How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater (38 page)

TeeJay lets go of me and rests his enormous hands on my shoulders. “That guy who works for Frank Sinatra, he hung around for a while and asked me what I was doing and was I gonna go to college or what. And I told him straight I didn't have enough money 'cuz my mama and my little brother depend on my paycheck. Then this afternoon, this showed up. Special delivery.” He hands me a letter.

That's so like Frank. He swipes my ten grand with one hand and gives away forty with the other.

“Don't thank me,” I say, as I hand the letter back to TeeJay. “Thank Frank Sinatra.”

“Yeah, but if it wasn't for your fucked-up plan, this never would have happened.”

“I can't take all the credit,” I say. “Natie thought most of it up.”

“Who?”

“Cheesehead.”

“Oh, yeah, I know that kid.”

I plop onto the porch swing and rest my face in my hands.

TeeJay sits next to me. “You okay, man?”

“Yeah, I'm just tired.”

“'Cause if you need anything, you just let me know.”

“Not beating the crap out of me was enough.”

“I'm serious,” TeeJay says. “You need some money? I've got plenty saved.”

“Oh God, no, please, no. But thank you. Go buy your mother something nice.”

“You got it,” he says and rises to leave.

I look up at him. “So what are you going to study?”

“Pre-law. I'm going to be a lawyer.”

“Good. I may need one.”

The doorbell at Ziba's house
is one of those old-fashioned kind that twist like a key, and I always ring it more than is necessary because I like turning it. The house is a gingerbread Victorian, complete with a turret where Ziba lives like an exiled princess in a fairy tale. Kelly answers the door. She mouths “Hi” to me, or “Hiyee” to be exact, and stares down at the ground like she's either embarrassed or has suddenly developed an extreme interest in Oriental rugs.

“Figured you could use a ride home,” I say.

“Thanks,” she says, almost inaudibly.

“Where's Ziba?” I whisper. I don't know why I'm whispering, but it feels like the thing to do.

Kelly glances over her shoulder. “Upstairs,” she says, then looks at me in the eye for the first time, which I take as an invitation to grab her in my arms and kiss her, movie-star style. Kelly complies for the briefest moment, then stops me by pressing her palms against my shoulders. She backs away, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “We can't stay long,” she says. “Ziba's parents will be home soon.”

Ziba's parents are a strange pair, so stiff and formal in their foreignness that all of us, Ziba included, spend as little time as possible in their house. There's something about the place—with its hardwood floors, its paintings with those little art lights above them, and its bookcases lined with titles in multiple languages—that makes one feel as if one should be discussing literature or art while sipping a fine vintage wine and using the word “one” as the subject of the sentence. You can tell that sophisticated people live here because all their photographs are in black-and-white.

Kelly and I climb to the third floor, then up the little winding staircase that leads to the turret. Ziba's room is so spare that you'd think it was a nun's cell were it not for the framed eight-by-ten glossies of Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, and Lauren Bacall. It's a tiny round space the color of a brown egg with just a single bed, a nightstand, and a small chest of drawers. Ziba actually has a whole other room on the third floor just to keep her many clothes and shoes.

“You decent?” Kelly calls as we reach the top of the stairs.

“Come on in.”

Ziba is standing in the middle of the room in a satin robe, a large bath towel over her head. She rubs with both hands to dry her hair, then flips the towel off and shakes.

I gasp.

“Well, what do you think?” she asks.

“It's so . . . short,” I say. Ziba has chopped off her long wall of hair so that nothing remains but the shortest of spikes, like an unmowed lawn. With her enormous eyes and beaky nose she almost resembles a baby bird, a very chic baby bird, mind you, but a baby bird nonetheless.

“I think it's kind of punk,” Kelly says.

“It's kind of necessary, is what it is,” Ziba replies, dropping onto the bed and flipping her head as if she still had long hair, “just in case the Mob comes looking for LaChance.”

“Those are just rumors about Frank,” I say.

“I still don't understand how he traced the money to you,” Kelly says. “We withdrew it as cash.”

“Never underestimate the power of Sinatra,” I say. “After Laurel Watkins told him about the Catholic Vigilance Society, he probably used some Hoboken connections to investigate the post office box, which must have led him to the Convent of the Bleeding Heart and LaChance Jones.” I look over at Ziba with her butchered hair. “Oh, Zeeb,” I moan, “I'm so sorry I got you into this mess.”

Ziba flicks the notion away like it was a piece of dust. “Edward darling, don't be so dramatic. My whole life there have been people who've wanted me and my family dead. Your evil stepmonster and the Mafia will just have to get in line behind the Ayatollah Khomeini.” Her eyes shift to Kelly. “No, if I wanted to be angry with you, I have a much better reason.”

Kelly blushes.

“Yeah, sorry about that, too,” I say.

“Oh, I can't blame you,” Ziba says. “Look at her.” She traces Kelly's jawline with a long, tapering finger. “She's irresistible.” Kelly pats the space on the bed next to her for Ziba to sit down and gives her a longish kiss.

It's really hot.

“That being said,” Ziba says, licking her lips, “I've never played well with others and I don't intend to start now. I know it must sound terribly
bourgeois
and frankly, I'm a little disappointed in myself for acting so
. . . traditional,
” she says it like it's the worst thing imaginable, “but that's the way I feel.”

I look at the two of them sitting on the narrow bed together, so impossibly gorgeous and perfect, like sunshine and darkness, and I see that Kelly has made her decision already. If I were being mature about it, I'd say she made the right one: as much as I care for her and am loving the sex, I don't think I could show her the kind of devotion that Ziba just did. If I weren't being mature about it, I'd do everything I possibly could to undermine their happiness so I could continue to get laid. But I don't.

When they make the movie of my life, this would be the moment when I graciously leave the two of them together, like I'm Humphrey Bogart telling Ingrid Bergman she has to get on the plane at the end of
Casablanca.
In the next scene you'd see me driving home alone in the Wagon Ho while Frank sings “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning” on the soundtrack, generating sympathy for my luckless, loveless state, but in real life that's not what happens. In actual fact, while I may be luckless and loveless, I still have to drive Kelly home where we will continue to live together platonically, except now I'm the one who wants to have sex all the time and she's the one avoiding it.

Turnabout is a bitch.

O
pening night of
Godspell
Mr. Lucas lets me lead the entire cast in a guided meditation as a warm-up. I know it's a little too funky woo-woo for a public high school, and some of the kids snicker and giggle, but I think it's important that we get in the right frame of mind for the show. I talk them through a visualization my mother taught me, nothing radical, mind you, just imagining your body filling with white light and exhaling out all negativity. It calms me, too, but also makes me kind of sad, which is usually what happens when I slow down enough to realize how I'm feeling. Everywhere I turn, parents of kids who do practically nothing in the show are bounding about, bringing them flowers and making a big woofy deal over them. It would never occur to Al to do anything beyond show up, which is more than I can say for my mom, who I can only assume is lying dead somewhere in a mass grave. That happens in South America; you know, people just disappear. I know. I saw
Missing.

I go into the bathroom in Mr. Lucas's office to check my makeup one last time and to get away from all the hoopla. What I see in the mirror surprises me. Originally, Mr. Lucas and I had thought I would keep the beard for a more biblical look, but since his concept for the production is so modern, he asked me to shave it off. I'm pleased to see that all that running seems to have made a difference. My eyes look big in my face and my cheekbones and jaw are sharp and lean. I've also grown an inch, for which Kathleen takes complete credit. “I raised another son,” she says.

There's a knock on the door and, as if on cue, there is Kathleen with a bouquet in her hand.

“Am I interrupting the artist at work?”

She's brought stargazer lilies. My favorite. A wave of emotion crashes inside me and I throw my arms around her, almost knocking her over.

“You okay, sweetie?”

I lean my head on her shoulder. “You've done so much for me,” I croak. “I don't know how I can ever repay you.”

Kathleen pulls away so she can look me in the eye. “You can't,” she says. “And you shouldn't.” She reaches up to play with a stray curl on my forehead. “Just remember that when you get to be my age and someone younger than you needs help, pass it on. Okay?”

I nod. “I got makeup on your shoulder,” I say.

She glances down at the blot on her shirt. “I'll treasure it forever. Someday that smudge will be worth a lot of money.”

Kathleen.

The auditorium is packed. Even from behind the curtain you can hear the buzz of excitement. Since Doug's in the show lots of the popular kids who wouldn't normally come to the plays have shown up. I get a couple of wolf whistles when I strip off my shirt for the baptism scene, which, considering I'm playing Jesus, isn't really appropriate, but I appreciate the compliment. Natie gets all the biggest laughs, particularly when he recites the beatitudes in a Donald Duck voice. And Doug does surprisingly well in the dual roles of John the Baptist and Judas. We have a big duet together that Kelly's choreographed with a lot of complicated hat-and-cane stuff. The number goes over real big.

During intermission, Mr. Lucas gathers the cast together, tells us how well he thinks it's going, and reminds us to concentrate. “They're a great audience,” he says, “but they're a tad rowdy, and will be even more so after the marching band sells them all that candy. So you must remember that when Judas betrays Jesus with a kiss, it is essential that you set the tone for the audience. Remember, that kiss is the confirmation that your savior is being condemned to death. If you take it seriously, so will they.” He glances at me and Doug. “We hope,” he mutters. It's just a quick peck, but this is high school, after all.

Mr. Lucas's concept for the second act is supercool. Instead of our funky 1980s clothes, we come back dressed in yuppie power suits; the idea being that we're grown now and Jesus is almost like a political candidate. The Pharisees come on wearing hollowed-out televisions on their heads and talk in Southern accents like they're televangelists. Mr. Lucas wants people to understand that even if Jesus were to come back today, he'd still be rejected and crucified.