The Genius of Little Things (18 page)

Across the living room, Rachel pointed her camera in my direction. I covered my face with my hand. She stuck her tongue out at me. Jann-Otto asked if Rachel was my girlfriend and if I ever “did her.” I didn’t answer. Then he told me, for at least the fifth time since I had known him, he planned to graduate summa cum laude. “You know the meaning of summa cum laude? It means some cum loudly.” I didn’t even attempt to laugh.

I walked out to the patio. Five guys were sitting around the rim of the hot tub, passing around a bottle of whisky. Six girls were in the tub, chatting and smacking each other. I turned to see Jann-Otto staggering toward me. I turned away and scrunched up my face and stared at the hot tub crowd.

I felt a hand on my back. It was not Jann-Otto, to my relief. It was Rachel. She said she was done with photo taking. She asked what else she should do. Her fingers began making circular motions.

“Is it a conflict of interest to put your hand on the back of someone you’re interviewing?” I instantly wanted to snatch the words out of the air and put them back in my mouth. I know that’s not possible, but that’s what I thought.

She removed her hand. “I like you. Do I have to spell it out?”

“But why?”

“Um, well. You’re smart, and cute. And definitely one of the more interesting people I’ve ever met. And very funny.”

Cute was the salient word. Funny and smart were not traits that led naturally to romantic relations. Hideous, brilliant clowns didn’t have a lot of sex, as far as I knew.

“I like you, too,” I said.

Apparently that was the correct response. She brushed her finger against my neck, and said she would give me a “tour” of the upstairs. I had a general idea of what this meant, and it had nothing to do with real estate. I told her I would meet her at the top of the stairs.

I hadn’t planned for it. I had brought no condoms. In fact the only condoms I possessed were in my Box o’ Crap. A student—me—who had given an impromptu campaign speech about the matter would be a fairly bad role model if he had unprotected sex. Perhaps I was being presumptuous. I hadn’t even fantasized about sex with Rachel. Zoe was still the object of my fantasies. But
that
wasn’t going to happen. This, whatever it was, with Rachel,
was
going to happen. And the chance might never come again. I would have to improvise.

The whole house was wired for sound, and the low raspy voice of the singer followed us everywhere. Rachel led me upstairs and peeked in each room as she pretended to be a realtor. “And here is a bathroom, resplendent with… fixtures and a mirror. Here we have a perfect nursery for all of the children you didn’t plan to have.” She opened the door to a bedroom where a couple was making out. She closed the door and gave me a sly grin.

She escorted me into an open bedroom. We stood there for a half second, peering into the darkness.

“So, here is a room.” She put her arm around my waist. “You can do a lot with it.”

My German club co-vice chancellor’s dad owns this place. It’s great how the music is everywhere. Sorry about the selection. I never heard of this Leonard Cohen guy before. He’s not good for dancing but I think the lyrics aren’t bad.

That’s what would have said, if Rachel hadn’t attached her lips to mine. The only thing that actually escaped my mouth was, “My Germ—”

Sometime while I was suctioned to Rachel, one of us had shut the door. The room was empty, lit only by a streetlight shining through the blinds. Rachel leaned into me, hard enough to almost make me lose my balance. I took that as a sign to lie on the scratchy acrylic carpet.

“My muscles are pretty tense.” I said this as a prelude to a massage, and I hoped she would get the hint. I was always pretty tense, so this was not a lie. Rachel climbed on my back, straddled me with her legs, and told me relax. Ordinarily I wouldn’t provide details about what went on next. I am not the kind of person to kiss, or do other things, and tell. But in this case I don’t think I would ruin Rachel’s reputation.

Over the course of four songs, she massaged my entire back. It was great, but I was tired of having my face smooshed into the rough carpet. I needed to aim higher on the physical intimacy hierarchy. I told her to stop. I sat up. I touched her face, gently. She didn’t object, even when I removed a strap on her top, and then the other one. She reached for the front of my jeans and began a more unorthodox massage.

Suddenly a shaft of light sliced across the room. The door was open. Some guy said, “
Entschuldigen Sie mich
.” That means
excuse me
. The door closed.

Rachel groaned. “I thought you locked it.”

“I… hmmm.”

She stood up and replaced the straps over her shoulders. “I always move too fast.”

“I have time. I don’t have a curfew.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Stupid interrupters! Why hadn’t I locked the door? It was one simple thing to do. I was always looking out for details. When you plan to have sex, or near-sex, you don’t want to overlook that detail.

She reached for my arm. I let her pull me up. She was surprisingly strong. She kissed me gently on the lips. “You’re funny.”

“Does that mean there will be a progression to more?”

“I suppose so.”

“When?”

“I don’t know.”

“I like certainty.”

“Deal with it.” She kissed me again.

So that was it. There would be no “happy ending” that night. Then again, if someone had told me we would do as much as we had, I wouldn’t have believed it. But I would have appreciated knowing in advance.

Downstairs, the party was dying. Annette-Barbel was picking up stepped-on fliers while wiping down the coffee table. There were dangling streamers, a forlorn sausage on a paper plate, a strand of sauerkraut hanging from a lamp, and a sleeping guy in the corner. There was an argument coming from the patio. Male voices.

Rachel said she had to leave. “My mom needs me.”

We walked out together and stopped at her bike, which was chained to a tree. We were the only two who didn’t drive, I realized. We kissed again, for about a minute. She told me the party was a big success and that I should be proud. I was proud, but not about the party. I watched her pedal away. I stood there on the sidewalk until she disappeared into the blackness.

I heard a scream and a crash inside the house. I decided to leave. If Jann-Otto and Annette-Barbel wanted to run the club, they could clean up. Oktoberfest had been their idea.

Carl was sitting on the sofa in semi-darkness with his eyes closed. I walked past him on my way to the kitchen. I hadn’t eaten anything at the party. Walking back to my room with a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats, I looked up for an instant and caught his eye.

“How did the music work out?”

“Great,” I said. He looked somewhat morose, so I repeated myself, with more vigor.

“I haven’t heard that Nina album since… when? I was finishing my dissertation at Berkeley. I had just met Janet. We were crazy in love. This was before our careers. And Scott.”

I held my cereal bowl and sat on one of the hard Indonesian wood chairs across from him. I decided to eat right there. I knew his one-sided conversation would last longer than the cereal’s crunchiness. I regretted my decision to sit down once Carl segued from 1980s nostalgia to 1990s nostalgia. He said he wanted to make a mark in the world, and he almost did that by taking his first software company public. But he was on the wrong side of the dotcom boom and the company went bust. Then there was another company, and another...

The longer I stayed with Carl, the more of my night with Rachel dissolved from my memory. In my head, I began listing the things I liked about her. The way she frowned when she concentrated, her smell, the way she tossed her head around in a small circle before her eyes came to rest on me.

My attention returned to Carl when I heard him apologize for Janet flying off the handle about my job. “She’s worried that we’re making the same mistakes we did with Scott. It’s been hard for us as you probably can guess.”

It had been a while since I had said anything, so I asked how long Scott had been their foster.

Carl was surprised. He said Scott was not a foster, but their son. That made sense. Scott must have been the kid in the photos.

I told him I had to get to bed.

“Thanks for not staying out late.” He jerked his head toward the bedrooms. “She’s…
you know
.” I wished he would stop saying
you know
in terms of Janet. I
didn’t
know.

Back in my room I forced myself to concentrate on Rachel. I tried recreating our abbreviated encounter, but her image was constantly eclipsed by Zoe’s. Worse, my mind kept drifting back to Carl’s statement. They had a biological son. Scott may have moved across the country, gotten married, and forgotten to write or call. They may have had a falling out. I had heard this was common with real families.

But there was one thing that bothered me. Carl chose his words with precision. That partly explained why it often took him so long to come to the point. So it was perplexing that he hadn’t used
is
to identify their son. I was sure that Carl used the past tense of the verb.

SEVENTEEN

November 19. A yellow jacket is an ephedra-loaded stimulant. Neon yellow is most common, but they also come in pink/purple, yellow/purple, and yellow/black. Side effects include irregular heartbeat, nausea, tingling, chronic sleeplessness, irritability, sweating, indigestion, tremors, numbness, loss of appetite, weight loss, diarrhea, and the possibility of heart attacks. I certainly don’t need any of those symptoms, and at 130 pounds I don’t need to lose any weight. Diarrhea would be especially unwelcome. Then again, wouldn’t diarrhea be uncommon? Kel said it was commonly known as “trucker speed.” Truckers can’t afford to stop often. Besides, Kel said he took yellow jackets and he insisted they were a mild stimulant. I will keep them and only use them for a worst-case scenario.

**

 It was a good thing that Ms. Gurzy wasn’t reading our journals carefully. It was also a good thing that I was taking the Creative Soul class, because I would need some acting skills to cover up how much my schedule was endangering my health. Since starting at Colonial Gardens I had been experiencing an ever-growing sleep deficit. At times my limbs were like wet sand. When I was not concentrating on a quiz or dodging traffic on my bike, I often fell into a netherworld between REM sleep and full consciousness.

Even exercises in the Creative Soul class were not enough to keep me stimulated. During air catch, I faded into a microsleep, and didn’t realize that someone had
sha-roomped
me the ball. A guy next to me gave me a nudge, and I said, “woof,” an inappropriate noise for catching an air ball. During an exercise where we had to be animals, I improvised a cheetah napping on the jungle floor, a performance that involved lying on the ground and actually sleeping for a minute. Ms. Gurzy was not so impressed with this less-is-more performance. She said there was a difference between cleverness and laziness.

I told Carl and Janet, via white board messages, that I received near-perfect scores on my calc and physics midterm exams. That would be true only if the standard for “near-perfect” was pretty broad. I scored a 90 in calc and an 88 in physics, my worst scores in any math or science course in my high school career.

On Monday after the German party, I suspected something was wrong when Jann-Otto showed up to class with a bandage over his nose. He wouldn’t look at me and neither would Annette-Barbel. They both ran from me when I stopped to talk with them after class.

During the next period, I was summoned to Principal Nicks’ office. Without taking his eyes away from a paper in his hand, he commanded me to enter, close the door, and sit. Behind the door was my German teacher, Frau Soto. Next to her was Carl.

I sat in the empty chair. Principal Nicks leaned back and put his hands behind his head. “I’ve spoken with Mike Woodcock and Jennifer Blanchard.” I was stumped for a second because I had forgotten the real names of my club officers, Jann-Otto and Annette-Barbel. “They both testified that you procured alcohol at a school event.”

“I told him no alcohol at any German party,” Frau Soto said. She was lying, but Principal Nicks wasn’t paying attention to her. I noticed for the first time she had a faint Latin accent.

I was too nervous and mortified to have a coughing fit. I did consider the possibility that I would vomit.

“I don’t see the problem,” Carl said. “Nobody was hurt.”

Steve Nicks said yes, in fact, someone was hurt. “Mr. Woodcock testified that he broke up a fight between two UNLV students. He tried to stop them from vandalizing the house and he ended up with a broken nose.”

“Are you suggesting Tyler punched someone in the nose?” Carl said.