Inside the Mind of Gideon Rayburn (9 page)

of the bahia blanca benitez-joneses

Friday night, two weeks into school, Gid sits in study hall. He's annoyed. He understands prep school is about
working, but Friday night study hall, well, it's stupid. (It's actually Calvinist, Gideon, and if you didn't spend all your time
getting high and panicking about how you're going to impress your roommates by having sex with Molly McGarry
before Halloween, you might develop the cultural literacy your hardworking blue-collar father sent you here to get.)
He reads the first chapter of
A Tale of Two Cities,
where the lady is making the scarf. Madison was knitting last night.
She was knitting a sweater that seemed to me to be mostly comprised of holes where she could show off her
breasts. Gid can't help thinking about her. Molly McGarry, okay; she seems like a nice girl, but Madison...he can't
explain.

I can. Molly's appeal requires some concentration. Madison's appeal is like...well, a sweater with lots of holes
in it.

Outside, a pizza delivery car is circling the quad, probably for one of the faculty. On Friday nights, Jim Rayburn
would leave Gid twenty dollars to order a bottle of grape soda and a sausage pizza. After he ate his pizza, he'd call
Danielle. Then they'd retire to his room for some...

Danielle. Holy crap, Danielle.
In a damp, hot rush of sweat and guilt Gid realizes that he hasn't called Danielle,
whom he spoke to every day for...well, he can't say how long (it was seven months, Gid, you went out for seven
months) since he got here.

Gid secures permission to return to his dorm on the grounds that he doesn't feel good.

The pay phone is in the basement rec room of Proctor, where small alumni gifts come to die. I don't
understand how a campus whose entire branding centers around cushy flawlessness allows such unchecked
mayhem. The veneered furniture is damaged and splintered. The television, connected to a dusty old VCR, only gets
UPN. On top of it is a dusty plastic fern in a tin pot covered with calico fabric.

A kid wearing a bathrobe and reading
The Turn of the Screw
lies on a cracked red vinyl sofa.

"I'm sick," he announces the moment Gid walks into the room. "Don't come any closer."

"Well," Gid asks, "why aren't you in your room?"

The kid shrugs. He has dark curly hair and small eyes and glasses. He still looks like a boy. He smells like pot
and some gross illness smell. Gid guesses he's a freshman. "I came down to use the phone," he says. "But it
doesn't work. And I'm too tired to go back up."

Gid puts the pay phone to his ear. Dead.

"I told you." The kid groans theatrically and sets his open book on his chest.

"You really don't have a cell phone?" Gid says, actually kind of happy about this.

The kid shakes his head. "My parents don't believe in cell phones," he says. "They hate the government."

Gid doesn't understand the connection. And he's never heard of anyone hating the
whole
government before.
It seems kind of extreme. "Your parents sound kind of crazy," he says.

"Probably," the kid says, totally unbothered by this idea. "I have an idea. Why don't you do me a favor?" He goes to sit up, and it seems he really is sick. He holds the book upright against the frayed arm of the sofa and kind
of uses it to hoist himself up. "I can't leave. Go over and use the phone in the girl's dorm, White, and call this
number." He reaches into his book and produces a number written on a ripped-off corner of a newspaper.

As Gid moves toward him, the kid makes a halting motion with his hand. "I told you I was sick," he says. He
balls up the paper and tosses it to Gid. It lands at his feet.

"It's my brother," says the kid. "Call him and tell him that Grandma is coming tomorrow at four-twenty."

"You have your brother's number written on the corner of a piece of newspaper?"

When Gid doesn't move, the boy sets the book down again and looks at him. "Look, if you do this for me, I'll do
you a favor."

Gid almost laughs out loud. The kid scowls at him. "You think I can't do you any favors, but I guarantee, I can
do a lot for you."

The kid has a lot of self-confidence, even if he is annoying. "Okay, your grandma's coming at four-twenty, and
what's your name?" Gid says, not trying to keep the irritated tone out of his voice.

"Mickey Eisenberg," the kid says.

"Nice to meet you." Gid waves, hoping to avoid another germ lecture. "I'm Gid."

"I know who you are," Mickey says. "You're the one who said that thing about your tongue to Ms. San Video."
He clucks his tongue. "That Ms. San Video, she is all woman."

"You're fourteen," Gid says. "You can't say someone's all woman. It's ridiculous."

Mickey Eisenberg just shrugs. "Hey, I know what I like," he says. "Someday, maybe you will too."

I think I might have a little crush on Mickey Eisenberg too! Not really. But if he's this sexually decisive at
fourteen, well, things can only improve.

The lounge in White is about as ugly as the one in Proctor, save for a poster of Edward Hopper's
Nighthawks
tacked above the pay phones. Gid stares at the poster, in particular at the man in his trench coat sitting at the lunch
counter. Gid identifies with him. The guy just plain looks like he doesn't know what to do.

Gid asks himself what seems like a thousand questions at once. Has he effectively broken up with Danielle by
not calling her? Does he need to actually break up with her, or could he simply behave as if they were never going
out
—i.e, do nothing?

His mind starts to take a strong liking to this notion. Then a phrase comes into his head that he thinks might be
just what he's looking for: I've been feeling confused.

Guys think the word
confused
gets them off the hook. They are so wrong. All it does is give girls hope where
there is none.

Wait, not confused. Oh, good, Gid figured that one out all on his own.
Confused
will lead to a conversation
about what he wants. No way. He gets a brief image of his parents, fighting.

He has to call Danielle. It's the decent thing to do.

Even I think so. And I don't want him paying attention to other girls. Even if he's only doing it to be polite. What if
he falls back in love with her from the sound of her voice? Doubtful.

He'll do the favor for Mickey first.

A guy, maybe twenty or twenty-five, answers. "I'm calling for Mickey," Gid says. "Your grandmother will be here
tomorrow at four-twenty."

"Okay," says the guy. And hangs up. Gid stares at the phone, wondering if he did everything right. He's thinking
about calling back when he hears a girl's low, snickery laughter. He turns around. Standing there dressed in a white
T-shirt, white pants, and brown sandals, next to the world's biggest pile of Louis Vuitton luggage, is a girl who is
somehow, impossibly, even more beautiful than all the other girls he has seen so far combined.

I can attest that she really is.

Gid gasps, as if the girl were on fire. The girl opens her mouth.

The girl says, "Four-twenty?" and raises one perfect brown eyebrow. "You know what that means, don't you?"
Her hair and eyes are dark, and her skin is a uniform golden tone. She reaches around and lifts the hair off her
neck, then winds it like a rope and ties it to itself so that it hangs in a heavy knot down the middle of her back.
"jQue

calor!"she
says. "You'd think these people could pay for some air conditioners, no?"

She looks Gid up and down, realizing he hasn't said a word and is just staring at her. Girls are starting to filter back from study hall, walking quickly, heads lowered, though most eyes cheat upward for at least a quick glance at
this girl. This creature. This apparition.

Gid's mind is going apeshit.

Her face lights up with expectation.

He realizes he will have to say something. "Do you go to school here?" he says.

She feasts on his incredulity. "You're new," she says, slowly, deliciously. Again with the eyebrows. Gid prays to
God that she's flirting. "I have been here since ninth grade." Her accent is totally different from Ms. San Video. But
he doesn't want to ask this girl where she's from, because he has learned that sometimes people with accents are
just from the United States and they get mad when you ask them where they're from.

"My name is Pilar Benitez-Jones," the girl says. "I am late because my sister got married." Pilar Benitez-Jones laughs, Gid notices, with little humor. "My sister got married, which was a long affair involving two continents, a lot of
air travel, which dried out my skin, and there was also an awful lot of my parents screaming at each other. Or, rather,
my mom screaming and my dad trying to excuse whatever behavior of his had made her scream." Pilar sits down on
top of one of her suitcases and, as if to shut it all out, clamps her beautiful hands over her beautiful ears.

"That's so funny," Gid says, happy for the first time in his life about his parents' acrimonious divorce. "I mean, I
was just thinking about my parents' fights in exactly that way. I'm Gideon," he says.

"Gee-de-on," she says. He doesn't even think of correcting her.

"My mother and her new husband moved to Santa Fe," he says softly. "I call it Santa Gay because it's
—"

His
confession is interrupted by a soft ringing. Pilar reaches into her bra
—oh my—and extracts a tiny silver
phone.

Gid thinks it is appropriate that this information about his mother kind of went into the ether. He would like for it
to stay there.

Pilar speaks excitedly, head bowed, in Spanish. Gid, who, appearances to the contrary, is not entirely clueless,
realizes this may be his invitation to leave. But Pilar covers up the phone's tiny mouthpiece with one pink-polished thumbnail. "Wait," she whispers. She's off the phone in a few seconds. She looks around cautiously.

"What are you doing in here, making calls for Mickey Eisenberg?" she demands.

"You know Mickey Eisenberg?" Gid is amazed.

"Of course, he sells Ecstasy.
He calls
himself Four-twenty, some pothead reference."

"I thought he sold Ecstasy."

Pilar holds out a lock of hair and pulls it down so it bisects her mouth. I recognize this as a brazenly
manipulative female gesture, but Gid just thinks it's the hottest thing he's ever seen. "He sells Ecstasy," Pilar
explains. "He smokes pot."

Gid must look shocked and stupid, because Pilar starts to laugh. "Mickey Eisenberg has you in here making
drug deals for him, and you don't even know it."

Pilar thinks this is very funny. Then her eyes soften with concern. She touches his arm.

That's when it happens. The slight weight of her finger on his arm feels like the whole world, in a good way.
She's talking. Gid tries to concentrate on what she's saying, but he's dizzy. He's in love. This is why he left Danielle
standing in the driveway without telling her what she wanted to hear. This is what he was waiting for.

Oh, and Gideon is forgetting the bet. Pilar has transported him from the cares of this world.

"Don't worry," she whispers. "None of the teachers here have any idea that Mickey Eisenberg sells drugs." She rolls her eyes. "And as long as we all keep getting our Ivy League acceptances, they wouldn't even think to
care." The dorm is starting to buzz now, as more and more girls come back from study hall. Suddenly, Pilar's golden
and perfect face lights up. "Madison!" she cries.

Madison Sprague's short hair is in little pigtails. Gid thinks they look cute, because he is a guy and doesn't
know to be annoyed by the whole "I'm so pretty I don't care what I look like" aesthetic. She and Pilar give each other a big girly hug as Gid hovers, embarrassed. He should probably walk away, but he just can't. He knows he'll be at school all year, he hopes all next year as well, but as he looks at Pilar's sparkling brown eyes and perfect butt in her
white pants, he can only feel this is the most important moment in his life.

'
^;
Hey, Gid.'
^:
Madison gives Gid a flirtatious punch on the arm. She reaches over and kisses him on the cheek.
Then she says, "He lives with Cullen and Nicholas," which makes Gid wonder, does she have to explain why she
knows him? Couldn't she just know him?

"I gotta go, Hal's calling," Madison says, walking backward up the stairs, sending smaller, less pretty girls
scurrying from her wake. "I'll come to your room later."