The Basic Eight (10 page)

I mean, OK, winking is a little, I don’t know, horny-old-uncle, but Adam did it with just the right amount of self-consciousness, with a hint of rogue.
Panache
–it was very
Cyrano
. So much can be said,
erased
with a gesture like that. Well, not
erased
. The love wasn’t erased, or even the ache, but its
context
changed. I didn’t feel the despair, like my shoes were filled with rain and I just figured out that I had been waiting at the wrong bus stop for an hour and a half and that Adam didn’t give a shit about me. Now the tension I felt about Adam was laced with expectation, rather than pain. Like Adam was biding his time, waiting to make his perfect entrance into my life, the way he strode into the auditori- um at precisely the right moment and turned my dread of an evening with a Shyness Patient into something that could be called, with only minimal overinterpretation,
a date with Adam. A date
with the man

I love.
Cymbeline
. None of us had mentioned
Cymbeline
. Had it been the proper century I would have swooned. Did I say that already?

LATER

One last note: Because everyone else went on ahead, by the time I reached the bus stop, my head still in the clouds, the bus had come and taken all my friends away. Bored, hungry, I sat on the bench, and who should sit next to me but Carr’s assistant. Talk about awkward. “Hi, what’s up since my high school teacher made a pass at you?”

“Not much,” she sighed. OK, really I just said “What’s up?”; to say the rest would have pretty much been redundant. She looked tired and had folders and folders of papers with her. The Bio test, I realized.
My
test.

“I could save you some time,” I said. “I’ll just correct my own exam. Scout’s honor.”

She smiled, faintly. “Actually, yours is the only test that he’s correcting. He wouldn’t let me; he said it was a conflict of in- terest.”

Talk about awkward–oh, we already
were
talking about awk- ward. I sat there opening and closing my mouth like a baby bird. I kept starting to say something. On my third try she interrupted me, although I don’t know if you can call it interrupting if the other person hasn’t said anything.

“He’s a shit,” she said. I don’t think I’d ever heard anyone in the education profession say “shit” except Millie. The bus was nowhere in sight. I became a baby bird again.

“He’s a shit,” she said again. “A perverted shit. Everybody told me I shouldn’t take the job. Everybody
told
me,” she said, slapping her hand against the bus

map printed on the side of the stop, color-coded routes scrawling across the city like something in a biology book. “But I took it anyway. When I get home I feel so gross I don’t even want to touch my own kid.”

Her own
kid
. Jesus. The baby bird wants
more
food,
more
food. She looked at me and realized who I was. “I shouldn’t be telling you this. I’m just
screwed
,” she said. “I shouldn’t be telling you this. I’m sorry. But at the end of the semester
he
writes me an evaluation, and if I get a bad one then it won’t do me any good if I have a credential or not. No one will hire me. That’s what he did to the TA he had last semester, though nobody told me
that
”–she poked my neighborhood–“until I’d already taken the job. I shouldn’t be telling you this. But just remember”–she stood up; the bus was stopped, gurgling in front of us like a phlegmy infant–“he’s a shit. Remember that. Aren’t you getting on the bus?”

She looked at me over the pile of tests. Behind her, the bus driver, fat as hell, shot me an impatient look. “No,” I said. I stood up and took a step into a large puddle of someone’s discarded cola. Evil corporate chemical sweeteners seeped in and began to soak my sock. The bus doors closed and the infant pulled away, whining and coughing. I had just realized I needed to be waiting at the other bus stop.

Thursday September 16th

Carr didn’t read it. He didn’t fucking read it! I’m in Biology right now, and we all got our tests back, mine corrected by the teacher himself (how he must of strained himself, he who is used to his love slaves/assistants performing that task) because of, as I learned yesterday, a conflict of interest, aka Flan, caught him with his pants almost literally down, and he didn’t even read it. I just

about fainted when I saw the A on top–no way did I get a smidgen of credit on that essay question, and that was one-fifth the grade–but he didn’t read it. I mean he literally didn’t read it. I turned to the page with the essay question on it and saw that I had actually written: “Biologically, these functions are important for the sustenance of a living system” and no one called me on it. What is it–an apology? A bribe? I’m flunking Math and apply- ing to college and my love life is a roller coaster and that isn’t enough–I need this bonus Moral Dilemma.

“Take the A,” Natasha told me, taking a swig of her is-it-really- alcohol-or-just-water flask as she spun the steering wheel. Out- side, pedestrians watched the car warily, like it might kill them. Sometimes accepting a ride home from Natasha is more stress than it’s worth, although so is Advanced Biology and I show up every day. Darling Mud blared; I ought to contact them about being compensated for endorsement when this is published.

“You know, there is a strong possibility that you actually earned it,” she said. “I’m going to run over this woman in the ugly hat.” “That hat is not worth prison,” I said. (These parenthetical asides distract from the dialogue, I know, but can I just say: denim, plaid brim, bright yellow feathers.) “There’s no way I earned it,

Natasha. I calculated it right afterward. It was a B and then only if neatness didn’t count for the sketches.”

“I’ve seen your sketches,” Natasha said. “With you it’s not an issue of neatness but
semblance
. You can’t
seriously
tell me that anyone would have pressed charges if I had destroyed that denim canary.”

“It looked like it was in a kilt, no less. Probably a canary of Scottish royalty.”

“And, as I recall,” Natasha said airily, stopping in front of my house, “we learned last year in Shakespeare that when you kill Scottish royalty the whole thing becomes a mess.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said. I got out of the car, sourly. Natasha hadn’t made me feel much better. “When shall we two meet again?”

“Tomorrow, of course,” she said, spitting gum out the open window. “Are you going to the dance tomorrow night?”

I hadn’t thought much about it. “I hadn’t thought much about it,” I said, cleverly.

Natasha rolled her eyes. “Oh, well,” she said, “I know that you want to give the matter your full attention before you decide. It’s a
high school dance
, Flan. You know, most people aren’t so spacey when they get an unexpected A during their most important se- mester for college.”

“Natasha, he’s a
shit
!” I said. “He makes me feel yucky. I feel like I can’t touch anything because Carr slime is all over it.” I thought about the teaching assistant not wanting to touch her kid.

“
Look at me
,” Natasha said. I looked her right in the eyeliner. “Forget about Carr. You can’t do a thing about it, and in the meantime he’s giving you better grades than you deserve. If you had half a brain you’d play it up and you’d never have to study in that class again.
Look at me, Flan
. Now go inside and write in your journal and thicken up your skin a little bit. And don’t forget, ‘your life, your woe, your death: all embraced in dreams.’”

That did it. We cracked up, loud and loose. “That really was a dreadful poem,” I admitted. “Of course, as editor I’m supposed to remain objective–”

“And confidential,” Natasha said. “So you don’t have to con- firm what I already know: it was a Frosh Goth creation, was it not?”

“How did you know?”

“The little State girl blushed and blushed as we all ripped into it. Very satisfying, I must say. Usually you start off the first meeting with one of your own poems so it’s actually pretty good.” “All right, enough flattery, I’m cheered up already,” I said, and

I was. I looked around, and in the foggy afternoon light my dull neighborhood looked cheerful–the lawns, the throwaway coupon books on everyone’s porch, Natasha’s gum on the street, moist as a kiss. It must have been pathetic fallacy again.

“That wasn’t flattery,” she said imperatively. “Flan, you’re ex- tremely talented.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, poking at the gum with my shoe. I realized it was probably water in the flask–nobody drank liquor while chewing peppermint gum at the same time.

“You
are
,” she said, putting the car back in drive. In the back of my mind I said a silent prayer for those pedestrians who would be in Natasha’s way. Especially the ones in ugly hats. “I just
know
that you’re going to do something that will make the whole world sit up and take notice.”

Friday September 17

Is this funny or am I just suffused with end-of-the-week giddi- ness? V ’s mother won’t let her go to the dance because of some stupid (rich old family name) family commitment. Lily, Douglas, Natasha and I were sitting around at lunchtime making up catty nicknames for her. I can’t repeat any of the suggestions of nick- names, because they all play off the Queen Mother’s first and last names, both of which are of course secrets. But it makes no differ- ence; suffice to say that the one that stuck we found hilariously funny.
Satan
. We laughed and laughed, there in the courtyard, Natasha with her bright red lipstick,

Douglas in another one of his linen suits, this one a sort of off- white, Lily with her tortoiseshell glasses and me looking surpris- ingly slim, I think, in these gray pants I used to have back then. We elaborated and laughed some more, imagining cute polished mother-of-pearl horns sticking out of her carefully shellacked bun, a pitchfork kept in the elephant-foot umbrella stand in V ’s hall.
Satan
. Of course later this nickname would get us into heaps of trouble, but that morning it was hilarious.

OH MY IT’S LATER

Tonight tonight tonight. Those were the words to that song and how true they are. Tonight tonight tonight. I had honestly forgot- ten over the summer the surreal, stupid but irresistible deadly charming intensity that is a Roewer dance. Was that a sentence? I’m checking…yes it was. Subject and verb both, and that’s how I feel, too. Tonight, tonight, tonight I am both subject and verb. I can’t seem to stop moving, and you’d think a bottle of cheap champagne is a depressant, right? But as you know, you gorgeous black leather notebook, I know shit about biology. Flan, begin at the beginning, it’s a very good place to start, all those lessons about narrative structure are melting away under all this fizzy wine.

Two New Year’s Eves ago (how’s that for beginning at the begin- ning at the beginning) my parents had a party and it was no problem at all sneaking one of the five boxes of champagne up to my room during the hubbub, they were having me act as waitress all night anyway so I felt it was my due. It lives under the bed, where my parents never check (plus, the fact that my parents have disappeared this year means they never check anything). On special occasions I take out a bottle. I took one when I got home

from boring boring school and called folks to see who wanted to meet early at the lake for cocktails before actually proceeding to the dance. I couldn’t get ahold of Natasha, Jennifer Rose Milton said coyly that she already had plans but would see me at the dance (of course, I would find out exactly what sort of “plans”–narrative structure, Flan, narrative structure), and Gab- riel was weird about it. He said he didn’t want to get drunk with me. He said it just like that–at least I think he did. “I’ll just see you there,” he said glumly. What is
up
with that? Anyway, Kate was game, but by then there were too few people for me to call Lily and Douglas because I didn’t want it to be one kissy couple and the two single girls, drinking out at the lake. I’ve seen that movie; they all end up revealing deadly secrets and killing one another. Anyway Lily and Douglas didn’t even show up.

Well I showered and changed my clothes and took the bus down to the lake, clutching the champagne neck inside my backpack, feeling the delicious paranoia that only a minor clutching alcohol on public transportation can feel. Spun off the bus and sat on a log, watching the sun setting and a bunch of grimy freshman girls drinking something they’d snuck out of the house in a food storage container. They shrieked with laughter as they spilled whatever-it-was on their shirts; I remember thinking that Carr would smell the liquor on them and lead them, shaken but still tipsy-giggly, to the office to wait for their parents to pick them up. All right, I couldn’t have been thinking about Carr before I found out he was chaperoning, but you probably didn’t catch that, anyway.

“Happy New Year!” Kate cried out as I popped the cork. Kate was wearing an outfit consisting entirely of the color dark blue. She always wears outfits consisting entirely of the color dark blue, and always will wear

outfits consisting entirely of the color dark blue, world without end. We gulped and giggled and talked about nothing, enjoying the Indian summer night but not the mosquitoes that flew in it. Just when the bottle was drained, what I thought was a large black backpack of one of the freshgirls looked up and it was no backpack but Rachel State, the Frosh Goth, Sister Of The Groom. She stared at me from eyes circled in what looked like coal. In fact, between her black lipstick and her black clothes and dyed black hair I would have to say her overall impression was dis- tinctly mesquitelike. If you were bad all year and of the Christian faith, you could expect Rachel State in your stocking.

“Rachel!” I cried out, hoping I was impressing the hell out of her, “Come meet my friend Kate!”

She scowl-staggered over while her friends gaped. The bubbly must have mellowed Queen Bee Kate Gordon (did I just use the phrase
the bubbly
?!?), because she didn’t cringe or mock or any- thing; she just said hello. How ’bout that.

“Rachel is Adam State’s sister,” I told Kate brightly.