M or F? (25 page)

Oh God, I thought as the memory of myself walking out of the kitchen with my mom's negligee exposed swirled in my brain. I couldn't even keep myself from groaning out loud. This had been one of the top three most embarrassing nights of my life—I didn't want to ever think about it again.

But at least it's over, I realized. At least it can't get any worse.

It was at that moment that I heard keys jingling in the front door.

“I'm telling you, Caroline, I don't know how you thought we'd get into that restaurant without a reservation,” my dad was barking as he and my mom spilled through the door. They could see down the hall, all the way to the back of the kitchen.

My parents stopped in their tracks and stood there, gaping at me. For a minute, nobody said anything.

Please let me die now, I begged silently.

“Frannie? What are you doing in your mother's nightie?” my dad demanded.

My mom's blue eyes were round with shock, locked on my cleavage.

I sighed. Hey, I thought, at least
somebody
is impressed with my boobs.

 

 

There he is, I thought as I spotted Marcus in the lunch line the following Monday. He was getting mashed potatoes, peas, and Frosted Flakes—a very Marcus meal.

You will come and sit with me, I thought at him. You will walk over to our usual table and take the seat next to mine. I command you!

He didn't even glance in my direction.

I sighed. I can't take much more of this, I thought. I'd already had to endure a full weekend without him. Not that it had been horrible—Jenn and Belina and I had gone shopping and checked out a movie on Saturday, then I'd spent Sunday catching up on my class work—which I'd been ignoring ever since Jeffrey hit the scene. I know, I know. You're horrified that I didn't call Marcus the minute I was sure about Jeffrey. But I just didn't feel like I could deliver the news over the phone. Besides, I still needed a signal from him that he was ready to make up. After all, he
did
owe me an apology for going behind my back to talk to Jeffrey. But after waiting by the phone for almost five days, it was becoming obvious that I was going to have to be the one to make the first move. . . .

The only question was . . . how?

I'm embarrassed to admit that the first thing that popped into my mind was an image of myself standing outside his window with a boom box blaring “In Your Eyes,” à la
Say Anything
. In my defense, Marcus is a movie freak, and that might actually have worked. But it seemed a little over the top. . . .

Okay, all I have to do is come up with a good opening line, I told myself. Something witty and clever so that Marcus will remember how funny I am and how much he misses me. Something like—

“Hey, what's up?” Marcus plopped his tray on my table and slid it across from mine. Then he slid into the chair, just like we were best friends again, or maybe like nothing had ever happened in the first place.

I blinked at him. “Hey,” I said finally. I held onto the bottom of my chair to keep myself from swaying back and forth. I couldn't believe how relieved I was. Just having Marcus say one word to me had made my muscles relax.

“I like your cowboy boots,” Marcus said.

“Yeah?” I kicked out one of the purple boots, admiring it. I'd woken up in one of those I-hate-all-my-clothes moods this morning, so when I dug these up after ransacking my closet for something different to wear, I decided, Why not?

“They go freakishly well with that gypsy skirt.” Marcus took a sip of his strawberry milk.

I smiled. I may be behind on my Jeffrese, but I speak fluent Marcus, and I knew just what he was telling me then. “I love you too,” I whispered to him.

Marcus looked down at his tray. Setting down his milk carefully, he looked up at me. “Listen, Frannie, I know that you hate it when I say this . . . but I'm sorry.” He swallowed hard, almost seeming to choke on his words. Without thinking, I reached out and took his hand. “I'm sorry that I hurt you,” Marcus went on. “And I want you to know that I'll do whatever it takes . . . or
not
do whatever it takes . . . to make things work between you and Jeffrey. You both deserve it, and I never should have gotten in the way.” His eyes were bright.

I gave his hand a squeeze and struggled to breathe through my tight chest. The truth was, Jeffrey and Marcus were the two who deserved to be together. They were the two who made sense. And it wasn't fair that Marcus was suffering, beating himself up for something that really wasn't even his fault.

At that moment, I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. Glenn was headed toward our table, tray in hand.

Crap. Go away! Go away! Go away! I thought at him, but my brain waves were having no effect. He caught my eye and grinned.

I had no choice but to grin back, cursing myself silently. Horrible, horrible timing. But what I had to say to Marcus just couldn't wait. Glenn was still ten feet away.

“Look, this should really be a longer conversation,” I told Marcus in a super-speed whisper, “but I really have to tell you this right now. I think Jeffrey's gay and you should go for it.”

Marcus's hazel eyes were as round as a pair of shooting marbles.

“Hey,” Glenn said as he walked up to our table. “Am I interrupting anything?”

“Not at all,” I said, gesturing to the seat next to mine. “In fact, you're just in time. I was about to tell Marcus here everything I've recently learned about animal husbandry.”

The camera zooms in on my face while the cafeteria falls away behind me. The background swirls, and Frannie's voice comes in, all echoey like she's inside my head and my head is a cave.

 

 

 

It was possible that I had misunderstood her. Possible, but . . . what else could it have been besides “Jeffrey's gay”? Chef breeze day?
Je frieze que?

I badly wanted to ask her a million questions, the first one being,
Whaaaaa???
followed by,
Are you sure?
and,
How can you be sure?
and,
Now what?
In that alternate universe where I can snap my fingers and stop time, it would have been no problem. Here in the cafeteria, Glenn had already hijacked the conversation and showed no signs of letting us go.

“Did Marcus tell you about our little date on Saturday night?” he asked Frannie. She looked across at me with confused eyes. I'm sure my own expression was as glazed as a doughnut.

“Oh,” I said. “I ran into Glenn and, um . . . ”

“Astrid,” Glenn said.

“Astrid. At the cafeteria—”

“The movie theater,” Glenn put in.

“Yeah, I mean the movie theater.”

A little drool on my chin might have completed the picture. At least Frannie knew what was going on. If Glenn wondered, I didn't care.

“What did you guys see?” Frannie asked.

“Head for Hell,”
Glenn answered. “The best terrible movie ever made.”

“What's it about?” she asked Glenn. I'm sure she didn't care. She was giving me a little space so I could think. Thank you, Ms. Falconer. And thank you, friendship gods, for bringing her back to me.

“Well, there's this psychiatrist, right?” Glenn started in. “And he only has one eye, but it's blind . . .”

His voice morphed into a vague
blah blah blah
in the background as my thoughts went back to Jeffrey.

So Jeffrey was gay? Why did Frannie think so? And what if he was? God, what would that mean for Frannie, to know that the guy she'd been hoping for was . . . the guy
I'd
been hoping for? Yikes. Major hurt. But, the thing was, she didn't actually seem upset. In fact, it wasn't like the words she'd squeezed out in the point-five seconds before Glenn arrived had been,
“I think Jeffrey's gay and I'm going to become a nun after all.”
She was all about me and Jeffrey, as if she'd breezed right through the getting-over-him phase and straight to the part where she's fixing him up with her best friend. Maybe that meant that deep down, she already knew he wasn't right for her anyway. Or was that just me, trying to make this all be what I wanted it to be?

And meanwhile, even if Jeffrey
was
gay, that didn't automatically mean he was into me. There was no sense getting too excited yet. Although . . . whoever Jeffrey thought he'd been chatting with all that time, it had been me on the other end. A version of me, anyway, but the chemistry was undeniable. That didn't make him gay, though. Of course, it didn't make him straight, either. Then there was also bi, bi-curious, hetero-curious, metrosexual . . . assuming Jeffrey even
had
a label. Maybe even he didn't know what he was.

What I needed was more information from Frannie, and I wasn't going to get it here in the cafeteria. Glenn was still going strong, somewhere in the middle of his movie review.

“. . . so then the nurse pulls out this syringe that was for, like, spinal taps on horses or something, and she sticks it right into the guy's eye. Marcus, wasn't that nurse the worst actress you've ever seen? She couldn't play a statue if her life depended on it.”

I nodded. “That's true. Hey, Frannie, can I talk to you in private for a second?”

Frannie reached for her purse. “Absolutely.”

Before we could even stand up, Glenn waved at someone behind me. Frannie's eyes went wide. This part is in slow motion. Close-up on Glenn's face, his voice extra deep in that slow-mo kind of way.

“Yo . . .

“Jeff . . .

“Over . . .

“Here!”

Then everything speeds up again and Jeffrey's sitting down next to me, across from Glenn and Frannie.

My heart and my brain started competing to see which could race faster.

“Hey, guys,” Jeffrey said. “What's up?” No kiss for Frannie, I noticed. I could feel her foot pressing down on mine under the table. “Nice vegetarian lunch there,” he said, pointing at my tray.

Omigod, he
is
gay, he
does
like me, I
will
go for it, and it's going to be everything I ever wanted. . . .

Frannie rubbed my foot with hers.

And we're back.
“Oh, uh . . . yeah,” I said. “I'm not an actual vegetarian.”

“But he does play one on TV,” Glenn cut in with this fake-announcer voice. I was glad no one laughed.

I suppose Frannie and I could have stepped away for a conference, but now it seemed like a wrong move. And it wasn't like I could just turn to Jeffrey and ask him if he liked boys or girls. The only thing to do was . . . keep lunching.

“Glenn was just telling me about this movie,” Frannie said. “So the nurse sticks a hypodermic in the guy's eye, and . . . ?” It was like she took Glenn off pause. He started right back up.

That left me quasi-alone with Jeffrey. I wondered if I had ever been this good playing for Frannie as she was for me right now. Not that I could think of a thing to say to him. All that advice I'd ever given Frannie—relax, just be yourself, yak yak yak—came back to me as the useless pile of recycled crap that I now saw it to be. Face-to-face is harder. It just is.

I took a big bite of Frosted Flakes mush and pretended that it needed lots of chewing. I was going to have to say something . . . anything . . . by the time I swallowed. Experience had shown that Jeffrey was not going to initiate the conversation even if he was interested; maybe especially if he was interested.

“What did you do this weekend?” I finally said. Not bad.

“My cousin was in town and we hung out. . . .” Was he avoiding my eyes? If so, was that a good sign or a bad sign? “Went downtown, went to the Peace and Justice Museum. You know, the usual touristy stuff.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said. “Did he have a good time?”

“Hillary? Yeah, she did.”

Oops. Did Jeffrey already say it was a she? Was he annoyed with me now? Was I going to die a single and lonely old virgin?

All this time, Frannie was convincingly absorbed in what Glenn was saying. I sent off a silent bit of appreciation her way, glad to have her here and not here at the same time.

“What about you?” Jeffrey asked. I looked over and caught his eyes. Our shoulders were almost touching, and he sure didn't seem to mind.

“Not much,” I said. “I worked a couple of shifts. Saw a really bad movie.” Tried hard not to stalk you on the computer. Wondered what kind of kisser you might be.