Extreme Elvin (13 page)

Mikie looked at her one last long time, over there munching her cookie.

He was gentle with me. “Or that she’s a little
more
than enough?” he said.

I nodded.

Like a human bulldozer, he circled behind me and plowed me toward the round-faced girl of my dreams.

What was it about these dances? If I could get the girls to manhandle me the way the guys did...

There was no great surprise on her face when we finally reached her. We were pretty obvious. “Hi,” Mikie said confidently from over my shoulder. Maybe that’s what I should have done, come in with a human shield.

“Hi,” she said.

“My name’s Mike, and this is Elvin.”

“Hi. My name’s Barbara.”

Wow. Mikie was
great
at this.

He didn’t have to shove me anymore, so he stood back and let me waver on my own. She seemed somehow friendlier now, softened somewhat. We stood for a minute or so grinning at each other kind of stupidly. At least hers was stupid. Mine I couldn’t see, but I could assume.

The time of my life. That’s exactly what it was.

“What are you
doin’,
Elvin?” Frank asked. Accused, really. He pulled on my arm, making me spill splotches of pink sugar water all over the varnished floor. I didn’t even realize I had a drink in my hand.

“Shaddup, Franko, is what I’m doing. Get outta here.” I yanked my arm back, spilled most of what was left of my drink.

“All our hard work... you were on the brink. You were a couple of rungs away from climbing out of the dry well of your sorry little life.” He made a big showy gesture in the direction of Sally, like he was a magician and was about to saw her in half.
“Sally,
for god’s sake, El. Remember Sally?”

“I’m thirsty,” Barbara said, and walked away. In the opposite direction from the drinks table.

“Now look what you did, bonehead,” I said.

Frank was about to respond when Mikie—who apparently found something he liked to do at dances—started muscling him away. “You’re on your own now,” Mike said.

“Good,” I said, and scurried off to find Barbara.

If this was a movie, you know, where things work out right and the music matches every mood and the backgrounds never get in the way of the action, and when you want dreamy or sad or romantic you get dreamy or sad or romantic, then I would have found Barbara outside the gym, leaning on a fresh-waxed copper-colored convertible or under a young maple tree, kicking at the roots with her toe. And either way, the dance music would settle down on us like a friendly warm mist that just visited and didn’t disturb anything.

But it was not a movie. It was my real life.

I found Barbara sitting on the edge of the auditorium stage, her back against one throbbing speaker as something scary—the Beach Boys or something—fell out of it. We had to scream at each other.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey.”

“I thought I lost you.”

“Your friend is a dirtbag.”

“Oh,” I said, reaching back into the mental file of all the times I’d had to try and explain Frankie to people. “Well, no, Frankie, he’s not a dirtbag. He’s just... handsome.”

I shrugged. Somehow, I just expected her to understand that. The way I pretty much always had. I hoped, hoped, anyway, that it would work that way. Boy, did I need her to understand.

She nodded. She did, did understand.

Mostly.

“He can be both, you know,” Barbara said, still nodding.

She got me nodding. I got her grinning. The reflective white crescents of her cheeks again came up and arced high above where any cheekbone could follow. Her eyes hid again behind them. I think I sighed.

“What?” she asked. The music was still swamping us, but still leaving me audible apparently.

“You
heard
that?” I asked.

“I heard
something
come out of you, but I don’t know what it was exactly. That’s why I said, ‘What?’”

Good, she didn’t hear it. Gotta be cool. Sighing like that so soon wouldn’t be cool. Good, good, she missed it, that was a close one. Whew.

“What?”

“Nothing. Did I say ‘whew’? Sorry. Nothing.” Jeez, how long have I been going around saying everything I think? Dangerous trend there. How lame am I that I didn’t know? Why didn’t anybody tell me?

The song changed. Thank goodness. Crap. More surfer music. I could swear it was the same song if they hadn’t stopped the music, paused, and started up again. The dopes.

“I love these old beachy songs,” Barbara said, starting to sway.

“Absolutely,” I said, starting to sway.

The one of us who was telling the truth even closed her eyes to love the music an extra bit. I realized how hard I was staring at her when I felt my eyelids pulling down along with hers.

But I caught them just in time. To some jolt in the tune, some spasm of rhythm or melody that I could not hear but that oh boy could I appreciate all the same, Barbara toggled.

Toggled. Her head, her rounder than earth, smoother than ice cream face tilted this way then that, back this way then again. The curls, hanging lower, shinier with the heat, brushing her cheek, touching her shoulder, falling around her eyes until with two dimpled hands she swept the whole hairy killing me dead mess back up and over and out of her way again.

Out of
my
way.

She did it two or three quick times, the toggle, as if she were trying to shake something out of her ears, and the effort didn’t trouble her one bit.

Troubled
me.
Troubled me crazy.

She caught me, and god only knows what a sweaty pervert I must have looked like because she immediately shrank away from me, leaning all the way back into the speaker, sinking there like into a wingback chair.

Merely startled, however. She toggled once more. A gift. And you know why? Because she had no idea she was giving it to me. She was just enjoying herself. And I was just enjoying herself.

“I love it because it makes me think of nothing,” Barbara said, referring to the sounds swirling around her head. “The surf stuff. It makes me think of just nothing, and I like my music to do that. A good feeling for no good reason.”

And so. I stood, still and silent and sappy, staring up at her there. And just as I was learning to love the surf, after I had already gotten the good feeling for what I thought was a pretty darn excellent reason, they pulled the plug. Just like that. Music over. Dance over.

And though I knew it made no sense, I felt like
everything
was over. When the lights came up—they weren’t very down to begin with—a panic filled my belly and I wanted to make a sound like a seagull.

I at least managed not to do that. But...

“I have puppies,” I said as I awkwardly rushed the stage to help Barbara with the short trip down. Where do I put my hands? Do I speak? Here, Barbara, let me grab something? Here, Barbara, grab onto me. Or hell, I should just drop to the floor and let her bounce off me like a moon walk. I’d do it, if that were the thing. What was the right thing for a guy to do here?

By the time I’d finished bumbling, of course, she was down off the stage, with her back toward me. She never even knew I was being gallant.

“Puppies?”

“Ya, a whole bunch of them. Wanna see ’em, Barbara? You can have one. You can have more than one, even. They’re really sweet. And they’re beautiful.” Please god, this’ll be my final lie, don’t strike me down...

I waited ten seconds. No lightning. Oh well, good. Maybe I could paint them or something before she came over.

“BB.”

“Huh?”

“It’s what my friends call me. Not Barbara. Although you can still call me Barbara if you prefer.”

Dropkick me Jesus, I was now all the way intimate, with such a pretty girl.
Such
a pretty girl. I didn’t know what Frankie was thinking, what he thought was a pretty girl but... holy smokes, I kept feeling like I wanted to reach out and just put a hand on her face like they tell you you can’t do to the artwork in the museum.

“Whoa, you okay there, Elvin Bishop?” Barbara asked, grabbing my elbow just before I lost my footing entirely.

Did you hear that? the way she said all of my name, just like that?

“Ya, thanks, I just slipped in some bug juice there. Dangerous stuff, y’know?” I paused. A spastic pause. Followed by a blurt.
“Barbara,
though.”

“Huh?”

“Barbara, I think is prettier. Than BB. Suits you better. It’s what I would call you... y’know, if you were letting me call you something.”

“And I will call you Elvin, unless you prefer something else.”

I’d answer to anything. So I just nodded.

I stood outside as the sisters of our sister school were shoved back on their bus. I waved, and was waved at. I smiled, and was smiled at. She blinked. I heard it—the swoosh of her eyelashes. I waved again, just a small, doofus wave to see if it was real, if I could get one back again. I did. I looked around to see who could see but, funny enough, they all had their own stuff to see.

I wanted to make the bus stay. I wanted to keep Barbara there in the parking lot. Or to accompany them, running alongside the bus, beneath her window. Just to talk. Or to listen would be fine.

And not to make one single joke, even.

L
IFE, I WOULD DARE
to say, was on the upswing.

Physically, I was just a shadow of the Elvin I once was. I felt strong and lean. I didn’t want to eat every minute because, to my surprise, I found there was other stuff to do. And when I had to get from point a to point b, I walked rather than slunk.

And I barely suffered the slightest lingering effects of my old, debilitating medical issue.

Love can work miracles.

Okay, love
and
EXTREME UNCTION
.

So I used it, all right? I don’t know what the secret was—and judging from Darth’s manner and his references to the import trade, I probably don’t want to know—but I don’t think a visit with the Pope could have been as transforming as my private anointings with
UNCTION
.

So it was only right. I had to settle up two scores. I had to pay for The Cure, and I had to once-and-for-all come clean on the Sally lie. I stopped hiding from Darth in bathrooms and lockers and teachers’ lounges, all of which was pretty much of a joke anyway since the Witness Protection Program couldn’t hide you from him if he really wanted you.

I wasn’t even afraid. Maybe the magic ingredients of EU had seeped all the way up to my brain.

“Mr. Sphinc, what are you, stuck up now? You can’t talk to your comrades? Just because you’ve achieved a certain status with the ladies, you don’t know anybody anymore?” This was the man himself talking.

“Huh?” I was walking down the steps headed for the cafeteria, but when Darth gently nudged me toward the exit, I went with the flow. Outside, with the sun shining on my head, I got somehow woozier, breezier, easier. We sat in the grass.

Silently I drew the twenty-dollar bill out of my pocket, the one my mother had given me for the vet appointment I ditched. In a way, yes, I kind of stole it, but I reasoned that Ma was pretty well attached to me by now, and me being dead in the filthy river might upset her more than the twenty.

“This is just part of it, I know. But—and by the way, it really, really works—”

“I can tell by the way you’re sitting,” he said, satisfied with his work. “I love doing things for humanity.”

“But I’m working on getting you the rest—”

Darth held up a hand. “I don’t want to talk about that now. I know you’ll make it up to me, one way or another.”

You heard that, right? So I’m not paranoid. There was something a little unsettling just happened around the second part of that statement, right?

“Hey,” he said, clapping his hands. “Are you listening to me?”

“Sorry, shoot. I mean, continue.”

“I just wanted to say, that word’s out on you, boy.”

Oh boy. Now I remembered the scary stuff.

“People are quite impressed with you. The way you’re leading the league in girlfriends, getting all buff and such. This is turning the heads of some very important folks.”

I was way beyond being able to speak to any of this. Anyway, I don’t think I was expected to.

“Congratulations,” he said, and then, inexplicably, punched me in the shoulder hard enough to tip me over backward into the grass.

I lay on my back, squinting into the sun. “Was that a good beating you just gave me, or something I should be worried about because you’re just getting started?”

He laughed. “I swear, Sphinc, you don’t know how to not be funny.”

“I could learn,” I said quickly. “You want me to learn? Gimme like a minute, and I swear...”

Just then, Metzger, who must have seen us through the glass doors of the school, came flying out into the yard. “Go on, Darth,” he screamed, like you do when you’re in a crowd watching a fight, only it sounds particularly stupid when the crowd is one guy. “Hit him again. Finish him. Kick his ass. Don’tcha
hate
him... thinks he’s so damn funny...”

All nine feet and seven hundred and fifty very hard pounds of Darth stood up now, throwing a shadow over Metzger, and me, and half the cars in the parking lot.

“He
is
damn funny,” Darth said, in a voice that sounded like god’s father.

This was a moment I could enjoy. Except it didn’t rightfully belong to me. It was like at the dance when Sally was easing up on me, saying we were square, dancing with me because she thought I’d done the right thing.

“You want me to kill him, Sphinc?”

In my mind we were starting to blend, me and Metzger. Like Darth beating Metz was not really different from Darth beating me, just a matter of time.

Blended too, like being Darth’s friend—or his pet, or his court jester or whatever I was—and being his victim. It wasn’t hard to feel both at the same time.

What to do? Metzger, the bully. Bane of my unspectacular-as-it-is existence. Menace. Stood there shaking, eyes closed, apparently praying—praying, right there in the midday sun—with at least three different very obvious wetnesses appearing on his body that were not there when he ran through that door a few minutes earlier.