Mean Boy (40 page)

Another half hour later I’m back at the bar about to place an order of margaritas for Janet’s gang when in the mirror I
notice Charles Slaughter lumbering up behind me wearing the same open-mouthed, distant-eyed expression he had when he shoved the table away.

“Chuck,” I say, turning.

“Fuckwit,” he acknowledges. On the stool beside me is a girl’s purse, and on the stool beside the purse, a girl. “Anyone sitting here?” Chuck asks the girl, lurching toward her as if the floor has suddenly shifted beneath his feet.

The girl looks way up at Slaughter, having to lean back slightly. I can see a decision being made. “My—” she stammers, gesturing at her purse. “My bag is.”

Slaughter looks down at the bag, swoops it up in one of his paws and places it in the girl’s lap as he sits down.

“Well, now
my
bag is,” he tells her.

The girl is hardly charmed. The girl, who is pretty but not intimidatingly so, whom I was thinking I might talk to at some point, gets up and leaves.

“Gallant,” I say to Chuck.

Slaughter just ahems and places his hands in front of him, staring at himself in the mirror behind the bar.

“Did you talk to Sherrie?” I ask.

Slaughter’s arms are such that just resting them on the bar means he can almost reach over and grasp the inside of it. He leans forward a little, and does exactly that. The position reminds me of a guy on a police show—a plainclothes cop having leapt on the hood of the getaway car, braced for a long and dangerous ride.

“I dunno,” says Slaughter. “Yeah. Mittens is mad at me.”

“Still?”

“She’s mad at me,” says Slaughter.

I watch him for a moment or two. Slaughter hasn’t taken his eyes from his reflected eyes in the mirror since he sat down.

“Charles,” I begin.

“Lawrence,” says Charles, stopping the words in my mouth, because Slaughter has never addressed me by name since I’ve known him. “I think you should get away from me. I think I’m going crazy.”

SOMETHING HAPPENS
. The evening goes mad. It’s not just Chuck, soon it’s me too, and everybody. I only remember drinking one margarita, but it felt like I drank it for an awfully long time. Green, sweet, and numbing.

I find a pay phone and call Sherrie. Ring, ring. She’s there. Something Slaughter. Something crazy. He thinks you’re mad at him, he’s losing it, Sherrie. You have to come.

Yeah, I am, I am mad at him. There’s no talking to him, Lawrence, he thinks he can get himself all fucked up and then come over and have a serious conversation with me, it’s ridiculous.

But he’s really messed up right now, I don’t know what to say to him.

I know he’s messed up. I almost called campus security to get rid of him. I told him I’m not going to deal with him when he’s like that.

Come, I say, and my voice feels like it’s happening above my head. Please come. Like someone else is doing the talking.

Sherrie’s voice goes wah-wah in my ear for a while, like the grown-ups in a Charlie Brown cartoon. One of Janet’s friends comes over carrying a blue cocktail and yells and laughs holding it up to my face until I agree to have some.

It’s good! I say.

It’s not good, says Sherrie, whom I can suddenly understand again. It’s not good, Lawrence.

What’s not good?

This thing with Charles. It’s not good.

I can feel myself drifting again, eyes bouncing lazily, balloonlike, around the bar. They alight on Janet, on her friends as they dance and swoon together, football players, the angry waitress. I want to drop the phone but a lone remaining tadpole of coherence thrashes its way to the surface of my brain, pokes its head out, demanding to be heard.

But why? asks the tadpole. Why are you so mad at Chuck anyway?

Scarsdale
, says Sherrie, and now I’ve lapsed back to catching Charlie Brown snippets as the crowd seems to swell then subside like the middle of the ocean. Wah-wah
whores
, says Sherrie in the distance. Wah-wah
sores
. He wasn’t kidding about that, Lawrence. He wasn’t kidding about any of that stuff.

One of Janet’s friends tells me her name is Susan, and I seize upon this. Susan, I say. Susan, can I tell you something, Susan?

Susan is laughing at me. Janet is nearby. Susan tells Janet I’m hilarious.

But, Susan, I say. Listen to me will you Susan?

He is so fucked up, says Susan.

Not he, Susan. Not he. Me. Come on Susan I’m right here.

Okay, I’m sorry I’m sorry but it’s funny.

Okay.

So, says Susan. What is it Lawrence? What would you like to say?

Here’s what it is. Here it is Susan.
Poetry
.

Susan looks at Janet, is about to say something, but then remembers—
not he
. So looks back at me.

What? says Susan.

He really likes poetry, explains Janet.

Not he! I yell. Me!

He’s getting upset, says Susan.

And so I am. I get up, and they call for me not to go. I go.

I don’t know where I go.

It’s dark and warm and soft, the place I happen to be.

Sherrie, I say. Oh, Brenda L.

Her laughter is dark and warm and soft.

The sun glares in at me through gauzy white curtains; curtains which actually seem to embrace the light instead of keeping it out. The curtains pull the sun into the room, fling it around. I’m on a couch, and not in the mood to leave it any time soon, more in the mood to turn over and lose my face in its cavernous dust-smelling crevasse, which is what I do.

A no-thought period ensues for a while, here in the dark of the couch, which I enjoy. I shove my fingers into its depths and feel around. Crumbs, and cool metal springs. I feel blindly for a while, groping like a baby, for no purpose but sensation.

Then the brain starts up. Suddenly, horribly. The raisin of dread leaps to attention, shockingly none the worse for wear after last night. Nourished, it would seem, on margaritas. Enlivened.

There are only two I can think of. Lord Byron and Edgar Allan Poe.

It seems typical of a Little Lord Fauntleroy like Byron, totally in keeping with his entitled, nothing-off-limits approach toward the world. I don’t like that Byron is one. I’m not supposed to have anything in common with Byron.

All I really know about Edgar Allan Poe is that, coincidentally enough, he was a huge fan of Byron. So points off Poe right there. And, since Poe got famous as a writer of horror stories, I assume I can safely dismiss his poetry. I always envisioned Poe as being like the pencil-moustachioed Vincent Price in the Hollywood Horrors—a kind of cartoon creep. The thing with his cousin confirmed that image.

With Byron, it was his half-sister Augusta Leigh. It was a huge scandal and he had to leave London. That’s the limit, society told him. It’s been very flamboyant and Dionysian and all, but that’s about as much as we can take from you, Byron.

Poe’s cousin’s name was Virginia. She was thirteen when he married her, and he loved her faithfully until she died.

I turn over again, masochistically allowing the sunlight to rake my eyes, not just because I know I deserve to suffer, but because I’ve realized all at once how very important it is for me to get up and leave right now. I’m fully clothed, thank God, and suddenly hot. One of Grandma Lydia’s knitted afghans has been thrown on top of me at some point. I fling it away, and months of settled dust takes wing, riding the sunbeams. I feel suffocated. I sneeze. The sneeze is bad, it shakes things loose, wakes things up I’d rather keep dormant.

Temporarily unable to leap to my feet and bolt out the door, therefore, I let myself lie back to gather strength and do some thinking. I think to myself that there are only a few months left of school. I avoided her most of last semester, certainly I can avoid her for most of this one. If I am very careful, I might well be able to avoid her until September, when she’ll be safely across the border, Big Apple bound, out of sight and memory.

And now it is imperative I try and sit up again.

It’s a perfect day for hating, the hangover shaping itself into a thundercloud behind my eyes, and I take my seat in the back rows, primed for hatred, ready to seethe and writhe. Seethe and writhe—this reminds me of how I used to mishear the national anthem when I was a kid. Only a geek who read dictionaries for fun would misinterpret such a simple construction as “we see thee rise” as “we seethe and writhe,” but the
thee
threw me off, and that’s what I thought it was for years.
With glowing hearts, we seethe and writhe, our true north strong and free
.

Creighton’s wearing his signature white shirt and a skinny Texas-oilman tie, but today, perhaps since he’s in his academic’s hat, we’re favoured with the requisite tweed sports jacket. Once the bifocals get positioned just above the pinkish bulb of his nose, the professorial picture is complete.

So where’s the hate? By all rights it should be rising like bile at this point, but I can’t seem to really get it going today. My mood is black, no question, but the rest of my being is otherwise exhausted from the surreal excesses of the night before. Maybe my raisin of hatred has been toppled for the time being. Maybe that’s how it works. Maybe different brands of booze knock out different cerebral raisins.

More likely is that I am finding Creighton less obnoxious out of his poet’s hat. He’s talking about Canada today, and how wonderful a place it is. It’s sort of soothing to listen to. Our nation glimmers, he tells us, with potential and cultural distinctiveness. By some, it has been called a “frontier”—and these people mean the word to have less than flattering connotations. But it is indeed a frontier, affirms Creighton. A new frontier, an intellectual frontier, still being shaped by the precious raw materials that we are fortunate enough to claim as our birthright.

Around me, on occasion, I hear sighs. Sighs of boredom, sighs of impatience—the standard thing at lectures. Still,
some of the sighs sound more pertinent than others, more deliberate—closer to actual comments. At one point, as Creighton scoldingly asks the students present how many of us plan to do graduate work outside of the country, one sigh comes at me with particular vehemence, and because I feel goosed by the question, I turn around to glare.

White-blue eyes meet mine, smiling, inviting collusion. I glance into the brown ones beside them, and the smile they send me is one of apology. Sitting even farther back than I am. They must have come in late. But why in God’s name would he bring
her
to
this?

Even more surprising, I note another latecomer, lingering in the back doorway, as extreme latecomers often do. Latecomers, but also people with a message to get across. A slouch to the shoulders, a loose, dismissive fold to the arms.

Before I can jerk my face forward again, he catches my eye. Another conspirator’s smile. Another invitation—one I can’t very well turn down.

The first thing I see, after emerging into the hallway after the lecture, is the mind-mussing triad of Jim, Creighton, and Robert A. Sparrow, department head. All of Jim’s poet friends are gigantic like himself. He and Creighton loom over the dainty Sparrow. As I gape, Jim makes introductions, gesturing from one to the other. Sparrow extends a delicate scholar’s hand to the crinkle-eyed Creighton.

The presence of Sparrow is the one force in the universe capable of prying Todd from the orbit of Jim and Creighton. He skulks a few feet away, pinning himself against a wall—seemingly trying to flatten and wriggle himself in behind a bulletin board.

I arrive at Todd before approaching the mirage farther down.

“They shook hands,” Todd whispers. “Just a second ago. Sparrow, like,
hailed
him. And walked over there. And they shook hands.”

“Well—that’s good,” I say.

Todd shakes his head. “I don’t like it.”

“They’re smiling,” I observe. But are they? Their mouths are smiling—corners turned up. Although Creighton has one of those odd, droll smiles where the corners turn down. But his is not either of the smiles Todd and I are interested in.

“They
look
like they’re smiling,” I amend.

“They’re putting it on for each other.” Todd sounds like he’s begging. “You can tell they can’t stand each other.”

At the same moment as I take a step forward, Sparrow makes gestures of self-extraction from the triad. He bows toward Creighton, shakes his hand a second time. A quick farewell remark to Jim, who nods—smiling? Smirking? Either way, Sparrow is now fully extracted and hoofing his small-boned way toward Todd and me. Todd pulls his head in like a turtle, turns, and faces the bulletin board. He mutters to himself as if reading, as if it were possible to read documents when they’re shoved practically up your nose.

I do nothing to adjust my naked gape, however. So, unlike Todd, Sparrow takes me into account.

“Hello, Lawrence,” he nods, he slows, but slightly.

“Hi, Sir.”

“You haven’t been to see me of late.”

“No,” I say.

“Make an appointment with Marjorie,” he calls over his shoulder. “We must get caught up.”