My Tiki Girl (14 page)

I’ve been here a million times, of course, but I don’t let on. Sukie, me, Troy, and Albert used to hang out in the basement doing dumb stuff like watching TV and playing Clue. I was always Mrs. White. Sukie was Miss Scarlet.

I know I’m being kind of an idiot not telling Dahlia all this. It’s not like she’s not going to find out. I’m just putting it off as long as possible, hoping like hell that by the time she learns who I used to be, who I am now will matter more to her, and she’ll be able to forgive me for once being exactly the sort of person she hates most.

Music is seeping through the front door. Some kind of gangsta rap, turned up real loud. I can’t make out the words, just the thumping bass, the threatening snarl of vocals.

I want to say it’s not too late—we can turn right around, go back to the apartment, and have band practice just like always, just the two of us. I want to remind Dahlia how last night she was making fun of the people who lived in these houses, mocking all the rich idiots with lawns like golf courses.

Dahlia explained on the walk over that Troy’s parents are away in Greece. Troy told her they go away a lot. They own a bunch of hotels. Troy’s house has a hot tub and a full bar. I did my best to act surprised, like I’d never been there before. Like it was some other girl who used to go to Troy’s to watch cable and play Clue.

Maybe, I tell myself, I can get through this without getting busted. I doubt Troy is going to bring up anything having to do with the old days and his ex-girlfriend Sukie when he’s doing his best to woo Dahlia.

Dahlia told me all about Troy’s house in this totally envious way, not all pissed off but more like,
Wouldn’t that be nice?

Dahlia says she hates rich people. She’s always going on about the waste, the arrogance, the mindless consumption that wealth breeds. But at the same time, I can see a little spark in her eyes that tells me that along with hating it, she wants it more than anything. It’s the same way she talks about Sukie and Heather and that whole popular girl clique. She hates them and says stuff like, “They’re just like cattle—all the same, mindlessly following each other around.” But I can tell some little part of her is envious and wants to join the herd.

Over the past two years I’ve learned that the things we want most, the things that we long for secretly, are usually the things that are the most impossible: like me wanting my mother back, or wanting Dahlia to love me. To Dahlia, the most impossible thing in the world is being rich and popular. It’s way easier to say she hates it than to admit to wanting it.

“Remember, LaSamba, just keep an open mind. If he totally sucks, we’ll forget the whole thing, okay?” She takes a deep breath, tucks her freshly washed hair behind her ears, then pushes the lit doorbell. Troy opens the door real fast, like he’s been waiting right behind it. It’s kind of creepy.

“I was starting to think you might not show,” he says. When I see his chest and arms through the tight black T-shirt, I think of comic book heroes in formfitting costumes with impossibly sculpted muscles, necks thick as tree trunks. His jaw is large and square and his nose has this Roman-god-like bump in it.

I hate him. I can’t help it.

I hate him because I know that eventually, the good-looking, persevering, rich, guitar-playing guy gets the girl. I’ve seen it in a thousand and one movies and gagged each time. I watched it happen back in eighth grade with Sukie—how he totally won her over and became her whole world in the course of just a few days.

“Haven’t you ever heard of being fashionably late?” Dahlia asks him. I follow her into the dimly lit wood-paneled hallway. There’s a carpeted staircase in front of us, but Troy turns to the left and takes us through the living room with a cathedral ceiling and a wall of windows to the steep wooden stairs that lead down to the basement, which has been turned into a rec room complete with a bunch of guitars and amps, Ping-Pong table, stereo, TV, a stack of board games (Clue is on top), and a beat-up leather couch where my ex-boyfriend, Albert Finch, is sitting.

Déjà vu.

“Hey,” grunts Albert, who looks all dressed up. He’s wearing tan chinos, a clean white button-down shirt, and cherry brown loafers. He’s kind of cute in that geeky-boy-with-glasses kind of way. Albert’s into video games and sci-fi movies. He and Troy seem an unlikely pair, but they’ve been best friends since second grade. Troy’s always trying to get Albert into the gym and Albert’s always trying to get Troy to read
The Lord of the Rings.

Looking at Albert now, I just bet Troy told him I was coming, so he got all dressed up just for me. I bet he’s even got on that stinky old cologne of his dad’s that he used to wear when we went on dates.

“Look who showed,” Troy announces as we enter.

“What’s he supposed to be, your agent or something?” Dahlia asks.

Troy laughs. “Nah, just a music lover.”

Albert stands up, like the men do in old movies when ladies enter the room. He looks all twitchy, like he doesn’t know quite what to do with himself. I catch a whiff and realize I was right about the cologne. It’s eye-watering. The poor kid must have used half the bottle.

“How about some Cokes?” suggests Troy.

“Sounds good,” says Dahlia as she slips out of her sheepskin coat.

“Finch, four Cokes,” orders Troy as he hurries to take Dahlia’s coat.

“A little cold out to be walking,” Troy says. “You should have let me pick you up.”

“We like to walk. Don’t we, Maggie?” Dahlia nudges me.

I nod.

“You’ve gotten so quiet, Maggie,” Troy says, and he gives me this look of pity. Poor Frankenstein girl with the dead mother.

I shrug.

“It’s okay,” he says with a smile. “It’s just different from how you were before. But different is cool. I mean, things change, right? The world is in flux.”

I try to smile back, but feel a little sick. I bite my lip and look down at my feet.

I was Mrs. White. Sukie was Miss Scarlet. Sometimes, after we’d play, the four of us would sit making out on the couch. I’d let Albert put his tongue in my mouth.

Troy’s right: the world is in flux.

Albert comes back with four cans of Coke. We all sit on the couch. Dahlia and I are in the middle. Albert is beside me, Troy beside her.

“Smoke?” asks Troy, pulling out a pack of Marlboros, which he so did not ever do when he was with Sukie. I think the cigarettes are just another prop to impress Dahlia.

“Got my own,” says Dahlia, reaching into her bag for her pack of cloves.

Troy takes a lighter shaped like a silver bullet from the table and lights her cigarette for her, filling the air with a mix of acrid lighter fluid and sweet cloves. He takes a cigarette from his own pack and lights up.

Dahlia holds out her cigarette, offering me a drag. I’m crazy nervous and inhale way too deeply, the harsh smoke burning my throat and lungs, making me cough. Albert pats me on the back, a little too hard, his hand like a wooden paddle. Then he does this creepy thing and leaves his hand on my shoulder.

“How’s your dad, Mags?” Albert asks.

“Fine,” I say, shifting away from him, toward Dahlia. He takes his hand back.

“You know her dad?” Dahlia says.

“Sure,” says Albert. “Howard. He’s really cool.”

“How does he know your dad?” Dahlia asks me, suddenly acting like Albert isn’t even in the room.

“He used to come over sometimes,” I say, my voice small and squeaky.

“They used to go out,” Troy says.

“You and Albert went out?” Now Dahlia’s the one with the squeaky voice.

I don’t say anything.

“Well, isn’t that sweet?” Dahlia says, all sarcastic.

We sip our Cokes.

“So what kind of music are you into, Wainwright?” Troy asks.

Dahlia kicks off her shoes. “Classic rock all the way,” she tells him. Then before I know it, she and Troy are off naming bands, arguing about who is more of a genius, Jimi Hendrix or Jim Morrison. Dahlia is impressing him with her Jim Morrison facts.

“Damn, girl,” Troy says, “you know your stuff. Truly.”

I start coughing again.

Dahlia squeezes my knee, asks if I’m okay. I nod.

Albert offers to get me another Coke, but I tell him I’m fine.

“So when did you two go out?” Dahlia asks.

“We started in eighth grade,” Albert tells her.

“And who broke up with who?” Dahlia asks.

Albert’s face reddens, starting with his ears.

“Well, someone must have broken things off. Unless, of course, you’re still together. Are you still going out, Maggie?”

She’s got an odd look on her face, half amused, half furious, and there’s a long silence while I try to figure out why she’s being such a bitch about this. Is it a) because I’ve kept a secret from her, or b) because she’s actually jealous, which means that maybe she’s got feelings for me, too? Albert clears his throat awkwardly.

“We broke up a while ago,” I say quietly. “Okay?” She narrows her eyes at me, but drops it.

Troy is putting on a Jimi Hendrix CD. He tells Dahlia she should really listen to the way he makes his guitar talk. I try to catch Dahlia’s gaze to give her a big eye roll, but she’s watching Troy.

Albert goes to get us these little bags of chips, and when he comes back, he hands me mine first and flashes me a smile that makes me feel kind of queasy. It’s an
Isn’t it nice to be together again like this?
kind of smile. I take the chips, but my hand doesn’t really feel like it belongs to me. It’s like a pale ghost arm sticking out in the air, thin, brittle fingers wrapping around the crinkly plastic bag. I have this sense that I’m not here on the couch at all, but somewhere up over us, a fly on the wall watching the four of us on the couch. But I’m not sure which me it is I’m watching: BTA Maggie or ATA Maggie. I feel a little like both. Like time has looped around in this room, doing a crazy figure eight, which is, I saw in a textbook once, shaped just like the sign for infinity.

“Infinity.” I whisper the word, thinking if I hear myself talk I’ll be back in my own body.

“What?” Albert asks.

I shake my head.

Dahlia and Troy are getting along like a house on fire, swept up by the flames Jimi Hendrix sings about. “Somebody’s house is burning down, down, down, down,” Hendrix wails. Troy is playing air guitar with his eyes closed in mock concentration, and Dahlia is keeping the beat with an invisible drum set, smiling, her eyes wide open as she watches him, listens to the music for cues to when to bang harder, faster.

We seem to be sitting like this forever on the couch, me listening to Troy and Dahlia, only half paying attention to poor Albert, who’s going on about some sci-fi convention he went to over the summer, but before I know it, I glance at the clock and an hour’s gone by.

“So, Farnham, are you gonna play or what?” Dahlia asks, and Troy smiles real big like he thought she’d never ask. He picks up his red guitar and plugs into one of the amps.

“Stratocaster,” he says. “Like Hendrix.”

He plays a few notes and makes them stretch and waver by wiggling the whammy bar. He plays pieces of songs I recognize from the radio, top-forty crap.

“So whaddya wanna hear, Wainwright? Blues?” with this, he plays a few low, wailing notes and sings, “I went down to the crossroads, fell down on my knees”; then his fingers dance up the fretboard. He’s bending the strings, making them moan.

“How about country?”

He plays some country twang and sings, “My dog died, my woman left me, my truck broke down, I got tears in my beer,” and this gets a laugh from Dahlia.

“Your flyer said you wanted eclectic,” he tells her with a wink.

Then he just starts jamming, playing whatever comes into his head, and much as I hate to admit it, he’s actually even better than I remember. And when he plays, he acts like he forgets we’re here watching him. He actually stops drooling over Dahlia and concentrates on his guitar. It’s kind of a miracle.

Dahlia gets up with one of her notebooks and starts singing the “Dead Aunt Mary” song, and Troy plays along. He fools around with different chords until he finds something that actually sounds kind of decent.

“Come on, Maggie,” Dahlia shouts between verses, taking my hand to pull me up from the couch.

I stand too quickly, and stumble as I struggle to get my clarinet from its case. Dahlia puts a hand on my hip, steadies me.

Finally I get the instrument out and put it to my lips. Maybe it’s being at Troy’s like this—feeling all floaty and strange and not placed in time—but the clarinet and I are one today. I get into the groove right away and Troy joins me, backing Dahlia, dancing our music behind her words, doing this beautiful ebb and flow thing. Troy might be a total jerk, but it’s like he’s got musical ESP—he knows what notes I’m going to play before I play them; he makes these subtle little changes in the rhythm that suddenly make the whole song work perfectly.

We finish, and Albert applauds. He’s looking at me all wide-eyed and puppy-doggish, like it’s the good old days and I’m gonna go make out with him on the couch after. Troy goes and gets a microphone for Dahlia, which he plugs into a small amp. Dahlia smiles and accepts the mike, caressing it a little, testing it by blowing and moaning into it, making my heart skip a few beats.