The Basic Eight (18 page)

“I don’t know,” I said, looking at my friend Douglas, classical musician and actor, who dressed in linen suits, always brought flowers to dinner parties and cried during the sad parts of operas. When he and I had been going

out, I’d had to spend a considerable amount of my time defending his sexuality to people at Roewer. Of course,
when he and I had been going out
would be the key part of that phrase. I don’t go out with gay men, as a general policy.

“It’s OK.”

“Did you know then, and not tell me? Come to think of it, does Lily know now?”

“No one knows now,” Douglas said. “I didn’t even mean to tell you. It just slipped out. And I don’t know how long
I’ve
known. I guess I don’t have to tell you that I don’t want anyone else to know.”

“Not even
Lily
?” I said. “Let me tell you one thing about wo- men, Douglas, not that you’ll need to know, now. They generally assume that their boyfriends are heterosexual.”

“Don’t tell Lily!” he said.
Cried
, rather.

“I hadn’t thought of telling her
myself
. But
you
should tell her.” “I can’t,” he said. “Not yet. And don’t tell anyone else.”

“I won’t, I won’t,” I said, already imagining what Natasha would think of this. “I promise. But you’ve got to set things straight with Lily.”

“So to speak,” he said with the ghost of a smile.

“What? Oh.
Oh
. Right. Douglas, Lily’s mad at me because she thinks, well I don’t know what she thinks. Let me show you this note she wrote me.” I bounded upstairs and got it from my room. As I picked it up I noticed my hands were shaking.
It’s no big deal
, I found myself telling myself.
Lots of people are gay
.

I went downstairs and showed it to him. “Why did she number all the lines?” he asked as he read it.

“No, I did that.”

He looked up. “Why did
you
number all the lines?”

“Never mind
that
. Read the note. You see how she purposely crossed out that part on lines 17 through 19, but left it for me to see?”

“Flan, give me a break. I’ll tell her soon, I promise. Come on, I’ll drive you to school.”

“
Douglas
!”

“We’re late already.”

“I’m not going to school. Neither of us are. We’re going to talk about this. Oh, wait, I
have
to go to school. I have to turn in my essay to Lewis or she’ll kill me. Come on.”

Douglas didn’t speak to me the whole way there. Or
wouldn’t
, rather. Douglas
wouldn’t
speak to me the whole way there. I sat in the passenger seat, Lily’s note still crumpled in my hands, and wished that I smoked so I could have a bitter cigarette at my fin- gertips, fuming along with me.

Douglas parked, and I swung my door open, almost knocking Gabriel down. I looked at him, one leg out of the car already, and felt the world grow pale like everybody got the flu at once.

“Hi,” I said hoarsely, trying–unsuccessfully, I knew–to make my face look like he hadn’t caught us at something. I heard Douglas get out of the car, behind me, and I waited for him to say anything. But he just walked away, and I was left shivering in the chilly morning.

“It’s already homeroom,” Gabriel said.

“I just know,” I said, “that someday I will actually be present and accounted for.”

“I was looking for Douglas,” he said, gesturing helplessly. “I wanted to talk to Douglas.”

I pointed to Douglas’s departing figure. “Well, he’s over there,” I said.

“Are you two going out?” he asked me. “Haven’t we settled this?” I asked him.

“You know,” Gabriel said, looking up at the cold air, “I wasn’t surprised when I didn’t see you this morning. If I were you I wouldn’t come to school, either.” Even from someone as sweet as Gabriel that sounded like a threat.

“Gabriel,” I said, “please.”

“What’s going on?” Gabriel asked. “Flan, you’re driving me crazy.”

I looked at him, Gabriel, this person who for some reason was now dangling on a thread I was holding, and I could only think of one thing to do. Maybe somebody else would have done something else, but I was just me, a senior in high school trying to get into college, flunking Calc, trapped in a biology class with Jim Carr, suddenly the center of controversy among my friends who saw me as a confidante, an adulterer, a liar, a slut, a collab- orator, an overweight slob and who knows what else, all except Gabriel, who stood there in the student parking lot seeing me as the person he loved, and it suddenly became so easy to see myself as someone who was in love with Gabriel, as he was in love with me, and I held my breath like you do when you’re opening a suspiciously dated carton of milk and kissed him. It was a long kiss, the proper length of kiss, I told myself, for the beginning of a relationship. I felt Gabriel stiffen, react despite himself and fi- nally surrender and kiss me back. I stepped backward and into the car door; it slammed shut and we both jumped and stopped kissing. We grinned at each other, his as wide as the Pacific and mine, I fear, as shallow as Lake Merced. Some
Gurgle and Buzz
song popped into my head, but just out of reach, scarcely audible. “Are you sure this is OK?” he asked me, and my mind scurried

out of the swampy lake back to Gabriel. He was

cute. He cooked and would never treat me wrong. No one would be mad at me any more.

“Yes,” I said, and he took my hand instantly and led me into the school building. The bell rang just as we walked in the door, and the hallway began to fill up. “I’ll see you soon,” I called to him over the roar of people my age who had a purpose, who knew where they were going and only had three minutes to get there. “I’ll talk to you soon.”

I opened the side entrance, and there was Adam. “Flannery!” he said, smiling. “I’ve been looking for you!”

I tried to make my voice sound like his voice didn’t make me weak in the knees.
You have a boyfriend
, I found myself telling myself, trying to picture Gabriel clearly in my mind. “What do you want?”

“What’s wrong? You look a wreck.” “Thanks a lot,” I said.

“Hey, I thought we were friends.”

“And
I
thought you needed a little room,” I said, feeling a little bored by all this until he suddenly took my hand. Suddenly I was warm, for the first time all morning since I got out of the shower. As warm as “With You With You.” “What?” I squeaked. The way my life was going, some great-uncle of Kate’s was bird-watching, accidentally photographing me with Adam to show Gabriel, but fuck it. Let him. I’m over here next to the orioles, Uncle Bob!

“I wanted to ask you to dinner Saturday night,” he said plainly. He was wearing a button-down shirt of pure white; did I mention that? He makes me into a walking cliché; did I mention that? Melting at his voice, swooning inside, the whole bit, a pure shot of desire.

“Really?” I started to say, but changed it, just in time. “Sat- urday?” I said. I started to shake my head, but from

nowhere a sentence dropped into my head like a note in a bottle.

Gabriel wouldn’t have to know
. “Yes.”

“Really?” he said, and then frowned like he hadn’t changed that in time. Adam was excited to ask me out.
Excited
. Maybe a little nervous. All he had needed was a little room; who didn’t need that, once in a while? “Um, I’m busy all day Saturday, so I won’t get ahold of you. Will you meet me in a cafe somewhere, let’s say six-thirty?”

“Death Before Decaf?” I said. “That’s close to where I live. We could just go back to my place and have sex.” That last sentence I purposely crossed out before I said it, but left it for him to hear. “Sounds great,” he said, blinking. “Death Before Decaf, Sat- urday, six-thirty. See you then.” He looked at me, and smiled widely like everything was easier than he thought. With a pang I remembered Gabriel, after the dinner party, showing me he had

found the right key to his car door.

“I Keep Finding What I’m Not Looking For,”
that’s
the Q.E.D. song that had popped into my head after kissing Gabriel in the parking lot. But this time, it was a different one, the album’s closer. “You’re young and you’re experienced,” the opening vo- cals whisper while a guitar purrs gently. The first kiss was gentle, and I thought that was going to be all. “And I can taste it,” the singer snarls, and the drums kick in, the full band in full force, the bass crackling like the feel of cold cement on your back as you lean against a building you hate, a building you’ve always hated, to kiss a man you love and have always loved. I don’t know how the rest of the lyrics go–I haven’t heard the song enough yet–except for the chorus: “Swept away by your ready desire/I surrender to your kiss of fire.” That’s the title of the song. When the kiss was over we looked at each other, out of breath, the silence around us expectant, just like it is when a great album is over. “Kiss Of Fire.”

Saturday October 2

Well, life could be worse, I’m not trapped on ice floes or anything, not like the gin was even
cold
, I have to go throw up. Fuck him.

Ahem. It’s later now, and although “sober” ain’t the word for what I am it’ll have to do; I’m not sitting on the cold tile of my bathroom floor with my cartoon-face night-light laughing at me anymore. He didn’t show, that’s why.

Back from another bout. I think the easiest way for my addled brain to chronicle this ignominious defeat is through a time line:

6:27 Flan leaves house to walk to Death Before Decaf, planning to arrive a few minutes late.

6:33 Arrives. A. S. has outfoxed her and Flan is forced to order a latte and sit waiting. Luckily she’s brought
Salinger’s Nine Stories
, which she’s rereading for the umpteenth time. She figures that it’s a good conversation starter, plus she can successfully pull off reading it carelessly, so when Adam comes she will be casual. In reality, her hands are sweating, and she keeps wiping them on napkins despite the self-righteous NAPKINS = TREES TAKE ONLY WHAT YOU NEED sign.

6:48 Orders another latte. Overcaffeinated and nervous, Flan suddenly realizes she’s read the same sentence in “For Esme with Love and Squalor” sixteen times in a row.

7:00 This is the deadline. Finally, Flan overcomes her own will- power and does what she knows will do her no good: takes her black leather notebook out of her bag and checks what time Adam said he’d meet her. Yes, it is fucking six thirty, put your journal back in your bag and order another latte.

7:18 Catches herself praying.

7:22 Decides her hands are so shaky that she may drop the latte on the way back to her chair, so she doesn’t order another one. 7:33 Flan doesn’t know what to do. Saturday night stretches before her like unwanted limousine service, waiting for me to tell it where to go. I can’t go home.

7:41 I was about to order some food. “Death Before Decaf offers a wide variety of low-fat salads” peeps another helpful sign, just when I was feeling fat enough, thank you, but about to collapse as a result of three lattes’ worth of blank jittery energy poured hot into an empty stomach. I reread the mocha-stained menu, flipping it over halfheartedly to see if what I wanted was on the other side. No, he wasn’t
there
either. Suddenly I couldn’t see anything. Adam had put his hands over my eyes for me to guess. “Guess who?” a decidedly female voice said, and in a flash I saw things as clearly as if I had invented them myself: Natasha, whom I had forgotten to call and cancel, had come to Death Before Decaf to grab a latte before meeting me for
Way Down East
as we

had agreed the other day at the beach.

“Hey!” I said, twisting my voice like a wet towel, wringing it tight into surprised, enthusiastic tones. This takes practice but it works.

“What’s wrong with you?” Natasha asked. “Nothing.”

She rolled her eyes, bored. “Well, I’m glad I found you. I got tickets already but we should zoom across the street,
dahling
. If we don’t hurry we’ll be sitting in the front row, and that’s too close to the organ.”

We scurried across. Just as the bored, multipierced usher was ripping my ticket in half, I looked back and

saw Adam, rushing into the café, his clothes torn and bloody. He had clearly been in a car wreck. Just kidding.

The lights were dimming when we walked in, so we sat in the back row and put our feet up on the seats in front of us. I felt disoriented:
Who
was I with?
What
were we doing? My shaky stomach fluttered like that movie where she’s pregnant with an alien. I don’t know what it was–the opening shot of Lillian what’s- her-name looking wan and helpless or the shimmering reverber- ations of the corny but sad organ chords–but as soon as
Way Down East
started I began to cry. I was being quiet, I think, but my shoulders shook Natasha’s leopard skin coat from the back of her chair. She heard the fake-bone buttons clatter on the floor; she took her eyes from the screen and watched me with the same rapt, detached attention. She reached down into the pocket of her fallen coat. I thought she was going for tissues, but I should have known. Lit by the yellowish glow of the old movie, she handed me the flask, which was polished to such a shine that I saw the reflection of the movie clearly in it. Lillian, as an abandoned wo- man, was learning that she was pregnant.

The gin wasn’t even cold. It was just straight, warm gin, and to say that it burned my throat wouldn’t begin to describe what it felt like. I read
Julius Caesar
sophomore year and was remem- bering Mrs. Brutus’s suicide via hot coals down the throat. Now, thanks to method acting I could play Portia to the hilt. I took an- other swig and by that time I couldn’t tell whether I was still crying, or some gin had leaked out and was dripping off my face like tears. You don’t have to be an A student in Advanced Bio like me (ha!) to know that empty stomach + three lattes + swigs of straight warm gin=one drunk girl by the time our heroine was clinging to ice floes, rushing down a river. I kept

swigging; next thing I knew Natasha was putting her arms under- neath my armpits to help me out of my ratty plush seat. I tried to stand up by myself outside the theater and slid down the wall to the floor. The usher was looking at me curiously; it occurred to me that he probably worked for Kate. I opened my mouth to tell Natasha this and to my horror found myself crying again. Natasha was sitting on her knees looking at me like a gargoyle, except she was gorgeous.