The Spectacular Now (5 page)

Chapter 11

Kendra’s car isn’t parked in front of her house, but I go to the door anyway. Her mom’s more helpful, telling me the girls went over to Morgan McDonald’s house for the Christian jocks meeting. Morgan’s my old junior high girlfriend, but that was so long ago now it’s not like we were ever anything more than friends. The weird thing, though, is that Cassidy would even go to a meeting with a bunch of religious jocks. She’s neither. In fact, she usually scorns them and their ilk.

Ilk.
I love that word.

By the time I get to Morgan’s neighborhood on the north side of town, I’ve had several more shots of whisky so I don’t have the butterflies anymore. Instead, it’s more like rusty bolts banging around in a tin can.

You should see all the cars parked up and down the block for this Christian jock thing. You’d think they must be handing out get-out-of-hell-free coupons. But don’t go getting the idea that this is some kind of wholesome, clean-cut, vanilla-wafers-and-milk extravaganza. You don’t even really have to be an athlete to come. No. Ninety-nine percent of the people who show up at these meetings are here for one simple reason—to hook up. And that accounts for the heft of those bolts rattling in my belly. Who is Cassidy planning on hooking up with?

I park at the end of the line of cars and start toward Morgan’s house, mulling over what I’m going to say when I see Cassidy. I need something lighthearted to begin with, something fun and colorful like, “Imagine meeting you at a place like this. Did you ride over with Jesus or is he taking that donkey again?” Then, once I have her smiling, I’ll launch right into the apology. “I was wrong,” I’ll say. “I wasn’t thinking. But you know me, thinking isn’t my specialty. I’m a moron at long-term romance. I need a special ed teacher to coach me. Someone like you.”

Ahead, I see the silhouette of a couple against the streetlight glow. By the height of the guy, I can tell it’s Marcus West, the basketball stud, but the girl is leaning so close into him that I can’t tell much more about her than that she has fairly short hair. “So,” I say to myself, “Marcus has himself a new girl. That must mean LaShonda Williams is free. I always did like her.” But as soon as that idea pops into my head, I shut it down. I’m not here looking for new girls.

Then, as I draw closer, Marcus turns so that he can lean against a car, moving the girl around with him and leaning down to lay a big kiss on her. Now I can see the silhouette of her ass perfectly, and there’s no mistaking who it belongs to. It’s Cassidy’s big, splendid, beautiful booty. The bolts in my stomach turn into rusty hammers.

A lot of guys might look at Marcus West’s size and turn right around, but not me. “So,” I say, stopping about ten yards away. “I see the spirit of Jesus sure got into you two.”

Cassidy spins around. “What are you doing here?”

“Hey, you got a haircut.”

Her hand flits to her hair for a second. “It seemed like a good time for a change.”

I nod and rub my chin like I’m some kind of connoisseur of style. “It is motherfucking stunning.”

Now Marcus takes a step my way. “Are you drunk or something, Sutter?”

I smile as wide as I can. “If
drunk
equals A and
something
equals B, let’s just say the answer absolutely is not B.”

His brow crinkles, not from anger but, surprisingly, from sympathy. “Look, man, I know this isn’t exactly the best time for you. Maybe you ought to let me drive you home.”

“And behold! Marcus West spake even unto the lowly.” I’m trying hard to pronounce all the words without a slur.

Cassidy’s like, “Oh Gawd, Sutter.” But I hold up a finger to let her know I’m not finished.

“And his blessing fell like a curse among the wicked. That, boys and girls, is the way the communion cracker crumbles.”

Marcus walks over and reaches for my arm. “Come on, man, let’s go over to my car.”

I pull away. “Excellency, that will not be necessary. I am a fair-minded individual who thoroughly understands the meaning of the phrase ‘kicked to the curb.’ So now, I bid you a good night.” I bow just far enough so that I don’t lose my balance. “And I wish you a lifetime of marital bliss, for I am now free to begin my epic search for the perfect soul mate.”

As I turn away, Marcus goes, “Sutter, look…” but Cassidy cuts in. “Let him go. He wouldn’t even know how to drive if he wasn’t halfway drunk.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I call to her without turning around. “You are a most understanding woman—in everything but love.” And that would have been a perfect closing line if I hadn’t tripped over a pile of trash bags and spilled my drink down the front of my pants.

Chapter 12

Another spectacular afternoon. This weather is unbelievable. Of course, that probably means summer is going to be vicious again, but I’m not worried about that now. I was never big on the future. I admire people who are, but it just never was my thing.

Me and Ricky are sitting on the hood of my car in a parking lot down by the riverfront in the middle of the city. I offer him a hit off the flask, but he turns me down, says it’s too early in the day. Too early? It’s two o’clock in the afternoon. On a Friday! But I’m not the kind of guy to put the pressure on someone to do anything they don’t want to. Live and let live, I say.

I take a quick shot and go, “Look, you can see the Chase building from here. Right up there at the top…”

“Yeah, I know. Your dad’s office is up there.”

“I wonder what kind of deals he’s making today.”

“You know,” Ricky says, “I’d go with you tonight if I could.”

“I know you would. It’s no big thing. I just can’t stand going over to my sister’s by myself. Her husband and his buddies make me want to puke sometimes. They’re so full of themselves. They think anybody that’s not them is riffraff. Actually, I don’t mind being riffraff. I just get annoyed with people who think that’s a bad thing.”

“I can’t break this date with Bethany. She’s got everything planned.”

“That’s all right.”

“Besides, I thought you were going to ask Whitney Stowe to go with you.”

“I did.”

“You did? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It didn’t go so well. She said she doesn’t go out with shallow party boys.”

“She said that?”

“Yep.”

“That’s messed up.”

“I don’t know.”

“Dude, you are not a shallow party boy. Anybody that’d say that doesn’t know the first thing about you. They never sat in on any of our late-night conversations, that’s for sure.”

“But you know Whitney—she’s an
artiste
.”

“I don’t know why you don’t ask Tara out. She wants to go out with you. Bethany said she does. Besides, I saw the way she looked at you when we were driving back from Bricktown.”

“Dude, I can’t date Tara.”

“Sure you can. Think about it. She and Bethany are, like, tight. We could go out on double dates. We could have cook-outs by the lake—hamburgers, drinks, a little weed. It’d be splendiferous.”

“I’m sure it would be,” I say, picturing the whole scene. “But it can’t happen. I can never ask Tara out. Ever. If I did, that’d just make Cassidy think she was right. She’d go, ‘Look at that little weasel. After he tried to tell me nothing was going on between him and Tara, now they’re feeding each other French fries under the white oaks.’”

Ricky gets a chuckle out of that. “You know what?” he says. “I still can’t believe she’s already latched on to Marcus West. I mean, I can’t see it. She’s always making fun of jocks.”

“Oh, I can see it.” I take another hit off the flask. “You know Cassidy and her Greenpeace and Habitat for Humanity and Gay Pride parades, and all that. Then you have Marcus, who’s practically a one-man Salvation Army. He’s always up to something—serving Thanksgiving dinners for the homeless, working with the Special Olympics kids, mentoring delinquents. You got to hand it to him. He’s a hard guy to make fun of.”

“Yeah,” says Ricky. “And then there’s that whole enormous dick thing.”

“What?”

“You know, they say black guys have these enormous, elephant-trunk dicks.”

“That’s bullshit. I don’t believe in racial stereotypes like that.”

“Me either,” he says. “But it’s kind of hard not to think about it.”

I look at him and shake my head. “Well, it wasn’t before you brought it up anyway.”

“Sorry, dude.”

I hit the flask a stout one. “That makes a real great picture. It was bad enough I have to go over to my sister’s, now I’m going to have that snapshot in my head all evening.”

“Here,” Ricky says. He pulls a fat blaze out of his jacket pocket. “Take this with you. It’s some hearty shit. It’ll get you through the night.”

Chapter 13

I have to work from three to eight, and for once, I don’t want to leave. I’m completely ready to stay way after closing even. I’ll do inventory till like ten o’clock or something, anything to postpone going over to my sister’s soiree. Unfortunately, around seven, Bob pulls me aside and says he thinks I’d better go ahead and leave early.

I’m like, “No way. It might get busy, and you’ll be stuck here by yourself,” but he’s, “Look, I know you’ve been drinking, and we can’t afford to have a customer call into the front office about something like that again, you know?”

I start to deny the drinking thing, but I can’t really lie to Bob, so I just say something about how I’ll swig some mouthwash and chew some more gum. He’s not buying it.

“I can handle the last hour by myself,” he says. “Just go home and get to bed early. I won’t hold this against you, Sutter. I know you’re a good guy. But I also know you’ve had a rough week, what with the thing between you and Cassidy.”

“Hey,” I tell him, “I’ve forgotten all about her. Believe me, that is no big deal. I’m a free man. A new girl is just around the corner.”

“Sure,” he says. “Okay. But you’re not going to find her at a men’s clothing store. So go on home. I’ll be fine. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

Going home is not an option, though. My mom will just tell me to get my ass straight over to Holly’s. No, there’s nothing to do but stop off for a big 7UP and cruise around for a while, then maybe take the long way over to Holly’s so that I don’t have to spend too much one-on-one time with her husband, Kevin, while she’s mixing up the salad or whatever. You know, usually I’m a positive guy—I embrace the weird—but I can’t help getting a little cynical about these two, and maybe I’m feeling a bit more than a little that way tonight.

Holly and Kevin live in that hoity-to-it area just to the north of downtown Oklahoma City on a street full of really big, old homes for upscale professional types. Just for the record, Kevin doesn’t pronounce his name
Kevin
the way an ordinary person would. He pronounces it
Keevin
. He’s some kind of muckety-muck exec for an energy company. They do very well, especially considering Holly is only twenty-five. Kevin is like fifteen years older than she is, and has an ex-wife that Holly says should be on a poster for what can go wrong with plastic surgery. Holly used to be an administrative assistant at Kevin’s company, but obviously she worked her way up.

I wouldn’t be surprised if my mom doesn’t actually love Kevin more than Holly does. In fact, Holly had to come up with some lame excuse about how his parents hadn’t been invited to dinner, so she couldn’t invite hers either. I’m sure he told his parents the same thing in reverse. Why they had to go and invite me, I don’t know, but Mom actually seemed jealous about it.

Kevin’s the golden boy where she’s concerned. He can do no wrong. In a way, she probably feels responsible for the fact that Holly spelunked up a fifty-carat rock like him in the first place. After all, Mom did pretty much the same thing with Geech. She started out as his secretary, and I guess the picture of herself in his big, two-story house got the best of her, so the next thing you know, Geech is getting a divorce and Mom’s riding around with him in his green Cadillac.

But even with all his money, Geech is still just a handful of rhinestones next to an upscale northsider with a sixty-dollar haircut like Kevin. You should see Mom sitting out by their pool with her shiny gold sandals. It’s like she thinks she’s royalty. She won’t even stick her perfectly manicured big toe in that little pool Geech had built in our backyard anymore.

Being born eight years apart, Holly and I never were very close. She used to tell me that she was the reason our folks got married and I was the reason they got divorced. She said if they only had one kid, they never would’ve had all those money problems to battle over. Whatever. She was just trying to get back at me for always making fun of her little, walnut-size boobs. That was before the augmentation thing, of course.

So, what I’m saying is I suspect she has some kind of ulterior motive for getting me over tonight. She’s like Mom. They both want me to have connections, see. “It’s all in who you know,” Holly likes to tell me. What she means by “it” she never does say and I don’t ask. You might think she just wants to help me get ahead, but my theory is that she really wants to make me into a sort of accessory to her lifestyle. A golden little brother to show off to her golden friends.

The only car I recognize in front of her house is a little red sports car. It belongs to Kevin’s buddy Jeff something who owns Boomer Imports down in Norman about a mile away from the University of Oklahoma. Everything’s clear now. They want me to go to Kevin’s alma mater while selling red convertibles to middle-aged divorced men who have delusions of becoming playboys.

Inside, my sister gives me an air kiss like I guess she thinks upper-crust types are supposed to do and leads me into the living room, where everyone else is already sitting around with their drinks in their hands. Of course, she doesn’t offer me any booze, but that’s why I hauled along the big 7UP.

Besides Jeff and his wife, there are five people I haven’t met before, and I forget their names as soon as my sister introduces them to me. Except for this girl—Jeff’s daughter as it turns out—who looks like she’s about my age and has the most gorgeous red hair you’d ever want to see. Her name’s Hannah and her sugar-cookie skin electrocharges my bloodstream on first sight.

Is it possible, I ask myself, that Holly’s thinking about fixing me up with more than just a job?

If it hadn’t been for Hannah, I would’ve been tempted to just wave at everybody and take a seat in the corner, but as it is, I work the whole assembly line, shaking hands till I get to her at the end of the couch. I hold on to her hand a little longer than the others.

“Where have I been all your life?” I say, flashing my irresistible space-between-my-two-front-teeth grin.

She doesn’t say anything back. She only looks down shyly and then up again, and the green of her eyes just about cuts me in two.