Inside The Mind Of Gideon Rayburn

by Sarah Miller

  Gid stands up, to be polite. "You're in Cullen's class, aren't you? How did his thing with the little toy soldiers go?"

  Edie waves her little hand from side to side, the international sign for so-so. "I laughed," she says.

  "Were you supposed to laugh?" Molly asks.

  Edie shrugs. "I was too busy laughing to decide."

  Now they both laugh.

  "What are you doing for your project?" Gid asks. You know, I don't know if it's obvious to Molly that he's only giving Edie the time of day to look better in Molly's eyes. Later in life, Gid's going to have to work on talking to all girls, not just the ones he wants to screw, so that when he talks to the ones he wants to screw, it won't be so incredibly obvious. Edie—whether she's on to him or not, I can't say—answers his question.

  "I'm writing Betsy Ross's diary. Around the time that she's making the flag." Gid sees Edie redden, and the way Molly stands next to her at a solicitous, protective angle, he knows that Edie's not real big on sharing.

  Gid nods.

  Edie continues, "But it's not about, like, the war and stuff. It's just about the actual flag. Like, imagining the stores she has to go to and how she makes the cloth and how she has to get some guy to come to her house when her loom breaks. It might sound weird, but I'm learning a lot about the way the economy worked back then."

  Okay, whatever. Someone needs to put the kibosh on all these hippie projects going on at this school. No wonder we are all nuts.

  The next night is Friday. Cullen and Gid are sitting together at dinner, late, long after the other boys have

  evaporated. "You should blow off rehearsal," Cullen says. "Ask Molly if she wants to go for a walk."

  "Go for a walk? That's so obvious."

  Cullen leans forward, fixing his pretty eyes on Gideon's. They have yellowish flecks in them, and they've seemed to blossom over the last few weeks. Is it drug use? Has their friendship deepened to the point where Gid has more chances for close observation? "Girls like obvious," Cullen says.

  Gid considers. "We have been getting out of study hall for the play," he says. "All the teachers think we're at rehearsal, and no one's checking up on us." But he frowns, looking out the window to the dark and cold. "But I think that... I mean, I think if I move too fast on her, she's going to think I'm weird."

  Cullen lifts a giant glass of milk to his mouth and rolls his eyes. He's laying off the chocolate for now, because Nicholas told him he was getting back fat.

  "What?" Gid says. "All I'm saying is that I know you don't think she's, like, the most incredibly gorgeous thing on the planet..."

  "Yeah," Cullen says. "Liam referred to her as stealth hot. Which I think is generous."

  Cullen is getting back fat, by the way. I've seen it.

  Gideon wasn't surprised that Liam told him he thought Molly was hot—excuse me, stealth hot. But he is surprised Liam admitted it to Cullen. This is not good news. His telling Gid was kind of like a tree falling in the forest. But Cullen matters. Telling Cullen means Liam might be prepared to do something.

  Gideon says, "Great. Liam Wu. Great."

  "Fuck Liam Wu."

  "You don't really mean that," Gid says.

  Yeah, he can't possibly really mean that. That's like saying, Fuck Pilar Benitez-Jones.

  "Okay," Cullen says, wagging his head from side to side. "I don't really quite mean it."

  "They flirt," Gid says miserably. "I mean, Molly really talks to me, but those two flirt."

  "You're selling yourself short, buddy," Cullen says. "You're a lot more visible on campus now. I see a lot of girls look at you. I think she already...Oh God. Look..." His voice trails off. "Okay, shit, well, we're about to have a little moment of truth here. Molly's coming toward us," he says. "I am going to tell you whether she's ready for you or not. Ill kick you under the table. Okay?" His wink is so confident.

  Molly is a little ramshackle in a shiny black slicker and oversize boots with a skirt. She has a knowing smile, and when she gets right up to the table, she opens her hands. In each of them is a plastic snout, identical to Liam's.

  "Check it out," she says. "You know what we were talking about yesterday, the dog represents the dictator, et cetera? Well, how about we wear the snouts too, not just Liam." She puts it on. "And it's like, we're all our own

  dictators. Whoa! Deep, right?" She laughs. Gid decides: She is excited to see me, just as Cullen kicks him, a little too hard. "She's going to love it. We can even be really bad, and she'll love it and give us A's, and well all go to Harvard, which is, let's face it, the only reason we all bother with this crap."

  "Oh, come on," Cullen says, stretching his arms up on purpose—clearly forgetting about his love handles. "This place isn't that bad."

  "For you," Molly says. "I mean, if I were a tall, handsome heir to a frozen diet cheesecake fortune and all I did was smoke pot and tell sophomores they were pretty, I'd like it here too."

  The look on Cullen's face is exactly the same as the look Liam got on his face the night Gideon yelled at him about finding Molly. It is the look of extreme confidence shattered. He is pale, his features seem to curl in on themselves a little. He stands up. Gid stands up. The three of them walk out of the cafeteria in silence.

  Passing through the alcove out of the cafeteria, Gid focuses on the notices pinned to the bulletin boards lining the walls: mini-fridges for sale, standardized test notices, offers of tutoring and summer programs and holiday rides to various locales on the eastern seaboard. Molly walks slightly ahead of them. She keeps turning around to look at Gid. Gid's torn between paying attention to her or to Cullen, who seems a little blindsided. "I thought your dad was a lawyer," Gid finally says.

  "He is," Cullen says. "He opened up the cheesecake business when I was three."

  So he hasn't actually been a lawyer for quite some time.

  "You can ask him all about it over Parents' Weekend," Molly says to Gid.

  Frozen diet cheesecake! He can see why Molly thought this would be an Achilles' heel. He had always imagined that Cullen's dad did something much more glamorous than that. He pictured a man in a dark suit, as handsome as Cullen, maybe with a little gray in his hair. Cullen's mother would be blonde and have tan legs from playing golf in short flowered skirts. Did Cullen's dad eat a lot of diet cheesecake? Was he fat? Was his mother fat? Gideon's mother had been fat when she was married to his father, but now she was thin. She and the science teacher were into power walking, which made them look like total assholes—part zombie, part windmill. But at least they weren't fat.

  "Okay, well," Molly says brightly, "I'll see you at seven-thirty." She puts the dog snout into his open hand, then closes his fingers around it. "I entrust you with this."

  "She's got a pretty nice ass," Cullen says as she walks away. There's something weird about the way he says it, though. It's a compliment, but I can tell that the frozen diet cheesecake thing got under his skin. There's a part of him, I would bet, that's trying to put her in her place. There's a little muscle under Cullen's neck that's pulsating in and out. Molly, Gid sees, got to him. She found a chink in his golden armor. A chink made of Splenda and fat-free cream cheese. He thinks about her ass. It's not just her ass. It's the way she walks. She walks like she's having a good time. Like no one's watching.

  first base

  Rushing along the stretch of Route 215 that leads to the theater, buoyant from having turned in a paper on Moby-Dick that he actually thinks might not be that bad, Gid is struck with a revelation at once so brilliant and so obvious that he leaps into the air. And this is it: After five rehearsals, it's time to do the script for real. Which means making out. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Gideon Rayburn, he says to himself, laughing appreciatively at his idea, and we are off-book.

  Hey, I'm more than ready for sexual tension to become sexual. My feelings about Gideon aside, it's just how things are supposed to progress. And after all, pretentious Spanish playwrights don't just write sensual stage directions for their fucking sa
lud (health).

  When he arrives at the theater, Molly's sitting on one of the little Plexiglas cubes in the lobby, waiting, mouthing words over the script. Gideon's plan is so good that it even includes an opening line—not an especially inspired one but a start nonetheless—"Pollard Theater is a really ugly building."

  But Molly holds off conversation with a raised finger. "Que nunca olvides este cancion, la cancion de la guerra, la cancion de los muertos" (That we never forget the song, the song of the war, the song of the dead), she murmurs. "God, what a load of crap." She closes the script and sets it down on her knee. Another skirt tonight, brown and soft against the whiteness of her skin. Her eyes soften to let Gid know she's ready to converse. "Pollard Theater," Molly says, "ugly indeed. Edie says it looks like an ice-cube tray fucked a roulette wheel."

  Gid frowns. "That sounds a little dirty for Edie."

  Molly fans herself with the script. "I think the 'fuck' part might be mine. But the sentiment, it's all her." She takes the script and taps him on the shoulder. (Molly's enjoying this whole actress thing. She might be wearing the skirt because she's into Gid, but mostly, I think she feels a little like a star and wants to dress the part.) "I suppose I should tell you that Liam is lying on the floor of the practice space, drunk."

  Molly stands up. Gid notices she has cute ankles. Is he forcing himself to notice she has cute ankles? No, he decides, walking behind her, watching them as she walks. They're not quite as exciting as Pilar's breasts, but ankles have their charms. As a girl, I would pick ankles over breasts any day. I mean it. They last longer.

  Liam rolls to one side and waves when they walk in. Even covered in dust from the floor and wearing a dog snout, he looks very handsome. Gid actually has a benevolent thought about his handsomeness. He sends out a silent wish for Liam Wu: Life is hard. May your totally unfair share of beauty make yours just a little easier. He's feeling generous, confident. He can do this.

  "Hey, uh, Molly," he says, "I think that we need to start, you know, doing the play more as it's written. I think we need to get, uh, used to the..."

  And here, he actually lifts one eyebrow, somewhat sexily.

  "The physical parts," he finishes. He doesn't know if he's saying the right things, but he knows one thing: He's moving forward. Finally.

  This moment isn't lost on Liam, who, alcohol-soaked as he is, begins to stir. His unfocused eyes sharpen ever so slightly with a sort of lascivious curiosity. He senses a plan, designs of sex and intrigue.

  As far as Gideon goes, he could give a fuck. Here's what he sees. Molly likes his suggestion.

  "Okay," Molly says, and Gid will be damned if he can't hear her trying to steady her voice, "let's get going, then."

  Liam takes a giant swig from his flask, slips on his plastic snout, and, after walking a few feet across the room, slumps at their feet in a canine heap. Molly and Gideon put on their plastic snouts. "El Perro que Compartimos," Liam slurs.

  The first scene doesn't require any physical contact. At least not with each other. It does require that they stand over Liam taking turns patting him and exchanging observations about the quality of his coat.

  "It is glossy."

  "It harbors fleas."

  "It is warm."

  "When wet, it steams and festers."

  "Hey," Gideon says when the scene ends, "I think I get what you said about the fascist stuff now."

  "God," Molly says, "I thought you got it the other day."

  Gid shakes his head. "You always think people know what you're talking about, and it makes it kind of hard to interrupt," he says. It's hard to talk with the plastic snout on. He takes it off and brushes plastic-smelling perspiration from his face. Shit. They're going to have to kiss with these things on. That's not going to be very sexy.

  'Thanks," Molly says. "I mean...oh." She takes off her snout too.

  They stand there, looking at their snouts. "Fuck," Liam moans. "I'm fucking bored. Come on, let's do the next scene."

  Molly looks at the floor with more shyness than Gid has ever seen her display, and then quickly, like she's jumping into water, throws her arms around Gideon's waist. Strange, but with a girl's arms around him like this, he can really feel how his body has hardened. He feels happy, fulfilled, accomplished.

  "Scene," says Molly.

  Liam starts to giggle.

  "Heel," Molly says.

  Liam giggles some more.

  If they do their little doggie-owner routine, Gid thinks, I will kill myself.

  They don't.

  It's a good thing that Gid doesn't really know what he's saying, because it's hard to concentrate on anything except the fact that he's got his arms wrapped around Molly McGarry. He always thought she was kind of small, but now he feels that she's surprisingly heavy, like a bullet. But not bad heavy, not like, "Hey, you should take up race-walking" heavy, just like, "She'd be sort of hard to pick up" heavy.

  Td eres el dueno del pe/ro/'he says. (You are the owner of the dog.)

  "Si tu me amas, el perro sea el tuyo tambien/' Molly says. (If you love me, the dog is yours too). She's actually not a bad actress. She's not seething with talent or anything, but at least you kind of believe what she's saying. Gid, by the way, is totally aware that he sucks, but he's smart enough not to add "lacks acting talent" to the list of personal shortcomings that are constantly piling up in his head.

  "Now the dog is our friend, we are together, and the dog gives us something to talk about," Molly says.

  And this is one of the places in the script where "Oscary Lucia se besan con pasion."

  Molly and Gideon se besan con pasion.

  This is a moment where being inside Gid's head is pretty weird. Because if I am Molly, of course, I know what to do. I know if he's not liking the kiss, and I can adjust. But what if I'm someone else, and Gid is kissing another girl, and liking it? I wouldn't like that. And he is liking it. Every aspect of it. The firm pressure of her hand on his back, the lighter pressure of her knee against the outside of his calf, the kiss itself—he doesn't know who started the tongue thing. Or if it's just part of acting. But it's definitely going on.

  Over the kissing sounds, Gid hears Liam say, "Wow."

  The pasion ends. Gid and Molly sort of pat themselves, arranging their clothes and hair.

  Liam gets up and stumbles out of the room. He pauses for a second at the door. "I think that we might get in trouble for that. I'm definitely not needed here." They look at each other as they hear Liam make his way down the hall and groan as he opens the heavy glass door and disappears into the night.

  "Let me be the first to tell you," Molly says, "we're going to get an A."

  At first he thinks she means that they're going to get an A for kissing. And he's about to grab her, he's really about to, when he sees that she's getting ready to go. "Uh, I should really walk you home," he says. "It's probably best."

  Molly pulls her hair free from under the collar of her sweater, which Gid notes is white and soft, and she shakes it out. "You don't need to walk me home," she says. "I mean, what, are you afraid the JV tennis team's going to pull a train on me?"

  Gid reddens and looks at his feet.

  "Oh, come on," Molly says. "Let's go."

  They take the path that goes through the woods, site of Gideon's high-stakes crime night. He checks her for signs that the kiss has left her ruffled—he doesn't know whether to jump up in the air or puke—but she's totally smooth. She reminds Gideon of...a sailboat. That's stupid. Yes, it is, Gideon, you're right. Sailboat is stupid. At any rate, she seems utterly fine with the silence between them, but Gid, desperate to fill it, and vaguely hoping her answer will illuminate how she feels about him, asks, "So, what was it about the play that made you think we're going to get an A? I mean, you said yourself it's a dumb play."

  "I know, because my parents are teachers. Anytime kids do something like this, without laughing, they're impressed. I mean, we're making out with plastic snouts on. How easy is that? Ms. San Video's goin
g to think that we see some sort of symbolism in the whole thing. She's going to brag to all her friends at dinner parties how insightful we are. It's genius." Here, she stops and puts a mittened hand to her head. "I salute Liam Wu, in absentia, for picking this play."

  "I don't know," Gid says. "I think that the kiss..." Molly puts her hands on his shoulders. He's pleased that she's touching him but knows it doesn't necessarily mean anything.

  "Seriously," she says, "my sister's in college, and she just gave a presentation in her art history class comparing vaginas to hurricanes. Total bullshit. She got an A. The teacher told her she was, and I quote, 'one of the most brilliant students I ever had.'"

  He was hoping that bringing up the kiss would lead to more talking about the kiss. Not this. Hurricanes and vaginas. These are two things he does not want to associate. Their walk back up Route 215, after this, is silent. And it's a girl silence, meaning she decides she wants it to be quiet. A boy silence is what happens all the time. Girl silences mean something. In this case, Gid hopes it means she's processing. Recovering.

  Maybe she is. Maybe Gid's kiss just wrecked her.

  Back at Molly's dorm, they settle themselves on a little cement step under the door to the basement. "Here we are again," she says. Molly wraps her arms around herself. Reflexively, Gid takes off his coat and tucks it around her shoulders. So now he's cold. He reminds himself sacrifice is part of the bet. "If you don't mind me asking," he says, going down another road altogether, "how did you end up coming to school here? i mean, if your parents are teachers?" Okay, Gid, this is a good question. Direct, curious. Girls like this. Have you noticed that Gid really does just as well on his own as he does following the "expert" advice of his roommates?

  "Thanks for the coat. That was nice and, once again, very Buffalo. I assume you were asking how I can go here because my parents don't make a lot of money, right?"

  Gid wags his head from side to side, wishing to get around this, but Molly waves him off.

  "When I was around four, my dad took me to a movie. We got popcorn, and lo and behold, we get to the bottom and a half-eaten bagel is lying there. Like with teeth marks. So we sued. And here I am with you fancy people!"