How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater (37 page)

If they only knew.

Kathleen gets a little too happy, however, and staggers off to bed as soon as we get home. I've just changed into the tartan flannel nightgown when I see Kelly standing in the doorway, her face scrubbed Ivory Girl clean and her hair pulled back in a ponytail. She wears an oversized Wallingford High football jersey that Doug gave her.

“I hate when she gets like that,” Kelly says.

I pat the place next to me on the bed. She climbs on, pulling the jersey over her knees like a tent.

“She's just unhappy,” I say.

“I know.” We sit in silence while Kelly traces patterns on the quilt with her slender fingers. She shivers.

“You want to get under the covers?” I ask. She looks at me through her bangs and nods.

I pull the blanket aside and we climb in. The bed is too small for two and I have to put my arm around her shoulder, but just in a snuggly, slumber-party way. “Your feet are freezing,” I say. “What are you, a corpse?”

“Sorry,” she says, “let me just warm them.” She rubs her frigid feet against my calves.

“Cut it out, icicle girl,” I say, fidgeting. “You're killing me.”

She laughs and nestles her head in the crook of my neck. It feels nice, but I'm not reading anything into it.

“You mind if I just lie here for a while?” she says.

“Stay as long as you'd like.”

Please God. I've got nothing. Let me just have this.

“Shall I turn off the light?”

I can hear her swallow. “Sure,” she says quietly.

I inhale and get a whiff of Kelly's shampoo. Herbal Essence. I've missed that smell. She rests her arm across my stomach.

“You're getting skinny,” she says.

“Really?” Thank you, Jesus. Literally.

“Yeah, right here,” she says, poking at my side.

“That tickles,” I say. I don't know why the reaction to being tickled is always to announce it, because inevitably it only inspires the tickler to tickle you some more.

“C'mon . . . stop . . . really . . . ,” I say, “your mother will hear . . .” This stops her. “Nah, she's passed out,” I continue, and start tickling Kelly back.

“No fair, no fair, no fair,” she says, trying not to laugh too loudly.

Kelly rolls over on my thigh and I stop tickling her. A strand of hair has gotten loose from her ponytail and I reach up to brush it out of her mouth. She looks so beautiful and, well, I'm sorry, I can't help myself—I just have to kiss her. Her mouth tastes minty and fresh and alive. I pull her to me, like I want to inhale her entire being as she gently grinds against me and . . .

Happy Easter! Jesus ain't the only one to rise today.

I worry for a moment that I won't stay hard, but a little dry humping convinces me that I am once again a member in good standing. In fact, all I want to do is get as close to Kelly as I possibly can.

“Do you want to?” I ask.

“You mean . . . ?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah,” she whispers. “But first you have to . . .”

“Put on a condom, I know.”

“Well yeah, duh,” she says, “but first you have to take off my sister's nightgown.”

We make love: slowly, gently, quietly. Climbing inside her feels like slipping into a warm, soothing bath. Or a dream.

You couldn't ask for a better first time.

I lie with my head
on her breast for a long time afterward, listening to her heartbeat. “Thank you,” I murmur.

“You're welcome.”

I lean over and make butterfly kisses on her belly with my eyelashes.

“Still think you're bisexual?” she asks.

I prop myself up on my elbows. “Do you?”

“I asked you first.”

We look at each other a moment and then both of us bust up laughing.

“Hell, yeah,” we both say.

“Nothing personal,” Kelly says, “but I think maybe only a girl can, like, really know what feels good to another girl, you know what I mean? Oh, not that it didn't feel good when you went down on me, even if you were doing it to avoid sex.”

I sit up. “You knew?”

Kelly rolls her mismatched eyes. “I'm a therapist's daughter,” she says. “How dumb do you think I am?”

“And you didn't mind?”

“What? That you, like, practically gave yourself lockjaw trying to satisfy me? That's a lot more than I can say for Doug, I tell you that.”

“Really?”

Kelly gives a feline stretch. “Please,” she says. “He thinks all he needs to do is fuck gently and carry a big stick.”

This girl never ceases to surprise me. I take a good, long look at her. “Have you always been this cool and I just never noticed?”

Her eyes cloud and she nods. “Actually, yes,” she whispers.

“I'm sorry.”

“Thanks.” She lowers her head and does that coy Princess Di thing that pretty girls do. “I know how you can make it up to me, though.”

“Oh, yeah?”

She gives a little push on my head. “Why don't you finish what you started?”

I'd answer, but it's rude to talk with your mouth full.

You know that scene in
Gone With the Wind
when Scarlett wakes up humming and singing to herself the morning after Rhett carried her up the stairs and gave her the banging of her life? That's how I feel the next day. Just the thought of the night before gets me hard, often at very inopportune moments, like while practicing to play our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Kelly and I agree not to mention it to anybody, least of all Ziba. Given my new sense of ethics, I'm not crazy about the idea of sneaking around behind Ziba's back, or Kathleen's, for that matter, but hey, I'm only human. And eighteen.

We have a harder time staying quiet during the Anne Frank in the Secret Annex game. Over the course of the next couple of weeks we progress from making love to making hot monkey love, complete with little high-pitched chimpanzee noises and that totally sexy thing when you call out each other's names while you're doing it. I think having someone acknowledge by name that you and you alone are the reason for their pleasure is such an immense turn-on, unless of course you have an unsexy name like Agnes or Wendell. It must be tough getting aroused when your partner shouts, “Oh, yeah, do me, Wendell!”

I'm concerned, of course, that we're too vigorous and noisy, but I'm like a kid with a new toy and getting Kelly to reach orgasm through intercourse alone becomes something of a personal mission to me. (“Look Ma, no hands!”) So we're going at it pretty hot and heavy one afternoon, me running lines in my head to keep from coming (Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall . . .) when suddenly Kelly's eyes go wide.

“Are you there? Are you there?” I pant. “Please tell me you're there.”

“Do you hear that?” she says.

“Hear what?” (Blessed are the peacemakers, for . . .)

“That sound, downstairs.”

I stop and listen.

Footsteps. Coming up the goddamn stairs.

Kelly and I leap out of bed and do that hopping-around dance that people do when they're trying to hunt for their clothes and get into them at the same time, all the while saying, “Shit, shit, shit!” Kelly's managed to find her shirt and I've got my pants to my knees when there's a tap at the door which, because we are obviously destined to be punished, swings wide open. I turn, and there she is, her eyes and mouth wide open like a flounder.

Ziba.

She looks at me, my boxers bobbing in front of me like a circus tent, then at Kelly, who's trying to appear nonchalant with her shirt on inside out and, I swear, it's like a water main bursts inside her. Tears erupt from Ziba's eyes and her face seems to crumble into pieces. It's kind of a distressing sight, to be honest. She spins around and pounds down the stairs, slamming the front door as she goes. Kelly jumps into her jeans and takes off after her without even putting on her shoes.

Who needs Juilliard when I've got all this drama right here?

I throw on the rest of my clothes and am just wiping some lipstick off my neck when, from downstairs, I hear a scream.

I fly down the steps and, as I whip around the corner, I see a very panicked psychotherapist frantically waving a knitting needle at a very large black man. “Who the fuck are you?” Kathleen screams.

The man backs away from her. “It's cool, it's cool,” he shouts as he raises his hands to show he's unarmed. He glances over his shoulder. “Edward, tell her you know me!”

“I know him, I know him!” I say. “We go to school together. It's okay.”

Kathleen drops the knitting needle.

“Kathleen, this is TeeJay.”

“I came here with Ziba,” TeeJay says. “Honest.”

Kathleen exhales and leans against the wall. “I'm sorry,” she says. “I heard a big crash and when I came upstairs and saw you, I . . .”

A worried-sounding cryent calls up from the basement, saying, “Is everything okay?”

“Everything's fine,” Kathleen says. “Just the cats again.” She runs her fingers through her hair and then hardens her eyes at me. “Edward. Sweetheart. I work very hard to make these people in the basement sane. Could you please try not to do anything that will make them crazy again?”

“Sure. Sorry.”

“Thank you.” Kathleen nods to TeeJay and then disappears down the stairs. He and I stand there, gaping at one another.

“Can we go outside and talk?” he asks. His voice is low and woody, like how you'd imagine an oak tree would sound if it could speak.

“Sure,” I say. We go out on the front porch.

“So, what can I do for you?” I say. “I mean, you're welcome here anytime, of course, but it's not like . . . well . . .” Why am I always such an idiot in front of black people?

TeeJay folds his huge cannonball arms across his chest and stares at me. “A couple of days ago this guy showed up at our door,” he says, “saying he worked for Frank Sinatra.”

“Frank Sinatra?
The
Frank Sinatra?”

“He said he was looking for information on LaChance Jones.”

My stomach does a backflip. “LaChance Jones? Who's LaChance Jones?” I say.

TeeJay burns a pair of holes in me with his eyes. “She was my sister.”

Oh. My. God. I'm going to roast in Hell forever.

“This guy asked if we knew anything about someone opening a bank account in my sister's name. My mama got so upset she just ran out of the room crying.”

Flames licking at my feet.

“He asked me if I knew who this was,” TeeJay says, and hands me a piece of paper. It's a photocopy of the fake driver's license Natie made for Ziba/LaChance. The bank must have xeroxed it when she opened the account.

Devils piercing my skin with their blazing-hot tridents.

“What did you say?” I ask, trying not to wet my pants.

“I told him no,” he says.

“What?”

TeeJay folds his arms again, the muscles in his biceps bunching. “I had no idea if this guy was who he said he was. But I knew Ziba was cool, so I figured I better talk to her first. She told me everything.”

Shit. “I'm so sorry,” I say. “I didn't mean to . . .”

TeeJay takes a couple of steps closer to me. “Didn't mean to what?”

“Didn't mean to cause you any harm.” I stagger backward, knocking into the porch swing.

“Come here,” he says.

Oh God.

“I said come here!”

I take a step forward. “Listen, I'm not good at this kind of thing, so can you just make it quick so we can get this over with?”

TeeJay unfolds his arms.

T
eeJay grabs me roughly by
the shoulders and I brace myself to get knocked into next week. But then he takes me in his huge arms and gives me the most bone-crunching, back-cracking, oxygen-depleting
hug.

“Thanks, man,” he whispers as he squeezes me.

“Fr wht?” I say into his chest. What the hell is going on?