Class (21 page)

Perched in one of the ergonomically designed front row seats, a beaming Professor Blanche sat with a sleeping Beetle tied to her chest with a yard of hemp fabric bought at the Common Ground Fair in Unity. There was a smattering of applause as Professor Rosen walked onto the black lacquered stage to greet the packed house.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for coming. It’s my pleasure to introduce two very talented freshmen actors, Tom Ferguson and Adam Gatz, performing
The Zoo Story
by Edward Albee. I read the play for the first time in college—a hundred and ten years ago—and it’s stuck with me ever since.”

Body twitching and saliva oozing from the corners of his mouth, Tom peeked at the audience from offstage. His parents were sitting in the front row. Shipley sat next to his mom, holding his mom’s hand. Eliza sat next to Shipley. The three of them whispered back and forth, giggling like nervous schoolgirls.

Professor Rosen bobbed up and down on the balls of her feet. Her hair was a helmet of copper beneath the spotlight.

“My seven-month-old has a thing for bubbles,” she said. “I blow them for him until my mouth hurts and I can’t take it anymore. He watches them, floating around in the air and bursting. Sometimes two bubbles bump into each other and float around together for a while until they both burst. This play is sort of like that—two totally separate bubbles colliding and floating around
together, until they burst.” She clapped her hands together. “Pop!”

The spotlight dimmed. Tom staggered against the closed curtain so violently there was a murmur from the crowd. He shut his eyes, blacking out for maybe three seconds, maybe three hours, maybe an entire week. The curtain opened. The play had begun.

Adam took off his suit jacket, folded it carefully down the middle, and laid it on the bench. He loosened his tie, waited a few seconds, then pulled it off completely and laid it down on top of the jacket. For a minute he just sat there, looking out at the audience as if it were a baseball game. Shipley was in the front row. He scooted back on the bench and looked up at the ceiling. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Then he picked up his magazine, which happened to be the December issue of
A Muse,
Dexter’s literary journal, hot off the press. Shipley had written one of the poems. It was in the table of contents: “The Years Between Us,” a poem by Shipley Gilbert, page 11.

Tom swaggered in from offstage, shoulders twitching, fingers flapping, knees all wobbly, and an actual river of spit gleaming on his stubbly chin. “I’ve been to the zoo,” he slurred.

Adam was busy looking for page 11. He didn’t even look up.

“I said, I’ve been to the zoo. MISTER, I’VE BEEN TO THE ZOO!”

Tom’s voice was wet and throaty. His words were garbled and hardly intelligible. A few people in the audience tittered nervously.

Adam looked up from Shipley’s poem. He was pretty sure he’d only understood what Tom was saying because he knew the play so well. “Hm?…What?…I’m sorry, were you talking to me?”

Tom did his best to keep his eyes open. He couldn’t believe his parents were here. And Shipley, with her face showing and her body parts in all the right places. She looked sweet and unfamiliar, which would have added to her allure had he not been so completely out of his head. Ether was nothing like ecstasy. It was not a touchy-feely sort of drug. It did not arouse the senses. The only thing aroused in him was the screaming pace of his heart. He was
alive
—but barely.

He wiped the spit off his chin and waggled his head from side to side to keep from blacking out again. Honestly, the play gave him a hard-on every time he performed it. It was as if it had been written for him. He could feel it—he could feel it all
over
—and even though his mouth wasn’t quite working right, the audience was fucking in love with him, he could tell.

The boys roared through the first half of the play, easy. Adam kept his eyes on Tom, forcing himself not to look at Shipley. During the funny parts, he could hear his parents’ and Tragedy’s hooting laughter coming from way in the back.

Tom hawked up a big ball of phlegm and spat it out right there on the stage before beginning his monologue.

“ALL RIGHT. THE STORY OF JERRY AND THE DOG. What I’m going to tell you has something to do with how sometimes it’s necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly….”

He went on to tell the story of how he, Jerry, had a problem with his landlady’s dog. Jerry lived in a crummy boardinghouse in Manhattan, and this dog, who was black, all black, except for his constant red erection, growled at Jerry whenever he came and went. First, Jerry bought the dog hamburgers in an attempt to win him over. When that failed, he poisoned the hamburgers. The dog got sick but he didn’t die, and their relationship
actually changed for the better. Finally they understood and respected each other.

At one point during the monologue, Tom got to say the words “malevolence with an erection.” Saying it felt awesome, like there were fireworks exploding out of his teeth. He couldn’t believe he got extra credit for doing this. Extra credit for talking about erections out loud in front of an audience—fucking awesome.

From up high in his booth, Nick had a perfect view of the front row. He watched as Eliza picked the cuticles of both thumbs until they bled. She yanked at a thread in her black tights until it formed a large hole and then she picked at a scab inside the hole. She chewed on the ends of her dark hair. She clenched her fists together until her knuckles turned white. Sometimes she smiled. Eliza was a minor celebrity now that naked portraits of her were on display all over the art studio. Beside her Shipley looked very small and blond.

Tom was outrageously good. He stole the show, pacing and gnashing his teeth, spitting and gesticulating. Adam wasn’t bad either. He was the perfect example of the status quo—someone who doesn’t speak his mind and never steps outside the box. It was nice, how Peter was actually helping Jerry by sitting there, listening, just like he, Nick, was helping the creep who’d been sleeping in his yurt by not calling campus security.

First there was the pile of blankets and clothes. Then there was the book,
Dianetics,
which Nick had ignored. He was tired of seeking solace in platitudes. How could you get inner peace from an outer source? Then there was the stove Eliza had given him, which Nick had left unopened in its box. He preferred to eat in the dining hall, where he could fill his plate as many times as he liked, where there were croutons and eight different choices of salad dressing. He didn’t even have to do
the dishes. A few days ago though, he’d gone out to check on the yurt and found the stove all set up. A still-warm can of SpaghettiOs lolled on the floor. Well, at least someone was using it.

Tom had just finished his long dog monologue. Now he and Adam were fighting over the bench. Tom pushed Adam and Adam fell on the floor.

Shipley squeezed Tom’s mother’s hand. “Watch out!” she cried. “He’s got a knife!”

Everyone in the audience craned their necks to look. A few girls giggled. Eliza nudged Shipley with her elbow. “None of this is real, stupid,” she whispered in Shipley’s ear. Tom was a surprisingly kickass actor. His voice didn’t even sound the same. And Adam was pretty decent too.

The knife was on the floor. “Pick it up,” Tom taunted Adam. “Pick it up and fight with me.”

Shipley covered her eyes with her free hand. Her heart was racing. She peeked through her fingers. Adam bent down and picked up the knife. She began to shake uncontrollably at the thought of Adam stabbing Tom. She held her breath. Oh, it was perfect. It was just what she wanted! No, it wasn’t. Oh, God, what was wrong with her? Her whole body trembled violently and she let out a yelp of nervous laughter.

Tom lunged forward and impaled himself on the knife. This was the scene he’d been worried about. A packet of fake blood was taped to his stomach. He felt the cold redness ooze out of the packet, staining his shirt. He gagged, staggered backward, and fell against the bench. Adam ran offstage. Tom was dying. The lights came up. The play was over.

The audience rose to its feet, hooting and applauding. Blanche stuck her pinkies into her mouth and wolf-whistled. From inside his hemp cocoon, Beetle let out a jubilant squawk.

Tom’s mother squeezed Shipley’s forearm. “He was marvelous, wasn’t he?” she cried. “Oh, I’m so glad we came!”

“Bravo!” Tom’s father shouted. “Bravo!”

“Atta boy!” Ellen Gatz yelled loudly from the back.

Up in the lighting booth, Nick sneezed his approval. His aim with the spotlight wasn’t the best, but he’d managed to muddle through.

Tom lay where he’d fallen, having blacked out once more. Professor Rosen led Adam back onstage to take a bow.

Adam knelt down to murmur in Tom’s ear. “Hey. Time to get up.”

Tom remained where he’d fallen. Shipley covered her mouth with her hand. He never could handle the sight of blood. Had he fainted for real?

Tom could see himself as a baby, crawling around in his mother’s flower beds. He saw the baseball his father had given him for his tenth birthday, signed by Reggie Jackson. He saw the French toast he and his brother made for his mom every Mother’s Day. They put nutmeg in the syrup. He saw his driving instructor, with the ridiculous rack. He saw his cap and gown from graduation. They moved their tassels from the right side to the left after Principal Doogie Howser handed out the diplomas. Man, that dude was small. He saw Shipley take off her clothes and get into bed. She kissed his lips, his ear.

“Get up, Tom,” Adam said again. “The play’s over. We’re done.”

Tom reeled back to semiconsciousness. The crowd roared as he got on all fours and climbed unsteadily to his feet. His white shirt was stained red. His eyes were slits, his face ashen, his entire body drenched in sweat. He slung his arm around Adam’s waist, staggered sideways and slung his other arm around Professor Rosen’s shoulders. Supporting Tom on either side, the
professor and Adam bowed together before dragging him offstage.

Shipley was clapping so hard her hands hurt.

“That was pretty good,” Eliza allowed. “Although I’m not so sure what it says about your taste in men.”

“Bravo!” Tom’s father called out once more. “Bravo!”

17

S
econd best to earning a lot of money and spending it is finding a lot of money and spending it. Patrick had taken the car three nights ago and still hadn’t returned it. Lucky for him, his sister had left her wallet on the front seat with $135 in cash and her American Express card inside. Her name was unusual enough for people to think it might belong to a guy, and copying her signature was easy. She wrote like a sixth grader. First he bought a whole tankful of premium unleaded gasoline. Then he booked a room at the Holiday Inn. He’d dined on room service for the last three days, watching pay-per-view and eating chicken Kiev. But the Lobster Shack was legendary. He’d always wanted to try it. So he soaked in the tub, using up all the shampoo and conditioner and bubble bath the hotel provided, changed into some of his new clothes, drove to the restaurant, and snagged a quiet table in the back.

The Lobster Shack was an old salty dog of a place, with the requisite dark wood, fishing nets, ropes, and anchors. What
made it unique was that the restaurant was perched on the bank of the Kennebec River, which rushed by the back windows with dark, liquid ferocity.

“You want baked potato or fries with that?”

“Baked potato.”

“Salad or coleslaw?”

“Salad, please. And chocolate milk, if you have it.”

“Yoo-hoo okay?”

Patrick munched his house salad with bleu cheese dressing and slurped his Yoo-hoo. One of the tenets of
Dianetics
was that simple pleasures like eating a good meal, kissing a pretty girl, enjoying a game of baseball are a necessity. One can survive without pleasure, but without pleasure life is not really worth living. To him that made a lot of sense. And it seemed to him that the Lobster Shack was full of simple pleasures.

He flipped through the pages of the magazine he’d found in the car. It was Dexter’s literary journal. Shipley had written one of the poems.

The Years Between Us

My brother, the one in the looney bin,

Holds his arms raised up

to keep his balance, hands

in fists as he creeps,

crouching like a giant in a crawl space.

I imitate him as a joke to warn him.

I say, “You look funny.”

He responds with secrets in his voice:

“I have traveled a thousand light-years today.”

Funny that she’d chosen to write about a time devoid of simple pleasures, when he was only just barely surviving. It was after he’d been kicked out of boarding school again. This time he’d stolen a bicycle from one of the deans. Instead of taking him home, his parents took him to Mount Sinai hospital in Manhattan for a full psychiatric evaluation. He was there for two weeks, in a private room in the psychiatric ward. Each day he was interviewed extensively by doctors and put on various medications. He watched
Wheel of Fortune
in the TV room and ate his meals, family style, with the other lunatics. He couldn’t open his window or wear shoes with laces.

He wasn’t sure how long his parents intended to keep him there, so one afternoon he walked down the back stairs and out of the building. No one stopped him. He walked across Fifth Avenue and into Central Park, grateful that it was only October and still not too cold to be wandering around in only a hospital gown and bare feet. In the park, he found another bicycle and rode it out of town, all the way home to Greenwich.

He took the back roads, foraging for food and clothes in Dumpsters along the way, amazed by what people threw out and delighting in the freedom to take what he wanted and move about unseen in the shadows behind buildings. The first thing he found was a man’s pink dress shirt, still in the plastic from the dry cleaners. He’d had a thing for pirates when he was a little boy. Pirates stole stuff to live and stay free, just like he was doing now. It was on that bike ride, wearing that pink dress shirt, that he became Pink Patrick. It wasn’t a gay thing. It was his pirate name.