Biggie (12 page)

Chapter 22

Cobb Salad

We hop out and I reach into a large red tool box in the bed of the truck. Even though I've had the truck for more than a year, I've never opened my uncle's old tool box. The only time before tonight that I've even moved it was to hose out the truck bed.

Sitting right on top is a thick, silver cord with two worn metal hooks on each side. The cord is surprisingly heavy, causing me to grunt a little when I pull it out. The three guys, two with girlfriends, chit-chat with the three girls as I fiddle with the towline, which is only a couple of feet long.

“I need to back up the truck to the car,” I say.

No one responds with words. Instead, they shuffle their feet close to the road. One of the girls mimes with her arms, most likely retelling the sad story about how they ended up in the ditch.

After backing the truck within a couple feet of the small, green Chevy Cavalier, I am forced to make a decision. To attach the hook, I have do what all fat people hate to do—lie down on the ground. The only way I can safely attach the far hook to the Cavalier is to get down on the cold ditch grass and secure it. This will do two things. One, I become the hero. The guy who saved the girls from massive tow bills and lost time spent shivering in twenty-degree temperatures on the side of the highway.

Two, it forces me to push myself back up. While it's easy for a fat ass to fall, it's not so easy for someone big like me to get back up. I have to do it in shifts. First, I use my arms to pull my chest off the ground. Then, I swing back and forth, trying hard to get my belly off the ground. Eventually as sweat swims all over my body, I get to my knees. This will allow a moment to catch my breath. Then, I kneel for a few seconds. Finally, I push hard on the ground and lift up a knee.

If I can keep my balance, I should be able to reach my feet in one attempt, but nothing is guaranteed. Best-case scenario, I secure the latch and get up in a minute. While sixty seconds in real time isn't much time, sixty seconds in fat-guy-getting-up-off-the-ground time measures out to approximately ten hours.

I could easily avoid this situation by handing the tow cable to Kyle or Killer and let them get the credit.

“You want me to latch that?” Killer asks.

“No,” I say. “I can do it.”

Everyone circles around me in silence. All I can hear as I drop to my knees are cars flying past on the highway. The “vroom” noises are accompanied by shots of chilly mid-November wind. Like an infant, I crawl, pulling the tow cable. As I near the bumper, I drop my head counter-clockwise and slide it under the backside of the compact car. It's not hot or even warm, which makes me think the girls have been stuck for awhile. I see a metal loop and latch the hook. The good news is that I am able to stay on my knees, which should save me several steps in the fat-guy-getting-up process.

Like pistons, my knees rotate backward and I pull my head out. I grab the bumper and pull myself up, holding my breath to avoid any weird grunts or pants. I push down hard on the bumper and pull my knees back, which lift my head, shoulders, and spine. Standing straight up, I look over the car at nothing. In front of me are only dark, empty Iowa fields. I must be able to see for miles. It's while staring that I notice the tow cord is not in my hand, but on the ground next to my tennis shoe. Crap! Here we go again. I close my eyes and begin to bend my knees.

“I got it,” a voice says.

I turn around and one of the girls is locking the other hook onto my truck. “Can I pull it out? It's my car,” she says. “My dad has a truck just like this.”

While I focus, my head nods “yes” without any internal debate. In the dark of a half-moon night, I see she's short. Not midget short, but she would be lucky to convince someone that she's five-foot-three. Despite being height-challenged, she leaps right into the truck, bouncing off the running boards like a gymnast. Through the back window, I can barely see her brown hair. There's a pause, which means she's screwing with my power seat. It's going to take me five minutes to get it back into the perfect spot.

“Biggie, move or you are going to get hit,” Kyle says.

I step back and watch the small car roll out of the ditch.

“Hey, who wants midnight pancakes?” Jet asks.

“I could eat,” says one of the girls.

Although Friday has turned into Saturday, Perkins has few open tables. The hostess seats the seven of us at a rectangle table in the middle of the restaurant. One by one, a boy sits across from a girl until I sit down across from no one. All three of the girls are pretty in their own way. Each one of them is clean cut with straight hair surrounding makeup-covered faces. They each smile at witty and smart-ass comments. None of them is tall. The one on the far end across from Jet might be the tallest, but she's no basketball player.

The Cavalier owner is the shortest of the three and is not really fat, but suffers in comparison to her two friends, who look like animated twigs. She looks like she could be younger than her thinner friends too. Because I was grabbing the tow cord and not involved in the initial chitchat, I don't know their names. I'm sure if I just brought that fact up, they would repeat them, but I keep quiet. Instead of joining the conversation, I sip on the room-temperature water and search for our waitress.

“What's your name?” a girl asks.

“Oh, shit,” Kyle says. “We never introduced Biggie. Biggie, this is Jenna, Amanda, and Courtney—she's the one that drove your truck.”

“Hey,” I say.

“What's your real name?” Courtney asks.

“Henry,” I mutter and quickly take a drink.

“We call him Biggie for reasons you guys can see,” Killer says. “He's a big boy.” Killer stretches out ‘boy' with a low baritone voice.

“Nice to meet you, Henry,” Courtney says.

Choking on water, I cough out, “Nice to meet you, Courtney.”

“Down the wrong tube?” Jenna asks.

With a crooked smile, I say, “Yeah.”

“You know I remember you.” Jenna turns her attention back to Killer.

“You do, huh?” he responds.

“You hit the game-winning shot last year in a basketball game against Madison Lake. That three-pointer ended my little brother's high-school career,” she says.

Crushing an ice cube with his teeth, Killer says, “If you want an apology, you're not going to get one.”

She smiles and shrugs her shoulder. “I'm just saying I remember you, that's all.”

“Hey, I scored twenty-two points in that game,” Jet adds. “You should be dreaming about me.”

“You scored twenty-two, but where were you in crunch time?” Killer asks.

“Driving the lane and kicking out a perfect pass,” Jet claims.

“I don't remember that.” Jenna smiles so big that I can't tell if she is lying to flirt with Jet or really doesn't remember what led up to the game-winning shot.

The waitress, a short, pudgy old lady with two pens slid into her silver-and-black ratty hair, asks us, “What can I get you?”

The guys each order breakfast platters full of pancakes, eggs, bacon, and toast. The girls decide to split a massive plate of fries. It isn't on the menu, but the waitress, with Harriet on her name tag, says she can throw something together.

After Killer told everyone my name was Biggie for reasons everyone can see, I decide against ordering pancakes or fries or meat of any kind. With words that taste like vinegar coming out of my mouth, I say something I never thought I would say in a million years.

“I will take a Cobb salad with French dressing on the side and a large glass of ice water.”

“Biggie, you don't get a salad at midnight at Perkins,” Killer informs me. “It's midnight pancakes. It's a tradition. He's new to our group,” Killer tells the girls. “He's kind of on a trial basis.”

Screw you, I think to myself. I don't even want to be here. If he doesn't want me to sit here and listen to him talk about how great a football and basketball player he is, I can happily leave. Good luck finding a ride home.

“Biggie tells really funny jokes,” Kyle says as Harriet sets down drinks.

My crappy small glass of water is replaced by a big crappy one, still no ice. Everyone else sips Mountain Dew, Diet Pepsi, or coffee.

“Tell us a joke,” Courtney says. “I love jokes.”

My joke telling doesn't come naturally. It takes hours of research on more than a dozen websites to find a handful of funny jokes for Kyle. I normally do the research on Sunday afternoon. I find three or four good ones and share them at the locker. By Thursday, I'm out of good material.

“Tell the one about the butler. I like that one,” Kyle says.

I gulp enough warm tap water to refresh a marathon runner and stare ahead into the eyes of the six-person crowd. They look at me with complete concentration. Three girls, two that probably go to college, and three popular kids from my school, including one who may or may not be screwing the girl of my dreams, wait patiently for a joke that I'm struggling to remember.

There's no turning back now. They are going to keep looking right at me like I'm Dane Cook on a Vegas stage until I say something, so I open my mouth.

“There's this rich couple and they are going to a party on the other side of town, so they tell their butler, Jeeves, that they will be gone all night and he's to watch the house.”

For reasons I can't explain, a couple of people start to smile. Their cheeks get a little red and their eyes light up. The beginning of the joke isn't funny, but they must just be excited with the expectation of laughter.

I continue, “Well, the party is all business talk and cigar smoke, so the wife tells her husband she's going to take a cab ride home.

“When she gets home, the lights are all out and Jeeves is sitting in a chair in the living room. She tells Jeeves to follow her upstairs to her bedroom. She closes the windows and drapes and tells Jeeves to take off her dress.”

The girls look at each other, likely expecting this joke to turn dirty with some hardcore sex action. The giggles under their breaths give me a little confidence and I finish the joke.

“So he takes off her dress. She says, ‘Take off my stockings,' so he takes off her stockings. She says, ‘Take off my bra and panties,' and so he takes off her bra and panties.” Courtney takes a long drink of her Diet Pepsi as I get to the punch line.

“She then looks at him and says, ‘If I ever catch you wearing my clothes again, you're fired.'”

Everyone at the table starts to laugh. Kyle even pounds the table. Courtney laughs, but not into the air. She laughs into the ice cubes buried inside her drink. This causes her to hop in her chair and bobble the glass. She avoids spilling the syrupy brown liquid on the table, but she can't keep pop from getting stuck in her nose. With both hands she covers her nose and coughs like a longtime smoker.

“There's pop coming out of her nose,” Kyle points out. “You know it's a good one, Biggie, when you get pop to come out of a girl's nose.”

While my joke brought some ha-has and chuckles, people are grabbing their sides and laughing hysterically at Courtney's coughing and red face.

Under the table, I pump my fist. As the guys keep hitting on the girls, I look around the restaurant. I can't believe I'm in a Perkin's at 1 a.m. I never thought it could happen with these guys, but it has. The gallons of tap water force me to hit the bathroom. While listening to the various noises one hears in a men's bathroom, I imagine the distance between this urinal and my bedroom.

I am four miles from Cedar Falls, which is fifteen miles from Finch. Twenty miles. Feels farther. I flush the urinal and head over to the sink. As I wash my hands, I sneak a peek at the mirror. My thoughts drift back to Dr. Pence's office, and my goals: the weight loss, the perfect game, Annabelle.

“I have a lot of work to do,” I whisper and head back to our table.

The chairs are empty. The table remains filled with half-empty glasses, sullied spoons, grimy forks, disheveled napkins, and plates filled with leftover pancakes, toast, and scrambled eggs. While the dishes are there, the gang is gone.

“They said you're the rich kid who was going to pay for this.” The pudgy waitress returns.

“I'm not rich. I work at a convenience store,” I mumble.

She sticks the bill in my face. In large red ink, she wrote $62.18.

“You gonna pay the bill or do we have a problem?” she asks, obviously angry about another all-night shift.

Outside, Jet, Kyle, and Killer surround my truck, chatting about God knows what. My blood boils and my nose huffs and puffs like a Spanish bull. I want to grab their shirts, slam them against the truck and scream, “You owe me sixty bucks,” but instead I say, “Where did you go?” An idiotic question which I already have an answer to. I apparently have no spine.

“Out here,” Killer answers anyway. “Kyle, give him the paper.”

Kyle lifts his elbow to showcase a slip of paper wedged between two fingers.

“After you look at that paper, you won't be mad about paying for grub,” Jet claims.

I snag the strip and unfold it. It's a phone number. As if I'm trying to dumb myself down for these guys, I ask another dumb question.

“What is this?”

“It's the combination to the girls' gold safe,” Jet says. “What do you think? We got Courtney's number. She's single like you.”

I have hundreds of girls' numbers in my phone and black binder, so having a girl give me her number is nothing new, but for some reason this sheet of paper feels slippery and fake. The area code, 319, is right. I count ten numbers, all single digits.

“She just gave this to you?” Finally, I ask a question without an apparent answer.

“I told her you liked her and wanted her number,” Kyle says. “I knew you would pussy out.”

None of that is true. I can ask a girl for a number if I want one.