Rats Saw God (14 page)

“Maybe after the dance, you can do my taxes,” Doug said, appraising my new look somewhat more critically. He took a stick of Wrigley's out of a pack on the floor and handed it to me. “Beer breath, a dating
no
when meeting parents.”

I checked my watch. It was 8:38, time to go. I returned to the bathroom and rechecked my teeth for gunk, then, nodding to my friend, departed. I arrived at Dub's at 8:56, a decidedly uncool four minutes early. Her house was plantation style with four white wooden pillars supporting a porch that circled the house. The slave quarters, I assumed, were out back. I considered driving around the block for the next ten minutes, but decided that since my Speed Stick was still at
full strength, it would behoove me to make my appearance now. I switched off the ignition, put the keys in my pocket, a bit concerned about the lump they made in my slacks, and forced myself to walk deliberately to the door.

I secretly wished a Varner female would answer the door, or better yet, Dub would dash out and say, “Quick, let's make a break for your car before you have to meet my parents.” I got neither. A brick of a man I assumed was Dub's father appeared in the doorway.

“You must be Steve,” he said, offering me his hand. “Come in. Come in.” I had dried my hands on the back of my slacks nonstop from the car to the door, yet I still felt like I was handing the Dub
père
a slice of Spam. He stepped out of the doorframe, revealing his wife. “I'm Francis and this is Maureen.”

I moistened Maureen's hand as well. My preconceptions of the couple had been based solely on my “I Never” knowledge of their marijuana dabbling. I realized as I met them that I had expected a VW bus in the driveway, a bearded Francis, and a bell-bottomed Maureen. Instead, Francis was balding, an inch shorter than me and a hundred pounds heavier. Maureen's straight black hair appeared natural, unlike her daughter's. Maureen had the camera. My “likewise pleased to meet you” response sounded like an audition for the Vienna Boys' Choir.

I had envisioned a grand stairway down which Dub would make her entrance. I also assumed she would need to be beckoned, but she appeared from somewhere in the back of the house, saving me from prolonged chitchatting with the adults.

“You look nice,” she said, stealing what should have been my opening line.

“So do you,” I eeped. Dub's hair was up, held by a magical clip that allowed the excess to cascade in hot iron-curled shoots down the back of her neck. Wisps of bangs had been purposely freed from the clip, and they hung down to Dub's lovely eyebrows. She had obviously coordinated the green vintage dress she wore with her eyes. White gloves covered her arms up to her elbows. The Varners beamed. Maureen pushed us together, stepped back and clicked off a half dozen frames.

From what I understood, the small gym was the perennial home of the homecoming dance while the prom alternated between the parallel lavishness of the Four Seasons and Ritz Carlton. We drove to Grace, making mirthless small talk about how we hoped we'd see Bill and Holly, how outdated and mainstream we imagined the music would be, the fluky nippishness of Clear Lake's early cold season. Dub sat so far away from me that I wasn't able to see her in my peripheral vision when I drove.

As Sarah had instructed, I parked the Lincoln and raced around to the other side to open Dub's door, but the car was so huge I couldn't circumnavigate it in time. She exited the craft unassisted. We joined the procession bound for tropical paradise. At the door Dub opened her purse as if we were going Dutch on the admission. I magnanimously refused her money. The bowels of the darkened gym were, as Holly had described to Lynnette, all construction paper and cheese. We sat across from each other in molded plastic chairs at a long cafeteria table that had been covered gloriously with white
butcher paper. It was quickly obvious that we were operating on sophomore time; the football game wasn't even over yet. A half-dozen ten-galloned couples shuffled around the jump ball circle to the yodeling of Garth Brooks. After an hour notable for stretches of staring at the dance floor by Dub, staring at the exit sign by me, separate and extended trips to the rest room, the playing of the love theme from
Beauty and the Beast,
and a deliberation on what our friends were doing that evening, a whooping and delirious throng seemed to instantly take over the gym in an orgy of bloodlust and school spirit. Dub leaned over to me.

“Looks like we kicked a whole bunch of ass tonight.”

Dub and I spotted Bill and Holly at the same time. We both stood and waved our arms frantically to get their attention. They acted surprised to see us. They pulled up two chairs on Dub's side of the table and sat close to each other, underscoring the distance between Dub and me. Holly challenged Bill to join the football players who were slam-dunking some unfortunate girl's mum in a crepe-papered rim. Bill pretended to get up to join the fray, but Holly pulled him back down and kissed his cheek.

The DJ played a five-year-old Peter Gabriel song, and Holly grabbed Bill's hand to pull him on the dance floor. I noticed with some annoyance that he didn't appear nearly reluctant enough. Dub looked imploringly at me.

“I, uh, don't dance,” I said, making it sound like I was a member of some cult that forbade it.

“If you don't want to dance, it's fine with me, but do you mind if I dance with Bill and Holly?”

“Yeah. Go ahead.” I slouched in my chair and watched as the trio edged out onto the floor. Bill and Holly danced, as did most students there, like speed skaters pushing off their opposite leg with each beat, celebrating each successful stomp with an intermittent clap, whereas Dub created her own dance microcosm. Dub's hands stretched high above her head where they seemed to be kneading an invisible lump of dough. Her feet were stationary, but her knees, hips, and shoulders swung hypnotically. She kept her eyes shut, and her ear rested against one of her upraised shoulders. In her queer dance I grasped, for the first time, the difference between sensuality and some athletic Fly Girl's simulated banging.

When Dub returned to the table, she sat next to me instead of across from me. I couldn't help but think that was a good sign. In the refracted squares of light supplied by the tropical paradise mirror ball, I could see Dub glistening, looking happier. Cassandra Holbrook seized the mike and interrupted a Madonna song to announce importantly that the coronation ceremony was about to begin. Now, ordinarily, this would have been a proclamation either Dub or I would have mocked (“Ooh, should we move closer?” “God! I can't watch!”), but in the presence of two nominees who happened to be our friends, we kept our sarcasm internal.

Within fifteen minutes Bill and Holly were sitting back next to us, looking no worse for their loss to a toothy Buc Babe and cement-truck-looking fullback. Missy had been right about the time most people spent at the dance. After
the royalty ceremony, people who came in an hour after us were already splitting. The DJ, not oblivious of the exodus, shifted into his one-to-one, then two-to-one, slow-song-to-fast-song ratio. Slow dancing interested me. There didn't seem to be much to it. Partners locked themselves into a first-round wrestling clinch and spun, taking thirty to forty-five seconds to complete a rotation. I tried watching feet, looking for some mystery step that would reveal me as a slow dancing impostor if I were to get out on the floor. I saw none. Though our tension had eased with the camaraderie and Dub's foray onto the dance floor, the two of us still weren't saying much. When I saw her mouthing the words to “With or Without You,” I worked up my nerve.

“Would you like to dance?”
Dance
seemed like a funny word. No one was dancing—they were mauling and groping. In essence, I had just asked Dub if she wouldn't mind following me out to the middle of a crowded room where I would proceed to affix myself to her. I wish I could have managed something cooler, a “Care to join me?” with my crooked elbow accepting only yes as an answer.

“Sure,” she said, and she took my hand, palm to palm, and led me out onto the floor of the gym.

I can't say I remember much about the rest of the U2 song. I was too concerned with sliding my feet and putting my hands in the proper lower back loci. I watched other couples rather than Dub, factoring their rotation, sway, body separation, and tried to adjust my own accordingly. When the song ended, I relaxed, congratulated myself for going undetected, and headed for base—our table. But Dub held
me firm, and as one of those drearier English bands equated love and death, she took over leading duties. First, she closed the distance between us. Then, using her hands, she positioned my head so that I was looking at her. She squeezed me and rocked us in time to the music. I hadn't realized before that slow songs had a beat. I became aware of Dub, her smell, the way she felt, her breath on my neck. I know it's a cliché, but I really did notice the curve of her back. For the first time since asking her to the dance, I was happy I had. All that time in geometry, wishing I were with her, wishing I were touching her, and here I was. I had been a rap song away from completely missing the experience.

We returned to our table holding hands (fingers interlocked). Dub had taken my hand, but I think I might have made the move had she not. Neither of us let go when we sat down.

“I am very happy right now,” I said like a dork.

“You're not thinking of getting us a room, are you?” Dub said, eyes widening in facetious anticipation.

“Already booked. And tell me now if you're not planning on putting out, because I know plenty of women who will.”

“Probably all friends of mine,” she said, winning the exchange. We grinned, and for the first time since Holly and Bill joined us, we were oblivious to them.

Matching blue envelopes lay on the bar that divided the kitchen from the family room when I got home from Cap's today. One was addressed to Sarah, the other to me. I knew they were from
the astronaut without reading the name. How many other people use an American flag icon on their return mail stickers? Given the dimensions and sameness of the envelopes, I guessed them to be invitations of some sort.

I nuked a hot dog and tortilla. I ate at the counter without disturbing the letter.

•   •   •

The next day—for the second time in less than a week—Sarah came into my bedroom. It was starting to feel like a Who concert in here. In her right hand was the blue envelope I had ignored the previous day. The left hand clutched her letter, already ripped open.

“Read it,” she ordered.

“What is it? Let me guess. He wants us to show up dressed like a gentleman and young lady to the Space Travelers Logrolling Convention? Houston Bigwig Elbow-Rubbing Seminar? Senator Ass-Kissing Competition?”

Sarah didn't think I was funny. “Just open it.”

I slid my index finger under the envelope flap and carefully peeled it open. I found, as expected, an invitation inside.

I'll be damned. The astronaut's getting married.

Dub sat in the same area code with me in the Lincoln front seat on the way home. Trey had stopped by our table and invited the four of us to a party at the Ritz Carlton that a bunch of his jock friends were having. What a guy! I couldn't accept, though, because I had to arrive home before 1
A.M.
—my standard home-from-work time, lest the astronaut get suspicious
about the Lincoln. Dub was going through the old man's somewhat limited tape collection.

“Put in the Goo Goo Dolls,” I said, aware of the actual selection.

“No Goo Goo Dolls. But can I interest you in
Hank Williams's Greatest Hits, Improving Your Putting with Ben Crenshaw,
or some tape with the all the letters worn off?”

“Put that one in.” I knew it to be Neil Diamond's
Hot August Night.
When we were kids, Sarah and I used to beg the astronaut to play it on long trips. Of course, I wasn't about to admit this to Dub.