Girl Meets Boy (13 page)

“He’s Smith of Smithville Pork. Don’t you know that? He wants to be governor, and he wants to put hog factories all over
Iowa. And our illustrious U.S. president endorses him.”

I stared at Hank. “Are you serious?”

Hank nodded, staring at Smith’s picture. “He’s a big lawyer in Des Moines and bought into the hog factory business. Dad says he helped put so much campaign money in the politicians’ pockets that the first weeks they were in office, they lifted the restrictions on hog factory waste so they can dump whatever they want, wherever they want, into whatever rivers they want … and they can force all of us little farmers out of business ‘cause we can’t compete, of course, with that kind of production for market.”

“Are you serious?” My stomach knot twisted a notch tighter. “How’d you know that?”

“Dead serious. I read about it. Dad said, too. Found out from some environmental lobbyists at the Farm Bureau … but of course the media shushed it up. Like any other environmental scandals since they’ve been in office.”

I stood rooted.

“Come on, Kerry,” David said. “Let’s go see the beef cattle.”

“Wait, you guys.” I couldn’t keep quiet any longer. “Listen. Last night, Rafi and I got stuck on the mud road across from you.”

“Aha!” Hank burst into laugher, then leered at me and raised his eyebrows. “Parking … ooh. We’re getting serious. Really serious.”

“Shut up!” I said. “Just shut up and listen.” And I told them about the night before.

When I finished, Hank’s and David’s mouths hung open. “Why didn’t we see anything?”

“They came about eleven thirty. Now that I think about it, I’ll bet they timed this so everybody would be at the fair and not notice until it was too late.”

We walked, oblivious to the fair smells and sounds, and hatched our plan. Then we separated, talking to every 4-H kid we saw, and I went to Gates Hall, where my friend Sally was setting up food and nutrition exhibits. I gave Sally the lowdown and asked her to tell everybody she could about the hog factory and Smith’s appearance at six. She didn’t think it would be a problem, and assured me that 4-H girls had a plethora of butcher paper and poster supplies—and there were plenty of big mouths among them, too.

At five forty-five, there were a few dozen people near Smith’s booth. David, Hank, and I positioned ourselves at the front as soon as a crowd began to gather. At five fifty-nine, Mr. Gordon Smith and a couple black-suited men stepped out of a black Ford Expedition bearing SMITH FOR GOVERNOR signs. He checked a microphone, and at six, he said, “It’s delightful to be here with you at the Story County 4-H Fair.” The words weren’t dead on the airwaves yet, when an army of senior 4-H kids swarmed from every nearby barn. In less than half a minute, there was a fence of homemade tagboard and butcher paper signs entirely encircling the booth. The color of Smith’s face changed, but his pasted-on politician smile never wavered, even as he realized he was surrounded by “STOP THE HOG FACTORIES BEFORE THEY START”; “POLITICIANS TAKE NOTE: HOGS DON’T VOTE”; “HOGS ARE OUR LIVELIHOOD”; “HOGS DESERVE LIFE WHILE THEY’RE ALIVE”; “HOG FACTORIES STINK-POLLUTE”; “KEEP IOWA RIVERS CLEAN”; and “HOG FACTORIES STEAL OUR WAY OF LIFE.”

“Well, well,” he began again. “I’m delighted to see how involved Story County young people really are.”

“What about the hog factories?” yelled Sally’s brother Tim.

“I don’t know why you’re upset about hog factories. That issue
was decided in March. Young ladies and gentlemen, that’s a
dead
issue. There are greater issues at stake for us tonight. Iowa’s economy rests on the fate of its agriculture. Our economy comes largely from corn, hogs—”

“If it’s a dead issue, why are you building a hog factory across from my house?” yelled David.

Smith sputtered. Spit actually flew from his lips as he scrambled for words. “That would be a great misunderstanding,” he crooned. “There was a decision that no hog factory in Story County—”

“You’re
lying!
” The words were out of my mouth so fast and so loud, I heard them before I knew I was thinking them. It was like the twist in my stomach handsprung and shot the accusation at Mr. Smith.

The crowd sucked in a collective breath like a tractor sucking air into its carburetor. Everybody,
everybody,
was staring at me.

Among the everybody, I saw Dad and Mom and Grandma standing in the crowd, thirty people away from me, inside the wall of tagboard signs. And my knees started to shake.

Mr. Smith turned toward me, eyes dark and angry, but that smile still plastered on as smoothly as his plastered hair. The combination looked demented. “Lying? I’d say the young lady is grossly misinformed.”

My mother’s disapproval was sharp from across the crowd. And I knew it would only get worse before it got better.

But all of this, this life we all had, summer smells included, was too important for me to back down now. So I took a deep breath and yelled, “There is a Smithville hog confinement farm going up in Story County two miles from my house. Right now. Across from Harold Thompson’s farm. You’re lying!”

“How do you know?” one of the collective everybodies yelled.

“What
are
you talking about?” Smith said to me. His voice was slippery, slimy, smooth.

I yelled back at his plaster smile. “You
know
what I’m talking about! I saw the earthmovers come last night. I
saw
them. Right across from the Harvey Thompson farm!” Here I couldn’t look at Mom or Dad. “And one of the drivers said they were making a foundation for a Smithville hog factory!”

The crowd exploded. Smith sputtered into the mike, something to the effect that he didn’t need to be a part of such nonsense, but his attempts at quieting the crowd were like throwing a glass of water on a burning ditch. Pandemonium.

Bodies were smashed together, and the noise was deafening, but in the hubbub, I felt an arm around me. I turned to see Rafi’s face beside me. He’d wedged through the crowd to my side.

“What are you doing here?” I yelled.

“Just came to see the fair,” he yelled over the racket. “I felt bad about last night, so I came to see you. I’m
proud
of you,” he yelled into my ear. I hugged him. And together with my boyfriend who couldn’t eat pork, I joined the chant, “Hog farms stink-pollute. Hog Farms stink-pollute.”

In the hubbub, Gordon Smith was whisked away by the guys in black suits, shoving through the fence of posterboard. The chants grew in intensity but faded out as the black limo pulled away.

I leaned against Rafi and heaved a sigh. “We lost, didn’t we? We can’t win this fight. They’re building no matter what.”

He nodded against the top of my head. “I wish it weren’t true,” he said, and he held me tight.

The hog factory would go up, in spite of all our protests. Money talked louder than the whole county could chant. But at least, the truth was in the open. Maybe tomorrow, all this would be in the papers, and maybe Gordon Smith wouldn’t be elected governor.

We turned, the two of us arm in arm, and found ourselves face-to-face with my parents’ and grandmother’s eyes. Over their heads above the fairgrounds, a pale moon had risen. I looked for Mars, the war god star, but it wasn’t out yet.

“If you two are
just friends,
I’ll eat my hat,” Grandma said. Her pale blue eyes were flashing. “It’s a sin, you know. A sin.”

Dad’s eyes were proud, but Mom’s eyes were daggers of anger and accusation. “
Last night?
” she almost hissed.

I kept my arm in Rafi’s and looked each of them straight in the eyes. “Listen,” I said, “the sin would be not telling the truth. The truth is like this … “

S.
The hardest decision the day I was going to meet Gavin: what to wear. “Your prom dress, of course, sweetie,” said Dean. “Shut up,” I said. Then I said the hell with it and wore what I always wear these days. It didn’t matter.

G.
For the past half hour I’ve been sitting at a little table in the corner, drinking an iced latte with a double shot of espresso. It’s noisy and crowded in here, lots of local oddballs and freaks, mostly college age. Not the place I would have chosen for our big reunion, but it’s where Stephanie picked, so here I am.

I find the restroom, push open the door with the funky rooster symbol on it (at least I
think
it’s a damn rooster and not a hen),
and am hit with the smell of recent cigarette smoke. Somebody’s at the urinal, so I head for the toilet stall, flip up the seat, shake hands with my best bud again, and take aim on a lone cigarette butt floating in the bowl. I jet-stream the butt around in circles, flip it a couple of times, then make it do a dizzying counterclockwise spin.

When I was nine years old, I thought this might be my calling in life—giving peeing performances. My parents were always telling me how everybody has a calling, something they’re truly gifted at. My dad’s gift was bootlicking and ass-wiping top-level corporate executives. Mom’s was using the exercise machines at the health club and giving luncheons. My gift was doing acrobatic peeing tricks and target shooting. I figured it would be a great calling; I’d get to drink all the Coke and Pepsi I wanted.

And these days I drink plenty of Coke and Pepsi. And a shitload of iced lattes. It keeps me buzzed and revved now that I’ve been trying to stay off booze and pot so I can pass my mandatory monthly drug test and get off probation. And my life’s calling, what I do for a living? Bus tables at a Chinese restaurant in downtown Seattle.

Tonight, however, is my night off, and I am trying to sink a cigarette butt in a toilet bowl in the restroom of the Last Exit in one of the raunchier neighborhoods in the heart of the Latte Belt, and waiting for Stephanie Jones.

Who I often think of when I pee.

She used to watch me pee in the woods behind her playhouse. She was a great audience;
so impressed.

That playhouse—man, that’s what impressed me. Her father and her big brother, Peter the dildo, had built it. It had nooks and
niches and hidden escape passages into the woods, and you had to climb a rope ladder to get in, where it smelled like fresh cedar and you could hear the rain tapping on the roof.

Yeah, I was jealous. Stephanie and I were the same age, and she seemed to get everything she wanted—or at least everything I wanted. And there wasn’t anything she wasn’t good at. Same with Peter the dildo. My parents were constantly reminding me of it—why can’t you just
try
to be more like Stephanie and Peter? Peter and Stephanie are always doing some interesting project, such good kids, so bright and active.

But I didn’t feel inferior when I pulled down my pants in front of her and performed impressive peeing stunts.

She asked me if I’d ever been in a pissing contest. “Sure, lots of them,” I said, having no idea what she meant.

When I turned twelve, I started having fantasies of kissing her inside her playhouse. Other places, too.

I finish peeing and stop at the sink to wash my hands, a sanitary habit I’ve gotten into while working at the Asian Buffet. I check out the mirror, just to see what I look like—what Stephanie will see when she shows up. Sure enough, what I look like is an eighteen-year-old busboy.

I’m still amazed she wanted to see me at all, considering the fact that we haven’t seen each other for two years, since eleventh grade. And the last couple times we saw each other were not good.

How this reunion came about is that a few months ago, a friend of mine got me a one-night job as a valet parking attendant at some gala charity event at the museum. All these luxury cars rolling up and dumping off old people in their gowns and tuxes, and one of the couples turns out to be Mr. and Mrs.
Jones—Stephanie’s parents. Opening the door for his wife, Charlie Jones didn’t give me enough of a glance to recognize me. But Dolly, all decked out in her jewels and evening gown and suntan, shoots me a double take. And then screams.

“Gavin? My goodness, it is you! Charlie, look! It’s Gavin!”

“Well, what do you know! Gavin, old boy! How are you!”

They marveled at how much I had grown. They asked what I was up to these days. They showed phony delight at hearing that I’d graduated from high school. They forced their smiles to stay propped up when I told them I was living in a rented room in a house. They didn’t seem surprised when I told them that my parents and little sister had moved to Texas and started a new life.

I was polite, but I had never liked Charlie or Dolly Jones.

I asked how their kids were doing.

Quite well, quite well, they said. Peter was at Harvard or MIT or somewhere; Kaylie had made the Junior Nationals in whatever the hell thing she was into—ice skating or gymnastic dancing or baton twirling.

They didn’t say anything about Stephanie. Zero. Mr. Jones glanced at his watch, then at his wife.

I had nothing to lose, so I came out with it. “How’s Stephanie?” And waited for them to tell me she was doing just splendidly in her first year at such and such college.

But they both gave me these empty, almost helpless stares, their faces turning a shade of pale, and I braced myself for some horrible piece of news.

Finally Mrs. Jones put her tanned hand on my arm and flashed that phony church smile that I’d seen so many times, and
drew close to me so I could smell her perfume and breath-mint breath, and said, “Gavin I’m so
glad
things are finally working out for your parents. Give them our best!” And she turned and linked arms with her husband, and they walked up the museum steps, and I parked their car.

For days after that, I couldn’t stop thinking about their faces when I’d asked about Stephanie. What was the deal? Why hadn’t they told me anything?

Not knowing what I hoped to find, I spent about five hours doing Google searches on my computer. A zillion hits came up for Stephanie Jones. My heart was slamming as I scrolled through the obituaries first, but they were all different Stephanie Joneses.

Then I hit a lot of stuff about her high school activities. We’d gone to the same schools together right up until spring of eleventh grade, when my parents moved out to the suburbs and I went with them. But we’d always traveled in different universes. She took all the high-achiever classes. She hung out with sensitive, egghead types, while I hung out with guys who tried to see who could fart the loudest. If it hadn’t been for our parents’ connection, Stephanie would never have known I existed.

And now I was trying to find out if
she
still existed. Her name came up in some old newsletter, at least two years old, that mentioned she was doing some community service project. It gave her e-mail address. A defunct address, no doubt, but what the hell, I figured I’d drop her a note and see if anything came back.

S.
“Jesus Christ,” I said, startling the person next to me at the scruffy little Internet café. I grabbed my coffee and took a long
gulp while I looked again at the screen. Yeah, that really was Gavin’s name in my inbox. He said hi. He’d just run across my e-mail totally by accident. He wanted to know how it was going.

I’d been meaning to change my address, but I was glad I hadn’t yet. Glad, with a fast heartbeat and sweat suddenly slicking my forehead, my hands, the space between my nose and mouth. I typed a reply, suggesting that we get together, and hit send before I could think.

I walked out of the café without logging out or paying, and down the street to my pal Dean’s apartment, where I switched from stimulant to depressant and kicked myself for answering the e-mail. Dean said not to be so upset, it was great to have the chance to reconnect with someone from my past; it was an important thing to do. I had a lot of balls. That made us laugh.

The first time we met, we were babies. Gavin’s mom used to have this picture of the two of us lying on a blanket, both half asleep, with those squinty expressions babies get, our tiny fists clenched. We look so much alike.

When we were six, Gavin marked me for life.

It seems odd when I look back on it that we were together so much as kids. I think it was mostly due to my dad. He not only loves being important, he loves seeing himself as family friendly. So every time he wanted to get his core staff together, he’d bring them all to our place and encourage them to bring spouses and kids.

Anyway, Gavin and I had run into the woods to hide from this whiny girl who was always trying to follow us around. I can’t remember which of us got the idea to pick up branches off the ground and use them as swords, but I remember the fight. We
were laughing and shouting when we started, but then it turned serious and deliberate.

I was trying to convince myself that we really were dueling knights, concentrating so hard, trying to turn the clacking of sticks into the clang of metal on metal, that I didn’t see it coming when Gavin stabbed me in the eye. There was just the sudden surprise of the pain and the red cloud over the vision in my right eye. We both screamed and then went running back to the lawn where the adults were gathered.

Gavin had dropped his branch, but I still had mine. This will sound weird, but I really wish someone had taken a picture of me then: standing there with my bloody eye, holding my branch in both hands as though I was waiting for another attack.

Mom said they had the worst time getting me to let go of it.

Gavin got into a lot of trouble. His mom was hysterical.

I got to ride in an ambulance and wear a cool patch that I refused to give up after my eye healed, because I’d decided it made me a pirate.

But Gavin wouldn’t play with me for a long time after that, and I spent countless bleak afternoons with the whiny girl. She liked to play dress-up, so every time we were at my house, I’d give her clothes. Until my mom caught on, I was doing a great job of divesting myself of all the froufiest items in my closet.

Whiny Girl also had a huge, horrible doll collection. I had dolls, too, and I liked them a lot, but I wouldn’t share them with her. My dolls fought crime. Hers had tea parties.

The one good time I had with her was when I convinced her that we needed to hold gymnastics trials for the doll Olympics.

“Time for the long jump!” I remember saying. Then I
hurled the doll as far as I could. She wailed, and I couldn’t stop laughing.

But now, laughing was the furthest thing from my mind. Why was I even here? It was such a dumb-ass idea. I rubbed my chin, chewed my lip, looked at the clock. It was a while before Gavin was supposed to arrive; I could still duck out. Or I could use the john. I got up, walked across the room, grimaced at the cheesy restroom signs (one featured a rooster, the other a fluffy chick), and pushed open the door.

I used to have this playhouse. “Playhouse,” Dad called it, but it was bigger than my current apartment. Gavin and I used to spend a lot of time there, I guess until we were about ten. There wasn’t much inside, except for my collection. Every time my family went to the beach, which was fairly often, I’d pick up things that had washed up onshore. Mom discouraged me from keeping entire bottles, but bits of glass were okay, as long as their edges had been dulled by water and sand. I’d put the glass in my pockets so my hands would be free for other finds: smooth stones, sand dollars, bleached and gnarled driftwood.

Once I’d taken the stuff back home and put it inside the playhouse, it never looked or felt right. But somehow I could never remember that when I was on the beach. I always thought, with each new salt-crusted object I gathered, that the whole collection would take on meaning.

It never did, for me, but Gavin always seemed fascinated. He’d trace the patterns on a sand dollar, or pick up one of the pieces of driftwood as though it was a baseball bat and swing it, listening to the way it whistled in the air.

Gavin paid attention to my collection. I concentrated on him. I used to ask him to do things, things it embarrasses me, now,
to remember. And I was so matter-of-fact about my requests. I didn’t think of them as weird, yet.

At school, once we got to junior high, Gavin and I didn’t really talk to each other. We were always in different classes. Oh, sure, if we saw each other in the halls, we’d nod, but he always seemed to be surrounded by the kind of people I had no idea how to talk to. Actually, that was most people.

We’d still hang out at Dad’s corporate shindigs, though.

But when we were sixteen, everything got messed up. Gavin and I were both suffering, innocent bystanders at the latest Dad-stravaganza. This time, he had the Team (he called them the Team that year; next year, it was the Workgroup—the year after that, he laid them all off) at a ski lodge. It was summer, so skiing itself was not an option, but we were close to the ocean, and there were woods, and the lodge, of course, had a pool and a hot tub.

The Team, when not pursuing healthful outdoor exercise, was trust building and brainstorming, furiously engaged in process improvement. The dozen or so Team Kids, ranging in age from precocious eleven to over-it-all eighteen, were sizing each other up, seeing who would deflate under the onslaught of our casual, bored mockery. We’d already demolished all of our parents, those ridiculously easy targets, and had moved on to each other: who was a virgin, who hadn’t been drunk, who didn’t swear enough, whose clothes were the wrong brands. I was the first three. Gavin was the last.

Gavin and I started avoiding the rest of the Team Kids. We did this with no conscious strategy or discussion, it just happened, without words, the two of us detaching from the group and spending more and more time by ourselves.

I was aware, on some level, that this time I was spending with Gavin meant something different to him than it did to me. But since I couldn’t articulate what it meant to me, I ignored the awareness.