American Fraternity Man (45 page)

“I’m at the airport. One of those golf cart things is driving by.”

“What are you doing in the airport?”

“I told you in July,” I say, “back when I emailed you my travel schedule. I told you I’d be flying out West.”

“Whoa, sorry. I didn’t memorize your schedule.”

“You should at least look at it.”

“I do,” she says. “Every now and then.”

“I’m flying to New Mexico.”

“Cool,” she says, yawns.

“I called you yesterday
. Several times, in fact.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I got your texts about
the truck drivers.”

Out there on the side of the highway, no response from Jenn as I called, no response from Jenn when I texted, but I realize now that it’s
probably because of the texts I sent: “Fucking call me back! This is important!” And later: “I fucking hate truck drivers! Do they drive like assholes on purpose?” I thought she might read this last text, look away and shake her head and rub her eyes, then examine the words again to make sure she’d read correctly. Did Charles just write that he fucking hates
truck drivers
? Does Charles remember a single fucking thing about me? And I thought that she might then—so upset by my texts—hit “talk,” and then my phone would ring, and she’d be mad, but we’d be talking again. I’d have her on the phone.

Charles is…trying.

Charles is…is he?

“Oh yeah. The texts. Well, a lot happened yesterday—”

“My battery ran out. Phone’s been acting retarded, so I couldn’t call you back.”

“It was a rough day.”

“A flat tire?” she asks. “Did you change it yourself?”

“Um. I don’t really want to get into it right now. It’s…I’m tired of thinking about it. So what’s going on at the house today?” I ask, then look around Sports Nation at the other Blazers on their cell phones. I could be talking to anyone, a business associate, but I’m asking about her
sorority house
? And I wonder why the bartender doesn’t take me seriously? “Good stuff, good stuff,” I say when Jenn doesn’t immediately answer. “What’s in store for your Saturday?”

“What’s ‘in store’ for my…who talks like that?”

“Anything big happening down in Fort Myers?”

“Charles,” she says. “Are you still talking to me? Why did your voice just change?”

“Ha ha!” I say. “I don’t know what would make you say that. But I can’t wait to get down there soon. It’s been awhile since I’ve been to that part of the country.”

“I don’t…” she says. “Did you book your tickets for Homecoming?”

“Send me an email,” I say and look around. “Remind me of the specific dates again. I’ll have to input it into my Outlook calendar. I’ve got my laptop with me.”

“Charles, really,” she says. “Next weekend. Did you book the tickets?”

“Oh, I’m fantastic. Absolutely fantastic.”

“W
hat are you
talking
about? We’re talking about Homecoming.”

“Things are going so great with the consulting.”

“Okay? What does that have to do with anything? You can’t get away?”

“Ha ha!”

A pause.

“Ha ha!” I say.

“This is fucking frustrating,” she says. “Are you even talking to me?”

I smooth my pants, try to laugh again, look around the bar and no one is looking at me, and so I say, “What’s the weather going to be like next weekend?”

“It’s Florida. September in Florida. Same as always, Charles.”

“Ahh, yes,” I say. “Truth be told, I haven’t actually…
purchased
…the tickets.”

“I knew it. I knew it.”

“I’m just not sure which airport I’ll be at. I have to look into it.”

“Do you remember when you told me you wanted to be a consultant?”

“Yes, I do,” I say. “A noble career. So here I am.”

“What else?” she asks.

“What else?”

“What else?”

“I don’t know. I mean. I can’t remember. Not off-hand.”

“I said that I supported your decision. Do what’s in your heart, all that.”

“Correct.”

“But I also said that the only way we’d be together is if you got some weekends off—not all of them, just some—so you could come back to Florida. That’s what we agreed.”

“Well,” I say.

“Even my father was able to live up to that sort of arrangement.”

Wait,
she’s
lecturing
me
? This is my job, I want to tell her. I just got a flat tire and did more than $1000 worth in damage to my Explorer for a job that pays nothing, and you’re out in Fort Myers, waking up at 10:30, en route to the EU pool, en route to pre-parties and drink specials and post-parties at the Kappa Sigma house and alcohol and
good times
and black mini-mini-skirts and those 1980s turquoise t-shirts you love, the ones with the gigantic necklines where one bare shoulder hangs out and the collar circumference is hula-hoop-large and so it seems like the whole shirt is slipping down your body and
I loved it when you stopped by the house wearing one of those shirts,
because—if I hugged you just right, let my hand slip over your shoulder, gave the shirt a tug—it would be a puddle of fabric at your feet and I’d say “whoops” and we’d have to fuck right there, wouldn’t we? Back in the house, back in my president’s room, back where there wasn’t a blazer in sight. And that’s what you’re wearing right now, without me, that’s the carefree joy of your life, and you can’t understand where I am now, you just want to
lecture me
? So I say, “All right then, yep, I’ll get back to you!”

“What the
fuck
does that mean?”

“Okay, ha! Talk to you when I land,” I say, end the call and turn off the phone.
Clench my fist, my stomach. But strangely, Mindy the bartender is now standing directly in front of me.

“Jack and Coke,” I say. “Rough day. You wouldn’t believe.”

“I’d believe,” Mindy says, and seconds later slides me a Jack and Coke. It’s getting later now, more Blazers arriving from their conference and huddling at tables for early lunches. Sip. Smile every now and then, just in case anyone wants to know whether or not I’m happy.

*

The crowds outside Sports Nation grow as the airport traffic increases in the late hours of the morning—planes skidding to a stop, planes blazing off, mothers and fathers reigning in families of five or six and toys dropped across the tile floors, Blazer after Blazer grunting past with thick-shelled briefcases. Crowds form long lines into Starbucks. Couples—young couples on their first vacations, maybe—hold ice cream cones, the mint chocolate chip dripping down the waffle cones, and they laugh as they race to lick it up. 11 AM, a transition hour. Coffee. Hamburgers. Ice cream. Jack and Coke. The airport a random collection of displaced or re-placed travelers. Gray hair, blonde hair, brown hair, highlights, buzz-cut, mullet, and—what’s this?—from the crowd outside Sports Nation, someone stares back at me. Directly at me, as though my “people watching” is a crime. Someone familiar. A 35-year-old man with hair so thin that he shouldn’t be using gel. Stares at me and laughs. 35-year-old man carrying a laptop case and wearing a short-sleeve blue dress shirt with loosened tie. Clean-shaven, except somehow still rough, looking like he was just involved in gritty combat with a copy machine.

And he takes a step in my direction.

I slide the Jack and Coke across the bar-top so that it might possibly have been left behind by some now-departed patron at the barstool beside mine. Is it bad to drink before noon? I touch my hair briefly: it’s a mess, an ugly smattering of slopped hair. When I stepped out of the shower, I squeezed a glob of hair gel into my hand, plopped it onto my scalp, tussled my hair without even looking to ensure that it had a semi-intentional appearance.

He walks closer, his brown eyes growing darker as he approaches, still smiling like he just got away with something, like he’s the poster-boy for corporate scandal.

My eye twitches, and he’s ten feet away, and just as I catch a whiff of starch from his dress shirt, I place him:
Ben Jameson
. Ben, who I met back in Kinston, Pennsylvania, when I stayed with Dr. Wigginton; Ben from the University of Pittsburgh; Ben the drunk alumnus with a wife and the two kids who never stop reciting Dr. Seuss. Ben Jameson is in the Philadelphia International Airport, standing beside me, breathing hard, laptop case heavy in his hand.

“Well, howdy,” Ben says, looking down at me.

“My God,” I say. “I never expected…”

“Damndest things happen at airports,” he says. “Crazy fucking places.”

“I guess.”

“No one’s sitting here, right?” he says and drops his bag on the floor, taking the barstool beside mine. “Long fucking week. I need
a drink. Spending the whole damned day in airports.”

I don’t know what to say, so I nod.

“There was this one time,” he starts, then yells “BARTENDER,” then continues: “Out at this airport in Spartanburg, South Carolina? Little shit-hole, honestly. Sunday afternoon, and I’m at the airport wearing this Nike shirt from college. Casual day. This old guy, seventy years old, a Dr. Wigginton type, except with this thick Southern accent, talks all slow like. And he sees my shirt and tells me about his pledge days at the University of North Carolina. Tells me about how they used to—back in the ‘50s, I guess—cover these kids with honey and drop feathers all over them and then drive them out to the middle of nowhere and just leave them there. Crazy stuff. Old School. And those guys from North Carolina are, like,
distinguished
now. Senators and CEOs and shit. This guy just tells me this stuff, right out of the blue.”

“Crazy,” I say.

“Fucking airports. So where you headed now?”

“New Mexico.”

Mindy arrives and there’s a glimmer of recognition in her eyes, too.

Ben laughs. “Hey there, Mindy. I need a Jack and Coke, but mostly Jack. That’s what you’re drinki
ng, right, kid? So make it two,” and I start to raise an objection because this is an alumnus and I promised the organization—I promised myself—that I would follow a Code of Conduct, I would be a Marathon Man and not a Frat Star and I would elevate the image of fraternities to their rightful place, but Ben just points at my glass as if to say, “too late, busted,” and then he’s talking again: “No shit, New Mexico. There are schools out there?”

“I’m visiting New Mexico State University. So…yeah.”

“Probably all they do is teach English, am I right?” He laughs. “Southwest states, I’m telling you. Over-run by Mexicans. Shit. Schools probably are, too. Not that I’m prejudiced or anything. But they’re taking over down there. Pretty soon, they’ll be spreading all over.”

And all around Sports Nation, the tables are filling. A woman in a black pant-suit sits and opens a trashy-looking airport novel, one with a pink cover
and glistening torsos. Two fat men in navy suits pull out chairs at different tables, debating which has the best view of their gate, before finally settling on a booth. And I’m wearing a polo and sitting with a man in a short-sleeved button-down whose every foul-mouthed comment makes me flinch, and I find myself constantly glancing around to see if we are causing a scene. When he says “Mexican,” one of the fat men in the navy suits raises his head, but it might have been a coincidence.

“Well,” I say. “It’s New Mexico. I think it’s always been…Hispanic.”

“The fraternities there. Shit. Probably all Mexicans, too, huh? Saying our oath in Spanish. Can you imagine being a
brother
to someone who doesn’t even speak English?”

Mercifully, the drinks come and the bartender asks Ben for his credit card. He tells her to start a tab because we’ve both got some time to kill before boarding. Then he tells Mindy that the University of Pittsburgh game is on ESPN2,
so if she wants a tip she should probably change the channel. Amazingly, she does so happily.

“Mindy’s the best,” Ben says.

“You know her?”

“Been here a thousand times. You take care of Mindy and you’re in good shape. Ain’t that right, sweetie?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says without looking at him.

“C
ourse you don’t. Eagles fans. Fucking clueless.”

“So,” I interrupt, t
rying to prevent more obscenity, “there’s a Pittsburgh game on today?”

“Fuckin’ A. It’s Saturday. College fucking football, brother.”

I look around. “Right.”

“I forgot. You went to some small school, didn’t you?”

He gulps his Jack and Coke, so I take a sip of mine.

“Who do you play?” I ask.

“Some sucker school,” he says and chokes on his drink, coughs, then laughs. “Every year, they bring some poor cupcake school to start the season, televise the game, give our team a victory. This year I think it’s some Florida school. Probably
your
school, for all I know.”