Extreme Elvin (18 page)

Now!

What the hell was that?

Now. The moment. Now. Be bold for once.
Act.
Now.

“Now
what?”
she asked.

If Barbara was hearing the voice, I had to act quickly or total self-destruction was certainly my next move.

She must have been good and paralyzed by the sight of me marching up her front steps, right there in full view of her father and his floodlights and everything. Because she simply stood there and waited. No comment, no smile, no defensive tae kwon do posture.

I didn’t stop till I got there. And when I got there...

Yes I did. I kissed her, kissed Barbara, this most prettiest of girls I have ever seen. Even as I was doing it I was worrying it, fearing she would snap out of it and scream me away, but it didn’t happen. What happened instead was that she allowed her lips, her pillowy thick lips, to be pressed against mine. And they had, like, muscles to them, under the softness, little twitchy things of movement that I swore were somehow electrified and would shock me to near death.

And so they did.

When the porch light started flicking madly, I figured it was just me. Brain overfiring and all. So that Barbara was already well inside her doorway, waving, by the time I realized I was solo again.

But I was altered then, the pressure off, the aloneness a different thing from what it ever was before. Not altogether alone. And not feeling I had anywhere to get to. I don’t think I stood there staring at the house for more than ten minutes. Maybe fifteen.

When I was a kid and I felt good, I used to chase the dried leaves in autumn all over, crazily, as the wind whipped them up and down, circular and straight and fast and without a pattern. It was pure stupid happiness. I’d do it all up and down the street and must have looked completely insane to the neighbors in their windows.

And to Barbara’s neighbors as I did it now.

I
SPENT THREE HOURS
in the bathtub. Stole a fistful of Ma’s colored bath oil balls from The Body Shop, broke them open in a steaming, almost unbearable tub full of water, then sat there until I had soaked all the dork out of me. By the time I stood up, pink and wrinkled as a newborn, the bathwater had turned to a thick oily soup. So I followed it with a shower to de-slick myself.

“Smells awfully nice in there,” Ma called as she passed outside the door at one point. But that was it. Maybe I was giving off something other than carrot and lemongrass oils, because she kept strangely distant and silent with me all afternoon.

Or maybe it was me who was strangely distant and silent. Because for sure I was spending more time sprucing alone than I had spent at any time since my first penance. And that was only because I had to compose some believable sins to replace the only real ones I had, which I was too embarrassed to discuss even if the priest was in a little dark box and couldn’t see me.

No problem with that now, though. Already had the one big whopper sin to contemplate.

Sally. I never fixed what I did. But I was hoping that the whole thing just kind of healed up all by itself. You know the way little kids cover up their eyes and think nobody can see them? That was me. My version of covering up my eyes was having Frankie invite Sally to the party. And when he reported back that she was happy to go and that she seemed to hold no leftover bad feelings... well, that meant nobody could see me, right? Maybe the problem just did fade away, right?

Like my hemorrhoids. And all my fat. A good bit of it, anyway. I stood there looking into my mirror, wearing only my underwear and the long grandfather shirt with the million buttons that Mikie and Frankie practically took me by force to buy. I held the shirt up, so I could get a better look at myself, and my self was only lopping over the waistband of my boxers by about an inch, maybe two, rather than the three inches of a while back. I leaned closer to my mirrored self, examining the shirt closer, and me in it. The powder-blue stripe, barely noticeable between the thin-enough brown stripes, over the cream background, that worked. It gave me the look of, almost, robust health. Made me look flesh-colored and lean, as opposed to Michelin Man bumpy, and Michelin Man white, like I was used to looking in another lifetime.

I reached behind me without looking away from the mirror, for fear that the illusion would shatter, that the image would be replaced by... you know. I pulled my pants off the bed, those same pants I had bought on that same shopping trip before that first dance. The pants my two friends had gotten me to buy and that my mother had then shrunk, forcing me to perform the great Houdini convulsive snake dance to even fit into.

They slid up over me easily now. Just as if they belonged to me.

I tucked the shirt in. No tent maneuver for this boy.

I stared.

I looked good. I really did. How did that happen? Did somewhere along the line the Army Corps of Engineers come in and do an overhaul of the EB infrastructure? No, it was more than that.

It was Barbara, making me sick enough that I couldn’t eat and nervous enough that I ran everyplace I went.

But it was more still.

I watched myself, something like a movie, but more like the outtakes from a movie, as I started dancing a bit in the mirror, hips shaking. Stopping. Shaking again.

I had to laugh at myself. But I didn’t mind at all, laughing at myself.

Right. They had done me all right, my boys. They’d really taken me by the hand through this social thing. I’d have to finally say something to them, at the party tonight. It would be kind of cool, like, a
moment.
A real celebration of like, all new stuff happening...

Oh.

No. Wait. That wasn’t going to happen, was it?

I ran to the phone, dialed one of the few numbers I knew by heart.

“Franko.”

“Studley.”

“Cut it out, this is serious. I just realized, Mikie’s not invited to this party.”

“I know that. This kind of thing happens, El. Don’t sweat it. Mikie’s not sweating it.”

“He’s not? Really, you talked to him about it?”

“Of course not. Grow up, El, guys don’t talk about stuff like this. I know Mikie’s not sweating it because Mikie’s not a dink, that’s all. There will be other parties.”

“No.”

“There won’t? Elvin, you know something I don’t?”

“No, I mean, no, can’t we not leave Mike out of it? Can’t we bring him along?”

“Elvin, what did Darth say to you, exactly? He said you could come, and you could bring a date, right?”

“Right.”

“So that is what you can do. That is
all
you can do. There is no messing with the arrangement, trust me on this.”

“I believe you, Frank. Your friends are a little freakish about their details, don’t you think?”

“Yes. Yes I do think. And I will never mention it to them.”

“Then
you
get him invited, Frank.”

“Elvin?” Frankie’s voice came out all strange and unrecognizable to me. High, like I hadn’t heard it sound since first grade. “Listen, I don’t want to go places Mikie can’t go. And probably I could figure out a way to get him there. But you know what? Mikie ain’t like you or me. You want to
really
make him feel bad? Treat him like a lame-o who has to get a charity invite to a party.
This
he can deal with.
That
he couldn’t.”

“So, what would happen if I just brought him anyway?”

Frankie sounded so sad, and scared for me when he then said, “Oh, Elvin,” it was almost as if I was already hospitalized, surrounded by flowers and a blurry doctor saying, “Can you feel this then, Elvin? How ’bout here, any feeling here?”

Frankie continued my education. “It isn’t done, okay? Just not at all cool. And in his own way, Mikie is very cool. He knows what’s what. He doesn’t make mistakes.”

Hearing what I already knew about Mike just made me more depressed. I sighed. “Maybe I just won’t go, then.”

“Oh, Elvin,” Same sound again. Same intonation. Same hospital.

“What, Frankie, they’ll beat me up just for not being there?”

“They’re really a lot more sensitive than people give them credit for,” Frankie said. And in his world, that made some sense.

Problem was, that’s the world I was in at the moment. I considered the implications.

“I don’t care what they do to me,” I said, my voice quavering because I most certainly
did
care, but this was just what a guy said when he was being brave.

“But you do care what Barbara does,” Frank said. “Elvin, listen to me here. Barbara wants to go to this party. You want what Barbara wants. Mikie is your friend, so he wants what you want. Ipso faxo, Mikie wants you to go without him.”

I sat silently on my end of the phone. I didn’t want to agree with him, because I thought I was a better guy than that. I didn’t
want
to agree with him.

So I just shut up.

“So Mike spends tonight at home or whatever,” Frank said. “There’s always tomorrow. He’ll still be Mikie.
I
might die if this party went on without me, but
he
won’t. I’ll see you at the party.” He hung up quickly then, because neither one of us wanted to talk about it one bit further.

He was right, though, right? This party wasn’t so special. I was making it a bigger thing than it was. It wasn’t like my first penance, it wasn’t anything like my first penance.

Right. Because at my first penance, Mikie was right behind me in line, supplying me the sins I needed to get through it.

I dialed the other number I knew by heart.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” he said.

Silence.

“Hey,” he said again. “Hold on, somebody wants to talk to you.”

I held on as somebody took his time coming to the phone. Then, there was a sound, like an obscene phone call, only the caller wasn’t having any fun at all. There was the heavy breathing, followed by a lot of desperate gnashing of teeth and chewing of the phone receiver, and weird little coughs like the speaker had swallowed the phone cord and only gagged part of it back up.

“She’s an excellent dog,” Mikie said.

I started laughing. “Is she sick?”

“Nope. Just excited.”

“Excited? How’d you manage that? I could barely detect a pulse. When she was born, I had her all wrapped up in newspaper ready for burial until she squiggled out and started suckling one of my bike tires.”

“I let her watch TV” Mike said. “It stimulates her. She’s my new couch buddy.”

Zing. I was his old couch buddy.

Another pause. I was usually more words and fewer pauses, so I was not firing on all eight here.

“Great dinner,” Mike said finally. “I mailed your mom a thank-you—seeing as she was the one who invited us and all.”

“Great home training.”

“I know it.”

More pause. God I hated that.

“Barbara’s pretty great,” he said. “I’m jealous as hell.”

“Shut up,” I said. To my knowledge, no one had ever been jealous of me in my whole life. Except maybe for the
real
losers, and Mikie wasn’t one of those.

“Okay,” he said, with a laugh, “I’ll shut up.”

The TV went on in the background. “The dog did that,” Mikie said. And I knew we were not going to talk about
it.
But hell, I kissed a girl, in front of her father even. I could try this.

“What’s gone wrong, Mike? Something’s not right. I should be home tonight. You should be smoothing away at the party. That would make sense. That would be—”

“I don’t mind looking like the leave-him-home loser,” he said.

“That’s ’cause you’ve never
been
that,” I said. “Sure, you don’t mind. I mind. I can’t feel right. I’m having troubles here. You should be the guy invited, the guy with the girlfriend. You should be—”

“You know what, El?” Mike said, calmly serious now. “I shouldn’t be. And you should. I don’t
want
to be at this party. If they did invite me, I wouldn’t even go.”

I was about to give him Frankie’s speech about when these people invite you, you
go,
whether you like it or... then I realized: No, Mikie wouldn’t.

“And I don’t want a girlfriend. I might. Tomorrow maybe. Don’t right this minute though. Whadya think, El... that okay?”

Is that okay? Sheesh... Was it what I thought he’d., say? Well, no. But was it okay?

It was Mikie who said it, right?

“Duh,” I said.

We both knew to stop then. That much was the same—we knew when to shut up on each other.

“So I’ll see ya then,” he said. “You gotta go.”

“Oh.” I gotta go, well I suppose. I’m ready to go, I’m not sure at all about that. “Okay, I’ll see ya, then, Mike.”

“Have an excellent time,” Mike said, and clearly, he meant it. Because Frankie was right, Mike was no dink.

He was
so
not a dink.

When I reached Barbara’s, she was in her front yard. She was not at all sweaty, as if she did this kind of high-grade social stuff all the time. Standing a few feet in front of the house, wearing calf-high paint-splattered boots, a quilt-pattern skirt of mostly denim and orange velvet patches, and a black T-shirt with an eagle on the front that was so massive its wing tips wrapped around and hugged her in back. She was bouncing a neon-green tennis ball off the steps.

“You look... wow,” I said.

“Thanks.” Barbara snatched the ball out of the air off the last carom and flipped it up onto a wicker love seat on the porch.

I was looking the house up and down, as if I were thinking about buying it.

“He’s not here,” she said, picking up her white denim jacket, then nudging me on out of the yard. “They went out.”

“Oh,” I said, and I suppose sounded a little more excited than I should have.

“They didn’t go out
forever,
Elvin,” she said. “Just for a little while. They will be back way before the party is over.”

“Oh,” I said, much more calmly. “Didn’t they want to meet me, check me out or anything?”

“Nah, after my dad saw you out there chasing leaves, he said there was no hurry.”

Ouch. “He saw that, huh?”

She smiled, looking straight ahead at the open road before us. Well, the open sidewalk. “Yup. He saw it.”