by Sarah Miller
We can both feel the softness of her butt next to his thigh. He likes it more than I do.
"Tenemos que charter," Pilar says.
"That means 'to chat,'" Gideon says, excited.
Pilar nods warily. "You Americans, you are so happy to know just one word. I want to tell you that the night when you helped me in the bathroom, it was very nice of you."
"Thanks," Gid says. He contemplates adding, "I live for opportunities to please you," but then, thankfully, Nicholas appears with the white pill. He breaks it in half and hands both halves to Gid. "Wait before taking the second half," he says. "Remember, you're not going to have a better time with more."
"Hola, Nicolito." Pilar exaggerates her accent. "iComo estas?"
Nicholas nods. "What's up, Pilar?" He walks away.
"Oh my God." Pilar turns toward Gideon and seizes his chin with her perfectly manicured thumb and index finger. "Why is he always so serious?" Her giant brown eyes look right into Gideon's. If Gid passed out from sheer joy, she would just keep holding his chin, and his head would dangle from her fingertips.
"Nicholas is just like that," Gid says. "He doesn't really mean it." Pilar finally lets go of his chin. Gid busies himself with the pill, puts half of it on his tongue. "What am I taking here, anyway?" he says, trying to talk around the pill, but its rough bottom part, where it's been broken in half, touches the roof of his mouth and then drips onto his tongue. It tastes like bad lemons and dust.
Pilar reaches into his mouth and takes the pill off his tongue. Gid fairly soars on a sense of victory. Pilar knows that there's another half of this pill in his pocket. So she could have looked at that if she wanted, right? This can only mean one thing. She wanted to put her hand in his mouth, which, Gid thinks, can only be fantastic news.
"Vicodin," she says. She opens her mouth, indicating Gid should do the same. She sets the pill back on Gid's tongue, and for a heavenly second, Gid inhales her smell of soap and lotion. He pours a good shot of beer over it and swallows. "It tastes bitter, but trust me, it makes you feel amazing. In fact, I wouldn't mind taking the other half."
After the chin grabbing and reaching into Gid's mouth, Gid hopes wildly that Pilar's going to help herself to Gid's pockets. He shifts a tiny bit, just in case this is her intention. It doesn't seem to be.
Pilar takes the pill with a hefty dose of her blue-green drink.
"Are you guys taking Vicodin?" It's Mija. She's wearing small, flattish white shoes. They're ugly. Gid's never been to Holland, or even to Europe, but he's right to associate her clothing problems with her nationality.
'Tell him how it's going to feel,'7 Pilar encourages.
Mija jams her hands in her pockets and thinks. "Well, first you're going to feel a little light. And then you're going to feel like you really, really like everyone."
He liked Dennis's general promise of feeling good, but this makes him nervous. Liking Pilar more than he already does could lead to embarrassing confessions. Maybe this isn't a good idea. The memory of the pill is still in his throat. He has time to stop this. In eighth-grade health, they were forced to watch a film strip on bulimia, and Gid's pretty sure he remembers how to make yourself puke. He saw a bathroom near the kitchen with a nice, solid, soundproof door. He gets up.
"No," Pilar coos, "don't go anywhere. You were making me warm!"
Wow. Gid sits back down.
"More important," Mija adds, "it makes you feel like you really, really like yourself."
Now, this is something he can get behind. Gid settles into the seat, inching even closer to Pilar than he was before.
"I thought you would like that," Pilar says, pursing her lips seductively.
The drug is working on her! Gid thinks.
Or Gid is. Probably a combination of both. She seems to be softening up, like butter left out.
"You know, I wonder about your relationship with Cullen and Nicholas," Pilar says. "The three of you have a secret."
"No secrets," Gid says, feeling as easy as his tone. "I mean, aside from the usual."
"What is usual between guys?" Pilar asks. "You're part of the, how do you say, sewing circle? What do you think of yourself, you, Cullen, Nicholas...the three amigos?"
But Gid's not listening. He's watching—and who can blame him?—Cullen and the no-underweared Fiona Winchester making out on the couch.
Fiona's leg lifts up in the air and wraps itself around Cullen's waist. Cullen picks her up, walks across the room kissing her, and carries her up the stairs. "Jesus," Gid says.
Pilar says, "If Fiona falls for him that easily, then, you know, you really can't blame him.'7 No softie, that Pilar.
I can't say I feel sorry for Fiona, but I don't think she's an idiot for believing Cullen really likes her. Why shouldn't she? She's a beautiful girl. She's smart. Her parents have a fantastic collection of modern art. And up until now, most of the information she's received about herself has proved to be more or less true. How's she supposed to know that the lying starts now, with Cullen McKay and his great smile and his love of all things silky?
Pilar knocks back the rest of her drink and saunters to the bar. Gid observes Liam, Devon, Hal, and Nicholas as they all watch her. She's sitting with me, Gideon wants to yell. Pilar says something to Devon Shine, and he blushes. The kitchen door swings open and Dennis Tolland appears, holding a playing card over his head. "Yes," he shouts. Pilar walks by him and smiles. "I'm winning at poker," Dennis says. "Do you feel lucky tonight?" Pilar keeps moving. Dennis stares at her while she walks away, mouthing the word lovely before ducking into the kitchen again.
Pilar returns. "What's going on at the bar?" Gid asks. They are snuggled into the chair now.
"Oh, everyone's getting wasted and talking a lot of shit. Nicholas isn't saying a word. Or drinking." They look over. Everyone nurses cocktails; Nicholas has his bottle of water.
"That's why I think it's so weird that you hang out together," Pilar says. "Cullen is a schemer. Nicholas is quiet and sort of mean. And then you, you are just, you know, chatty and nice." Pilar shrugs. "I see you talking to Molly McGarry sometimes," she says. Gid looks around to see if anyone else heard. There's no one even remotely close to them who's not talking frenetically or woozily glass-eyed.
"She's a friend," Gid says, watching her face. She seems to accept this. The light on her cheeks is fucking poetic to him, so much so that even as he senses himself careening toward audacity, he is powerless to stop himself. "It's so loud here i can't think," he says. "Let's go upstairs."
He watches her face as she considers this, more terrified than he's ever been in his life. Is she smiling? And if so, is it out of happiness, or derision? "Let me go up first," she says. "Then we won't have to answer any questions."
The moment is so incredible Gid can't quite occupy it. He's never in his life even dreamed of being this thrilled. He watches Pilar hustle up the stairs, thinking, Those feet, those legs, that butt, that hair, are all going upstairs because of me! He guesses he should wait about five minutes and wonders how he will make it. Madison, Erica, and Mija are all huddled on a couch in the corner, whispering. Erica looks sad but hopeful; Mija, sympathetic but wary; and Madison—ubiquitous bottle of wine at her side, her pretty face wild-eyed and pink—she just looks drunk. The guys are a roving pack of blender duty and various loud arguments about guitars, guitar players, marijuana quality, and the relative appeal of various tropical vacation destinations.
Gid decides to bide some time in the kitchen. A little side trip, to throw everyone off the scent, then upstairs. Madison bounces in behind him. "Sorry," she says. "Girl crisis." Hal grabs Madison's arm, pulls her roughly in, and
kisses her. Madison giggles. Gid notes that Hal Plimcoat doesn't really have a chin, and that his front teeth, which are the size and shape of Chiclets, are concave, almost at right angles. The stretchy, stripey little-kid clothes don't help. No wonder Madison wanted to have sex with me, he thinks; I'm way hotter than Hal Plimcoat.
Gid, let's not for
get that Hal has something very important called extreme sexual confidence. And also, if you tried to grab a girl the way Hal just grabbed Madison, you'd probably wind up falling over.
Dennis, with a sort of wobbly hand, offers him a cigarette. "I don't smoke," Gid says. "I run." Laying claim to his athleticism makes him puff out his chest. Outside, the BMW waits. But not for me, Gid thinks. That's okay. Pilar, he thinks, is better than the BMW.
'That so?" Hal Plimcoat says. "I run too."
Gid has never been to England and wonders what running is like there. He pictures Hal padding slowly around a muddy field dressed in an old suit, smoking, with waterfowl scattering in his wake.
"You don't really run. You sort of shuffle along," Madison says, encouraging Gideon's vision.
Hal shrugs and taps an ash. "That's right," he says. "Jog. Didn't say I sprinted like bloody Chariots of Fire, did I?"
Madison ignores this. "We're playing strip Scrabble."
Gid asks how this works and is told that the high scorer at the end of every round has to take off his clothes. "So, like, see, you get punished for being smart," Dennis says. "Like in the real world."
Gid's dad always says this. It's pretty banal, right? Less than you'd expect from a British rock star.
"Or," Madison says, "in my case, I get to show off my brains and my tits."
Gid's trying to decide if Madison is smart in an idiotic way or idiotic in a sort of smart way. She raises one of her eyebrows. "So, Gid. You looking for your roommates? Don't quite know where Nicholas is, though I have a good idea. I think Cullen and Fiona are taking a walk on the beach."
"Actually, they're taking a walk upstairs," Gid says, happy to be in the know.
At this, Dennis stands. He's wearing a leather cap, several turquoise necklaces, and a pair of Bruce Reynolds-y sunglasses. And that's it. No one—no one except Gid, that is—blinks as he crosses the room and peers out into the living room. Cullen and Fiona are indeed nowhere to be seen. Mija's lying on the couch, thumbing through a coffee-table book on Helmut Newton, and Yves is passed out on the floor, a red towel under his head.
Dennis sits back down and shakes his head at Hal. "That Cullen. Can you imagine a bloke like that, not even seventeen, doesn't even try with girls, but gets it all."
Neils nods. "When I was in high school, girls threw things at me."
Everyone goes back to the game except for Dennis, who stands up again and, to Gid's delight and surprise, walks over to Gid. He drapes an arm heavily tattooed with Asian writing over Gid's shoulder. "You like that Pilar, don't you?" He nods, not waiting for a response. "I think she's perfect for you."
Gid looks nervously over his shoulder.
"No one's listening, kid, this is about you," Dennis says. "Look, your buddy Cullen, I love that dude, but you've got soul. I'm serious. Go put it to work."
upstairs
As Gideon ascends the back stairway of the Winchester summer home—in fast pursuit of the future so optimistically promised by Dennis Tolland—the Vicodin turns to molten silver. The molten silver decants itself into a deep pool, and Gideon tells himself, Pilar digs me. By the time he's stepped inside this pool for a long, hot soak, he's arrived at, Why wouldn't she? I'm awesome.
Through the closed windows Gideon can hear the ocean crashing. To the left is a door, and then a long hallway that, Gideon guesses, leads to the master bedroom. He walks down the narrow, high-ceiling hall, past a wall covered with photos: Fiona on a horse, Fiona climbing a hill, Fiona in a bathing suit, her eyes as bright as the sea around her. Gideon's parents each have a few pictures of him, but they're all posed, impersonal—not, he thinks sadly, unlike his attitude toward both of them.
At the end of the hall, there's another, smaller hall off to the left, and a door, open about an inch. Gid senses this is the place. He opens the door into an alcove. Straight ahead he sees the foot of the bed, and Pilars bare, manicured feet, crossed demurely over each other, and the wide cuffs of her velvety brown sweat suit. Gid moves forward, still floating on Vicodin and Dennis's encouragement.
Pilar's hair is laid out in a silky rope on the pillow. (I know it's really gay to call hair silky, but her hair is silky, okay?) A wineglass, half full and balanced on her stomach, throws red shadows on the far wall. She smiles as if she were expecting him. "Come in." She moves over. So he's supposed to lie down, next to her. "What are you doing up here?" she asks playfully.
She's a great flirt. I am jealous.
Gid can feel Pilar's expectant smile in the dark. "Well, I was just in the hallway, looking at photos of Fiona, and I was thinking about only children. I'm an only child, you know."
Pilar smiles. "I know. You told me that the first day I met you."
The fact that he has a life inside of Pilar's mind, even a small one, deepens his bliss. I wonder how he would feel about his situation with me. Sure, everyone wants to be listened to, to be understood, but perhaps not this well.
"I mean, obviously, she looks perfect and pretty in all those photos."
Gid lies down. Then he sits up again, takes his shoes off, and lies down again.
"You think Fiona's pretty?" Girls are really unbelievable! This is so not the point of the story, but of course Pilar can't resist.
"Of course," he says. "I don't think Fiona's prettiness is up for debate. Anyway, moving along [Good for you, Gid, not to indulge Pilar in this], Fiona just looks so...adored. In my photos, I look...well, I'm just there. Taking up space. Anyway, it's clear Fiona's parents see her, their only child, as their crowning achievement. I am just the weird remnant of a big mistake."
"That is so depressing!" Pilar exclaims.
"Is it?" Gid asks. He's thinking that maybe it's not, that if your parents were obsessed with you, they would never leave you alone. Being left alone is not that bad. Fiona Winchester's mother probably calls her three times a day. "Being a weird remnant is kind of fun," Gid says.
Then the most amazing thing in the world happens. Pilar rolls over so she is facing him. Gid rolls over toward her too. Their bodies make the exact same shape, knees bent up, hands folded and pressed against their chests. Where their kneecaps and elbows almost touch Gid can feel heat, not just from her but between them.
Pilar giggles. "I feel like we're stowaways on a ship," she says. "Close your eyes."
Gid closes his eyes. He opens them to see if Pilar's are closed. They are. He closes them again and listens to the waves breaking outside. He peeks again. Pilar's eyes are still closed, and she's smiling.
"So," Pilar says. "Gee-de-on. Do you want to know what else I was thinking?"
This is abrupt but exciting. Gid's eyes fly open. "Sure, I want to know."
Pilar props herself up on one elbow and with her free hand traces invisible patterns on the white bedspread. She looks exactly like a wife talking to her husband in a movie, in the part where she gives him levelheaded, loving counsel and says things like, "I think you'll be a great father," or "Don't worry about the election. Worry about the people. The election will come." Gid imagines himself running for office. He's wearing a blue suit and a red tie. At the end of the day, Pilar serves him a sandwich and some chips.
"Pilar," Gid says, making no effort to hide the desperation in his voice. "Do you ever think that we could go out?"
She laughs. Big. Loud. Mocking. Weirdly, his first impulse is annoyance: A smaller laugh would have been sufficient for making her point. What should he do now? Roll over in the other direction? Too petulant. Argue? Creepy. Even stalkerish. He decides not to do anything. If he's quiet long enough, maybe she'll say something that
makes him feel better.
"Actually, I have thought about it."
Gideon had hardly been expecting that!
Pilar is so close to him that he can see the reflection of the Winchesters' ABC Carpet & Home sconces in her eyes. He reaches out with a finger and strokes her shoulder. Pilar doesn't move away, but she doesn't move toward him. The Vicodin has softened his mind but strengthened his resol
ve. His hands move toward her face, and his mouth to her lips. He gets very, very close—close enough that as she exhales he can almost taste that blue-green
blender drink.
She doesn't exactly push him away. Her eyes lower just a little, almost demurely, and she puts her hands on his wrists and brings them down so she's holding them near her waist. "Let's not," she whispers. "It's not that..."
"Not that what?"
Pilar shakes her head. Gid's heart is beating so fast he's afraid she can hear it. "We can sleep like this, though," she says, sliding her hands down from his wrists and wrapping his fingers in hers.
Gid's heart slows down, still excited, and relieved not to be totally rebuffed. The Vicodin tells him that he is
loved.
In the silence that follows—a good silence, thinks Gid, who, as a child of divorce, really knows his silences—he dares to let his eyes take her in. Yes, Pilar is the most incredibly gorgeous thing he's ever seen in his entire life. He wasn't making it up. He resolves then and there that he will make getting her to be his girlfriend the most serious priority of his life. Well, he will try to do well in school and so forth. But other than that, it's all about Pilar. Which is fine. It might take a long time. He might have to actually become a state senator or whatever before he can get her, but that's okay. Out the window, the sky and sea are both black; one shines, the other stretches on, dark, studded with diamond-hard stars. I have nothing but time, Gid thinks. And, incredibly, Pilar, drifting toward sleep, inches closer to him, as if, Gideon reasons, her body would allow her things her mind would not. Basking in this possibility and the incredible warmth coming off Pilar Benitez-Jones's elbows and knees, he falls asleep.
And I, wherever I am, fall asleep too.
bonding
Late the next morning, driving back to school, Gideon slouches in the backseat as a stern Nicholas drives and a carefree Cullen chain-smokes, alternating between joints and cigarettes. A small but concentrated ache presses against the top of Gid's head, but that's nothing compared to his depression. When he woke up, Pilar was gone and every remnant of her—wineglass, cute little slip-on athletic shoes, shiny hair clip—was gone too. The tyranny of her absence, he thinks, was almost not worth the magic of her presence. But that can't be all of it He feels scraped out, utterly hollow. The yellowed nowhere of southeastern Massachusetts slips by, a deserted Ames's, a row of split-level vinyl-sided houses, then a Cumberland Farms where guys in quilted flannel shirts with mullets blow on cups of coffee.
