by Scott Brown
It was awesome. And stupid. Not punk rock, not cock rock—just dork rock. I felt comfortable there, at the corner of Awesome and Stupid. At the corner of Dork and Rock.
I felt so comfortable that one night after a game, after we’d dropped Ethan at his house, I took Sidney to the Lowlands.
I know, I know.
There were a lot of reasons I shouldn’t have done this, starting with the fact that interns aren’t allowed in Keeper Access after visiting hours.
And followed by the fact that the Lowlands felt like Monica/Drew territory. Like it belonged to my old life. Not this new one. Hell, I didn’t even bring Rafty to Keeper Access. I felt like I was breaking a vow.
That’s probably why I did it. I had to break a rule we’d never made. Why? Who knows? Hormones. Enzymes. Biology.
All of this was assuming, of course, that Sidney was interested in anything other than friendship of the strictly intramural variety.
But I had a bit of a hunch. Sidney was relatively direct.
“So,” said Sidney as we walked into Keeper Access, “this is where the monkey magic happens.”
“Ape magic,” I said, “technically. And as far as ‘magic’ goes: most of it comes down to fruit and poop.”
“Doesn’t everything. What’s this?” She was pointing to a collection of sharpened bamboo rods, which the staff had hung on a rack made for pool cues.
“Oh. Um. Murder weapons.”
“Funny.”
“Not kidding, really: the chimps make those.”
“Whoa.”
“Yeah. They started doing it a few months ago. Now, every couple of weeks, we have to confiscate a few. They collect ’em here, then send them to the Smithsonian.”
We sat in front of the plate glass, watching the nighttime activities of the gorilla troop. (They’re diurnal animals, so not a lot to see. Gorillas in nests, gorillas in trees. And somewhere high on his rock, in the dark: Asshole, dreaming of crushed skulls and a gold medal in the fifty-yard poo hurl.) Sid, despite the conspicuous lack of apes, was pretty impressed.
“So the chimps are stabby. How ’bout these guys, the gorillas?” Sid asked. “What are they packing?”
“These guys don’t go in for shivs. Just crush you to death. Maybe a bite to the carotid if they’re feeling ambitious. Gorillas are straightforward.”
Unlike a certain zoo intern.
I’d brought Sidney here for some reason, but now I wasn’t sure what. So I stalled. Ran through my ape patter: the hierarchies, the social structures, the strength comparisons. Five or six fully grown humanoids, with spears, could maybe take down one adult silverback, blah blah blah.
“You don’t go in there anymore, you said, ’cause the big guy thinks you’re gonna steal his gorilla ladies?” Sid asked.
“Yep,” I joked along. “I was just too irresistible. Maybe it’s my opposable thumb—”
And all of a sudden, Sidney Lim was kissing me.
On tiptoes.
Sidney Lim was really good at kissing, turns out.
It was like she was talking to me. A whole conversation, with a rise and fall to it, her arms around my neck. And all my brain came up with was:
Mouths are…really detailed. People are really detailed. Inside. Outside. Girls? Girls are all detail. And wonderful wonderful wonderful brain flatliiiiiiiiiine…
And after a long, long, long “conversation,” during which I didn’t feel like I contributed nearly enough, I came up for air, pushed a stray waterfall of hair away from her eyes, tucked it behind her ear. It felt choreographed. Instinct? Or something I’d seen somewhere? Nature or nurture or Netflix? Her face seemed near and far at the same time, and I couldn’t choose which eye to focus on, which is something that happens to me only when I’m really, really nervous or really, really close to someone’s face or both. Sid, I saw, had faint freckles, little strawberry flecks, reaching from the bridge of her nose in a butterfly pattern. I’d never noticed that before. I was noticing everything, all of a sudden. With my hand on the curve of her hip, I thought the following total nonsense: I could drive there blindfolded, I could drive there blindfolded, I could—
Oh, Jesus Christ—
Magic Mike was at the glass, watching us. Sid saw him first.
“Whoa,” said Sid, but she didn’t jump or freak, which was impressive. (Me? I jumped a little.) She just laughed. “Creepy?”
“Uh. Yes.”
“Can you do the sign language for creepy to him?”
“These apes don’t sign.”
Sidney giggled. “You said that like it’s…like, the badass slogan of this zoo.” In an old-time movie-trailer voice, she intoned: “These colors don’t run—and these apes don’t sign!”
Which sent me right over the giggle falls. Guy needs a certain tension release in a situation like this: first real kiss, first ape voyeurism experience. A Grow-liath’s gotta laugh. Also, I was very happily realizing something: Sidney Lim was pretty awesome. And wildly out of my league. And kissing me. Again.
This is my last chance to ruin things with her.
I didn’t.
Instead, I kissed her back.
Then I said, “Let’s get out of here, because there’s a hominid watching us make out, and that offends me, as a biologist.”
Sidney saluted. “You’re the expert. Lead on.”
We went to the parking lot. We got in my sex museum. We set up a very small makeout exhibit for two.
Well, it was intended for two.
I’m now fairly sure we still had a hominid watching us that night.
[jack].
[justjack]: how u doin big boy feelin goooooooood
?????????????????
WillD: you know i send these to the police right
[justjack]: lol im terrified. sd’s finest cybercrime unit = top shelf! guess ill c u n court! lol j/k hey how’s sidney
WillD: [YOU HAVE BEEN BLOCKED]
[nowwith30percentmorejack]: i could do this all day. can u? whats wrong? u feel okay? is it catching up w u yet??????
“COACH IS PLAYING me off Forchette,” Drew croaked from the back seat. He was crazy dehydrated. Monica tossed him a Vitaminwater, which she called Liquid Fraud and objected to, and Drew absorbed it in two gulps.
“Head games,” he gasped. “For no reason. Now Forchette thinks he’s acting captain and I’m ‘the show’—I mean, it’s all screwed up.”
“That’s a drag,” I said, in what I thought was a pretty sympathetic tone of voice for someone trying to thread traffic on the inbound I-5.
“Yeah,” muttered Drew, in a tone that told me a drag didn’t begin to cover it.
“Buck up, Spesh,” said Monica. “You’re killin’ it.”
Monica was laying it on thick. Maybe because Drew (and I) was (were) taking her to a fancy restaurant for her eighteenth birthday?
Yeah, so this was mid-December, and the Nativity scenes were blooming in San Diego amid the decorative cacti. The Harps, as predicted, were 12–0 so far in regular season play, with Drew hitting a mind-blowing .629 field goal percentage for the season. Meanwhile, I was touching the cusp of six feet, seven inches tall. I’d reached my goal height, and life was good. So far, magical thinking had been a smashing success—even though it couldn’t quite delete the distressing image of Monica’s sleeping bag stowed at BoB, Drew’s duffel nesting right beside it.
There was a lot packed into that image, a lot of questions. Questions cunningly turduckened inside other questions. Okay, just two questions, really, but they were doozies:
Was she sleeping at BoB?
Why?
That last question had an answer that would be weird-making no matter what it was. If the answer was Because dad, then the follow-up from Monica would be And I told you not to ask. If the answer was Drew and
sex with Drew, then the follow-up from me might be an embolism. And just asking the first question would mean implying the second question.
Also, asking Drew? Out of the question.
But today’s excursion, I hoped, would answer all conspicuously unasked questions (How are things at home, Monica?) without asking them at all. Because today was Monica’s birthday, and we were going to her house in Barrio Nacional to pick up her party dress.
We were celebrating Monica’s eighteenth year of life on earth at a rotating restaurant. Yes: for Monica’s eighteenth birthday, we were gonna get turnt! But the path to that great turntable in the sky would take us dangerously close to Martin Eddy. I’d get a flyby of Monica’s father for the first time in nearly a year.
Martin Eddy was one of those guys who said things like Nothing gets past this guy, when, in fact, most of life had. He’d come to Miramar in the mid-’90s to become a fighter pilot; that turned out to be bad timing, since nobody really needed fighter pilots by then. He’d been at TOPGUN a week when they announced they were shutting down the school.
After his navy hitch, he’d entered the exciting world of private security. Meaning: he was a rent-a-cop. Traded his F-14 for a Daihatsu. Somewhere in there, he’d gained a daughter and a drinking problem. Somewhere in there, he’d lost his girlfriend, Monica’s mom.
Monica’s mom, whose first name Monica never spoke aloud in my presence, had been a lot younger than Martin Eddy when they’d had Monica. (“Apparently, I was not the product of careful planning.”) Seven months later, she slipped out one of life’s side doors and vanished forever. Until Monica was six, Martin told her the ocean was her mother. Which was kind of beautiful, really, as lies go. It had some poetry to it, enough to get Monica to the water’s edge. She and her busted board took it from there.
But since then, Martin Eddy’s lies had gotten less charming, less poetic. Now they were lies about How many pills, Dad? How many beers, Dad? The lies didn’t work, not on Monica, not on his employers. Even the rent-a-cop gig bit the dust, and the Daihatsu was garaged forever. All Martin Eddy piloted today, as we drove up to the curb, was a lawn chair. The alleged lawn on which it rested was a mange of sand and anthills, stubbled with chickweed. The chair sat in the shade of a single teetering cedar, curving precipitously over the swaybacked roof of Chez Eddy-Bailarín like a scythe. Martin warded off this and all omens with a beer, a Lucky, his talisman of Oakland pride. A dry breeze played with what was left of his straw-colored hair. A gut bloomed over his belt buckle, collecting flecks of beer foam in fast-evaporating constellations.
He had no history of violence, but he made up for it with a lot of anger. And he had plenty to be angry about. He couldn’t prepare himself a meal. Couldn’t even charge his phone without a reminder. Martin Eddy was a life drain who’d been lucky enough to spawn a daughter with life to spare.
“Hey!” called Martin, raising his Lucky Lager. “Hey hey HEY! It’s the Snowflakes Karamazov.”
Martin Eddy was a reader. He wasn’t going to let you forget that, either. Everything about Martin was a dare. C’mon, those pink eyes said, you just try and put this guy in a box! Try! I SAID TRY, DAMMIT! Please try? Please put this guy in a box? And then bury that box?
“Hey, Martin,” said Drew, getting out. He used a monotone he’d had plenty of opportunities to hone. Monica gave Drew a quick peck I pretended not to notice (but Martin whistled at), and then she was halfway to the door.
“ ‘Hi, Dad, how was your day?’ ” Martin prompted.
She didn’t take the bait. Just dashed inside for her dress.
I got out of the car. My knees were screaming: growing pains plus plain old spatial limitations. These days, even with the seat at its backmost click, I couldn’t spend more than ten minutes folded into the Yacht without needing to unkink.
I realize now: getting out was a mistake. I’d presented Martin Eddy with an opportunity. A big one.
Suddenly it was just us boys in that mangy yard. The wind died.
“Holy hell,” said Martin, giving me the once-over. “What happened to Mini-Me over here? Real pituitary case we got here, regular Andre the Giant.”
“It’s not pituitary,” Drew snapped, before I could even issue some kind of inert disengagement. “And don’t call him Andre the Giant, it’s offensive.”
Martin Eddy got up.
This was a bad sign. Martin did not, as a rule, get up.
“Drewy,” he said, swaying perceptibly, menacingly in Drew’s direction, “your ass is in my yard. That means your mouth does not get to tell me what’s ‘offensive.’ ”
Drew went dangerously silent. Just stared into Martin’s swimmy pink eyes.
I telegraphed a big ol’ Stand down.
Finally Drew shrugged. The air unpuckered.
Martin returned his righteous ass to his chaise longue. Drew got back in the car. The situation was returning to equilibrium. Nice, shitty equilibrium. The kind you live with, and live through.
Monica came back out, beelining, her dress on a hanger and a canvas tote of supplies over her shoulder. She clearly wasn’t going to stay a second longer than necessary.
That was the moment Martin Eddy took an unfortunate renewed interest in me. He was weaving his way toward me as I tried to fold myself back into my Fiat.
“Hey. Quick question for you, Dre…”
“Dad.”
“The other boys…they try to…sneak a peek? Y’know. At the pisser?”
“Dad!”
“I mean, hell, I’m curious. We’re all grown-ups here, cards on the table—”
Monica looked like she’d been stabbed. Humiliation rolled off her in sheets of steam. “Jesus Christ, Dad…”
That’s when Drew came at Martin like he’d been steam-launched off an aircraft carrier.
Martin threw down his beer. He made an O with his mouth, and it looked like a drain we were all about to vanish down. They were almost chest to chest when Monica got between them. I didn’t even see her move, she was so fast. She had her hands around Martin’s thick brisket forearms, and she was pushing him back, back, back to his chaise longue.
“We’re late,” she said, “we’re going.” She drilled her eyes into Drew’s. “Now.”
Drew didn’t move.
“Drew? We’re late,” Monica tried again.
Drew was thirty years younger than Martin and in peak physical condition…and, I realized suddenly (thrillingly?), he had backup.
Me.
Andre.
It didn’t come to that. Luckily.
“We’re late,” Drew said finally. “Yeah.”
And got in the damned car, thank God.
“I got a tip for you, Dre!” Martin called to me as we pulled away. “You’re the bigger man. And he knows it. So watch out!”
* * *
—
In the car, I just said it.
I’d spent weeks trying to find the right words. Ridiculous. It shouldn’t have taken me that long to figure out there weren’t any. The time was right, in its total wrongness. Conditions were finally awkward enough. Monica’d just endured the humiliation of breaking up a fight between her father and her boyfriend; now she was staring silently out the window. Drew was deep in his phone, thumbing numbly through game tape and trying to pretend the last fifteen minutes hadn’t happened. I gripped my tiny Fiat steering wheel like I was trying to strangle it. Ready to launch.
“Nazis marched in Sacramento,” Drew said finally.
“Which kind? Biker kind?”
“No, the other kind. The little Dilberty guys in, like, khakis and shit.”
We were talking about Nazis. This moment definitely came preruined so I went for it:
“Mon. Are you sleeping at BoB?”
Monica turned to look at me, her expression souring from Wistful Middle-Dist
ance Stare to Something’s Off in the Fridge.
“What?”
“I know you’re keeping your stuff there. I saw the…sleeping bag, the stove—”
“Oh…kay…” Monica seemed to be concentrating very hard on the Fiat insignia embossed on the dashboard.
“I just wanna know, is everything okay? Are you…are you okay?”
How come it had taken me weeks to ask my best friend: Are you okay?
Then Drew got deafeningly quiet, cat-that-got-the-canary quiet. And I remembered: that’s why.
I took a deep breath, enough to push out all the wrong words in one big huff: “How bad are things with your dad? And yes, I know: I’m making it weird. I’m making it six kinds of weird. But it’d be weirder if…if something…ever…happened….”
Monica just nodded for a while. The Fiat kept hurtling down the highway, a bubble of silence in a thin fiberglass membrane.
I’d done it. Six kinds of weird. I awaited judgment.
The cement was drying fast on this silence. I almost thought of turning on the radio.
Finally she said:
“So…you know how I’ve always not-talked about my dad and his bullshit?”
“Yeah.”
“That hasn’t changed.”
“Okay.”
“You’ve just got to trust I’m taking care of it.” She swiveled to look meaningfully at Drew. “You’ve both got to trust that.”
“I know,” said Drew, nodding vigorously, looking at his knees. “Just a slip.”
Monica didn’t have as many rules as Drew did, but this one she’d had on the books for years: nobody laid a glove on Martin Eddy—not physically, not verbally, not symbolically—except Monica.
’Cause Martin was a monster, sure. He was the monster who lasts.
He was also the monster who stayed. When the other one ran away. Which entitled him to a certain degree of respect. If he needed dealing with? Monica’d do it herself. Not outsource it to Sir Boyfriend-upon-Testosterone. Or, obviously, to me.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Wherever I sleep, I sleep pretty well.”
