Two Parties, One Tux, and a Very Short Film about The Grapes of Wrath

by Steven Goldman

  “I’ll come with you.” M.C. reaches up and takes my hand. Her fingers slide in between mine easily, comfortably, as if they did this all the time.

  “I’ll have Sorrelson call us a cab,” I tell her, and we both smile. Not quite a laugh, but a real, unforced smile. The first one I remember all day.

  CHAPTER 30

  Monosyllabic Utterances

  Guys

  Maybe David and I are guys after all. We self-parked. It wasn’t humiliating enough for us to arrive in a Honda; we had to skip the valet too. Climbing out of the Civic in prom gowns would have been less than glamorous, but at least we could have walked into the elegant lobby, down the plush maroon carpet, and made a proper entrance. Instead, David pulled into the parking deck and our dates had to walk, in high heels, up two flights of dingy, poorly lit stairs that smelled like someone had been sick in them recently, before finally arriving through a side door next to the bathrooms.

  “He had to have taken the car.” M.C. looks cold in the air-conditioned lobby, so I slip off my jacket and place it around her shoulders. Maybe I should have asked first. She seems surprised by my chivalry, but not upset, and she slides her arms into the sleeves. The jacket may fit her better than me. She definitely looks cuter in it.

  “Maybe he’s sitting in the car waiting for us.”

  We agree that I at least have to check. I leave M.C. standing in the lobby, in case he comes back. The stairs seem even darker now and the smell is more complex—still vomit, but now with undertones of pot.

  The car isn’t there.

  I stand in the space where it should have been. I recheck the signs to make sure I’m on the right level. I’m in the right place. The car is just gone. I didn’t expect it to be here, but somehow I’m more disturbed by the reality of the empty parking space than I was by the thought of it. David took the car and left me here. He must have been really pissed off. I know what David eats for lunch, I know what he means when he shrugs, I know his batting average, and which episode of Pib and Pog is his favorite, but I have no idea what he’s thinking right now. I’m not sure I know anything about my best friend.

  Sex

  I hear the beep of a car alarm being deactivated, followed by the click of a door being unlocked. Door slams, engine revs. Normal on the surface feels portentous here in the depths of the parking deck.

  With a squeal of tires, a familiar Porsche pulls up next to me.

  “Lost something?” Best friend, girlfriend, car. I nod. Nicole’s hair has lost some of the composure it had earlier in the evening, as if someone has been pawing it. There’s some story here—some sequence of events that led her to get her own car from the garage and leave by herself—but not one that I can guess from looking at her face. She seems only half-interested in whether I answer her question. She knows at least part of why I’m standing here by myself.

  “Carson’s. After-party. Ditch this lame-ass event. Hop in.” Nicole’s not one for full sentences.

  For a moment I imagine myself a different Mitchell, one who would “hop in” to Nicole’s Porsche on my way to an after-party that the real Mitchell never would be invited to, watching her long tan legs work the gears. She looks like money, even without the Porsche as backdrop. Her skin is smooth and unblemished, her clothes are expensive and fit her perfectly, but worn with the casualness of not having to worry about such things. My fantasy has worked itself all the way up to the after question about whether this was just mercy sex when she interrupts.

  “Mitch?”

  I’d like to be a different Mitchell, but I’m not Mitch. I say, “Thanks, but …” and can’t seem to finish the sentence. She doesn’t seem fazed.

  “Catch you later,” she says, but she doesn’t mean it. I don’t expect her to ever speak to me again. She was just offering a ride to a schlep her friend dumped.

  “Gotta go. Party goin’ on.” She pulls away. I head back up the stairs.

  No

  When I reenter the lobby, M.C. isn’t alone, but David isn’t back. The blond male standing beside her is Louis. I almost don’t recognize him because he is standing still, not gesturing, not talking.

  “You’re still here,” he states quietly, like he didn’t think I should be.

  “I’m leaving. We were just trying to find David.”

  “I was just asking M.C. if she would like to stay.”

  “I think your date might mind,” M.C. says in a very flat tone.

  “She would,” he answers, looking M.C. straight in the face.

  “I’m going with Mitchell.” M.C.’s voice is firm, leaving no room for even Louis to argue. “We’re going to see if we can find David.”

  “Okay,” Louis says with a forced casualness. “I’ll see you Monday.”

  Nobody moves.

  Finally, M.C. takes my hand again. “Bye,” she says, and walks us out of the lobby. Neither of us looks back.

  Friend

  M.C. shrugs. It’s a David sort of shrug. I don’t ask her about what was happening with Louis back there.

  “Did you try calling him?” she asks.

  “He doesn’t carry a cell.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “We could call my parents. Or yours,” M.C. suggests.

  “I need to find David.”

  “We could walk. David doesn’t live that far from here.” M.C. is being unusually reasonable.

  “Why didn’t he walk, then?”

  “I think he may have been upset. You look pretty upset too. Would you please stop pacing? If that were forward motion, we could be there already.”

  I think she means this as a joke. I look up and she is smiling, but I’m not going to relax that easily.

  “Come on, the walk will do you good. Dry you off and everything.”

  I shove my hands in my pockets and walk beside M.C. We must look odd walking down the street, tux and prom gown. If I wasn’t feeling like such a shit, I might be able to see some humor in all of this. I try to sort out the noises in my head. What did I say to David? Had I really stomped on his heart? Did I really use the phrase “stomped on my heart”? Am I really a heart stomper? How did I pee on my own pants? I look at M.C., who still seems lost in her own thoughts. She must realize I’m looking at her, because she changes into her smile.

  “How are you holding up?” she asks.

  “Oh, I’m fine. I’m dropping out of school as of Monday, and I’m never leaving my room again, but I have a pretty nice room and I’m sure my parents won’t mind me staying there forever.”

  “It’s not that bad.”

  “Oh, come on. It’s pretty bad.”

  M.C. nods. “Yeah, it’s bad. But at least it wasn’t you—I mean, people have to blame Danielle for being cruel enough to dump you at the prom.”

  “I guess this hasn’t exactly been the prom of your dreams either?”

  M.C. smiles again. “I’m not sure what I expected, but this is a little different than I imagined. I feel a little badly about Louis. He looked really sad when I left with you.”

  “He told me that you were the one he wanted to take to the prom.”

  “I know. That’s because of the ski trip thing.”

  “The guy from the ski trip. That was Louis?”

  “You didn’t know? He didn’t tell you?”

  “No.”

  “You’re going to think I’m horrible.”

  “Mostly I’m just freaked out that you were willing to kiss Louis.”

  “Oh, come on. Like you haven’t been sharing saliva with Danielle for two weeks.”

  “One of those choices seems more hygienic.”

  “Whatever. It was all so stupid. We were on this ski trip. And I guess I was flirting with this guy—the guy we saw when we went to get ice cream. Do you remember? But he was only interested in Carrie, and when he saw that was no go, he stopped even pretending to talk to me. I was feeling about this high, because no one is ever interested in me. I’m always the tag-along. Carrie’s frie
nd. And I end up sitting there and talking to Louis, who was sort of listening, and then he leans over and kisses me, and I liked the attention but not particularly Louis, and maybe that makes me the worst human being to say it that way. But that’s all that happened, like three kisses, and then I tried to be nice about it and say it was a mistake and he made a joke about it and I thought that was it, because he really didn’t talk to me at school at all. It was just a kiss. And when David asked me to go to the prom and he was willing to take me as a friend, I was like, ‘Great, that would be fun.’ But then he took off, so I don’t know what I did.”

  “You didn’t do anything. David and I had an argument in the bathroom and he took off because he was angry.”

  If that makes M.C. feel better, it is hard to tell. She looks up at me, then back down again at the road.

  “The next time I kiss someone, it’s going to be someone I really like. The way things are going, I’ll probably be an octogenarian, but I’d like to feel like it meant something. I know it’s just kissing, but still.”

  M.C. is right. David’s house isn’t very far away. It would never have occurred to me to walk. I have a suburban mentality: going anywhere farther than my driveway requires getting into a car. I have no sense of actual walking distances. My rented shoes hurt a little, but I think they would have by now anyway.

  There are no lights on in David’s house.

  “He must have gone to bed.” Another possibility that hadn’t occurred to me. I assumed somehow that he would be up waiting for me. I’m not sure how I expected him to know I would walk over immediately, but going to bed seems almost rude.

  “We should wake him up. You guys need to talk.”

  “I’m not knocking on his door.”

  “Mitchell, what did you expect to happen once we got here?”

  “I don’t know. I expected him to be up, watching TV or something.”

  “Why would he be watching TV?”

  It’s what I would have done. I would have gone home, turned on the TV to whatever rerun I could find, and spent the rest of the night pretending that none of this had happened. It’s really what I want to do now. I start to suggest this to M.C. but she’s already walking around to the side of the house.

  “Which is his bedroom?”

  “The one on the corner. Why?”

  “We’ll just tap on his window. Thank God for ranch houses. If he was on a second floor, we would have to throw gravel or something.”

  M.C. has taken over. This is now her project. Why am I such a putz? Of course we could knock on David’s window. No more putziness. I am going to be active. I go up to the window. I have to negotiate a rather large and prickly shrub, which is probably staining my tux, but I am now undaunted. I reach over the green impediment to knock on the pane, but there isn’t anything there. I flail around a little, but no glass.

  “The window’s open,” I tell M.C.

  She starts to giggle. I’m in a white tux standing in a shrub failing to knock on a window. Maybe she has cause.

  I lean into the window. “David,” I whisper. “David—it’s Mitchell. David?”

  I look back at M.C. for guidance.

  “Is he a sound sleeper?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never seen him sleep.”

  “Why don’t you just climb in?”

  Okay. Breaking and entering. I step back to make sure that this is, in fact, the right house, but of course it is. I heave myself over the window ledge and into the room. Easier than it looks. Good thing I’m not a burglar.

  “David,” I whisper again. I try to remember the layout of his room and walk with my hands outstretched but still crash into his desk chair. He can’t be in this room. I follow the wall to the door and run my hands around the frame until I find the light. I flick it on. The room is empty.

  The one single-syllable word none of us have used yet

  M.C.’s head appears in the window.

  “He isn’t here,” I whisper.

  “I’m coming in,” she tells me, as if maybe he is hiding somewhere and she’ll be able to find him. She takes off my tux jacket and throws it inside, then places her hands on the sill and swings one leg over. She manages the window pretty well considering she’s dressed in taffeta and heels.

  “You’re right, he’s not here,” she declares.

  “Now what?”

  “We wait. He has to come back.”

  “Where the hell could he be?”

  “At a friend’s house?”

  “I don’t think he has any other friends.”

  “What about Mariel?”

  “She’s at somebody’s lake house this weekend.”

  “Maybe he went to one of the after-parties.”

  “By himself?”

  She shrugs. We sit on the bed.

  “Maybe we should turn off the light,” I suggest. “I don’t want his mom to think he’s home if he isn’t.”

  She nods and I stand up and turn off the light, then go back and sit beside her on the bed. I don’t think about the fact that we are sitting on a bed in a dark room until I’m already sitting down, at which point it feels like it would be more of a statement to stand back up and move to the chair, presuming I could find the chair in the dark. We aren’t touching, but I can feel her beside me.

  “Mitchell?”

  “What?”

  “Were you like, you know, sort of—well, in love with Danielle?”

  I hadn’t thought of it in those terms. Was I in love? It seems like such a big word for one syllable.

  “I’m not sure. I was sort of blown away that she even wanted to go out with me. I mean, no one has ever been interested in me at all, and then it was Danielle—well, you know, Danielle was Danielle and I don’t know. For a little while I believed.”

  “Other people have been interested in you. You just never notice.”

  “Oh, Amanda. I didn’t know, I thought she was, but then …” I flail around looking for a word and brush M.C.’s bare shoulder. I hadn’t realized how close together we were sitting. “Sorry,” I say, knowing that I’m blushing but also that she can’t see I’m blushing. “I guess maybe I should have asked her out, but I didn’t know Amanda really liked me. I thought she was just looking for a prom date.”

  “I wasn’t talking about Amanda. I think she was looking for a prom date, mostly.”

  “Oh.”

  “I mean, I’m sure she liked you, but she didn’t know you very well. But other people have been interested. You’re, like, a really nice guy and you’re cute and smart, and I’m such an idiot and I can’t believe I’m telling you this.”

  “Telling me what?”

  M.C. doesn’t respond immediately. I hear her take a deep breath, the kind you take before jumping off the high dive at the pool. “That I would have gone out with you if you had asked, but you wouldn’t have asked me because I’m like your sister’s dorky friend who’s over all the time and in your way and stuff, and I think I need to go home now.” She starts to get up. I touch her arm and she sits back down.

  I turn toward her. There isn’t enough light to really see her face, she is just a dark blotch in a dark room, but I turn toward her anyway. I’m not sure I heard what I think I heard, but I think I know what she said and I think what I want to do right now is kiss her.

  My kissing experience is pretty limited, but it seems like there’s this moment just before you kiss someone for the first time where there is a question, then you have to wait for a response, for a yes. I’m not sure how you know it’s a yes, it isn’t a nod or some visible signal, but it’s a yes. I don’t ask M.C. if it would be okay if I kissed her. For once my natural silence, the quiet non-voice I’ve been trying to overcome, is the right response. And she no longer seems to be the same M.C. I’ve always known. She is suddenly someone new—familiar but not the same. It’s as if you stepped out of your house and there was this tree in your front yard that you never really noticed before—you knew it was there, but you hadn’t reall
y seen it and it’s beautiful and green and so obvious that you can’t believe you’ve never stopped and really looked at it, not until right now. Even in the darkness I can picture M.C.’s face perfectly. I know the green eyes, the corners of her mouth, the freckle on her eyelid; all those details are in my head. I know her smile, I know her giggles, I know the look she gets when she’s angry, but I never knew I was noticing. I never put it all together. I never wanted to kiss her before. I do now. And, although I can’t see her face in this dark room and we bump noses before we touch lips, I know already that her answer is yes.

  CHAPTER 31

  Regulars

  Mostly dressed

  David was at my house. I learn this when my father picks me up. Dad is not looking too happy when he pulls into David’s driveway. In fact, he’s looking a lot like someone who would rather be in bed.

  “Maybe you’d better tell me the whole story before we get home. I might be more receptive than your mother.”

  “It’s sort of a long story. It’s been sort of a long night.”

  My dad isn’t the heart-to-heart type, and so this is going to be new territory for both of us. I watch him drive and realize that he looks older than I usually think of him as being. His hair is thin. The lines around his eyes are carved deeply. His throat is fleshy, and the pouch of a second chin quivers when he talks, which isn’t often. I wonder if he’s happy being who he is.

  “So,” he prompts.

  “Where do you want me to begin?”

  “How about explaining why I get a call in the middle of the night from David’s parents telling me that they found you in David’s bed with some girl?”

  “We actually weren’t doing anything. We were still dressed.”

  “Mostly dressed, according to David’s parents.”

  “Mostly dressed.”

  The truth is we had fallen asleep. It felt nice to sleep with my arms around M.C.

  At the next stoplight, Dad turns to me. I can tell from his face that he is trying hard to figure out how to handle this situation. “What do you think Amanda’s parents would say if they knew?”

  “Not much. I wasn’t with Amanda.”