After serious deliberation, I settle on the Hilton. Not quite the Ritz, but the best place within a ten-mile radius of Green Meadow that takes AAA discounts. Even so, it’s a giant pain in the behind, since if you don’t have a credit card, which I don’t, they make you leave seven hundred dollars—yes, that’s right, seven hundred smackeroos—in either cash or a cashier’s check as a deposit before they’ll book it. Which means early one Saturday morning I have to drive an hour and a half to deliver their blood money.
On the way back, I make a quick pit stop at a Bed Bath & Beyond, where I have a plethora of five dollar and 20-percent-off coupons. There, I purchase the most expensive bubble bath they carry and stock up on scented candles. There’s a whole section of them. Three full aisles. Morning Rise. Afternoon Surprise. Raging Sunset. I never before realized that there were so many olfactory moods to pick from. I select After After-Party Humpathon. Just kidding. Try a six pack of Deep Penetration. Waiting in the checkout line, I see they’re having a special on dried rose petals, so what the heck, I spring for a sack of them too. No expense spared for The Great Consummation.
The Great Consummation. I have mixed feelings about The Great Consummation. Guilt, because The Great Consummation, if there is indeed one, will only transpire because I’m a lying piece of crud and complete tool. I all-too-fully realize that I can’t keep the balls in the air indefinitely and anything beyond Prom’s an impossibility for Shelby and me, but I figure where’s the harm in one measly night? One scorching hot, beyond incredible night. Okay, technically I’m using her, but in a twisted way she’s using me too so that means we cancel each other out, right? I mean, I still don’t get Shelby’s fixation with Celia Lieberman, but why look a gift horse in the mouth? Anyway, soon Shelby’ll be traipsing off to Barcelona and Mykonos and I’ll just be a beautiful memory. I hope. I pray.
Because the other even stronger feeling I’m feeling is Lust, with a capital L. Our close encounter in the backseat of the Bentley hounds my every waking second and haunts my most fevered dreams. We did everything. I mean everything. That is, Everything But. And lemme tell you without getting too specific, Everything But was earth-shattering. I can’t wait for what But’s going to be like. I am a man possessed.
I can’t sleep the night before the Big Night. Besides the endless loop of erotic fantasies, I’m as nervous as a schoolgirl on her first date. Despite all the Homecomings, Winter Formals, Spring Flings, and Proms I’ve attended in the past year, in some ways this is a first for me. First time it’s mine. First time I’m going as me. Kind of. First time I’m paying out of my pocket, that’s for danged sure.
---
I arrive at the hotel two hours before tee time. Park the Beast at the very top of like a ten-story garage, where it’s most out of the way. When I get to the room, it’s got twin beds. I practically have to pitch a hissy fit in the lobby for the promised king and end up with a queen with a view of the air-conditioners. I unpack the bubble bath, strategically arrange the scented candles, sprinkle the rose petals. Then it’s a quick shower and another shave. I lay out the trusty tux on the bed and then collapse in my boxers besides it. Everybody’s supposed to meet up at Cassie’s at seven sharp for assorted beverages and photos before we collectively embark in the super stretch limo. But that’s not for forty-five minutes and she lives like a three-minute cab ride away. Plenty of time to cool out. I switch on the Yankees. Top of the fifth, we’re up by two. I need to refortify. Truth be told, with all the preparation and anticipation, not to mention the constant white noise and angst about Columbia, I’m pretty beat.
Next thing I know, I’m drenched in a puddle of my own drool and it’s the bottom of ninth, Yanks down by three, two outs, nobody on. I bolt up, peer into the shadows. What the hell? That game was in the bag. I realize I’ve nodded off. Question is, for how long? Holy crap! Seven sixteen! I’m late! So late! Maybe too late!
I’m still yanking on my pants and misbuttoning my shirt as I streak from the Hilton. There’s only one cab in the cab line and five people waiting for it. I have to frantically debase and demean myself by begging and groveling and then bribing them each a twenty to butt in first. I scream at the driver to step on it. He doesn’t appreciate the attitude and I have to apologize before he’ll move an inch. Then, just to add salt to my gaping wound, he deliberately goes a full three miles under the speed limit the whole ride there.
---
The circular driveway to the Trask manor’s a jumble of valet parked high-end imports. I jump out without tipping and sprint, windmilling around to the back patio, where there’s a big circus tent under which everyone is gathered. Up front, obscenely well-to-do, normally with-it parents are elbowing and jostling each other like crazed paparazzi, grabbing shots of a long chorus line of their begowned, bejeweled daughters. Arm in arm, their pampered little princesses vamp, giggling and smiling bashfully as expensive digital cameras whir and flashes flash. They know they’re hot. Each more done-up, more gorgeous than the last. And in the center, the most ravishing, most regal of them all. Shelby. My date for the evening. Lucky, lucky me.
Or am I? Even though she’s grinning ear to ear like Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, I can tell Shelby’s not exactly a happy camper. I haven’t exactly helped my cause by leaving her to fend for herself for the past twenty-six minutes of phony pleasantries and rampant speculation about my whereabouts and then strolling in like the cock of the walk. It’s pretty much inexcusable. But then again, being a dick’s part of my inexplicable charm for her, so maybe I still have a shred of a chance at redemption.
“Okay, now girls and boys!” directs the hired professional photographer, the same annoyingly chipper gay guy in the pink bow tie who’s snapped me from time to time at sundry events on the senior year social circuit. I’m too relieved to be suitably alarmed.
For all is not lost. I haven’t missed the couples shots. That would have been irreparable. I’ve made it just under the wire, without a nanosecond to spare.
The guys in their tuxes take their places in the chorus line beside their dazzling dates. I take advantage of the frenzy to nimbly slide in beside Shelby.
“Sorry,” I murmur. “Death in the family.”
“Where have you been?” She smiles a frozen smile at me as the cameras continue to flash. “I thought you had stood me up!”
“Smile for the birdie, everybody!” yells Pink Bow Tie. Then he pauses, glances up from the view finder, and looks at me quizzically.
“Hey, weren’t you at the Prom in Bronxville last weekend?” he asks.
Actually, it was the weekend before and in Larchmont. But of course, I shrug like I don’t know what he’s talking about.
“Not me,” I demur, darting a look at Shelby. Fortunately, she’s too relieved that I’m there to take notice.
Scratching his head, Pink Bow Tie returns to his task.
“All right, boys and girls. It’s all downhill from here! On three!” he chirps. “One, two . . . !”
I bare my incisors and smile for posterity. One of them.
Instantly I’m swept in the mass migration to our awaiting carriage. Tearful parents stream in a herd after us. Their babies, all grown up, leaving the feathered nest and all that. Hunter and Gretchen Pace swoop at me from out of nowhere, beaming, wanting to converse, however briefly, with their daughter’s date for such a landmark occasion.
“Hi, Brooks, I’m . . . ,” Hunter gasps, thrusting out his hand.
“MUMMY, DADDY, WHAT DID I TELL YOU BEFORE?” thunders Shelby.
Whatever she’s told them before must have been a real doozy, because both titans of their respective fields immediately evaporate back into the ozone.
---
To rousing adult clamor and the deafening cannon-fire of confetti, we pile inside, eleven dashing couples, twenty-two stars and starlets in all. Although our motor craft’s about the length of a lap pool, it’s still a tight squeeze and Shelby has to perch on my lap. I don’t mind, not a bit. Primped, powdered, and perfumed, molded into a sheer backless, strapless designer gown, wearing Mummy’s diamond earrings, she’s never looked more glamorous—and probably never will. She’s at her apex. She is the apex. And she’s mine. All greedy mine. Or can be—if I can just manage to suppress my scruples and not to screw it up, which so far I seem bound and determined to do.
Honking obnoxiously, we pull away. Within seconds it becomes Party Central. Kanye’s blasting from surround speakers, colored strobe lights are crisscrossing. Yes, there’s a laser light show inside the limo. Flasks are produced, fatties the size of Cubans proffered. Gratefully and greedily I partake of anything that comes my way. So does Shelby. She brushes into me when we round a corner. I detect major wood forming. So does Shelby. She presses down against it—uh, me. All is forgiven. It’s fuckin’ Prom.
There’s only one large-sized fly in my ointment. Fallick. Busting out of a Valentino, he stares daggers at me from his seat directly opposite the rectangular compartment. Booze dribbles down his chin as he swigs, the sight of me with Shelby eating him alive. I mean, if looks could kill, I’d be dead meat a thousand times over.
Vicuna Munson, Fallick’s consolation date, strokes his heaving chest. And she’s some consolation, lemme tell you. Taut, tawny, bountiful where it counts. But nevertheless a distant second to Shelby—just like every other girl. The weird thing is, though, this Vicuna chick’s staring right at me too, like we know each other, like she’s trying to place me. What’s weird about that is I’ve never seen this Vicuna chick before tonight, because if I had, I definitely would have stored this Vicuna chick in the memory banks, her bounty is that bountiful. Anyway, I have no clue why she’s staring, but it’s kind of unsettling.
Suddenly, still glaring at me, Fallick lets out the terrible guttural cry of a wounded animal.
“AHHHHHHHH!!!!”
I mean, he just howls. The others interpret it as simple high spirits and join in. I know for a fact it’s simple homicidal rage and don’t. Guys, girls, everyone’s whooping, hollering, yowling. A rich, ever-ravenous-for-more pack. Totally unhinged.
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!”
Even Shelby’s howling. In her case, adorably, with her little button nose crinkled up. The air’s electric with expectation. For this is it. The final blowout. The end of an era.
And then I howl too. Part of it all, even though I’m not. And why not?
It’s fuckin’ Prom.
---
Fully baked and starving from the stimulants, not to mention the primal screaming session, we arrive en masse at Chez Five-Dollar-Signs-On-Every-Review-Site, where we’re stampeded by a particularly snooty maître d’ to our own plush private banquet room in back. Even in my stupor, it remains staggering how much one meal for two’s going to set me back. In the musical chairs scramble for cushioned seats, I momentarily and uncomfortably find myself next to this Vicuna chick, who continues giving me the eyeball.
“I know I’ve seen you before,” she says.
“I don’t think so,” I respond quickly, ushering Shelby to the far end of a conveniently long table.
“Westport!” she declares decisively.
Westport! Westport was the night with Gravity Dross, the night we mind-melded and I joined her some place remote on the spectrum. No wonder this Vicuna chick doesn’t register on the Rattigan Scale. That night I was so lost grooving in inner space, an alien invasion wouldn’t have.
“Never been,” I grunt haughtily, like Westport’s a teeming cesspool right on par with the Black Hole of Calcutta. Best defense is an offense, right? But my heart’s suddenly thumping like one of The Murf’s crazed solos.
She looks at me doubtfully, but not a hundred percent sure so she lets it slide for now, allowing Fallick to drag her away Neanderthal-style back to his drunken jock pals. Shelby looks at me like, what’s that all about? I shakily pull out a chair for her. What the hell’s going on tonight? First Pink Bow Tie Guy, now this Vicuna chick. I’m telling you, I’m living on borrowed time.
Shelby orders the Beluga caviar for starters. There is no chicken. Casting financial fate to the winds, I say fuck the pheasant and go for the steak. It takes both appetizer and salad courses for my nerves to settle sufficiently to digest Shelby’s ongoing conversation.
“So then Daddy says, ‘Honey, you sure you don’t want to go?’” she’s saying. “‘I’d hate to have you miss it.’”
“Go?” I ask absently, sawing into my grass-fed slab.
“To Prom, silly rabbit,” Shelby smiles, barely nibbling on her truffles. First the twenty-two-dollar tiramisu, now the thirty-one-dollar truffles. Why does she order the crap if she’s not going to eat it? “When I wasn’t sure you were going to have the balls to actually ask me.”
“Oh yeah,” I observe, infantilely titillated that she just said “balls.” Remember, I’m severely buzzed at this point.
“Anyway, for a while there it looked like I wasn’t going. I mean, nobody at school would dare ask since Tommy’s running around threatening certain death . . .”
I nod, chewing vigorously. Sixty-plus bucks and they can’t even cook it right. My meat’s overdone, tough as shoe leather.
“So my dad, get this, he tells me that at his office the other day,” she titters, finding it so hilarious that she can only speak in disjointed pieces. “At his office, he heard about this kid who could take me.”
I stop in mid-chomp. Somehow I know where this is going.
“Very discrete, he says. Great dancer. Comes highly recommended,” she guffaws. “A stand-in!”
“A what-in?” I rasp.
“A stand-in,” she says, cracking up more. “A professional escort. Can you imagine?”
Yes, I can imagine. That and many other things. Like being roasted alive on a spit over a bonfire in the town square of Green Meadow as hundreds of super-fit villagers with torches and shotguns cheer.
“So I tell him, please, I’m not that desperate,” she chortles, shaking with merriment. “Allow me some small semblance of pride.”
She laughs uproariously, the idea ludicrous to her. I chuckle along at the absurdity of my own existence. She’s way stoned too so we’re just chuckling like a couple of morons when suddenly sirens and red alerts are going off because a thick un-masticated hunk of overcooked beef has just lodged tightly in my narrow passageway.
The effect’s immediate, a jolt to the system. It’s like being trapped in one of Burdette’s headlocks, only there’s no Burdette to beg to stop. This blockage has a sense of permanence. I leap up, clutching my neck, thrashing and flailing. Dishes go crashing, chairs topple, Promees scatter as I, blue-faced and choking, jerk and spasm. It’s like the greatest death scene you’ve ever seen in a movie, except, unfortunately, I’m not acting.
“Oh my God, Brooks!” Shelby exclaims. “Are you all right?”
“Water. . . ,” I wheeze.
Gasping, I snatch a bottle of the bubbly kind and swallow it down. It does me no good. I just spout a stream of fizzy liquid back out. Next I tilt back and try shoving two fingers down my throat. No good either. I flop and flounder like a hooked fish. I’m staring into the Great Abyss. A lifetime of squandered opportunities and unrealized regrets pass in a flurry across my dimming vision. The travels and experiences I will never have. Vacations with the grandkids. Hell, vacations with the kids. Vacations, period. But most galling, the fact that I will never ever bone Shelby.
Good-bye, private dining room. Good-bye, long table. Good-bye, tasseled chairs. Good-bye, people just watching. Good-bye, Fallick smirking happily as I asphyxiate to death. At least I won’t be picking up the check. Oh, parting is such, such sweet sorrow. Good-bye, shiny chandelier. Good-bye, plush carpet. Good-bye, Celia Lieberman. Celia Lieberman!
As I crumple, she catches me from behind. Locking her arms around my midsection, she performs a rapid sequence of rib-crunching abdominal thrusts on me. The pain’s excruciating but somehow reassuring. The good ol’ Heimlich maneuver. A doctor’s kid, of course she knows it. The maneuver never fails. But it does on me.
While the brutal display of violence does what it’s designed to do, namely compress my lungs thereby exerting tremendous pressure on the meat plugging my trachea, I don’t expel it. Not that I don’t try my darndest. I hack. I gag. I slobber.
Then Celia Lieberman folds me in half like a wooden puppet and slams me with the heel of her hand on the back in the tender spot between my shoulder blades. Hard. A bunch of times. My eyes bug out and tear up from the repeated impact, but I remain plugged.
“Allow me!” Fallick bellows, rolling up his sleeves.
One sledgehammer blow would do the trick, but Fallick uses three, pounding me with all his mighty might with both interlaced fists. The offending obstruction ejects from my windpipe, out my mouth, and splats against a red velvet wall where it sticks, a glistening glob of goo.
Yes, brothers and sisters, existence, miserable as it is, has been prolonged by Fallick. Oh, the ignominy.
Gulping for air, grimacing from the multiple fractures I’ve most likely sustained, I nattily readjust my tie and lapels, mustering the shards of what’s left of my pride. Everybody’s gawking. Fallick, Shelby, Celia Lieberman, Cassie, Trent, and—look, there’s Franklin, dippy in black sneakers and black T-shirt stenciled stupidly like a tuxedo. I’ve put on quite the show.
And then fortune fortuitously intercedes.
The snippy maître d’ pops his shellacked head in, attracted by the furor.
“Everything satisfactory?” he inquires warily.
I draw myself up, puffed with indignation.
“No, everything is not satisfactory!” I announce, pointing at the gob on the wall. “You call this Chateaubriand?”
Collective snickers. Superior smiles. Nothing like putting the hired help in place to restore equilibrium.
---
How does that line in that book go? It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Or something like that. Well, that’s exactly how I’m feeling.
The Best of Times because it’s the Prom of all Proms, the Grand Soiree of Grand Soirees. We’re talking the Main Ballroom at the Four Seasons. A live major minor band, the kind with two or three megahits now pretty much forgotten. Tables heaped with delicacies of every persuasion. Fields of sushi, a suckling pig, mountains of tropical fruits. Absolute, unbridled, pointless, glittering Excess.
And I’m taking the Queen of it. I should be King of the World.
And I am. Only I’m not.
The Worst of Times because I’m ready for the shoe to drop and squash me any second. All survival instincts are whispering for me to inch my way to the door and hightail it out of Dodge while the getting’s still good. However, all primal ones are screaming at me to just fucking go for it.
Shelby shakes her ultra-tight bod to the wild, tribal rhythms, brushing against me, pulling back, brushing again, teasing. I corral her by her slender waist, lead her by the hand, and twirl her. She’s supple, responsive to my touch. We move as one. Graceful. Sinuous. Sensuous. Perfectly matched.
“Did you book the room?” she huskily breathes.
“The Hilton,” I smile confidently, envisioning Shelby and me in the bubble bath, our wet naked bodies bathed in the flicker of six artfully arranged scented candles and a blizzard of falling dried rose petals.
“The Hilton?” Her smoldering expression slightly cools.
“The Four Seasons was sold out,” I lie. “Hey, it’s within walking distance.”
“Sure, if you want to hike a mile along a turnpike,” she all-too-accurately notes.
I smile less confidently. Then my gaze falls on Celia Lieberman and Franklin clumsily box-stepping past. And I must say, now that I’ve regained a full supply of oxygen and most bodily functions, I can’t help registering that Celia Lieberman has jumped well into the Cute Zone. She fills out an old vintage flapper dress she’s had altered and must have picked up in the Village quite, quite nicely. She’s even showing a little cleavage, not to mention significant portions of leg. Her hair, cut short—at my recommendation, I might add again—is finally under partial control. I mean, I don’t want to get carried away here, a flapper dress is kind of a rather interesting—okay, dorky—choice. But still a mega-mega stride forward.
“Ouch!” I hear her squeal. “Franklin, quit stepping on my feet!”
“Quit stepping on mine!” he returns in kind.
I smile despite myself, feeling for poor Franklin. The guy’s clearly got no clue what he’s gotten himself into. Shelby goes rigid in my arms.
“Having second thoughts?” she says darkly.
“Celia never could dance for shit,” I explain lamely.
Shelby angrily jerks away from me. She really has a complex about Celia Lieberman. Go figure.
“Hey, the girl did just save my ass.”
“I have to pee!” Shelby announces, stomping off. Huh, I think. Abruptly and ignominiously stranded, I thread my way through the crush to the punch bowl, which has been heavily spiked, and dip myself a brimming fine crystal cup of much needed fortitude when I hear:
“You still haven’t told her?” accuses Celia Lieberman, grabbing my drink like I poured it just for her, wincing down the noxious brew.
Great, just what I need right now, an extra conscience. Like my puny one’s not pestering me enough. Deftly, I deflect the subject.
“Listen, thanks for rescuing me back there,” I say. “For a second, I thought I was a goner.”
“Anytime,” she shrugs nonchalantly, handing me back my own libation. Up close, I can observe that she’s wearing mascara, rouge, lipstick, the whole works, imperfectly applied, but effective all the same.
“Killer dress,” I blurt out, to my surprise.
“Thanks, I picked it out myself,” she says proudly, twirling around like a model, returning to me, beaming. “I did it, Brooks, I did it!”
“With Franklin?” I croak, alarmingly alarmed.
“No, my parents,” she announces. “I did it. I finally stood up for myself.”
And then Celia Lieberman lays out the whole story of her great personal triumph on me. It happened yesterday when Celia Lieberman was just getting back from pre-Prom mani-pedi . . .
“Celia, cupcake, is that you?” trills Gayle, stopping Celia Lieberman short in the doorway, making Celia Lieberman cringe to the very marrow of her bones.
“No, it’s Beatrice, your imaginary lesbian lover,” retorts Celia Lieberman, thinking what does the woman have, sonar for hearing?
Then, wouldn’t you know, Gayle breezes in from the den, holding the latest hideous, poufy monstrosity up to her ample chest.
“Don’t you just love it?”
“What is it?” asks Celia Lieberman, although she fully knows what it is.
“Your Prom dress for tomorrow night!”
Gayle giddily whirls around. It’s like she’s the one who’s going to Prom, not Celia Lieberman, according to Celia Lieberman.
“I happened to be at the mall yesterday and I just couldn’t resist!”
“You happened to be at the mall?” Celia Lieberman replies. “You have a PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Chicago. You hate the mall. And, for your information, I have my own Prom dress.”
Well, it kind of escalates from there. By the time Harvey putters up in the Prius, home after another day on the cutting edge of modern medicine, the usual insanity is echoing from the Lieberman abode, shattering the otherwise peaceful night for miles around.
“YOU ARE NOT LEAVING THIS HOUSE IN THAT RAG! I ABSOLUTELY FORBID IT!”
“I’M ALMOST EIGHTEEN! I CAN MAKE MY OWN GODDAMN DECISIONS!”
“CELIA, I DON’T CARE IF IT IS AGE APPROPRIATE, YOU CANNOT SPEAK TO ME THAT WAY! I AM STILL YOUR MOTHER!”
“THEN TRY ACTING LIKE ONE! JUST LISTEN TO ME FOR ONCE!”
Harvey starts to tiptoe back to make a clean, quiet, electric getaway when the front door swings open, casting an ominous shadow over him. Celia Lieberman looms, hands on her hips, meaning business.
“Not so fast, Dr. Lieberman, this concerns you too!” she commands.
Harvey meekly joins Gayle in the living room. I shudder at the vivid image of the three of them among all those deeply disturbing fertility statues. Then Celia Lieberman, again according to Celia Lieberman, addresses them both somewhat calmly.
“Mother, Daddy, I realize you’ve come perilously close to destroying my life with the best of intentions,” Celia Lieberman tells me she told them. “That you’ve pushed, prodded and meddled because you don’t want me to miss out like you did.”
And guess what? They don’t interrupt. They just listen for once.
“Well, thanks to you, I haven’t missed out,” Celia Lieberman reports. “During the last six months, I’ve been to every social event of the school year. I’ve been to restricted country clubs, overpriced and overrated restaurants, and a vast array of equally asinine after-parties. I’ve danced. I’ve gotten drunk. I’ve vomited.”
“But, honey, isn’t that what you . . . ,” cuts in Gayle.
“For pity sake, Gayle, shut up for once and let her finish!”
This is a first for Harvey. And, for that matter, Gayle too. She shuts up for once. Harvey motions to Celia Lieberman, relinquishing the floor back.
“And now that I’ve done the scene, I know it’s definitely not for me,” resumes Celia Lieberman. “Which should be cool with you because, frankly, and I mean this in the nicest way possible, you’re two of the most uncool people I’ve ever met. I mean, hello, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
Gayle nods tearfully. Celia Lieberman hugs her. She hugs them both.
“Please, I beg of you,” Celia Lieberman says from the bottom of her soul. “Let me make my own mistakes.”
Celia Lieberman glows at me. I am proud. I am proud of Celia Lieberman. And vindicated. Didn’t I tell her what she had to do? Knowing Harvey and Gayle as little as I fortunately do, I know what it took for Celia Lieberman to finally stand up for herself.
“Wow,” I say sincerely.
Reaching the end of the first set, the band launches into a signature slow tune designed to leave the audience on just the right warm and fuzzy high note. I recognize it. “Love for All Time” or “Eternal Love” or some such mush; I’m not really big on Top Forty. But, like, one of their two giant hits. I mean, once upon a time it was all over the radio. Celia Lieberman and me, we just stand there awkwardly.
“Better get back to Franklin,” I finally say.
“No worries,” says Celia Lieberman, looking up at me through her new glasses. They really do complement her. “Franklin’s decided to sit the rest of the night out.”
Across the shimmering dance floor, fairy-tale couples intertwine, becoming one. The guys, tall and jaunty in black tuxes, the girls, lithe and lustrous in silky gowns. Onstage, ablaze in a pool of light above the roiling darkness, the sexy lead singer pours out how her heart’s been broken by some thoughtless, insensitive, unable-to-commit, lying scumbag. The same-old-same-old. I glance at Celia Lieberman. She sways to the song, syrupy though it is. Before I can think better of it, I bow formally before her, befitting the majesty of the occasion.
“Madame, would you do me the supreme honor?”
Yes, I’m asking Celia Lieberman to trip the light fantastic of my own free will. Yes, I want to. I can tell she’s surprised. And pleased. But shy and hesitant.
“Oh, come on,” I coax. “We’ve never actually danced. For real, I mean.”
I extend a waiting hand. She takes it. I guide us into the thick of the steamy action. I loosely encircle her. She drapes her arms tentatively over my shoulders.
The lead singer’s emoting up a tsunami, at the part where despite all the terrible shit she’s suffered she still can’t stop herself from loving the thoughtless, insensitive, unable-to-commit, lying scumbag. Women, I tell ya. But as Celia Lieberman and I press together, shifting ever so slightly back and forth, even I have to concede the cheap potency of the formulaic melody.
“It’s too late to tell Shelby,” I say out of the blue. “I’ve already blown it.”
“If she really likes you, it’s never too late,” Celia Lieberman says softly.
“You’re pretty smart, you know that?” I smile.
“That’s what they tell me,” she says, resting her head against my chest. I hold her ever nearer.
“It’s weird, but since this whole thing began, you’re the only person I can actually be myself with,” I note, almost as much to me as to her. “I mean, you’re the only person who knows how the whole Brooks Rattigan machine works, how all the moving parts actually fit together.”
“Yay me,” I hear her muffled voice say. She tightens against me. I tighten almost imperceptibly back.
“Franklin Riggs is one lucky guy,” I say, meaning it, wishing her only the best.
Onstage, the emaciated bass player sidles over to the microphone and starts singing along too. I’d forgotten all about this section. And, for a strung-out string bean, the dude can really boom. He’s sorry, he tells the sexy singer who’s letting it all hang out, quivering, beside herself at being so wronged by him. Just give me another chance, baby, scumbag begs, I’ll do better. Yeah, right. Then she, of course, forgives him and they scream into each other’s faces at the tops of their respective vocal ranges, declaring undying devotion. And I’ve got to admit, it really kind of gets to me.
Celia Lieberman and I silently shuffle, caught up in the cheesiness.
“I finished your dad’s book,” she says.
It’s the last thing I expect her to say. But you’d think I’d know by now that with Celia Lieberman you can never predict anything.
“It’s really good, Brooks. Really, really good.” She looks at me, eyes round and solemn behind her lenses. “He’s had it pretty rough. I mean, if even a fraction of it is true, it’s amazing he’s still in one piece.”
“Barely,” I say bitingly, the mention of Charlie putting a damper on what could have and should have been a beautiful moment.
“Maybe you shouldn’t be so hard on him,” Celia Lieberman has the nerve to suggest, like it’s any of her business.
“Maybe you should butt out,” I counter, but gently, not wanting to tangle with her, especially not here, not now.
Thankfully, the song tapers off into silence, putting an end to our one and only slow dance and my short but way too eventful acquaintance with Celia Lieberman. I unpeel from our now very unwelcome clinch. What was I thinking? How could I ever have let my guard down? Things can never just be with Celia Lieberman. No, you can always count on Celia Lieberman to point out something at the exact point you most don’t want it to be pointed out. It’s like she can’t stop herself. This is Celia Lieberman we’re talking about here.
“I’m just saying . . . ,” says Celia Lieberman.
“Don’t.”
“Oh, you’re the only one who gets to dispense free advice?” she presses. “That’s how it goes with you?”
Suddenly, Shelby lurches into view like the creature from the Black Lagoon, teetering and tottering precariously on her stilt-like shoes, cheeks wet with copious tears.
“I give up,” she slurs her words at me.
“She’s drunk,” Celia Lieberman observes clinically, like it takes one to know one.
“No shit, Einstein!” laughs Shelby, turning to Celia Lieberman, suddenly merry and gay. “I’m fucked up, Celia! Plastered! But it doesn’t take a brainiac to know that!”
“Shelby, stop,” says Cassie, rushing up to steady her. “You’re wrecking your makeup.”
Shifting back from comedy into tragedy, Shelby seesaws close toward me, jabbing a sharp painted nail hard in my gut. “What’s Celia Lieberman got that I haven’t got? Huh? Huh?”
“Zits,” Cassie soothes, balancing Shelby upright while dabbing her streaked but still spectacular face with crumpled wads of toilet paper. “Bad hair days.”
Onlookers quickly swarm around us. Generally, as a rule, on average there’s one huge alcohol- and/or drug-induced emotional public breakdown at every major high school social event. Well, apparently I’ve just been elected this evening’s entertainment.
“What’s wrong with me, Cassie?” Shelby blubbers. She’s a mess. It’s jarring to me, to everyone, because it’s her. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
I know I should say something, but I don’t know what to say. This night, for no reason I can readily ascertain, is rapidly turning into a nightmare. Worse, I’ve got the sinking feeling that Shelby and yours truly won’t be consummating anything, great or otherwise, anytime soon.
Then Fallick and this Vicuna chick push to the front of the pack.
“Wait, I remember now!” she crows to one and all. “It just hit me when I saw the two of them dancing!”
Did I say nightmare? Try catastrophe, try cataclysm. I’m the Titanic and I’m going down with all hands on deck.
“You took Gravity Dross to the Spring Fling at my school in Westport!” this Vicuna chick proclaims, jabbing a prosecutorial finger at me.
I glance at Celia Lieberman. She’s gone white as a sheet. But other than her, no one else reacts to this Vicuna chick’s triumphant revelation. Why would they? So I was at a Prom in Westport. So what? Probably just coincidence.
“He did?” Fallick’s glazed, wasted eyes fight to focus, to think.
“Yeah, everybody was amazed Gravity Dross even had a date,” this Vicuna chick explains. “Especially a certifiable cutie like him.”
“Why’s that?” Fallick persists, curse him.
I shrivel up inside, fearing what’s coming. So does Celia Lieberman, only she’s gone rigid, reverting back to pre-me petrified state. Shelby tilts her head sideways, suddenly cogent again, her interest piqued by this new tidbit of information.
“Gravity Dross is, like, retarded,” this Vicuna chick says.
“Take that back!” I snap, too outraged to revert into customary total-denial mode. I mean, if this Vicuna chick weren’t a chick, I’d deck her.
“Okay, okay,” this Vicuna chick allows. “Mentally impaired. Whatever.”
Everyone’s looking at me. My outburst’s incriminating. But what, precisely, is my crime? Nobody knows. That is, except Celia Lieberman and me, and we both are quaking. The Moment of Reckoning is at last at hand.
“I don’t get it,” Fallick says, the cogs laboriously turning. “Why would a guy willingly take out two different losers to two different schools in two different states in the tri-state area? It just doesn’t figure.”
Celia Lieberman’s trembling. I bristle at the insult to her, although this is clearly my cue to take off for the hills.
“You’re the only loser around here, Fallick,” I say with feeble conviction. I can easily think of another.
“What’s your deal, Rattigan?” Fallick demands, crowding me, getting right in my face. “Somebody paying you off?”
Bingo!
Shelby looks at me in dawning horror. Strap in, folks, it’s going to get real ugly real soon.
“You’re the stand-in?” she asks quizzically, too shocked to be pissed—yet.
“Shelby, it’s not what you think,” I protest, though it totally is.
“I am such an idiot!” Shelby shrieks, anger at last kicking in. “I thought you had so much depth and character! But the whole time you were just being paid to be different!”
Across the vast ballroom, all activity comes to a crashing, screeching halt.
“You were hired to be Celia Lieberman’s date!” Shelby discloses to the entire planet. “You did it for the money! Why else would the two of you be together?”
All eyes fall accusingly upon me and Celia Lieberman as everyone begins to get it. And one by one, Green Meadow’s elite of the elite start to laugh uproariously.
“I knew it had to be something!” Cassie crows.
“Figures she had to pay for it!” Trent snickers. He shivers exaggeratedly, howling: “NOT ME, NOT FOR A MILLION DOLLARS!!”
The grand chamber rings with incredulity, ridicule, and scorn in a cruel crescendo.
“You’re both pathetic,” Shelby says witheringly to me and Celia Lieberman.
Then Celia Lieberman takes off like an unguided missile. Clawing through the howling mob, she flees the scene of the massacre, leaving me to my gory fate. She’s been exposed to eternal scorn, forever ruined. And it’s all my doing. Because everything was fine, only I had to push it.
“Celia!” I call out, though it serves no purpose.
Shelby quivers with self-righteousness. Her face twists into something scary and unrecognizable.
“This should be one of the best nights of my life and you’ve turned it into the worst!”
Those emerald eyes brim with hot, injured tears. There’s no defense for what I’ve done. I’ve really hurt her. Like Celia Lieberman once said, I suck.
“Shelby . . .”
“She said to leave her alone, Rattigan!” Fallick erupts, grabbing me by the shoulder, swinging me around.
“Can it, Penis—I mean, Fallick!”
Then the bastard sucker-punches me in the jaw. I mean, he really crushes me one. Instantly I’m seeing exploding stars and crazy patterns. I go smashing to the parquet where I lie there, stunned. I taste molten metal. My lower lip’s shredded. Everything’s a red curtain.
Fuzzy teenage faces sneer down at me. Cassie’s cackling. Trent’s chortling. Fallick’s cursing. Shelby’s crying. But I can’t hear what they’re saying because both ears are ringing. I stagger woozily to my feet and then plop back down on my butt. I’m pouring blood. There’s more than a good chance I need medical attention.
But no one extends me a helping hand. No one.
I’m in a daze, but not too much of a daze not to remember to be flooded with shame and humiliation. I stumble away to a rising tide of hilarity.
Through the plush, glittering lobby, past more blurry contorted faces, only the respectable, responsible grown-up variety. Even though I’m a terrible sight—bloody, swollen, wobbly-legged—no one comes to my assistance or offers the slightest aid. No captain of industry, no high society matron, no five-star-plus hotel staff.
Not a soul.
I rush out into the shelter and relative anonymity of night. The crisp inky air both revives and assaults me. My lip’s an open gash, my head’s a deep fog, I can’t see or think straight. All I know is I’ve got to get out of this place, this place that won’t have me, that disdains me and my kind. I take off sprinting down the center of the grand, curving driveway, which is ablaze in a constellation of artificial light. Luxury craft squawk and swerve around me.
“Brooks!” I hear. “Are you all right?”
It’s Celia Lieberman, curled up on the curb beside what must be Franklin’s dippy oblong VW Bug at the farthest reaches of the self-park lot. Prom Night and Mr. Poetry-and-Roses couldn’t spring for the valet. That Franklin’s all class. Clutching her knees, Celia Lieberman rocks back and forth, traumatized, wracked with mortification.
“Oh my God, what happened?” she gasps through her own pain at my grievous physical condition.
“Finally got what was coming to me,” I say grimly.
She sniffles, choking back fountains of tears. Was it really just moments ago that Celia Lieberman was gazing up at me, her face so soft, so lovely? Now it’s a battlefield, streaked with her first hopeful efforts at self-beautification. I did this to Celia Lieberman. Me.
“Celia, I’m so sorry,” I mumble.
“No, it’s not you,” she says in a faint, small voice. “It’s Them. They’ve always been like this to me. Since we were together in preschool.”
I can’t imagine what it must be like. To be the punch line just for existing, for just being you. Unaffluent and unconnected as I am, this is way beyond me, way beyond anything I’ve experienced in Pritchard. Or maybe I just haven’t been looking.
“They have it all,” she says, staring down. “Why do they have to be so mean?”
“You got me.” And she does. She really does. Why do the strong always have to prey upon the weak? I’ve never been able to figure it out. “Maybe just because they can.”
Then a new voice intrudes into the thoroughly depressing conversation.
“Celia, I just got your text!” says Franklin, sauntering up, chill as can be. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” says Celia Lieberman, standing. “Just everything!”
“Jesus!” exclaims Franklin, taking in bleeding-and-battered me.
“Where were you?” she demands.
“In the game room. Figured they’d have the new Walking Dead. Thing’s totally bitchin’,” reports Franklin, then he reacts as he gets a better view of me. “Jesus, you really should have that looked at.”
Franklin, being Franklin, has missed the whole extravaganza and, as usual, has no clue what’s going on with the rest of planet Earth. What Celia Lieberman sees in the doofus defies me.
“Want me to take you home?” Franklin asks, finally registering that she’s crying.
To my surprise, Celia Lieberman shakes her head.
“They expect me to just eat shit and die like always,” she says, swallowing back tears. “Well, not this time, not tonight. It’s my Prom and I’m going to enjoy it even if it kills me!”
Then Celia Lieberman yanks Franklin by the T-shirt and starts madly making out with him.
I don’t know why, but it’s like another body blow. I back away into the darkness. I turn. I run. Past block after block of baronial splendor. One mile, two—I don’t know—but a long way. I run like I’m on the run, like I’m being hunted. I run in my tux and good shoes down the sparkling sidewalks, past the glinting shops, through a gauntlet of guarded expressions that see right through me. Up I stagger all ten flights of stairs in the Hilton garage. To the refuge of the Beast hidden in the corner at the very top.
My hands are shaking so much it takes four fumbling attempts to fit the key in the lock and three for the ignition. Gunning the engine, I floor the gas, zooming back, smashing my rear bumper into solid wall, shearing it half off. Rusted steel scrapes against concrete as I scream off in a spray of sparks down the ramp.
Hurtling southbound in the fast lane on the New York State Thruway, I beep frantically for people to let me by. I’m hyperventilating like a dying man, just gulping air out and in. When I catch my reflection in the rearview mirror, I’m more multi-hued than my most vivid apprehensions. All sweaty, puffy, and purple, I’m the guy who’s been beaten to a pulp by the hero at the climax of a third-rate boxing movie. You know, the bad guy.
Which, let’s not kid ourselves, is exactly what I am. I’m the villain of my own tawdry tale. It’d be one thing if I had something to show for my self-serving, craven deeds, but I have nothing. No Columbia. No Shelby. And now, no pride. Not a grain, not a particle.
I got what was coming to me.
I’m beneath my own contempt.
As the distance rapidly mounts from Green Meadow, so do the self-recriminations. Mute, accusing faces fly at me, dissolving into mist as they hit the windshield. The Murf, my oldest and bestest pal, who never did me a single bad turn. And how do I repay him? By stabbing him in the back, ditching him, almost getting him killed. Shelby. Hot, sexy Shelby. Classy, perfect, sexy Shelby. All she wanted to do was steal me away from Celia Lieberman and screw my brains out, albeit for mistaken reasons and suspect motives. And what do I do in return? I ruin what should have been the best night of her overprivileged, overindulged life. Poor baby. Well, tough shit.
Then, just as self-pity gives way to self-justification and outrage, yet another face confronts me. Celia Lieberman, inexpertly applied makeup splotched and smeared, eyes runny and raw. Celia Lieberman, whom I have most wronged. Celia Lieberman, whom I have abandoned to jeers, Franklin Riggs, and her own clueless devices.
The turnpike forks ahead. The giant road sign beckons: “NEW JERSEY.”
Back I speed to safety, to lowered expectations, to the preordained, to my own kind. Back I speed, soon to be an amusing anecdote, a blip on otherwise glorious, trust-funded horizons. Back I speed to the only place I can call home, tail between my legs.
Then suddenly, deep inside, something snaps. At the last possible instant, I slam the brakes, sharply jerk the wheel. The Beast shoots off the highway through a gap in the median strip. Horns wail as I fishtail around, just missing being flattened by a big rig and a bus, and plunge recklessly into the onrushing tide of northbound traffic, back to Green Meadow. Back where I don’t belong.