Extreme Elvin (19 page)

You know the way you say something to somebody, it’s half a question and half a command, as if you can force the answer to be what you want it to be? “You didn’t see it though.”

While continuing to walk, Barbara turned her head my way. “I think it’s good to be childlike.”

We can assume she saw.

“Well anyway, that means, that’s good, right? With your father, that is. He likes me then, right?”

“Oh sure. When he stopped laughing, he told me he wished
all
my boyfriends were eleven years old. He’d sleep better.”

My mind worked that one over frantically, trying to find something good. “He likes my boyish quality.”

“Bingo,” she said brightly. I think she was trying to help me out.

But then the other part kicked in. What did her father mean,
all
her boyfriends?

W
E WALKED IN THE
door to Darth’s fairly lavish home. It was a big old three-story stone place, like a giant cinder block with one of those widow’s walk things on top. It had apparently been some sea captain’s home originally and was still decked out in nautical stuff, oak everywhere, barometers and harpoons and ships’ wheels and petrified starfish all over the place even though Darth’s old man wasn’t a sea captain but a car dealer.

“So, she’s not talking about it at all, right?” I whispered in Frank’s ear. “Her damaged rep and all that?” There was no one close enough to hear us, but it was the kind of place where you felt like you were being monitored.

“Come on,” Frank said. “She’s
my
date for a hot party. Her reputation’s the last thing on her mind.”

This, oddly, brought me great relief. “You’re the man, Franko.”

He was looking all around the place as if he were in a wax museum with all his heroes in it. “No I’m not,” Frank answered. He gestured at all the stuff, the piano, at the framed photos in the entryway of Darth’s dad arm in arm with very important-looking people we did not know but who must have been
somebody.
“No, I’m not the man. This is the man.” He went right up to the pictures, got close enough to one to fog the glass. He wiped it off again. “I think this guy in this picture is like, a TV news guy or something.”

I looked closer, just to be polite. “He does the weather before school in the morning.”

Frankie leaned away, tapped the glass of the picture. “That’s what I want, right there. Power, fame, style.”

I couldn’t relate. What I wanted was a lot simpler.

I went to find Barbara, who had gone with Sally to scope out the snacks and beverages situation. Remarkable, no? Two girls from entirely different social circles, united by their relationships to me.

Gasp, there it is again. Relationships, with girls. Plural, even.

I located them in the dining room, where the ten-foot table was laid out with a very professional-looking buffet of small sandwiches, shrimp on toothpicks, white-corn tortilla chips, guacamole and salsa and sour cream, crackers, Muenster cheese, soft spreadable cheese, cheddar cheese so sharp it’d make you bleed. There were a couple of cold noodle dishes, Thai peanut and sesame, along with thin finger-length raw veggies and dips of such intense colors that either somebody picked them out of an organic garden fifteen minutes ago or somebody had painted them. Guava juice, pineapple juice, Italian sparkling water, real root beer with pieces of root in it for good measure, many different bottles of wine with labels that had no English on them, standing behind tall cut-glass goblets that were so fancy you could swear they danced when the music from the basement rumbled the table. There was an ice bucket big enough to fit my head in standing guard beside the table in its own six silver legs.

“Good evening,” Darth said from behind the four of us. We must have been gawking so obviously that it showed on the backs of our heads. “Don’t be shy. It’s there to be eaten.”

“Whoa,” Frankie said, shaking Darth’s hand very hard the way a salesman does in the appliance store before he realizes you don’t want a stereo, just some blank cassettes.

“Whoa yourself,” Darth said, shaking Frank, shaking him
off,
and walking right up to the girls. Skipping me altogether.

“Sally, right?” Darth asked, and he pointed at her in an I’ll-get-back-to-you-in-a-second manner.

“Yes, hi,” Sally answered. She seemed flattered that he already knew her.

“I don’t know you though,” he said to Barbara, whose hand he took and held lightly while she spoke.

“Barbara,” she said. “Thanks for having us to your party.”

“No, thank you for coming. If it wasn’t for girls like you and Sally, I’d be stuck looking at people like these guys”—he thumbed toward us—“all night. And that would make for an aesthetically bad party.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Barbara answered, looking me and Frankie over with a nod. “I think they make nice party decorations.”

Darth made his way to Sally, took her hand lightly the way he had Barbara’s. With very little pause he nodded at her, bent like a gent, and kissed the back of her hand.

I swear I saw his mouth open when it was on the back of her hand. I swear it. Not that I was, you know, obsessing over it.

I figured on some fireworks now. Sally can get pretty steamed...

She smiled. She nodded.

“Wine?” he asked. Then he passed his look over the rest of us, spreading the invitation over us like peanut butter rather than repeating it three more times.

“Well, I don’t...” Barbara began.

“Well, I do,” Sally said.

“Make it two,” Frankie said.

I waited, to see what Barbara would do. Darth did not.

“Oh sure you will,” he said. “I’ll have one with you. Red or white?”

Pauses all around.

“Red it is,” Darth announced, and proceeded to pour. He half filled five of those sparkly glasses with ruby-looking wine, then delivered, two by two, ladies first, of course, before lifting his own. “Welcome to my home,” he said, and we all clinked glasses with him very, very carefully.

After enduring my tiny sip of surely outstanding wine, I snatched a quick look all around. Yup, everybody but Darth was making the same I-just-drank-pickle-juice face.

“Come on down to where the actual party is going on,” Darth said, walking out and motioning for us to follow.

That was a relief. I had begun to wonder if there was a party here at all, or if we had been lured to one of those suave murder-mystery parties where rich people actually kill somebody out of boredom. I’d seen only one other person there, and she simply fixed herself a small plate of cheeses and broccoli trees and disappeared again, down the cellar stairs where we were now walking.

The music got louder, got thumpier as we got closer to the source. The source, in the end, was a very large entertainment-complex thing, with a television screen covering one entire wall, dark wood furniture and low lights giving the place a warm feel even though the wide-open rectangular room was nearly as long as a basketball court. The music poured out of surprisingly small speakers. Thirty surprisingly small speakers, ringing the room like high-security TV cameras, high up on the walls.

None of this was what I’d expected. I thought there would be a certain amount of rowdiness, perhaps some visible flesh, bawdy drinking songs, Ibiza dance videos, and deafening savage music.

The music was some kind of jazz that had a beat in there someplace, but sounded more like a bunch of different instruments playing different songs with great seriousness. The silent monster of a television flashed some Eurosport channel with a bunch of sports nobody really played like hurling and curling and bocce ball. Even the people there—including Obie and all the scary members of the Photography Club—were strangely quiet and within the law, sitting on the leather sofas, talking quieter than the music, and using coasters.

“Excuse me,” Darth said, suddenly agitated. He ran to a corner of the room, far from the TV and stereo action, where it didn’t even seem he’d been looking.

“Is that a spill?” he asked a shocked couple. “On the floor, right there, is that cocktail sauce I’m looking at?”

I covered my mouth as I started laughing. Barbara did the same. Frankie came up close behind me. “Is this awesome, or what?”

I turned just my head, like an owl, to see him. “Awesome is one word for it,” I said.
“Boring
is another.”

“What are you, nuts?”

“Franko, there is nothing going on here. It’s like a school field trip to Old Sturbridge Village when it’s closed.”

“Once again, you are so out of it, El. There’s more going on than meets the eye, I’m sure of it. This is probably the setup for some excellent devil-worship ceremony or something, you’ll see. Then you’ll feel stupid you said that.”

“Hey, I feel stupid already, thanks.”

Our host was coming back to us, shaking his head sternly.

“Do you think I was too hard on them?” Darth asked. He took a sip of his wine, since the question clearly did not require debate, as he was shaking his head no while asking.

“If you don’t mind my prying,” Sally pried, “where are your parents?”

“Oh.” He brightened. “I slipped them a few bucks and shoved them off to Plum Island.”

We all laughed, not because it was a great line—it was just okay—but it becomes pretty clear in these situations when you are
supposed
to laugh.

Sally, however, appeared to mean it. “You’re funny,” she said.

“Ya, I am.” Then, finally, Darth noticed me. He came over and gave me a firm hug around the shoulders. “But the real funnyman is this guy here. Sphinc, you having a good time?”

I nodded. Tough spot here. I was earning some points—getting instant stares from all sectors of the room—by appearing to be Darth’s only full-contact buddy. But I had to believe I was losing some too, by being the Velveteen Sphincter. What do you think?

“Funniest guy in the school, right here,” he said, slapping me on the chest with his free hand.

“I know it,” Barbara said. She smiled at me proudly, which added inches to my height, and my chest. “He gets it from his mother,” she added, before excusing herself to the bathroom. Sally went with her.

“What a coincidence,” Darth said when they were just out of earshot. “I get it from his mother too.” He slapped me on the chest again.

I saw Frankie stiffen. We were both a little possessive of my mother. However, only one of us was mentally imbalanced on the subject. I whacked Darth right back, in the chest.

It felt like I had struck a sheet of marble behind a silk curtain.

Darth remained unruffled. “Yo, Sphinc,” he said calmly. “I cured your ’rhoids; I can give ’em back to ya even quicker, know what I mean?”

Did I know what he meant? In the time it took him to make that statement, the affliction
came
back, with the stress.

How does he do that? Go from Señor Smoothie to Joe Knuckles just like that? Spooky, is what it is.

The girls returned.

“You know,” Darth mused, “this is why I have parties. I feel like a different person altogether, when there are beautiful ladies around. The world is a better place.”

Ah-hah.

“You know,” he added, “that our school is full of nothing but boys.”

Everyone nodded. Like we were at a wake.

“Please excuse me, ladies,” Darth said, bowing. “There is hosting to be done.” And he saw himself out, out of the room, out of the party, actually, as he went back up the stairs to where nobody seemed to be.

“Now
that
is home training,” Barbara said.

I was not about to disagree, because I didn’t want it to sound like sour grapes. Ouch.

Fortunately Sally, woman of the world, did the honors. “There’s something kind of scary about him though,” she said, looking at the hot spot in the air where Darth had just been.

Ah, good. Sanity.

“But in a most intriguing way,” she concluded.

Frankie was definitely taking notice, that Darth was catching the eye of his date. But unlike what I would have done—sweat, run around flapping my arms and telling jokes and saying please look at me, not him—he merely seemed to be observing, like an apprentice to a master craftsman.

I was suddenly tired. I led the way to a couch, the last one left, right next to the stereo. It sat across from a matching green leather love seat where Sally and Frankie took up residency. Barbara and I sat across from them, settling deep into the overstuffed, oversoft buttery leather, for some nice four-way conversation. Maybe the evening wouldn’t be so bad now after all.

Make that two-way conversation. The smell of leather or something had an effect on Sally and Frank, but they opted out of the conversation immediately and decided to wrestle instead.

My, the apprentice is a quick study.

Barbara and I, with a much bigger area to use, turned and faced each other on the couch in a more civilized fashion. I would have paid a million dollars if Frankie would trade me that love seat.

“Anyway,” I said to Barbara as if we had been talking for hours. “You kind of think Darth’s cool I bet, huh?”

She took one more sip off of her wine—her first sip in a long time—grimaced, and set the glass down on the end table near her. Relieved, I passed her my glass too. “I can’t finish either,” I said.

We both laughed, like kids, looking around at everybody (other than the two persons nearest us) as if we were going to be discovered and asked to leave for not fitting in.

“So,” I said, and by now it seemed I
had
been carrying on this conversation for hours. “You kind of like him I guess, huh?”

“Will you stop, Elvin?” she said. “He is interesting, and you can’t deny that. But I can see what Sally means, about him being maybe a little spooky.”

Just at that moment, the spooky host returned. He came right toward us, with a silver tray and an obvious sense of purpose. Sort of like before when he scolded the people who spilled, he seemed miffed.

“I’m sorry the wine doesn’t agree with you,” he said, placing one fresh goblet in Barbara’s hand, then one in mine. He took the two glasses off the end table. “I think you’ll like this better.” And, since he stood there over us, we figured we’d better try.