“Look at the odometer,” Angelina was saying as we pulled away in Ivan Fishback’s Ferrari. Angelina’s pudgy fingers patted the upholstery; the odometer read: 000000. “You don’t understand what my father’s done, Toby. This car, this Ferrari has never been driven. When he bought it, he bought it direct from the factory. Then he had it flown by helicopter to Venezia. It arrived in the U.S. in the hull of a cruise ship, like some pampered poor relation escaping a war. And Daddy hired movers to deliver it here, and with a custom-made winch they installed it in our driveway. Since then, it hasn’t moved. It hasn’t budged, Tobias. It’s the only pure thing in my dad’s entire world. And now you, a stranger, are popping its cherry! If I were superstitious, I would turn around now. I would turn around and drive back home and watch Schwarzenegger movies with my dad and eat schiacciata… . Nothing bad’s gonna happen tonight, is it, Toby?”
We were on our way to the Japanese restaurant. The place was named Namida. Namida means tears.
“I mean, you aren’t in love with Ian Lamb, are you? It occurred to me tonight when we were watching television. Sacred Heart was on the news. It was Principal McDuffy. He was talking to reporters about the rumor going round that a same-sex couple would attend tonight’s prom. And I thought about you, and the days you were out. And I thought about Ian, and the days he was out. Then when all the couples came, Ian Lamb arrived late. Courtney didn’t care; she was flirting with Juice. And Ian had two corsages—one for him and one for you. And your tuxes, even now, they’re exactly alike! And I thought about how both your folks were in Barbados. And I thought about how you’ve both been out of school a lot. And all the girls in my class—you know, it’s like a lottery. Who’s gonna get stuck with a flamer for a date. So tell me I’m just being paranoid, Toby. Tell me you and Ian Lamb are really just good friends. ’Cause I don’t wanna go as somebody’s fag-hag girlfriend. I care about you, Toby—but I care about me, too. I’m not the most beautiful girl in the world, but I have my good qualities—my charm, my joie de vivre. And we’ve been such good pals. And you know, this would just ruin it. I don’t care what you are… . Remember the library?”
I told her I remembered. I did remember, too: the way we had waltzed across the crunching bug bodies, the cataracts of moonlight, the novels we rescued.
“When I saw the news tonight, I thought, Shit, it’s Tobe and Ian! And when Ian came late, and he wouldn’t talk to Courtney, and he wouldn’t talk to anyone, a chill went down my spine. And when you didn’t show, and no one answered at your house, I knew that I was right, and I knew I was a fool. So tell me, Toby Sligh, that it’s my imagination! Tell me it’s me you want to dance with at the prom! Because, if it isn’t, you can take me home right now, in my father’s Ferrari, before I get crushed. You can take me home now and I’ll forgive you, Toby Sligh. You can take me home now and I’ll forgive everything.”
We were parked beside a limo. The chauffeur was dozing. The limousine was longer than Pinocchio’s nose.
“You’re the one, Angelina,” I said to her, and kissed her. I was thinking of my parents. “You’re the only one I want.”
She looked at me awhile—a dark, probing look. Then she turned away and said, “Would you get my door for me?”
I got it. She stepped out, leaning on my arm.
“Ya know, I always thought my dad would open that door for me.
“Irasshi!” a sushi chef called out to Angelina as a skittish woman in a blue silk kimono led us past the bar to our party in back. Angelina, who had studied Japanese on the sly ever since she’d seen Kurosawa’s Rashomon, spoke in soothing tones to the jittery hostess, who nodded at Angelina through a strained smile. In a beautiful room at the rear of Namida our party sat huddled around a low table. Anquanna wore a ravishing Pierre Cardin gown—black, chic, and strapless; she had fallen asleep. Juice sat beside her in a James Bond tuxedo playing Jinai Seijin, “The Goddess of Saintly Love,” a black market Japanese video game that emitted gross gastrointestinal noises and which Juice had commandeered from Namida’s owner’s son. Across from him, Bubba was using a chopstick to dig at a plantar’s wart bedded in his heel. Leaning against him was his date, Grace Cage, dressed in a gown that looked like a greasy lunch bag and holding up a piece of raw fish between her chopsticks as if it were a lump of contaminated flesh. Across from Grace, Courtney Ciccone sat gazing at a compact, enamored of herself; she wore a scarlet dress that plumped her breasts up like tomatoes, and I wondered what her feet were doing underneath the table. Opposite Courtney, back to me, sat Ian. He was placing pink petals of ginger on his eyes. When Ian turned around he looked like Little Orphan Annie. He couldn’t even see me. Angelina screamed.
“What did you order?”
“Sashimi,” Ian told her.
“Sashimi? I wanted you to start things off with sushi!”
Juice snorted, “Girl, I ain’t eatin’ no bait!”
“We thought we’d begin with something easy,” Courtney added.
“Sashimi?” Angelina said. “Sashimi’s raw fish!”
“Well, we didn’t know that,” Ian said. “Hello, Toby.”
“Hello, Ian,” I said.
Angelina looked at us.
Grace Cage whispered, “People die eating sushi. Fish have parasites.”
Bubba said, “They any good?”
“Excuse me,” Angelina said, bowing to the hostess. She went over to her brother and she slugged him in the stomach.
“Ow!” Bubba shouted, upsetting the table.
A cup of green tea splashed Anquanna’s sleeping lap.
“Sushizume!” cried the waitress.
Anquanna sprang to life.
“Bubba Fishback, shit, I finna whip yo’ white bootie!”
“Wha’d I do?”
“Down, Anquanna!”
“Help me, Toby!”
“Angelina!”
It was decided , after a brief deliberation, and after Angelina had calmed Anquanna down, that we would get bottles of sake to go. Juice bribed the waitress—who was happy to get rid of us—and soon we were piled in the stretch limousine, which was redolent of rice wine and cloying corsages. In no time at all we were thoroughly shit-faced—all but Grace Cage, who sipped her green tea, whose sobriety was part of a loftier mission.
“Anquanna?” Juice whispered.
“What is it, Leon?”
She was running her fingernail down her cousin’s wrist.
“Check it out,” Juice said.
Anquanna leaned over.
Juice showed her something in his pocket, and she flinched.
“What is it?” Courtney asked. “Like, can I see it?”
Anquanna was fuming; she wouldn’t look at anybody.
“Secrets!” Courtney sang. “Everybody’s got secrets!”
Grace Cage held a copy of the Bible in her lap.
“Have you heard about the gay couple going to prom?” Grace Cage began.
‘Who hasn’t?” we all answered.
‘Who is it, do you think?” Grace Cage asked Angelina.
‘It’s Toby and Ian,” Juice said.
We all laughed.
“They find out what happened to your Porsche today, Juice?” Anquanna looked at Bubba.
“What happened to his Porsche?”
“Somebody,” Bubba said, “put a brick through the window.”
“And they slashed its pretty tires,” Courtney chimed in.
Anquanna looked at Juice; then she swore and looked away. “I cannot believe you didn’t tell me this, baby.”
“I was fixing to tell you.”
Everybody got quiet.
“If my mama knew, boy—”
“Your mama won’t know.”
Anquanna was seething; she was glaring out the window. “What did you do?” Grace Cage asked Juice.
Grace was leaning into Bubba; Juice was studying his knuckles.
“You must have done something to make somebody so hateful. Have you talked to the Lord?” Grace asked.
>
“I lost His number.”
Anquanna shook her head. “Then you better find it, boyee!” I ain’t gettin’ caught in the crossfire this time!”
“What crossfire?” Grace asked.
Anquanna only cursed. I watched as her hand wandered up to her face, to the place on her cheek where her bruises had been.
Courtney touched Anquanna.
“Like, what crossfire?”
Anquanna whirled around and slapped Juice’s padded chest. “Leonard Compton’s wearing a bulletproof vess!” Anquanna announced. There was a dull, leaden thud.
Juice bowed his head.
“Open up and show ’em!”
Juice picked his teeth.
“Go ahead, you coward!”
When Juice didn’t move, Anquanna reached over and unbuttoned the studs above Juice’s cummerbund. A gray sheath of sturdy material emerged. Juice buttoned his shirt and wouldn’t look at anybody.
“Please take me home,” Grace Cage said to Bubba.
“Why are people after you?” Angelina asked Juice.
“He deals,” Anquanna said. “Juice Compton is a dealer.”
Everybody knew it, but now it had been said.
“Better watch your back tonight!” Anquanna warned the party. “Juice Compton is a dealer—he got gangsters after him!”
“And why don’t you shut your fucking mouth now, Anquanna?”
“It ain’t gonna help yo’ ass talkin’ dirty now!”
Anquanna started crying; everybody was embarrassed. Ian Lamb was looking out the window of the limo.
“Juice had a half brother.”
“Shut up, Anquanna!”
“Nobody’s tellin me to shut my mouth now! Juice had a brother, half brother name a’ Eddy! Folks called him E-Eye ’cause he only got one eye! You know how he lost it?”
Courtney said, “Let’s change the subject.”
“No way, Li’l Miss Teen Bitch! Not a chance! … Juice’s brother lost his eye, and a whole lot more because—”
“Anquanna Gray, I am warning you, baby… .”
“Whatchoo got to warn me about, Mr. Big Stuff?” Juice was curling in on himself like a snail. “You’re the one wearing the bulletproof vess! You’re the one’s got the automatic in his pocket! You’re the one’s puttin’ your friends on the line! You put me on the line dealin’ product for you! Maybe you can’t see the bruises on my cheek, but I got ’em in here! I got ’em inside! They held me down, Juice! They held me down and hit me! We all deserve better! We entitled to the truth!”
Juice said to Anquanna, “You’ve had too much sake.”
Anquanna just laughed: “Yeah, I had too much of you!”
“This is a downer,” Courtney Ciccone pouted.
I said, “I think we’ve all had a bit too much to drink.”
Ian turned from the window.
“How’d your brother lose his eye?”
Juice turned on Ian.
“And how’d you lose yours, Ian?”
“Everything’s so ugly,” moaned Courtney Ciccone. “Let’s try to be happy!”
Grace Cage cleared her throat: “I’m not so sure that I like the idea that I’m riding in a limo with somebody with a gun.”
Juice took an automatic pistol from his pocket and looked at it and rolled down the window and pitched it.
“That’s better,” Anquanna said. “What about the blow?”
Juice pitched a nickel bag of cocaine out the window.
“Now the vess!” Anquanna said. “Get rid of that vess! And then we can go to the prom like normal people!”
Blushing, Juice removed his ruffled cummerbund, unbuttoned his shirt, and drew out the leaden vest. He rolled down the limousine’s window and pitched it. Then he buttoned up, and he kissed Anquanna’s hand.
“That’s how I like you!” Anquanna said, nodding. “I just wanna live normal, tha’ss all I want!”
Grace Cage was looking from Ian to me.
“You two really going to the prom as a couple?”
Angelina, Courtney, and everybody laughed.
Ian asked, “And would we go to hell if we did?”
“There’s only one way to find out,” Grace Cage told him.
A secret closely guarded by the Senior Prom Committee was the annual theme: Stranded on a Desert Island. Ten tons of sand, several potty-trained macaws, and coolers of nonalcoholic margaritas had passed undetected by the likes of Angelina into the ballroom of the Downtown Hyatt Regency. But as our limousine drew up to the luxury hotel—a Dunsinane forest of palm trees filing past us—we didn’t need to see the firetrucks or local news crews to know that something more than the theme had been spoiled.
“Bomb scare? There’s really been a bomb scare?” Courtney squealed as we turned on the TV in the backseat of the limo. There we were, captured by our pixilated eye, our limousine idling on a screen within a screen. We could see a reporter sidewinding toward us. We would watch ourselves live on the news as we became it.
“Spencer Calloway reporting live at the Downtown Hyatt Regency, where a bomb threat from an anonymous phone caller has thrown an abrupt hitch in the Sacred Heart prom festivities.
“Though school officials have persistently denied rumors that two students of the same sex would attend tonight’s private function as a couple, today local gay rights and anti-gay rights activists converged upon the Hyatt to voice support and concern for what may prove to be the educational dilemma of the future.”
Here the coverage switched to earlier footage of lethargic demonstrators waving placards at each other. When the camera cut back, Calloway was next to Juice, whose head was sticking out of the limousine window. We had the option of watching Juice’s face on the screen or staring at his butt as he leaned out of the limo.
“We’re now talking live to Sacred Heart senior and local All-State running back Leonard ‘Juice’ Compton. Juice … do you mind if I call you Juice?”
“Go for it, Spence.”
Juice wagged his ass at us.
“We understand that the Sacred Heart prom will be relocated tonight to an undisclosed locale. But do you have any idea who might have been responsible for the terrible bomb scare that has rocked this small community?”
“Some gay basher ain’t got nothin’ else to do.”
“And Juice, is there any truth to the rumor that a same-sex couple will attend tonight’s prom?”
“Don’t look at me, Calloway. I like the ladies. You the one’s dressed by International Male”
Then Juice looked at the camera and said, “I love ya, Mama. I’m sorry what I done. I’m still yo’ baby… . Come dance with me tonight!”
Inside, Anquanna pinched Juice’s rump.
“Just when I think Leonard Compton’s a monster,” Anquanna said, “he goes and says something sweet.”
“Gotta go now, Spence!” Juice told an outraged Calloway, and he winked at the camera. “My boyfriend’s goosin me!”
The Prom Had been relocated to Sacred Heart High—an “undisclosed locale” any moron might have figured out—and moving vans arrived bearing beer kegs full of beach sand, which were rolled out and strewn around the school cafeteria to give it an impromptu “desert island” look. The cafeteria was surrounded by squad cars and security guards—squad cars in the event of any gay-related violence, and private security as a visible deterrent to members of the press who might conveniently forget that the Sacred Heart prom remained a private affair. Nevertheless, in a city our size—which was barely a city, and too mean to be a town—scandals like these brought the media running: camera crews were drinking coffee somewhere in the bushes, boom mikes masqueraded as telephone poles, and frenzied helicopters from rival TV stations were circling in the moonlight like sublunar sharks. Juice seemed to know a good deal of the security: they were on loan from an import-export magnate (read: mafioso) who was a big alum. They were all duded up in identical tuxes with Sicilian flags emblazoned on their satin cummerbunds. Most of them, however, wer
e decidedly not Sicilian; most of them were black and built like brick shithouses. They were the muscle behind the local hero, a hero whose traffic included stripjoints and crackpipes, ponies and greyhounds and dirty syringes, bingo and porno and underage escorts who came, if you were lucky, with complimentary condoms. Two guards, twins—Lonnie and Johnnie—had played ball for Sacred Heart, and Juice introduced us. He pointed to their names high above the lunch counter, to the records they had set for tackles and sacks. When their boss came around—a wheezy padrone with red licorice trailing from his lips like a fuse—the duo said, “Juice, you better not let Twizzler see you,” and Juice disappeared to empty beer kegs full of beach sand.
Anquanna and Courtney and Grace and Angelina retired to a table at the back of the hall and were sitting with their feet up sipping Crystal Pepsi. In front of the curtain on the stage where all our plays were, a four-piece outfit of Bob Marley wannabes were setting up kettledrums, guitars and amplifiers. Teachers dressed nicer than they ever had occasion to were milling around with their eyes peeled for queers, and I spied Ian Lamb in a big pack of jocks. I went over. When I did, everybody got quiet. There was soft sporadic laughter. All the guys were in cahoots.
“Ian,” I said, “could I talk to you a second?”
I thought I heard whispers; everyone was staring at me.
“What is it, Toby?” Ian said, not moving.
He was standing in the middle of a circle of jerks.
“I need to talk to you.”
“So go ahead and talk.”
Guys on either side of Ian Lamb started laughing.
Someone said, “Can we tell him?”
“He wouldn’t get the joke!”
“But he’d get something else!”
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