by Gurley, Jan
“Mothers,” he said, cranking, “Can’t live with them…”
“…can’t be born without them.”
***
It got worse as we drove, this feeling like the way I imagine an asthma attack comes on. Sneaky at first, then you realize you can’t breathe so well, and by the time we were pulling up the circular drive to Sander’s house, I felt shaky and panicky. I had my knuckles pushed into the mass of my skirt.
What the hell had I been thinking, agreeing to this?
Kids were climbing out of Porsches, and BMWs and, good God, that meant there was a valet hired to park the cars.
Drew zoomed to the front, past the other cars waiting in line, threw the coupe in park and got out before I realized what he’d done. He came around and opened the door, put an elbow on the top of it, drumming his fingers like he’d already waited too long for me, and said, “Buck up, Kate.”
Which, of course, made me angry. Who was he to imply I was afraid? I tried to look haughty, swished my skirt to the side, put my pointy-toed go-go boot out and, mimicking Bianca, got a foot under me and did a one-leg lift from the low-slung passenger seat. Hey, it worked!
Drew seemed to be trying hard to not smile. Which is when I realized that the haughty, disdainful look kind of disappears if you’re mentally giving yourself a surprised high-five for not falling over.
Then he waited.
“You’re supposed to go on,” I said.
“What are you talking about?” Kids were piling out of cars in ones, twos and groups, walking toward the sweeping mass of steps that lead to ten-foot-tall double doors.
“I know how it works. I watch people. If you’re giving me a ride, you just walk in. Or we go in side-by-side. But this waiting so I go first and you follow behind, this is…” I looked away down the drive, where a couple of people were starting to pay attention to us. I whispered, “…this is like date behavior and you know it.”
He gave me a heavy-lidded look, “How would you know? I heard you’ve never dated.”
I could feel the mottled embarrassment breaking out in red spots all over my chest and shoulders. “Who told you that?” I said, aware that a few people were drifting closer to eavesdrop. Then I crossed my arms. “I am going to kill Tio.”
“Is it true?” he asked, and there was something in his voice.
“Of course it’s true! Are you crazy! I’m too tall and too weird and too opinionated for any guy in high school to ever…” I shook my head, “Don’t you change the subject. Why are you acting like this — this was never a date and if you don’t stop, you’re going to give people the wrong message. Act like I’m one of the boys.”
He hesitated, like he started to say something, then changed his mind. By now six people stood at the edge of the drive, watching us. He gave me a slow smile. “I bought you supper,” he said.
“Half a churro.”
“More like two-thirds. I barely had any.”
“Next time, get your own.”
“All right, then,” he said, putting a hand on my rigid back and pushing me forward, his voice humming with laughter, “Next weekend. It’s a date. As long as you’re buying.”
I was afraid to say anything, with all the people listening. I wanted to shake him and ask what he was doing. Drew now knew from Tio, if he hadn’t before, in excruciating detail exactly what a social misfit I really was. Had he lost his mind? A part of me also wanted to get back in the car and hide until this was over. Because this was too painful and too hard, pretending I didn’t care, pretending that a “date” was a joke between us. Pretending I didn’t know how doomed even friendship was, once Drew inevitably discovered his mother hired me.
But there was no way out. Of any of it.
We inched up the stairs in the crowd, everyone silent around us. Then we were standing in the double doors, where I could see masses of people in a huge, two-story, vaulted room, most of them turning to look at us.
That’s when Drew held my arm and turned me toward him, people bumping to a halt behind us.
“Here, you’ve got some powdered sugar,” he said, and ran his thumb along the edge of my lower lip. His eyes were a smoldery color and my breath seemed to hitch in my chest. “There.”
Then he put his hand on my back and gently, relentlessly, pushed me forward until we were no longer framed in the doorway and I was headed, much too late to turn back now, into the seething mass of Uni students.
***
Imagine there’s a webcam on my head. Here’s what it would project. I snake through masses of people, squeezing through a doorway, then into a room with a full-sized pool table, out the opposite door to a room with a eight foot by six foot screen, a row of rocking pilot’s seats up front, each with an attached, side table, and behind the pilot’s seats what seems like hundreds of bodies lounging around watching one in a series of classic movies (now, Fatal Attraction, box propped up to show what’s next, Blair Witch Project). Through the opposite doorway is a mini-kitchen and a glass wall overlooking a pool. A band with a singer plays outside, the volume so loud you can only talk by shouting, even in the glassed-in room. People in caterers’ outfits, older than any of us, weave through the crowds, offering plates of food, everything from gourmet, crust-less peanut-butter and grape-jam triangles, to what looks like sashimi tuna on hard rye crackers. You’d think I’d be starving, but my stomach is knotted into a fist. There’s no one I know. Not one set of friendly eyes, and since Drew is behind me, his hand still at my back, steering me through the maze, I don’t even see his.
Out the glassed-in room and into the open-night area of the pool, and forward toward the band. That’s where we see Sander, who shouts, “Dog! It’s the man of honor.” The song ends and Sander gets the band to pause so he can talk just by waving a hand at them. They stand, professional musicians, like robots that someone has disconnected from a power source, conserving energy until they can start again.
Sander shouts to all around, “It’s the Dog,” and a woof-woof chant starts at the edge of the crowd. Drew says, from behind me, at almost-normal volume level, “Sander, meet Kate, Katharine Baptista. She’s,” there is this little pause, “with me.” People have shushed the woofers into silence and you can hear, muttered around us, someone asking, “what’d he say?”
Drew’s hand is still on my back and Sander gives both of us a look up and down, obvious surprise on his face that he doesn’t try to hide. I wonder if it’s the clothes. The fact that we’re standing here together? Both?
I half-turn, thinking to leave, when a woman who can only be Sander’s mom (dark, tastefully streaked hair, YSL dress, thumb-sized diamond stud earrings — God, are those real?) steps in from the left and says, “Kate, how nice to meet you,” and offers a hand.
She glances at Drew, “We’re so glad, Drew, that you brought your,” that pause again, “friend. It is, after all, your birthday party.”
I shake Sander’s mom’s thin dry fingers (like grabbing a clump of pencils), and then we can go, thank God, and I weave around the pool, people calling to Drew, and him answering back, but he keeps steering me, this time into a different glassed room that also opens onto the pool area, a room with sofas and huge armchairs and people sprawled around cable sports, and we keep going through that room and out to a cavernous room where a DJ is spinning and lights are strobing. People shouting “Hey!” and before you know it, a chant of Dog Dog Dog starts and thunders around us and then we go through to the other side and under an archway. There’s a courtyard, the smell of night-blooming flowers, and lights hanging all around the people who stand in clumps and drift across the crushed gravel. In the center is a three-tiered fountain, with water that hums and gurgles and more of those caterers, slipping like fish through the crowd.
It takes me a while, as Drew talks to a pal of his, and my eye drifts up the wall of the home, past many-paned windows to upper floors with more windows, to realize I’ve only seen a small part of the house.
Greenbacks finally appe
ared, and I’m so glad to see them that they’re like fireflies winking to life around me.
Phoebe said, “The movie room. Did you see it?”
Helena said, “The screen’s HUGE.”
Viola adds, “Although I’m not sure bigger is better when you’re seeing Sharon Stone’s —“
“AHEM.” I said, cutting her off because Tio had arrived. He wore his little boy suit and tie again. He glanced at each of us, looking sweaty from his push through the mob, and he clawed his tie off like it was in the act of throttling him.
“My mother — that’s what this is.” he said it the way you’d shout in despair, “terminal cancer — that’s what I’ve got.”
He handed Viola his paisley tie and she promptly put it on the front of her shirt.
“Keep it. Looks better on you.”
Viola wore a pair of tight skinny jeans, a baggy argyle sweater vest, and a white loose shirt. She’d dressed the outfit up by adding platform wedgies and a pink tutu.
“Have you seen Bianca?” I asked Tio.
He looked even more glum. “Not yet.”
“Then, quick, give Tio your vest, Viola.” Tio looked at me like I was crazy. “Jacket off, Tio. Trust me.” I said it like an order.
Viola shucked the vest, gave it to Tio. Phoebe and Helena, starting to get the idea, began unbuttoning Tio’s cuffs and rolling up sleeves.
“Untuck the shirt! Tug your trousers down a bit!”
Within minutes, he looked a thousand-percent better. He was rolling his sleeve up more, and Viola had on his jacket, when I said, “Lick your palm, and shove up your bangs. Hurry!”
“You think I’m crazy?” he said to me.
Then Drew appeared. “Look what she did to me.” He did a full twirl, including taking off — catwalk style — the jacket. Tio stared, then, without hesitating, lapped his palm and wiped up his bangs.
Phoebe eyed the result and said, “Genius.”
Tio’s shoulders seemed to settle down a couple of inches. He dropped his hands into the front pockets of his trousers. He and Drew started talking about, weirdly enough, clothes and shifted to the side.
Helena said, “Nice dress.” I stared over the heads of people around me, looking for any sign of the other Greenbacks, and answered, distracted, “Drew bought it.”
Right then, a girl in a Juicy tube micro-mini dress, and nails manicured to match the exact same shade of teal, eyed my knee-length blue lace like it was something she might find Rover playing with in the back yard. After a storm.
She turned to the girl on her right, “What’s that I smell?”
I said, “Ex-cuse me?” one hand on my hip, and she looked startled. “That smell,” she said, again, and actually sniffed. “Is that…hotdogs?”
Celia appeared in a cloud of eau de sausage, Gonzo at her elbow. Gonzo said, “I’ll have you know that’s all-beef franks. Nitrate-free.”
In the blinking, confused silence, the girl said, “What. Ev. Er.” and left.
Gonzo narrowed his eyes at us and said, “There is a difference, you know.”
Celia looked annoyed, and not the least embarrassed. She gave me a look, “So I forgot to wash my hair. Who knew?”
But there was something about her eyes, the way she held herself too tall and still, like she might shatter any second.
“Celia, thanks for taking my shift,” I said, but she cut me off.
“It’s not like it was hard.” She raised her fingernails to chew her cuticles, like she does when she’s embarrassed, then sniffed them and stopped.
“Baby shampoo,” I said, “It’s got the right pH or something. Strips the smell right out of your hair and nails.”
A guy pushed through the crowd, stopped in front of Celia and stared. She turned snake eyes to him, and he freaked and started pushing back the way he’d come. But not before I saw, on the skin of his neck, a raw-looking fly-swatter outline.
“Maybe you can give me tips sometime,” I said, watching him go, a smile on my face.
Celia said, also watching him go, “Connect hard enough first time out. You only have to swing once and you’re done for the day.”
“Gremio’s got more of a high-speed, low-velocity approach.”
“Well that’s just bull,” she said. “What’s the use in that?”
“Fits the space. There’s not much room to maneuver.”
“You come up from down low, get your shoulder into it.”
“I don’t see it. But maybe I’m too tall,” I said glumly.
“No way. Gives you more reach. Here’s what you do. Picture a spot on the other side of the guy’s head. That’s what you’re aiming for, right through him. Then go for it. That way you don’t pull back at the last second.”
I caught sight of Phoebe, Gonzo, Tio, Drew, and Viola, who were staring at the two of us, open-mouthed.
“What?” I said, “Can’t a girl talk shop?”
***
Ten minutes later I realized Nate and Curtis were talking to Phoebe and Viola.
“Guys, Bianca’s not here,” I announced, one hand on my hip, hoping to scare them off for Tio before Bianca arrived.
All four of them looked at me, confused. For some reason, I felt suddenly stupid. I waved a hand, “Never mind. Go back to…whatever.”
And then I realized Drew had come up behind me. It was like I could sense him.
I took a deep breath and felt his hand trail up between my shoulder blades to hold the back of my neck again. He leaned over my left shoulder and, his mouth near my ear, said, “You want a soda?”
He was almost leaning against my back. I could feel the heat of him, and I didn’t want him to know how it affected me so I talked to the air in front of me like he was there. “Actually, I’d rather die of dehydration than charge that crowd again.”
“See, you’re not a celebrity like me. I know people who know people who can get in touch with people to make big things happen.”
“You mean you’re a wall of muscle and you know how to shove. Professionally.”
“Well, in a word, yes.”
“Bragger.”
I felt his breath tickle the side of my neck as he gave a silent laugh. My skin felt as raw as if Celia had swatted me.
“Listen, when I get sacked on the way back, I’m blaming you.”
“You are so entitled. I think you should be willing to put yourself out for my personal soda experience. It’s not like you need both knees.”
I felt that silent laughter tickle me again, warm against the chilly night air. He draped his leather coat over my shoulders and said, “Keep this. Some things I’m not willing to injure.”
Even though I turned right away, he was already going through the crammed door, people laughing and talking to him, guys punching him in the arm.
Moments later, a hush fell around us. Bianca, Alex and Robin arrived. Bianca wore a black classic tux. It had everything — a perfectly tied bow tie (no nasty clips visible), pleated black cummerbund, and thin shiny black stripes up the outside of her seemingly-endless legs. Only the shirt was missing.
I knew there was a black bra in there somewhere, but the buttoned jacket gave the distinct impression that everything, with the slightest disturbance, might spill out any second.
Holy cow.
Alex wore leggings, a baggy Flashdance top, one black fingerless glove, lots of neck-chains and a newsboy cap. Robin did the David Bowie thing — tight skinny jeans, men’s pinstripe suit-jacket, eyeliner and one huge earring.
People cleared space around them.
It was as much the swagger as the clothes. Somehow Bianca had, in one afternoon, infected Alex and Robin with a giant dose of I dare you to try and stop me. With a sprinkling of don’t you wish you were me thrown in for good measure. It was incredible to watch, like gunslingers come to town, Alex, Bianca and Robin walking down a metaphoric main street three abreast (so to speak — I mean really, who knows?).
It was so quiet, we could hear the chatter in the house,
the distant din of amplified music roaring.
The three of them stopped and looked over at the Greenbacks. Tio walked over to Bianca, across the space cleared around them, and, wordlessly, held out his folded-sleeve arm. Bianca took his elbow, smiled at him, said, “Love the vest,” then swished her way to the rest of us.
Offering his arm should have been a lovely, courtly, classic-Tio gesture. But I wanted to shake his teeth out of his head for having done it. Why couldn’t he have waited? Because now, unlike moments before, Curtis and Nate were both glowering at Tio and Bianca, ignoring Phoebe and Viola completely.
Gradually, conversation resumed. Admiring Uni gazes never once stopped darting across the room at the new arrivals. The adoration wasn’t just for Bianca and her daring. When it came to Uni students, Alex and Robin had quite the bunch of fangirls and fanboys forming.
***
Probably I was having too much unexpected fun. That’s the only reason I could find for why I headed to the bathroom by myself. Normally I’d remember I was in Hostile territory.
I even gave Celia my purse to hold, so it wouldn’t bang and catch on people as I threaded through the crowds.
I craned my neck down a hallway beside the food room and turned to ask someone if that’s where the bathroom was, when a guy in front of me, twice Drew’s size, hooked an arm around my waist and said, his word slurring, “Look what I caught. You want to get into my locker room, baby?”
He hitched me up against his waist and I put both palms flat, pushing hard. His arm was cabled steel and all my pushing only bent me backwards.
One of his hands pawed at the outside of my left thigh (ew) slipping on the layers of my dress. I imagined, the way Celia advised, a point beyond my target and brought my knee up, hard.
He let go of me with an urk, his face green, and plummeted to the ground, like someone pulled a ripcord to a parachute that sucked him to the earth. I stood panting, Drew’s jacket slipping off one of my shoulders. I reached and hitched it back up and turned to flee, barreling into Drew’s chest.
