The Basic Eight (11 page)

“And you–,” Rachel slurred, pointing a black nailpolished hand vaguely in my direction. “
You’re
the one who wrote Adam love letters all summer.”

If this were a movie–and don’t tell me it’s not melodramatic enough to be one–some great disaster would have struck right then, and we would have glossed over the mortifying moment by running to shelter, bailing out the boat, comforting the be- reaved, calming the horses, anything, anything but standing there–with
Kate
, Queen Bee
Kate Gordon
no less, while the worst poet I’ve ever seen went and blabbed my only secret. But as it turned out, no tidal wave was needed; not that Lake Merced could have produced much of one.

“No, she’s not,” Kate said, without blinking. She wasn’t cover- ing up for me; she was genuinely, drunkenly,
stupid
, just for a moment. Tomorrow morning, I have to drag my hungover ass out of bed and spend all my money on novena candles. If ever the proof of a Benevolent Deity, this.

“Oh,” said the Frosh Goth, closing her eyes to regain her bal- ance. Her black lipstick was smeared like she had just eaten fudge. “Then you must be the one he really likes.” She turned to her surprisingly nonblackened friends and explained, gesturing limply. “There are two girls, one who is chasing him, one who he wants to chase.”

Fuck the novena candles, I’m sleeping late. “Come on,” I said to Kate, trying to sound bored. “Enough hanging around Merced with the Frosh Faction.”

We stumbled into the building that challenges us academically, athletically and socially, only to find that Carr was one of the evening’s chaperones. Now
that’s
a challenge. Carr took our tickets and glared at me. We entered our high school for the second time that day, now festooned with streamers. I could hear the bass lines of the music coming from the gym like an approach- ing army. Gabriel and Natasha bounded up, already dance- sweaty, and grabbed us. “It’s on!” Natasha shouted, and I looked at her in her tight black jeans and sequined bustier with a big fake rhinestone
X
in the center of it and just didn’t care anymore. We went into the gym and danced and shouted and danced. They were playing that song that goes “Tonight tonight tonight,” it’s still in my head. I love that song. Everything was great, all champagne blurry and the boys weren’t looking at the bustier but at me (dream on, little Culp girl) when I stepped out into the hallway to get a drink of water and all of a sudden I was in The Chamber Of Horrors. I can only describe them by exhibits:

EXHIBIT ONE: JENNIFER ROSE MILTON LEANING AGAINST THE WALL AND MAKING OUT WITH FRANK

WHITELAW!
I don’t know if I’ve recorded here in this journal the only conversation I’ve ever really had with Frank Whitelaw–he ran into me once maybe last week, when it was raining–but he is a slow man. I mean
stupid
slow, not like he moves slowly. In fact, given the location of his hands on Jennifer Rose Milton’s gorgeous thin body, I would say that slow is most certainly
not
how Mr. Whitelaw moves. So
this
is who Jenn has been seeing.

EXHIBIT TWO: JIM CARR, BIOLOGY TEACHER, FLIRTING WITH SOPHOMORE CHEERLEADING CHICK, STROKING

HER HAIR EVEN.
Enough said, I trust. Not only that, they were blocking the drinking fountain. I turned and went down the hallway you’re not supposed to go down during school dances because, I don’t know, something horrible might happen to you, and like I was a character in one of those religious pamphlets they give out, something horrible did happen, right then, because there was

EXHIBIT THREE: DRUNK MARK WALLACE
, leaning against some lockers with his bloodshot eyes and a sweat-stained T-shirt that read: “Black By Popular Demand.” Just what I needed. Mark Wallace is perhaps the most obnoxious person at Roewer, and when drunk he’s downright belligerent. Natasha had to crack a bottle of beer over his head at a cast party once–but that’s another story. This story goes like this:

Once upon a time, in a hallway too far from supervision, the Big Bad Mark Wallace asked Flan what was up, and Flan said nothing much and the B. B. M. W. asked what

her hurry was, and Flan stuttered something and then Mark told me I had nice tits. What do you say to that, exactly? So I said nothing, and turned around and that’s when he reached over and grabbed one of them, trying to kiss me on the neck at the same time. I think that Mark hoped that my body would respond in ways that were beyond my control, and he was right: I threw up, all over his political statement. Then, while he gasped and gaped, I turned and ran. I turned the corner and ran the rest of the way down the hallway. I had almost reached the gym when I felt a tap on the shoulder. It was Carr; behind him, a cheerleader looked at me with the same smugness as the States.

“Culp,” he said, licking his lips nervously, “you’re not sup- posed to go down that hallway.” He put his arm authoritatively on my shoulder; I think that’s what did it.

“Carr,” I said, “we all do things we’re not supposed to. Now get your hand the fuck off my shoulder.”

“OK, Flan, time to go home,” Gabriel said, appearing from nowhere. He put an arm around me and I instantly broke down. I kept my head down so I couldn’t see any more Horrors. People were probably laughing at me, pointing at me, but I didn’t see them. I kept my head down and kept walking, a strategy that turned out to be handy later, on courthouse steps and the like.

“So,” Gabriel said conversationally as he buckled me in and started the car. “Have a nice evening?” I laughed and he laughed and I told him about the only Exhibit I thought it was appropriate to talk about: Jennifer Rose Milton and Frank Whitelaw. He was impressed.

“Not bad work for a lush,” he said.

“Hey,” I said. “You’d be a lush too if you’d have joined me at the lake. What, did you have a better offer or something?” He looked so sad, so suddenly.

“I just–” he said, and I looked at him and saw that he was longing to say something. He had rolled down the window for me, and the night air chilled me. I waited, but he didn’t say any- thing.

“You just what?” I said as he pulled onto my street. The air kept chilling me, and I kept waiting.

“I just–” he said, and stopped at my house. He sighed and then smiled emptily. “I’m just tired,” he said, and let me out. I went inside and swallowed all the aspirin and water in sight. What was that all about? Well, it’s too late to think anymore about that or anything else. It’s too late to think about it. I keep dozing between sentences, but I’m going to stay awake and write a poem or die trying.

There’s no poem here. Draw your own conclusions.

Saturday September 18th

Back here, in editing land, as I retype this journal and try to set everything right, I have drowning dreams. The gurgles I hear all night break through my only window, and dribble onto the floor. I wake up when the water level reaches the mattress and soaks it. By that time it’s pouring down. It’s hard for me to get out of bed because the itchy wool blanket is heavy and bloated in the torrent. The gurgling is everywhere. Water fills my hands, my mouth and my own screams add to the gurgles as I wake up, this time for real. Sometimes if I’ve been shouting this fat matron of a woman asks me if I’m OK. Now
there’s
an essay question that nobody would give me an A on.
On which they’d give me an A
.

This morning the Satanic Minion of Hangover Hell must have had it in for me because the phone rang in the middle of a dream in which something terrible was

chasing me. It was Kate, asking if I wanted to meet everyone for focaccia at The Curtain Rises, this upscale non-Italian Italian place across from the theater.
Hamlet
. I forgot about
Hamlet
just like we forgot all about
Cymbeline
last week. If we had remembered
Cymbeline
then I wouldn’t be worried about
Hamlet
. He’s going to be there. “Should we invite Adam for focaccia, too?” Kate asked, and I wish those science fiction phones had been invented so I could have reached into the screen and my hand could have come out in her bedroom and slapped her. She could barely keep her delight at my disastrous evening out of her voice. So many exciting things for you to spread around, Kate! How nice for you! I told Kate I’d invite him myself–let her choke on that, little gos- sipy twit–and took a shower. Do you think if I turned the shower on to its harshest frequency it could wear some of the flesh off me? I mean, if babbling brooks can do it to stone…

“You’re being too harsh on her,” Natasha said to me when I bitched about Kate. How’s this for a friend: She had let herself into my house using the key that everyone knows we keep under the flowerpot (Attention burglars: it is there no more) and fixed poached eggs and coffee and Bloody Marys. She was slicing celery into suggestive stalks when I came down in sweats.

“I thought you might need some recuperation assistance,” she said as I hugged her.

“Sometimes having you around is like hanging out with those gorgeous bitter single girlfriends of the heroine in romantic comedies.”

Natasha bit the tip off one of the, um, stalks. “But baby,” she said. “I’m the real thing. What happened last night? Each person I talked to only had a scrap of the story; it was like some Robert Louis Stevenson ripped-up treasure map thing.”

I told her the whole Chamber Of Horrors, but the problem was I couldn’t tell her everything because nobody but nobody knows that I’m the one who wrote Adam all those damn letters and that postcard that I would give my right arm to go back in time, beat up the Italian postal carrier and destroy. Natasha listened intently, sipping the Bloody Mary and the coffee alternately, and eventually I got around to Kate’s phone call, and that’s when she told me I was being too harsh on her. Thought I’d never return to that, did you? Remember, I was hungover then, but now, typing this, I’m stone sober. Remember what’s real.

“Flan,” Natasha said. “Kate’s not
delighted
you had a terrible evening. But you must admit, telling Carr to get his hand the fuck off your shoulder is a pretty irresistible tidbit.”

“How does she know about everything already?” “How does she ever know? Don’t worry about it.” “But she’s going to tell everybody about Mark,” I said.

“What if she does? Everybody knows Mark’s a scumbag already,” Natasha said. “You may recall a certain incident in- volving his skull and my beer bottle? Now calm down and eat your egg and we’ll go catch a movie. There’s a one-fifteen matinee of
Stage Fright
; if I drive quickly we can make it.”

If
she drove quickly indeed. “I don’t think my stomach could take food right now,” I said. The poached egg gaped at me like a ripe breast. I thought of my own sagging ones–not in the least bit nice; Mark must have been even drunker than me–and didn’t dare put anything into my body that could turn into more body. What a perfect excuse a hangover is not to eat anything. I should drink more often.

“You have to give your stomach something else besides a Bloody Mary and a cup of coffee or you aren’t going to last through the fall of Denmark,” she said.

“I’ll have focaccia. Oh, speaking of which, I told Kate I’d invite Adam tonight. I can’t believe he’s going to be there. How did that happen?”

“Who would think we would have forgotten
Cymbeline
?” Natasha said. “Whoever–or
wherever
–Cymbeline is. So call him.”

“I don’t have his number,” I said.

“You most certainly do,” Natasha said. She took the rest of her celery and poked my uneaten egg right in the nipple. “Who ex- actly do you think you’re talking to? I’m sure that you looked it up months ago and wrote it down in that gorgeous black leather notebook thing. Where is it, anyway? It’s never far from you.”

“It’s right here,” I said. “I’m writing down this conversation.” Sorry. I just can’t hear myself think around here with that damn
radio
down the hall. If you can believe it, they’re playing the same song that I have in my head today: Tonight tonight tonight. How the present resonates with the past! How the Flan of yesterday and the Flan of today intermingle, like best friends, like confid-

antes!

I left a message on his machine and by then it was three o’clock, with no chance of catching the movie. Natasha said she’d go home to change and pick me up. “What are you going to wear?” I said, out of the sheer desire to keep her in my house. “You looked great in that sequined thing last night.”

“
X
marks the spot,” she said, tracing last night’s rhinestones on her body like she hoped to die, sticking a needle in her eye. “You want to borrow it tonight?”

“There’s no way I’d fit into that,” I said. “It’s bigger than it looks,” she said.

I crossed my arms in front of my stomach. “Thanks.”

“Oh Flan,” she said, “I didn’t mean it like that. Come on. You know that. I just mean–”

“Forget it,” I said. “I’ll see you soon. I have to iron my muu- muu now.”

“
Flan
,” she said, putting on some really smashing sunglasses. “I came over and fixed you breakfast, listened to your woes. What more do you want from me?”

I felt dumb. “Your forgiveness,” I said meekly, and she smiled and hugged me, patting me on the back like a weary mom. She waved and headed out the door. “And a ride!” I called out. In front of the house, the world still looked a little too bright, but I was going to survive. “I also need a ride!”

Natasha zoomed off, and I went upstairs, found my journal right next to my bed, and wrote this all down. I’ll let you know what happens with the inscrutable man and the crazy woman who loves him and all the intrigue and deception and murder.
And
how the play turns out, ha ha ha.

Sunday September 19th

So I haven’t been in Bean and Nothingness
five minutes
–I’m still savoring the first frothy sips of latte and haven’t even opened the journal yet–when Flora Habstat walks in, sits at my table and talks at me for the rest of the day. A whole day, wasted. Not a word in edgewise, either to her or my journal, lying there neg- lected on my table as Flora went into a free-form monologue on applying for colleges, how tired she was of school, this new band Darling Mud–had I heard of them?–and assorted World Records. She literally talked to me for about an hour and a half, and when I said I had to go to a bookstore, she went with me and dragged behind me as I pretended to scan the shelves, babbling and bab- bling and babbling. By the