20
Alex’s “Move”

There he is, at last. I can see Alex on the corner, blowing his hands against the cold.

So far, everything has gone as planned. Tonton Pierre dropped me off at Mary Agnes’s, with stern warnings, at one thirty, and her mother left at exactly 2 p.m. to get her Saturday spa treatment. “It’s my weekend ritual,” she said on her way out the door. She was expecting a laugh, but it didn’t sound like a joke to me, so I just smiled.

Mary Agnes and Maricel are both wearing pink Converse shoes, jeans, and purple T-shirts. Part of me wishes they would tell me when they plan to match like twins, and another part of me thinks they look ridiculous and is glad I have my own outfit on. I wear a pair of light blue pants (not jeans, though) that Marie Claire gave me and a white Izod shirt. Honestly, I am just glad not to be wearing any polka dots.

“I can’t wait to see John,” Mary Agnes says, hugging herself. She means Nomura.

“You’re too cute,” Maricel says.

“Are you psyched to see Alex, Bijou?” Mary Agnes asks. “Things definitely seem to be moving along for you, right?”

“Shh,” I say. “They’ll hear us.” I deliberately speed up so I won’t have to answer. Yes, things are moving along, but that doesn’t mean I want to talk about it. Americans share too much. Far too much.

“Hi. How are you?” Alex says, handing me a ticket for the movie. He is looking only at me, as if my friends, and his, do not exist.

“Fine,” I say. “Good to see you. And … thank you for this.”

“You’re welcome.” Alex takes half a step forward, then hesitates. I save him by kissing him on the cheek. Suddenly, everyone is hugging one another and trying their own version of the cheek kisses. “Ooh la la,” Mary Agnes says. When Americans meet, I’ve noticed, they don’t know what to do: kiss, hug, or shake hands? Even a simple hello can turn awkward.

“As long as I don’t have to kiss Maricel,” Ira says. “Ick.”

“Right back at you,” Maricel says.

With the greetings over, we hand our tickets to the usher and are directed upstairs. Maricel and Mary Agnes go to the bathroom and pull me along with them; the three boys go, too (into the men’s room, I mean!). As soon as we’re inside, Mary Agnes starts checking her makeup, even though she did that at home ten minutes ago. Maricel does, too, wondering aloud why she’s doing so when Nomura and Alex are already “taken.”

“You never know who you might run into,” Mary Agnes says.

“No makeup?” Maricel asks me. I shake my head. I’ve never worn makeup in my life. Maman wouldn’t allow it. But I do check my hair to be sure it’s tucked neatly into its bun.

“She’s so dark,” Mary Agnes says. “She doesn’t need makeup. Look how flawless her skin is.”

I let the remark pass. If she doesn’t think black women use makeup, she must be blind. And I’m not much darker than Maricel, who’s got plenty of it on. Do I look “blacker” to Mary Agnes because I’m from Haiti? After all, Maricel’s family is from the Dominican Republic, which is on the same island as my country.

“Okay, Bijou, John and Alex will probably try to make a move during the movie, so don’t be surprised. Just … go with it.”

“What is ‘make a move’?” I ask. “You mean, like, kissing?” There is no way I’m going to let Alex kiss me. While surrounded by other people? No way. Kissing is something to be shared between two people, not a whole movie theater.

“Well, he’ll probably start like this,” Maricel says. She stands next to me, leans back, yawns, and slowly drapes her arm over my shoulder before cracking up laughing.

“They pretend to be tired to get close to you?” I ask. “That doesn’t sound like a compliment.”

“It’s because they’re shy,” Mary Agnes says. “It’s kind of cute when you think about it.”

“Don’t I have any say in what happens?” I ask. “I’m not just something for him to do whatever he likes with.”

“Just go with it, Bijou,” Mary Agnes says. She sounds like one of the teachers. “It’s the way things are done here.”

The boys actually take longer to come out of the bathroom than we do, and Alex and Ira seem to be having some kind of disagreement.

“It’s gone, see?” Ira says, showing him the screen on his video cam.

“It better be,” Alex responds before putting a smile on for me.

The theater is dark and only about one-third full, and Alex and Nomura are whispering, trying to figure out where to sit. On the screen, a message tells us not to smoke, talk, or use cell phones. This should not be a problem. I still don’t have a cell phone, I left my cigarettes at home (a bad joke, but I do try to entertain myself), and it’s the boys talking, not me.

“Come on, man,” Alex whispers to Ira, who wants to sit next to us. “Give us a little room.” Oh no, Alex, please. No kissing attempts, not here!

“I like the aisle,” Alex says, in a more “public” whisper, one loud enough for our group to hear, but not too loud to disturb those around us who have been seated for some time already.

“So do I,” says Mary Agnes.

“We’ll sit behind you guys. That okay with you, Bijou?” I nod. So embarrassing. If Alex does anything more than put his arm around my shoulder, I’ll elbow him right in the belly, I swear it. No matter how much I like him.

“I get it, everybody wants privacy,” Ira says, quite loudly.

“Shhh!” hisses someone from the middle of the theater.

“Settle down, Ira,” whispers Nomura, who takes the seat between Mary Agnes and Maricel. Ira sits next to Alex.

“Great, I’m sitting next to my own sister,” Ira says. “Next thing, Aunt Malinda’s going to magically appear in my lap.”

“Quiet, the trailers are starting,” says Mary Agnes.

Alex sits back in his chair, gives me a glance and a quick, not-quite-comfortable smile. In the first preview, a handsome, boyish-looking man—not so different from an older Alex, really—is sitting cross-legged with a pretty white girl, eating cereal on a bed with rumpled covers. They give each other naughty glances while walking through New York City. What will happen to them? Will he get sick? Will she have to choose between him and a job? I feel I have seen this movie more than once before; anyone who has watched a single episode of Tous Mes Enfants knows this story by heart.

In the next preview, a teenage girl is in love with a strong, fit dancing man. They are in love, but her parents do not want them to be. It looks like a sweet story—love wins in the end, of course—but not very much like real life.

“Did you ever see the original Dirty Dancing?” Alex asks. “My mom and my sister love that movie. I guess they remade it.” I shake my head. No, I haven’t seen it, but I’m quite sure I know how it ends.

Now, our movie has started. I didn’t know we would be seeing one of these movies, where a masked killer chases down teenagers one by one, and they spend an hour and a half running for their lives. I asked Mary Agnes what Terror Lake was about yesterday, and she giggled and said, “It’s a romantic comedy.” Very funny. But these movies don’t scare me; they bore me.

Alex and I are not touching, but we are sitting very close. There’s really no choice—this is an old theater, and the seats are not very large. If he makes his “move,” what will I do? I don’t want to create a scene and embarrass both of us. If Alex is a gentleman about it, I will let him put his arm around me, but no more.

I take a quick peek at him. He looks quite nervous, actually. Tense as a stretched rubber band, and pale, too. He doesn’t seem like someone who is about to make a move; he looks like someone who wants to run away and hide.

“Do you want anything?” he whispers suddenly. “From the concession stand?” I shake my head. I’m not hungry or thirsty. Does he really want to leave the movie only ten minutes after it’s begun? “I’m going to get some popcorn,” he says.

“Me too!” Ira whispers. “This movie sucks.”

Alex breathes a sigh of exasperation. He seems always to be irritated with Ira. Are they friends or not?

They are gone for eight or ten minutes; half of the people in the movie are already dead. But by the time Alex comes back to his seat with a bag of popcorn, a Coke for himself, and a lemonade for me—“In case you get thirsty,” he says—there is a pause in the action. Ira sits, for some reason, behind us. We are one group, but are now sitting in not two, but three rows? So odd. And these people find Haitian culture strange?

Alex takes a deep breath, probably relieved that nothing too scary is happening. The camera now follows a new couple, who are driving toward the lake house where the chase happened. They are navigating a deserted road, unaware of the terrible death that awaits them there. She’s a long-legged redhead, and he wears a backward baseball cap and has an ugly dot of beard hair on his chin. He tells silly jokes, and the girl laughs, but she slaps at his hands when he tries to grope and grab at her. Alex had better not be getting any ideas, because if I slap at his hands, it won’t be a joke. My slaps hurt.

I look at the row in front of us. Mary Agnes is leaning so far into Nomura, she is nearly in his lap. He sits as stiff as a soldier, not pushing Mary Agnes away, not pulling her toward him, either. But Mary Agnes has never needed encouragement, has she?

In the next scene in the movie, the redhead and the baseball-cap boy are looking around the abandoned house in the middle of the woods. Everything is covered in dust and dirt, but there is a half-eaten plate of food sitting on a messy table. The girl is scared, but the boy is still joking around, bouncing on a rusty iron bed and trying to get her to “try it out” with him. The girl ignores him and fixes her eyes on an old wooden chest in the corner of the room. She approaches it and begins to open it up, while the music on the soundtrack gets louder and scarier. Because the trunk is locked, the boy begins to pry at it with some kind of bar, and finally, as he breaks the lock, a cat jumps out of the trunk, right onto the girl’s face.

“Aaah!” Alex yells, holding his arms up as if the cat is going to pounce at him through the screen.

Without thinking, I reach out and grab his hand. “Are you okay?” I whisper.

At first, I can’t tell who has scared Alex more: the crazy cat or me. But then he takes a deep breath, smiles, and squeezes back. “Yeah,” he says. “Thanks.”