Running the Bases - Definitely Not a Book About Baseball

by Paul Kropp

  20

  Ah, Poetry

  SOMEBODY SAID THAT falling in love is when Top 40 songs stop sounding silly and begin to sound like deep wisdom. The entire next day, I kept singing Top 40 songs, thinking about just how much extra meaning there was in each verse. I mean, Shania Twain was sounding real profound.

  Was I in love?

  “It’s probably just lust,” Jeremy responded. “You’re such a horny guy and now you’ve finally got a girl who’s willing to touch that disgusting body of yours. It’s a miracle, but it’s only lust.”

  Maybe I shouldn’t have told him. Jeremy has such a piggish brain. He’s watched too many porn films to have any idea what kind of emotions I was feeling.

  I sighed. “You don’t understand.”

  “Alan, when you’ve had as many girls as I’ve had, you won’t go ga-ga after getting to second base. Love is love. Sex is sex. Don’t confuse them.” It was hard to believe all this wisdom coming from Jeremy, whose knowledge of philosophy was not nearly as good as his knowledge of history.

  “I guess you’re right,” I said, “but I can’t stop thinking about her. She smart, she’s gorgeous, she’s loving, she’s…everything.”

  “Please, Al, I’m going to barf if you keep this up.”

  I did not keep it up. I realized that Jeremy was either crude or unsympathetic. What I really needed was another list from Maggie, but I thought that might lead to some embarrassing questions. Besides, Maggie’s bills were already digging heavily into my bank account. I counted the words in Instruction Set 3, added on the coffee money, and figured her May billing was getting close to a hundred bucks already. I didn’t know if I could afford any more advice.

  Besides, I was doing quite well on my own. I was talking to Rochelle on the phone every night. She’d phone me or I’d phone her cell, and that was on top of all the instant messaging. She had fallen for me, or I had fallen for her, or we were both falling in the direction of real commitment. I mean, this was serious.

  You’d think that during these earnest conversations I would have managed to reveal the truth about myself, little by little, but that was not the case. What actually happened is that I added more and more details to Al Macklin’s college life. I made up stories about my Italian class, invented details about my supposed math-for-poets class, pretended I’d seen Rochelle on campus while staring out the window of my English lit. class.

  I had constructed in my mind, and in hers, a brand-new me. The Al Macklin I made up was a serious student, interested in Romantic poetry, struggling through his other required first-year courses, desperate to move out of his parents’ home and into a shared house like Rochelle’s. I have to admit that the Al Macklin I made up was a lot more interesting than the Al Macklin I happened to be. Someday, I said to myself, I’ll have to get my real life to match my imagination.

  The next Thursday, Rochelle suggested that we go out again, this time to a coffee house at the student centre. Some local band was playing ‘20s New Orleans jazz, and that sounded pretty good to me. Besides, it would give me a chance to use my fake ID and maybe get both of us a little drunk. If I’d managed to get to second base pretty much sober, imagine how far I could get with a little booze to break down inhibitions. Booze, KFUG and patience—how could I lose?

  “Hey you,” she said when I met her on campus.

  “Hey to you too,” I replied. It was a routine we’d developed on the phone.

  And then we kissed. She did this little fluttery thing with her tongue that just drove me wild.

  “Can I have another one of those?” I asked.

  “Later,” she said, squeezing my hand.

  Yes! Later! I said to myself. And then another voice came in. Don’t rush things. Love and sex follow their own timetable. I really do pay attention to those memos from Maggie.

  We got into the pub without having to show a student card, and my fake ID was enough, along with $12, to get us a pitcher of beer. Rochelle admitted that she didn’t drink very much; after recent events, neither did I. Besides, I wanted to be ready for anything that night.

  The pub wasn’t very crowded, maybe because exams were on, so I talked to Rochelle about how hard I was studying. The Italian final, I told her, was going to be a killer, but I thought the English lit. would be a piece of cake. “I’m just hoping there’s a question on Lord Byron,” I said, using my new-found Internet knowledge. “I know Don Juan like the back of my hand.”

  Rochelle looked at me with these wonderfully approving eyes.

  After a while the band came up on stage. They were mostly a bunch of old guys with their grey hair tied back in little ponytails, except for the trumpeter, who seemed about thirty. I thought I recognized one of the guys in the band, but I couldn’t quite place him. The trumpeter, however, really was from New Orleans and had the drawl to prove it.

  “He sounds like Louis Armstrong,” Rochelle said.

  “Yeah, definitely,” I agreed. It occurred to me that I knew absolutely nothing about jazz. But Rochelle was running her bare foot up and down my leg, so my ignorance didn’t seem that much of a problem.

  So we listened and drank and looked into each other’s eyes and all this was going very well until a bunch of kids came into the pub right after the first set. They were noisy and kind of stupid, so I turned to see what all the noise was about.

  And there they were—about half the kids in my math class. Maggie, Scrooge, Nikki, Allison, Hannah the Honker and a half-dozen others.

  There should be a word for the sudden rush of fear when something like that happens, a word like kafoozle, a word to capture that rush of panic and embarrassment and the need for instant reaction.

  “Alan, you’re sweating all of a sudden,” Rochelle said.

  “It’s nothing,” I lied. “Hot flashes, that’s all. Just a little kafoozle.”

  She giggled, not that the word was all that funny. It’s just that Rochelle giggles at all my lines, and in the most adorable way.

  Do I ignore those guys? I asked myself. Do I turn away and hide and pray that none of them sees me? Do I walk over and say hello and try to keep them away from Rochelle?

  While I was paralyzed, unable to decide what to do, Maggie and Scrooge made the choice for me. The two of them walked over to our table with grins on their faces.

  “Alan, my man, glad to see you…but gladder to see your friend,” Scrooge began. He had this enormous girlkilling grin on his face, as if he were going to steal Rochelle away by the force of his smile. “Hello, hello,” he said to Rochelle, ignoring me for the time being. “My name’s Leroy but everybody calls me Scrooge.”

  “Scrooge?” Rochelle asked.

  “Yeah, it’s a long story. I’d love to tell you about it sometime.”

  Maggie pulled him back. “Down, Scrooge. Down,” she said, as if Scrooge were a slobbering dog.

  “Aww,” Scrooge whined.

  “Just ignore him,” Maggie told Rochelle. “He sees a pretty girl and he goes into this automatic obnoxious mode. Nice to see you again, Rachel,” Maggie said, mangling her name just a little. Then Maggie turned to me. “I guess you came to see Mr. Greer with the group.”

  “Mr. Greer?” I said. No, that was stupid. Try to keep the conversation general, I told myself, and get them to go away. Somehow I’ve got to get them to go away.

  “Yeah, our math teacher is playing the bass, can you believe it?” Scrooge told Rochelle. “We thought he only knew about irrational numbers. Guess he also knows some Dixieland numbers.”

  That was a groaner, and it got exactly that response.

  “Is Mr. Greer a prof?” Rochelle asked.

  “No, no,” I said. “He’s a high-school teacher. Trigonometry, that kind of thing.”

  “We’re all in his class,” Scrooge volunteered.

  I shuddered. I sweated. I stuttered. “We…we…we were all in his class.”

  “Yeah, like yesterday,” Scrooge went on, ignoring me.

  Maggie just stared at me. Her eyes wer
e always pretty big, and seemed even bigger after she ditched her glasses and got the contacts, but now her eyes were positively enormous. Enormous and staring at me.

  “It, uh, feels like yesterday,” I went on. “Doesn’t it, Scrooge?” I said, glaring at him. I was giving him simultaneous thought transmission, beaming right into his brain: Go along with this, you idiot, and I’ll owe you big time, like forever.

  “Oh, yeah, yeah,” Scrooge said, somehow getting it. “It was like, really, ages ago, but a guy like that is hard to forget, you know.”

  I breathed a quick sigh of relief, my eyes glazing over until Maggie came into focus.

  “Just how long ago was it, Al?” Maggie asked. She had this strange smile on her face, as if she knew she were sticking a dagger into my gut.

  “Oh, a couple years. You remember our trig class, don’t you?” I was sweating like the proverbial pig; even my hand was shaking as I reached for my beer. Please, Maggie, I prayed, please just let me keep my little fraud going. Please let me keep just a little shred of dignity.

  “Oh yes, I do,” Maggie replied. “How could I forget?” She smiled a conspiratorial smile.

  I let out my breath. She wasn’t lying, but she wasn’t exposing me either.

  That’s when Rochelle raised another delicate issue. “Alan tells me that you two used to go out.”

  “Well, I guess, in a way,” Maggie said. “I guess you could say I taught him everything he knows about girls.”

  “Then I owe you,” Rochelle said. “He’s turned out to be quite a guy.” She reached over and took my hand in this wonderful, loving way.

  Maggie gave her a strange smile. “C’mon,” she said to Scrooge, “I think these two really want to be alone. Besides, I’m feeling a pressing need to…” The rest of the sentence was mostly lost because the band started playing, but I have a hunch that it really concluded with the words “throw up.”

  I picked up a napkin and wiped my forehead, then cuddled beside Rochelle so the two of us could watch the stage. Mr. Greer was up there, plucking away at a big double bass, not looking at all like the guy who held the chalk in our math class.

  “You know, Al,” Rochelle whispered in my ear. “That girl Maggie still isn’t over you.”

  “Oh?” I said.

  “Yeah, girls can tell. I think seeing you here with me made her kind of jealous. She was definitely covering something up.”

  I was smart enough to say nothing. The jealous part was pretty silly, but the covering-up part was too close to the truth. Didn’t Mark Twain say something about that? Better to keep your mouth shut and appear ignorant than to open it and remove all doubt. Besides, Rochelle was chewing gently on my ear so I was having some trouble concentrating.

  Oh, it should have been a fine, fine night. It should have been the kind of night about which songs are written and poets dream. It should have been “Dover Beach” meets “You’re Still the One.”

  Rochelle and I sat, hand in hand, arm around shoulder, touching, kissing, sighing, dreaming. Or at least she was sighing and dreaming. I was desperately trying to figure out my next move. What if Scrooge came over and spilled the beans? What if Maggie really was jealous and decided to tell Rochelle everything? What could I do? How could I possibly recover?

  But while the band played, a miracle occurred. My high-school classmates slowly disappeared in the darkness. After the second set, Maggie was gone and Scrooge had gone off to put the moves on some blonde girl at another table. After the third set, not even Hannah the Honker remained. They were all gone by the time Rochelle and I made our way outside, and nowhere in sight as we made our way back to Rochelle’s place.

  Then the miracles continued. It was a warm, warm night and Rochelle’s room doesn’t have any air conditioning, so it kind of made sense to take off our shirts as we made out on her bed. And then it kind of made sense for her to take off a little more, since I was so busy running my hands up and down her back. And then maybe it made sense for us to throw the rest of our clothes into the pile we had already started on the floor.

  Now if I were a poet, I could write something wonderful about a guy’s very first contact with a woman, skin to skin, body to body. I could write something about the silken skin of the female, the roughness of a man’s flesh, the way two bodies can intertwine in ways that are physical and more than physical, sexual and more than sexual. But I am not a poet, so I won’t go on. But I will tell you about the most wonderful nine words I’ve ever heard, a kind of prose poem.

  The words were from Rochelle. They were whispered.

  “Let me show you this little thing I learned.”

  Ah, poetry!

  21

  The Truth Will Out

  “YOU GOT TO THIRD BASE!” Jeremy cried.

  We were sitting in the cafeteria, right after the holiday weekend, so his announcement brought more than a few looks from the other kids. Naturally, I turned red.

  “Would you just be quiet,” I snapped at him.

  “But, Alan, my man, you’ve had a triumph! I mean, the way you’re going, you’ll have her in the sack by the end of the week.”

  “Shhh,” I said. “Listen, Rochelle and I have a…a relationship. This isn’t just about sex. Besides, we haven’t had sex yet. We just…”

  “I know, I know, you’re getting deeply serious and she’s a wonderful girl and you respect her and all that. But, Alan, what is the point? The point is you getting laid. I mean, you’re almost there.”

  Somehow I found Jeremy to be just too crude in his description. Rochelle and I had spent the rest of the night making out on her bed. But what I loved most was lying across from her, looking into her eyes, tracing her eyebrows with my fingers, kissing her again…and again. Sure, it was physical, but it was so much more.

  “Jeez, you’d think you were in love,” Jeremy said in disgust.

  Was I in love? Was this it—the big one? When all you really want to do is be with someone, to look at someone, to dream about someone…is that love?

  “Well, I dunno. I guess, maybe, kind of—” I could have gone on with a list of idiotic comments, but that’s when Maggie appeared. I could see her bearing down on us from across the cafeteria, fire in her eyes. The look on her face brought me back to harsh reality.

  “You—sleazebag!” she said, slamming into a chair beside Jeremy. The pause was actually filled with a couple of good curse words. I hadn’t realized, before this, that Maggie could swear like a sailor.

  “Well, I, uh—” My dialogue isn’t even worth writing down.

  “You are slime. You are scum. You are worse than scum. You are the deep unclean that defeats even Lysol. You are the scummiest of the scum!”

  “Well, I, uh—”

  “That girl likes you!” Maggie exclaimed. “That poor deluded girl actually thinks you are what you pretend! So what year in college did you tell her, Al? Are you a first year, second year, a Rhodes Scholar? How wild a story is it?” The words were literally dripping with disgust.

  “I, uh, well…”

  “You…you lying, dissembling con man. You somehow managed to convince Rochelle that you’re a college student! You incredible fraud, you two-faced piece of filth!”

  Every single person in the cafeteria was staring at us. Maggie stopped and became aware of the eyes that were turned in our direction. I sat there, open mouthed. And Jeremy began to applaud. Soon the applause spread through the cafeteria. Even the people who hadn’t heard Maggie’s speech knew that she’d said something heroic.

  Maggie shook her head as the applause died down. Then, in a quieter voice, she added, “And I went along with it. I gave you advice!”

  “Thank you,” I said, my voice very quiet.

  “I’m almost as much of a scum as you are. I betrayed another woman,” she moaned.

  “No, you stood by your friend in a moment of need,” I suggested.

  “We’re both scum, but you are worse,” Maggie said. Her eyes really did shoot fire at moments like this. I susp
ect it’s her Scottish background, all the bagpipes and haggis in her blood. They are moralistic people, the Scots. I read that somewhere, and I could see it in Maggie.

  “I’m going to tell her the truth,” I said, looking at Maggie with as much sincerity as I could muster.

  “Before or after you get her in the sack?” Maggie asked.

  “Before,” I mumbled. “For sure, before.”

  “Al’s already at third base,” Jeremy offered, helpfully.

  “Third base?” Maggie asked.

  “That’s like, you know…” Jeremy kind of choked on the explanation.

  ‘You’re at third base?” Maggie repeated, her voice rising. “You lie to this girl and pretend that you’re somebody you’re not and you…?” Her voice was still rising, and people began looking at us again. “And you tell your stupid friend about it and you’re proud about getting to third base and now you’re thinking about a home run and all the while you’re lying to this girl, you’re—”

  Maggie stopped. She looked around at the cafeteria, which was in a hushed silence, and then back at us.

  “You’re pathetic.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Pathetic,” she repeated.

  This time there was only a smattering of applause. Still, we had obviously been lunchtime entertainment for half the school.

  “Look on the bright side,” Jeremy said. “At least Maggie hasn’t called you a pervert.”

  “No,” Maggie spat out. “I’ll save that adjective for you.”

  Jeremy looked down at his hands. I’d never seen him turn red in the face before.

  Maggie shook her head. She was in charge right now, and she knew it. “I’m tired of chewing you out in front of an audience, and I want some time to think.” Then she went on in a quieter voice. “So listen up, I want to see both of you at Starbucks after school. We’ve got to talk.”

  I read somewhere that the phrase “we’ve got to talk” is the single most ominous thing a girl can say to a guy, or vice versa. Certainly the way Maggie said it implied a threat, maybe that she’d call Rochelle and tell her the truth or, maybe worse, that she’d tell everybody what I’d done. Or not done.