Beat the Band (24 page)

“STICK A MEAT THERMOMETER
up our butts,” Sean says, all twitchy. “’Cause we’re done.”

“First of all, dude, don’t ever say that again.” Christ. He hasn’t shut up about the demo all morning. “Second of all, I’ll figure it out.”

I open the door to SaveMore Drugs and usher my buds inside. I’ve convinced the guys to come to the drugstore with me during lunch so we can pick up a few things I think will help pimp our rock-and-roll image: teeth whitener, tanning spray, hair color, hair gel, aftershave. I had to sell one of my iPods and a whole whack of old comics to raise the cash for all this stuff, but it’s important we look our very best for performance night.

And while we’re at it, I fig I can grab some of the contraceptives I promised to get for the Health project.

Sean’s jaw pulses as we cruise the aisles. “I seriously think Mr. Grossman knows.”

“He doesn’t know,” I say. “If he knew he would have called us out right there.”

“Here’s the teeth whitener,” Matt says, pointing to a shelf.

“Later.” I stride right by the oral hygiene racks and turn down the next aisle to find the Family Planning section. I stop and stand before a giant wall of colorful condom boxes, tubes of lubricants, and pregnancy tests.

“What are you doing?” Sean asks. “I thought you said we came for grooming products?”

“I need to get a few things for my Health project first.”

“You didn’t say anything about that.” His eyes dart around like mad. “Someone’s going to see us. What if my grandma comes in? Or Father Hurley?”

“No one’s going to see us.”

“But what if they do?”

“They’ll think you’re a responsible dude. I’ll only be a second.” To be honest, I figured I’d have the same anxious reaction as Sean when we got here. But now that he’s acting all Chicken Little, it kind of makes me want to torture him a bit by dragging this out.

“What exactly do you need?” Matt says, more nonchalantly than I’d expect. Maybe he really has run the bases with Val.

“Let’s do condoms first.”

“Here.” Sean quickly grabs a box of condoms off the shelf. “What about these? Made from . . .” he reads the box, “real lambskin.” He cringes. “Ew. Sick. That’s like one step away from having sex with a lamb.”

“You’d know better than me.” I snatch the box from him and toss it into my shopping basket. “Isn’t that why you were banned from the petting zoo?”

“That’s not even funny.” Sean screws up his face. “People actually do that kind of thing and —”

“You have all their Web sites bookmarked? Boo ya!” I give Matt a fist bump.

“Noooo. And even if I did . . . it’s only because . . . your mother . . . e-mailed me the links.” Sean blinks hard. “Because she’s . . . into that sort of thing. With animals . . . and people . . . together. Doing stuff.”

“Good one, Sean,” I say as I reach over to the shelf, grab a Family Pack of Leviathans, and throw them in the basket. Odd that they call it a Family Pack when that’s exactly what they’re meant to prevent.

Matt stares down at the carton. “Those are for ‘the extra-large man.’”

“Right,” I say, dropping my voice an octave. “Might as well get some that I can use for when we win the Battle of the Bands, because the groupies are going to be swarming the stage.”

“You probably want the fun size then.” Matt grabs a random multi-colored box of condoms off the shelf and waves it in my face. “For your pygmy schwang.”

“What’s that, Matt Gratton?” I announce loudly. “You have a pygmy schwang? That’s very brave of you to admit. Most guys would keep that to themselves.”

Matt flings the box of condoms at me. It hits my chest and drops into the basket.

“Nice shot,” I say.

Once we’ve grabbed a few other products — a bottle of lube, a Today sponge, a tube of spermicide, contraceptive foam, more condoms — we head over to the grooming supplies to finish up our shopping, then up toward the cashier.

“Are you going to be able to afford all of this?” Matt asks.

“Yeah. Of course. I’ve got a hundred and twenty bucks.”

I look down at the mound of contraceptives in my basket. I’m trying to act all caszh but the closer we get to the cash registers the sweatier I start to feel. “We have to split this stuff up,” I say, stopping at the end of the aisle. “It’ll look too weird if I’m buying it all by myself.”

Sean backs away. “I don’t
think
so. This was your idea.”

“I’ll give you the money,” I say.

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Sean says. “I’m not about to go up there and have somebody see me buy all this . . . crap. They’ll think I’m some kind of perv.”

“I’m not asking you to buy a giant purple dildo, Sean. Grow up. People use this stuff to have safe sex.”

“
Sex.
Exactly. And that’s what the cashier will be picturing me doing as she rings it up.”

“Well, then, go to a guy cashier. He’ll think you’re a player.”

“Right. Unless he knows my sister,” Sean says. “And then he’ll tell her, and the whole world will find out. No. I’m not doing it. I’ll buy the grooming stuff if you want. But none of the other things.”

“You’re a real pal.” I turn to Matt. “What about you?”

Matt shrugs. “Sure. Fine.” He shifts his weight. “But give me a mix of things. And we should probably grab some . . .”— Matt scans the endcap filled with school supplies —“notebooks. And pens. And highlighters.” He pulls them from the shelves and chucks them into the basket. “So it’s a jumble of stuff, instead of a never-ending line of sex products.”

I nab two more baskets from the front of the store and return to Matt and Sean to separate the items. Sean gets most of the grooming products. Except for a bottle of lube, which I hide amidst the tanning sprays and teeth whitener, just because I can’t resist. Then I split up the money — forty dollars each — and we hit three separate cash registers.

I head over to an ancient liver-spotted dude with an eye patch and glasses, in hopes that he won’t be able to make out the things I’m buying. Matt goes the young-guy-maybe-he’ll-think-I’m-a-stud route.

And Sean casually strolls over to the till being manned by somebody’s grandmother because he has nothing to worry about. Or so he thinks.

I’ve got an anxious thrumming in my gut as I begin to place the items on the counter. Praying no one steps up behind me in line. I was busting on Sean for being such a pussy, but I have to say, I’ve never been so uncomfortable in my entire life.

My strategy is simple. Hair color first, followed by a couple of condom three-packs hidden under a package of pens, then a tube of spermicide and a can of contraceptive foam camouflaged nicely by a notebook and some aftershave.

“Nice weather we’re having, huh?” the old guy says as he starts ringing up my stuff.

“Yeah, it’s great,” I answer. Oh, God, I hope I didn’t land the chatty cashier. I need this to go fast and smooth.

I avert my eyes, employing the if-I-can’t-see-him-he-can’t-see-me technique. I pretend to be captivated by the check-out stand magazines. Well, well, look who has cellulite. Mm, wow, celebrities without makeup. They look so different. “Marry Me!” says Britney.

“So, big plans for this weekend?” the guy asks, scanning and bagging my items.

My eyes flick over to him, then dart back to the magazines. “What?”

“I was inquiring about your weekend plans. Doing anything exciting?”

I glance at the pack of multicolored condoms he’s holding and feel my chest tighten. “Um. No.”

He scans the item and places it in the bag with the rest of the stuff. “Weatherman says Indian summer. Which means the wife’ll want me to do some serious humping on Saturday.”

I blink. Not sure I’ve heard him correctly. “I’m sorry. What?” Christ. Why is he telling me this? Just because I’m buying condoms doesn’t mean I need to hear about his exploits.

“It’s not like I mind it.” He scans the contraceptive foam. The notebook. The aftershave. “It’s just, there are other things I’d rather be doing on a sunny day, right? Instead of having to lug all the garbage down to the junkyard.”

“Oh. Right,” I say.
That
kind of humping. It takes me a moment to supplant the image of this old dude going primal on his wife with the one of him lugging trash, but thankfully, my twisted mind obliges me.

“Hey, Ernie!” It’s the old lady who’s ringing up Sean. She’s looking over at us and waving the red bottle of lube I snuck into Sean’s basket. “Do you know how much the SlideRight Sensuous-Strawberry Personal Stimu-Lube is?”

Sean’s face goes pale. His eyes wide with horror. He’s shaking his head no and moving his lips, but no words are coming out.

“What?” Ernie says, cupping his ear with his hand.

“SlideRight Sensuous-Strawberry Personal Stimu-Lube!” the grandmotherly woman shouts. “Do you know the price?”

Ernie scrunches up his nose. “What is it?”

“It’s sexual lubricant. Flavored. This kid wants to buy it. And it’s not giving me a price.”

Ernie throws his hands in the air. “I have no idea. Call Martin.” He punches in some numbers on the register and squints at the screen with his one eye. “Thirty-eight seventy-three.”

I look over at Matt, who is standing by the front door holding a plastic bag, shaking with suppressed laughter.

I hand two twenties to Ernie and watch as Sean tries to reach over the counter and grab the bottle of lube from the old lady. But she’s turned away and already has the intercom phone to her ear.

There’s a
beep-beep
over the store speaker, followed by the old lady’s nasal voice calling out, “Martin. Can you get me a price on SlideRight Sensuous-Strawberry Personal Stimu-Lube? The four-ounce bottle?”

“No, no, no,” Sean says.

I get my change, grab my purchases, and head over to Matt so we can watch the show together.

“I thought you only gave him grooming products,” Matt says, laughing.

“I slipped him one thing,” I say. “I thought for sure he’d spot it before it got rung up.”

There’s another
beep-beep
over the intercom. “Say again?” a man’s voice calls over the loudspeaker.

Sean’s waving his hands frantically. “It’s okay. It’s fine. Never mind. I don’t want it. I don’t want it.”

“Don’t worry, honey,” the old lady says. “It’ll just be a second. We’ve got to get it into the computer anyway. I’ll be right back.” She steps from behind the counter and walks off toward customer service.

“All right,” I say. “I guess we better go save him.”

Me and Matt hurry over to Sean, who looks like he might blow a gasket.

“I’m going to kill you,” Sean says to me through clenched teeth.

“Oh, come on.” I laugh. “You have to admit. That was pretty funny. Just leave the cash and lets get out of here.” I snatch the two twenties from his hand and toss it on the counter.

Matt grabs the bag of goods, I grab Sean’s arm, and the three of us hightail it out of there.

Me and Matt hold ourselves together heroically as we hit the streets.

Until we both glance at Sean’s scowling, something-stinks expression.

And then we’re cracking up all over again.

“NO OFFENSE, DUDE,”
Matt says, his hair matted with sweat. “But don’t you think your dad’s maybe taking this band thing a little too seriously?”

“That was sick how many times he made us play ‘Paint It Black.’” Sean flexes his fingers.

We’re hanging in my room following our four-hour after-dinner rehearsal. The guys agreed to stay over again to get in some extra band practice. I tried to come up with a caszh way of inviting Helen to stay over, you know, just because. I had the whole scenario worked out in my head. Her lack of pajamas. Her need to borrow one of my T-shirts. Me explaining how there was plenty of room for both of us in my bed.

But the thought of someone from school seeing her leaving my house in the wee hours of the morning was all it took to kill that fantasy.

And honestly, she’s not the one who needs to put in the extra work.

“We only have a few more weeks and he wants us to be good,” I say, but even I can’t believe how crazed Dad’s getting. I tried talking to Mom about it but she says that he’s just going through a phase. That it’s the happiest she’s seen him in a long time and she’s willing to put up with the facial hair and silly clothes until Dad gets back on his feet with work. “Anyway,” I continue, “we have something much more important to deal with right now.”

“Sleep?” Matt says, collapsing on his sleeping bag.

“No.” I move to my closet and take out the loot from the drugstore. “We’re going to test out our rock-and-roll images. This way, if anything doesn’t work, we’ll have time to tweak our looks before the performance.”

“Cool.” Sean grabs the bag from my hand and looks inside. “I was wondering when we were going to get to use this stuff.”

“Aw, man.” Matt drops his head on his pillow. “Can’t we do it some other time? I’m wiped.”

“Don’t be a tool bag.” I grab his arm and pull him up. “You’ll thank me when you see how kick-ass you look.”

“You keep saying how I’m always going to thank you, but I never do.”

“I know. You ungrateful bastard.”

Matt laughs. “That’s not really what I meant.”