“Don’t tell Lily!” he said. Cried, rather.
“I hadn’t thought of telling her myself. But you should tell her.”
“I can’t,” he said. “Not yet. And don’t tell anyone else.”
“I won’t, I won’t,” I said, already imagining what Natasha would think of this. “I promise. But you’ve got to set things straight with Lily.”
“So to speak,” he said with the ghost of a smile.
“What? Oh. Oh. Right. Douglas, Lily’s mad at me because she thinks, well I don’t know what she thinks. Let me show you this note she wrote me.” I bounded upstairs and got it from my room. As I picked it up I noticed my hands were shaking. It’s no big deal, I found myself telling myself. Lots of people are gay.
I went downstairs and showed it to him. “Why did she number all the lines?” he asked as he read it.
“No, I did that.”
He looked up. “Why did you number all the lines?”
“Never mind that. Read the note. You see how she purposely crossed out that part on lines 17 through 19, but left it for me to see?”
“Flan, give me a break. I’ll tell her soon, I promise. Come on, I’ll drive you to school.”
“Douglas!”
“We’re late already.”
“I’m not going to school. Neither of us are. We’re going to talk about this. Oh, wait, I have to go to school. I have to turn in my essay to Lewis or she’ll kill me. Come on.”
Douglas didn’t speak to me the whole way there. Or wouldn’t, rather. Douglas wouldn’t speak to me the whole way there. I sat in the passenger seat, Lily’s note still crumpled in my hands, and wished that I smoked so I could have a bitter cigarette at my fingertips, fuming along with me.
Douglas parked, and I swung my door open, almost knocking Gabriel down. I looked at him, one leg out of the car already, and felt the world grow pale like everybody got the flu at once.
“Hi,” I said hoarsely, trying–unsuccessfully, I knew–to make my face look like he hadn’t caught us at something. I heard Douglas get out of the car, behind me, and I waited for him to say anything. But he just walked away, and I was left shivering in the chilly morning.
“It’s already homeroom,” Gabriel said.
“I just know,” I said, “that someday I will actually be present and accounted for.”
“I was looking for Douglas,” he said, gesturing helplessly. “I wanted to talk to Douglas.”
I pointed to Douglas’s departing figure. “Well, he’s over there,” I said.
“Are you two going out?” he asked me.
“Haven’t we settled this?” I asked him.
“You know,” Gabriel said, looking up at the cold air, “I wasn’t surprised when I didn’t see you this morning. If I were you I wouldn’t come to school, either.” Even from someone as sweet as Gabriel that sounded like a threat.
“Gabriel,” I said, “please.”
“What’s going on?” Gabriel asked. “Flan, you’re driving me crazy.”
I looked at him, Gabriel, this person who for some reason was now dangling on a thread I was holding, and I could only think of one thing to do. Maybe somebody else would have done something else, but I was just me, a senior in high school trying to get into college, flunking Calc, trapped in a biology class with Jim Carr, suddenly the center of controversy among my friends who saw me as a confidante, an adulterer, a liar, a slut, a collaborator, an overweight slob and who knows what else, all except Gabriel, who stood there in the student parking lot seeing me as the person he loved, and it suddenly became so easy to see myself as someone who was in love with Gabriel, as he was in love with me, and I held my breath like you do when you’re opening a suspiciously dated carton of milk and kissed him. It was a long kiss, the proper length of kiss, I told myself, for the beginning of a relationship. I felt Gabriel stiffen, react despite himself and finally surrender and kiss me back. I stepped backward and into the car door; it slammed shut and we both jumped and stopped kissing. We grinned at each other, his as wide as the Pacific and mine, I fear, as shallow as Lake Merced. Some Gurgle and Buzz song popped into my head, but just out of reach, scarcely audible.
“Are you sure this is OK?” he asked me, and my mind scurried out of the swampy lake back to Gabriel. He was cute. He cooked and would never treat me wrong. No one would be mad at me any more.
“Yes,” I said, and he took my hand instantly and led me into the school building. The bell rang just as we walked in the door, and the hallway began to fill up. “I’ll see you soon,” I called to him over the roar of people my age who had a purpose, who knew where they were going and only had three minutes to get there. “I’ll talk to you soon.”
I opened the side entrance, and there was Adam.
“Flannery!” he said, smiling. “I’ve been looking for you!”
I tried to make my voice sound like his voice didn’t make me weak in the knees. You have a boyfriend, I found myself telling myself, trying to picture Gabriel clearly in my mind. “What do you want?”
“What’s wrong? You look a wreck.”
“Thanks a lot,” I said.
“Hey, I thought we were friends.”
“And I thought you needed a little room,” I said, feeling a little bored by all this until he suddenly took my hand. Suddenly I was warm, for the first time all morning since I got out of the shower. As warm as “With You With You.” “What?” I squeaked. The way my life was going, some great-uncle of Kate’s was bird-watching, accidentally photographing me with Adam to show Gabriel, but fuck it. Let him. I’m over here next to the orioles, Uncle Bob!
“I wanted to ask you to dinner Saturday night,” he said plainly. He was wearing a button-down shirt of pure white; did I mention that? He makes me into a walking cliché; did I mention that? Melting at his voice, swooning inside, the whole bit, a pure shot of desire.
“Really?” I started to say, but changed it, just in time. “Saturday?” I said. I started to shake my head, but from nowhere a sentence dropped into my head like a note in a bottle. Gabriel wouldn’t have to know. “Yes.”
“Really?” he said, and then frowned like he hadn’t changed that in time. Adam was excited to ask me out. Excited. Maybe a little nervous. All he had needed was a little room; who didn’t need that, once in a while? “Um, I’m busy all day Saturday, so I won’t get ahold of you. Will you meet me in a cafe somewhere, let’s say six-thirty?”
“Death Before Decaf?” I said. “That’s close to where I live. We could just go back to my place and have sex.” That last sentence I purposely crossed out before I said it, but left it for him to hear.
“Sounds great,” he said, blinking. “Death Before Decaf, Saturday, six-thirty. See you then.” He looked at me, and smiled widely like everything was easier than he thought. With a pang I remembered Gabriel, after the dinner party, showing me he had found the right key to his car door.
“I Keep Finding What I’m Not Looking For,” that’s the Q.E.D. song that had popped into my head after kissing Gabriel in the parking lot. But this time, it was a different one, the album’s closer. “You’re young and you’re experienced,” the opening vocals whisper while a guitar purrs gently. The first kiss was gentle, and I thought that was going to be all. “And I can taste it,” the singer snarls, and the drums kick in, the full band in full force, the bass crackling like the feel of cold cement on your back as you lean against a building you hate, a building you’ve always hated, to kiss a man you love and have always loved. I don’t know how the rest of the lyrics go–I haven’t heard the song enough yet–except for the chorus: “Swept away by your ready desire/I surrender to your kiss of fire.” That’s the title of the song. When the kiss was over we looked at each other, out of breath, the silence around us expectant, just like it is when a great album is over. “Kiss Of Fire.”
Saturday October 2
Well, life could be worse, I’m not trapped on ice floes or anything, not like the gin was even cold, I have to go throw up. F
uck him.
Ahem. It’s later now, and although “sober” ain’t the word for what I am it’ll have to do; I’m not sitting on the cold tile of my bathroom floor with my cartoon-face night-light laughing at me anymore. He didn’t show, that’s why.
Back from another bout. I think the easiest way for my addled brain to chronicle this ignominious defeat is through a time line:
6:27 Flan leaves house to walk to Death Before Decaf, planning to arrive a few minutes late.
6:33 Arrives. A. S. has outfoxed her and Flan is forced to order a latte and sit waiting. Luckily she’s brought Salinger’s Nine Stories, which she’s rereading for the umpteenth time. She figures that it’s a good conversation starter, plus she can successfully pull off reading it carelessly, so when Adam comes she will be casual. In reality, her hands are sweating, and she keeps wiping them on napkins despite the self-righteous NAPKINS = TREES TAKE ONLY WHAT YOU NEED sign.
6:48 Orders another latte. Overcaffeinated and nervous, Flan suddenly realizes she’s read the same sentence in “For Esme with Love and Squalor” sixteen times in a row.
7:00 This is the deadline. Finally, Flan overcomes her own willpower and does what she knows will do her no good: takes her black leather notebook out of her bag and checks what time Adam said he’d meet her. Yes, it is fucking six thirty, put your journal back in your bag and order another latte.
7:18 Catches herself praying.
7:22 Decides her hands are so shaky that she may drop the latte on the way back to her chair, so she doesn’t order another one.
7:33 Flan doesn’t know what to do. Saturday night stretches before her like unwanted limousine service, waiting for me to tell it where to go. I can’t go home.
7:41 I was about to order some food. “Death Before Decaf offers a wide variety of low-fat salads” peeps another helpful sign, just when I was feeling fat enough, thank you, but about to collapse as a result of three lattes’ worth of blank jittery energy poured hot into an empty stomach. I reread the mocha-stained menu, flipping it over halfheartedly to see if what I wanted was on the other side. No, he wasn’t there either. Suddenly I couldn’t see anything. Adam had put his hands over my eyes for me to guess.
“Guess who?” a decidedly female voice said, and in a flash I saw things as clearly as if I had invented them myself: Natasha, whom I had forgotten to call and cancel, had come to Death Before Decaf to grab a latte before meeting me for Way Down East as we had agreed the other day at the beach.
“Hey!” I said, twisting my voice like a wet towel, wringing it tight into surprised, enthusiastic tones. This takes practice but it works.
“What’s wrong with you?” Natasha asked.
“Nothing.”
She rolled her eyes, bored. “Well, I’m glad I found you. I got tickets already but we should zoom across the street, dahling. If we don’t hurry we’ll be sitting in the front row, and that’s too close to the organ.”
We scurried across. Just as the bored, multipierced usher was ripping my ticket in half, I looked back and saw Adam, rushing into the café, his clothes torn and bloody. He had clearly been in a car wreck. Just kidding.
The lights were dimming when we walked in, so we sat in the back row and put our feet up on the seats in front of us. I felt disoriented: Who was I with? What were we doing? My shaky stomach fluttered like that movie where she’s pregnant with an alien. I don’t know what it was–the opening shot of Lillian what’s-her-name looking wan and helpless or the shimmering reverberations of the corny but sad organ chords–but as soon as Way Down East started I began to cry. I was being quiet, I think, but my shoulders shook Natasha’s leopard skin coat from the back of her chair. She heard the fake-bone buttons clatter on the floor; she took her eyes from the screen and watched me with the same rapt, detached attention. She reached down into the pocket of her fallen coat. I thought she was going for tissues, but I should have known. Lit by the yellowish glow of the old movie, she handed me the flask, which was polished to such a shine that I saw the reflection of the movie clearly in it. Lillian, as an abandoned woman, was learning that she was pregnant.
The gin wasn’t even cold. It was just straight, warm gin, and to say that it burned my throat wouldn’t begin to describe what it felt like. I read Julius Caesar sophomore year and was remembering Mrs. Brutus’s suicide via hot coals down the throat. Now, thanks to method acting I could play Portia to the hilt. I took another swig and by that time I couldn’t tell whether I was still crying, or some gin had leaked out and was dripping off my face like tears. You don’t have to be an A student in Advanced Bio like me (ha!) to know that empty stomach + three lattes + swigs of straight warm gin=one drunk girl by the time our heroine was clinging to ice floes, rushing down a river. I kept swigging; next thing I knew Natasha was putting her arms underneath my armpits to help me out of my ratty plush seat. I tried to stand up by myself outside the theater and slid down the wall to the floor. The usher was looking at me curiously; it occurred to me that he probably worked for Kate. I opened my mouth to tell Natasha this and to my horror found myself crying again. Natasha was sitting on her knees looking at me like a gargoyle, except she was gorgeous.
“Jesus, girl,” I said. I mean she said. I’m going to go wash my face again.
“Jesus Christ, girl,” she said. “How much did you drink?”
Wiping my face with my fist and feeling grubby, I looked at her and turned the flask upside down. The last trickle fell onto the grimy floor. I leaned my head back against the theater display case, inside of which was a poster advertising what was coming up, and felt the cold wash of shame fall over me like thick netting.
“What happened to you?” Natasha asked, and I told her. I told her everything–kissing Gabriel, kissing Adam, Adam standing me up, and everything that had happened to Lillian. Halfway through that last part I realized she had been there for the movie.
“Yeah, yeah, I was there for the movie,” she said, standing up and pulling me up, too. The whole street glimmered loudly at me like a snow globe. San Francisco fog was rolling in, canned ambience for my own dense gloom.
“Now look at me, Flan,” Natasha said. She ran a hurried hand through her perfect hair, haloed in the streetlights. She took the flask firmly and screwed the cap on tight. “You were screwed over tonight. What are you going to do about it?”
“Are you mad at me?” I asked her, my lip quivering. “Why aren’t you mad at me? You were the one who got screwed over. I stood you up for our movie date, and I didn’t even call–”
“Don’t worry about that,” she said, holding up her hand. She reached down and picked up my forgotten bag, draped it over my shoulder like a bandage. “I’m always here, whenever you want me, you know that. I can take care of myself. It’s you you should worry about. What are you going to do? You have to do something.”
“You sound like Mr. Baker.”
“What?”
“That’s Baker’s Rule: do something.”
“Well, he’s right.”
“I don’t know.”
“Of course you don’t,” she said, sighing. “Well, I have to go. I have somebody to meet.” She raised her eyebrows, just slightly. Glamorous. “I’ll call you in the morning, Flan. Or maybe I’ll just come over. You might not want to hear the phone. Don’t forget aspirin, Flan.”
“You know,” I said, jumping trains as only a caffeinated drunk can do, “I always secretly thought you only had water in that flask.”
She smiled. The fog was rolling in thicker, thicker. “Sometimes it is, Flan. The secret is to keep everyone on their toes. Everybody’s got to keep guessing or you have nothing left. You shouldn’t have written him those letters, Flan.” She saluted me–her nails catching the lights of the theater–and walked off into the fog. It was rolling in thicker, and thicker; soon planes wouldn’t be able to land and I’d be stuck here for good. There was no trace of Natasha, which left me feeling empty and alone, like I’d been stood up for a date and just gotten drunk, by myself,
in the back of a revival movie theater six blocks from my home. Like this was my Saturday night. Disgusted, I found my car keys and shakily drove home.
Oh, shut up, Peter. I didn’t drive home; I’d walked, remember. I even gave you a clue in the previous paragraph: “six blocks from my home.” But you didn’t listen. What’s the use of even writing this all out if you’re not going to fucking listen?
Vocabulary:
GNASH
EXORBITANT
INEXPLICABLE
INVULNERABLE
SUBJUNCTIVE
EXPECTANT
DEFIANT
IGNOMINIOUS
Study Questions:
1. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the I Have A Really Good Reason For This approach versus the Have Mercy on Me Mr. Baker approach. Which would you have used in Flannery’s situation?
2. Lily uses the word really eight times in a simple one-page note. Study your own writing and find a word you use too often. Look it up in a thesaurus and come up with at least eight good synonyms.
3. Flannery writes: “Well, life could be worse, I’m not trapped on ice floes or anything.” Which do you think is worse: being trapped on ice floes or being stood up by a man you love?
4. Everybody keeps getting mad at Flannery, but it’s not her fault. Discuss.
Monday October 4th
I’m glad you could join us today. Absinthe has had a variety of historical meanings, but never one as sinister as what it now means to all Americans: the Basic Eight, whose notorious deeds were spurred on by their abuse of this innocent-looking liquid. Here with us to discuss American absinthe abuse are [as the camera panel-pans] Mrs. Ann Rule, grieving mother of an absinthe abuser and the founder of the American Association Against Alarming Absinthe Abuse, the first national organization to have the courage to take on this tragic and complex issue; Peter Pusher, a nationally renowned expert on The Family, author of the book What’s the Matter with Kids Today?: Getting Back to Family Basics in a World Gone Wrong and president of the Peter Pusher Think Tank on National Reform; Dr. Eleanor Tert, nationally renowned teenage therapist and author of How Kids Tick (You Off) and the forthcoming Crying Too Hard to Be Scared, a profile history of the psychological torment behind famous Americans from Edgar Allan Poe to Marilyn Monroe to Flannery Culp; Flora Habstat, the member of the Basic Eight who pulled–blew–the whistle, currently in recovery under the auspices of a twelve-step program; and Felicia Vane, a teenager who claims she only uses absinthe socially. Thank you for joining us, everyone.
The Basic Eight Page 14
