American Fraternity Man (73 page)

“Excuse me?” I ask, peering into the water fridge. “How did you get this number?”

“This is Ma-
ri
-a,” she says. “Don’t act like you don’t know who this is.”

“Maria?” I ask. “
Maria
, Maria?”

“Maria, Maria.”

“Maria,” I say. “I didn’t recognize the number.”

One of the employees has noticed the spilled soda on the counter, shakes his head and says “Fucking savages.” He goes off in search of a mop, and I distance myself further from the mess I created.

“Of
course
you didn’t,” Maria says. “You probably deleted my number, didn’t you?”

“I…” Shit.
I know who you are
, and yes, she’s seen my Facebook page. She knows that I’m a consultant, that I lied to her, and she isn’t calling to plan Date #2. “Yeah.” I exhale. “I deleted your number. Sorry. I honestly didn’t think we’d talk again.”

“You’re a fucking
ass
-hole,” she says.

“I am. You’re right. I had to—I had to leave town, Maria. I’m sorry. I should have called, you know? That was really…an asshole thing to do.”

“You left town? That’s an interesting way of putting it.”

“That’s what happened. I don’t know what you were told.” I swallow again. Remind myself that this is just some college freshman halfway across the country, that there should be no worries, not now. I can handle this. “It was”—what did Sam say?—“my Mom died.”

“Bullshit. You were here for a
week
. Left town? You were never here to begin with.”

“All right, all right,” I say. “Let’s slow down.”

“Bullshit, slow down.”

“What have you heard, Maria?” Calmer, now.
I head for the front door of the gas station, empty-handed, ready to squeak out of here with no purchase. “Tell me what you’ve heard.”

“It’s what I didn’t hear,
Charles
,” and she says my name mockingly, almost as if she believes it to be a lie. “We go to Juarez, I invite you to my room.” A pause. “But I never—I swear to God I didn’t think this would happen—not so much as a
phone call
? Not a word. And why was that, I wondered? I can handle a run-of-the-mill asshole, Charles, ‘cause at least I can tell my girls to stay away, but you fucking
vanished
. It was like you’d never existed.”

“It wasn’t, you know, my intention to—”

“How do I get back at an asshole that isn’t around to face consequences?”

“You don’t have to get
back
at me.”

“D
idn’t accept my friend request,” she says. “That was too bad. I could have let bygones be bygones.”

I’m out the door
of the 7-Eleven, heading back to my car while behind me a mop squeaks my spilled soda. The wind is cutting so sharp that tears streak across my face.

“You want to know how I found the
Facebook page, Charles?” she asks. “See, you told me you never had a page. And at first, I just kept seeing this page with Ryan Reynolds as a profile picture, and you
damn sure
aren’t Ryan Reynolds. But I
googled
you, Charles. And funny, the things you find online. Full profiles of Educational Consultants at the Nu Kappa Epsilon National Fraternity web site.”

“Wait, hold on
,” I say, back inside the Explorer.

“Your entire bio. Your degree, your honors and accomplishments, your travel territory. Do you want me to read it to you? You’re at
Bowling Green
right now, aren’t you?”

“You know…” I start.
Hotter in here. Blood in my head beating quicker, quicker, almost pounding as I hold the phone to my ear, and it’s the same sound that my tires make these days as they rattle on my busted wheels. And when I speak, trying to sound calm and rational, trying to remember that I’m the adult and she is just an emotional college girl, trying to convince her that this is all a miscommunication, I can only manage this: “Um, how did you get my cell phone number?”

“I called the phone number on the web site.”

“What web site?”

“The Nike national web site.”

“My phone number isn’t listed.”

“I called the Headquarters. The 800 number. Some guy answered—”

—
who
could have answered? A guy? Not one of the secretaries, obviously. Maybe she hit an extension number, got one of the interns? LaFaber himself?

“What did you say?” I ask, mouth dry.

“I told them I had to get in touch with you. Easiest phone number I ever got.”

“What
else
did you say?”

“Oh, you’re worried, aren’t you?” she asks. “You’re not supposed to sleep with little sorority girls, are you? Big no-no. I asked the Alpha Alpha traveling consultant about it when she came to
our sorority house. She said there are strict policies against that: no dating, mating, or relating, she said. You’re scared, aren’t you, Charles?”

“Listen,” I say. “Listen. I was wrong, all right?”

“Easy to say afterwards, isn’t it?”

“What do you want, Maria?” I ask. “I told you I’m sorry. But I’m in Indiana right now. There’s not much I can do out here. What is it that…I mean, what do you
want
?” I realize, after I say this, that it comes out sizzling like acid—
what do you want
?—like I’m some action hero who finally finds the dastardly villain who’s been threatening to blow up the city for no real reason.

She’s silent for a moment, considering the ridiculousness of the question. “I want more than some half-assed apology,” she says eventually. “We’ll talk again, player. Till then, be easy on those little
Ohio bitches.” And she hangs up; the car suddenly grows cold, a light rain hitting the windshield and then rising in violence, the long road back to campus falling dark.

*

Long after the fraternity house has gone silent on my final night at BGSU, I type the final letters on my visit report for New Mexico State University. It’s late, so late that many of the local gas stations have closed until sunrise, and outside the guest room window the campus appears so windy, wet, and desolate that I feel as if I’m in the middle of a Florida hurricane. Middle of night darkness made darker because the rain and the shaking tree branches obscure the street lamps. Everyone on lockdown, not a car on the streets, not a smoker on the park benches.

Nobody, it seems, wants to watch me finish this report.

“I did not witness hazing in Las Cruces,” I typed on the first draft, “but I recommend further investigation/ temporary suspension. I saw clear signs of bullying (brothers making jokes at the expense of the pledges), though one could dismiss such activity as ‘boys just being boys.’”

But this wouldn’t have been good enough for LaFaber.

So I added, “I saw boxes full of blindfolds. Unclear whether these were to be used in a ceremony, but I feel it must be recorded.” Then, “I was unable to attend any chapter events, but…” But I strike it out because LaFaber wouldn’t believe it, replace it with, “I attended a chapter Etiquette Dinner for a few minutes, and many of the pledges seemed terrified when they learned that I was a national representative, perhaps indicating that the member education process is flawed? Warrants further investigation.”

LaFaber needs specifics, individual incidents and observations. So I type, “I overheard a brother call the pledge class a bunch of ‘dirty scumbags.’ I overheard one pledge complaining about having to do push-ups all night long.” And, “I think they have some alumni connection to a pecan farm the
y use for pledge activities. Didn’t see anything, but this seems suspicious.” But I also write that it is “important to note that individual brothers—Sam Anderson, the New Member Educator—seemed committed to doing the right thing,” but “the overall chapter culture seems influenced by ROTC/ military training tactics. This is a problem chapter.”

“Charles…is typing the wrong date. The date: one month ago.”

“Charles…is printing the report.”

And then the visit report is in my hands, paper-clipped, all six pages. I shake it and expect it to be heavy.

I remember a time, back when I was in high school, 14 or 15 years old, and my father was involved in a long and bitter battle over a sizable chunk of land along a few of the twisting brackish creeks and rivers that fed into the intracoastal waterway. I don’t know who he was working with, which investors or holding companies, but the plan was to transform the mud and palmetto scrubs and spiderwebs and snake pits into long rows of condos, town centers, boat clubs, docks, seafood restaurants…“Coastline” was the name of the development…undesirable land turned into waterfront property…but an organized political push from the Sierra Club was holding them back. Something about tortoises, pelicans. And I heard the daily updates from my Marine Biology teacher, Mr. Foster: how we would never get these wetlands back, how this was Corporate America at its worst and today they just got another permit approved, how there was a march at the Super Wal-Mart the next weekend and a letter-writing campaign and we need to stand up and do what’s right, how the people in charge—“Suits” and “Blazers,” he called them, but you knew he wanted to say “Greedy Bastards” or “Shady Sons of Bitches,” that he had faculty-lounge conversations with the other teachers where his face grew red and he pounded his fist on desks—were fudging documents, commissioning environmental studies showing that there were no endangered tortoises anywhere close and
they were lying
, Mr. Foster said, he’d seen them! One morning in class he read aloud an article from the
Cypress Falls Herald
, and my father was quoted as saying that “it had been a long struggle” but “it was a big win for the local business interests.” Coastline was a reality.
Thomas Washington
, my teacher said, throwing the paper down.
Thomas Washington! Who is this guy? How can he sleep at night
?

I didn’t say a word. To Mr. Foster or to my father.

But I remember thinking: no one would ever say the same thing about me. I just wanted to do
good
in the world, to have everyone acknowledge that and say, “Yes, Charles Washington is doing good. This world’s a better place because of him.” It didn’t seem like that tough a mission.

I flip through
the report, looking not for typos but for some sign of the damage I will do, as if the text will suddenly have turned red, bolded, surrounded by blinking lights and arrows that denote each individual lie, as if I will see the wetlands drained and all the pelicans and tortoises and deer and foxes slaughtered, but…it’s just paper. Black and white. Just text on paper, and paperwork isn’t action, right? I stuff the report into a FedEx envelope.

Just paper, I tell myself. Just paper. Just paper.

And I don’t know if I know where I am now. If I know who I am, what I’m doing.

CHAPTER T
WENTY-FOUR. Purdue.

I leave Bowling Green on an afternoon when the sky has again taken the color and texture of cracked cement, and I drive to Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, where the world seems even darker, more jagged, the campus painted with grayer grays than BGSU, the cold sidewalk puddles longer and deeper. Students burrow into gray Boilermaker hoodies as late October winds slice through campus, tearing apart piles of leaves in the grass and sending the leaves rocketing through the air until they eventually smack against kids in their hoodies and leave muddy leaf-prints. Winter is hungry, and Purdue is experiencing its first bite.

Just the same as Illinois and Michigan, the fraternity houses are spread throughout the campus, and it takes me half an hour to find the correct one-way street, pull into the proper alley, and park in the correct lot for the
sharp-edged limestone Nu Kappa Epsilon Fraternity house, a structure built from stone blocks as large as the parking spaces.

I d
art through a steady driving rain, wearing my EU windbreaker over a long-sleeved Fresno State T-shirt I bought in California, but as soon as I make it to the front door the chapter president tells me that I’ve got a meeting with the Greek Advisor in twenty minutes. Face is cold and wet, my hair dripping in matted-down tangles. Dress shirts still packed.

“I’ve got a meeting?” I ask. “In twenty minutes? You’re kidding me.”

“Yeah,” he says. His name’s Bryan O’Reilly, a thick Irish kid—half fat and half muscle—with a shaved head and fiery goatee, and he takes huffing breaths after every sentence he speaks. “Only time he could meet. I can take your stuff upstairs, though.”

“I look awful. I need to clean up,” I say. “Didn’t you think to call me?”

“No,” Bryan says. “You didn’t tell me I was supposed to.”

*

I change into an NKE polo, stick with the destructed jeans I’ve been wearing nonstop, sprint across campus to the Greek Life office, and dry my hair with a brown paper towel from the building’s first-floor bathroom. The Greek Advisor here at Purdue—Grant Farmor—is just another 23-year-old kid with a Master’s in CSP: soft face, pale white and marked with acne scars on the cheeks, hair such a thin fair blonde that it looks like it might fall out at any moment. Grant rolls his chair to his scuffed desk, boxes and boxes of folders and papers and disks and network cables at his feet, and with an energy level sustained by grande Starbucks coffees, he introduces himself and lists his accomplishments: he is the
Greek Advisor
of Purdue, the man in charge of the third-largest Greek Community in the country! He is only 23! He has presented at conferences as diverse as SEIFC and SROW and the Beta Theta Pi National Convention! The first ten minutes of our conversation feel like a spoken-word performance of Grant’s resume, and then suddenly he looks me in the eyes and shifts focus: “And you,” he says. “I’ve heard about
you
.”