Slot Machine (24 page)

“It’s
my
affliction, remember? I’ll make the faces.” I made one. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do,” I whined.

Mikie shook his head thoughtfully. “You know what everyone’s gonna say right? You know what they always say at a school like ours, when a guy gets—”

“I know.” I buried my face in my hands.

“Gonna say you’re easy—”

“I said I know, Mike...”

“Volunteer center on the football team... captain of the shower squad... good ol’ Elvin, Just Say
Go
...”

“All right, I know, I know. I read the walls like everybody else. But I really don’t need that kind of popularity.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “You could use
some
kind. ...”

I opened my hands, and my face, to my good friend. “And you’re the guy who’s
helping
me, is that right?”

“So what? A little bit of a rep would do you some good. At least your phone will finally start ringing.”

“Hey. It rings plenty, all right.”

“Ya. For your mom.”

I went all dark on him. It’s quite a sight. The whole thing, glowering, scowling, growling, snarling.

“Thought we had a rule?”

“That wasn’t a mother joke.”

“It was a mother joke.”

“No. If it’s true, it doesn’t qualify as a mother joke.”

Hmmm. “Well it’s damn close to a mother joke.”

“You know, El, I been meaning to bring this up anyway. We made that rule when we were, what, seven? Don’t you think...?”

“It’s a perfectly good rule,” I snapped. “It’s a timeless rule, one that’ll make sense when we’re fifty.”

“If you’re still having this discussion when we are fifty... about how nobody can joke about your mom and all... then you’re going to be having the discussion
alone.”

“I don’t know why we’re talking about that anyway. I’m not going to see fifty. I’m not going to see October, Mike.”

“I don’t think it can kill ya, El.”

I didn’t answer. Maybe I wasn’t going to die, but it would have been nice to be treated like I was. That kind of thing was Mikie’s job. I waited.

“Hurts though, huh?” he said somberly.

I nodded bravely. Felt better.

“Kinky, no?” Frankie said, which is what I’d expect Frankie to say. We were sitting around my kitchen table after school, discussing the assembly we’d sat through earlier in the day. Eating graham crackers with peanut butter. And milk. A good wholesome snack, even with Frank kinking things up.

I like that they call it Assembly. It gives me pictures in my head. Like, we’re all so mangled and disarranged that they have to convey the whole lot of us down to the gym and put us back together again.

And what did they assemble us for, on this otherwise fine September day? To tell us about the sister school.

We have a sister school.

Does she look like us? Will she wash the dishes? Does she have any nice-looking friends we could meet?

No. We dance with this sister.

Should I be confused here? Should I be ashamed of the thoughts that may be dancing in my head? Excited, though, is what I am. Excited in the most unpleasant, terrified way, at the mention of dancing with the sister school. Thank god I don’t have a real sister, if this is the way I respond to...

“Why do we have to have a sister school?” I asked. “And why do we have to dance with it?”

“Because,” Mikie said, “you may have noticed, we’re all guys at our school.”

“Hey, I take gym like everybody else. I noticed.”

“Well now they’re gonna fill that gym up with girls, and I for one think it’s a fine idea,” Frankie said.

The school did this every year, apparently. Got all us oozy pimply-faced frosh guys together with the pimply-faced frosh girls of our sister school, St. Theresa’s, to stir us up with forty-year-old doo-wop music and Chips Ahoy cookies and see what kind of sexual slaw we could make of ourselves.

“Yes, a very fine idea,” said my mother, walking in from work.

“Yes, well, nobody asked you,” I said. Bratty. I get like that now that I’m in high school.

“Wait till I tell your father,” she snapped back at me.

That would be my dead father.

Mikie and Frankie stopped chewing and stared at me.

“Ma, could you stop the talking to dead people thing? At least while we have company? I have few enough friends as it is.”

“What company?” she pointed out—reasonably enough. “We don’t have company, we have
them.”

“Well maybe if we practice on these two we can get some real company eventually.”

She plunked herself down into the fourth kitchen chair, leaned forward on her elbows real friendly like. She smiled at Mikie, who smiled back. She smiled at Frankie, who took that as his cue to do something with his feet under the table that made her kick him. This was kind of an ongoing story, and neither one of them seemed particularly fazed by it.

“So, Elvin,” she said. “Are we ready to discuss your problem?”

“Ah,
hell,”
I said as both of my friends got up and walked out.

“You two probably want to be alone,” Mike said, rustling Frank out.

“Can we hang outside the window?” Frankie asked before Mikie gave him one final mighty shove.

Now that we were alone... I bolted from the table, locked myself in the bathroom and ran myself a steaming—and noisy—bath.

T
HE THREE OF US
were standing in the mall parking lot, looking up at the big sign.

At the big, and tall, sign.

“I have my limit,” I said sternly.

“Ya, I’d say your limit’s about two sixty these days, Elvin,” Frank cracked.

“I don’t care if it’s
three
sixty, I am not buying clothes in there. No sir. Anyway, what do I need new clothes for? The clothes I have are fine. I look great in my clothes.”

Mikie got very serious with me. He put his hand on my shoulder. “Elvin, I am your friend. I am your friend, but even I wouldn’t say—”

“Shut up,” I said. “Did my mother put you up to this?”

“Elvin, you are never going to get anywhere with the girls if you don’t spiff up your look a little,” Frank said.

“And I think you should stop mentioning your mother every other sentence. Nobody wants to date Principal Skinner.”

“I told you already, I’ll be spiffy enough when my diet kicks in. I can feel it working already. Whoa, there it is now. Feel that? It’s kicking.”

“That’s good,” Mike said. He was doing the serious thing again, which somehow was even more degrading than Frankie’s ridicule thing. See, when Frankie abused and humiliated me, it was half accidental, because he was teaching me life in his style, and his style was mayhem. But when Mikie did it, he was being Dad. He was always right, and we all knew it. If Mikie was bringing me down, I always assumed down was where I belonged.

“Maybe you wouldn’t have the ’rhoids if you’d keep the weight under control. ...”

See? Like that.

“So what. You guys can stop worrying about my health, and we can skip the Big and Tall Shop because since my diet started this morning I’ve already gotten everything under control. So let’s skip the clothes store and go on over and spend the money at Pizzeria Uno instead.”

“Come on, El, the dance is Friday. You can’t lose that much by then, and I am determined to get you some companionship if it kills me,” Frankie said.

And you thought he couldn’t be nice.

“We can’t change you,” he added, “but we might be able to disguise you, with the right outfit.”

Never mind.

I looked up at the sign again. I closed my eyes tight. I opened them again. It was still there. It was still big and tall.

“I can’t do it. This is the lowest, you know? Do you understand, what I am admitting, if I start buying my clothes in there? Huh? Do ya?”

They looked at each other, then looked back at me.

“Uh-huh,” they both said.

So. See these are the things here at fourteen long hard years, the things I have to reassess. Are these guys my friends, my best-of-alls, because they are the people who will tell me the truth? Or would they be better for me if they could just make me feel good by saying whatever necessary? Y’know, every part of me, every cell, every jiggly cell, wants to tell them to shut up, beat it boys, leave me alone. Two problems with that, though. First, they probably wouldn’t listen to me if I did tell them to blow. Second, then again they might.

That still doesn’t mean I was ready to take this thing head-on.

“Well, no sale,” I said. “I can’t do it. I can’t admit that.”

So there we were. Two well-proportioned high school freshmen and myself, standing outside the B&T, staring.

“You’re tall,” Mikie said suddenly.

“Huh?” I asked.

“Huh?” Frank asked.

“You’re tall, Elvin,” Mike repeated. “You had a growth spurt recently or something? Because I didn’t realize before this how
tall
you are. Isn’t that right, Franko?”

Franko was a little slow on the uptake. “Tall? I suppose, he’s maybe kinda tall. Where we goin’ with this?”

“Tall,
Frank. He’s tall. He’s wicked tall.” Mikie was gesturing madly up at the Big and Tall sign as he spoke, trying to get the point over.

As a thinker, Frank is a very handsome guy. But eventually he got it. “Ah,” Frank said,
“tall.
You been drinking giraffe milk, El? Listen, we got to get you into the Big and
Tall
shop, get you outfitted. ...”

We had magically gotten to that place where a person’s life becomes so pathetic it isn’t even embarrassing anymore. I was enjoying it.

I allowed myself to be tugged toward the shop, each friend pulling one of my hands.

“I better duck on the way in,” I said as Mikie held the glass door open for me.

“Better pull on your boots too,” Frank said. “It’s gettin’ deep.”

Mike elbowed him in the chest.

“Yes sir, what can I show you?” the very big and not so tall salesguy said. To me.

I frowned at him. “How do you know it’s me? There are three of us just walked in, so how come you came right up to me, huh?”

The guy flinched. Then he looked at Mikie, who got way up on his toes, pointed at me, smiled and nodded at the guy. Frank, who was about three inches taller than me, slouched dramatically and gave the guy the high sign.

Good friends. Knuckleheads, but good friends.

“Oh, well, you’re the
tall
guy,” the salesman said to me. “Obviously.”

I suppose he’d served a neurotic defensive fatty or two in his career.

“He’d like to see some of your finest tall-people pants, please,” Mikie said.

The salesman looked at my waist. “Thirty-eight, right, Stretch?”

“You got it, cowboy,” I said, and we followed him to the racks.

It was a pretty silly scene, actually. Mike would select a shirt and Frank would select the pants to match, nobody would ask me anything, and then I’d try on whatever they pushed on me. “Right this way,” the salesman said; then he’d shove me into a snug-fitting dressing room where I’d wrestle with the ensemble, trying to get it on and get a look at myself in the mirror that was practically rubbing up against me and trying not to expose the glory of me too soon as the skimpy curtain that served as a door insisted on attaching itself to me with all its static clingy might.

I know, by the way, that they do hide surveillance cameras in dressing rooms. It’s against the law and all, but we all know they do it. And it’s not to catch shoplifters half as much as it is to catch scenes like this one. I’d do it if I were them.

“Come out,” Mikie called the
first
time I took twenty minutes with an outfit.

“Cripes,” he said when I came out wearing my own clothes. “What the hell, El?”

I mumbled. “Try thirty-nine.”

“Jeez,” Frankie said. “Whatja do, Elvin, bring snacks in there with ya?”

I retained all my dignity. Fortunately this didn’t take long since I didn’t bring all that much with me in the first place. “Thirty... nine, please.”

“There should be a law,” Frank grumbled, snatching the pants away from me. Frank takes fashion issues very seriously. “If your waist number is bigger than your inseam number, you should be forced to wear corduroys that thigh-whistle at you every day till you get your act together.”

I didn’t have to take that kind of crap off him. There are moments in life when even us even-tempered guys have to spout. This was one of those moments. This was where I needed to draw a line. When the going gets tough and all that, right?

Right?

“And bring me back a Coke,” I yelled.

That would have been funny, huh? If I were trying to make a joke instead of a stand.

It was a real boys’ day out though. I tried on seventeen combinations without even counting the hats and socks. The guys were very patient with me.

“Cripes, Elvin, just wear a toga,” Frank said.

“Hang in there five more minutes, Elvin,” Mike cracked, “and that outfit will qualify as secondhand and you’ll get it cheaper.”

“Five more minutes and you’ll owe me rent/’ the salesman snapped.

“Sheesh,” I said. “What a grouch. Maybe a year from now when I buy my
next
new outfit I’ll take my business somewhere else.”

“If you’re even out of the dressing room by then,” he said.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Mikie said. “They’re wheeling in the spring collection. A whole season changed while you were in there. New colors, new fabrics.”

Can’t believe I fell for it. I stuck my head out through the curtain again, and they nabbed me. Frank grabbed my head, Mikie ran into the dressing room and collected all my old clothes, shoes, everything, and the salesman led the group of us to the register.

“He’ll take this,” somebody said, the voice muffled by the arm around my head.

But they were right. I looked smashing. Once I got my shoes on I was a new man, and all I wanted to do was parade around that mall and check myself out in every store window. The shirt was one of those granddad things, with about a hundred buttons running between the straight-up collar and the navel, where the button deal stopped entirely. A button-down shirt that you still have to pull over head! Madness. Fashion genius. I could feel everybody looking at me, and well they should, with that one subtle-but-daring powder-blue stripe running between each pair of brown stripes. Imagine!