by Larry Buhl
I was beginning to experience something like a negative emotion, so I told Milagro I had to go. Her arm shot out and snatched the photos. We played a tug of war for a few seconds. I won, but in the process I spilled her box onto her bed. Some things—a ticket to a concert by someone named Paul Anka, a Jesus coaster, lipstick—fell onto the floor.
I began picking up the items, and when I reached for a lump wrapped in aluminum foil, Milagro fluttered her hand. I assumed that meant she wanted what was inside. I unwrapped the lump. Inside were pills, dozens of them. I recognized a few from the med carts I re-stocked. Milagro stopped fluttering and looked straight ahead, like a kid waiting for punishment.
I rewrapped the pills and placed them in her box. I told her I had to get back to my station immediately, which was a lie. I didn’t want to break the doctor-nurses’ aide bond—there was such a thing according to my nursing class—but I couldn’t ignore a cache of pilfered pills.
I told Mrs. Platt what I found in Milagro’s box. She showed no emotion when she thanked me.
At approximately 2 a.m., I convinced myself Milagro Sanchez hadn’t been planning to kill herself with an overdose. She was a collector, like me. The pills I saw may have been amassed over the years, from drawers in her house. They could have sentimental value.
You could convince yourself of a lot of scheizen at two in the morning.
For three days, Janet had been waiting for me at the end of my shift. She parked at the back entrance of Colonial Gardens. The commute was always quiet—she kept the radio off and a death grip on the wheel. She was the opposite of my BiMo, who basically did everything one could do safely, and sometimes not safely, while driving. She would punch in radio stations, re-do her makeup, pull back her hair, talk on the phone, seemingly all at the same time. When she was depressed, she didn’t drive. She didn’t see the point. It was remarkable that she was only involved in three accidents that I knew of. She never had an accident when I was with her. I believed it was my mental powers that kept us safe. I know that’s not likely or scientifically verifiable. It’s what I chose to believe.
Janet’s car was so quiet, it took all the strength I had not to fall asleep. Sleeping would have led her to assume, correctly, that the job was a strain on my body.
“I’m not going through with emancipation.” I just blurted it out. I had been thinking about this for several days, but I hadn’t actually made the decision until I heard myself say it.
Janet said nothing for about a minute. She must have heard me. I said it pretty loudly.
“It makes sense financially to stay in the system, and preferably in your house,” I said. “So if everything is working out to your satisfaction, I would prefer to stay.”
“I’m glad we make sense to you. Financially.” Her tone was snippy.
She was ticked about emancipation, before, and now she was ticked that I wasn’t emancipating. There was no winning with her.
SIXTEEN
November 12. Highlights of my romantic life:
· Mika (a girl’s name) gave me a necklace for Valentine’s Day. I gave her nothing. Ten years old. Doesn’t count.
· Sky (also a girl’s name) was my science lab partner in eighth grade. Relationship lasted half the school year, in my imagination only.
· Jasmine, girl I met at the science fair in ninth grade. She was outside the auditorium, crying. She told me her no-bake asphalt cookies didn’t win anything and her parents would be disappointed. Without thinking, I hugged her. Also without thinking, I told her, “at least your parents aren’t dead.” Relationship lasted four minutes.
· Sara. We had one date and might have had another, but the Foster-go-Round moved me across town the following week.
· Zoe, in imagination only. May be ending.
· Rachel, today ?
**
The German party was official school business. I was granted permission from the office to paste fliers on the poles in the courtyard cafeteria. As with my tutoring fliers, they were defaced within minutes. German Sux was written on one. On another was a swastika and Hile Hitler. Not surprisingly, heil was misspelled. I invited a few random students from my classes. Most were uninterested. I would not be bringing fifty guests as Jann-Otto and Annette-Barbel demanded. It didn’t matter. Since the coup, it was mostly their club.
Before I left to set up for the party, I informed Carl of where I was going and how long I would be. He asked if I needed a ride. I said I didn’t.
“Janet doesn’t want you riding your bike at night,” he said.
Silence.
“That’s all right. I’ll cover for you. She’s… you know. After what we went through with Scott…”
I kept forgetting to ask who Scott was. But now was not the time.
Carl followed me all the way to the front door. “I’m very glad, we both are. About you staying. I think this is working out. We have our issues. But who doesn’t?”
I remembered Jann-Otto’s other request. I asked Carl if he had any kind of German music, preferably danceable. He was thrilled to help me out—at least for a minute, until he realized he had nothing fitting that description in his collection.
I took some of his non-German CDs and said they would be fine. When I was half a block away, Carl called me back and said he found something. He was waving a CD case. I rode back and snatched it.
“It’s Janet’s. There’s a song about nuclear war, and you can dance to it.”
The party pad belonged to Jann-Otto’s parents. They bought it as an investment, but couldn’t rent it. It was all tan carpet, beige walls and generic plastic blinds. I noticed a hot tub in back, on the patio.
Jann-Otto had demanded that we come dressed as Germans. I chose to believe that if I were German, I would still wear khakis and a knit polo shirt. Jann-Otto was miffed at my sartorial nonchalance, even though his only nod to the occasion was a dorky green Bavarian hat with a feather. When I arrived, he was in the process of hanging crepe paper streamers and being a dervish of neuroses. He was not impressed with Carl’s CDs. “Paul Simon? Leonard Cohen? They don’t sound German.”
“They’re not,” I mumbled.
“Did you at least bring the strudel? Tell me you brought strudel!”
Oops.
In my defense, I couldn’t have brought a tray of strudel on my bike, even if I had remembered it. That would be dangerous. Janet would have been very pissed about that.
Jann-Otto crossed the line from churlish whining to a full-blown temper fit. He shredded the crepe paper streamers until it rained confetti. He screamed he always had to do everything himself. Nothing he did was good enough. His father went to Stanford, and he could not end up at UNLV. And if we couldn’t have decent music, we needed beer.
I informed him that I couldn’t get beer.
He made some kind of high-pitched scream, and threw his feather hat at the wall.
I wanted him to shut up. I agreed to look for beer.
“German beer,” he shouted, as I left.
In a planning meeting I had stupidly informed him I had a fake I.D. I don’t know why I told him this. The I.D. didn’t look like me, and it said I was 18, not 21, so it would be useless. I fully expected to come back empty-handed. This would make Jann-Otto even crazier.
I went to a sketchy-looking liquor store and picked out two six-packs of beer, because that was all I could carry safely on the handlebars. Yes, I realize the only safe way to travel is with no bags of beer dangling from one’s handlebars. I handed over my fake license, fully expecting the counter guy to shake his head and shove it back to me. That’s not what happened. He barely glanced at it. I think it may have been attitude that made him choose not to look closely. I must have displayed no sign of nervousness, thinking that there was no chance I would get away with it.
Back at the party house, Jann-Otto threw a two-minute tantrum because it was not enough beer. He pacified himself by grabbing a “Hiney” and consuming it as if it were the last drip of water in the d
esert.
Annette-Barbel showed up at the door, dressed as a garish Bavarian prostitute. She wore a push-up bustier and a mane-like platinum blonde wig. When she saw that we were not dressed as Germans—at least not as bizarrely German as she was—she became irate. “If I’m the only one in costume, I’m going to look stuuu-pid.”
“But you look good,” Jann-Otto said.
“And you look like der pimmel,” she said.
I covered up a laugh by making it sound like a sneeze.
The first official guests were two girls from German class and two girls I didn’t know. The quartet tentatively took steps into the living room, moving like an eight-legged giggle monster. Next, three guys who seemed too old for high school sauntered in with bottles of booze. A few minutes later two more guys—one wearing UNLV sweat pants—strutted in without knocking.
When there were about two-dozen people, Jann-Otto put on Janet’s German techno album. Almost everyone started shouting and jumping. Some guy pushed the sofa aside to make a dance floor. The “99 Luftballons” song went over well. Some partiers even sang along in German. If I knew how to dance, I might have joined them.
Around nine o’clock there were at least forty people. I assumed the party was at its apex. I turned down the music and asked for a moment of everyone’s time. I was ignored until Jann-Otto, now drunk, sprang up from the sofa and shouted, “Achtung!” The crowd gave me their reluctant attention while I explained about how joining German club would look great on college applications. I mentioned the importance of the German language. I even read a passage from Goethe, which bored everyone, so I cut it short. I wrapped up by promising more hot tub parties if at least 25 students pledged to sign up for German class next semester.
One person applauded. Rachel. She was standing in the back of the living room behind a cluster of students. I was glad to see her.
Someone put on one of Carl’s CDs, something that was more appropriate for burying the dead than for dancing. Still, one guy tried, alone, moving as if he were trapped in gelatin. It would have been a good mime for the Creative Soul class.
Now Rachel was standing in front of me. “Are we dancing? Slow dance?”
“It’s not that I don’t want to. But the music…”
She fake-cringed. “I know.” She brushed her hand against my arm said she would be right back. She went around snapping pictures, causing most people to groan or shield their faces. A few guys posed by giving her the middle finger.
Jann-Otto was next to me, suddenly. He steadied himself by putting his hand on my shoulder. He apologized for being such a prissy twit. At least that’s how I interpreted it. What he really said, slurring, was, “you’re nice guy and everyone loved your music, at least the first album, but this album sucks donkey dick, and I shouldn’t tear up streamers and throw them at good people. I should throw them at aaaaaassssshoooolllllles.” He shot a glance at two of the UNLV guys.
Across the living room, Rachel pointed her camera in my direction. I covered my face with my hand. She stuck her tongue out at me. Jann-Otto asked if Rachel was my girlfriend and if I ever “did her.” I didn’t answer. Then he told me, for at least the fifth time since I had known him, he planned to graduate summa cum laude. “You know the meaning of summa cum laude? It means some cum loudly.” I didn’t even attempt to laugh.
I walked out to the patio. Five guys were sitting around the rim of the hot tub, passing around a bottle of whisky. Six girls were in the tub, chatting and smacking each other. I turned to see Jann-Otto staggering toward me. I turned away and scrunched up my face and stared at the hot tub crowd.
I felt a hand on my back. It was not Jann-Otto, to my relief. It was Rachel. She said she was done with photo taking. She asked what else she should do. Her fingers began making circular motions.
“Is it a conflict of interest to put your hand on the back of someone you’re interviewing?” I instantly wanted to snatch the words out of the air and put them back in my mouth. I know that’s not possible, but that’s what I thought.
She removed her hand. “I like you. Do I have to spell it out?”
“But why?”
“Um, well. You’re smart, and cute. And definitely one of the more interesting people I’ve ever met. And very funny.”
Cute was the salient word. Funny and smart were not traits that led naturally to romantic relations. Hideous, brilliant clowns didn’t have a lot of sex, as far as I knew.
“I like you, too,” I said.
Apparently that was the correct response. She brushed her finger against my neck, and said she would give me a “tour” of the upstairs. I had a general idea of what this meant, and it had nothing to do with real estate. I told her I would meet her at the top of the stairs.
I hadn’t planned for it. I had brought no condoms. In fact the only condoms I possessed were in my Box o’ Crap. A student—me—who had given an impromptu campaign speech about the matter would be a fairly bad role model if he had unprotected sex. Perhaps I was being presumptuous. I hadn’t even fantasized about sex with Rachel. Zoe was still the object of my fantasies. But that wasn’t going to happen. This, whatever it was, with Rachel, was going to happen. And the chance might never come again. I would have to improvise.
The whole house was wired for sound, and the low raspy voice of the singer followed us everywhere. Rachel led me upstairs and peeked in each room as she pretended to be a realtor. “And here is a bathroom, resplendent with… fixtures and a mirror. Here we have a perfect nursery for all of the children you didn’t plan to have.” She opened the door to a bedroom where a couple was making out. She closed the door and gave me a sly grin.
She escorted me into an open bedroom. We stood there for a half second, peering into the darkness.
“So, here is a room.” She put her arm around my waist. “You can do a lot with it.”
My German club co-vice chancellor’s dad owns this place. It’s great how the music is everywhere. Sorry about the selection. I never heard of this Leonard Cohen guy before. He’s not good for dancing but I think the lyrics aren’t bad.
That’s what would have said, if Rachel hadn’t attached her lips to mine. The only thing that actually escaped my mouth was, “My Germ—”
Sometime while I was suctioned to Rachel, one of us had shut the door. The room was empty, lit only by a streetlight shining through the blinds. Rachel leaned into me, hard enough to almost make me lose my balance. I took that as a sign to lie on the scratchy acrylic carpet.
“My muscles are pretty tense.” I said this as a prelude to a massage, and I hoped she would get the hint. I was always pretty tense, so this was not a lie. Rachel climbed on my back, straddled me with her legs, and told me relax. Ordinarily I wouldn’t provide details about what went on next. I am not the kind of person to kiss, or do other things, and tell. But in this case I don’t think I would ruin Rachel’s reputation.
Over the course of four songs, she massaged my entire back. It was great, but I was tired of having my face smooshed into the rough carpet. I needed to aim higher on the physical intimacy hierarchy. I told her to stop. I sat up. I touched her face, gently. She didn’t object, even when I removed a strap on her top, and then the other one. She reached for the front of my jeans and began a more unorthodox massage.
Suddenly a shaft of light sliced across the room. The door was open. Some guy said, “Entschuldigen Sie mich.” That means excuse me. The door closed.
Rachel groaned. “I thought you locked it.”
“I… hmmm.”
She stood up and replaced the straps over her shoulders. “I always move too fast.”
“I have time. I don’t have a curfew.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Stupid interrupters! Why hadn’t I locked the door? It was one simple thing to do. I was always looking out for details. When you plan to have sex, or near-sex, you don’t want to overlook that detail.
She reached for my arm. I let her pull me up. She was surprisingly s
trong. She kissed me gently on the lips. “You’re funny.”
“Does that mean there will be a progression to more?”
“I suppose so.”
“When?”
“I don’t know.”
“I like certainty.”
“Deal with it.” She kissed me again.
So that was it. There would be no “happy ending” that night. Then again, if someone had told me we would do as much as we had, I wouldn’t have believed it. But I would have appreciated knowing in advance.
Downstairs, the party was dying. Annette-Barbel was picking up stepped-on fliers while wiping down the coffee table. There were dangling streamers, a forlorn sausage on a paper plate, a strand of sauerkraut hanging from a lamp, and a sleeping guy in the corner. There was an argument coming from the patio. Male voices.
Rachel said she had to leave. “My mom needs me.”
We walked out together and stopped at her bike, which was chained to a tree. We were the only two who didn’t drive, I realized. We kissed again, for about a minute. She told me the party was a big success and that I should be proud. I was proud, but not about the party. I watched her pedal away. I stood there on the sidewalk until she disappeared into the blackness.
I heard a scream and a crash inside the house. I decided to leave. If Jann-Otto and Annette-Barbel wanted to run the club, they could clean up. Oktoberfest had been their idea.
Carl was sitting on the sofa in semi-darkness with his eyes closed. I walked past him on my way to the kitchen. I hadn’t eaten anything at the party. Walking back to my room with a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats, I looked up for an instant and caught his eye.
“How did the music work out?”
