The Basic Eight (2 page)

school was, and about some books, and about your own trip to Italy. You were one of the non-brain-dead non- phonies around that place. I felt–I don’t know–a connec- tion or something. Well, luckily I’m running out of room on this aerogram, which is probably a good thing, but I’ll seal this before I change my mind.

Yours, Flannery Culp

P.S. Sorry about the espresso stain. All the waiters here are gorgeous, but clumsy and probably gay.

September 1, Florence

Dear Adam,

If writing one letter to you was presumptuous, what is two letters? It’s just that I feel you’d be the only one who’d understand what I’m thinking right now, and besides I’ve already written everybody else too many letters and I have all this caffeinated energy on my hands, as I said last time.

But in any case, the only person who’d really get what I want to say is you, because this relates to the hotel bookstore metaphor I told you about before. Yes- terday, when viewing Michelangelo’s David I had the exact opposite metaphorical experience. I mean, I had of course seen the image of David 18 million times, so I wasn’t expecting much–sort of like when I saw the Mona Lisa last summer. I stood in line, took a look, and thought, Yep, that’s the Mona Lisa all right.

It was huge. From head to toe he was simply enormous, and I don’t just mean statuesque (rim shot!) but enormous like a sunset, or like an idea you can at best only half comprehend. It simply took my breath away. I walked around and around

it, not because I felt I had to, but because I felt like it deserved that much attention from me. I found myself looking at each individual part closely, rather than the entire thing, because if I looked at the entire thing it would be like staring at the sun. It was such an unblink- ing portrayal of a person that it rose above any hack- neyed hype about it. It flicked away all my cynicism about Seeing Art without flinching and just made me look. I walked out of there thinking, Now I am older.

But it wasn’t until I finished one of my hotel-lobby mysteries that night that I thought of my experience metaphorically. Unlike bringing books to Italy, I went to see David anticipating an empty, manufactured ex- perience; instead I found a real experience, and a new one. I didn’t think I’d have any new experiences left, once sobriety and virginity took flight. Perhaps that is what next year will hold for me. Not sobriety and vir- ginity, but real new experiences. Maybe in writing to you, a new person in my life, I will embark on some- thing new, as well. David has filled me with hope. And another biblical name fills me with hope as well: yours. Out of room again.

Bye, Flan

And a postcard, written September 3rd, postmarked September 4th.

On the back:

Listen what my letters have been trying to tell you is that I love you and I mean real love that

can surpass all the dreariness of high school we both hate, I get back from Italy late on the night of Saturday the 4th call me Sunday. This isn’t just the wine talking.

F.

On the front:

A picture of the statue of David. Cancellation ink from a winking postmarker across the groin.

Vocabulary:

VAMPY SOBRIETY PRESUMPTUOUS VIRGINITY FAUX POSTMARKED HACKNEYED

Study Questions:

1. A Chinese proverb reads: “Never write a letter when you are angry.” Are there other states of mind in which one should not write letters?
   

2. Most postal laws state that after one has given one’s letters to the post office to mail one cannot retrieve them. Do you think this is a fair law? Think before answering.
   

3. Taking jet lag into account, how long would you wait to call someone who had just gotten back from another continent? If you had just gotten back from another continent yourself and were expecting a phone call, what would be the appropriate amount of time to wait before you could assume the phone call wasn’t coming? Assume that you kept the line available as much as possible by keeping all other phone calls short.
   

Monday September 6th

Jet lag finally wore off today, so it seemed time to start my brand- new-expensive-black-Italian-leather-bound journal.

Historians will note that my bargaining skills were not yet sharpened when I made this purchase, which is why I’m trying to write costly sentences to justify my expenditure (i.e., “Histori- ans will note…”). For the past couple of days since I got back I haven’t been doing anything much, anyway; only sitting around my room trying to call my friends. My bedroom became a perfect decompression chamber between the European and American civilizations: I spent all my time talking to machines and was thus soon acclimated back to my motherland.

No one was home. I was sorry to miss them but glad to keep my phone time brief. I’m keeping the line open for Adam. He hasn’t called. I’d like to think that he’s on vacation, but school starts tomorrow so his parents must have brought him home by now to give him time to shop for new khakis.

Just when I was going over each of my letters in my head, Natasha called. “You know Natasha, right, Natasha Hyatt? Long hair, dyed jet-black, sort of vampy-looking?” What
stupid
things to write! I picked up on the third ring, but before I could speak I heard her breathy voice.

“Flan, are you waiting for some
guy
to call?” Reader, note here that she pronounces my nickname not as the first syllable in my name is regularly pronounced, but as “a pastry or tart made with a filling of sweet rennet cheese, or, usually, custard.”

I put down
The Salem Slot
, the last of my hotel bookstore acquis- itions. Once I’ve started something, I have to finish it, no matter how bad it is. “Hi, Natasha. How did you know?”

Natasha sighed, reluctant to explain the obvious. “You just got back from your European jaunt. You’ve left ‘Hi-I’m-home’ mes- sages on everybody’s machines, so you haven’t gone out. You are therefore sitting on your bed

reading or writing something. You can reach the phone without moving, but you waited until the third ring. Now, Watson, we need school supplies, ja? Let’s meet for coffee and go buy cute notebooks.”

“Cute notebooks?” I said. “I don’t know. I sort of have to–” “
Yes
, cute notebooks. We’re going to be
seniors
, Flan. We have

to play it to the hilt. If we can find pencils with our school colors on them, we’re buying them. But of course we’ll need coffee first. I’ll meet you at Well-Kept Grounds, OK?”

She started to hang up. “Wait! When?”

“Whenever we get there, dearest. While on the Continent, did you forget how we operate? Did you forget us entirely? Nobody got even a postcard.”

“Sorry.”

“Yes, yes, yes. Leave the machine on in case he calls. And I’ll want to hear
all
about it. The more you talk with machines and the more they talk with you, the more acclimated you’ll get to American civilization.
Ciao
.” The phone clattered as she hung up. Only Natasha can make me move as fast as I did. I left the machine on, ran out the door, turned back, got my coat, ran out the door, turned back, got change for the bus and ran out the door. I forgot that San Francisco September can be chilly and that my July bus pass wasn’t going to work two months later. Once on the bus I adopted the Blank Face Public Transportation Dress Code but by the time I got off I couldn’t help beaming. I was happy to see Natasha again. It’s often difficult to keep up with her Bette Davis-meets-Dorothy Parker act but underneath that

she’d do anything for me.

Well-Kept Grounds is tucked into a neighborhood full of hippie preteens and bookstores dedicated to the

legalization of marijuana, but the surroundings are a small price to pay for the cafe’s collection of fabulous fifties furniture and for not charging extra if you want almond extract in your latte, which I always do. Natasha was there already. I saw her lipstick first, though her forest green rayon dress was a strong second. “
Flan
!” she called, sounding like she was ordering dessert. Men in their midtwenties looked up from their used paperbacks and alternative newspapers and followed her with their eyes as she cantered across the Grounds. She gave me a hug and for a second I was embraced by a body that makes me want to go home and never eat again. Natasha is one of those high school students who looks less like a high school student and more like an actress playing a high school student on TV.

“Hi,” I said sheepishly, wishing I had worn something more glamorous. Suddenly a summer of not seeing each other seemed like a long time. She stood in front of me and looked me over. She swallowed. We both waited.

“I’ll go get a drink,” I said.

Natasha looked relieved. “Do that.”

The men in their midtwenties slowly returned to their used paperbacks and alternative newspapers. What I would give to have someone in college look me over. I got my drink and went and sat down across from Natasha, who put down her book and looked at me. I looked at the spine of the book.

“
Erotica
by Anaïs Nin? Does your mother know?”

“Mother lent it to me,” Natasha said, rolling her eyes. She al- ways calls her mom “Mother” as if she’s some society matron when in fact she teaches anthropology at City College. I thumbed through the book as Natasha took a sip of some bright green fizzy drink.
I can see you biting and scratching. She learned to tease him, too. The

moans were rhythmic, then at times like the cooing of doves
. When people thumb through this book, those italics will catch their eyes and they’ll spot a pornographic sentence before the page flaps by. A writer’s got to sell herself.

“Why no latte?” I asked, gesturing to the green potion. “I thought it was mother’s milk to you.”

“After this summer it’s begun to taste like some other bodily fluid,” Natasha said, looking at me significantly. Her eyes were very carefully done; they always are.

“Do tell,” I said, happy to have arrived at a topic that didn’t involve my confession of love, written in a hurried, Chianti-laced scrawl, on a postcard. Just thinking about it made me want to hide under the table, which was painted an unfortunate fiesta- ware pink.

“All right, I’ll talk about
my
love life, but then we’ll talk about
yours
. But first, this Italian soda needs a little zip.” Natasha found a flask in some secret pocket and added a clear liquid to the soda, watching me out of the corner of her eye. She’s always taking out that flask and adding it to things. I often suspect that it’s just water but I’m afraid to call her bluff. She went on to describe some guy she met at the Harvard Summer Program in Compar- ative Religion. Natasha’s always had a fascination with what people worship. Kate says Natasha’s actually fascinated that people aren’t worshiping
her
instead. In any case, each summer Anthropologist Mom plunks down her hard-earned money for Natasha to fly across the country and make out with gorgeous men, all for the cause of higher learning. According to Natasha, this one was five years older than us and attended a prestigious liberal arts school, the name of which I’m not sure I can mention here lest its reputation become tainted due to its association, however brief, with the notorious Basic Eight.

“He was said to be brilliant,” Natasha said, “but to be honest we didn’t have too many conversations. It was mostly sex. It will be a while before I order any drink with steamed milk again.” She drained the rest of her soda in an extravagant gesture and I watched her throat as she swallowed, taking mental notes.

I sighed. (How
perfect
my recall of these small details. I
sighed
, reader; I remember it as if it were yesterday.) “You go to the puritanical city of Boston and hook up with a genius who also happens to be an excellent lover–”

Natasha used a blood-red nail to poke a hole in my sentence. “More accurately, he was an excellent lover who also happened to be a genius.”

“–and I go to Italy, the most romantic country in the world, and the only man who makes my heart beat faster is carved out of marble.” I briefly described my experience with Michelangelo’s David. She broke character for a full minute as she listened to me, shaking her head slightly. Her silver earrings waved and blinked. I was a little proud to have hushed her; even my best poems haven’t done that. When I was done she remembered who she was.

“So this is the guy you’re waiting to hear from?” she asked. “Can I give you a piece of advice? Statues never call.
You
have to make the effort.”

“You have experience in this realm?” I said. “And here I thought you only slept with anything that
moved
.” Natasha threw back her head and cackled. U.p. and a.n. went down again; the men all sat and wished they were the ones making her laugh like that. I jumped in while she was laughing.

“It’s Adam State. I’m waiting for Adam State to call.” Once I finally told someone it seemed much smaller, a

problem made not of earth-shattering natural forces but of proper nouns: first name Adam, last name State.

Her cackling stopped like somebody pulled the plug. “
Adam State
?” she screeched. “How can you have a crush on anyone who has a name like a famous economist?”

“It’s not because of his name. It’s because of–”

“That
sine qua non
,” Natasha finished, batting her eyelashes. She stopped when she saw my face. “Don’t get angry. You know how I am. Underneath all my Bette Davis-meets-Dorothy Parker act I try to be good, really. There’s no accounting for taste. Do you think it will work out?”

I bit my lip. “Honestly?”

Natasha looked at me as if I suggested she keep her hair natural. “Of course not.
Honestly
. The very
idea
.”

“In that case, yes. It will definitely work out. I’m just worried about how ‘Flannery State’ will look on my stationery.”

“You could do that hyphenated thing. Culp-State, say.” “Sounds like a university. Where criminals go after high

school.”

I finished my latte and paid careful attention to the taste of the milk. I didn’t notice any real similarity, but my palate isn’t as experienced. “This is a secret, Natasha.”