Play Me Backwards (14 page)

“He's been doing that since he was at least nine or ten,” I said. “And I'm not really even sure he's pretending. His hangover cures defy science. And I don't think I've ever seen him fall asleep.”

“Are his parents out of town?”

I just shrugged as I got into the car. “I haven't seen either of them in years. I only ever saw his mom once, and that was just for five seconds when I was about nine.”

She shook her head. “Weird.”

I didn't much want a lecture on how bad my friends were, so I put
Moby-Dick
back on as we drove off to Leslie's, where about twenty people had gathered in her living room to watch a really awful comedy that was still in theaters, but that someone had downloaded off a torrent site. It was a camera recording that looked like shit, and you could hear people talking in the background, but I don't think a better quality file would have made the movie any better. The one thing it had going for it was a scene where an old lady gets diarrhea and says, “Oh, merciful Heavens!” while she explodes. It was stupid, but I laughed.

And when I did, some asshole turned back to me and said, “Do you know that is the
only
time I've heard you laugh at this entire movie?”

Some guy on the other side of the room looked over towards us. It was dark and he couldn't see me, but he said, “Is it that Leon guy? I told you, man, all this guy ever talks about is turds! I'm just saying, bro.”

I laughed along with everyone else—you've got to be able to laugh at yourself when someone makes a realistic point. I'd brought it on myself. I was the Poop Guy.

At the end of the movie Paige and I drove off to the nook and did a little more fooling around. I noticed that sometimes she didn't seem to be kissing back, like what she really wanted wasn't to make out, but just to be kissed. That was all right.

Once I dropped her off at home, I headed back to Stan's place, where everyone was watching a Japanese horror movie. These were my people. And no matter how good I got at hanging around with Paige's friends, they probably always would be.

This, of course, made me wonder again what the hell Paige saw in me, beyond the fact that I had the sense not to go around sending people pictures of my balls when they hadn't asked for them. But she saw something. Out of all the guys at all the restaurants and living rooms in town, she'd chosen me. The Poop Guy.

In fact, the next morning she asked if I'd like to have dinner at her house and meet her parents.

Paige had never tried to get me to shave the pubelike whiskers that I'd cultivated on my chin. I suspected that she liked them, actually. They gave me sort of a rugged air that I think some women are biologically programmed to dig—it's a mental remnant of the days when tough-looking guys could bring home more woolly mammoth meat or something. But the day I was supposed to meet her parents, I shaved them off using disposable razors and shaving cream that I picked up down at the dollar store. I looked about twelve years old without them, and even less like I could ever kill a woolly mammoth, but I wanted to be halfway presentable.

When I knocked on the door, Paige opened it up and immediately covered her face with her palm when she saw my smooth face.

“Oh my God,” she said through her hand.

“Go ahead, you can laugh,” I said. “I look ridiculous.”

She put her hand down and just chuckled, then did this thing
where she put her hand on my shoulder and traced it down my arm before holding my hand.

“You look nice,” she said. “But now I feel like a cradle robber.”

“I'm older than you,” I said.

“Girls mature faster than boys.”

I shuffled my feet and took off my shoes. The carpets were all white, and everything about the house made me want to rethink any plans of cleaning myself up. When I get a house, I'm getting brown carpet so I can track mud around, spill stuff, whatever. I'd be afraid to fart in a room with white carpet.

A man should be able to fart in his own house. I'd rather live in some hovel, like the pirate guy from the Hickman Avenue Kum and Go probably did, than live in Oak Meadow Mills.

“Is that him?” came a voice from the kitchen—Paige's mom, I assumed.

“He has a name, Mother,” said Paige.

Her mom emerged in the hallway, smiling. She was rich, all right. Most of my friends' moms look like brutally normal women in their thirties and forties in their mom jeans and sweatshirts. Paige's mom looked like she'd spent a lot of money putting herself together. I imagined that she was probably a Botox user.

I gave her my most charming smile.

“Hi,” I said. “I'm Leon.”

“I'm Renee, Paige's mom,” she said. “Come in. Make yourself at home!”

Paige and I followed her into the kitchen, where Paige's twelve-year-old sister, Autumn, was sitting at the table already, staring at her phone. Their dad, Gene, whom I'd already met the day he
threatened to stab me, was cooking something on the stove.

“Hi, Leon,” he called out. “Have a seat. We're casual here.”

Nothing weird had happened, but I could tell Paige was totally embarrassed already. She gave this
Oh my God, I'm
SO
sorry
look as we sat at the table, with me across from Autumn, who was wearing so much makeup that if you pushed the edge of a quarter against her cheek, the makeup probably would have held it in place.

The family all prayed before dinner. I kinda felt like they should have made sure I wasn't Jewish or anything first, but I suppose Paige would have told them if I was.

After they said “Amen” and we all started on our salads, Autumn said, “Is it true that everyone who works at the Ice Cave worships the devil?”

“Autumn!” said Renee. “That is not polite!”

“Natasha said they did!” said Autumn. “I'm just curious. God.”

Autumn did that thing you hear from girls a lot where she added an “uh” at the end of every sentence. Like, she pronounced “God” as “God-uh.”

Paige did it occasionally too. It kinda bugged me, but I was learning to live with it.

I dodged the question, of course. There was a woodcut print of the Little Brown Church in the Vale, one of Iowa's few landmarks, on the wall, so I obviously wasn't going to score any points by trying to explain that it was mostly agnostics and pagans back there. I was not going to mention Stan under any circumstances.

I was just turning myself off and faking it, the way I sometimes did in group outings, and the way I did just about any time I had to talk to a teacher or my own parents. It's about like going to someone
else's church: Stand when they stand, sit when they sit, and hope you don't end up getting sacrificed with a big knife or something.

“Did you ever think about one of the other ice cream places?” Gene asked from the stove. “We like Penguin Foot Creamery.”

“I worked there for a while,” I said.

“It's supposed to be a great place to work,” he said. “They made some list in
Forbes
. Something about the best employers or fastest growing companies.”

“They talk a big game,” I said, “but I get more hours at the Ice Cave, and I have a better chance of moving up to management sooner. All of the managers at Penguin Foot have to go to college first.”

“Well, there's nothing wrong with that,” said Renee.

“Yeah, but I can't really imagine going to college just to go into retail management,” I said. “I'm probably better off getting into it now and getting it on the résumé ahead of time.”

“Smart,” said Gene. “Didn't I tell you he was smart, Renee?”

“You did,” said Renee. “You sure did. Which college are you going to, Leon?”

The answer, of course, was
nowhere
. But I had rehearsed for this by telling my stock lie to my parents over and over. I was on autopilot, not even thinking about what I was saying now.

“Just junior college for the first year or two,” I said. “So I can work more and save money while I get the requirements out of the way. You don't do anything in your major the first couple years anyway.”

“What's your major?”

“Undeclared for now. I haven't quite decided. But the requirements are the same for a lot of them.”

Gene set the food down on the table—steaks. Nice ones. Mashed potatoes, too.

“Can I grab you a beer, there, Leon?” he asked.

I looked up, thinking,
Hell yeah,
but not knowing whether I ought to say that. But then he slapped me on the back and said, “Just kidding! Ha!”

Har de har har.

There were only two particularly awkward moments over the course of the dinner, really, but they were big and notable ones.

The first was about halfway through the main course, when Autumn looked me right in the eye and said, “Do you guys have sex?”

I didn't have to answer, because Renee shouted, “Autumn! This is the dinner table. That is very rude.”

“I was just asking,” said Autumn.

Paige fixed her with one of her serious glares, only
way
more serious than the ones she gave me, and her dad started asking if I ever played golf. Which, of course, I did not. I hadn't even played
miniature
golf in a long time. He offered to take me out to play the back nine at the country club some time, and I said it sounded great.

I felt like kind of a chump saying that, but it's not like I could
say
it sounded awful, and that I knew it would give him a good chance to get me to a secluded place to give me a sex talk. Stand when they stand, sit when they sit.

The next big, notable, awkward moment came when Paige's mom asked me a question for which I was really, really unprepared. One that I could not have prepared for and couldn't handle on autopilot.

“So,” said Renee, “you're escorting Paige to her debutante ball, right?”

“Oh, God, Mom, you can
not
bring that up,” said Paige.

“Debutante ball?” I asked. “They still have debutante balls?”

At first I tried not to laugh. I'd seen debutante balls in, like, cartoons now and then, but I thought they were one of those things that
used
to exist, and maybe still did, but that I'd never meet anyone who'd been to one. Like 4-H Club meetings. Or low-down boxing clubs and mirror mazes.

If those were real, she might as well have asked me if I was going to the moon or something.

Paige was sort of blushing. “They still have them,” she said, “but the only people who care are the debutantes' moms.”

“Well, technically, it's not a
debutante
ball,” said Renee. “It's a
scholarship cotillion
that the Harvester Club puts on every year. But we call it the debutante ball. I'm surprised Paige didn't tell you about it. Lots of her friends are going.”

The thought of actually
going
to one brought about that same familiar gnawing feeling in my guts that had been less noticeable since I got the detention dealt with. I didn't know shit about debutante balls, but something told me I couldn't count on the fact that everyone poops to help me make small talk at one of them. I went straight to looking for a way out. Paige didn't seem excited about it, so I didn't feel obligated to go along with it.

“I'd need a suit, wouldn't I?” I asked.

“Every man should have a suit,” said her dad. “I'll take you shopping myself.”

Sweet Satan, this guy was desperate to get me alone. I was starting to think maybe he was a pervert or something.

“I think I have one,” I said. “I just don't wear it much.”

“Don't tell me you spilled a Slushee on it.” He laughed as he picked up his fork. Renee gave him a weird look, and Gene said, “Didn't Paige tell you about that? The two of them go driving around looking for some weird Slushee flavor,” before putting the steak in his mouth.

“They do not,” said Autumn. “They probably just park the car and have sex.”

“Shut
up
, Autumn!” said Paige. “We drive around town and, like, explore.”

“Explore sex,” said Autumn.

“That's enough, Autumn,” said Renee. “Didn't you also say you were listening to an audio book together, Paige?”

“Uh-huh,” said Paige. “Leon has been listening to
Moby-Dick
.”

“See? Dick!” said Autumn.

Gene put his silverware down, swallowed the food he was chewing, and gave her a stern, fatherly look.

“Autumn,” he said, “I'm sure they aren't doing anything I wouldn't want them to do.”

He gave me a very quick
you'd better not be
look.

“And that's a real classic book, isn't it?” asked Paige's mom. “It's very famous.” Then she looked at Autumn and said, “And it's very old, so there's no sex in it.”

“Not so far,” I said. “I'm only about halfway through, though.”

I'd been making a point of listening to it more lately, now that I'd calculated that if I didn't hurry up, I could be listening for months. I usually had it playing while I was working by myself, and any time I was in the car. And I was more and more sure that Ishmael and Queequeg were more than friends.

Paige, meanwhile, was clearly getting desperate to leave before anyone said anything else about sex.

“Don't we have some yearbook work to do, Leon?” she asked, the second I finished my steak.

“Yeah,” I said. “We'd better get going, huh?”

Autumn opened her mouth, obviously to say we were going to go have sex, but both parents stopped her with another look. I did all of the necessary hand-shaking and talking about how good the food was (which at least wasn't a lie—that steak could have been the food of Danish kings), and we hustled out the door into my car.