Flyover States, page 18
I say, “Who in the hell’s that?” I’m sitting across from Mona and have my head propped up on my two fists stacked one on top of the other. We have four more minutes until we have to go downstairs. It’s raining outside, so we’ve had to stay in.
Mona shoves the magazine at me. I pick it up, put it down, shove it back toward her and shrug.
“Previous Engagement? You ain’t seen that picture?”
“No.” I yawn. “I hate stupid films.”
“Films,” Mona says. “La-di-da. They ain’t pictures no more?” She checks her watch. “Man, I hate to go downstairs right now,” she says and picks up the magazine one more time. She looks again at the picture of the happy— Hollywood happy—couple. “Well, I don’t care. I think that Dakota is pretty.”
“If plastic is pretty,” I say, but then lay off because to my own ears I sound like one of those I-don’t-like-TV people. It’s too easy to be the jaded Los Angeleno. Once you’ve seen one Botox/bulimia combination, one man with plucked eyebrows and a fake tan, you’ve seen them all.
“You see anybody famous when you was out there?” Mona asks. She gets up and starts making herself one more cup of coffee and puts three packets of creamer in it. I perk up when she asks the question. I did see one of my favorite actors, one of the character actors that no one has ever heard of. Joe Torey. I get excited telling Mona about being behind him in the checkout line. He bought Frosted Flakes and deodorant.
“Who?” Mona screws up her face.
“You know. The one with the crazy teeth? Always plays losers?”
Mona just shrugs.
I love that guy. I was so excited to be behind him in the checkout. I almost told him what a big fan I was, but decided that was too stalky. “He was just in the small art film The Lightbulb.”
Mona’s finished her coffee and crushes the cup. She stretches. “I wouldn’t of seen that picture,” she says. “I hate pictures like that. Nothing ever happens.” She stood at the door. “You coming or what?”
Downstairs, I took my time walking to my stations. The night seemed longer than it had ever been my two months here. I went to them, though, and started working, because I had no choice. Work, or leave. Ray came around checking in like he did with everybody every night.
“What’s wrong with you, College?” he calls out over the noise of the machines. “You working right slow tonight. This ain’t no California, now. Ain’t no time to be ‘mellow’ or whatever you call it.”
I smile and hold up a speaker cover to inspect it before I answer. It isn’t perfect. You’re supposed to be able to see through all the tiny holes in it, but this one’s tiny holes are mostly covered over in plastic. “Machine’s off, Ray,” I say. I show him the speaker.
He holds it up to the light to get a better look. “Dang. It’s been giving us trouble all week. Lots of damaged ones coming through. Let me go turn this dadgum thing off.” In a minute, it’s slightly less noisy because Ray’s turned off the machine. “You can go work on eight until I get this figured out. I’m gone have to reset the controls, get that plastic coming through right.”
“Okay.” I look in the direction of station eight and suddenly I’d give anything to be doing something else. Ray’s turning to go fix the machine, but I stop him before he gets too far. “You think I can work on another station, Ray?”
He puts the speaker cover down on the conveyor belt. “Another station?”
“Yeah, I mean, I’ve been doing this one for a while. Two months now.” I’d gone from needing to take notes on every little step, to being bored, so bored that much of my entire shift was always one big daydream. Me sitting on Bita’s deck, me and pre-asshole La Varian, me trying to compose arguments for Professor Lind’s final paper, me sleeping or sitting on my couch watching hours of TV. It’s a wonder cars all over America don’t have shitty speakers.
Ray scratches his head. “We got you trained good on these two things, Ronnie, and everybody’s doing their jobs at their stations already…it don’t make sense to pull you off these here and retrain you on something we don’t need you for.”
I nod and try not to look sad. But I give it one more shot. “I guess I’m just bored, Ray.” I shove my hands into my pockets.
Ray picks up the bad speaker cover from the belt. He turns his free palm up, like, what do you want me to do? He stares at me, and I get the feeling that I’m one of the most bewildering people Ray has ever met. “Well, hell, College,” he says finally. “A person can be a lot more worse off than bored.” He points to station eight with the speaker cover, then walks away.
We’ve waited too long to take our walk around the outside trail at the Y. I didn’t wake up until two in the afternoon, so now the sun is blaring and the humidity is ungodly. It rained all morning long, so now there are little worm carcasses everywhere. I try not to look down while we trample all over them and mash them to shit. Doris and I shoot for five laps, which is five miles, but sometimes, depending on the level of hungover, sleepy, tired or hot, we don’t quite make it. We alternate talking with no talking, just walking, and now I’m thinking about how I’d like to be back in my bed sleeping until it’s time for me to go back to work tonight. I change the channel in my head because there’s no need thinking about work if I’m not working.
“Professor Lind is throwing an end-of-class gathering at her house,” I say. “You have to come. It’s not just for folks in the class, either. I can bring a guest. She’s doing one big summer thing and inviting a lot of different people.”
Doris adjusts her yellow sun hat and pushes her white sunglasses back up her nose. “I think I have something to do, like, watch a whole lot of TV and paint my toenails.”
“Okay, that is more fun than another academic party. I’m not arguing that. I’m just saying, pretty please. If you’re thinking karmicly at all, you’ll come with. It’ll all come back to you.”
“Fine,” Doris says. “Gross, something just bit me.” She slaps her shin. “Which one are we on?”
“Three.”
“Damn, it’s hot. Why can’t we be on lap four?”
We walk for a bit and stop to pet one of the familiar dogs on the trail, a brown Chihuahua named Eddie. His owner’s a big guy with a sandy beard who always stops to let us pet Eddie, but he never says much. We don’t even know the guy’s name, but we always say hello to Eddie. When Eddie’s owner gets out of earshot, Doris says he reminds her of Earl.
“He does,” I say. “Totally.”
“Cute,” Doris says. “He’s cute, just like Earl.”
“Y-es,” I agree slowly.
“He asked about you last night, wondered why Paolo and I had been at the bar three times in a row without you.”
“What’d you say?” I fall behind Doris to let a jogger pass us on our left. I never told Earl that I did anything else but go to school and write. It never came up. I don’t know how I feel about him knowing. I think I prefer him thinking of me as the glamorous, half-naked, drunken flirt who’s always stumbling in and out of the bar, rather than “a factory worker.” I’d started Valtek not really thinking about it much, other than it was just another job, but other people’s reactions had me thinking these days, like the times I used to wear my fishnets proudly without even thinking about them, until people kept giving me looks that said “inappropriate.” Doris waits for me to catch up before she answers my question.
“I told him about Valtek,” she says.
“Oh.” I envision my Jack and Cokes not being so generous anymore. I keep walking in silence.
“He said he had a cousin at Valtek.”
“Oh, no,” I say, slowing down. “Who?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t ask,” Doris says. “Why ‘Oh no’? Why do you care?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. It’s just weird, I guess.”
Doris doesn’t say much for a good fifteen minutes. We complain about the bugs, pet a few more dogs that come around the trail and laugh about Allesandro, on whom my crush lasted all of one day. It was the Any wife of mine is going to give me eight kids and be a better cook than my mother that turned me off. Cute only goes so far. I’m lost in my own thoughts again, when Doris clears her throat.
“Okay,” she says. “Don’t kill me.”
“What,” I say. I stop walking. “Don’t kill me” can’t be followed by anything good.
“It’sjustthatEarlkeptaskingaboutyou,” she blurts in one breath. “He looked so sad until I told him that you and La Varian weren’t hanging out anymore.” Doris covers her hat with her hands and bends forward as if she’s waiting for me to hit her over the head with something.
“What,” I ask slowly, “did you do?”
“Gave him your number?” Doris winces and closes her eyes. She finally opens one and looks at me.
It takes me a minute to hear—and understand—what she’s saying. “Are you crazy?”
Doris starts walking again. Fast.
“He’s going to call me?”
“I don’t know,” Doris says, biting her nails. “He said he would?”
“You say that like you’re asking me,” I say. “Man,” I say, “if you weren’t so goddamn shocked yourself, that you’d do something so crazy, I’d kill you. I’d kill you dead.”
“What? I don’t know why you’re flipping out,” Doris says with resolve. She’s adjusting her hat, since she crushed it earlier. She picks up the pace. “You know you like him.”
“Kidding,” I say. “I was kidding.”
Doris looks at me out the corner of her eye. “Oh, no you weren’t,” she says. “Drunk half the time, yes. Kidding, no.”
I walk and don’t say anything. What am I supposed to do with someone like Earl? Yes, I think he’s handsome. Yes, he’s awfully nice. But he’s a good ol’ boy. Me dating Earl would be beyond interracial. It would be interplanetary. Inter-common-damn-sense. Clair Huxtable and Grizzly Adams. Together again.
“What lap is this?” Doris asks matter-of-factly.
“The last,” I say, and wipe the sweat from my forehead with the front of my T-shirt. “Your last,” I correct, and shoot her a look.
“I’ll stay for hours at Professor Lind’s party,” Doris offers. “I’ll make like the Brie and couscous is barbecued pork ribs, and I’ll never ever give your number out again, I swear.”
One thing I hate more than a lot of things about academia is arriving at a “party,” only to be met by silence—meaning no music—and folks hovered over a platter of dried-out carrots. And that’s what Doris and I get when we step into Professor Lind’s house. It’s a beautiful house, brick with a red door, and slick hardwood floors that echo when you enter the foyer. She’s got lots of art hanging on her walls, eclectic stuff. African masks, Shakespeare prints next to Andy Warhol prints, lots of beautiful plants. At least the lighting is nice, too. Soft, with lots of candles placed on countertops and windowsills. Only three rooms are open to the guests, and I wonder what’s in Professor Lind’s other rooms. A lot of faculty are standing around, predictably, the vegetable platter. I skim the room to survey the potential damage. Then I have to grab Doris’s arm.
“La Varian and Iris are here,” I whisper too loudly, like a kid.
“No. Way. Where?”
I tilt my head in their direction. I can’t look again—not until I have time to get used to the idea of seeing them together.
“What is La Varian thinking?” Doris says, cupping her mouth and leaning into me, even though they’re across the room and probably can’t hear. “And can you believe that tiny college he’s going to next? Compared to it Langsdale is Yale, Harvard and Howard all rolled into one. And what is she wearing? She looks like she just came from an archeological dig, and he looks like Christmas and Kwanzaa had a head-on collision.”
“And we were worried about the way we dressed tonight.”
Doris makes a face. “Let’s go get something to drink, like immediately. This without alcohol is not even an option.” We weave through various clusters of people until we make it to the kitchen, where we think we’ll be safe. Professor Lind is pouring ice into a bucket and looks up when she hears us laughing.
“What’s so funny?” she asks. She smiles and nods toward Doris. “Hello.”
“This is Doris,” I say.
“Already amused?” Professor Lind sits the ice bucket on the counter and fishes a pack of cigarettes from her blazer pocket. “Help yourselves,” she says, motioning toward the bar. Doris gets us cups and pours the wine while Professor Lind stares at me. “I like to know the dirt.”
“Oh, it’s just this guy I dated for a little bit. He’s in there with Iris. I guess they’re together now.”
Professor Lind lights her cigarette and takes a puff. “That you dated? With Iris?”
I nod.
“Hmm,” she says slowly, and blows out her smoke. She looks up at the ceiling and squints her eyes, trying to make the connection. “Is it La Varian Laborteux you used to date?” When she says his name—La Varian Laborteux— I actually get proud for a second. I’m the kind of woman who deserves to be with someone named La Varian Laborteux. It just reeks of elegance. Not the kind of woman to be with someone named Earl. It occurs to me that I don’t even know Earl’s last name, and the pride leaks out of me and is replaced with sorrow for myself. I can hear my father lecturing me about Sammy.
“Drink up,” Doris urges, handing me a plastic cup of Chardonnay. She touches her cup to mine and takes a sip.
“That,” says Professor Lind, “is a fabulous outfit.” She reaches over to touch the ruffles of Doris’s skirt. I’d told her she should totally wear it because it was very Carmen Miranda.
“Thanks,” says Doris. She looks at me. “I think we’re going to have to keep moving all night to avoid what’s-his-name and what’s-her-name.”
“Or not,” Professor Lind says. “Iris is an interesting choice for La Varian.” She levels her eyes at me. “A confusing choice. Is there a story?”
“It’s long,” I say. “The story.”
Doris keeps sipping and looking back and forth at me and Professor Lind.
“That La Varian is a very smart young man,” Professor Lind states. “On his way to brilliant. I saw him give a paper last week. It was flawless.”
“I’m sure it was,” I say without much enthusiasm. I’m thinking about Trisha, without whom this article would not have been written…
“The paper was flawless,” Professor Lind goes on, then pauses for what seems like effect. “I don’t think you should have to keep moving to avoid anything. You should keep moving to get what you want.”
“Amen to that,” Doris says.
“Hell—” Professor Lind takes a long drag before stubbing out her cigarette “—I knew I forgot something. There’s no music. I never intended to be…” Her voice trails off. “Like that.”
Doris and I raise our eyebrows at each other.
“Any suggestions?” Professor Lind asks. We follow her into the living room and start to look through her CD collection. Lowell Fulsome. Aretha Franklin. Elvis Costello. David Bowie. My hands stop at Chaka Khan.
“We have to put this on,” I say.
Professor Lind extends her hand and I place the CD in it. “This will keep the dryness and Derrida to a minimum,” she remarks, smiling. “A party should be a party.”
We’ve reached the cutoff point, Doris and I, but sadly, no one will. Cut us off, that is. And if no one else will cut us off, why should we do it to ourselves? Professor Lind has a houseful now, and we’ve managed to mingle and not get into much trouble—until now—because inevitably everyone on the Last-Person-I’d-Like-To-See list is here and accounted for: La Varian and Iris, of course; Luis; that awful know-it-all from Shakespeare class, John; and every other faculty member who has never learned to say hello nor learned to start a sentence without the phrase “I read somewhere…” I saw Luis come in a while ago, but alcohol, surprises and Doris don’t mix, so I decide not to mention it. She’ll see him when she sees him, and will be too drunk to care—I hope.
In the meantime, we think it a good idea to seek out people we would have avoided two hours and six glasses of wine ago. After a while, when we’re standing in a tight circle talking to poor, jittery Professor Lee, who does Twentieth-Century American, Luis sidles up to Doris, asking, “How are you?” Some people will walk straight into a fire.
“How am I?” Doris repeats to Luis. “Like you care. Why do you even bother talking to me?” She shakes her hands at him. “Why?”
Luis looks around to survey what kind of damage is being done. We were all having a fun conversation before Luis slithered up. Professor Lee had let his hair down. He’s bald but still. Professor Lee is a shy, older professor who is near retirement but has a sense of humor anyway. We were lamenting how, still, Carver is underrated, and how come the meanest and most idiotic person still won Survivor every time. It was maddening, wasn’t it? Luis came up to us right in the middle of Professor Lee’s one-night-I-was-so-drunk story. Professor Lee scratches his nose when Doris decides to acknowledge Luis’s presence in a less-than-diplomatic way. “Why,” she asks, “are you breathing my air?”
“Excuse me,” Professor Lee says. “Restroom,” he adds like an apology.
Now Luis is laying on the charm that always seemed to work on most people. I don’t know whether to stay or go. I stay.
“Doris,” Luis says evenly, “there’s no reason to be antagonistic.” She pulls at her skirt to smooth it out. “I’m just saying hello,” he repeats, calm and even, as if he’s trying to reason with a mental patient. He adjusts the lapels on his blazer and looks at me. I look away. Why is he doing this to himself? Earlier, he’d been talking to Iris and La Varian—mostly La Varian. Christmas collided with Kwanzaa was looking good to Luis, it was clear.
