Drama Queers! (37 page)

Six more weeks and I’m outta here.

Then what am I gonna do?

“You want uth to drive you to Big Boyths?” Rakoff lisps, unlocking the door to his shit-brown rust-bucket Dustermobile.

“No thanks,” says Carrie, refusing the offer. “We’re riding with Ava.”

“Don’t forget 9 Mile’s closed for construction,” I remind the girls. “You gotta take Woodward Heights over to the service drive and down.”

“I think we can find our way to Elias Brothers,” says Audrey, the smart-ass!

Whatever…

The inside of Rakoff’s car smells like pine-scented puke.

I got news for him: the faux-velvet fir tree hanging from his mirror is doing
nothing
to mask the scent of mothballs and kitty litter. Truth be told, I don’t even know if Rakoff’s got a cat, but he manages to come to school every day covered in feline follicles.

“What are we listening to?”

The second we’re on our way, he turns up the radio.

“Thith would be Ebn-Ozn,” Rakoff beams.

Talk about bizarre!

If you can even call it a
song
, I don’t know what the hell it’s about. Some guy sipping cappuccinos with a Swedish girl named Lola across from Lincoln Center. Of course, this makes me think of my Juilliard audition and the fact that my life no longer has any meaning.

Forget Big Boy’s…I need an alcoholic beverage!

“Do me a favor,” I say to Rakoff desperately. “Stop at the nearest Party Store.”

“There’s one right by my houth,” he informs me, turning left by St. Mary’s off Woodward Heights onto John R.

I can’t tell you how many times I drove past Gary’s Market, with its green and gold Vernor’s sign hanging above the front door, but never set foot inside. In fact, there are tons of tiny businesses all along John R that have been here all my life: Vic’s Auto Parts, the B & B Beauty Salon, Koei Kan Karate Club. For whatever reason, I never get around to patronizing them.

The second I push open the door, jingle bells a-jangling, the scent of Party Store hits me smack dab. I don’t know what it is exactly, but they all smell the same no matter which one you frequent.

Maybe it’s the bags of chips stacked in all the bins.

Maybe it’s the rows of candy running beneath the counter.

Maybe it’s the guy smoking a cig, watching TV on a five-inch black-and-white.

“May I help you?”

Avoiding eye contact, I place a bottle of Boone’s Farm before him. Talk about a cheap buzz! At only two-for-five bucks, you can’t beat it.

“Can I also get a pack of Marlboro Lights, please?”

I don’t know why it’s the case with most of the party store owners in Metro Detroit, but the middle-aged man ringing up my Strawberry Hill is totally Middle Eastern.

“You have ID?” he asks, smoke wafting about his dark head like a halo.

His accent makes me think of hot Jerry from Lakeside Mall. It’s been over six months since our last trip to see
Rocky Horror
back on Halloween. How can it be that long ago? Time speeds up the more life winds down.

Six more weeks
…

Pretty soon, it’ll all be over.

Then what am I gonna do?

Opening my wallet, I flash the guy my freshly altered license. “How much?”

When I first started using the fake, I felt a tad freaked out. Like there’s no way I could possibly pass for a 21-year-old. I mean, let’s face it…They don’t call me “Opie” for nothing.

Mr. Party Store Owner gives me a look, like he’s never seen me before, since he hasn’t.

“Remove, please.”

“I beg your pardon?”

I can’t believe this guy’s actually gonna make me take my ID out from the plastic window-thingie and actually present it to him. What’s he gonna do, inspect it?

That’s exactly what he does!

First he brings it up to his eye, super close. Then he holds it at a distance, in front of the overhead light above the counter, behind the
Newport…Alive with Pleasure!
display.

“You know what?” I say. “I don’t need the wine.”

“No, you do not,” Mr. Party Store Owner concurs.

It seems he’s used the inch-long, yellow crusted fingernail of his right thumb to scratch at the glued-on double 6’s of my DOB, thus revealing the true year of my
naissance
.

“Is there a problem?” I ask, trying to sound as surprised as Mr. PSO.

“1970,” he sneers. “You were born 1970.”

I can’t tell if he’s asking or telling me this, so I just nod and smile.

“You can read, young man?”

He points to the orange and black sign taped up behind the counter.

You Must Be Born on or Before This Date
In
1967
to Purchase Alcohol
NO EXCEPTIONS!

I’m thinking,
Oh, shit…Now what’s he gonna do?

I mean, attempting to buy alcohol with a fake ID isn’t illegal…
Is it?

I reach for my license so I can be on my merry way, and this guy can forget he ever laid eyes on me.

“Just one second,” my captor replies, withholding the evidence.

Now I’m thinking,
He’s not gonna call the cops…
Is he?

Sure enough, he reaches for the phone, and dials. Of course, I can’t understand a word he’s saying as he converses in some foreign tongue that isn’t French, so I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about.

“I’m sorry,” I interrupt. “I gotta go…My mom’s waiting for me in the car.”

Mr. Party Store Owner continues on his tirade, most likely bitching to the person on the other end about how he can’t stand these American kids coming into his store, trying to take advantage of him…I know that’s what
I’d
be saying if I was him.

From far away comes the sound of sirens.

I’m about to be arrested, I know it.

The perfect ending to the perfect day!

My heart rate’s a mile a minute, my breathing shallow, my forehead soaked with sweat. I’m having a heart attack. I’m about to drop dead in the middle of some strange party store around the corner from Zack Rakoff’s house. Once I depart, he’ll probably run home and ask his mom to whip up one of her mayonnaise cakes in my memory.

Next thing I know, I’m climbing over the counter, snatching my ID back, and getting the fuck outta there.

“Unlock the door!”

I been inside the store all of five minutes, it’s barely 9:00 PM, and we’re in
The Friendly City
, for chris’sakes. Why the hell has Rakoff barricaded himself inside his car?

It’s not like we’re in downtown Detroit where people get shot and killed on a daily basis.

It’s not like anything exciting ever happens in this godforsaken Hillbilly Hick town.

And then I see it…

A dark brown blur whizzing past, pursued by two others—these ones white with bright blue and red flashers.

Have you ever witnessed something so frantic, so frenetically frenzied, yet while you’re viewing it, every detail sparks with vivid intensity? Each sight, each sound, each smell strikes a chord, cutting thru you to the bone. Like in that moment from
Ice Castles
, just before Lexie Winston takes that fatal jump, everything slows to a standstill.

That’s exactly how I feel watching the two cop cars hi-speed-chase the Chevy van up the center of John R, past the party store, towards the corner of Woodward Heights where St. Mary Magdalen protects her personal place of worship.

I stand transfixed, caught in a spell.

This is one of those times you think:
Are they making a movie?

I mean, I see it happening in front of my eyes. But like I said, nothing such as this ever occurs in Hazeltucky, Michigan.

And then I hear it…

Crash!

Metal crunches metal.

Burning rubber fills the air.

Followed by a scream.

Oh, God
.

I hate funerals.

In the spring of 1985, I went to one for my friend Paula Cowgill’s mother. Part of me thought if I didn’t go, if I didn’t see the woman’s lifeless body laying in a box, she wouldn’t really be dead. Somehow I could keep her alive…

If only in my memory.

Paula’s a year younger than me, but she went to elementary school at Webster, and her mom used to always volunteer because they lived across the street. Not that I’m calling her an ugly duckling, but Paula went from being a shy, glasses
and
braces-wearing 7
^th
grader, to looking like the lead singer from The Bangles the following year. It’s amazing what a pair of contacts and a perm can do to improve a girl’s self-esteem.

A few days prior to Mrs. Cowgill’s death, Mrs. “Friends hold you back” Putnam took the members of Symphonic Band to perform on the steps of the Michigan State Capitol. Back before she blossomed, Paula played clarinet with the Band Fags. Her mother accompanied us as one of our chaperones, along with Zack Rakoff’s mayonnaise cake–baking mother, and Ava Reese’s mom—who I love!

I remember seeing Mrs. Cowgill sitting amongst the crowd, tapping her feet to the beat of John Philip Sousa. Or whatever the hell march we played that day. This may seem like an ordinary observation, except for the fact that Mrs. Cowgill was totally deaf. Her and her husband both. I don’t know how they managed to raise a non–hearing impaired daughter, let alone one as intelligent as Paula, but somehow they did it.

To this day, I’ll never forget the time back in 6
^th
grade when she helped Miss Norbert teach a select group of students how to perform several different songs in sign language. Our repertoire included “Coming to America” by Neil Diamond, “I Wouldn’t Have Missed It for the World” by Ronnie Milsap, and my personal fave, “Xanadu” by Olivia Newton-John. Surprisingly, there’s no single sign for the title of that one, so every time we came across it, we had to spell the whole word out super fast: X-AN-A-D-U.

Sadly, that afternoon in Lansing was the last I seen Mrs. Cowgill alive.

A few days after our trip, she suffered a heart attack and died.

She was 40 years old.

The news of her untimely death came as a Total Shock. How could somebody so young die so unexpectedly? I mean, my mom’s forty-
two
now, and I can’t imagine losing her in the near future…Why is life so unfair sometimes?

I dreaded the day of the funeral. At the time, I only been to one, for Grandpa Victor when I was seven, and I really didn’t get it. I remember the flower-filled parlor, the people I didn’t recognize, and seeing my grandfather laying in his coffin at the far end of the narrow room. I knew he wasn’t sleeping, that he wouldn’t open his eyes, sit up, and say hello. But the concept of never-coming-back didn’t quite have an effect, you know what I mean?

By the time of Mrs. Cowgill’s passing, I was almost fifteen. I finally understood what it meant to be gone
forever
. Luckily, Ms. Lemieux showed up that day and helped make the proceedings more tolerable.

‘member mine and Jack’s hot-to-trot 7
^th
grade Enriched English & Social Studies teacher whose first name is Cinnamon? ’member how she up and abandoned us our Freshman year to move down to Florida for a teaching job or a new boyfriend, we’re not sure. Well, either the new gig didn’t go or the new guy dropped her like a dirty habit, because Cinnamon returned to Hazel Park less than a year later, just in time to pay her last respects to poor Paula Cowgill’s dearly departed mother.

Driving from St. Mary Magdalen’s out to the cemetery in Ms. Lemieux’s car, me and Jack crammed ourselves in the passenger seat, our heads hanging out the window in search of the procession.

“I can’t run a red light.”

Cinnamon insisted this, stiletto to the pedal, and doing just that as we both egged her on.

Like the blind leading the blind out 1–75, we finally caught up to the group at White Chapel, half an hour late for the graveside service. Thinking back, we probably needed one of them funeral flag-thingies affixed to the hood of our car, but what did we know? We were kids. Besides, we got away without getting a ticket, didn’t we?

I realize me and Jack probably shouldn’t have been laughing our heads off while our friend Paula watched them plant her mother forever in the earth. But we do that sometimes when we hurt…Isn’t laughter the best medicine?

Well, not today.

“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost…Amen.”

I can’t say I ever been to Shrine of the Little Flower before. I thought for sure the service would be held at St. Mary’s in HP. Considering that’s pretty much the place where she lost her life, I imagine her mom didn’t wanna have her funeral anywhere near there.

Oh, my God…I can’t believe I just acknowledged the fact.

Audrey is
dead.

As in never-coming-back.

Just to fill you in on the details, from the
Daily Tribune
…

According to the police report, some 25-year-old asshole robbed a party store down on 7 Mile in Detroit. All he took was something like a hundred dollars. But then he got into a
stolen
van and tore up John R at 70 MPH, the cops following him the entire way. Meanwhile, Ava, Carrie, and Audrey were heading west on Woodward Heights in Ava’s car, en route to meet the Band Fags for a post-concert celebration at Big Boy’s.

In the worst case of coincidence, the girls just happened to be passing by St. Mary’s as the asshole in the brown van ran the red light, slammed into the side of the blue Citation, pinning it up against the newly built brick wall on the corner. Luckily, both girls wore seat belts in the front. Unfortunately, Audrey in the back did
not
.

The collision with the van literally tore the car in two, the point of impact being precisely where Audrey sat. You can bet the 11 o’clock news had a heyday that evening. Before the ambulance arrived, reporters and cameramen already converged on the scene. And all the busybodies from Battelle to Browning had to come out and gawk, of course!

Standing on the side of the road with Rakoff, across the street in front of Tony’s Hardware, we recognized Ava’s car right away. And her screams. Fortunately, both she and Carrie only suffered minor injuries, treated at Oakland General. I wish I could say the same for Audrey…She died at the scene.

Luckily, the cops were already on hand from chasing the asshole in the stolen van. I recognized one of the officers as Betsy Sheffield’s uncle. ’member, from The Gas Station on Valentine’s Day? I guess that guy gets around.

The next day in school, everybody walked about in shock, like zombies from that movie
Night of the Comet
with the original Kayla Brady from
Days of our Lives,
Catherine Mary Stewart. During Wind Ensemble, Mr. Klan didn’t say much about the accident, the two vacant chairs in the clarinet section serving to remind us why both Ava and Carrie’s parents kept them home from school.

The person I felt sorry for was Jack.

I forgot he sits—I mean,
sat
—next to Audrey in Miss Horchik’s 1
^st
hour World Lit. From what I been told, the night before, Jack got a call from Betsy Sheffield after she heard the news from her uncle. Neither of them had any details about who the collision involved, other than (quote) three girls from Hazel Park (unquote), as the TV reported later that evening. When he walked into class the next morning, Jack noticed Audrey’s empty seat, clueing him in on all he needed to know.

Speaking of…

In the pew behind me, over to the left, I see him sitting all by himself.

I can’t remember the last time me and Jack ran into each other outside of school. He looks rather dapper in his blue button-down dress shit and khaki pants, his face tanned from his Spring Break adventure with Max, who I do
not
see. I’m surprised since Max used to hang out with me, Jack, and Audrey, back in the day. In fact, I almost forgot he was there the night Audrey singed her bangs lighting a cig on the stove at Luanne’s New Year’s Eve party.

For a split second, I start cracking up. Like I said, I realize it’s inappropriate to laugh when somebody’s died, but you should’ve seen the expression on Aud’s face when she smelled the stink of her own hair set aflame. Looking back, I feel guilty for thinking it funny, even though it totally was.

Great!

Now I’m crying.

Ava offers me a Kleenex I use to wipe away my tears.

Looking down at the Virgin Mary prayer card I’m holding in my hands, I can’t say I ever expected to view that particular name printed on one of these things…At least not for another fifty or so years. Again, I can’t believe any of this is
real
. I feel like I’m an actor in a movie or something, waiting for the director to yell, “Cut!” Then we’ll do the scene all over again from a different angle.

For the first time, I notice the organ music echoing thru the chapel. A quick glance around, I’m surprised at how many people I see, how many kids from school came to pay their last respects. Of course, we have the Usual Suspects en masse: Tuesday Gunderson, Keith Treva, Will Isaacs, Zack Rakoff, Claire Moody, along with Miranda Resnick, Ashley Lott, Michelle Winters, Ron Reynolds, Charlie Richardson, and Darlene Ellington.

I even saw Joey Palladino and Diane Thompson on the end of the aisle next to Mr. Dell’Olio and Mr. Klan. Miss Horchik is here somewhere, too. So is my favorite most-likely-a-lesbian Gym teacher, Miss Phelan.

Two rows in front of me, Tom Fulton sits with the entire football team, including Allen Bryan. ’member, he played Sonny in
Grease?
I know most of them guys weren’t friends with Audrey. Not the way me, Ava, Carrie, and the rest of the Band Fags and Drama Queers are—I mean,
were
. But she was Rob Berger’s girlfriend, and they’re his friends, so I like to give them credit for being here to support him. Not just because they want a free day off from school.

Poor Rob Berger…I haven’t had a chance to speak to him yet, but I seen him in the front pew with Mrs. Wojczek and Audrey’s brother, Mike, who I almost didn’t recognize with a shirt on and his mohawk shaved off. I can’t blame him for wanting to look respectable at his (half) sister’s funeral. I don’t know what I’ll say if and when I talk to him, other than “I’m sorry.” Maybe he won’t even recognize me out of our usual atmosphere.

In the row across the aisle sits the Vikettes: Angela Andrews, Marie Sperling, and Lynn Kelly. Beside them, girls’ Varsity basketball co-captains, Natalie Davis and Fay Keating. I forgot Fay and Audrey used to be good friends when they were both at St. Mary’s before coming to Webb. Opposite, I see the cheerleaders: Shellee Findlay, Jamie Good, and Betsy Sheffield, along with Liza Larson, Pam Klimaszewski, and Tonya Tyler from Chorale…And who else?

Tonya’s cousin, better known as The Sophomore.

Our eyes meet. We hold our gaze. There’s so much I wanna say…

You were right
.

It’s my fault
.

I
do
love you
.

I keep thinking about what Aud said the other night after I professed my feelings for Richie…

“What are you gonna do about it?”

“I don’t know…What
can
I do?”

For that, she just about smacked me upside the noggin.

“You can start by telling him.”

Even after I explained what Christopher told me in New York, Audrey still wasn’t buying my excuses.

“What if you don’t make it as an actor?” she asked me pointblank. “You got a better shot at Aggie Usedly drawing your numbers in the daily lottery.”

“Lord knows I could use the money,” I replied, knowing Aud was right, but not wanting to admit it.

“Then what’ll happen? You’ll be sad and all alone, wondering why you never got laid when you were in high school.”