The Basic Eight (15 page)

“I thought that maybe it was a perfect day for walking across the Golden Gate Bridge.”

I stood there thinking that perhaps I had stepped into a time warp. Walking across GGB had been my standard date with Douglas; all that was missing was the flowers. I had a brief ray of hope that what I thought had been last summer and this first month of school had in fact been a long, fevered dream, and that I was waking up and it was my junior year. I was still going out with Douglas, I hadn’t done anything dumb like write letters all summer to some boy, I was going to sign up for Chemistry instead of Biology, I wasn’t going to commit a murder fairly soon and my grades didn’t count quite as much toward college. Douglas must have read my thoughts because he smiled and said, “Not like that, not like that, I figured you’ve had enough of
that
this weekend. You must not have had coffee yet.”

“Yeah, well, it is before ten o’clock. Why did you come over so early?”

“I couldn’t sleep. Plus I figured if I waited any longer some other member of the Basic Eight would scoop you up and put you through the third degree about Gabriel.”

“And
you
wanted to do it first.”

“No, I wanted to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge. We can talk about him or not. We can talk about
anything
or not. Now go get dressed and I’ll make the coffee. Where do you keep the fil- ters?” He was already in my kitchen, opening cupboards–but, typical male, the wrong ones of course. Not like he’d ever been in my house, making me coffee nineteen thousand times. I reached over his head and opened the right cupboard. For a moment my face, my mouth, was right near his neck, and I felt a flush go down my body, naked and still damp under the robe. I hadn’t had anything close to a sexual moment with Douglas for quite a while. It was odd. He was looking at me like he was afraid I was going to hit him, and when I avoided his eyes and looked back at his neck I saw why. For a minute it looked like a birthmark, but I knew Douglas’s neck. The purplish blotch on his neck wasn’t a birthmark. I looked back at him and he looked terrified.

“Um, aren’t you supposed to wear turtlenecks to cover those up?” I asked him. “Surely you own a turtleneck, Douglas.”

“I don’t, actually,” he said. “Gave them away.” His hand strayed to the mark and stayed there. I handed him the box of coffee filters and he looked at it for a second before taking his hand off his neck and taking it from me. I remembered suddenly that I had bought him a turtleneck, a nice one, black, last Christ- mas. I thought it was a good time for me to go upstairs and get dressed.

It was a perfect day for GGB walking. San Francisco tourists always attempt to pillage our city in short shirts and Bermuda shorts, and on foggy days like this they are soundly defeated. Today they could be found huddling in rental cars, clutching one another and grimacing for cameras, they were an innocuous presence; Flora Habstat

would have written
The Guinness Book
to tell them no one asked us to take a family portrait with white sailboat dots and an island prison in the background.
Here we are on the Golden Gate Bridge
, those pictures seem to say, mom and dad smiling emptily with hands placed artificially on the shoulders of itchy, embarrassed teenagers. What Douglas had to say was less clear. He kept making small talk about nothing and nervously covered his neck when anyone else went by. Eventually we walked in silence, Douglas looking at the ground and me looking at him, running my hand along the fence they recently installed to give suicides an added challenge.

“So, how are things going with Lily?” I said.

He looked past me at the fence. “A lot of people must jump from here,” he said. “I wonder why. I mean, I
know
why they want to end their lives, but why here?”

“So I’m hearing that things aren’t so hot,” I said, and he looked at me and smiled.

“Sorry,” he said. “I guess I
am
a little gloomy today.”

“The
weather
is a
little
gloomy today. You are
lots
gloomy.
Are

things with you and Lily all right?”

“They have their ups and downs,” he said, gazing at the water. “You dated a classical musician so you know how it is. With two it’s almost constant melodrama.”

“You act like that’s a bad thing,” I said. “And how does Mr.

Classical Musician know about the new Q.E.D. album?”

“I don’t know,” he said, and for the first time all day I really looked at him. His eyes looked so tired they were almost closed, and his whole face was wrinkled with worry like a prisoner, or a widow. He looked as if he might cry. Above him seagulls cried too. He looked up at them, down at the water, over at the traffic, not at me. “I don’t know,” he said again.

“
Hey
,” I said. “
Hey
. This is
me
. You know,
Flannery
. You can tell me
anything
. What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” he said reflexively, the way people do when you ask how are you and they say fine and then remember they have cancer. “I don’t know.”

“Are you bothered by what Gabriel is doing, you know, with me? Because, you know,
I
haven’t even worked out what’s going on with that–”

“No, no,” he said impatiently. “I don’t care about that. I mean, I
care
about what happens with you, of course, but–”

“Then is it things with you and Lily?” “No, no, no–”

“Because, I mean, how bad could things be if you’re bruising each other all night?”

“I didn’t get this from her,” he said, quickly, quietly, pointing at his neck. I felt a chill, and it wasn’t the fog; I was properly dressed in a sweatshirt, remember?

“
What
?” I hissed. I looked around us hurriedly. Some lone brave tourists, shivering in shorts, were nearby; Lily was unlikely to have any connections with them but you couldn’t be sure. “What are you saying? Are you dating somebody else?”

“Um–”

“
Douglas
,” I said, “are you seeing another woman?”

“No, no,” he said, quickly. “I’m not–it’s too complicated to go into right now, but–”

“
Douglas
,” I said, ducking my head to meet his eyes. “Lily’s a friend of mine.
You’re
a friend of mine. What’s going on?”

“I don’t want to–I
can’t
talk about it now.”

“Douglas, Lily isn’t going to talk to those tourists. I can’t promise that
I
won’t tell anyone, but–”

“Just
please
, I need you to do something for me,” he pleaded.

“What?” I asked, seeing just how frightened he looked. Whatever this was, it was bigger than Lily and me and the whole Basic Eight. “What?”

“I need to cover this up, of course, that’s what,” he said, pointing to his neck and looking around like a spy. “Do you have something, makeup or something? I can’t let Lily see this! What would she think?”

“Probably what I’m thinking,” I said. “I don’t know, Douglas. I’m not going to help you cover up for something unless I know what it is.”

“Look,” he said, running his hand through his hair. “I’m not seeing another woman, OK? Is that what you want to hear? That isn’t what’s happening. But Lily will
think
that’s what’s happen- ing, and I need you to cover up for me! Please!”

“Just buy a turtleneck,” I said. “Don’t get
me
involved in this, Douglas! Lily’s my
friend
, and she’s paranoid enough about the two of us without this.”

“I
can’t
,” he said. “This thing will take a few days–”

“
Hickey
,” I said. “
Love bite
. Just say what it is. You have a
hickey

that comes from someone who isn’t–”

“It will take several days to wear off, and I can’t wear turtle- necks for several days in a row. Everyone’s used to seeing me in these suits! What will they think?” He was getting absolutely panicky.

“Well then, go buy some makeup.”

“I can’t do that,” he said. “I can’t do that, I can’t do that, I can’t do that, I can’t do that–”

“Calm down, Douglas.
Jesus
.” “You’ve got to help me.”

“I don’t know.”

Douglas’s face grew angular, his eyes squinty. “Listen, Flan- nery,” he said in a low voice. “No one’s supposed to tell you this, but on Thursday Bodin called some of us

into his office. Me, and V , and Flora and I forget who else.”

I blinked, trying to keep up with the changing subject. “What did our good principal want?”

“Well, he’d heard the rumor about you setting the fruit flies free, and he called in some friends of yours to sort of grill them.”

“Flora’s not a friend of mine.”

“Yes, she
is
, Flan. But you’re missing the point.” “Who else did he call in? Gabriel?”

“No.”

“Natasha?”

“No, she wasn’t there that day, remember? In fact,
you
weren’t, either, which is what saved you. But you’re missing the point.”

“What do you mean,
I
wasn’t?”

“Well, everybody knows you were there that day, but for some reason you were officially marked absent. Dodd must have spaced out–”

“Or got me and Natasha confused–”

“Whatever. But what that meant was you couldn’t have done anything if you weren’t there. But you’re missing the point.”

“Did you guys back up my story?”

“Yes. We told Bodin we’d heard the rumor, too, but that we didn’t think there was any truth to it. Of course, we didn’t say that you weren’t there that day, because we didn’t know, but Bodin seemed too dim to really catch that, plus Carr was chomping at the bit to fire that assistant–”

“Carr was there?”

“Yes. But you’re missing the point.” “OK, OK,” I said. “What
is
the point?”

“The point was, we backed you up even though we didn’t know the story. All we heard was that you had

done something kooky in a classroom, and knowing your love of
panache
we guessed it was probably true. But even though we were suspicious we backed you up, because we’re your
friends
. We
trusted
you; we knew that even if you had done something wrong you had a good reason. And once Kate had the opportunity to fill us in it turns out you
did
have a good reason.”

“So what does this have to do with you?”

“I’m telling you. Sometime you’ll be filled in, and you’ll know I have a good reason. But right now I need your help and you have to trust me.” He actually started to cry, right there. Just a few tears, but that’s a lot for a boy, even one who can tell Shos- takovich from Tchaikovsky and wears linen suits to school. “Please.”

So I helped him. But I didn’t feel good about it. Something in the way he told me about the scene in Bodin’s office made me feel obliged to help him. Like my friends, unbeknownst to me, had made a move, and I had to follow. They had upped the loy- alty ante of the Basic Eight, and now I followed. OK, I didn’t feel that way until later, but it
could
fit in this situation. It took forever–Douglas was really paranoid, so we had to drive to some desolate neighborhood, and I went in by myself and bought a bunch of different shades of base, and then back at my place, with the shades down, I tested them until I found the right one (sur- prisingly, a fairly dark one, considering how pale I consider Douglas to be) and blended his neck until the bruise faded. He made me promise to meet him early, before school every day, until it faded. We compromised, and he said he’d drive to my house to do it, and that he’d fill me in as soon as he possibly could. I can’t even imagine.

Once he’d left, I cleaned up the coffee mugs, and noticed that Douglas had left his hat at my house. I took it

upstairs and put it on a chair in my room, on top of Kate’s blue sweater. I checked the answering machine, thinking there’d be a message from Gabriel, hoping there’d be one from Adam, but I had forgotten to leave it on.

It was getting on toward six o’clock. I considered calling other people, asking them what the plan was for tonight, but then I realized they’d probably planned something to leave Gabriel and me alone, so I just sat in the living room, listening to the Bach that Douglas put on and writing this all down. It’s now ten o’clock–the latest showing of the movie was nine-thirty. So I think it’s safe to say that I don’t have a date with Gabriel this evening. Or Adam, for that matter, or even some coffee date with Natasha or someone. I’m alone. There’s a poem in that, but I don’t want to write it. I don’t want to be someone who spends Saturday night alone at home, writing poems about being alone.

Vocabulary:

LIMP-WRISTED GALLIVANTING ELOCUTION

DROSOPHILA
*

*
May be difficult to find in some dictionaries.

Study Questions:

1. In this chapter, Flannery writes: “I lead a ridiculous life.” Do you agree with her assessment? Why or why not? Do you lead a ridiculous life? Why or why not?
   

2. Is it rude to bring an uninvited guest to a dinner party? Should you be ex- cused if it’s your boyfriend? What if he’s dumb?
   

3. Do you think Flannery did the right thing with Douglas at the Golden Gate Bridge? Do you think Douglas did the right thing with
   

Flannery at the Golden Gate Bridge? Do you think Bodin did the right thing with Douglas and the others in his office? Did Douglas and the others do the right thing with Bodin, and Flannery, in Bodin’s office? Do you generally do the right thing? Questions like these will be repeated several times throughout this journal, but write down an answer each time, so it’s fresh.

Monday September 27th

Super Student was almost late to homeroom today, because it took longer than I thought to blend Douglas’s neck at my house. If you can believe it, I had to duck when we entered the student parking lot because Lily was right there and Douglas didn’t want for her to see us together. I had to run down the hall to Dodd’s room, wondering why. I mean, if he marked me absent
again
I could cause a little more havoc and not get caught. But not me, oh no. I’m Super Student, remember? Don’t you remember on Friday, how I sat in the library and wrote out a pledge to be Super Student,
all the while missing my fucking Calc test
?