“Oh, shut up!” I said fiercely, and stared out into the billowing fog. What with all the schnapps it was just racing up the hill like wild horses. I felt my eyes get wider and wider, and fill up.
“Just not working out,” Kate was muttering, lying on her back. “Where the fuck is Orion’s belt?”
“Around his ankles,” I said. Not bad, considering how drunk. We were. “You know, Kate, it’s really true how better off you are. And you know how I feel about him, how we both feel about him–”
“Yeah,” she said, suddenly sitting up and suddenly angry. “I know all about how you feel about him. Buying me ice cream and cookies doesn’t make it all better, Flan.”
“What?”
“Oh, come off it,” she spat. “I know it, you know it, everybody knows it. You’ve been in love with Adam since God knows when. For better or for worse Gabriel doesn’t know, or won’t admit he knows or whatever the hell, who knows with Gabriel. But Adam didn’t like you,” she said, throwing the plastic container far, far away. I had a brief memory of the absinthe container, sinking into Lake Merced. “Adam chose me. Or did, anyway.” She was crying again. “I can’t believe it,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said. My head throbbed with ice cream and liquor. “You know how I feel.”
“Well,” she said, with a nasty smile, “don’t get any ideas. Don’t think that you can have him now, because you know what? Somebody else beat us both to him.”
I swallowed, tasted something sharp. “What?” I said. “What?”
“What? What?” she mimicked. “He told me it wasn’t working out, Flan, but you know me. I found out there was somebody else. We should have moved early, darling. Remember, I don’t know if you knew this, but somebody was writing him some kind of”–she yawned and took another cookie–“some kind of love letters? All summer? Well, that’s who he wants. Adam loves the love letter girl”–she was starting to cry again–“and not me.”
I threw up.
Sunday October 31st
Today’s the day! I can’t wait. The biggest event of the year. A day to be remembered–a famous day. We’re going to be having so much fun, people are just going to die.
Of course I didn’t say any of that; when last we saw me I was throwing up, remember? I woke up feeling like a yak was sitting on me. It turned out to be Natasha.
“Today’s the day!” she said, straddling me like a rider, or a rapist. She had opened the shades so the irksome blaze of dawn was upon me like too much salad dressing.
“Get me some water,” I said.
“I can’t wait!” she said. “The biggest event of the year. A day to be remembered, a–”
“Famous day, yes,” I said. Natasha was grabbing both my arms so I couldn’t cover my eyes. “If you get me a glass of water I’ll give you fifty bucks.”
“We’re going to have so much fun–”
“One hundred dollars, Natasha. Two hundred.”
She laughed and got off me, ran to the bathroom. She came back with a glass of water that she–
“No!”
–poured on my head.
“I hate you,” I said, dripping. “What happened to the good old days when you would be making me Bloody Marys and such?”
“No time,” she said. “I’m too excited. You can’t hate me. What should I wear?”
I stood up, wiped my face off. She was already going through my closet. “You think you are going to find something to wear in my closet?”
“I want to wear something regular,” she said. “But, you know, sarcastic regular. Ironic. You know, for Halloween.”
“Thanks a lot,” I said.
“But I have your outfit,” she said, holding up a shopping bag. “I’ll be dressed like you, and you’ll be dressed like me. Get it? We’ll be like what’s-it, like those twins who advertise chewing gum on TV.”
I rubbed my eyes and walked to the bathroom. “Except those twins look exactly alike and we will look totally different.”
She stuck her face in the door as I tried to shut it. “Ironic,” she said. “Sarcastic twins. It’ll be great. It’s supposed to be Halloween, remember? But it’s not a costume party, so these are sarcastic costumes. Irony. You know, I think I’ll make us Bloody Marys after all. Come downstairs after your shower.”
My body looked thinner in the shower, leaner. I looked in the mirror as I stepped out of the shower and blinked as I found myself not just unashamed but even a little proud, slightly strutty to stand naked for a few moments in front of a mirror. Then I put on sweats; I didn’t even want to look at what Natasha thought I would wear until the worst of my hangover had passed.
The problem: no tomato juice. Natasha’s solution: substitute spaghetti sauce from a jar. The result: Bloody Marinaras. She put a few strands of uncooked spaghetti as garnish instead of a celery stalk; I swear this girl’s IQ is funneled into all the wrong places.
“You don’t really expect me to drink this stuff, do you?” I said. She pointed to her half-empty glass with her swizzle noodle. I saw she’d chewed off the ends of the spaghetti.
“It’s good, really,” she said, lying.
“Watching you have some is enough for me. I’m going to make coffee.”
“So, how was Heartbreak Hotel last night?” Natasha asked. “Kate told me you guys exorcised some demons.”
“Leave it to Kate to gossip about herself,” I said, looking for the damn filters. How my head throbs. I put my head down on the counter until the coffee was ready. After three cups I was ready for toast, and to fill Natasha in on Twin Peaks.
“I scarcely remember how we got home,” I said. “I mean, I know I was in a cab, but I don’t know if Kate was with me. I think I left the cookies in the car and the plastic container on the hill.”
“Peak,” Natasha corrected. “Quite an evening, Flan, particularly for you. Between the two of us we are leaving quite a trail of illegal plastic storage containers.”
“Natasha, you’re missing the point. Adam wants me.”
“No he doesn’t,” Natasha said. “He wants whatever mooning chick wrote him love letters. Now let’s go try on party outfits. Something tells me this night is going to be big.”
I ached to tell her, but that mooning chick stopped me. “Natasha, if it turns out Adam does want me, what should I do?”
She was halfway up the stairs already. “Date him for three weeks, make him buy you stuff, dump him and tell everybody he’s gay,” she said. “Also, cut off his–”
“I’m serious,” I said.
“So am I,” she said automatically, and then said, “You can’t be serious, Flan.”
“I’m serious,” I said again. I felt like maybe I would only say “I’m serious” over and over again, for the rest of my life. A sentence.
“Go upstairs and put on that dress,” she said in a terrible voice. We looked at each other for a second and then she said it again. “Go upstairs and put on that dress. The sweetest boy in the world is in your hand like a small animal, like something you’ve rescued. Gabriel has given you his fucking heart, Flan, and what do you want? This idiot who is messing everything up! Charming his way into dinner parties and breaking the heart of somebody who, I agree, Flan, is sometimes a bitch but is our friend nevertheless! I’ve watched you whimper over him all year and it’s only October! It’s just fucking Adam State, Flan! Remember Adam State? For three years he just puttered alongside us like a tugboat and it was just Adam State, like Frank Whitelaw or Steve Nervo or fucking Flora Habstat, dammit. Then, all of a sudden, the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie and you’re mooning over Adam State. And I think, OK, this is a fine premise for the start of senior year: Flan chases boy, it could be any boy, it doesn’t matter. It’s just something to do–it’s just the plot, Flan. So by all means flirt with him, invite him places and talk about him all the livelong day, but what happens?” Her shoulders sputtered up in a loud shrug. “What’s the punch line, Flan? He doesn’t like you. That’s all. He just doesn’
t like you. He doesn’t like you, he doesn’t like you, he doesn’t like you. And–and this should have been good news–he turns out to be evil. Says he’ll call, doesn’t call. Makes a date, stands you up. Capital E, capital V, ill. Evil, Flan!”
She started back up the stairs again but turned back, tossed her hair. “But no, apparently this is bad news, you want the evil man all to yourself, and when he goes out with Kate–just to drive us both nuts–you buckle! You could have bawled out Kate, you could have bawled out Adam, you could have chained them up in a deserted shack and left them to die–but what do you do? Buckle, buckle, buckle! Kate, who’s supposed to be your friend, takes Adam from under your nose–and what do you do? Buckle! Were you ever the least bit interested in Gabriel? I don’t mean, do you think he’s nice, I mean, the least bit interested? But you buckle and before you know it you have a boyfriend you don’t like and you don’t have a boyfriend you ought not to like! Then he dumps Kate and even that doesn’t stiffen your fucking resolve, Flan! Evil, evil, evil, and all you can ask me is ‘What if he wants me now? What if he wants me tonight?’” Her voice had its practiced snarl, a genuine, rehearsed sharpness like all the best speeches, throughout history. “Friends, Romans, countrymen, Flan, he’s E-Vil and for once in your life I’m not going to do it for you. No secret absinthe potions tonight, darling! I’m going to go your own way–my own way, I mean–and I’m not going to look back and see what you’re doing, but I hope for once you’re fucking paying attention in Calc because you ought to do something, do something, do something!” Her eyes blazed with, I don’t know, heartfelt theatrics and sexy fury. I had seen her bawl people out but never me. Not even our fights in the car had been like this. I was frightened.
“But what should I do?”
“You should go upstairs and put on that dress!” she said, frustrated. She ran a hand through her carefully disheveled hair, all the misplaced strands graceful as swans’ necks. “And hurry up, because we have to stop at Basic Bakery and pick up baguettes.”
She gave me a small smile and we both went upstairs to change and once we were inside the room everything changed. I don’t know what it was, weird strangeness when you’re talking and taking off your clothes and abruptly the nakedness just hits you. If it had been a movie the soundtrack music would have either suddenly stopped or suddenly started and there’d be a two-minute sequence with two teenage girls, changing their clothes back to back and stealing glimpses of each other. On the way out of the movie theater, people would say “Remember that part in the bedroom? What was that?”
It first hit me as I pulled off my sweats and realized suddenly I was naked except for my socks, and turned to grin sheepishly at Natasha, holding up one foot to show her. Except when I turned around she was already looking at me curiously like I had just emerged from a cocoon, with quiet wonder and expectation. I shrugged at her quickly but the spell didn’t break and then I looked back at her, down her neck and saw that she was naked except for these cotton white underpants I wouldn’t have expected of her. One hand was on her hip, below the underwear; she had obviously just realized she didn’t need to take them off in order to change into some of my clothes. I started to smile at her, but she wasn’t looking at me; she was looking at me. Behind her was the shopping bag with her dress in it and I stepped toward her feeling like a predator. She stiffened like something dangerous was getting closer to her skin, arching her neck, wary and still watching me. Watching my whole body. I could feel her gaze everywhere. I stepped so close that her breasts almost brushed against mine, and leaned over to get the shopping bag while she watched me the whole time, tense and expressionless. I stepped back and she walked toward me, tangolike. We moved like this, locked in each other’s eyes, back to my dresser and finally she opened a drawer and had to look in it to find clothes. We exhaled and breathed.
Inside the bag was a fake silk black dress, shiny and cheap like a fake kimono. I had never seen anything like it–it was as though the concept of a dress had been explained to somebody who had never seen one and based on this explanation made a reasonable facsimile. It had thick red streaks on it, elegant and gory. It felt wonderful but I wasn’t sure how it looked; the mirror was blocked by Natasha’s body so all I could see was her flesh. Her underpants had fallen a little low, still half-off, and her pubic hair was peeking out like an escaping spider. What was happening? I moved nearer, feeling the dress move around me, feeling liquid and naughty. Natasha straightened up suddenly and put on a plain white T-shirt with a tiny stenciled flower at the center of the neck and then looked at me as I felt the sudden true flush of desire. Keep that line for a poem. She watched me and then looked at her own hand as she hitched her underwear back up. The spider scuttled underneath. Her breasts were as clear underneath my shirt as they were naked, clearer even. She kept her hand on her hip for a second, her fingers lingering on the cheap white cotton I couldn’t believe she owned. She knew I was watching her, I realized, and looked at myself in the mirror. I was amazed how much like Natasha the dress made me look. No, wait: I was amazed that the dress made me look so much like Natasha. The sharp neck of the dress made my features look more clearly drawn, like Natasha’s did, and the red streaks of the dress made a thin thread between appeal and violence. The scarlet hugged my body like snakes, accented curves I couldn’t see in myself but always saw in Natasha, curving like beckoning fingers, like parentheses around remarks only funny to me, remarks only I could hear.
Natasha put on my blue jeans and looked inadequate. Even her perfect hair and the sneer of her lipstick couldn’t balance out the bland costume. She looked like me, I bet: slightly slouched, a little off-center, ineffectual and something you wouldn’t notice, not unless it was right in front of you. But I looked great. It was exciting to feel like her, and I felt a little smug that she’d be overshadowed tonight. She couldn’t perform as well in that costume. But I looked great. This was going to be a day to be remembered–a famous day.
When she was looking elsewhere I reached up to the top of my shelf and grabbed a talisman that would complete my Natasha imitation. Transformation, I mean. I reached up to the top shelf of the closet: Douglas’s hat, Jenn’s earring, Lily’s glasses–where was it? There it was: the nail file, with the two claw hands at either end. I slipped it into the dress’s one pocket and turned around just as Natasha turned around, like a reflection in the surface of a lake. She smiled and handed me the flask.
We got the baguettes at Basic Bakery where the showy ovens shone red and hot on us like a pit of fire. We had to park two blocks away, there were so many cars, and making out in one of them were Frank Whitelaw and the girl on stage crew who curses like a sailor and can always fix the light board, fooling around. Hello. Frank “it just isn’t working between us” Whitelaw, making it work with somebody else. Natasha and I had downed her whole flask on the way here, so we were already loud and obnoxious, weighted down with sheaves of loaves. When we came upon them I lifted my leg and kicked the window of the car, leaving a high-heeled footprint. Then we ran, looking back to see Frank and what’s-her-name peering out the window. Her shirt was unbuttoned and it wasn’t even seven-thirty yet.
The same Tin Can album was on in the house that had been on in the car. Lots of people were there already, but everyone was running around so it was hard to tell. V__ was on her knees in the front hall scrubbing something out of the carpet. Her face was red and tense but she was glad we had the baguettes. “In the kitchen,” she said, gesturing off somewhere. We walked by a small bathroom decorated in wallpaper patterned to look like bookshelves and with a large framed portrait of Jennifer Rose Milton in it. Why would V__’s parents–wait a second. I gave Natasha the rest of the baguettes–she looked like one of those peasant women loaded with sticks–and doubled back to the bathroom. It was of course the real thing, not a portrait, crying already. It wasn’t even seven-thirty yet.
“Oh, Flan,” she said, and I shut the door behind us. The books loomed in close; the flask’s gin was roari
ng up strong in my ears like a hair dryer. Jennifer Rose Milton had on a basic black dress and was holding one of those masks on a stick, but all that was shattered by her inelegant, coughy crying. “He’s seeing somebody else,” she said, leaning against the sink. The faucets were little golden swans which spat water when you turned them on, so I did. I hugged her, ducking down so her tears wouldn’t land on my dress because I didn’t know what it was made of and it might stain. “He’s seeing somebody else,” she said again, a little crossly as if I hadn’t said the right thing and I realized that I hadn’t said anything at all.
“There, there,” I decided on.
“He said that things just weren’t working out,” she said, drooling, “but Cheryl just told me–”
“Who’s Cheryl?”
“That fat girl,” she spat, “who got drunk at Lily’s cast party last year and threw up all over the yellow rug.”
“Her name is Cheryl?”
“Yeees,” she wailed, grabbing a tissue. The swans kept spitting. “She told me that Frank is seeing Nancy Butler. Can you believe it? Nancy Butler?”
I remembered Kate in the courtyard with me the other day, gathering her rosebuds while she could or however that goes. “I thought Kate already told you that.”
“I didn’t believe her,” she said, sniffling. “I thought she was lying. I thought she was wrong. And she’s here, of all the nerve. She’s at the party, and she wasn’t even invited.”
“Jenn, of course Kate was invited.”
“Not Kate, Cheryl. I mean, not Kate, Nancy Butler. She keeps wandering around asking where Frank is.”
“Well,” I said, “Frank is outside making out with somebody else in his car.”
“Really?” she said, blowing her nose and looking at herself in the mirror. “You’re just making that up,” she decided, “to make me feel better.”
The Basic Eight Page 25
