by Bert Murray
Perfect, I thought. She’s a Napoleon fan, too.
Chester sipped his beer and looked excited. He started nodding his head rapidly. “I’m Napoleon.”
I bit my tongue. I thought it was over. I thought Chester had blown it. But I was wrong.
“So you believe in reincarnation, too? I was a farmer, you know, in the 1880s,” Susan said. “I was shot in the back by a convicted felon. He wanted my land. Such a wasted life.”
I leaned back in my seat. This was incredible.
Chester, his ferret eyes shining, leaned closer to her. “What are you on? Ecstasy? Peyote? Acid?”
I turned for a second to look at two gorgeous blondes playing darts in the corner. They were already drunk and kept missing the dart board.
“I smoke pot on the weekends. That’s about it,” said Susan.
“Fantastic! You make my ramrod stand at attention,” Chester blurted.
I put down my beer and started to laugh but stopped myself. The two of them together were too much.
“Sometimes I like to watch porn,” Susan said to Chester.
“Do you like whips and chains?” asked Chester.
Susan twirled some of her long black hair around her fingers. “No. The only time I’m violent is when I’m playing Dungeons and Dragons. Do you play?”
Chester wrapped his hands around her black lace gloves. “I’d play with you. I want to kiss you.”
“We just met.”
“Then when? Please don’t give me blue balls.”
Susan smiled. “Postponement heightens gratification.”
Chester’s face turned serious. “Wanna smoke a joint with me and listen to Pink Floyd? I want to take you to the dark side of the moon!”
Susan stared into Chester’s beady eyes. “OK. Let’s go.”
We paid the tab and I went home alone. I couldn’t believe that things had turned out so well. I dialed Jasmine to tell her the good news. But she didn’t want to hear about my night. She was worried again. She was sure she’d gained 3 pounds. It was all in her head. I knew her body. She hadn’t gained a pound since the start of the semester.
27.
THE NEXT MORNING, first thing, I hurried downstairs to the men’s room looking for Chester. I wanted to know what had happened with Susan. I heard him singing in the shower. I didn’t recognize the song he was singing. He certainly didn’t have much of a voice.
“Hey, Chester. How did it go last night?” I asked.
The shower curtain prevented me from seeing anything but the top of his wiry red hair.
“Oh, hi! I hit a grand slam! I swung at the first pitch and knocked it out of the park. Now everything is just hunky-dory. I’m a real hoochie-coochie man.”
I shouted. “Way to go, stud!”
“We were going at it all night!”
“I told you everything would work out.” Cool! I had really made it happen for Chester. It really had been a great little idea of mine to set the two of them up.
“I used three packs of condoms!”
“Jesus, was Susan able to walk this morning?”
“I’m going to start bodybuilding. I want to have a larger chest. You can show me how to do the bench press,” said Chester.
“Get out of the shower and we can hit the gym.”
“Just a minute.”
I waited. Then I realized that I didn’t hear any water running. I wondered what he was doing in the shower.
“Hey, what’s going on in there? Are you OK?” I asked.
Chester opened the white curtain. I was shocked. He was dressed up as Napoleon. He wore white satin breeches and a hat with a plume and was waving a sword. He looked totally bizarre.
“What the hell?” I said.
“I’m Napoleon.”
“Come on, Chester. Knock it off. This Napoleon thing is going too far.”
“But I am Napoleon!” He stepped out of the shower and walked toward me. “I am the greatest military leader in all of history. I changed the map of Europe.”
“This is ridiculous. Are you stoned?”
“Stoned? Me? Not at all. I was exiled to Elba. But now I’ve returned to fight again. Nothing can stop me this time. I’ll be emperor of the whole world.”
He sounded crazy. “Come on. What’s going on with you? Are you all right?” He had seemed so normal last night. What happened? Why was he pulling this stupid Napoleon shit again?
“Those damn Russian winters!” Chester ran out of the men’s room waving his sword like a conductor’s baton.
28.
I KEPT HAVING trouble sleeping, night after night. I decided I needed to breathe fresh air and get some exercise. I went for a walk around campus and ran into Mrs. Vesquez. She invited me up to her cozy apartment on the second floor of the Counseling Services Building. It was the first time I’d been in a professor’s house.
I looked around and saw two large bookcases bursting with books behind the tan sofa I was sitting on. On the coffee table there was a pile of old black-and-white photographs of Mrs. Vesquez posing with family and friends. It looked like the photographs had been taken in Spain. There were also three volumes of poetry lying on the coffee table, one by Robert Frost, one by Emily Dickinson and one by Edgar Allan Poe.
Her large cat jumped onto my lap. Half the cat’s left ear was missing, and he had one blue eye and one green eye, like David Bowie. He rubbed his head against my knee, intermittingly purring. Mrs. Vesquez smiled gently at the cat.
“Oh, Quixote, I see you’ve met our new friend, Colin,” she said.
I rubbed Quixote behind his good ear, and the cat squinted his eyes, finally shutting them completely. I wasn’t a cat person. I liked dogs, especially golden retrievers and boxers. Cats seemed selfish. But I let the cat lie in my lap because that seemed to make Mrs. Vesquez happy.
“Have one,” she said.
She was holding a tin box of assorted Spanish candies. I took a green one and a purple one. I was thinking of putting one or two in my pocket to add to the stash I kept in my room for late-night snacking.
“What is going on with you?” asked Mrs. Vesquez, sitting down in an old wooden rocker across from me. It creaked every time she rocked back.
“Life sucks,” I said, unwrapping one of the candies.
“How could life be anything but wonderful? You’re young. What a thing it is to be young.”
Old people always said that. “I don’t think it’s so great.”
“How could you not?”
“Because I’m miserable. My girlfriend and I are fighting all the time. Why can’t we get along? I can’t stand her being angry all the time. I want to make it work so bad. But things are just getting worse.” The cat lay down across my lap.
“Ahhh,” said Mrs. Vesquez, nodding and pointing her index finger. “Love can bring you to great heights, but it can also cut you down. If you love too much you always get hurt. That’s why I have trouble sleeping. Now I take Valium and sleeping pills.”
“Why Valium? What happened to you? What’s your problem?”
“It’s not your burden.” Her whole face tightened. She looked at her fingernails. Nine were red, long and shiny. One had cracked.
I wanted to get the damn cat off my crotch, but I couldn’t just push it off. It might scratch my balls. Even though he seemed to be sleeping, I didn’t trust him. Lightly, I nudged him.
“Come here, Quixote,” said Mrs. Vesquez.
The cat didn’t move.
“He’s stubborn.” I didn’t want to say what I really thought. That I couldn’t stand him.
“Wait, I’ll get it a piece of fish. Quixote eats only fish.”
She walked out of the living room and I tried to nudge the cat off my lap again. He dug his front claws into my jeans.
“If you make my balls bleed, you’ll pay,” I whispered.
The cat stared at me. He bared his teeth, daring me to move him.
“Damn, you stupid cat. Get off, get off.” I glared at Quixote, and he glared
right back. I didn’t know why I was feeling so hostile.
Mrs. Vesquez appeared with the fish. “Here. Now eat. Eat, Quixote,” said Mrs. Vesquez, and she placed tinfoil that held grilled tuna smothered in a thick, white sauce on the living-room rug to tempt the cat away from me.
Quixote gave me a nasty look before jumping off me to get his food. Mrs. Vesquez closed him in the kitchen with the tuna. I was relieved. I saw a large pile of Beatles records next to the stereo. I was surprised I hadn’t noticed them before. Mrs. Vesquez sat back down in the rocking chair. I got up from the couch and began to flip through the albums.
“You listen to the Beatles, too?” asked Mrs. Vesquez.
“Yes. I’m a huge fan. Especially of John Lennon.”
We were into the same music. I couldn’t believe it. For about a 50-year-old woman, she was very cool. I was happy I’d come up to her apartment.
“I love John Lennon, too. He’s my favorite Beatle. I stayed up all night crying when he was shot. Colin, why don’t you put on The White Album?”
I turned on her stereo and put the record on the turntable. The phone rang.
“Hello. Yes, hello, Stacy. Of course I can meet with you to discuss your paper. You still need more time? Okay, well come to my office after lunch tomorrow and we can discuss giving you an extension. I’ll see you then.” Mrs. Vesquez hung up the phone.
“A student?” I asked.
Mrs. Vesquez raised her eyebrows. “Yes. Stacy. She has amazing brown curls. But I think she spends more time on her hair than on writing her term paper.”
“So you really like John Lennon? I can’t picture someone like you, a writer, caring about a rock star.”
“Why not? I’m not uninterested in popular culture. I lived through the summer of love. You forget the ’60s were my time. Give Peace a Chance expressed everything I felt about Vietnam. John and Yoko’s Bed-Ins helped turn public opinion against the war.”
“I can’t believe that idiot Nixon tried to kick John out of the country.”
Mrs. Vesquez opened her black patent-leather pocketbook and took out a silver lighter and a pack of Virginia Slims. “Enough of the world. It will get along without us. Now how about you? I want to hear. What is going on? What do you fight about with your girlfriend ?”
“Well, a few weeks ago Jasmine got angry just because I forgot to pick up movie tickets.” Just thinking about it got me tense again.
“Tell me more.”
I hesitated. The sounds of The White Album were filling the silences in our conversation. The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill began.
“Jasmine threw a bottle of beer at me and slapped me. She has a really bad temper when she gets angry.” Mrs. Vesquez was the first person I had told this to.
“You’re telling me Jasmine slapped you and threw a bottle at you over forgetting to pick up movie tickets. It’s a bad sign. This girl is trouble! Probably this is only the beginning. It’s going to get worse with her.”
“Worse? You think so? Really?”
“I know this type of girl. I’m sorry, Colin. She sounds self-absorbed. It can’t end well. My advice is to get as far away from her as you can. You are better off alone. She is the wrong girl. You should consider dating other girls immediately.”
I shook my head. Mrs. Vesquez had never even met Jasmine. Did she really think she knew her better than I did? “No. No way. You don’t understand. I’m going to make it work. I really am.”
Mrs. Vesquez laughed and shook her head. “You are going to waste a lot of time and hurt yourself pretty badly in the process. You can trust me on this. Unfortunately, I know exactly what I’m talking about.”
For a second I was annoyed that she’d laughed at me. I didn’t want to hear anything negative about Jasmine. “I’m completely in love with her. I couldn’t date anyone else. I just have to learn how to deal with her mood swings. That’s what I’m working on. I’ll figure it out.”
“You know what they say. Those worn-out words are true! Love is blind. Colin, don’t say I didn’t warn you later on.” Mrs. Vesquez took a puff of her cigarette.
“I love her. There’s no use trying to convince me that she’s wrong for me.” I didn’t want to talk about Jasmine anymore. Not with Mrs. Vesquez. Not with anybody. I had to change the subject. I flipped through the book of Edgar Allan Poe poems on the coffee table. I noticed that Mrs. Vesquez had scribbled some notes in Spanish next to one of the poems: Eldorado.
“What does Eldorado mean?” I asked.
Mrs. Vesquez smiled. “Oh, I love that poem. Poe is underrated as a poet. He is mostly known for his short stories. Anyway, El Dorado is the treasure that we spend our whole lives searching for. Some believe it is gold, others say it is true love and some people say it is the Holy Grail. When I finally find it, then I’ll be able to write the important novel I’ve always dreamed of writing. The big one, that’s my El Dorado.”
“Have you written anything lately?”
“No. I have writer’s block. It’s horrible! It’s torture! My imagination dried up. Like a sunbaked starfish lying on the sand. I haven’t written a page in three years.”
It was too bad. She was like John Lennon had been during his dark moments. Really talented. And really messed up. No one said anything for a few seconds, and we listened to the Beatles sing. Mrs. Vesquez sang with them.
“Do you teach modern Spanish literature or the old stuff?”
“I’m teaching my own novels and how they relate to the turbulence and change of the 1960s. It was a creative moment,” said Mrs. Vesquez, taking another drag. “I was happy. Anything seemed possible. I even quit smoking for a few years back then.”
“Why don’t you quit now? You’ll get old-looking faster if you smoke,” I said.
“People get wrinkled whether or not they smoke,” said Mrs. Vesquez.
29.
A WEEK LATER Jasmine and I went to the Halloween costume ball at the student center. She dressed up like Little Red Riding Hood and wore a long red cape with an oversize hood and a short miniskirt. I was the Big Bad Wolf, dressed in black with a rubber wolf-head mask.
A disco ball hung from the ceiling, covering the walls with shimmering points of light that faded in and out. Green and white crepe paper crisscrossed the ceiling. A fog machine was set up in the corner, and every few minutes there was a loud hiss as the vapor shot out. Jasmine pulled me onto the dance floor. Her hips moved back and forth and made me hard.
It had been nine days since we last had sex and she hadn’t given me a blowjob for three weeks. When I had asked her why she was holding out, she said it was because we were fighting a lot and she didn’t want to give a blowjob when she was angry. The lack of any kind of sex was really driving me crazy. I was ready to burst.
When the song was over, we went to get a drink. On the bar were two large plastic bowls. One was filled with small pretzel twists and the other had orange-and-yellow candy corn. I grabbed a handful of candy and poured it into my mouth as we waited for the bartender to notice us.
“How can you eat that?” asked Jasmine.
“It tastes good,” I said, scooping up some more.
“Candy does not pass through these lips,” said Jasmine, pointing at her mouth with her finger. “That crap isn’t natural. It’s pure junk.”
“Who cares?” I could eat three bags of candy corn, one after another. Sometimes I did.
Jasmine got that really serious look on her face. “Remember, you are what you eat. It’s all about karma.”
“Hey, I’ve given up meat for you. Isn’t that enough?”
“Don’t give up meat for me. Give it up because it’s the right thing to do. Because it will make you a better person.”
The girl behind the bar smiled. She wore a headband with cat ears on it and had drawn three whiskers on each of her cheeks. We both showed her fake IDs and Jasmine ordered two Lemon Drops for us.
“What’s a Lemon Drop?” I asked. Jasmine knew a lot of unexpected things.
&n
bsp; “Vodka shots. But more fun. You’ll see.”
The girl placed two shot glasses and two lemon wedges in front of us. It was an open bar, but Jasmine pulled out two singles and stuffed them in the tip jar. Before I knew it, she picked up one of the glasses, tilted her head back and swallowed the shot. She quickly shoved a lemon wedge into her mouth and sucked on it as she slammed the glass down with the other hand. She was quick and cool.
I lifted my mask so it rested on top of my head and grabbed my shot glass, ready to copy what Jasmine had done. She grabbed the lemon wedge from the bar and held it between her teeth. I did my shot and sucked the piece of lemon out of her mouth. Jasmine could even make drinking sexy.
We continued to do shots between dances, and by midnight we were both intoxicated. Jasmine wanted to smoke a cigarette, so we walked over to a bench by the door. She wouldn’t eat candy, but she didn’t mind smoking. It seemed a little hypocritical to me.
I left Jasmine to use the bathroom. I pushed through the throng of people and headed toward the clear, circular staircase that led to the first floor of the Student Center, where the bathrooms were located. On the way, I passed Frankenstein, a nun, Dracula and a bloody beauty-pageant contestant.
When I came back from the bathroom, I returned to the bench. But Jasmine wasn’t there. To my utter surprise, Chester was. He was dressed up as Napoleon again. I saw him pop a pill that looked like aspirin into his mouth and take a swig from a silver flask, which he then hid in his inside jacket pocket.
“Chester! What are you doing here? This is the last place I expected to see you,” I shouted.
“This is the only party all year where I can dress as Napoleon and feel like I’m normal.”
“Yeah, you fit right in here.”
Chester’s face was full of pimples. But at least his uniform was recently pressed and not as rumpled as it had been when I’d seen him walk out of the shower stall.
“Where were you all week? I haven’t seen you around,” I said.
“I’ve been working on my play. I finished the first act.”
