“Juarez,” Maria says. “We’re going. You’ll love it.”
“What happens if I get really, really drunk in Juarez?” I ask. “I’ve seen those shirts that say, ‘I was drunk and left for dead in a Mexican prison.’”
“There are Mexico horror stories, Charles,” Maria says, scoots her chair a bit to the left to show her disinterest in Michael. “That’s why you go with a group.”
“Yeah!” Shelley says. “It’s more fun that way, too.”
“But you have to find the
right
group,” Maria says.
“Who are you?” Michael asks me, but he looks at Maria. “I don’t know who you are, bro. Never seen you before. Who
is
this guy?”
I adjust my napkin,
wonder if I should just end the performance and make a formal introduction to Michael, if there’s any going back now.
“I like your tie,” Maria says. “And that suit? What color is that?”
“Silver-black,” I say. “It’s supposed to be the next big thing.”
“It’s very classy.”
“Thank you. I’m glad you like it.”
Michael turns away, still eying me suspiciously, then exhal
es loudly before scrolling through his cell phone. “Whatever,” he says.
Soon thereafter, a short Hispanic guy in blue jeans walks from a doorway at the back of the room, carrying four styrofoam bowls of salad balanced uneasily on his wrists and palms. He arranges them in front of each girl at the far table, then heads back through the doorway
to the kitchen, a moment later returning with more salad bowls, and he continues, over and over to the kitchen, until all thirty of us have been served. I joke with Maria and Shelley about how a single tray would be more efficient to carry all these plates, about how it’s great that we’ve broken out our finest china for tonight, and while I worry my jokes are contrived, they laugh with such honesty that I wonder if I might somehow sparkle with the same energy that attracted Jenn so long ago. Meanwhile, Michael continues to mutter under his breath. “A thousand comedians out of a job,” he mumbles.
*
Dinner: Michael plunges into his salad before Maria and Shelley are even finished folding their napkins in their laps. I wait to pick up my fork until they’ve taken their first bites, and Michael says, “Fucking show-off.” Still, I ask them how the food is, and I don’t chew with my mouth open, and I swallow and wipe my mouth before speaking.
Michael again asks if he knows me, now has his hand on my shoulder.
I brush his hand away—Maria and Shelley staring at this scene the way you’d regard parents reprimanding their children in public—and I whisper so loud that it probably isn’t a whisper: “
Come on
, Michael. Quit messing around.”
“Is he all right?” Maria asks, fingers at her temples to keep her curly hair from slipping over her eyes. Minutes before, she didn’t seem to mind the spontaneity of out-of-place hair
, but now the tension has become a tangible thing seated at our table.
“He’s a joker,” I say. “Funny guy. Heh.”
“He seems…” and she lowers her voice to a whisper: “angry.”
“No no,” I say. “See, they’re talking now.
Everyone’s having a great time.” But Shelley is still staring at the two of us, and Michael is now on his cell phone, telling someone about
Transformers
.
After we finish our salads, the server in the blue jeans brings out styrofoam plates of steaming spaghetti and lumpy meat sauce, and plates stacked high with garlic rolls.
“What are you studying here?” Maria asks.
“Business,” I say. “But I’m already thinking about changing.”
“To what?”
“College. I can major in
college
, right?”
She laughs. “Do you have a girlfriend?”
A plate of spaghetti is slid before me, sauce spattering on the tablecloth.
“Girlfriend,” I say.
“Yeah. You have one?”
“
I don’t even know anyone around here.”
“Good. Guys without girlfriends are more fun.”
“Yes they are, aren’t they?”
After the spaghetti is delivered, Michael
thankfully turns his full attention to Shelley, quizzing her on NBA stars and statistics, Dwight Howard vs. Shaq. Kobe vs. LeBron. Her eyes going wider and wider and her hands flapping around in frustration as she says, “Look, I don’t
care
, okay?” But somehow, I’ve got something going with Maria: I’m commenting on differences in weather between Florida and New Mexico, in landscape, in student attitudes, and amazingly, she remains engaged throughout dinner. I slip once or twice, first telling her that I’m from Fort Myers and then telling her I’m from Cypress Falls. But the cities are right next to each other, I reassure her. Parents bought a new house. We moved.
“So does everyone, like, have orange trees in Florida?”
“Orange trees?” I ask. “Where’d you get that idea?”
“Don’t laugh,” she says, laughing herself, and both of our hands are above the table and she stretches out her fingers and taps my hand playfully. A curl of hair falling across her forehead and settling like a dark lightning bolt over her right eye. She doesn’t lift her hand to brush it away, just lets it sit there framing her face in shadow, just keeps her fingers intertwined with mine. “It’s a real question,” she says.
“Real question? I don’t ask you if all New Mexicans have cacti in their yards.”
“You
do
have an orange tree back home, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I say. “Everyone’s got orange trees. And everyone lives on the beach. And Mickey Mouse is our governor.”
“Don’t laugh.” She play-hits me again.
“This is good stuff. I’ll have to remember this.”
And I can’t stop smiling, because everywhere I’ve been, I’ve only noticed those things that are different from my home state; I’ve viewed the world through the lens of Florida, and now suddenly I’m being viewed through New Mexico.
But the dinner, and all conversation, ends abrupt
ly when Sam and Nicole reappear at the front doors of the chapter house, Sam with his arms folded before his body, Nicole with her hands at her waist and her foot tapping an impatient rhythm. “All right, gentlemen,” Sam says, “I need you outside
now
. Out the back door. Courtyard.”
And there is no explanation following this statement.
The pledges rise from their seats, fifteen confused young men with spaghetti-full mouths, marinara-stained napkins falling to the floor as they stand. One of the pledges on the far end of the room tries to continue his conversation with his sorority partner even as he rises, but Sam just says “
Now
!” and he jumps forward as if poked by a cattle prod.
“Thank you gentlemen,” Nicole says with a fake sing-tone in her voice.
So I tell Maria and Shelley “Thank you for a wonderful time,” and shake both of their hands (but only the very ends of their hands, their fingers, not a full-hand grip like Michael gives) and I join an awkward line of pledges out the door and into the back courtyard.
I realize, also, that I didn’t stain my shirt with marinara.
Score.
*
For a moment—here outside in the fraternity house courtyard (there’s no
yard
, just pavement and sand and cacti), where it has grown dark and where the distance affords only jagged black outlines of miles-away mountains, no city lights—all is quiet. Fifteen young men stand with hands in pockets, disappointed looks on their faces because they can’t believe the Etiquette Dinner has come to such an abrupt and anticlimactic end. The same kind of look you might see in a theater when a movie cuts off unexpectedly, some electrical failure ripping the audience from the experience. They wanted phone numbers. They imagined themselves wooing their women, winding up back in dorm rooms beneath bedsheets: for 18-year-old men, the mind inevitably unveils this scenario whenever conversation is struck with an attractive female, no matter the occasion.
But the disappointment lasts only a moment.
Soon, the scattered pledges converge in the center of the lot to re-form their fifteen-man Pledge Clump, and quickly it becomes a jubilant mass of howling laughter, of “Yo, that was
money
, baby!” and high-fives, pats on the shoulder, fist-pounds and “I almost got her
number
, man,” and even spiky-haired Michael is high-fiving his pledge brothers, bragging as though he was the model of “true playa,” as though he wasn’t reciting Shaq’s rebound totals for Shelley or slurping his spaghetti and splattering the meat sauce across the tablecloth.
I stand on the periphery to avoid drawing attention to myself, but I can’t help loosening my tie and unbuttoning my wrists, my own minor victory celebration. For one night, I was
a pledge at a college party, not an angry storm trooper blasting his way inside the house.
After a few minutes, though, Michael breaks free of the Clump. “Yo,” he says, “I would’ve fucking had my girl’s
number
, too, bro. She was all up
on
me. But this other guy, yo, he fucking cock-blocked me
all
night.”
This oth
er guy. Cock-blocking.
“I kept trying to talk to her,” Michael says. Has a cigarette in one hand, and this time it’s lit, a trail of smoke swirling about as Michael ma
kes wide slashing gestures with both hands. “Kept trying to work my way into the convo, but this fucker kept brushing me off, knahmean?”
“Brushing you off?” someone asks. “Who was it?”
And outside, here in the unlit parking lot, I suddenly feel the need to tighten my tie again, to button my cuffs. Just another pledge? I hide behind a section of the Pledge Clump and scroll through my cell phone for nothing in particular.
Michael glances in several directions, looking for me
. Takes a drag of his cigarette.
The New Mexico night
growing colder, but still I can feel dried sweat and desert dust caked over my skin. Waves of it, like this state wants to bury me one sand grain at a time.
“Yo,” Michael says, and he’s located me in the crowd. He walks to
me, motioning for a companion—a heavy-set kid with spotty facial hair over smooth cheeks—to follow him. Michael’s body sways from side to side, boxer style, the sort of pose he probably saw on a 50 Cent video. Wipes fist across dry lips. “Yo, who the fuck are you, man?”
Silence in the Pledge Clump. Heads turning to
watch the three of us. Smiles creeping across faces. Elbows nudging ribs. Whispers: “
this is gonna be good
!”
“
Um. My name is Charles,” I say. “We met.”
“No, no,” Michael says. He waves his index finger at me. “Who
are
you?”
“We sat at the same table. I’m Charles.”
“Course we did. You think I don’t know that?”
All eyes on us
, the Pledge Clump breaking apart like a patch of scattered seagulls on the beach taking flight, all sorts of flapping noises and “Come on, come on,” and “Let’s go!” and they charge forward and re-converge quickly around
us
, surrounding the three of us in the same way that a mob might form around a middle school fight, almost as if they’ve been waiting for a confrontation all evening. Like they’ve known all along that I’m too polished to be authentic.
“Who the fuck
are
you, bro?” Michael asks. “I never seen you before. Never seen you at any parties, at any pledge meetings, nothing.”
His finger in my face, ember-tipped cigarette centimeters from my eyes.
“I’m Charles,” I say. “
Charles
. What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know what you’re trying to pull, yo, but I know my pledge brothers. I know that this is Tony, right here. I know that that’s Ro, over there. That’s Miguel. That’s Richard. But
nobody
knows who the fuck you are.”
And I don’t want to lose this night, don’t want to reintroduce myself as “someone from Nationals,” but all eyes are on me, violence in the glares, and so there’s only one thing I
can
say: “I’m an Educational Consultant from the Nu Kappa Epsilon Headquarters.” Vague looks from the Clump. “You might have read about my position in your pledge books. A consultant? From Headquarters?”
“The fuck…?” Michael says.
“Yo, this guy’s a fucking spy,” Tony—the stocky sidekick—says.
“The fuck?” Michael
says again, head shaking.
“Brothers were testing us,” Tony says.
“Oh,
shit
,” Michael says and his chili-colored face immediately drains and his anger is gone and I could swear his pupils dilate and his spiky hair deflates and he looks like he’s going to throw up. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.”
“
Hold on,” I say. “It’s, um…”
“I’m so fucking sorry, man,” he says and takes my hand and tries to shake it, but he looks like he was dipped in wax, barely moving or breathing, and—startled—I pull my hand away. “Oh shit,
sorry
, man. Don’t tell the brothers. Don’t tell the brothers I didn’t know who you were. Oh shit. Don’t tell them I stepped to you, bro.”