The Best Four Years of Adam Becker - 20. Freshman Year - Chapter 20

“So, Justine,” Kevin said, settling into the chair across from her, looking exceptionally smug with himself. We had a patio table outside The Boot, spoils of arriving early to happy hour: we were already on our second round. “Adam says you’re thinking of coming to Tulane next year.”

Adam--when had Kevin Malley ever called me Adam? It had been roughly twenty seconds since Kevin and Justine collided like two 747s on a foggy runway in Tenerife, and we were already off to this kind of inauspicious start. I knew my idiosyncratic nomenclature would crop up eventually--I figured I would have an hour or so, enough time for everyone to get drunk before anyone noticed which names were being tossed around.

I figured Kevin would, at least, have the good sense to call me Becker.

“It’s so weird you call him Adam,” Justine told him, smiling maybe a little bit uncomfortably. “He’s always been Peter to me.”

Kevin, for his part, seemed pleasantly surprised by that news. My name on Facebook was Peter Adam Becker, but he didn’t know my first name wasn’t as vestigial as I had let him assume.

He looked over at me, smiling. “How did I not know that?”

I attempted to conjure up as much nonchalance as possible, considering the high stakes deathmatch I was currently drowning in.

“You don’t know a lot of things, Malley,” I told him, as crisply as possible. I figured I could play this off as a casual acquaintance not knowing the finer details of my life. “My first name’s Peter.”

“I know your first name’s Peter,” Kevin said, rolling his eyes. “I just didn’t know anyone actually called you that.” He turned back to Justine. “Well, I just call him Becker. Usually. I was being formal. You know, meeting his family.”

“Meeting his family” was such a boyfriendy thing to say, and there was a split second where the entire happy hour seemed poised to grind into a catastrophe, an actual collision of jumbo jets, but Justine didn’t seem to read the context. “Oh, you don’t have to be formal around me,” she told him. She tossed a smile my way. “Peter’s the one who’s nervous with me here.”

Bitch. “I am not nervous,” I said, which probably sounded too defensive, which probably made me sound more nervous than I actually. “I like having you here.”

Justine gave me a playful eye roll, and took a sip of her screwdriver. She was knocking it back with far more ease than I had anticipated. I remembered my first real drink at the Zeta house, the “guy vat,” trying as hard as I could to keep it down. I wasn’t our parents; I wasn’t naive enough to think that Justine hadn’t drank at all during her time at the Harrington School, but I hadn’t expected her to adapt to The Boot’s happy hour culture so natively.

A short silence fell over the table like a sudden fog.

“So, where’s everyone else?” Tripp tossed.

“Morton said he was coming,” Baker offered, setting his phone down on the table.

“And Patrick,” I told him. “And Jordan and Michaela. Everyone’s always so fucking late for everything all the time.”

“Well, they’ll be the last ones,” Erik told Justine. He pointed across the street, across the quad, to Jordan and Michaela’s dorm. “We can see their building from here, but they’ll be the last ones here, because Michaela needs about six hours to get ready before she can be seen in public.”

“Let’s be real,” Kevin said, “not many girls look like Michaela Birdrock even after infinite time.”

Erik did not find that especially amusing. The rest of us let his empty barbs in Michaela’s direction roll off of us without comment; Kevin was not part of that silent covenant.

Tripp, for his part, found that change in routine rather amusing, or so I gathered from the pleased eye contact he offered me from across the table.

However, “No one’s perfect,” he said, judiciously.

“Anyway,” Kevin said, turning back to Justine. “Do you claim you’re from D.C. like this kid, or Nevada?”

There was a chumminess that Kevin was attempting with Justine that made me exceptionally uneasy. They had both had very divergent sets of nuclear codes for my life: one for Peter, one for Becker.

Justine, for her part, seemed to be reciprocating; she grinned widely, set down her drink. “D.C. Definitely. Where are you from?”

“All over,” he replied. “Army brat. But I went to high school near L.A.”

That was quite the euphemism for Riverside, California, two hours due east of Los Angeles and nestled in a dusty desert county that scandalously abutted Nevada instead of the Pacific.

“I did live in D.C. when I was little,” he continued. “Well, about thirty miles south--Triangle, Virginia? My dad was stationed at Quantico.”

“What?” I interjected. “You didn’t tell me that.”

“I don’t tell Peter lots of things,” he said, dismissively, to Justine. “Just for a year.”

I did not pretend I knew Kevin Malley like the back of my hand, the way I might claim with Tripp or Erik, because he was a closed book and I was a closed book, and we managed to make that sort of thing work. He had glossed over the bulk of his childhood: I knew his father was dead, but I knew that because Baker told me, since Kevin never mentioned it. And I knew Kevin had moved around a lot--military brat, like he said--and hadn’t settled in one place for longer than a year or two until he moved to Riverside when he was fourteen. What we talked about wasn’t in the past, which I was more than okay with. But what I was not okay with was how he was just a fountain of percolating personal anecdotes with Justine.

Not cool.

“Triangle’s pretty far,” she said, “but the outlets are near there. Woodbridge?”

“I don’t know,” Kevin said, with an apologetic smirk, “I think I was four when we left.”

Justine took another sip of her screwdriver. She was making an awful lot of progress on it, very quickly. I thought back to where I was on my first night at Tulane back in August--I was three months older then than Justine was now--and how tough it was to force down those initial shrugs of alcohol. And yet, Justine, knocking back a screwdriver (and The Boot didn’t skimp on the booze) with the well-conditioned liver of a sorority girl.

She had turned eighteen less than a month before. Where had she learned to drink like that--at the Harrington School? Where was I when all of this was happening?

I did not want to be a big brother about it--orchestrating the weekend to perfection was enough to worry about--but this did not bode well for formal tomorrow night. If Justine hooked up with anyone at my fraternity formal, I would never hear the end of it.

Michaela and Jordan were hustling across Zimpel Street.

“Finally,” I said, to no one in particular. As they got closer, I bitterly called, “Take your time!”

“Sorry,” Jordan said, as they sat down. “It wasn’t my fault.”

Michaela added: “We were watching Jon & Kate Plus 8.”

“Oh, and here I thought your excuse was going to be frivolous,” Erik said, which earned him a smile from me, even though I knew it was more of a dig at Michaela rather than actual solidarity with me in defiance of their truancy.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Jordan replied, rolling her eyes, “Boot happy hour is clearly so much more important to world peace.” She pulled a five out of her wallet. “Becker, do you want to get me a vodka-cranberry?”

“Only because I need a drink,” I replied, taking the bill from her. “Who else needs a fresh drink?”

There were two takers: Michaela, who also handed me a five and an order, rather than offering to come with me, and Chris Baker, who chugged the icy remains of his drink, and then accompanied me inside.

It was still earlier for happy hour, but The Boot was just beginning to get crowded; the tables were all full both inside and outside, and the congregation of standing groups had begun to pock the room.

We waited at the bar.

“I think it’s going well,” Baker told me. “Justine, I mean.”

I didn’t know why people kept insisting that I was nervous about Justine coming, that I needed reassurance that I didn’t have to be nervous. The whole thing just made me more anxious.

“Yeah, I guess so,” I said. “Until Iota Chi collectively tries to bang her,” I said. “In which case, I’ll forever be known as the guy with the sister who hooked up with someone at formal.”

Baker grinned at the idea of that. “I’ll keep an eye on her tomorrow, little bro,” he replied. “It’s probably a good thing that she’s coming for formal though, you know? Everyone will be paired off already. Imagine if it was a fall party where everyone’s trying to bang any girl that wanders in.”

He had a valid point: I imagined it would be in poor form to ditch your date to have sex with someone else, even if I thought there was not a completely outside chance of me doing that to Michaela with Kevin tomorrow night. It gave me some solace, at least.

He smirked. “Though she is my date tomorrow, so.”

I couldn’t tell if he actually believed he had enough game to reel in Justine tomorrow, but I figured he didn’t. Baker was always painfully aware about his lack of success with the art of the deal.

I must’ve shot him a dirty look, inadvertently, because he gave a forced laugh to bolster his case that he was joking.

“So,” he said, with another joking smile, “when do I get to call you Peter?”

It was only a matter of time before that reared its ugly little head.

“A week from never,” I told him, folding my arms. “I hate Peter.”

“You mean yourself, or the name?” His grin grew wider. “Peter.”

I legitimately had to think about that one--I wasn’t really fond of Peter in any sort of capacity at this stage of my life. But it would’ve been weird to say that. “The name. You know, in the Bible--”

Baker mock-coughed: “Republican.”

“You’re a Republican too,” I reminded. Got back on track: “So in the Bible, I always hated Peter because that’s not his real name. It’s like, Jesus tells you one day: I’m going to call you Peter, and Simon’s just supposed to be like, ‘Sure, dude, no big deal.’ It’s so fucking pathetic of him. Have some balls.”

I didn’t quite tell that story correctly, after two exceptionally strong Boot triple gin and sodas. But there was at least a chance it would’ve sounded even more insane had less alcohol been consumed.

“Well, if God tells you to change your name,” Baker offered. “You should probably just do it. What’s the biblical affinity for Adam, then? Desperate need to be created by God himself?”

“I know you’re a stickler for fine craftsmanship,” I told him. “No. Adam was just the other name I had. The one that wasn’t Peter. Besides, I don’t think I could manage under an authoritarian dictatorship that willfully censored knowledge, even if it was in the Garden of Eden.”

“Such a libertarian,” he said, with mock disdain. “Can’t see the forest through the trees.”

I really didn’t want to get into theology with Baker, who I always suspected was slightly more religious than he let on--he went to church on most, but not all, Sunday evenings at the nondenominational chapel across from Newcomb Hall.

“I think it’s a garden,” I replied, instead, as the bartender came up at precisely the most necessary moment. “I can’t see the garden through the trees. Gin and soda, vodka-cranberry, and a rum and diet.”

 

We got back to the table with our bounty. Kevin was still interrogating Justine--or at least I deemed it to be interrogation; his tone was being quite the opposite.

“Well, I think you should come here,” he was saying, to my horror--I knew I shouldn’t have left them alone. “You’d fit in well. Have you met Veronica Tandy yet? She could get you into Tri-Gamma.”

I wondered if Justine appreciated just how gorgeous Kevin was at this moment--perfection in the copper light of the sunset, just the right amount of shadow on his strong jaw, like a matinee idol photographed under optimum lighting. Had Kevin been a girl, it was a pairing I would have flaunted to the end of time.

Justine shook her head. “I haven’t. Peter will have to introduce us.”

“I’m a Tri-Gamma too,” Michaela added. “Well, I’m a new member.”

“That’s sorority code for pledge,” Erik told Justine.

“It’s one of the best sororities on campus,” Michaela continue. “Probably the best overall. Some sororities are the slutty girls, who are hot but have nothing else going on. And then some of them are super sweet, but fat.” Justine bristled, almost imperceptibly, at the bluntness. “But Tri-Gamma’s great. Everyone’s attractive but not slutty, and, you know, sweet, and smart, and just so great to be around.”

Jordan and Erik sent me the exact same expression. Tripp, for his part, nodded along supportively with Michaela. He was a nicer person than the rest of us.

Of course, I did not disagree with the general perception of Tri-Gamma--which was one of the better sororities on campus, and did have more well-rounded girls than some of the other ones--but I wasn’t entirely convinced that all the girls were as sweet, smart, and chaste as Michaela liked to imagine.

Pretty, certainly, but Delta Delta Rho was universally considered hotter.

“Tri-Gamma really is great, though,” Tripp said. “I run into that Jackie Hughes all the time.”

Next to Peter, Jackie Hughes was another name I hadn’t realized I did not want mentioned in this conversation.

Kevin could be counted on to excavate what I only imagined was a long grudge, with chipper precision: “Becker went out with her a few times,” he told Justine, with far too much enjoyment. “She’s so sweet.”

He twisted that knife looking directly at me, a big smile on his face, eyes that seemed to dance with lighthearted but serious warning. That was Kevin: he was a cat, toying. I wondered how long he had been keeping Jackie Hughes in the wings.

Justine gave me a look that I couldn’t quite translate: surprise? affirmation? disbelief?

I did not return eye contact.

“I mean, I don’t say hi or anything,” Tripp continued, quickly. “She probably doesn’t remember me. But I see her--I think we have our labs in Israel at the same time.”

Tripp’s offhand comment about Jackie Hughes did not seem to have a story attached to it, as much as he wanted to think it did. He seemed to realize that almost immediately. He bit the cuticle on his left thumb.

“Israel is one of the science buildings,” Kevin explained to Justine. “Not the country.”

Justine nodded. “I take my campus tour tomorrow,” she told him. “9am.”

“Brutal,” Erik said. “Let me guess: your mom booked it?”

Justine nodded. “Yeah, I was thinking more like noon or something. But I’m excited to see everything.”

“Well,” Kevin replied, “you won’t see everything on a tour--you’ve got to get to know the local color.” He motioned to all of us sitting around the table. “Otherwise, you never know what you’re getting into.”

 

I cornered Kevin as he was leaving the restroom.

“You’re being way too flirty,” I told him, following him to the bar. “Around Justine.”

“Oh, you’re so paranoid, Peter,” he said, with a nasty little smirk. “I’m being nice and making conversation. You really think I want to bone your sister? Me? Out of the entire table full of people we’re with who actually do want to bone your sister?”

“I didn’t say you wanted to,” I said. “Please don’t use that word. I said you’re being too flirty.” In a high-pitched mocking voice: “‘So, you think you want to come to Tulane next year? You’ll have to join the hot, smart, fun sorority. You’ve got to get to know the local color.’ You’re going to give her the wrong idea.”

Kevin scoffed theatrically, as he pulled out a twenty dollar bill and leaned over the bar. “I’m just trying to make a good impression, because she’s your sister. You’re being a crazy person. I know you think everyone hits on girls to throw people off the scent because that’s what you do, but some of us are a little more secure than that. Some of us are just trying to be nice to the high school girl who is probably a little out of her element right now.”

I lingered over his words, each of them, words that I felt that he had been saving up for a while.

“I do not hit on girls.”

I said that a bit too loudly, but the bar was packed to the rafters by this point so the din around me was all-consuming. I kept a casual, half-smiling look on my face; no one would know we were teetering on the edge of an argument.

“Which is why you looked like you were going to throw a drink at me when I mentioned what’s-her-face.”

Oh. He knew who Jackie Hughes was. He couldn’t wait to dangle that in front of Justine, first opportunity he got.

And he knew it was true, because of how quickly he tried to pivot the subject away now. He leaned in: “So if we do get Justine laid, maybe you can get laid too. I, for one, would enjoy some quality alone time with Peter’s peter.”

I leaned back, away from him. “Please stop calling me Peter.”

He raised his eyebrows, playfully. “You gonna make me?”

“Probably not,” I told him, less comical and more exasperated than I had imagined it in my head, but that’s where I was at this portion of the evening, this far into happy hour. Exhausted. It was exhausting making sure that everyone stayed on their best behavior around Justine, exhausting making sure Justine stayed on her best behavior around everyone else.

The bartender pointed at us.

“Gin and soda, vodka-cranberry, rum and diet, and a screwdriver. Don’t make the screwdriver too strong.”

“Bud Light draft,” Kevin echoed. He turned back to me. “In happier news, I heard from another internship today. In D.C., of all places.”

Of all places. Kevin had not told me he was applying to any internship in D.C., which seemed like an intentional oversight to me. He had told me he was applying to an internship at the American Philosophical Society Museum in Philadelphia, a handful of law firms in New Orleans, and Smith Barney in New York, which still shocked me considering how distant a socialist philosophy major was from an investment banker. “On a whim,” he had justified. “I was feeling poor that day.” Kevin and I were similar in a lot of ways, but his ability to be whimsical and impulsive, and then take concrete action based on said whimsical impulses, was not one of them.

“Interesting,” I said. “You didn’t tell me you were looking for something in D.C.”

“Well,” he said, slowly, “it was on a whim. The EPA.”

I scoffed mockingly. “Communist.”

“I know, right?”

There were definite pros and cons to having Kevin Malley in D.C. for the summer. Mostly cons, as much of an asshole as I felt like for believing that. I saw him multiple times a week at school, which was nothing out of the ordinary--I saw lots of people that often. In Hamlet, no dice. I saw no one, and those I did, I saw them rarely. I could just imagine my mom: “You’re seeing that guy again?” The thoughts racing through her head. And I could imagine Kevin, insistent.

Kevin did not belong in D.C., just like Justine did not belong in New Orleans, and I certainly wasn’t drunk enough to get blindsided on both fronts this weekend.

I was cautious: “Are you going to take it, do you think?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “So I have four options, assuming everywhere else rejected me. One, stay here and wait tables. Two, New York for Smith Barney. Three, D.C. Four, go home to Riverside and throw myself into freeway traffic.”

I grinned a bit at that last bit. I was going home; I understood. “Do I get a vote?”

He paused for a second--I couldn’t tell if it was because he didn’t want my opinion, or didn’t think I would offer an opinion, or just thought I would immediately make the case for D.C.

“Shoot.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him not to come. So I smiled, and said, “Freeway traffic.”

“Ha, ha,” he replied. Kevin was not quite as passive as I was: “No, but what do you really think? We could both be in D.C. for the summer. It’d be fun.”

The pro was, of course, easy access to sex. And easy access to Kevin. And somewhere to go in the District that wasn’t Panera or the movies with Sarah Bernard and Grant Prendergast.

They were compelling. They did not outweigh the cons.

“Smith Barney,” I said, finally. “That’s my vote. It’s such a good opportunity to actually do something--you won’t make any money at the EPA.”

If he was disappointed, it did not compute on his face. The expression on his lips and eyes actually did not change one iota, which was vaguely unsettling. Of course he would have an opinion on me nixing D.C. Undoubtedly. I wasn’t sure if he figured out what I was doing, but I didn’t put it past him.

“Well, technically, I won’t be able making money from either,” he replied. “Unpaid intern, holler.”

“You know what I mean,” I continued, because I was in this deep already. And he really should have told me if he was even considering something in D.C.--not put me on the spot at the Boot, when I had enough potential calamity this weekend. “I don’t have any idea how you got an internship offer from Smith Barney, but it seems like something you shouldn’t pass up.”

He smirked. “You don’t think I’m smart enough to work at Smith Barney? I have a 3.9.”

“No,” I said. “You’re very smart. But you’re a philosophy major. Did Plato do a little retail brokering on the side that I didn’t know about?”

“You know there’s more to philosophy than Plato,” he said. “And I don’t know how I got it either. They liked me in the phone interview. So I don’t know, either that one or the EPA thing. In D.C. I don’t know how good of a fit Smith Barney is. I mean, investment banking. I don’t even know what that is.”

The bartender was taking forever with these drinks.

“New York’s only three hours from D.C. by train,” I told him. “I can still visit whenever I want.”

There was a smile. “Don’t think I didn’t look that up.”

“What are we going to do with you in D.C. anyway?” I asked him. “Hang out in Hamlet with my mom? I’ll be working weird hours, and it’s such a long drive anyway. And you’d love New York. You belong there.”

The bartender came back with the bounty, finally.

“Yeah,” Kevin said. “A lot to think about, anyway.”

 

Justine and I got back from happy hour appropriately drunk—drunk enough to save face. The rest of the group had splintered apart; no one wanted to get too wild, considering formal was tomorrow night. Tripp and Erik went to the Iota Chi house, and we went home with Michaela and Jordan. I figured Justine had been given enough of a show at happy hour, so we ordered two slices of Boot pizza and went home.

First thing she said when we got back to my room: “So they call you Adam.” Because of course that topic was going to re-enter our orbit at some point of the evening. “It’s weird.”

I didn’t like the word choice. Weird. What was weird about it--what did it matter? People went by their middle names all the time. Mitt Romney came to mind.

“Well, my friends here all call me Becker,” I told her, hoping to explain some of this away, since it was clearly lingering in her mind. “Last name sort of thing comes the fraternity. No one calls me Peter.”

“Do you still call yourself Peter?” she asked.

“I don’t call myself anything,” I told her. She rolled her eyes, so I added: “I guess I think of myself as Adam, mostly. I told you--no one down here calls me Peter.”

“I’m not going to stop,” she warned, sitting down at the foot of Tripp’s bed. For good measure, she added: “Peter, Peter, Peter.

There was a lengthy silence, which I occupied by pretended to be looking for something in the pile of mail on my desk.

“I had so much fun tonight,” Justine said, too enthusiastic, putting emphasis on every syllable. I had never seen Justine drunk before, at least to my knowledge, though I knew she had gone to parties. “What’s your favorite part of Tulane, Peter?”

I could not help but the use of “Peter” was intentional.

But it was such a simple question—such a likely one for someone contemplating matriculation, but I was almost overwhelmed by it. There was so much I loved. Who I was down here was not the person I was back in D.C., and maybe that was what I loved the most. Life began when I stepped off that plane in August. So if there was anything Peter loved about Tulane, it was Adam; it was all Adam, someone worthy of the friends he had, the fraternity he pledged, the guy who was giving him the time of day.

But I couldn’t say that. Not to Justine, but not to anyone, because it was such a pathetic flag to wave: that I had spent so much time in a holding pattern, that I was belatedly grateful just for getting the kind of easily-dismissed things that everyone else had their entire lives.

“The people,” I said, instead. She continued staring, waiting for elaboration. “You know? I made a lot of good friends down here. They know everything there is about me.”

“I like your friends,” she said. “They’re fun. Your friend Kevin’s so sweet.”

I did not know how to approach that: I knew she would get the wrong idea from him.

“The Boot is a close second,” I added quickly, instinctively, even though that wasn’t true: I went to Bruno’s far more often that I did The Boot, but that seemed like an unnecessary complication in the narrative.

“I like The Boot too,” she agreed. There was another long pause. I had received a credit card offer from Discover--who had business sending me a credit card offer? “I think I’m going to come here next year.”

It was the Hiroshima I was dreading, because maybe in the back of my mind I knew that after a weekend here, Justine would pick it. It was that compelling of a place.

It hadn’t been lost on me that I was walking a tightrope: showing off Tulane and my life here, but not enough to make her actually want it for herself. It was not clear why I ever thought those things could both be possible.

So maybe it was the alcohol talking, but I was, for the first time since Justine suggested she might apply to Tulane, not completely opposed to the idea.

Because things had completely slammed together: Justine and Kevin exchanging conversation over $4 triple well drinks on The Boot’s patio, lions lying down with lambs. And things had gone okay. The walls had not come down around me, and wasn’t it easier to not keep people in their separate interrogation rooms all the time?

“You should,” I told her. I was going to add, “I’d like that,” but I still wasn’t drunk enough to be that enthusiastic.

 

I woke up the next morning at 11, hungover and filled with some strange emotions at what had transpired.

Justine was fully dressed, sitting in my desk chair. She had somehow managed to pop out of bed for her campus tour at nine. By the time I woke up, the gears had already been in motion for some time. She had already called my parents with the final decision; they immediately pitched a check into the mail. I opened my eyes to find out Justine had dropped Nagasaki too.

Justine was buoyant.

So I would have Justine infiltrating down here for the next three years of my life. The liquored-up acceptance I had felt the night before in solidarity had given way to the nauseating anxiety that I figured would be a constant theme in my life.

“Your friend Kevin is so sweet,” she had said the night before, and I had thought it was because he was quasi-flirting with her, but now I was panicked that she hadn’t gotten the wrong impression--she had gotten the right one. I couldn’t remember her tone, I couldn’t remember the look on her face.

Disaster. Utter disaster. The alcohol had seemed to convince me that all of my different social circles could sit down and break bread over cheap well drinks, but that was not a possibility. Did I want Justine here? Absolutely not. One night had gone well: one conversation with Kevin Malley, who I would now have to keep her away from. One conversation with Iota Chi guys, who I would also have to keep her away from (for different reasons.)

The next three years suddenly seemed claustrophobic and taxing, a sentence.

I thought about it on my walk to Kevin’s house on Lowerline. Justine and Michaela had gone to get their nails done in anticipation of formal, and I was borrowing the Tercel so Tripp, Erik, and I could pick up our rented tuxedos from the Men’s Wearhouse in Metairie. I was paying him back with sexual favors; his words.

“You look so sexy,” he told me, grazing his hand down my arm.

“We really don’t have time for that,” I replied. “Erik and Tripp think I’m just coming here to pick up the car. I can’t stay long.”

Kevin removed said arm, but started unbuckling his belt. “Ten minutes, tops. Time me.”

“Oh, that’s so romantic,” I told him. He unzipped his fly. “Are you serious?”

“Get against the wall,” he replied, “and don’t turn around.”

And I didn’t quite know what I was doing, but I did it, put my hands on either side of the light switch, took a stance, and waited.

“Should I take off my clothes?” I asked him.

Kevin didn’t answer me; instead, I heard the flutter of his shirt coming off, and felt his hands on my hips. “I’m going to fuck you,” he whispered, kissing the side of my neck, “so hard, you’re going to be screaming.”

His dick was already hard as a rock, its gigantic mass rubbing up and down against the back of my shorts. I didn’t know how he was already so raring to go, this soon after my arrival, before I even got naked.

“It’s not that difficult,” he replied. “I know I’m going to have sex, I snap my fingers, and I’m ready to go.”

I appreciated his high self-worth, even if it had been slightly more sluggish than snapping his fingers and going on previous encounters, and I also appreciated that it wasn’t going to take a lot of finesse because we didn’t have a lot of time.

His lips felt so good, nibbling at the bottom of my ear, kissing down my neck and jawline from behind.

He leaned into me harder, kissed my neck harder, more aggressively--I let out a breathy moan, involuntarily, as he turned up the volume. One hand went up underneath my shirt to my chest, the other to my pants, which he was surprisingly adept at undoing with just one hand.

“Well, I’m very dexterous,” he replied. “Stop asking questions.”

My pants came down to my knees, and then Kevin tugged on my boxer-briefs--he didn’t take them off; he just left them puddled around my thighs, just low enough to free my dick and expose my hole to him. I was already at attention too, by this point, and he reached around, grabbed my dick with one hand, and gave it a few tugs.

His other hand snaked down to my bare ass. Kevin ran his index finger up and down my crack a few times, then went in for the kill.

I’d never taken anything in my ass without lube--his finger felt so much bigger than I’d been bracing for, somehow so much more painful than even riding his giant dick.

“Ooh,” I muttered, attempting to wriggle my ass free--no luck. “Stop, stop, stop. Lube.”

“You love it,” he whispered, slowly fucking me with his index finger, his lips back on my neck. “Just relax.”

It was wickedly uncomfortable. And then it was less so, and he was, fuck, hitting the spot. Pounding the spot, as much as he could with one finger. And when he removed it, before he put two fingers in, I heard the telltale raspberry of liquid from the bottle of lube he kept in his nightstand.

“I didn’t say no lube,” he replied. “I said relax. I did say stop asking questions, however.”

“Is that all questions? Or just ones pertaining to sex.”

He let out a puff of laughter, and bit the bottom of my earlobe. Mouth full, he said, “The next words I want to hear out of you are ‘fuck me harder, Kevin.’”

Kevin inserted the two fingers, which were easier than the one finger, with all the lube. I let out another involuntary moan, louder, deeper.

“You have to be quiet,” he said. “My roommates’ll hear you in the hallway if you’re standing right by the door.”

“No,” I told him, craning my head as best I could to look at his face. Kevin was stark naked. “Let’s go to the bed. Fuck me on the bed.”

He let out a plaintive sigh.

“Come on,” I said. “You’re getting to fuck my ass regardless.”

He smiled a bit at that, and backed away to the bed. He did not sit down, just standing next to the bed as I pulled off my pants and underwear, and then my polo.

“Get on your back,” he barked, when I was done. “Now!”

Kevin was, of course, smiling through the entire thing--he could be aggressive when he was taking control, and even a little bit kinky, but he was not especially convincing as a dominant strongman. He smiled too much, that tilted half-moon smile that I always pictured him wearing when I pictured him in my head.

But I did as I was told--I got on my back, facing him, took my knees to my chest.

“That’s right,” he said, leaning over to the nightstand. “Lie back, think of England.” He pulled a condom from the nightstand, then went back to face me, condom wrapper in his teeth. He tore it open, pulled it out, and rolled it down his stellar dick.

“And lots of lube for Her Majesty,” he replied, with a smirk, reaching for the bottle that lied on the bed next to me.

There was something I always found so sexy about watching Kevin grease up his cock. Maybe because it was so big, and I just knew what was coming next--how much it would fill me up, and hit my spot, and leave me sore for the rest of the day.

I was rock hard myself by this point, my dick flat against my stomach, almost to my belly button.

“Don’t stroke it,” he warned, as he positioned himself behind me. “Not yet.”

He put the crook of his elbows under my calves, and pushed my knees even harder into my chest. He bit his lip, like he was solving an equation, and then I felt the head of his dick pushing against my ass.

“Take it slow,” I whispered. “Your so big.”

“We only have ten minutes,” he replied. “Take it like a man, Adam.”

I groaned loudly, maybe in pain, maybe in pleasure, probably in both, as he forced his way in, but I didn’t stop him. For a second, there was a searing pain, like a heated discomfort, but then there wasn’t.

“Good?” he whispered.

“No more questions,” I told him.

He smirked again, and he slowly began to buck his hips, forcing that beautiful dick deeper into my recesses, tapping morse code against my prostate. I wasn’t sure if he could tell internally exactly when he was hitting it each time, but I knew he could tell from my face, from the geyser of hot air I’d sigh into his face whenever he did.

“You’re so fucking hot,” he said, his face just inches from mine, as he fucked me. “You’re such a hot little bottom.”

“Fuck me hard,” I moaned, and I didn’t really mean it--it was just something to say, something in the heat of passion that trickled out of your mouth when you were getting fucked by a big dick--but he took it to heart, pulling my legs around his torso, and then slamming me, his loose balls slapping across my ass as he pounded into me.

“Shh,” he whispered, and he put two fingers in my mouth so I could bite down on them. But I was still moaning, even if it was muted, as he continued to pound. He hit a rhythm--boom, boom, boom; I had my legs wrapped so tight around him, holding on his body for dear life, and I couldn’t stand it anymore.

“I,” I said, his fingers still in my mouth, as my had shot down to my dick. I started stroking, furiously. “I’m going to cum.”

“Cum for me,” he panted. “Cum while I fuck you.”

He didn’t have to tell me anything more; I stroked a few more times, and then it came--rapid bullets of milky white pleasure, all across my chest and stomach.

Kevin kept fucking me, harder, his face twisted in his own anticipation, and then I felt him pull out, as fast as he could. Between my legs, he tore off the condom, threw it onto the bed, and then shot on top of my fresh paint.

“Ugh,” he said, collapsing face first into the mattress next to me. Muffled: “That was hot.”

I put my hand on the small of his naked back. “Yeah it was. What time is it?”

He picked his head up, looked over to the clock on his nightstand. “Ha,” he said. “Eight minutes. Not too shabby.”

“In this particular situation,” I replied. He leaned over, kissed me firmly on the lips.

“You’re tense,” Kevin said, putting his hand on my chest. “I can tell. The way you clench. You realize.”

“That’s really gross,” I told him, “that you’re reading my mind from inside my rectum.”

He grinned. “Don’t be tense. Just because Justine’s here. It’s only two days.”

“Well, she’s coming here next year,” I told him. “It’s a done deal. My parents sent in the check.”

He looked at me with uncertainty. “Congratulations?” he offered.

I threw my head back in self-pity, stared up at the white expanse of his ceiling. “No, it’s the other one.”

“Oh, come on,” Kevin said. “She’s a great girl. What are you afraid of--that she’s going to find out? Your friends all know me, and they don’t know we do this.”

He had a point with that, with that major secret, but he didn’t know about Peter, who Justine saw Peter as. Which was another major point, one that could not be sufficiently articulated to anyone down here, especially not Kevin Malley, of all people.

My outlook must not have improved.

“You shouldn’t be nervous about it,” he added. “Everyone liked her, believe me.”

“Do we have to talk about my sister when we’re naked?” I said. “And why does everyone keep saying that I’m nervous?”

He ignored the first question. “Because it’s true,” he said, to the second. “Come on--it’s me. I’ll like you even when you’re nervous. I mean, I’m usually the stressed one, and you still like me.”

“You’re never stressed,” I told him, leaning in to give him a peck on the lips.

“I’m a deep well of emotion,” he replied, casually. “I’m in a very stressful line of work.” He paused dramatically. “Food service.”

“Sure,” I said, rolling my eyes. He kissed me.

“I’m sorry I’m not taking you to formal,” I told him.

He rolled his eyes. “I didn’t expect you to. I’m going with Rebecca Laughton to the Beta Phi formal anyway.”

“You never told me you lived near D.C.,” I told him.

“We lived everywhere.”

“How many places?”

“Nine,” he said. “Before he died. Quantico, Fort Bragg, Fort Hood, Fort Benning. Fort Ord, right before it closed, when I was seven. In Monterey. That was my favorite.” He paused, as if debating whether he should continue naming the other four; he did not. Instead, he continued on about Ford Ord. “It’s a college now. Cal State Monterey Bay. I went up there to visit during my senior year.”

“How was it?”

“Oh, disgusting,” he said, with a smirk. “They took the barracks, painted them bright colors, and used them as dorms. ‘Natural California landscaping,’ they called it, which is code for dust. Sometimes things should just stay a memory, because they’re never as good as you think they are.” He shooked his head. “Well, I was just making conversation with your sister about Quantico--I don’t even remember it. None of them really made a very big impression. They were just stopovers.”

“Well, you must have friends all over, at least.”

“Just stopovers,” he repeated. “It doesn’t really work that way. Not when you’ve only been friends with someone for a year or two. You close the book and open up the next one. Otherwise, you’re going to be missing people for your entire life.”

I had moved exactly once: from Summerlin, Nevada, to Hamlet, Maryland, and I was really too young for it to make any sort of lasting impact on my social life. I remembered snippets of the Summerlin house, the color of the kitchen, the way the sun came through my bedroom window, how cold the downstairs tile got on winter mornings. But I didn’t remember any sort of social life, however nascent.

“I’ve been in the same place,” I told him, “for almost my whole life. When my dad ran for Senate, I made my mom promise that we wouldn’t move back to Nevada if he lost. She said she couldn’t predict the future.”

“Well, I’m sure there would’ve been plenty of options for a retiring Congressman,” Kevin replied. “More than if you’re in the army. You basically go where they tell you to go. But my dad was dumb. He enlisted. You should never enlist--you should go through ROTC.” He smirked. “Obviously, I couldn’t do either, even if I wanted to.”

“I won’t tell,” I told him.

“I didn’t ask,” he replied. “Esophageal cancer. That’s how he died. Not in combat or anything. He always said he was going to either die on the battlefield, or live to be a hundred. No middle ground.” He paused. “And I always wished some Taliban guy had shot him and ended everything fast, because esophageal cancer’s a grisly way to go. He couldn’t get out of bed for the last week or so, and I just remember being on the other side of the wall in my bedroom, listening to him moaning in agony all night, even after he was on the morphine. And I just remember praying for him to finally die, or at least agree to die in the hospital.”

A stillness set in, a quiet; I didn’t know if I was supposed to respond to that. I just rubbed Kevin’s bare shoulder; words didn’t seem to fit.

“He wasn’t a smoker or anything,” Kevin continued, as if he was just processing all of this right now. “It was completely apropos of nothing. He went to the doctor because he had had a sore throat for a couple weeks, and six months later, he was gone.”

I could only offer more silence; Kevin didn’t seem to expect me to fill any of it.

“He was a good guy,” he added, with finality. “I mean, he was a tough guy--you know, a soldier. But he was a good guy.”

I could see the wheels turning in his head, what he was silently trying to justify to himself, because weren’t we all silently trying to justify the same thing.

I didn’t know if he wanted me to bring it up, but I asked him anyway: “Do you think he would’ve, you know?”

“I have no idea,” he said, trailing a circle with his index finger absently around my belly button. “I don’t. I wish I knew. I like to think he would be super supportive, but sometimes I think you lionize something after it’s gone. You forget the actual man for who he was, and just remember everything how you want to remember everything. But only he’d know what his reaction would be.”

There was a digitized chime from my jeans; I sat up, leaned over the side of the bed, and fished my phone out of the pocket.

Erik, of course: “Where are you?”

“Sorry,” I told Kevin, flipping open my phone. “Erik’s asking when I’m getting back.”

Kevin nodded understandingly. “Do you need a towel?”

“Yeah,” I told him. “If you don’t mind.”

Kevin stood up, went to grab the towel that was hanging on the back of the door.

“Just got the car,” I texted, and I hoped he and Tripp wouldn’t put their versions of the timeline together. “I’m heading back now.” Kevin wiped his dick down first, then tossed the towel onto the bed next to me. “I also need the keys to the Tercel.”

“Sure,” he said. He plucked those off the nightstand, and tossed them to me too; with one hand on the phone, I made a grab for them, but they clattered out of reach to the floor. “So you’re really only good at catching in one use of the word.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Thanks.”

 

It was a black tie event, and still Justine managed to be somehow overdressed: she was wearing the gown my mother had worn to Bush’s second inaugural; foil-gold, voluminous skirt.

“Well, it’s a good night to be Chris Baker,” Erik complimented. “Words I never thought I’d say.” Justine took it in stride, giving him a playful smirk.

And yes, Justine was objectively stunning tonight; Justine was beautiful, had always been beautiful; I couldn’t understand why she would wear couture to her brother’s fraternity formal. I certainly didn’t want to be the one to explain to our mother why there was vomit and spilled punch, and god-knows-what-else, smeared down the side of her Valentino.

Baker looked very pleased with his fortune, considering the dubious attractiveness of, say, Brett Morton’s sister. And I was pleased that he lacked anything remotely close to the game necessary to knock Justine off her perch. So that was good. I knew Baker would be watching her with, if not quite as watchful an eye as I would, plenty of brotherly surveillance.

My esteemed date, however, did not look especially pleased at Justine. Of course Michaela was radiant too--she was, also objectively, hotter than Justine, but there was a certain neutering of her impeccable confidence that she wasn’t the one showing up in a knockout dress, receiving a metric ton of compliments about her appearance.

Erik seized on that immediately.

“You look fine too, Michaela,” he said, as patronizingly as he could.

Michaela folded her arms, did not dignify.

Satisfied that he had shattered enough of Michaela’s self-esteem for one evening, he said, “Let’s go. Hannah texted that she’s out front.”

Hannah Metzenbaum was a buxom sophomore Delta Delta Rho he had been trying to bang, thus far unsuccessfully. We had not actually met her, though we had seen her once at The Boot and, Erik being Erik, seen about twenty-five trillion Facebook photos of her posing in various stages of undress.

Erik had warned us that she was exceptionally defensive about the correct pronunciation of her name.

“It’s pronounced Chonna,” he had told us, with stone-cold seriousness over Bruff the previous week. “Not Hannah. With that rasp, like how you’d say Chanukah.”

“I’d say Hanukkah,” Tripp replied. “So can I call her Hannah?”

Erik had stared at him, with wide-eyed annoyance, but instead switched to pleading: “Can you please just not fuck this up for me?”

She sounded like a lovely girl. Tripp had later pointed out that Erik had a history of taking out the very beautiful and the very self-involved; Jordan reiterated the fact that he kept dating himself.

Anyway. She was waiting for us outside the building.

“There you are,” she said to Erik, with only a hint of annoyance. He gave her a half-hug and a peck on the cheek. To us, she said, “Hi, I’m Channah,” with the inflection and everything, but didn’t give us a moment for our own introductions: “It’s so cold out. I should’ve brought a wrap.”

Her dress was strapless; still, it was not cold; it was New Orleans in late April.

“You can have my jacket,” Erik said. Channah did not accept or decline; she just folded her arms, grabbed her biceps with each of her hands, and we headed off towards the taxi rank.

Dinner was at Byblos on Magazine Street--dry; Baker warned they would be carding, which they did. Formal was in the French Quarter, but even though we were halfway downtown anyway, Baker was insistent that we head back uptown and take the bus with everyone.

“That’s half the fun,” he said, although I was not convinced.

The buses were picking us up in front of Howard-Tilton Library on Freret Street; when our cabs pulled up, there were no buses, but there was already a giant crowd in formalwear--bigger than just Iota Chi.

“Sigma scheduled their buses for the same place, same time,” Morton said, shaking his head. “I wonder how many of those fucking idiots are going to wind up at our formal.”

Baker was quiet, subtly looking over Justine, whose dress seemed to catch even the dim haze of the streetlight, illuminating her. She was a lighthouse of attention-seeking in that dress. I wondered what Laura Bush had thought of my mother.

So Baker was subtly looking over Justine, yes, but not in a pervy way. Maybe in a slightly pervy way, but I didn’t mind quite so much because I knew he lacked anything remotely close to the game necessary to knock Justine off her perch. So that was good. It weakened the need for hefty brotherly surveillance.

“When are they supposed to get here?” I asked.

“Any minute,” Morton said. “Mingle. There’s a bag of Franzia floating around here somewhere.” He turned around. “Hey, Mer! Where’s the wine?” A girl about ten feet away spun around, shrugged, and then returned to her conversation. She did not have the aforementioned Franzia. “Yeah, I don’t know where it is, then.”

“Meredith Greenblatt,” Erik said, approvingly. He glanced over at Channah. “Lucky is the man who snags a DDR girl for formal.”

Channah seemed to appreciate that sort of vacant pandering.

“Oh, you’re a DDR too?” Morton said. “You’ll have to hang with us--I feel like every girl here is a Tri-Gamma or a GDI.”

“Goddamned independent,” I clarified, for Justine’s benefit. “Not in a sorority.”

Baker, who had stopped ogling Justine, caught Veronica and Tommy on the other side of the crowd. “Speaking of sororities,” he said, “Justine, have you met Veronica yet?” Justine shook her head. “Can I borrow her for a second?” he asked me.

“She’s your date,” I replied, and they went off to network.

“Everyone wins,” Morton said. “Baker’s going to get rejected by a hot girl this time, at least, and you don’t have to see anyone sleep with your sister. Nice legwork.”

“It’s a skill,” I replied. “What can I say.”

“You’re a prince,” deadpanned Morton. “I’m going to grease the skids on my date.” He went to join Meredith Greenblatt, who by that point had recovered the bag of Franzia, and I instead turned to Erik, Channah, and Michaela.

“You’re going to like the place,” Erik announced to us all, as if he had any role in selecting the venue. “It’s this old mansion on Governor Nicholls Street, big courtyard.” He looked up. “Good thing it’s not raining.”

Patrick Sullivan and Annie Rue were getting out of a cab, being grabby, per usual, and they sauntered over to us.

“I thought we’d miss the bus,” Patrick said, sticking his hands in his pocket. He went to shake Channah’s hand. “Patrick Sullivan. And this is my girlfriend, Annie.” She introduced herself back, with the ridiculous glottalized inflection, and then Patrick surveyed us. “Where’s Tripp? I feel like I never see you guys without him.”

“He wanted to impress Little Miss Architecture with a private dinner at La Petite Grocery,” Erik said, rolling his eyes. “He hasn’t had sex in a really long time, so he needs to loosen the purse strings.”

He blurted that last bit out, and then we all casually glanced over to Channah, who seemed unfazed by it.

“Who’s Little Miss Architecture?” Patrick asked.

“Her name’s Marjorie Ross,” I said. “She’s in architecture with Tripp. Obviously. She’s cute. Seems like she’s, you know, amenable to all that’s expected of her.”

“Old lady name,” Patrick said, with a smirk. “Wait, who was the mom on Happy Days?”

“Marion Ross,” said Annie, casually. She was a cipher.

A pair of Hotard charter buses pulled up in front of us. I looked around for Justine; she had wandered away from the light, disappeared into the crowd of Iota Chis and Sigmas and everyone’s dates.

“Finally,” Patrick said. “Let’s go.”

“Yeah, it must’ve been grueling waiting thirty seconds for the buses to arrive,” Erik replied, as we joined the mob that had sprung up around the entrance to the buses.

“Where’s Justine?” I asked.

“There’s two buses,” Erik replied, as we joined the herd of people shoving their way towards the buses. “You’ll see her there.”

“I just can’t believe Morton sprung for charter buses,” I said, still scanning the crowd, trying to find her. “With how much he penny-pinches the social budget.”

“It’s formal,” Patrick replied. “He had to class it up a little. It’s not like we’re going to a date party at Grit’s.”

“Only the best for us, right?” Annie said to Michaela, with a smile.

 

By the time our bus pulled to a stop, it was very clear that we had been actually heading in the wrong direction of the French Quarter for a very long time. We were in front of a long stone Art Deco building, surrounded by absolutely nothing except empty land. It had a quiet spookiness to it, like we had been taking out somewhere far away from civilization by a horror movie villain.

“Where the hell are we?” Erik said, from the row behind me and Michaela, craning his neck to see better.

“Um,” Annie said, hoisting herself up and leaning over Patrick so she could peer out the window. “This is Lakefront Airport.”

The only things I knew about Lakefront Airport was that it was not a functioning airport at the moment--it hadn’t reopened after the storm yet, and even then it had been relegated to general aviation after MSY was built in Kenner--and that it was in New Orleans East, nowhere near the French Quarter.

Around us, the dark figures began filing off the bus, as if this was a completely rational place for the bus to end its journey. Which is when it dawned on me that we didn’t know anyone else on this bus.

“Fuck,” said Patrick, looking around, eyes ablaze with the horror of reaching the same realization I just did. “Do you think we got on the Sigma bus”

There was a laugh from behind us, from a dimly-lit silhouette in a white dinner jacket--someone I didn’t recognize as being an Iota Chi. “Fucking morons,” he said, in a sharp, gruff voice.

“Yo,” Erik said, menacingly, but the guy and his date disappeared down the aisle.

We didn’t exactly know what to do. What could we do? We let everyone else file out around us, and stayed in our seats.

“Let’s just call a cab,” Annie suggested, finally. She pulled a pink RAZR out of her purse, and flipped it open. “I can do it. We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

She pressed one of her speed dials, and put the phone to her ear. We waited, silently, as we awaited the verdict.

“Busy signal.”

“Keep calling,” Patrick told her, prying his own phone out of his tuxedo pants. “Is that United Cab?”

The bus driver came plodding down the aisle, a planet of a woman. “Y’all have to get off the bus,” she said. “I’m pulling out.”

“We’re not supposed to be here,” Patrick explained. “We got on the wrong bus, I think.”

The bus driver did not look especially concerned with our wellbeing, put her hands on her obese hips. “I have to pick up another group at Delgado. Y’all have to get off.”

Had she been going back to Tulane, or Loyola, or anywhere with civilization, we might’ve begged to stay onboard, to reset the clock in an area somewhere closer to home. But I didn’t know where Delgado was--based on the silence, it seemed like none of us did. We didn’t know if it would be even further out than Lakefront Airport.

“We’ll be fine,” Annie said, pausing to redial. “We’ll get a cab, and we’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

No one quite had the words we were supposed to say; with the bus driver staring us down, we all stood up in silence, and cycled out of the airport.

The terminal at Lakefront Airport was old and beautiful, an Art Deco relic that had been newly-restored from the storm. So I had read. It also had the unfortunate distinction of being in the middle of nowhere, wedged between Lake Pontchartrain and a neighborhood that had ceased to exist, August 29, 2005.

The Sigmas and their dates had finished pouring into the building and, showing as little concern for us as the bus driver had, they had shut the door behind them as we stood out on the asphalt driveway.

“Well, it looks like a great place to have formal,” Annie said, chipperly, redialing again, as the two Sigma buses drove off into the night. “I bet it’s beautiful on the inside.”

There was something irritatingly perky about her, compared to how precarious our situation was quickly becoming. We didn’t know where we were; we were at an abandoned airport; we were missing our own fraternity formal. And all of the cab dispatchers were giving us busy signals.

“Well, I don’t think they’ll take kindly to formal crashers,” Patrick told his girlfriend, putting his hands in his pockets. “Should we head out to the main street?”

I wasn’t even convinced there was a main street; it was hard to imagine we were in a city at all, but it made sense--it was an airport, at one point. We walked down the airport driveway, which was pitch black and far longer than I’d been anticipating. In the distance I could see the piercing colors of a stoplight--a light that turned from red to green, again, and again.

We got to the corner of something called Stars and Stripes Boulevard, which sounded so foreign to me that I didn’t even know if we were still in city limits. It was two lanes with a neutral ground, designed for traffic that didn’t seem remotely plausible, and there was absolutely nothing across the street, except for a large elevated freeway running parallel to the road.

I called Jordan, and explained the bus fiasco. Followed by a cacophonous round of laughter.

“Okay, well, I need you to MapQuest Lakefront Airport,” I told her, “and tell us how to find somewhere where could grab a cab.”

“Wait, wait,” Michaela said. “Tell her to take my car and pick us up. We’re not that far.”

Patrick, Erik, Channah, and Annie all suddenly perked up with the potential lifeline. We stopped all abruptly walking.

“Actually,” I told Jordan. “Can you just take the Suburban and pick us up? Erik will buy you dinner.”

Erik flipped me off, but didn’t seem to want to rock the boat.

There was a pause on Jordan’s end, as she clearly contemplated whether to turn off reality TV at nine-thirty on a Saturday night, but finally she said, “Are the keys here, or did Michaela forget to take them out of her purse again?”

I posed the question to Michaela, who did not answer, but instead looked heartbrokenly down at her purse.

“Yup, that’s what I thought,” Jordan said, without waiting for me to answer. “I have MapQuest up, though.”

Jordan gave us directions, to walk west until we hit Downman Road, which looked like something of a major thoroughfare. I, meanwhile, tried to think of anyone else I knew with a car, who wasn’t in Iota Chi. It was a short list. Kevin, naturally, but he was at the Beta Phi formal and would’ve already left. And Michaela, who was standing next to me, car keys flaccid in her purse.

“Can you borrow a car from anyone?” I asked Jordan.

“Who?” she asked. “Everyone’s already gone out for the night. And I don’t know anyone else with a car.”

The six of us moved as one incredibly depressing regiment down Stars and Stripes Boulevard, refugees from a very dressy country.

Where we lived, in Uptown, was a bubble of safety; there was crime, certainly, but we were covered by a sort of gossamer fog around campus, the comfort that nothing all that bad could ever actually happen to us.

New Orleans East, however, was a completely different situation. It wasn’t lost on me--probably not on any of us--that New Orleans was still, in fact, one of the most dangerous cities on the planet, and we were six white teenagers lost in formalwear.

And yet, there wasn’t even visible crime because there weren’t even people; this wasn’t even a shady neighborhood, but a missing one.

“I hate these shoes,” Michaela moaned. She took my arm, and leaned hard into me, so I was dragging her down the street. Channah certainly did not look pleased at our detour to Lakefront Airport; she was texting furiously on her phone. Annie, for her part, was remaining about as sunny as she could be in the situation; she was calling United Cab on repeat, as Erik called White Fleet, and Patrick called American Cab.

“How are the cabs all busy,” Erik muttered, putting his phone down so he could redial. “At every cab company.”

“Because it’s a Saturday night at ten o’clock,” Patrick replied. “Every cab in the city is picking people up right now.”

“Do we even know if New Orleans cabs will pick us up?” Channah asked, folding her arms; she had put on Erik’s tuxedo jacket by this point. “Are we still in the city? We might need a Metairie cab.”

I didn’t know if we were in the city or not, but I did know we were in the opposite direction of Metairie.

About ten minutes later, we finally came to the cross street that Jordan had told us about, Downman Road. It did not seem nearly as promising as we were led to believe, but it couldn’t be any much worse than Stars and Stripes, the road of nothing, to nowhere.

“This way?” Patrick suggested, and did not receive a response from any of us, but we kept walking silently, following him as best we could.

I got a text from Justine: “Where are you guys?”

What to say to that. I thought about Justine, how she was now alone in a room full of my friends--not even my friends, since most of my friends were in New Orleans East with me, but a room of veritable strangers. It was exceptionally worrisome, to think of Justine alone. The things that could happen, or be said, if I was not there to effectively chaperone.

But I also didn’t want to worry her. I would’ve been worried, if I was stuck at one of Philip’s fraternity events without companionship.

So I texted Baker, instead, hoping he could deliver the news a little bit more delicately. “We accidentally got on the Sigma bus to Lakefront Airport. We’re cabbing over now.”

Baker’s response: “Hahahaha. Dumbass. You know Morton would never spring for a charter bus.”

Maybe he felt guilty at his schadenfreude; he followed it immediately with the more polite: “See you when you get here.”

And then, a third text: “Justine’s fine. We’re having a blast.”

I only hoped that, if Baker thought they were having a blast, that meant they were standing in the corner, watching the rest of the party pass them by. Which was probably accurate, because I couldn’t imagine they were rocking on the dance floor, at the very least; Chris Baker categorically did not dance, and Justine couldn’t do anything north of a sway. She looked like she could dance, because she was bubbly and lithe, but she was roughly as two-left-footed as I was. Philip and our mother were the dancers in the family; the rest of us, hopeless.

We crossed under the overpass, and all we saw was the shattered wreckage of what used to be a neighborhood. And, sticking out from the carnage, the promised land: a Speed Racer gas station and a mini mart, lights bulging out of its windows, the vague shape of a neon “OPEN” sign in front. It had somehow survived the carnage the devoured the rest of the neighborhood.

“Praise to Allah,” Patrick said. “Just the fuel we need to keep going.”

“I don’t think we need gas,” Channah told him, dismissively. “Without a car.”

Patrick did not deploy a sarcastic comment at Channah’s expense; she was, after all, largely a stranger. “I meant they have booze. And I have a fake. Which we can use to buy booze.”

That sudden realization perked everyone’s spirits up a bit. If we were going to be lost in the faraway bowels of the destroyed city, we deserved to be drink our way towards the light at the end of the tunnel.

“Thank God,” Erik said. “I was going to kill myself if I had to stay sober for another minute.”

There was only one car parked in front of the Speed Racer, maybe the cashier’s; we hovered in our glistening eveningwear next to the a Salvation Army donation bin, which had a watermark from the Katrina flooding near the top--I didn’t want to imagine how one would go about cleaning floodwaters out of a donation bin.

Patrick went alone into the liquor store, to not raise attention at the fact that all of us were eighteen or nineteen, and came back a few minutes later looking chipper with a brown paper bag. “Hope everyone’s okay with vodka.” To me and Erik, he said, “You two owe me five dollars.”

“Gladly,” I said. “Did you ask the guy how to get a cab?”

Patrick took a swig, then passed it to me. “He basically said we’re fucked, and should just keep calling. Because nothing else is open around here.”

Down the street were other commercial buildings, all dark. I could make out the golden arches of a McDonald’s in front of a half-collapsed boarded-up building with a red mansard-roof.

Resigned to our fate, we settled down on the curb on the corner in front of the Speed Racer, because the girls needed to take off their shoes. Erik, Patrick, and I stood, as we continued passing the vodka bottle back and forth.

“I didn’t think you’d be able to see stars in the city,” Erik said, craning his neck backwards as far as he could. “Even out here. It reminds me of when I was little, and my dad and I’d go--”

“Hey, Copernicus,” Patrick interrupted, redialing his phone, “maybe keep calling White Fleet.”

“Wait, wait,” said Annie Rue, waving at us to be quiet. “Yes, I need a cab to--” She paused, looked around. “Downman Road and Hayne Boulevard.” There was a long pause. “Okay.” She lowered her phone, snapped it shut. “United’s sending a cab.”

“Victory!” said Erik. He took a long swig of vodka. “We’ve got to finish this before the cab gets here.”

“So that’s not too bad,” Annie said, as I sat down between her and Michaela. “We’ll be an hour late, but that’s still two hours of open bar.”

I was torn between enjoying her sunniness, and outright resenting it. I was leaning more towards the latter, at least until the cab officially pulled up and we were on our way back to where we belonged. I didn’t trust cabs; I didn’t trust them to really come all the way out into the hinterlands to get us.

Michaela seemed to have similar thoughts; she had her arms folded, did not seem especially thrilled with anyone at the moment. I understood: it was formal, it was supposed to be a glittering night, elegant, like prom but with an open bar. I hadn’t drank before my prom, or after. I didn’t realize everyone else had until after graduation.

That was only a year ago. I took Allie Evans, from speech and debate, who was a serviceable girl for the occasion--cute enough, “cute, for you,” as Philip would say. I didn’t imagine I would be sitting next to a girl like Michaela Birdrock barely a year later, that things would be so incredibly close to perfect.

Aside from the fact that we were sitting on the curb outside the Speed Racer station, instead of hovering on the courtyard dance floor at the old mansion on Governor Nicholls Street.

Aside from the fact that I didn’t want Michaela Birdrock, the most enviable date out of anyone in Iota Chi, sitting next to me on this faraway curb, as much as I wanted Kevin Malley, the least enviable.

My ass could still feel Kevin, missing, as if my body was still expecting a reprise of the eight minutes of speed-fucking we had engaged in mere hours earlier. And all I could think about was him: wrapping my legs around his body. His half-smile, his dick. How gorgeous he must look in a tuxedo at this very moment, some girl on his arm, at some other formal, when it should’ve been me, and this formal.

I took out my phone, and created a new text to Kevin. “I wish you were here tonight,” I typed, but I knew I didn’t want to send that, not really, so I didn’t. I tossed it into Drafts, just as the bottle came back around from Michaela. The fresh dose of alcohol cushioned like it always did.

“Stop biting your nails,” Patrick told me.

Erik was more nostalgic about the whole thing, staring down the street at the shards of the post-apocalypse: “I don’t even feel like I’m in New Orleans,” he said, finally. “You know, when you’re uptown, everything seems like it’s back. It’s not back.”

We couldn’t say all that much, because he wasn’t wrong, but he wasn’t especially deep in his thinking: he was like a child who just realized that people died. It was grueling to see the city like this, the washed out houses and businesses across from us, floodlines near their roofs, Katrina crosses on their doors, an angry postscript of the storm that seemed to seep into everything we did, and yet still seemed so far offshore from how we lived, day to day.

It was amazing how two cities could live side by side, never touching. This wasn’t the part of the city we should be in at all. We didn’t belong here; we certainly didn’t belong here in evening gowns and tuxedos. We belonged in the mansion with the courtyard, with the open bar and the DJ, and the celebration of the close of the best year of Adam Becker.

“I wonder if this will get nice,” Erik said. “You know, when they rebuild it. If, in fifteen years, this is where everyone’s going to want to live.”

The decimated shacks, cluttered in communion around the Speed Racer’s city-on-a-hill, did not look promising, but maybe, in the right confluence of events, it’d somehow rejoin the land of the living.

“I wouldn’t,” Patrick said.

I hovered the cursor over my Drafts folder, I did not select, I did not bother Kevin, because what was he going to say to that sort of thing? With a signature scowl, “Of course you weren’t going to invite me and out both of us.”

“I wish you were here tonight,” bothered me not because it was the truth, but because it was a lie. I did not wish he had gone to formal; I only wished that I wished it.

But I did want him here. Right here, in the desolation of Downman Road. But, of course, I only thought about him because I was nowhere--we were outside an empty gas station, doing nothing, my ass still feeling nothing, drinking alcohol that tasted like nothing, and missing the night we were all entitled to have on the other side of town.

Michaela was startlingly beautiful in the dimness of the streetlight, chugging vodka from the plastic liquor bottle in her navy blue silk. Beautiful and maybe a little sad, that she was missing everything because she was stuck out here in the broken remnants of the city’s soul. Or at least I was sad.

But it would’ve been nice if he was here, with me, in this exact place. He was nuclear power; the source of light, and a constant, fatal risk, and I knew that. But I still wished he was here.

We had nearly finished the bottle of vodka when a car finally pulled up, its lights tearing into the darkness of Downman Road. The flag of a liberator etched on its side, “United Cab,” we were rescued.

 

We got back from formal late--I didn’t know the time. Whatever time the buses came.

“I had a great time,” Justine told me, grabbing her towel from off the back of the door. “Everything was perfect.”

It had been exactly as I expected it, once we got there. I had the prettiest date, and a vivacious fraternity, and we threw a raucous party at an old French Quarter mansion, and I saw Justine the whole time, smiling, envious maybe, excited mostly. Everything was so nearly perfect, except where it wasn’t.

Because there was Michaela, who looked right but fit wrong, and Kevin, who looked wrong but fit right. So where did that leave me--viciously riddled with imperfections either way: a billboard on the side of a busy freeway that everyone could gawk at for miles; or suffering through shit with a vacant smile on my face.

Even though I did everything I was supposed to do. This was supposed to be four years of Adam, the best four years of the best version of myself, and I was supposed to be happy. And somehow, I wasn’t: I was still Peter Adam Becker on the edge of a precipice.

“Can I tell you something,” I said.

She looked at me, her eyes focused, ready to hang on each word as the storm of alcohol inside me delivered them.

“Yeah,” she replied. “Anything, Peter.”

No, Justine didn’t really know me. No one did. Because no matter how many moltings I bundled around myself--Philip, Justine, Kevin, Tripp, Erik, Jordan, Michaela, Baker, Iota Chi, my parents, Tulane--there was nothing underneath but the shattered and paralyzed fragments of Peter, Adam, and Becker, who couldn’t make sense on their own.

I hitched a smile, and I just told her: “Everything’s always perfect. You’re going to be so happy down here.”

She did not have a chance to react; the door opened behind her, making her jump. It was Tripp, his shirt untucked, his tuxedo jacket draped over one of his arms. He steadied himself on the top of the microwave, nudged past Justine, and navigated his way over to his bed.

“I thought you were going to stay over at Marjorie’s,” I greeted.

“She passed out,” he grumbled, with the bitterness of someone who spent a lot of money on tickets, only to get slammed with a rain delay so close to kickoff. “Before I even got her fucking shoes off.” He set his hands down on the mattress, and spun himself into bed like a paraplegic gymnast. Seconds after his head hit the pillow, he passed out too, and the room was filled with limp, rhythmic snoring.