Tell It to Naomi

by Daniel Ehrenhaft

  Now the auditorium wasn’t as quiet anymore.

  A murmur rippled through the crowd.

  It grew louder and louder.

  My heart began to thump again.

  Now they got it.

  I glanced at the back row.

  Celeste stood up. She stared right at me. The look on her face was about as close to pure revulsion as I’d ever seen. She stormed out.

  “Wait!” I yelled at her. “Hold on—”

  I felt a hand clamp around my arm.

  It belonged to Joel Newbury.

  “I don’t know what you and your sister are trying to pull here, but you’re both in big trouble,” he said through clenched teeth.

  Principal Fairfax appeared onstage beside him.

  “My office, fifteen minutes,” he snapped at me.

  “Uh … okay.”

  Suddenly the stage was crawling with people. I couldn’t get a grip on the situation. Time seemed to accelerate. Naomi ran out and started pleading with both Joel and the principal—but about what, I don’t know. I didn’t even hear what she was saying. All I know is that somewhere in the fracas, Joel let go of me.

  I took the opportunity to dash backstage.

  So, I’ll probably be expelled, I thought, crouching low in the shadows. Maybe even thrown in some kind of juvenile prison. But, hey, I bet I can make myself useful there! People in prison need advice, don’t they? Sure—

  Naomi poked her head through the curtains. She smiled at me.

  “Dave, I’ll meet you at home, okay?” she whispered quickly. “I’ll soften Mom and Aunt Ruth up. So don’t you worry. I’m so proud of you. I love—”

  “Naomi!” somebody barked, grabbing her. “This isn’t the story I wanted…”

  Her face vanished.

  The curtains fluttered shut.

  Okay, I told myself. Okay. Just relax.

  I knew I had to look on the bright side, being the eternal optimist that I was. At least Naomi hadn’t completed her last sentence in front of four hundred people.

  * * *

  I was less than twenty feet from Principal Fairfax’s office when I heard footsteps behind me in the hall.

  I picked up my pace.

  The footsteps grew louder.

  Crap. There was no use trying to escape. I knew what was coming, too: one of those girls out in the auditorium had waited for me as I’d hid backstage for twenty minutes, and then had followed me as I’d snuck through the halls—no, wormed my way through the halls (to worm being the only verb fitting for a worm)——and now she was about to bawl me out or slap me around.

  And I deserved it.

  I should consider myself lucky, though. If I only had to deal with one furious tirade or act of violence before I was expelled, I’d he getting off easy. Everybody in that auditorium wanted to bawl me out or slap me around. But even so, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel like a criminal awaiting the guillotine. I hung my head. I steeled myself and turned …

  And found myself face to face with Olga Romanoff.

  “What’s up, Naomi?” she said flatly

  I swallowed. “Hey.”

  “That was a nice scam you pulled,” she said.

  “I know. I’m sorry. Really.”

  “Yeah, that’s what you said back in the auditorium.” Surprisingly, she sounded bemused. “Some speech you gave.”

  “Uh . .

  “You know what the weird thing is?” she asked. “I finally got rid of him. Your advice helped. I can’t believe it, but it did. I mean, damn. Who would have ever thought that a little punk like you could help somebody like me? Look at you! How could you help me?”

  Help?

  I blinked, not comprehending in the least. “I don’t know,” I squeaked. “That’s good, though … I guess? That I helped you? Right?”

  “Right,” she said. “I guess.”

  “Uh … which ‘him’ is this, if you don’t mind my asking? I’m sorry—”

  “My boyfriend.” Her dark eyes bored directly into my own.

  I wracked my brains trying to figure out who or what she was talking about. But all I could manage to say—in classic idiotic Dave Rosen fashion—was “You have a boyfriend?”

  “Yes, it is hard to believe, isn’t it?” she asked sarcastically.

  “No, no.” My face turned bright red. “God, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that at all. It’s just—I—I mean, I’ve never seen you with a … uh—well, I just always see you with those chicks from the lit—sorry, girls from the lit club.”

  She laughed. “You know something? You’re a lot more articulate in e-mails than you are in person. You talk like a dope.”

  “I …” On second thought, a guillotine might have been preferable to this. “I guess I do,” I mumbled.

  “My boyfriend—my ex-boyfriend—goes to Franklin,” she said. “That’s why you never saw him. But you do know him.”

  “I do?”

  “You know him through me. I’ll give you a hint. He smells. He told me not to buy candy for the Halloween party, because he thought it would make me fatter than I already am. He wanted to sneak beer into the party instead. I was very … ‘sick of’ him.” She made air quotes.

  Holy—

  She might as well have slapped me.

  “You?” I shrieked, my eyes bulging. “You’re S.O.M.B?”

  She laughed again. “I guess now the artist formerly known as,” she replied.

  “Bu-but—But you’re not fat!” I sputtered, looking her up and. down. (Okay, I admit to having compared her to one of those wooden Russian dolls, but they aren’t so much fat as stout. Or solid.) “You don’t have a beard of zits! I hardly see any zits at all! Three, on your chin! Tiny ones!”

  “Gee, you really know how to sweet-talk a lady,” she said as dryly as ever.

  “I … no … ugh.” If I blushed any more, my face would explode.”All right. Forget that you aren’t fat and ugly—because you really aren’t. You act totally different in e-mails than you do in person. I mean, come on. You can’t blame me for being surprised, can you?”

  Her eyes narrowed, but she was grinning. “Hello? Isn’t this a case of the pot calling the kettle black?” She gave me a quick once-over. “I’m looking at you, and I’m not seeing a woman named Naomi. I’d say you acted a little differently in e-mails too, there, buddy. Who should be surprised here?”

  I shook my head hopelessly. “But you never mentioned books or anything when you wrote in! You never mentioned the lit club, either! You never mentioned that coffee shop—”

  “And you never mentioned being a guy,” she shot back.

  “Yeah, but …” Air flowed from my lungs. I wasn’t even sure why I was arguing. I didn’t know what I was thinking. I was too deflated.

  “Listen, I don’t mean to give you a hard time,” she said. “Well, maybe a little.” She patted my shoulder, teasingly. “Okay. I know you feel like an asshole—actually, I don’t know how you feel. Hey, have you ever read that book by the guy who pretended to be … ? Oh, never mind. I just want to say this: don’t worry about me. I’m cool. A little freaked out, yes—but cool. But you shouldn’t be surprised about me, either. I mean, just because I’m in the lit club doesn’t mean … Forget it. Just go back and read what we wrote to each other. I bet things will start to make sense. You’ll see.”

  I nodded, staring down at the floor. Once again, I didn’t have the slightest idea what she was talking about. I only knew that I really must have been deflated—or at least overwhelmed—because there a was a good chance I might start crying. And that had been happening way too much lately.

  “Did you keep the e-mails I sent you?” she asked quietly.

  I looked up. “Yeah, of course. They were some of my favorites…” I swallowed.

  “Well, good. Because I kept the ones you sent—”

  Principal Fairfax’s door crashed open.

  Oh, God.

  He hadn’t just been waiting for me. He’d been stewing. Compa
red to how his forehead had looked back in the auditorium … this was beyond cracked-up washcloth material. Now it looked like a giant raisin: a bright red one.

  “Go in and sit down.” He stepped aside and shot a sour glance at Olga. “And you, young lady—go home.”

  Olga’s eyes met mine.

  “Good luck,” she mouthed.

  “Thanks,” I whispered in return.

  A smile spread across my face.

  “Now!” Principal Fairfax spat.

  He grabbed my shirt and yanked me into the office.

  I managed to catch one last glimpse of Olga. She smiled back at me, puzzled. She was probably wondering how I could possibly manage to look so cheerful, given the circumstances.

  It wasn’t because she’d wished me luck.

  It was because for a moment there, she’d made the possibility of expulsion seem like a crisis that maybe—just maybe—I could cope with. Or try to cope with, anyway.

  She’d helped.

  And really, who would have ever thought that somebody like Olga Romanoff could help a little punk like me?

  The verdict: four days’ suspension.

  The upshot: massive relief.

  I’ll spare you the details of what went on inside Principal Fairfax’s office. (Enraged rants are never very interesting.) Suffice it to say that he basically recapped everything I’d been telling myself for the past month—that I was a liar, that I had some serious apologizing to do to every single person who’d written to me, that I’d betrayed the school’s trust, et cetera. He concluded by telling me that “honesty and honor code come from the same root” and that I should think about that during my absence.

  I told him I would.

  And I meant it.

  I wanted to think about honesty.

  Unfortunately, by the time I reached 433 East Ninth Street, I had other worries on my mind—namely my mother and my aunt.

  Suspension beat expulsion, no doubt about it. Punishment-wise, they weren’t even in the same ballpark. But I couldn’t really see myself putting such a positive spin on the day’s events for Mom and Aunt Ruth. (“Just think, you guys! I’ll have the rest of the week off to help you do chores around the house!”) And I knew that whatever fury Principal Fairfax had unleashed on me back at school … well, that was just an appetizer before the main course. What waited for me upstairs was a Don Vito’s-sized serving of pure, unadulterated wrath.

  The front door of the apartment building suddenly flew open.

  “Dude!”

  Cheese barreled down the steps, shaking his head. It was clear he’d been waiting in the lobby for me. Before I could manage a word, he grabbed my arm and hustled me down the street.

  “I wouldn’t go up there if I were you.” he warned. He laughed shakily. “I … uh … I’d let your mom and aunt settle down a little bit.”

  “Oh,” I said. I decided not to question why he was making the effort to tell me this, considering we were barely friends anymore. In times of emergency it’s usually best just to run with the situation.

  “I could hear them all the way down in my apartment,” he said.

  I swallowed. “What are they doing?”

  Cheese paused at the end of the block, glancing over his shoulder. “They aren’t listening to Hendrix, I’ll tell you that,” he muttered.

  “Did… um . .

  “They’re freaking out on Naomi,” he said.

  Uh-oh. I gazed back at the building, rubbing my moist palms on my jeans. “Did you hear what they were saying?”

  “Something about ‘the column, the column.’ That was all I really understood.”

  “Oh.” I looked down.

  “I know about the column, Dave,” he said.

  My head jerked up. “What?”

  “I know that you’re Naomi, too.”

  Blood pounded toward my skull. “Uh … did you just, uh—?”

  “Did you really think you could fool me?” he interrupted. He laughed indignantly, folding his jacketed arms across his chest. “I thought you’d give me a little more credit than that, Dave. We go back a long ways.”

  “But … But …” I couldn’t speak.

  “Come on,” he said. “The Bad Kid had the exact same problems as I did, but only in chick form. You know what I’m saying?”

  I gaped at him.

  The blood in my head abruptly made a U-turn. My face went white.

  Finding out that Olga Romanoff was S.O.M.B. was one thing. That I could believe. (Sort of. I was still grappling with it.) But this … No. This was as if a cache of homemade tattoo ink had exploded at the Spiral Lounge. This was a case of strange forces conspiring against me twice in a row. Back to back. This was too much.

  “You?” I croaked. “You’re the …”

  Cheese laughed again. “Come on! You know me. I have a taste for the unexpected. I get freaky in all sorts of ways—ways the average man can’t fathom. But I did feel a little funny about pretending to be a chick. That is, until I realized that you were doing it, too. Then I was like, hey! Maybe every sick visionary has to pretend to be a chick in order to reach that Higher Level of Being. I mean, I always maintained that you don’t talk like other guys. But in this case, you went deep, son. Deep. You made me go deep, too. You know what I’m saying?”

  I started laughing. I couldn’t help myself.

  “No, Cheese.” I said. “I don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “Let me put it this way: yes, I have a crush on your sister. I admit it. Can you blame me? She’s hot! She’s a sexy, high-style woman, son! But it’s not like I’m pining over her or anything. She’s practically my sister, too!”

  I shook my head.”Cheese, I’m—”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, let me finish. I’m on a roll. See, I overheard Naomi talking with her boyfriend out on the stoop one day. You know, about the column. Oh—by the way, her boyfriend is chump change, right? And I’m a bank-issued stack of crisp hundreds? But anyway, I thought, damn, she stole my idea! I want my fifteen percent! No, but seriously, I was like, I should do something here. I should write in and ask her for advice. Because I need advice. I need to know why the hell things got so screwed up between you and me. And who better to answer that but your sister? So that’s what I did. But I couldn’t write in as a guy, because guys don’t write in to advice columns. But as soon as you wrote back … I knew. That’s why I acted so weird when I saw you on Friday and Saturday. I knew, but I didn’t know if you knew. You know?”

  I nodded.

  I wasn’t sure what else to do.

  That stupid lump started to creep up my throat again. If it hadn’t belonged there before, it definitely didn’t belong there now. I tried to gulp it back down. My brain was like a slot machine, whirring with a blur of dialogue I’d been craving to start for the past month. How long had he felt bad about all this? Did this mean we were really friends again, the same way we were before? And along those lines, did he want to introduce me to his new friends?

  But of all the burning questions, the loser that came up was:

  “How come you didn’t invite me to the party?”

  I couldn’t believe it. Forget getting rid of the lump: I needed that Cosmic Rewind Button.

  Cheese sighed. “I … I don’t know.”

  Neither of us spoke.

  After a minute he looked at me.

  “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, Dave. The mind is a terrible thing. The mind is a terrible thing.”

  “You’re telling me,” I mumbled. I drew in a shaky breath. “Sorry about that. But listen, um—here’s something I want to say. This band you’re starting … if you want a built-in mailing list, I’ve got the e-mail addresses of about four hundred chicks.”

  His eyes lit up.”Dude! That is huge—”

  “I’m kidding, Cheese. But I am psyched to check you guys out. I think my next big gig will be as a rock critic. You know … a rock critic with a mission—one who hates singer/songwriters but who loves real bands, esp
ecially bands with live onstage gravy incidents. I’m through as an advice columnist. And I definitely need a second job. Going to school by itself just doesn’t cut it anymore.”

  He smiled. It was the same kind of smile I’d given Olga Romanoff. “Dave! You’re a freaking genius! You just came up with our band name!”

  “I did?”

  “Yeah! The Gravy Incident! Oh, man, I knew you had skills, but this takes the cake… So now you have to review us. And you’ll have to meet all the band members in person, right? It’s the only way you can get the full, decadent, debauched history of the Gravy Incident’s formation.”

  “Well, yeah, of course,” I said. “I definitely have to meet them all. I’m especially interested in how your guitarist doesn’t have a guitar that works … but I guess I’ll just have to let him use mine. I have a real guitar: the same kind of guitar that Hendrix played at Woodstock. See, that’s how I intend to scandalize you—by giving you your band name and lending you my guitar, and then putting it all in print.”

  Cheese brushed his bangs out of his face. “That is a sick story, son!” he cried excitedly. “Mike can smash his own lame guitar at our first gig. At my birthday party! And then he’ll have to play yours. Then, when you see the Gravy Incident play … well, we’re both gonna go far. You’ll take us to the top. It’ll be like when Rolling Stone gave the White Stripes five stars. It’ll be a seminal event in rock history”

  “Right,” I said. My voice was strained. No matter how hard I tried to swallow, that lump wouldn’t recede. It had a mind of its own. I just had to ignore it. “I, just … uh, I’m worried I won’t be allowed to come to the party. I don’t see Mom and Aunt Ruth letting me have fun anytime in the foreseeable future.”