Flagged Victor (9 page)

Leah herself was a female revelation, and a conundrum. She was as eager for sex as Chris, and they went at it with industrial frequency. I wanted to know details, but Chris was surprisingly coy and gentlemanly about it. All he said was, Oh, man, the things she will let me do to her, it boggles the mind. And, for once, he didn’t provide any dirt on what was being boggled or how. They did not seem to have a serious relationship, in
the boyfriend-girlfriend sense. They didn’t hold hands or act affectionately in my presence. They were merely friendly and comfortable, and that was mysterious too. Any guy would sign up for a no-commitment relationship, but was it normal for a woman? Maybe because we didn’t have the term for it back then, I couldn’t grasp the concept of a fuck buddy.

Their collision and subsequent arrangement left me in a daze. One day, he told me, She can never wear underwear around me. It’s our rule. If she comes to meet me for a date, or even for lunch, she can’t have underwear on. If we run into each other unexpectedly on the street, no matter what else she’s got going on, she has to excuse herself, go somewhere private, and take her panties off. Weird, huh?

I could never see Leah again, naturally, without thinking of her free of panties, and this was happening in the early fall when coeds in class wore little but shorts and tank tops. I’d never seen so many beautiful women, and the distraction was often so intense I felt afflicted by a kind of malarial insanity. Despite my pain, Chris even had the nerve to occasionally complain about his situation. He felt overly confined by their schedule and irritated by vague behind-the-scenes discussions and arguments. Leah, apparently, could be a pain in the ass once in a while. It seemed an awfully small price to pay. But the human capacity for dissatisfaction is boundless. No wonder we were kicked out of paradise.

It
all culminated on Halloween. Some friends of Chris were holding a house party. College house parties equal wild orgiastic
sex, Chris informed me casually. For a week or so in the lead-up, I was beside myself with anticipation. And then, on the Tuesday before the weekend, I ran into Susan on a downtown street. My life stopped. I remembered everything that should have happened but hadn’t. I was ready for it to begin now.

Susan. Again. She was with a friend, an East Indian girl, and they were coming out of a cheap costume store that I was heading into, looking for vampire teeth and a tube of fake blood. With her clothes on, Susan seemed shorter than I remembered, and less physically striking. Still, in her scarf and sweater, she was fresh faced and cheerful. She surprised (and thrilled) me by hugging me like an old friend. She introduced me to Radha, whose eyes, I noticed in a moment that felt like a betrayal of Susan even before our relationship really began, were strikingly bewitching. She’d lined them with eyeliner and had a wicked and mischievous way of watching you and laughing. Susan asked me how I was doing, how college was treating me. I understood, then, how she saw me. For a high school girl, a college guy who stops, gives her a hug, and spends some time chatting was a kind of trophy. For the first time in my life, I actually had some cachet. I told her all was good, and I asked what they were going to be for Halloween.

Belly dancers, Susan answered. And I almost fainted.

Well, instead of going door to door begging for candy, why don’t you come to our party? I asked.

Suddenly, it was our party. I did not even know the guys who were throwing it. But I was confident that two belly dancers would be welcomed.

After the words escaped my mouth, I worried that they might scoff at my idea. But they were thrilled, fucking titillated. I gave
them the address, said goodbye, and went into the store to get the kind of teeth I would need to tear a chunk out of the world.

Chris
was not as thrilled as I would have expected. He groaned something about Leah. It turned out that, since the incident at the lake, Leah and Susan were no longer friends. Leah had tried to make amends, but Susan would not be persuaded. I was defiant, however, and for once, I did not get myself worked up about consequences. Let the cat fight begin.

My vampire costume was low-key but did what I needed it to do, exposing throats to me that I would never have had access to ordinarily. Naturally, I was completely outshone by Chris, who went as a Chippendales dancer with black suit pants, a black bow tie, and no shirt. His pectoral muscles were big enough to set a beer onto. Leah had painted her face white and made her lips red, and set her shock of frizzy hair vertical so that she looked like an electrocuted witch. She also wore a miniskirt and black boots that were thigh high and, presumably, no underwear. The house was full. It took effort moving between rooms. Every floor was wet with beer. The air was clogged with cigarette smoke. I was anxious for Susan and Radha to arrive, counting on my college mojo to give me a fighting chance, not taking into account how much that mojo was diluted by the presence of forty or fifty other college guys.

When they showed up, in long winter coats, I was surprised to notice how young they seemed. They were only high school students after all. But when they removed their coats, all was forgiven. The bikini at the lake had been a burka in comparison,
and they were glittery with gold speckles. Every half hour or so, with plastic beer glasses raised above their heads, they began to gyrate in unison as if to the distant winds of Middle Eastern music, hips propelling their stuttered rotation, bellies fluxing wildly, and every male with a view cheered heartily in appreciation. I should have charged a fee.

Around eleven o’clock, Chris grabbed me and shouted in my ear that he needed to take Leah home. She was tired and feeling sick, though I got the impression she was also upset by some interaction with Susan. Chris was my ride, and I would be stranded without him. He wasn’t apologizing, however, just informing me of the situation.

I’ll probably get stuck banging her or something, he added.

I nodded drunkenly. Even to me, Leah suddenly seemed like an old maid, an albatross around our necks, a monkey on our backs. To my surprise, she gave me a sudden hug before they left. I didn’t realize it was a different kind of goodbye.

I danced with Susan and Radha. I hung with them. I lost them and found them again. I wanted alone time with Susan but this was impossible, and she had a sharp emotional edginess to her that didn’t allow for easy intimacy. At one point, and out of nowhere, she and I began an intense conversation about my North American Novel class. It started as an inquiry by Radha into what courses I was taking. Susan pounced on the novel class, my favourite, and there was a spark in her eye.

How many women novelists are assigned to the reading list? she asked.

The question took me aback. It had never occurred to me to count the women novelists on the reading list. This was not
because gender didn’t matter. The fewer women the better, I probably believed without consciously thinking about it. The novelists I revered were not women, they were distinctly, overtly men, and I did not jibe with a feminine sensibility. I liked my description of character, mood, tone, and moral outlook to be firmly rooted in landscape and action, salted with the premonition of imminent violence and the contemplation of emotional betrayal. But I had no interest in having an argument. We were at a house kegger, and I had fangs in my mouth, and Susan and Radha were wearing spangles and smoking cigarettes, and all I really wanted to do was suck on their breasts. But I understood, as I focused blearily on her darkly lined and unblinking eyes, that this was important for her. Susan wanted to play grown-up. She thought that college students stood around at parties and argued volatile differences of opinion, before they went off and fucked. She wanted the college experience. Well, I aimed to give it to her. So I rose to the challenges she offered, knowing she was a child before my withering intellect.

Who gives a fuck whether a novelist is a man or a woman? I asked.

She stiffened. Dimly, I sensed danger and realized I had just dislodged one of her crazy stones. She began poking my chest sharply as she spoke, becoming more worked up with each point. Even so, I thought: She must really want me. If this seems like an incongruous view, don’t kid yourself; every man, in almost every situation, with almost every woman, imagines that she wants him and imagines what she would be willing to do.

Unless fifty percent of the novels you study are written by women, your class is nothing but bullshit, she said.

There were angry tears in her eyes. Fearing irreparable harm, I tried to make nice. Look, I’m just kidding you. There are a bunch of women on the list.

Like who? she countered.

I could only think of two names. Margaret Atwood and Eudora Welty.

Eudora Welty?

I was surprised that my offering hadn’t mollified her more. No points for Margaret?

Eudora fucking Welty? she asked again. No Alice Walker, not even Toni Morrison? You probably don’t have room, right, because there are three essential John UpCock novels on the curriculum?

I happened to like John UpCock. In fact, no one had taught me more about how to paint a nice coating of metaphor over the drywall of a story. But I didn’t know how to say that.

Instead, I said: Wait a minute, you’re telling me Toni Morrison isn’t a dude?

I knew my situation had become hopeless. All I wanted to do was get her to the couch and start cuddling.

Susan looked to Radha for moral support.

This is bullshit, don’t you agree? Only two women and all those men?

Radha was smoking a cigarette and eyeing us both. I don’t know, she said. Who are you going to leave out?

I volunteered to get us more beer.

They
were still with me at the party at two in the morning. Radha had curled up asleep on the end of the couch, her long
black hair fanned out around her hidden face in a don’t-fuck-with-me veil. Susan and I sat side by side. The tension between us was an electric fence. I kept willing my hand over but my arm didn’t respond. I wanted to draw her to my side, even if it was only to fall asleep with her head on my shoulder, but I had to be content with her nearness. None of us were capable of driving home. It was going to be a long, uncomfortable night.

When Chris returned, he stood before us, grinning as though he’d discovered the source of the Nile after an epic quest. I’d never been so grateful for the easy forgiveness of male company. I registered his presence and grinned back, hopeful that he’d be impressed by my success at keeping two belly dancers close by. Radha remained asleep, curled a different way now, like a child in the back seat of a car. Susan remained upright but locked into a thousand-yard stare.

Nipples get cold? I asked him.

He was no longer bare-chested and bow-tied but wearing an old T-shirt I didn’t recognize.

Nah, he said. I got raked pretty bad.

I didn’t understand what he meant, so he turned to the side and lifted his shirt up from the back. I saw thick red gouges, like whip welts. It dawned on me.

Leah? I asked.

She does go in for some vengeful breakup sex.

Susan’s head bobbed, as though she’d fallen asleep and woken up just as suddenly, and then she was sitting upright, her stare a little more focused, maybe ten yards out instead of a thousand.

I was awestruck by Chris, the way he handled whatever turns life gave him. Leah had left him, his industrial sex sessions were
over, he was doomed to self-governed celibacy once again, and it did not even cause him a flinch. I would have mourned her, or mourned what was gone. His adroit indifference made him seem forever in control. He was one of the charmed ones, and I was lucky to be his closest friend.

Susan rubbed her eyes and crossed her legs, the triangle of blue bikini disappearing into the wedge of her naked thighs. She must have been cold with little but glitter to cover her. I felt brave enough, suddenly, to mark her as my possession. But at the very moment I meant to reach my arm over, she rose.

And then, to my disbelief, she was standing next to Chris.

They began to talk. They shared a laugh. They huddled closer together, Chris leaning over to hear what she was saying, Susan’s hand reaching up to touch his shoulder and remaining there.

I started to rise, to insert myself into their conversation, to reclaim my stake. Then something in me, something small and despairing and angry, gave up, and I sank into the crumb-infested couch, three times heavier than my normal weight, and thought: This is where I belong, abandoned like a forgotten sock.

I watched them like I’d watch a movie. Beers appearing in their hands. Cigarettes. Chris didn’t even smoke, but he was smoking now, holding the cigarette like he’d pinched a snake to keep it from fanging him. And then I blinked or passed out for a fraction of a second, and when I looked up again, I saw that they were leaving. No. I saw that she was leaving, and bringing Chris with her. His hand in her hand. He looked over his shoulder at me with a puzzled grin as she led him away.

I knew what was happening, but I did not understand how someone as cavalier and emotionally careless as Chris could win
over the girl who’d argued with me about the number of women novelists in my first-year literature class. I did not understand the game, let alone the rules; but I knew once again I’d lost.

Ten minutes later, they were still not back. I went off in search of the bathroom. When I found it, I saw two women standing outside, banging on the plywood door with their fists, calling for the occupants to get their own room. I listened between fist bangs, and heard shower water drilling a tub, and the hollow thud of something knocking against linoleum over and over, and little yelps and little grunts.

Like a cuckold, I was too stunned to weep or flail, but went off to find a beer.

In
the lonely days that followed, I fretted and obsessed about Susan. I wanted to call her and ask why. I knew that she loved me, not Chris. So what compulsion made her give herself over, in the same public fashion that Leah had? What compromises and allowances? What tweaky needs? The pain of the loss I felt was confused with the pain of desire, and the dark suspicion that the fault had been mine, that I’d made some fatal mistake. Maybe I shouldn’t have made fun of Toni Morrison. How was I to know she’d win the Nobel Prize?