  “…January.”

  “Why did it take you so long to answer?”

  “I knew it. It’s my birthday.”

  “If you were twenty-two, you’d be annoyed that I was asking so many questions.”

  “I’m just trying to ans—”

  “Do you want our money or not?” said Ben. “We can just go to the place near the Common.”

  “So why didn’t you?”

  “Like he said, you’ve got the best prices.”

  “That costs the same everywhere,” he said, glancing down at the bottles.

  “Hey,” said Ben. He counted softly as he pointed to pairs of bottles. “One hundred and thirty dollars: Yes or no?”

  “If our store loses its license, a hundred and thirty dollars—Who cares?”

  “We’re twenty-one!” Hutch said. “You’re not going to lose your license!”

  The boy laughed.

  Out on the street, Evan put his hands on his knees. “Fuck! Fuuuuuck! What the fuck are we going to do? We can’t go back to school unwet.”

  “We got unlucky,” said Ben. “There are other stores in Chinatown.”

  “You said this was the place,” Hutch said to him quietly. “You said this was the place.”

  “Teddy said this was the place.”

  “I guess it doesn’t matter what he said.”

  Ben looked up at the bright stripe of sky between buildings already in dusk. He had so few chances left. He knew Alice wouldn’t care if he was able to buy, but he wanted this to impress her anyway.

  Evan said, “I don’t know, another place?”

  Hutch tsked. “No one’s going to think we’re older than that guy thought we were, dude.”

  “But maybe someone will care less about taking fake IDs,” Evan answered.

  “Exactly,” said Ben. “That kid was the problem. The regular owner would have totally sold to us.”

  “You said that was the easiest place,” Hutch said to Ben. “That was the place anyone could knock over.”

  They chewed sandwiches in Au Bon Pain. The employees were without affect. There was a hectic family next to them and several people eating alone and reading or just looking out the window onto the train station.

  Ben felt the other two figuring out what they were going to say when they got back to school.

  “Look,” Ben said.

  “What?”

  “That guy.” He had to do it before he could stop. “Hey, ’scuse me,” said Ben. “Hey, man.”

  The man had his head resting on the wall behind him, and he didn’t lift it off as he turned his eyes to Ben. The other two came up just behind Ben and he could feel their reluctance.

  The smell of the man came to Ben: his sweat was different from sweat at the gym. The man’s eye-whites were the color of year-old newspaper, and his Southpole puffy coat had white wavy rings on it, as though it had dried after soaking in salt water.

  “Hey, listen. Could you help us out?”

  The man seemed wary, as though trying to anticipate how the boys were going to move.

  “Could you help us out?”

  “Yeah?”

  Ben lowered his voice. “Can you buy us alcohol?”

  The man passed his eyes over all their faces again, and then he smiled. His teeth were lighter than his eyes.

  “You want me to walk in somewhere and break the law for you?”

  They laughed fearfully and nodded.

  The man didn’t move, didn’t lean toward them, and his smile didn’t change. Ben wasn’t sure if he had understood.

  “Nah, I’m good here.” He closed his eyes again.

  “We’ll pay you,” Ben said.

  The man opened his eyes again and looked at Ben. Ben held his gaze.

  “Where’re you thinking to buy from?” the man asked.

  Hutch started but Ben cut him off. “Chinatown’s right here.”

  The man lifted his head off the wall. Ben expected him to spit on the table.

  “The birthday party got canceled without me, huh?”

  Ben tried to change his expression to seem like he got some joke. The man laughed and then coughed, a sound like shucking corn, and in unison all three boys leaned away.

  Outside they all stood underneath the Chinatown arch. Everyone passing them, white and Chinese, looked at them in the expiring light. The streetlamps came on. They approached Pacific Liquors, but then Evan said the kid would recognize the duffel bags.

  “Don’t have all night, fellas.”

  “All right, it’s fine. Just let him use one of them,” Ben said.

  They told the guy what they wanted: just the twelve, keep it simple, and he could have the money left over.

  The three boys started to spread out. Hutch’s hand went into his jacket pocket to take out the money, and Evan walked past the entrance to the store and stood on the other side. Ben walked to the edge of the sidewalk. Ben realized as the money came out that he was the last barrier in case the man decided to take the cash and run. Just as Ben realized it, he saw that the man understood what he was thinking too.

  Then he went into the store. Ben was immediately convinced that there was a back exit he hadn’t noticed and that they would never see the guy again. But a few minutes later he came out with the duffel loaded down, and without looking at them he walked slowly farther into Chinatown. They followed as nonchalantly as possible and then they all turned a corner and the guy lowered the bag to the ground. Evan knelt down and unzipped the bag, counted the twelve bottles, and nodded.

  The guy pointed to the bag.

  “Careful with this,” he said.

  “Sorry?”

  “This is sadness waiting for you.”

  “Okay,” Hutch said. “You got your money, right?”

  The man pressed his side pocket. “So I apologize. For making you all unhappier.”

  “That’s all right.”

  He walked away toward the arch, and Ben thought they should have asked his name, but he hadn’t asked their names either.

  * * *

  On the way back to school, with the bags safely underneath their feet, Hutch finally seemed to look at Ben with durable esteem. When Evan was in the bathroom at the back of the bus, Hutch said quietly, “That was right, man.”

  They decided to take everything to Ben’s room to divvy it up because that was closer to the cab drop-off than Woodruff. When they walked in through the back entrance, unseen as far as they could tell, Markson was there coming the other way.

  “Hey, Ben. I’ve been looking for you. Hey, boys.”

  The three of them were still, and Markson looked at the big duffel that Evan Pingree was carrying, and instantly the knowledge of what was inside became plain in everyone’s eyes. Markson smiled and looked down.

  “So come by when you have a second. All right?”

  Ben kept nodding and had a hard time stopping. Finally they were up in his room, and none of them were in the mood to drink, and Ben played “Blue Sky” on repeat as the three of them sat with their
eyes closed, Hutch and Evan on the beautiful couch, Ben in his hard desk chair with his elbows on his knees.

  * * *

  Alice asked him to sit for portraits again, and Ben had the beginning of a new not-caring that made him feel like maybe he could try for her. Why should her refusing prevent him from saying it?

  And then they were in the studio together again. He felt the mass of all the things he wanted to say to her, but instead he sat in that room and stayed quiet.

  “Now the college consultant guy loves that I’m taking photos,” Alice said. “‘This is great for your narrative’ are actually the words that came out of his mouth. ‘This is what sets you apart from all the Asian kids with sixteen hundreds on their SATs.’ Why couldn’t he just leave this alone?”

  “They should know you’re good at it,” Ben said.

  “What if I’m not any good? Why is it important that I’m good? As soon as he said it, the drain opened up under my enthusiasm.”

  “But here we are.”

  “Here we are, still.”

  She started taking pictures, and he imagined going to her room. He would walk to her door and come in without knocking, and she would look up and immediately put some textbook aside and pat a space next to her on the couch—no, nobody pats the space next to them. Maybe instead she would come to his room, and her coming would put him at ease because it would mean she was interested in him, and he would make a joke and she would laugh. He wouldn’t have to strain to smell her smell. He would lean and kiss her, and instead of him making the decision about whether to put his hand on her breast, she would take hold of his hand and pull it there. And then when Ahmed got caught and kicked out, Alice would go to Aston’s office and appeal for a second chance, for aid, but Ben would stop her—his family’s pride—and Alice would never forget him.

  “Um, can you do something else with your face?”

  “Something else?”

  “Yeah, you’ve been looking the same for a while.”

  Ben didn’t move his face.

  “I’m worried about Ahmed.”

  She stood up from behind the camera. “Hanging out with Tommy and those guys?”

  “Yeah, exactly.”

  “I sort of like Tommy, actually.”