Nine Inches

by Tom Perrotta

  “Goddam!” Brendan said, punching himself hard in the chest. “That shit is poison!”

  AFTER A while, Brendan got bored and drifted off, to my great relief. I probably should have left, too — three shots of tequila are enough for anyone — but I didn’t want to let Sarabeth out of my sight. I figured that sooner or later we’d get a chance to talk, and I was planning on coming right out and telling her how pretty she was, just state it like an obvious fact and see how she reacted.

  In any case, the kitchen wasn’t the worst place to be. All sorts of people drifted in and out — there was a keg on the back patio — and I found myself hugging a whole bunch of them, including some I barely knew, and one or two I didn’t especially like. Most of us were seniors who’d already gotten our college acceptances — I was heading across the country to Pomona — and a generalized cloud of goodwill was in the air, that sense of connection that comes from having a shared past and one foot out the door.

  One of the few people who didn’t hug me was Iris Leggett. She just sort of materialized by my side while I was recovering from shot number four, which had gone down easier than its predecessors and then detonated like a fireball in my stomach. I had to close my eyes and wait for the uproar to subside.

  “You okay?” she said, tugging gently on my shirtsleeve.

  “I think so.” I blinked a few times, getting the world back in focus. “Just a little wobbly.”

  After that there was an awkward pause. Despite our promise to remain friends after the break-up, Iris and I had been avoiding each other for months, and now here she was, squinting up at me with an expression that seemed to hover somewhere between amusement and concern. I was also a bit distracted by her shirt, so tight and low-cut that it could barely contain her breasts. In school she always covered up, usually with an extra-large hoodie that hung down to her knees.

  “I know.” She nodded ruefully, following my gaze down to her impressive cleavage. “Holy shit, right?”

  I winced and mumbled an apology. I still felt bad about blurting that out, making her cry the first time we had sex — the first time for both of us.

  “It’s okay,” she told me. “I’m trying to own it, you know? I’m sick of hating my body.”

  “That’s good,” I said. “That’s a really healthy attitude.”

  “Fuck it, right?” There was something a little off about her smile, or maybe the tone of her voice. “If guys want to stare at my tits, who am I to stop them? I’m like, Here they are, dudes. Knock yourselves out.”

  “Are you drunk?”

  She raised her red plastic cup, tilting it to show me the contents. It was pretty big, at least twenty-four ounces, and more than halfway full. “Turns out I like beer,” she said, shrugging in a who-woulda-thunk-it sort of way.

  “You should try some tequila. That’s pretty good, too.”

  “Maybe,” she said, but her attention had shifted from me to Sarabeth, who was taking a selfie by the sink, making a supermodel face for the camera. It seemed like everybody in the room was watching her.

  “She’s pretty,” Iris observed. “But she’s such an exhibitionist.”

  “She’s nice,” I said. “She’s in my art class.”

  Casey joined Sarabeth for the next picture, the two of them posing with the tequila bottle. On the one after that, they gave each other a playful kiss. Some guys started cheering for more, but Casey pulled away and gave them the finger, telling them to dream on.

  “I should’ve gone to more parties,” Iris said. “I used to act like they were stupid, but that was bullshit. I pretty much wasted the past four years pretending I was above it all. But the joke was on me, you know?”

  “You didn’t waste it,” I told her. “You worked your ass off and got into a great college. I bet you’re gonna love it at Northwestern.”

  “I’m gonna go to more parties, that’s for sure.” She swirled the beer in her cup as if it were fine wine. “I just wanna have some fun for once.”

  There was a disturbance just then, a bunch of football players scuffling in the hallway. From the sound of it, I thought it might be a real fight, but they were just goofing around, Brendan and Chad Capaldo and Dontay Williamson tugging on one of their buddies, dragging him forcibly into the kitchen.

  “Get this man a shot!” Brendan shouted as they spilled through the doorway. “It’s his birthday next week!”

  Dontay was blocking my view of the birthday boy, but then he moved and I saw that it was Jake Harlowe. He looked sweaty and a little flustered, his blue oxford shirt rumpled and askew.

  “I can’t drink tonight,” he said, realigning the buttons on shirt. “I have to take the SATs tomorrow.”

  I was impressed by the smoothness of the lie, the note of regretful sincerity in his voice. And that look on his face, so anxious and innocent, like he didn’t want to be a party pooper, but couldn’t help it.

  “Fuck the SATs!” Capaldo hauled off and punched him in the arm, pretty hard. “You only turn seventeen once!”

  Jake frowned and rubbed his shoulder. Some guys started chanting, Birthday shot! Birthday shot! Birthday shot!

  “Really,” he said. “I can’t.”

  “Come on,” Dontay taunted. “Don’t be a pussy.”

  I turned back to Iris, shaking my head like I couldn’t believe what a bunch of immature assholes they were, but she wasn’t even looking at them.

  “Just so you know,” she said in this melancholy, thoughtful voice. “I don’t hate you anymore.”

  I laughed, though it didn’t sound like she was joking.

  “Why would you hate me?”

  “Why wouldn’t I? You came to my house, you fucked me, and then you left. You never said anything nice, never took me out, never called to ask how I was doing. You acted like it was your job or something.”

  “That’s not fair,” I said. “That was your idea. You wanted to keep it casual.”

  “I know.” She nodded for a long time, accepting her responsibility. “But you weren’t even grateful.”

  Drunk as I was, I knew she was right, knew that I owed her an apology. But for some reason I was looking at Jake again, watching as he accepted his birthday shot from Casey with an attitude of reluctant surrender, a good guy defeated by peer pressure. Smiling sheepishly, he toasted the onlookers and tossed it back to widespread applause.

  “He really shouldn’t be doing that,” I said, but Iris was already slipping past me, shaking her head in disgust as she veered toward the hallway.

  I WAS a conscientious employee, you have to give me that much. Even with a splitting headache and a broken heart, I managed to drag myself out of bed at six-fifteen the next morning, force down two Advil and a cup of black coffee, and drive out to the Brackett Academy, an exclusive prep school that had a nicer campus than some of the colleges I’d visited. I trudged into Winthrop Hall and joined a long line of nervous-looking kids waiting to take the most important test of their lives.

  Getting through security wasn’t a problem. The proctor just made the usual cursory inspection of my ticket and ID before waving me inside. When the room was full, he passed out the test booklets, recited the rules and regulations, and told us to get started. My forehead was clammy and there was an ominous sloshing sensation in my stomach; I wasn’t sure I’d be able to make it through the next three hours without passing out or throwing up.

  I’d known that fifth shot was a mistake even as I was bringing it to my lips, but by then I didn’t care. I’d already realized what was happening between Jake and Sarabeth, seen the way she’d chosen him, the way she pressed her body against his arm and whispered in his ear, the way he laughed at whatever it was she told him. All I could do was watch from across the room, my face burning with a rage that felt like shame, or a shame that felt like rage.

  Fuck my life, I thought, and I swallowed that last gulp of poison.

  At least it got me out of the kitchen. They had just started kissing when I rushed for the door and staggered
out into the fresh night air. I wanted to make it to the grass, but it was too far away, so I barfed on the slate patio, right in front of a group of weed-smoking juniors who thought it was hilarious and couldn’t stop marveling at the amount of awfulness that was spewing out of me.

  SICK AS I was, my mouth still sour from last night’s vomit, I could still manage the test without too much trouble. Most of the questions were ridiculously easy, as if they’d been designed for idiots. For example, Question #1 in the Critical Reading section was a sentence — A man of _____, he never went back on his word — that we were supposed to complete with one of the following options:

  (A) hypocrisy

  (B) integrity

  (C) flexibility

  (D) inconsistency

  (E) solidarity

  The correct answer was obviously B, but Jake Harlowe, fool that he was, chose D. And he kept doing that, question after question, always picking the wrong answer, often the wrongest one possible. But it served him right, I thought, going to a party the night before a big test, getting drunk and hooking up with a girl he didn’t even deserve.

  I knew Kyle would be furious, but I didn’t care about him. I was just sorry we’d ever met, sorry I’d accepted his job offer, sorry I’d let him turn me into the kind of person I’d become.

  I wasn’t all that worried about Jake, either. He’d get another shot at the SATs in September, and I was sure he’d do better the next time around. Maybe not good enough to get into Amherst like his brother, but so what? There were a lot of schools out there. In the meantime, he was going to have to suffer through that humiliating moment when his scores arrived; they were going to be a big disappointment. I could imagine the sense of helpless failure that would overwhelm him, the knowledge that something terrible and unfair had happened that he couldn’t even complain about. I thought it might do him some good, just this once, to feel the way I’d felt the night before, the way I was feeling at that very moment, darkening those bubbles with my Number Two pencil, making one stupid mistake after another.

  THE ALL-NIGHT PARTY

  LIZ GOT SUCKERED INTO TAKING the graveyard shift at the All-Night Party the same way she’d gotten suckered into every other thankless task in her long parental career — organizing soccer banquets, soliciting donations for the Dahlkamper Elementary School Auction, canvassing against the perennial threat of budget cuts and teacher layoffs, feeding her friends’ cats and turtles and babysitting their kids while they went off on business trips to Vegas or second honeymoons to St. Bart’s. She could’ve just said no, of course — she was a working mother with way too much on her plate — but she could never escape the feeling that everything depended on her, that if she didn’t do it, it simply wouldn’t get done. There would be no money for championship jackets, class size would skyrocket, marriages would crumble, beloved pets would starve. And maybe somebody somewhere would think it was her fault and decide that she was a bad mother, a bad neighbor, a bad citizen. Liz didn’t know why that possibility bothered her so much, but it did.

  The All-Night Party Committee knew exactly how to push her buttons. First, they’d softened her up with a never-ending barrage of e-mails, the tone friendly and inspirational in March (Let’s Uphold a Great Tradition; Please Help Keep Our Seniors Safe on Graduation Night), turning mildly reproachful in April (Don’t Leave Us in the Lurch!; Junior Parents, It’s Time to Step Up and Do Your Part!), before reaching a fever pitch of hectoring intensity as May edged into June (ALL-NIGHT PARTY IN DESPERATE NEED OF VOLUNTEERS! NO MORE EXCUSES!! THIS MEANS YOU!!!).

  Liz had felt her resolve weakening throughout the spring, but she was determined not to give in. She was swamped at work, she was feeling down (the reality of the divorce finally beginning to sink in), and still nurturing resentment from the soccer season, during which she’d done more than her fair share of the heavy lifting, hosting two team dinners, supervising the sale and distribution of eight hundred boxes of frozen cookie dough for the Booster Club fund-raiser, even manning the ticket booth in a couple of emergencies. And now that Dana had been elected captain for next year, Liz’s responsibilities on that front would only increase. So just this once, couldn’t they leave her alone and throw the goddam party without her? Was that too much to ask?

  She knew from experience that the Committee would escalate its recruiting efforts in the home stretch, cranking up the peer pressure, twisting the arms of reluctant volunteers. Liz opted for the time-honored strategy of cowardly avoidance — keep your head down, let the calls go to voice mail, and then, if pressed, claim you’d never gotten the messages. My machine’s been acting up; I really have to get a new one. No one would believe her, but so what? Summer vacation — that blissful season of amnesia and forgiveness — was just around the corner, everyone’s slate wiped clean until September.

  Her plan might have worked if the call had come from Marilyn Tresca, the sanctimonious Volunteer Coordinator, or Ken Lorimer, the red-bearded blowhard who headed the Clean-Up Brigade. But the Committee was too smart to lob her a softball like that.

  “Liz?” said the wryly apologetic voice issuing from the speaker of her answering machine. “Are you there? It’s me, Sally . . .”

  Oh, shit, Liz thought. That’s not fair. Sally Cleaves was the one member of the Committee she actually liked. Their daughters had been playing soccer together for the past ten years, attending the same skills clinics and summer camps, carpooling to club practices and indoor matches. Liz and Sally weren’t friends, exactly, but they were better-than-average bleacher buddies, thrown together on countless autumn evenings, cheering for their girls, sharing umbrellas and blankets in nasty weather.

  “I guess you’re not home,” Sally continued. “I’ll try you ag — ”

  Liz had no choice but to pick up the phone.

  “I’m here,” she said, panting a little for effect. “I was just in the laundry room.”

  “Laundry,” Sally commiserated. “It never ends, does it?”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Liz agreed, though she was thinking that it actually would, that in a little over a year Dana would leave for college, and Liz would have no one’s clothes to wash but her own, no one to cook for, no one to talk to at the breakfast table. It would just be herself, brooding in the empty nest, bored out of her skull. “How are you, Sally?”

  “Good, pretty good. How about you?”

  “Okay, I guess. Better than I was a few months ago.”

  “I’m glad. I know it’s been a tough year.” Sally let a few seconds go by, marking the transition between small talk and business. “Listen, Liz, I really hate to bother you about the All-Night Party. I know how busy you are.”

  “Not half as busy as you,” Liz countered. Sally was a patent lawyer who somehow managed to work full-time, raise three kids, serve on the School Board and Friends of Gifford Soccer, and run at least two marathons a year. Of course, she had a husband who loved her, so that made things a little easier. Or maybe a lot easier. Liz had no way of knowing how much of a difference something like that might make.

  “Oh, I doubt it,” Sally said, her voice full of the warmth Liz had been so grateful for during the soccer season, the first one she’d had to navigate as half of a divorced couple. It was horrible, suffering through game after game with Tony sitting just a few rows away, his shoulders rigid with anger, acting like he didn’t even know her, like the mother of his child didn’t merit the common courtesy of a hello.

  God, Sally had remarked one night, totally out of the blue. He’s a cold-hearted bastard, isn’t he?

  Always was, Liz replied. From the day that we met.

  “Anyway,” Sally went on, “we’re in a really tight spot, or I wouldn’t even bother you. You do so much already.”

  Liz released a martyr’s sigh. She felt the all-too-familiar, almost-pleasurable sensation of buckling under pressure, surrendering to the inevitable.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “What do you want me to do?”

  SHE ARRIVED at the high
school a few minutes before midnight, making her way down the rumpled, confetti-sprinkled red carpet leading to the side entrance. It must have been quite a scene a few hours earlier — a swarm of well-wishers cheering and blowing kisses at the graduates as they paraded in, a fireworks display of flashing cameras — but right now it was desolate, just Liz and a bored-looking cop sitting in a folding chair by the metal doors, beneath a hand-painted sign that said CLASS OF 2011 YOU ROCK!

  The cop had his head down — he was watching something on his iPhone — but Liz recognized him right away as the meathead who’d written her a ticket a few years ago for rolling through a stop sign on Whitetail Way. Just a glimpse of his Jersey Shore physique brought it all back to her: the way he’d ignored her when she tried to explain that her daughter was late for practice, and then his crazy overreaction when Dana attempted to get out and walk the rest of the way to the field, which was only a couple of blocks away.

  Remain in the vehicle! he’d barked, placing his hand on the butt of his holstered gun. Dana was only thirteen at the time and barely weighed a hundred pounds. If you exit the vehicle, you will be placed under arrest!

  And then, out of spite, knowing they were in a hurry, he’d made them wait in the car for what felt like an eternity while he checked Liz’s license and registration, a routine task that should have taken a minute or two at most. By the time he finally strutted over to deliver the ticket — along with a condescending lecture about driving more carefully in the future — Liz had had enough.

  Just so you know, she told him, I’m going to be writing a formal letter of complaint to the police department about your rude and unprofessional behavior. And I’ll make sure the mayor gets a copy.

  Go right ahead, he shot back, his face flushing pink beneath the bronze of his permanent tan. My name’s Brian Yanuzzi. With two z’s.

  Liz never wrote the letter — Tony convinced her it was a bad idea, feuding with the cops in a town as small as Gifford — but she had cultivated a lively private grudge against Officer Yanuzzi in the intervening years, cursing under her breath whenever she caught a glimpse of him directing traffic around a construction site, or sitting in his cruiser in the center of town, monitoring the pedestrian crossings. He was such a vivid figure in her mental universe that she was surprised, and even a bit disappointed, by the bland friendliness on his face when he looked up from the phone, as if she were any other well-meaning taxpayer.