Althea and Oliver (5 page)

And then there were the games they made up themselves. Swaggering around downtown Wilmington wearing sunglasses, black clothes, and sullen expressions—that was called Playing New York. Whoever cracked a smile first lost. Sitting in the gazebo in August, complaining about the humidity, drinking limeade out of silver mint julep cups, and exaggerating their mild Southern accents—that was called Playing New Orleans. You won by keeping up your accent longest. Last spring, after catching
Deliverance
on cable late one night, they started passing the afternoons on the banks of the Cape Fear, stalking, chasing, and ambushing each other in the woods, although neither ever consented to squeal like a pig. That ended in a draw.

“Non-Stop Party Wagon doesn't sound like much of a game to me,” she says, batting at the foliage in her hair.

“Then it will be easy to play,” Oliver says.

“Come here.” Standing close, she brushes leaf detritus from his shoulders. Her sweatshirt smells like the beach.

Often they are mistaken for twins, although their faces look nothing alike. Oliver doesn't have her high cheekbones, and she doesn't have his dimples. But they are both lean and narrow, and when she is dressed in his clothes, Althea's straight-up-and-down body doesn't look all that different. They have the same blond hair, pale skin, and blue eyes. She brushes her bangs out of those eyes now with one chapped, nail-bitten hand so she can scowl at him more effectively. She wrinkles her nose. “Okay. I'll play along.”

When they arrive at the party, Oliver's own resolve wavers. It's as though someone rounded up every teenage misfit in New Hanover County and doused them with so much alcohol that if anyone lit a cigarette, the whole house would ignite. Taking hold of Althea's elbow, he shoulders his way through the crowd. The air is stifling, like breathing through a whiskey-soaked rag. His friend Valerie appears, wading through from the opposite direction, a plastic funnel and tube hung around her neck like a stethoscope. Another friend, Coby, shoves past them, precariously toting at least half a dozen cans of Natural Ice—tucked under his chin, wedged between his elbows and ribs, and stuffed in his pockets.

“Where the hell is he going?” Oliver asks.

“To hide them,” Valerie says. “You've never seen him do that at a party?”

“We don't really go to parties,” says Althea.

“All over the house. In the mailbox, in someone's underwear drawer. Toilet tanks are his favorite—they actually keep the beer cold. But he'll hide them anywhere that will guarantee him a beer later when everyone else is out.”

“Christ,” says Oliver. “He's like an alcoholic Easter Bunny.” It fits Coby, though, the kind of guy who reads Bukowski and is building his own apartment over his parents' garage, presumably so he can continue to pilfer their bourbon long after he's limped across the finish line at Cape Fear Academy with the rest of the class of 1997; the kind of guy who has sex in your little sister's room at your house party and then steals the keg on his way out.

“Let's go downstairs,” Valerie says. “The show's about to start.”

Althea and Oliver exchange a glance.

“Yes,” they say.

The basement is low-ceilinged and devoid of windows. A haze of beer-sweat stink and cigarette smoke hangs in the air, haloing the heads of all the miscreants. A table is set up for beer pong, red plastic cups stacked neatly on either side; in one corner a group Oliver vaguely recognizes from Hoddard, the local public high school, is playing a rousing game of Asshole.

There's no stage, just a misshapen rectangle of rust-colored shag carpet marked off with masking tape and filled with fourth-hand instruments and miles of uncoiling black cables. Oliver's friend Howard stands inside the box, nervously tuning his guitar. Oliver lifts his hand in a reassuring wave. Howard responds with a weak smile, gingerly testing the state of his blue Mohawk. His fine hair is too thin to stand erect on its own, so he thickens it daily with toothpaste and Elmer's Glue in order to spike it properly. The pervasive peppermint odor has earned him, of late, the unfortunate nickname “Minty Fresh.”

“What are they called again?” Althea asks Oliver.

“I don't remember.”

“He changed it,” Valerie says. “They used to be the Great Expectations. Now they're the Freddy Knuckles.”

They drink their beers and wait. The drummer picks anxiously at a fissure in his crash cymbal, and the bass player practices the same three notes over and over. Finally Howard gives Valerie one of those imperceptible best-friend signals—it could be a raised eyebrow or a subtle hand gesture. Oliver doesn't see it, but he knows it's happened because of the speed with which Valerie rushes to the back of the basement, turning off the stereo, dimming the lights, and hissing at the Asshole-playing contingent to shut the fuck up. When the basement is sufficiently hushed, Valerie returns to the area by the makeshift stage and cues Howard, and this time Oliver sees the signal, a small, decisive nod that visibly bolsters Howard's courage. Rubbing a guitar pick between his fingertips, he steps up to the mic and rushes through his introduction, then attacks his guitar with all the finesse of a raccoon pawing through the contents of a particularly redolent trash can. His bandmates are no better versed in their own instruments, but all three of them are unusually spirited performers, and there is at least a whiff of melody beneath the noise. Howard is also the lead vocalist, and there is something strange about his singing voice that Oliver can't identify until Althea leans over and screams in his ear, “Why the fuck is he singing with a British accent?”

Oliver shrugs. The music fills the basement as completely as air fills a balloon, and behind him the entire party is crushed into the space, a hundred teenagers thrashing about while watery beer spills over the sides of their Solo cups. Valerie is beaming proudly at Howard, her stumpy brown pigtails bouncing as she dances. Althea, despite her reluctance to leave the house earlier, seems to be relishing this now, getting shoved by the crowd and shoving back. He can't tell if it's actually the music she enjoys or the volume or the shoving, but either way he's relieved. She arches her long neck to finish her beer, her throat quivering as she takes the last pull. Letting the can fall to the ground, Althea opens her eyes and catches Oliver motionless and staring, just as he is nearly toppled by a swell in the throng. She grabs his wrists, keeping him upright as a handful of eager kids jockeying to get closer to the front move around them, until Althea and Oliver are so thoroughly fenced in by the heaving sweaty mess of drunk people that they can barely see the band. Overwhelmed, he turns toward the stairs, but Althea tugs again on his arm, more gently now.

“Stay and dance,” she shouts over the music. “Your rules. You can't say no.”

She's right, as she is so infuriatingly often, so he stays and lets himself get shoved around, pressed so closely against the shoulder blades and shirts of his fellow partygoers that he can smell their shampoo and the moist, musky scent of their perspiration, and even, he's sure of it, the trace odor of toothpaste. Althea reaches out and nonchalantly plucks a full beer from some stranger's grasp, quickly chugging half the contents before he can protest, then passing the remains to Oliver. Howard empties his own beer onto the kids closest to the mic and hurls the can into the audience.

The end is anticlimactic. There's no stage for the band to exit; they just finish their last song and start breaking down the equipment before the tepid applause has even stopped. As soon as it's over, it's as though they never played. Someone turns on the lights and the stereo and starts rearranging the cups on the beer pong table.

“Althea, come be my partner for beer pong,” Valerie says, pulling on her sleeve. Althea looks at Oliver helplessly. He shrugs. He can't go back on his own rule now, although he knows beer pong is not her game. She'd be better off playing Asshole; no doubt she'd end up as president within a few rounds and have a great time spending the rest of the party telling people what to do. But Valerie's made her request; the proverbial die has been cast.

“Let's go make friends,” Val says. “Expand the gene pool.”

Coby reappears with a beer for Oliver.

“You didn't just pull this out of a toilet, did you?” Oliver asks, wiping the top of the can on his shirt.

“By the time it comes to that, you'll be too drunk to care.” Coby gestures toward Althea with his beer. “What did you have to do to drag her out?”

“We go out,” Oliver says.

“To parties? With other people?” Coby drinks. “Be real.”

The cement floor is slick with spilled beer. From an unseen corner behind the laundry room comes the sound of muscular, robust vomiting. The president of Asshole is demanding that his secretary give him a lap dance while singing “I'm a Little Teapot” in a Russian accent.

“You're right,” says Oliver. “We should do this more often.”

Coby smirks. “Don't be such a prick. These are our peers.”

They both snicker derisively.

As suspected, Althea is terrible at beer pong; hand-eye coordination has never been her strong suit. This is why they never go bowling or shoot pool. Coby cheers her on every time she plucks the Ping-Pong ball out of another red plastic cup and drinks its warm, flat contents.

“Got any plans for the summer?” he asks Oliver.

“I'm taking an astronomy class at UNC. Bulk up my college apps.”

“You should go to Space Camp. That'll dazzle them.”

“You got some big projects scheduled? You going to put up some drywall in that tree house you built above the garage? You should put up some of those Christmas lights—you know, the ones shaped like chili peppers? The ladies will come running.”

“It's not the décor they come for,” says Coby, resting a hand on his belt buckle and shrugging modestly. “It's the company.”

“Come for the video games, stay for the syphilis.”

“That was just a rumor.”

Grimacing, Oliver finishes his beer. At the table, Althea is squatting to retrieve the ball, and as she gets up, she smacks her head on the underside of the flimsy table. Beer sloshes out of several cups on top. “You okay?” he yells.

“Only my pride, whatever,” she replies.

“Dude, your girlfriend is drunk,” Coby says to Oliver.

“You know she's not my girlfriend.”

“You two aren't even hooking up?”

“No.”

“Why not? You're together all the time.” Coby shakes his head, seeming genuinely perplexed, as if proximity and opportunity should be enough.

“She's my best friend.”

“So who
is
she hooking up with?”

“No one,” Oliver says.

“Are you sure?”

He remembers the night of the Jell-O, the way Althea had looked at him in the too-small pool. “Yeah, I'm sure.”

Althea misses another shot, and Coby applauds as she chugs. Valerie shakes her head, mourning her choice of partner.

“I knew Al shouldn't have played this game,” Oliver says. “She's terrible at shit like this. Pool, bowling, anything with—”

“Balls?” Coby chortles.

“—spatial relations,” Oliver finishes.

“Let me see if I can help her out.” Coby is eager to be Althea's instructor, standing close behind her, demonstrating the gentle wrist flick necessary to arc the ball into an opponent's cup. She leans in to hear Coby's advice over the music, intent on improving her game, but even one-on-one coaching can't help her. When she misses her sixth shot in a row, Oliver turns his back. He can't watch anymore.

“Where are you going?” Althea yells across the table.

“To check the mail,” he says.

Sure enough, there are two beers in the mailbox at the end of the driveway, nestled between the pages of the
Pennysaver
. He pops one open and puts the other in the pocket of his sweatshirt. Wandering back to the house, he's able to fully appreciate how many people are here tonight: kids running to greet one another, girls shrieking like harpies and falling off the porch while boys roll their eyes and feign disinterest. He vaguely recognizes Jason, the host, who occasionally sells Coby pot, and they nod to each other across the lawn.

He goes inside to find Althea, but the girls have been replaced at the table. He steps out the back door. Howard and a girl wearing tight black jeans covered in useless straps and zippers are pawing at each other on a bench set back among the dogwood trees. His hand is clutching the back of her neck as if he's nervous she might sprint off into the shrubbery. The safety pin in her ear gleams in the moonlight. The screen door opens continuously to spill teenagers into the backyard or suck them back into the house. Howard whispers something and the girl giggles, pricking her hand gently on the spikes of his Mohawk. He slips a hand between her jacket and shirt, down to the small of her back, and pulls her close. Oliver finishes the beer in his hand, tosses it aside, and opens the spare.

The girls are in the kitchen, Valerie holding aloft a funnel full of beer while Althea, on her knees, eagerly waits for the foam to subside. The floor shudders with the drumbeats of “Lust for Life,” which is cranked up on the speakers in the living room.

“Valerie's teaching me to funnel beers,” Althea tells him. “She says I'm a natural because I seem to be lacking a gag reflex.”

“Our girl here is going to make one lucky man very happy someday,” Valerie says. “Go ahead, Althea. Don't forget to open your throat.”

Althea wraps her mouth around the plastic tube, keeping it pinched shut until the last moment. She tilts her head back and releases, shooting all of the beer down her throat in one impossibly long swallow. When she's drained it she stands, wipes her mouth with the inside of her wrist, and hands the beer funnel back to Valerie. “Oliver's next,” she says.