Page 35

35

Driving to the Hospital, Spencer Recalls the Night Rebecca Emerged from Her Unlovely-Person Cocoon

Following Hornfly’s consumption of Bjorn Skollborg in Liberty Park pavilion on Halloween night, through the first seventeen days of November, the young amigos made no progress in their quest to learn the truth about Maple Grove. They discussed ways they might intimidate Pastor Larry into explaining the ten incompletely formed humans arranged like a chain of paper dolls in the church basement. Also, why did he allow a hulking orange-eyed monster with weird hair to lounge around, reading for pleasure, in the rectory library? Why did the collection of books therein apparently contain so many novels featuring great quantities of blood, pain, mayhem, cruelty, murder, and mass death, which was just the kind of entertainment a human-eating monster would enjoy? And did his sister in fact have serious dental surgery, and did he really travel upstate to look after her for a few days—or was he elsewhere, conniving with malevolent forces to destroy humankind? Whatever the answers might be, one thing was already clear: Pastor Larry was not really a man of God.

On the Sunday evening before Thanksgiving, Spencer and Ernie and Bobby were in the back booth at Adorno’s Pizzeria, unaware that it would become a ristorante in less than twenty years; unaware that major cities would literally become cesspools with widespread public defecation and legions of drug addicts dying in the gutters; unaware that an engineered virus would kill millions and that no authorities would care enough to discover its source; unaware that David Letterman would retire from TV and grow a strange Gabby Hayes beard, leaving late-night comedy to die; in short, unaware that the future would fail to be like the world in which the Jetsons had lived and would become a place that alarmed even the Addams family. The amigos drank their cherry Cokes, their vanilla Cokes, their chocolate Cokes, as they anticipated a future without war, without disease, without the annoyance of unsolicited phone sales. They refrained from choosing and ordering pizzas until the fourth amigo arrived, for theirs was an association rooted in democracy; furthermore, Spencer and Bobby and Ernie were not misogynists.

The night was chilly. When the front door opened, a cold draft briefly fanned through the pizzeria, bringing with it a fragrance as pleasantly picturesque as the town through which it had blown to get there. A remarkably pretty girl entered and stood just inside the door as it closed behind her. She wore pink sneakers, fitted jeans, and a tan jacket over a pink sweater and white blouse.

As this marvelous apparition unzippered her jacket, shrugged it off, and unwound a scarf from around her neck, the three amigos in the back booth goggled at her, though only for three seconds, after which they glanced at one another and then turned their attention to their Cokes.

Although they never discussed the protocols of girl watching, the three friends conducted that activity in precisely the same fashion. If an attractive girl appeared within your line of sight, you could look at her for three seconds, maybe four if you happened to be in a bold and reckless mood, and then you must redirect your attention. To stare longer would be to risk that the girl would become aware of your interest and make eye contact with you, which was a thrilling prospect but also one certain to lead to disaster. If she made eye contact, the chances that she would approach and say something became intolerably high. If it was going to be one of the worst days of your life, she would actually speak to you. Then what? Then What ? Then, inevitably, you would stammer incoherently or say something so stupid that you would die a little while you listened to yourself say it. Then a blank look would come into her eyes, as though you had become invisible, so that she wondered whatever had possessed her to speak aloud when no one was there to be spoken to. Your friends—if you had any friends and they were with you—would regard you with abject pity, though they could not have thought of anything better that you could have said, that anyone could have said in the history of the world, under such perilous circumstances.

So after Spencer, Bobby, and Ernie briefly goggled at the girl who came in from the November night, they stared at their Cokes, heads lowered as if they were saying grace for the blessing of cola-flavored sodas. Although they were usually talkative, they were at the moment bludgeoned by beauty into a state of stupefaction. They were not the kind of boys who made crude or even suggestive remarks about girls; as certified nerds, they regarded sex and voodoo as equally mysterious territories, where the wrong words could bring a hideous curse down on them.

When the blonde in the pink sweater crossed the pizzeria to their booth, they did not see her coming even with their peripheral vision. They expected her to take a table as far away from them as the layout of the premises allowed. When she threw her scarf and jacket into the booth, they reacted as if she had lobbed a grenade among them, and when she sat beside Ernie, across from Spencer and Bobby, their collective gasp sucked a significant portion of the air out of the room.

Only when she said “Hey, guys” did they recognize her from her voice. On being struck by the realization that this was Rebecca, they found speech impossible. They stared at her, their expressions like those of frogs gazing in wonder at the moon, until Spencer heard himself say, “What’s happened to you?” in a tone of voice and with an emphasis that made it sound as if he were saying, Dear God, girl, you were once presentable, but now you’re a beast. How have you let yourself go?

On the last word of Spencer’s question, Ernie pointed at Rebecca with a trembling finger. “You’re moving on!” Heartbreak shivered through his voice. “You’re moving on, aren’t you?”

Clearly puzzled, Rebecca said, “Moving on from what?”

“From us.”

“From you? Why would I?”

“Look at us,” Bobby said.

Spencer said, “And look at you.”

“I’m dying inside,” Ernie said, having always been the most sentimental of them.

“Thanksgiving’s coming and nothing to be thankful for,” said Spencer, because he was years away from having his special hat to comfort him. “Nothing, nothing.”

Bobby asked, “Why? What did we do? We deserve to know why.”

Rebecca made eye contact with each of them in turn and then squinted like Clint Eastwood conveying keen impatience. “Listen up, dudes. Are we amigos or are we amigos?”

“I thought we were,” Bobby said.

And Spencer said, “I hoped we were.”

“But now it comes crashing down,” said Ernie.

Gia Adorno arrived at the table. The boys ordered as if they had nothing to live for but food.

To Rebecca, Gia said, “I’m happy to see you stopped with the Bride of Frankenstein act.”

The boys at once rebelled at Gia’s implied approval of the new Rebecca:

“I liked the way you looked before.”

“I loved the way you looked before.”

“I adored the way you looked before.”

To Rebecca, Gia said, “They’re sweet but impossible.”

“They’re not completely impossible,” Rebecca said. “They’re works in progress.”

With evident admiration, Gia said, “I gotta say, you’re a better friend than I could be.”

“They’re good friends, too,” Rebecca replied. “They’re the best. They just need a shot of Thorazine from time to time.”

As Gia went to the kitchen, Rebecca regarded her amigos with tenderness that they interpreted as pity, as confirmation that she was done with them. Some of them wanted to cry, but to protect their dignity, the names of those who were near tears won’t be revealed, though it was all of them.

“Do you remember, I told you I always must be treated as one of the guys?”

They stared at her as if any response they could make would have disastrous consequences.

“Remember how you all agreed to that without hesitation?”

They weren’t deer on a highway, and there were no headlights aimed at them, but anyone seeing them at this moment would have thought of that same analogy.

“If you are unable to respond with words,” Rebecca said, “just nod in confirmation or shake your heads to disagree.”

They all nodded.

“Good. That’s great. Well, nothing has changed. I’m still one of the guys.”

With apparent reluctance, they shook their heads.

“Oh, yes I am. Nothing has changed. What has happened is that, in little more than two months of friendship, you have given me the courage to be who I am. I’m no longer afraid of dealing with those boys who used to come on to me as if I should fall on my back and let them do what they wanted.”

The deer in that analogy were suddenly red-faced as no real deer ever could be.

“Through your friendship, you’ve given me confidence. Because of the weird things we’ve experienced together, my spine has gone from jelly to steel. If I can stand up to Hornfly when he’s holding a severed head by the hair, I can stand up to anyone—especially with you at my side. And I give you strength, too. I know I do. Okay, I look different from how I did yesterday, but I’m still me. We all need to grow up, but we don’t need to grow apart. We’re amigos, and we always will be.”

Ernie was the first to find his voice. “But you’re not a nerd anymore. You’re not a nerd like we are.”

“Honey, don’t say such a hurtful thing. I am too a nerd. I’m a total nerd. Nerds come in all shapes and appearances. Nerdism is a state of mind, internal rather than external. Some people are nerds, but you’d never know it by just looking at them. They have to start talking first and trying to share their interests with you, their opinions, their hopes. Then you know.”

Spencer was doubtful. “Appearance is part of it. Just look at Ernie and Bobby and me, and anyone will right away think nerds .”

“It’s not the way you look,” Rebecca insisted. “It’s the way you dress, the way you comb or don’t comb your hair, the things you like and don’t like, the things you say. Nerdism is about wanting the right things—love, friendship, family, hope, peace, justice, happiness— but being clueless about how to get them .” Again, she made eye contact with her amigos, one at a time. “ Being clueless about how to get them. But together we’re learning how. We can’t do it alone. You can’t do it without me. I can’t do it without you. Together, and only together, we’ll get where we need to go. We’ll become the people we want to become.”

Unnoticed, Gia Adorno had arrived with four different flavors of fountain Cokes on a tray. She stood staring at Rebecca for a long moment. Then as she transferred the drinks from tray to table, she said, “This round is on the house.”

The amigos thanked her effusively if inarticulately. Although four free Cokes was a small thing, they were moved by the gesture.

Gia said, “In fact, tonight only, all drinks from this point are free.” Then she gently admonished, “But you’ll still have to pay for pizzas and everything else.”

When the waitress departed to attend to other customers, Bobby said, “Maybe we can do this.”

Rebecca waited for a moment and then pressed him. “Do what?”

“Still think of you as one of the guys.”

“And a nerd,” Spencer said.

“An amigo,” Ernie added.

Bobby consolidated it all. “A nerd amigo guy.”

Rebecca wasn’t satisfied. “‘Maybe’?”

“We can do it,” Ernie said.

Spencer agreed. “We already are doing it.”

Rebecca smiled. “I love you guys.”

They flinched as one organism, and Bobby said, “Guys don’t say they love one another.”

“My mistake,” she acknowledged. “Forget I ever said it. Rewind your memories, and over-record that with this: You’re the best damn bunch of screwup losers in the world, and I’m proud to hang with you.”

They high-fived one another across the table.