The Basic Eight (38 page)

“Yes?” she said.

“What time is it?” I tried.

She shook her head. “The least of your problems, Flan. Stand up.”

I gripped a towel rack, slippery with something. I blinked again. Where was I? No, I mean, V ’s bathroom, but what was going on? “Um–” I said.

“Stand
up
!” she said, cracking. “Hurry up, Flan!” The bathroom stumbled by me, another door opened and I was in V ’s brother’s room, everything suspended in time like rooms are when their occupant is a junior at Yale

University. This wasn’t helping. Natasha opened the sliding door of his closet and the mirror lurched off left. Prim suits stood in a line like commuters. “Jesus,” Natasha muttered, looking at them one by one. She turned back to me in astonishment. “
Don’t sit down
!” she yelled, running to me and pulling me off the bed. She looked at the bedspread and tore it off the bed. “
Jesus
, Flan,” she said. “Get it off and don’t
touch anything
!”

“What are you–what are you
talking about
?” I said, and looked down and realized I had ruined her dress. Rum punch and water were all over it and the fabric seemed saturated with it.
No wonder she’s mad
, I thought, but I felt a small rush of relief, realizing it was punch stains. Because if it wasn’t punch stains–

“
Get it off get it off get it off
!” she screamed. “Oh, God!” She grabbed me again and the bedroom stumbled by me, another door opened and I was back in the bathroom. “Stand
up
!” she said and I stood up. Downstairs somebody was shrieking; I was therefore upstairs.

Natasha pulled the dress over my head like I was a baby; it slid by me like an eel and left me shivering alone in the bathroom with my hands above my head. I thought Natasha would come back but nothing happened so I lowered my arms. Through the crackle and gurgle of my head came the sound of the water run- ning. Behind the gauzy curtain the shower was running and empty, so taking a wild guess I got in and felt the water wash it off me. I wasn’t staying up very well, so I stretched each hand out to balance me: one on the bright clean tile and the other on the shower curtain; I slowly slid down until I was sitting
in
the shower, water spitting all over me, forgotten. I thought maybe I’d just
stay
there but Natasha clawed the curtain back and forced me out of the tub again. I chattered and

chattered and suddenly felt myself heaving into Natasha’s arms. One of us was crying but I didn’t know who.

Natasha leaned over me and turned off the shower. She was wearing a man’s suit that was way too big for her and stacked in her hands she had the clothes she’d borrowed from me that night at V ’s party: the plain white T-shirt with a tiny stenciled flower at the center of the neck and a pair of blue jeans. “They’re sweaty, but wear them,” she said tersely, and threw me a towel.

I rubbed my face and the world went terry cloth for a minute. “I’m sorry about your dress,” I said sadly, into the towel. “Is it going to be OK?”

“
No
,” Natasha snarled. I kept rubbing my face, not wanting to meet her eyes. Then I heard her sigh. “It’ll be OK,” she said, as if to herself, but then repeated it to me. “It’s OK,” she said, “but listen to me, Flan. Listen to me. Take the towel off.”

I took the towel off. The suit made her look less and less ridicu- lous and more and more OK, glamorous even. She was holding up a paper grocery bag; inside it I could see her ruined dress, curled and coiled like a captured snake. “You’ve never seen this dress,” she said. I was looking straight down into the bag, right at it. “You didn’t wear a costume tonight. You’ve never seen this dress in your life.”

I started to laugh but Natasha grabbed my face, turned it to look right at me. With one hand grasping my cheeks and the other pointing right at me, she said it again. “You’ve never seen this dress.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’ve
never. Seen. This. Dress!
” She let go of me and my head darted back, like I was startled. I
was
startled.

“What?” I said.

“
What
?” she screamed back at me.

“OK,” I said.

“OK
what
?”

“I’ve never seen that dress,” I said, pointing at it. The mirrors were fogging over with the shower, or maybe they weren’t; maybe they were reflecting exactly what was going on. “I’ve never seen it.”

Natasha rolled the bag up and put it under her arm. “Put your clothes on,” she said. Foggier and foggier.

Suddenly, something grabbed my ankle. I stumbled and put my hand on the damp grass to stop myself from falling. I picked up a baguette, thin and incredibly stale, and beat at the hand until it let go, until it stopped moving, until it was barely a hand.

Natasha had opened the shades so the irksome blaze of dawn was upon me like, I don’t know, too much salad dressing. “Today’s the day!” she said, straddling me like a rider, or a rapist. “I can’t wait! The biggest event of the year.” Then I woke up and she was kneeling beside the bed peering into my half-open eyes. “You OK?” she said tenderly. I was grasping the blanket to my chin like a baby, but everything was cold: the gray mist outside, the windowpanes, the floors and walls of the room and my whole body, solid with cold like something stretched out on a slab. I felt like shit. I looked right back at Natasha, who was dressed curi- ously in a man’s suit and sharp perfect lipstick. I looked at her and she looked back at me, sharply, theatrically, until all of a sudden the air didn’t feel like a stark glacier, ending our Age as we knew it. It just felt like the morning blues. “I’m thirsty,” I said, and shifted under the blanket, looking for a warm spot. “What did I do?” I said. Natasha had put a glass in my hand, so large and cold. She didn’t answer my question.

It wasn’t the right question. I licked my lips in anticipation, finally, of water, but floating at the top of the glass was a thin layer. Of something. I raised it past my mouth to my eyes; Natasha’s face skittered and rippled behind it. Dust was dancing at the horizon of the water, like plankton. My stomach gurgled; I didn’t want to sip it. “This water looks gross,” I said to Natasha. She was looking at V ’s brother’s clock radio.

“I’m not surprised,” she said, turning the clock toward me. The bright digital numbers danced in front of my eyes like hot red sparks: HED, DED, DIE, 5IE, 53E, 5:30. It was five-thirty and I was in V ’s brother’s bedroom. “It’s been sitting around all day. Like you.”

When I woke up I found myself in V ’s brother’s bedroom, ter- ribly thirsty and still in the clothes I had worn the night before: my white T-shirt with the tiny flower in the center, and blue jeans. Through a dusty glass of water, red sparks of a clock radio were winking at me, but I couldn’t read them. I was experiencing what Natasha has been known to call a déjà typhoon–a storm of famili- arity, a rush of can’t-quite-place-it-ness. There was something right in front of me, something I knew the shape of but couldn’t quite know, like I’d just had a baby but hadn’t yet gotten to know it, but there it was, suckling away.

Somebody was feeling me up. I could feel the feel of some- body’s hand along my very spine, teasing me until the plain white cotton felt like something silky, like a kimono against my skin. I opened my eyes; Yale pennants spun. Outside the window showed moonlight against fog, a dense shrubbery of gray half- light. Somebody was breathing heavily, and their fingers were trembling on my skin. When he kissed me I sucked him in like a fish, taking him down with me. We kissed

superhard, and his fingers were still shaking when they slipped under my elastic and across my hipbones, cold and hard as marble. I followed him, grabbed his fingers and slid them inside me. He moaned; it was Gabriel. I grabbed at this: It was my
boy- friend
. My legs were spread so wide it was impossible to take my underwear off; he got them halfway down when they stuck, overstretched like those little wire things that don’t always keep bags closed properly. Gabriel needs to cut his nails. I kept thinking things like that the whole time, little sentences. Reduced senten- cing. My underwear is ripped and I don’t have another pair. In this case it is true about black men. Not being able to remember V ’s brother’s name. It hurts. The light is weird in here. Harder. Tasting Gabriel’s shoulder, biting down on it. We’re not using any birth control. Harder. It hurts anyway. Is somebody watching us? Would I be able to get into Yale? Gabriel breathing in my ear. My hips moving in a way I wasn’t planning–instinctively, I guess. The familiar taste of blood. Gabriel’s noises and my own. Nata- sha’s unblinking eyes in the dark, like cat’s eyes. The hot tip of her cigarette, riveted and bored. The sound of the bed. The sound of us in the bed.

I was sitting on the stained couch with a cup of coffee I wasn’t drinking in my hand when the doorbell rang. V ’s doorbell is scrupulously polite, a slight tinkle that just clears the throat in a discreet “ahem”; nevertheless my head split like a melon. I closed my eyes and experienced what I sometimes call a déjà typhoon–a storm of familiarity, a rush of can’t-quite-place-it-ness. What was that, a head splitting like a melon? A baguette stuck in it, some weird fruit salad. I got up and answered the door.

It was Rachel State, showered and worried. “Hi Flan,” she said, looking me over. “How are you?”

I thought it was sarcasm but when I looked down at myself it was genuine concern; I was wearing my plain white T-shirt with a small flower embroidered on it, wrinkled and with a new tear on the shoulder like someone had bitten it. I suddenly felt my hair, like a mess of twigs. Particularly in contrast to Rachel’s sleek black ensemble I felt like a mess.

“I’m OK,” I said. “Just, you know, getting up. It was quite a party, wasn’t it?”

“It’s none of my business,” Rachel said, looking at the floor. What? “Weren’t you there?” I said.

“It’s none of my business,” she said again, and I realized she was
beginning
a sentence, “but did Adam sleep here last night?” She raised her eyes and looked at me. In about half a second, she went from The Frosh Goth to a little fourteen-year-old knocking on the door of a house that hosted a party, looking for her big brother like somebody sent into the dark woods in a fairy tale. Which made me the witch, I guess.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Come on in, I’m freezing standing here with the door open.”

She looked wary and embarrassed.

I took a step backward and ran into Kate and Lily. They looked out of breath and were wearing damp aprons. “Hey,” I said, “Rachel is here. She’s–”

“Adam didn’t come home last night,” Rachel said. “My mom is raising hell. I’m sorry for coming over.” The open door was chilling me through, but I didn’t quite have the audacity to reach past her and pull it shut so I just stood there trembling.

“Nobody’s here,” Lily said quickly.

Rachel blinked. “Have you seen–”

“She’s looking for Adam,” I told them. “He didn’t come home, apparently.” Still trembling, I tried to scan back and figure out when I’d seen him last. Laughing in the kitchen–

“Well,” Kate said, “he’s not here. Only the Basic Eight were invited to spend the night. Everybody else was supposed to
leave
.” She was looking right at Rachel.

“I wasn’t–” Rachel gestured uselessly. “I just wanted to–” “I don’t think Adam came to the party at all,” Lily said.

“Yes he did,” I said. “I’m just trying to remember the last time I saw him.” I looked curiously at Lily; surely she remembered he was there. Her eyes were wide and bagged; she clearly hadn’t slept. Had
I
slept? “Come on in, Rachel,” I said. “There’s coffee.” “Thanks,” she said, giving me a tiny smile. She stepped farther into the house and I walked around her to shut the door. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been this cold, but then again I wasn’t

remembering much at all. “It’s in the kitchen,” I said.

“Thanks,” Rachel said again, but she couldn’t get to the kitchen because Kate and Lily were standing there. They looked at each other and then parted slightly so Rachel could squeeze through. What in the world was going on? Gabriel came through the kit- chen door and blocked Rachel from it, his face set and unreason- able. Flora Habstat, of all people, stood behind Gabriel; she looked like she’d been crying. At last, I grabbed the handle to shut the front door and found V and Douglas standing there, out of breath. They looked scared raw. “Hi,” I said. “Where have you guys been?”

“I know this will be hard to believe, Flan,” Douglas said sharply, “but I’m not in the mood for jokes right now.”

“He followed me so I could get home,” V explained. “Where have
you
been?” I asked.

“
Flan
,” she said. Her hands were shaking.

“V , look who’s here,” Kate said meaningfully. “Rachel State.

You know, Adam’s sister.”

“Oh,” V said. She blinked. She put her hand over mine and slammed the door shut. “What are
you
doing here?”

Rachel looked at me, her only ally. “I–” she said. “Did Adam stay here? He didn’t–my mom is looking for Adam.” She looked around like one of those kittens in a cage they have downtown as part of the Adopt-an-Animal program: Look how helpless, look how cute. Take it home. Everyone was too close to her: Kate and Lily, Gabriel and Flora, standing around her like walls at the zoo. Like a cage.

“It was a
party
,” Kate said. “We don’t know where he went.” “She’s going to kill him,” Rachel said quietly, and Gabriel began

making a terrible sound. Everybody looked at him, and he covered his mouth though it didn’t do any good. He was doubling over. Flora went to him, Kate went to him.

“I’m sorry,” Gabriel sputtered, and when he looked up for a minute I saw his red face and knew he was
laughing
. “I’m sorry,” he said when he caught his breath.

V reached out a hand and whirled Rachel around to face her. “Gabriel’s been sick,” she said. “He’s just hungover, that’s all. This really isn’t the best time for a visit, Rachel.”

“I was just looking for Adam,” she said uncertainly.

Kate snapped her fingers. “You know, I think he might have gone home with Shannon,” she said. “You know, Shannon, from the choir?”