The Basic Eight

by Daniel Handler

  Or a criminal. I don’t want to end up a criminal.

  My only lucky break in all of this is that I probably won’t get busted for Drosophila Liberation, because Carr has already blamed the wrong person. So even if everyone does know (I could have sworn that Bio Room was empty, where were those geeks, hiding under the tables like it was an earthquake drill?) that it was me freeing the fruit flies, nothing will be put on my permanent record.

  Get it down in ink, Flan: today is the day I start being Super Student. I will not allow myself to sink into the mire of the present, I must reach toward the future. Even now, editing, I feel that way. I can’t sink into the mire of the present, but must reach back and back into the past, holding each day of last year up to the light, to illuminate the truth for all of you. Listen to me.

  LATER

  You know, despite all my world-weariness and cynicism, I think I’ve always believed that there is one person in the universe who you’re truly meant for–for whom you are truly meant–and the fact that sometimes there are two or even more people on the earth you can fall in love with really bothers me. It suggests that if you work hard you can be meant for anyone. Maybe that’s a more comforting notion. The champagne poured and poured into my mouth tonight, and I can see that it’s pouring back out. Start over, sister.

  Gabriel drove me straight to the grocery store from school, and straight from the grocery store to the dinner party so he could wash and dry all the mushrooms properly in time to eat. I forget what kind of mushrooms they were, but fancy ones. We went to Kate’s house and I immediately felt underdressed, still wearing my school clothes and all. Gabriel had brought a shirt and tie in a bag, of course, but that had never occurred to me. So while Gabriel used his special mushroom brush, brought in the same bag as the shirt and tie, Kate found me a sweater big enough for me to fit into (yes, such sweaters do exist) in a lovely shade of–can we guess?–navy blue, and when I came back downstairs Douglas and Lily were already there and Natasha was just coming up the front steps. Darling Mud was on (loud music during cooking; quiet during dinner, immutable), and Gabriel had enlisted Kate as Shrimp Deveiner. I peeked in the kitchen, but Kate and Gabriel were in earnest conversation and looked up like I’d caught them with their hands in the cookie jar, so I scooted to the living room. Natasha had brought an artichoke-heart dip and some chopped red peppers and broccoli florets; I guess she was anxious to avoid the should-I-bake-the-cheese-or-not controversy of last weekend. Was it really last weekend? It feels like ages ago. Oh, it wasn’t last weekend; it was ages ago. Douglas–stunning linen suit–and Lily were diving into it like they’d been doing something strenuous all afternoon. I don’t want to think about it. Natasha looked up, suddenly, and strode to the stereo. “I’m getting very tired of Darling Mud.” She took the tape out and stared at it like it tasted bad. Badly.

  “Oh sure,” Kate called from the kitchen. Ears like a bat, that girl has, the better to be Queen Bee. “You’re sick of them and you haven’t even taped them for me yet.”

  “I’ll get to it,” Natasha said, emptying her bag on the carpet. “Somewhere in this mess is the new Q.E.D. album.”

  “Prattle and Hum? You bought it?” Douglas asked.

  “Since when has a classical snob like you heard of Prattle and Hum?” either Natasha or I said, I can’t remember.

  “Prattle and what?” V__ asked as she came up the stairs. “The door was open, Kate. I brought flowers because Douglas said he didn’t have time.” She had a bunch of lilies, one of which she had turned into a corsage.

  “What have you been doing all afternoon, Douglas?” Natasha asked pointedly. She was on her knees, rifling through lipsticks, eyeliners, loose change and individually wrapped chocolates and condoms. Douglas turned red and coughed, but was saved from a reply when Natasha found the tape. “Here it is! And it’s not Prattle and Hum; it’s Gurgle and Buzz.”

  “What are we talking about?” V__ said. “And Kate, where is the silver polish?”

  “You’d better hurry and polish everything,” Lily said, handing Natasha a stray condom with a dry look. “Gabriel said that dinner must be at seven-thirty sharp or the rice won’t be right.”

  “It’s only five after,” V__ said, consulting a gold watch. “And Jenn isn’t even here yet. Is she the only one we’re waiting for?”

  “I think so.” I started to count to seven on my fingers. “Me, Douglas, Lily, Gabriel, Kate, V__ and–”

  “Flora Habstat?” Lily said.

  “No,” Natasha said, putting on the Q.E.D. tape, “not Flora Habstat.”

  “So yes, Jennifer Rose Milton will complete the Basic Eight.”

  “It’s so nice,” Kate said, emerging from the kitchen and wiping her hands on a Mona Lisa apron, “to finally have a dinner party that’s just us. Give me a broccoli.”

  Frank Whitelaw appeared on the front steps just as the earnest voice of Q.E.D.’s singer appeared on the stereo. “I keep finding what I’m not looking for,” he whined (the singer, not Frank) as he (Frank, not the singer) bounded up the stairs. We all stood there looking at him like he came out of a spaceship. We all would have stood there all night, stock-still, had Jennifer Rose Milton not come up behind him, apologizing for being late. For being late. She brings someone as dumb as a bag of hammers to one of our dinner parties and apologizes for being late.

  “It’s OK!” Gabriel called from the kitchen. He hadn’t seen Frank Whitelaw yet. “The rice is taking longer than I thought.” He strode into the living room. “In the meantime a little broccoli would be–Frank!” A beautiful recovery for our champ. “I didn’t know you were coming! What a surprise!”

  “Surprising indeed,” Kate said. “You’d better polish another place setting, V__.”

  “I brought champagne,” Frank said, like he’d been trained to say it and couldn’t say anything else. He held up four bottles of champagne, two in each enormous hand. I caught myself thinking about the hand/genitalia ratio and just when I was about to gaze mid-khaki and hazard a guess I stopped myself and looked back at the bottles. Well, that was something; no one had come up with anything to drink yet, and I hadn’t had time to stop at home and raid my New Year’s stash.

  “It’s cold, even.” Jennifer Rose Milton said winningly, like she could read our minds. We all waited for Kate to make up her mind.

  “Very well then,” she said, finally. “Let’s pour.”

  Frank poured, and kept pouring, and Gabriel’s rice was perfect, perfect, perfect. We chatted away, and Frank detracted surprisingly little, being as he didn’t talk much; it was just like there was an enormous chunk of wood perched to Jennifer Rose Milton’s left, occasionally kissing her. After dinner Kate put on a noir videotape while the shrimp pots soaked, but in our champagne haze we dozed through it, rousing only when Natasha turned off the movie and the static blared us awake.

  “I will not have Marlene slept through,” she announced. “It’s time to go home.”

  “It wasn’t even Marlene; it was Veronica Lake,” Gabriel said grumpily. “You were obviously napping, too. Come on, I’ll take you home, Flan.”

  I jumped up. Gabriel never has to clean, because he cooks, and I wouldn’t either if he took me home. I kissed everyone good night (well, nodded at Frank) and stood at the top of the stairs as Gabriel found his school clothes, his whisk, his special pepper grinder and the mushroom brush and kissed everyone good night (well, nodded at Frank). Kate grasped his shoulder, looked at him significantly and gave him a brief thumbs-up; she must have really liked those shrimp. Outside the air was cold and Kate’s sweater was thin, but Gabriel, chivalrous as ever, gave me his blazer and I walked to his car feeling the cool night air. From the hill where Kate’s house is you can see a bright view of the city, and I leaned against his car and stared at the constellations of streetlights, winking at me like mischievous creatures of the night, while Gabriel tried to get into his automobile. The lock on the door always jams.

  “Shit!” he said, and I was yanked out
of my reverie. “Sorry,” he said when I faced him.

  “No problem,” I said. “I could look at this night for hours.”

  “Well, hopefully it won’t take that long,” he said, pursing his lips. He looked nervous. “Do you have any plans tomorrow night?”

  “Oh, you know, I’m the lead in that Broadway show, I should probably call the pope. The usual,” I said. “Why?”

  “Well, do you want to see that movie where Andrew MacDowell is the professor and falls in love with his student? It opened this week.”

  With a cameo by Jim Carr, probably, I thought, but out loud I said, “That sounds good. We should have planned this at the dinner table, though; they’ll probably figure out something else as they scrub pots.”

  Gabriel tried the key again; no dice. He looked at me like I wasn’t making it any easier. “I wanted to ask you,” he said, and I got it.

  “Oh, right, better to make plans without Mr. Whitelaw around,” I said. “No reason to spend the entire weekend with him.”

  “No, I mean just you,” he said, looking at the lock. He started to look at me but looked back at the lock. He looked at the lock. “I wanted to ask–just you.” He looked at me and sort of rolled his eyes. He showed me the key he had been trying, moved down a notch on his key ring and showed me another, tried that one in the lock and opened the door effortlessly. “Just a movie,” he said like he was apologizing.

  “Just me,” I said slowly, “and just a movie.” The car door gaped open. It was the passenger side door. He was opening the car door for me.

  “Right,” he said, and looked out toward the city. “I mean, if you want. We could all go, too. It doesn’t matter.”

  I got in the car and unlocked his side for him. He got in and started the car, gripping the steering wheel like it might spin out of his hands even though we weren’t going anywhere. Like it might spin away. With champagne in my head I could say anything. With champagne in my head I could sit right next to Gabriel and think, But what if Adam calls and asks me out tomorrow night?

  “Why don’t you call me tomorrow,” I said, and Gabriel looked at me like an enormous question mark. “When we have a newspaper in front of us, so we can see what time it starts. I have so much champagne in me I can’t possibly schedule anything. How about you? Should you be driving?”

  “I’m fine,” he said, and in the dark his teeth smiled like what’s-his-name’s cat. He looked at me sheepishly and just about broke my heart. “I’m a little giddy,” he said, “but I’m fine.”

  You know, despite all my world-weariness and cynicism, I think I’ve always believed that there is one person in the universe for whom you are truly meant–and the fact that sometimes there are two or even more people on the earth you can fall in love with really bothers me. It suggests that if you work hard you can be meant for anyone. Maybe that’s a more comforting notion, I thought as I watched Gabriel drive, but inside I wasn’t sure. I could deny Adam and make myself be meant for Gabriel, but what would that be? Would it be like studying hard and getting good grades, or would it be like sneaking into a room I had no business in and setting free little bugs that were never supposed to be free, never supposed to be flying unfettered in the air? I know, I know: in which I had no business.

  Saturday September 25th

  Douglas, the only man in my life who I thought wasn’t doing strange things, knocked on my door at nine-thirty in the morning. The two of us looked at each other, me in my robe and damp hair and he in a brown heathered suit and a hat.

  “Hi,” he said. “How’ve you been?”

  “You mean during the last nine hours since I’ve seen you? Oh, fine. You know. Sleeping. What are you talking about?”

  “I thought that maybe it was a perfect day for walking across the Golden Gate Bridge.”

  I stood there thinking that perhaps I had stepped into a time warp. Walking across GGB had been my standard date with Douglas; all that was missing was the flowers. I had a brief ray of hope that what I thought had been last summer and this first month of school had in fact been a long, fevered dream, and that I was waking up and it was my junior year. I was still going out with Douglas, I hadn’t done anything dumb like write letters all summer to some boy, I was going to sign up for Chemistry instead of Biology, I wasn’t going to commit a murder fairly soon and my grades didn’t count quite as much toward college. Douglas must have read my thoughts because he smiled and said, “Not like that, not like that, I figured you’ve had enough of that this weekend. You must not have had coffee yet.”

  “Yeah, well, it is before ten o’clock. Why did you come over so early?”

  “I couldn’t sleep. Plus I figured if I waited any longer some other member of the Basic Eight would scoop you up and put you through the third degree about Gabriel.”

  “And you wanted to do it first.”

  “No, I wanted to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge. We can talk about him or not. We can talk about anything or not. Now go get dressed and I’ll make the coffee. Where do you keep the filters?” He was already in my kitchen, opening cupboards–but, typical male, the wrong ones of course. Not like he’d ever been in my house, making me coffee nineteen thousand times. I reached over his head and opened the right cupboard. For a moment my face, my mouth, was right near his neck, and I felt a flush go down my body, naked and still damp under the robe. I hadn’t had anything close to a sexual moment with Douglas for quite a while. It was odd. He was looking at me like he was afraid I was going to hit him, and when I avoided his eyes and looked back at his neck I saw why. For a minute it looked like a birthmark, but I knew Douglas’s neck. The purplish blotch on his neck wasn’t a birthmark. I looked back at him and he looked terrified.

  “Um, aren’t you supposed to wear turtlenecks to cover those up?” I asked him. “Surely you own a turtleneck, Douglas.”

  “I don’t, actually,” he said. “Gave them away.” His hand strayed to the mark and stayed there. I handed him the box of coffee filters and he looked at it for a second before taking his hand off his neck and taking it from me. I remembered suddenly that I had bought him a turtleneck, a nice one, black, last Christmas. I thought it was a good time for me to go upstairs and get dressed.

  It was a perfect day for GGB walking. San Francisco tourists always attempt to pillage our city in short shirts and Bermuda shorts, and on foggy days like this they are soundly defeated. Today they could be found huddling in rental cars, clutching one another and grimacing for cameras, they were an innocuous presence; Flora Habstat would have written The Guinness Book to tell them no one asked us to take a family portrait with white sailboat dots and an island prison in the background. Here we are on the Golden Gate Bridge, those pictures seem to say, mom and dad smiling emptily with hands placed artificially on the shoulders of itchy, embarrassed teenagers. What Douglas had to say was less clear. He kept making small talk about nothing and nervously covered his neck when anyone else went by. Eventually we walked in silence, Douglas looking at the ground and me looking at him, running my hand along the fence they recently installed to give suicides an added challenge.

  “So, how are things going with Lily?” I said.

  He looked past me at the fence. “A lot of people must jump from here,” he said. “I wonder why. I mean, I know why they want to end their lives, but why here?”

  “So I’m hearing that things aren’t so hot,” I said, and he looked at me and smiled.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I guess I am a little gloomy today.”

  “The weather is a little gloomy today. You are lots gloomy. Are things with you and Lily all right?”

  “They have their ups and downs,” he said, gazing at the water. “You dated a classical musician so you know how it is. With two it’s almost constant melodrama.”

  “You act like that’s a bad thing,” I said. “And how does Mr. Classical Musician know about the new Q.E.D. album?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, and for the first time all day I really looked at hi
m. His eyes looked so tired they were almost closed, and his whole face was wrinkled with worry like a prisoner, or a widow. He looked as if he might cry. Above him seagulls cried too. He looked up at them, down at the water, over at the traffic, not at me. “I don’t know,” he said again.

  “Hey,” I said. “Hey. This is me. You know, Flannery. You can tell me anything. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” he said reflexively, the way people do when you ask how are you and they say fine and then remember they have cancer. “I don’t know.”

  “Are you bothered by what Gabriel is doing, you know, with me? Because, you know, I haven’t even worked out what’s going on with that–”

  “No, no,” he said impatiently. “I don’t care about that. I mean, I care about what happens with you, of course, but–”

  “Then is it things with you and Lily?”

  “No, no, no–”

  “Because, I mean, how bad could things be if you’re bruising each other all night?”

  “I didn’t get this from her,” he said, quickly, quietly, pointing at his neck. I felt a chill, and it wasn’t the fog; I was properly dressed in a sweatshirt, remember?

  “What?” I hissed. I looked around us hurriedly. Some lone brave tourists, shivering in shorts, were nearby; Lily was unlikely to have any connections with them but you couldn’t be sure. “What are you saying? Are you dating somebody else?”

  “Um–”

  “Douglas,” I said, “are you seeing another woman?”

  “No, no,” he said, quickly. “I’m not–it’s too complicated to go into right now, but–”

  “Douglas,” I said, ducking my head to meet his eyes. “Lily’s a friend of mine. You’re a friend of mine. What’s going on?”

  “I don’t want to–I can’t talk about it now.”

  “Douglas, Lily isn’t going to talk to those tourists. I can’t promise that I won’t tell anyone, but–”