Sophomores

by Sean Desmond

  The crew found a sketchy spot to park off Good-Latimer. The boys got out and wandered down Elm Street, the main drag, past the tattoo parlor and the bikers eating quesadillas on picnic tables, past Easy Skankin’, the ska spot on the corner of Crowdus, and then turning down onto Commerce and arriving at the patio for the Crescent City Café. Already parked at a prime center table with café au laits were Jane and Tommy, holding court with Maura, her friend Eileen, and Eileen’s friend Brittany, and so on. Various arty kids with spikes, fades, and mushroom cuts thumbing through Chomsky readers and the Dallas Observer occupied the other spots on the patio. A huge Muppet of a man sat in the corner playing Leonard Cohen at a wrist-slitting cadence. The three boys tried to find seats, Sticky immediately ordered sopapillas (correction: beignets), everyone lit a cigarette, and the waitress brought fresh mugs of Community Coffee.

  “Anything going on tonight?” Rick gave Jane the quick-awkward-boyfriend-kissing-girlfriend-in-front-of-his-dudes-like-we-always-do-this-right?

  “Maura and I almost got mugged on our way here. Some insane, drugged-out homeless guy trying to sell us his dog.” Jane shuddered with the perfect I’m-barely-over-it face.

  “You know what I saw? Craziest thing . . .” Tommy put his hand to his chest. He was a bit ridiculous, but no one minded, it was part of his charm. “I was walking past here last week with Ashley”—Ashley was a boy from Magnet, and a douchey poser worth an eye roll—“and we saw a dog with a tattoo.”

  “Get the fuck out of here.” Stick pretended to snort the powdered sugar heaped on his beignets.

  “Swear on the baby Jesus.”

  “What was the tattoo?” Jane asked.

  “‘Bite me,’” Sticky offered.

  “Just a paw print,” Rick suggested. “or maybe a bone with angel wings.”

  “‘Fido RIP,’” Sticky chimed in, now balancing a teaspoon on his nose.

  “No, who is Fido’s mom?” Jane thumped on the table. She almost had the joke.

  “‘Bitch’!” Tommy screamed. “That’s right! It said, ‘RIP Bitch’!”

  Everyone died at that one. A DPD cruiser went screaming by, and Sweetums picked up the pace and sang “Police and Thieves” in zero-four time.

  “So what are we doing, or is this it?” Dan asked. With $10 from his father, he was semi-flush for the first time in his limited history of going out.

  “Anyone playing tonight?” Rick flicked a Zippo against his thigh. The clubs were all eighteen-and-older, which was why coffee shops like Crescent City were moth lights to the young and the restless.

  Tommy sat up and ashed off his lavender Sobranie cigarette. “My friend Tristan can get us into Gypsy Tea Room.”

  “All of us?” Rick asked. “Who’s playing?”

  “I think it’s the Reverend.”

  “Eh . . .” As in the Reverend Horton Heat. No one was really into punkabilly.

  “When are the Smiths coming to Dallas?” Jane asked.

  “Not until next year.” Stick was practically an A&R man for all the bands they listened to.

  “Boy afraid to put his hands on your mammary glands . . . ,” Rick yodeled in a Morrissey falsetto, “because his cat might die . . .”

  Dan started sniggering halfway through the impression, which was up there with Rick’s herky-jerky Michael Stipe dancing. Down Commerce two jacked-up biker assholes pulled each other into the street. A scrum of denim, leather, and skeevy hog chicks with tassel jackets and poofy hair ensued. Everyone craned their necks to leer, missing the trio of Ursuline girls coming the other way.

  “Reek!”

  Dan heard her first. Or Rick was pretending to have gone deaf.

  “Reek! Hallo!”

  Lili, like a not-so-clueless bébé agneau, came bounding across the café patio. Her hair in a milkmaid braid, she was wearing a Jesus and Mary Chain T-shirt tied at her belly button and a swishy black tulle ballet skirt. She draped her arms over Rick and fell into his lap. Dan winced, afraid to look over at Jane.

  “Reek, you didn’t tell me that you were going here in the Deep End, no?”

  Even Sticky couldn’t laugh at the irony of that one. Lili brushed Rick’s hair with the back of her hand and smiled at everyone at the table as if seeing them for the first time. Tommy caught Dan’s eye and mouthed “holy shit” as they all turned to Jane.

  “Uh, hello . . . ?”

  Though they both went to Ursuline, Jane and Lili orbited in separate social systems. Each studied the other, eyebrows up, expecting the other to realize and recognize. Unable to crawl under the table, Dan witnessed the shock on the faces of Maura, then Eileen, then Brittany, and so on down the line. Lili, who was no dummy, noticed it too and leaned away from Rick. Jane’s eyes narrowed, and she clutched at the edge of the table.

  “Rick, what the hell?”

  Rick squirmed, trying to peel Lili off his lap. “Listen . . . it ain’t nothing like that . . .”

  Jane buried her head in her hands, too smart to be talked down from this. “So full of shit.”

  Tommy put out an arm in support, but also possibly to restrain her. Her anger fought her humiliation. She couldn’t bear to look up.

  “After everything I’ve been through this year. After everything I told you.”

  “Jane, please. You don’t understand.”

  Earlier, Rick had hinted to Dan in lowered tones that Jane had some unresolved shit with her father, who had left her and her mother. Something you tell your boyfriend because you know you have issues and you hope he won’t compound them.

  “Reek, what happens?” Lili, her defensive instincts kicking in, went back to playing naïve and lost in translation as Jane’s little sorority all gave her the evil eye.

  Jane grabbed her purse and then raised her head, trying to ward off tears. “Oh my God, Rick. You are so stupid. I am so stupid.”

  “Stop. Look . . .” Rick was stuck between uneasy poles of caring and playing it cool. There wasn’t much he could say, but he stalled for time anyway. “Can we talk for one second?”

  “This is so fucking embarrassing.”

  “Jane, please.”

  “Somehow I knew. I knew before fucking Marie Antoinette came over here and sat in your fucking lap.”

  “Tell me what I did. You are making a big deal—”

  “Don’t . . . just don’t.” Jane fished for a cigarette with trembling hands but gave up. “I have no emotions right now. I can’t believe you . . .” And with that, she bolted out of her seat, bumping past the table, and in anger at that, punched at Rick, who dodged and took it in the neck.

  “Whoa! Come on.” Rick tried to play it off that she was “hysterical,” but he was really frustrated he couldn’t unfuck this. Jane raced away sobbing, followed by Maura and the other girls. After scrounging a few dollars for the tab, Tommy and the rest of his group lit out as well, leaving the Jesuit boys ready to regroup and rehash, except they were still plus one French croquette.

  “Let her calm down,” Sticky suggested.

  “Yeah, no shit.” Rick was rubbing the still-white welt on his neck.

  Lili was unsure of her next move. In mere minutes, she had both won and lost. She wanted Rick’s attention, but he was clearly in no mood. Her girlfriends—a clingy stoner chick named Dara Baird and Lili’s host sister Delphine—were beckoning from the edge of the patio, wanting no part in this soap opera. So she stood there in a half twirl, waiting. Rick lit a new cigarette and shook his head.

  “What am I going to do with you?” he asked.

  “I didn’t know, Reek.”

  “I think you did.”

  “Don’t be cruel. You didn’t tell me. I was just happy to see you.”

  “This is such bullshit.” Rick scratched his scalp. “Why are you here, Lili?”

  Lili took a step away, her hands moving to her hips. “Jane think
s I’m your slut on the side.”

  Sticky let out an uncomfortable laugh.

  “This is not funny.” Lili didn’t have the words, and it angered her. Her foxy smile faded as it sank in—the girls would talk, and no one would defend her from the gossip, and this would set off a whole chain reaction that would ostracize her at Ursuline. Dan didn’t know what you would call the pain she was feeling, but he was pretty sure the French had a word for it. She held out her hand (Sharp, Dan thought, put it on Rick to make the call), but Rick rebuffed her, and with that, the other girl in his life went running off into the night.

  Rick gave Dan a fuck-me look, and Dan well knew he needed a friend, not a lecture.

  “Jesus Christ, Dowlearn. Like sands through the hourglass over here.”

  Sticky eyed the chicory at the bottom of his mug. “I have to say, Rick. That was some major-league pussy trouble.”

  Rick chuckled. The mortification was slowly melting as the macho walls got rebuilt. The crew kept at it.

  “Do you know the chances of Frenchie walking down this block on this night at this hour?” Stick was now finger-licking the powdered sugar. “That is unbelievable shit luck, Reek.”

  Rick slurped the dregs of his coffee. “I guess this means I’m a free agent again.”

  “Good luck, playboy.” Dan patted him on the shoulder. “Might want to cool it with the Ursuline girls for a while . . .”

  “Until the spring at least . . .”

  “I was thinking the close of the decade.”

  * * *

  They kept jawing and drinking coffee and smoking and dissing chicks and cheering up Rick. At eleven thirty, the waitress brought the check, and the crew decided to prowl down Elm and Main, hoping to see if something was happening. They slunk around, judging bouncers and doormen, all of them scoping IDs. There was nowhere to try to crash, and Dan was getting close to curfew. None of them wanted Anne Malone hectoring their parents after midnight with half-crazy panicked phone calls. But just as the crew was about to split, Dan spotted Cady Bloom and a flock of her friends flitter down July Alley. Seeing this girl on his birthday was kismet—the universe telling him to take action. Wired to the hilt on caffeine, Dan was determined to break through his shyness. This is the gut-check moment in the made-for-TV movie that is your life, Dan Malone—don’t chicken out.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  Cady still had on her pancake cheerleader makeup, which gave her raccoon eyes, but had changed into a polka-dot crop top and black jeans. And she was wearing patent leather red penny loafers. There was something about them that was the goddamn cutest thing Dan had ever seen.

  “You heading to Dick Chaplain cotillion?” Dan called out.

  It was a decent pull from seventh-grade memories. The two of them in church clothes with braces and sweaty palms struggling through Lindy and jitterbug lessons.

  Cady giggled and stepped toward Dan. “Five six seven eight.” Dan thought he was going to die. Snappy on the comeback, and painfully adorable.

  “Where are you headed?” Cady asked.

  “Home. Sticky’s station wagon turns into a pumpkin soon.”

  “So does that make you Cinderella?”

  “Oh, you’re right. That doesn’t work.” Idiot. Be cool.

  “We’ve gotta head out too.”

  “Cheerleading practice?” He was following Rick’s advice: Ask about their bullshit.

  “Well, we do need the practice.” Cady fiddled with her hair and shifted her weight toward Dan. “Those girls are, like, really into cheer, but they are not as good as they think they are. Know what I mean? So over it. Did y’all get in anywhere?”

  “Nah. Just hit the tattoo parlor with a bottle of tequila.”

  “Right. Maybe you can take me there sometime so I can drink you under the table.”

  “Like what’s-her-name in Raiders of the Lost Ark?” Too geeky? Shit!

  “Yeah, like if you want to lose!” She was swaying between flirting and teasing when Dan decided to take a shot at the end zone.

  “So can I call you? You know, when you don’t have to hang out with all the cool cheerleaders?”

  “I don’t know, Danny Malone. You might be more trouble than you’re worth. Hanging out in Deep Ellum, smoking, tattooing.”

  Clever girl, putting me off just so. “I joined a biker gang, too.”

  “Bad boy, huh? What’s your gang’s name?”

  “The Bugaloos.”

  “Intimidating.”

  “Ride or die. Can I call you?”

  “Well . . .”

  “C’mon, it’s my birthday.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I swear it’s true. Scorpio. I love sunsets and long walks on the beach.”

  “Fine, call me.”

  Touchdown Cowboys. “Great. Gotta go rob a liquor store now.”

  “Remember the left-side pass.” And Cady Lindy-hopped for two steps back to her girlfriends, her red loafers twinkling in the streetlight. Dan gave a smart little wave and tried not to fall over.

  “Happy birthday, Dan,” he whispered to himself.

  [ NOVEMBER 30 ]

  The drinks were going down andante. Pat Malone liked Bushmills on occasion for suffering, making him a traitor to his faith and ancestors. The Protestant whiskey wasn’t syrupy and cloying like Jameson. A good bottle of Bushmills was like a contrail across the sky—a straight bite of apples and the barrel. A bad bottle was thin and medicinal, like furniture polish, herbal and anised. Today was a bad day but a good bottle, fresh and peppery, and each drink grace-noted him along, measure for measure, like a song without words.

  Pat looked up at the gray pulsing light of the TV. An iceberg, twice the size of the state of Rhode Island, had broken away from Antarctica and was drifting into the ocean. Pat gulleted the last drops off the rocks and shoved the glass next to the $10 he had put on the bar. Where am I again? Uremic light, the Indian-red brick of the far wall—Like a brick shithouse, this place—yep, he was at Doll’s on West Lovers. The bartender came over. A thick Mick with rosacea who made a face about pouring the Bushmills. Kevin is his name. No, Kieran. No, Keith.

  “Another, Keith, if you don’t mind.”

  “You got it.”

  Fresh ice was added, which Pat frowned at. The iceberg was impossibly massive. One hundred miles long, seven hundred fifty feet thick. The size of the country of Luxembourg. And Keith splashed out another double. Not skimpy though, which steadied Pat’s mood. Keith placed it on a coaster for Shiner beer and pushed it back at Pat. The mass of an iceberg is 90 percent underneath the water. If the iceberg makes it into open seas it will create a huge navigational hazard. It could take years to melt, calving into a chain of ice islands, each silently prowling the austral currents.

  Kevin returned to the other end of the bar and huddled over his crossword. Shit, is his name Kevin? This is Doll’s, right? It’s definitely Doll’s, but Doll is dead and now this Irish lug nut is running it. Wherever he was, Pat was hot. The temperature outside had dropped down to something resembling fall, but Pat felt clammy. He took off his jacket, and there was the letter sticking out of the inside pocket. The letter Shapiro had handed him. Just one more drink, a few more measures, and he’d be settled in and could deal with the letter. Besides, you know what it says. You know the package. You drew up the package. Not yet though, a few more sips before he—Goddamn it. He was thinking about the letter now, and the glow was off. All that slow, deliberate drinking dashed on the rocks, and the song the whiskey played was now this mournful adagio, a somber horn against a dark void. All he wanted was a moment to regroup. But just like that, the taste of a good bottle had flattened into nothing but caraway and burn.

  * * *

  “Listen.” Les Shapiro’s right hand combed through a thinning astronaut buzz cut, then landed on the envelope on his desk
. “I asked you to meet with me because I have some important news I need to tell you.”

  Christ. Right out of the script from the manager’s handbook that Pat had helped create. Here it comes. Panic drew over him like a white sheet.

  “This is tough . . .” Shapiro searched for eye contact with Pat, who rubbed his aching leg. “As you well know, we’re trimming across management, and, Pat, I fought to get you this.”

  “Thanks.” Pat heard his mother’s voice in his reply. What’s done is done. There is no point to arguing this now. His shock hadn’t yet turned to disbelief or anger.

  Shapiro tented his fingers, leaving a fat thumb on the envelope. “It’s so much more than industry standard, and with the cuts we’re facing in the New Year, it’s better to get this now than face a less certain future in terms of what the company can offer.”

  Pat stayed silent.

  “It’s a good deal . . .” Shapiro stuck to the script. The incentives: $18k up front and additional pension payments of $400 through the age of . . . Pat couldn’t pay attention. He knew the package. But he was still falling. Shapiro pushed the main terms across the desk so he could see. They would extend health insurance for a full year.

  The terrible irony was that Pat had proposed buyouts to Crandall as a magical way to chop payroll. With a grumpy wave Crandall had dismissed it and asked for alternatives. But the Pharaoh had an elephant’s memory for cruel, penurious ideas. A 6 percent reduction of senior management, combined with layoffs, would result in a 10 percent payroll deduction, while—and this Pat had underlined in his report—adding employees to the AMR workforce at the current 12 percent growth rate.

  And now Pat was starting to overcome the shock and question how he got hoisted on his own petard. If the airline was growing, then this must be about something else. The MS? The drinking? No, he had to save face: These were just cuts across the board. Pat was fifty-five—right where the senior actuary himself had drawn the line for buyouts to begin.