Dallas (Time for Tammy #1) (10 page)

I joined Dallas and Jane as they were measuring the width of the roof’s door by counting the stripes on the arm of Dallas’s button-down.

“You ready?” Dallas asked me as he held his freakishly long arm across the span of the attic doorway. In lieu of an answer, I ducked under his arm and headed back down toward the bike rack. At least now I’d have one story to tell, even if I did get kicked out of Eckhart.

“It’s not bad,” Dallas said as we stood in the courtyard of Alpha, staring up at our handiwork. The bright purple paint of LaVerne’s darling bike adorning the roof of Gershwin was easy to discern, even in the dark.

I was slightly sweaty and Dallas had ripped a small hole in his shirt, but we had done it.

“Do you want to stay over and watch a movie?” I was emboldened by the adrenaline of getting that bike up there.

“Nah. I gotta get going.”

“Hey, Dallas,” Jane said. “Don’t get drunk and tell everybody about this at the Kennedy party.”

Dallas bounded down the steps away from Alpha and—without a glance backward—replied, “I’ll try not to.”

LaVerne must have been at the Kennedy party because her booming voice was discernable long before she entered the complex. Jane, Linda, and I had been watching
Saturday Night Live
but rushed out of the dorm as soon as we heard her.

She was accompanied by a stocky freckled face guy, thankfully not Eric, who held her arm as Vernie swayed on her feet. He seemed relieved to see us and dropped her arm.

“LaVerne, are you drunk?” Jane asked.

“Me? Nah…” she slurred.

Linda’s head unwittingly swerved up to Gershwin’s roof. Freckle face’s eyes followed, and I could see his eyes widen. “Hey—” he started to say.

“C’mon, LaVerne, let’s get you inside.” Jane moved forward to take her arm.

“I never go this way,” LaVerne replied, but let Jane pull her toward the door.

“Yeah, but if you fall, you’ll fall on carpet instead of concrete,” Linda told her, taking her other arm. I got behind LaVerne and put my hands on her bulky shoulders. The three of us managed to deposit a drunken LaVerne in her room, ducking out before we had to help her change out of her clothes, and walked back out the dorm door.

A small crowd had gathered around Freckle Face and a few pointed up at the bike on Gershwin’s roof.

We inclined our heads to pretend to see what they were looking at, but the canopy above the dorm prevented us from seeing the bike from our vantage point.

“What are you guys looking at?” Jane called as she walked down the steps to the outer atrium.

A guy standing next to Freckle Face pointed upward. “There’s a bike on the roof.”

“No kidding?” I asked in a too-high voice.

“LaVerne’s going to be
pissed
,” someone else said.

Freckle-face cocked his head at us but didn’t say anything.

In the sunlight of the morning, Alpha Lame had a lot more visitors than usual, as a few co-eds came to gawk at the bike on the roof. Someone had added to our handiwork by changing the letters that usually spelled “Gershwin House” to “G-spot.”

“Wonder where they got the ‘P’ and the ‘T’ from,” Linda said. She didn’t have to wonder long, for after we decided to visit Dallas to see if he was indeed able to keep his mouth shut, we saw the dorm across from Ibsen, Thompson, was now ‘homson House.’

“Are you guys here to see me?” Dallas asked, coming out of his room as we stood in the lobby.

“No,” Nester the Dadian called from behind the open door of his room across the hall. “They’re here to see me.”

Dallas made a hand gesture.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Nester asked as he came out into the lobby.

Dallas raised his hand higher. “It means ‘Fuck You’ in American.”

“No it doesn’t.” Nester walked over to him and grabbed his hand. “You’re only supposed to hold up your middle finger. Look,” Nester continued, angling Dallas’s hand toward us. “He holds up his thumb.” Indeed, Dallas’s middle was stuck straight up, but his thumb was also angled outward, at almost a 90 degree angle.

“What is that, the Idiot flip-off?” Nester asked him, letting go of his hand and putting Dallas in a half-nelson. He pronounced ‘idiot’ like ‘id-ge-it.’

“You’re the id-ee-it,” Dallas told him, breaking free.

“You know what Dallas was doing last night?” Nester turned back toward our direction.

The three of us shook our heads slowly, wondering if Dallas told Nester about the bike. “He was shitting and puking at the same time!” Nester declared gleefully.

“Shut-up, Nester.” Dallas said as I let my breath out.

“He was. He got so drunk he could barely hold his head up, and then he goes to take a shit, but he grabs that bucket,” Nester gestured toward the corner of the hallway, “so he can puke in it.” Linda, who stood closest to the bucket, moved to the other side of the door.

“You’re such a bluckhid,” Nester continued.

“A what?” Jane asked.

“He means ‘blockhead’,” Dallas told her. “He doesn’t speak American very well sometimes.”

“Blah-ck-head,” Nester repeated, this time in a mimic of Dallas’s Texan accent. “You know I love you, right Dallas?”

“Whatever,” Dallas replied.

“Now, go ahead and speak with these ladies here, and I’m going to get going to practice.” Nester ducked back into his room and came out shouldering a large duffle bag. “We should just let big un’s be big un’s.”

“Big un’s?” Jane asked. “Is that a porno magazine?”

“No. Big un’s. Like, things you don’t want to talk about anymore.”

“You mean ‘by-gone’s’” I told him helpfully.

“Right. Big un’s.” He gave the four of us a final salute and pushed open the dorm door, knocking the infamous bucket over as he walked out. Thankfully it was empty.

“What was that all about?” Linda asked.

“I told you, he doesn’t speak American very well,” Dallas replied.

“You mean English. And I think it’s just his accent. I think he speaks fine,” Jane told him. “And what’s his deal, anyway?”

“What do you mean, his deal?”

“Does he have a girlfriend or not?” Jane asked, sitting down on the couch.

“Girlfriend? Try wife.”

“What’s that now?” Jane was trying to be nonchalant, but I could see the words turning in her mind.

“Yeah. Back home in Trinidad. He’s married.”

Jane snorted loudly.

“I’m serious,” Dallas told her.

“Well, I’ll be,” Jane said, leaning backward on the lounge couch. “The Dadian’s a daddy after all.”

“He doesn’t have any kids, he’s just married,” Dallas clarified.

Jane gave him a non-Blockhead flip-off. “So, were you able to find the G-spot last night?”

I think that was her subtle way to ask if Dallas had anything to do with the changing of Gershwin’s sign, but as usual, Dallas was confused. “Huh?”

“Never mind.” Jane stood up and then turned to Linda and me. “Are you guys hungry?”

That was probably our cue to leave, but Dallas cut in. “I might have something to eat.”

“Do you have anything besides peppers and snap peas?” I asked him doubtfully.

“Let’s see,” he said, sauntering over to his dorm room. He opened the door and then gestured for us to come inside. I could feel my face heat up as I entered. Dallas’s bed was still uncovered, and his egg crate was rolled up to one side.

“Let’s see what we’ve got,” Dallas repeated, opening the mini-fridge. It contained two beers: one bottle and one can, but nothing else. He shut it quickly and then rummaged through the packages on top of the fridge.

“Are these sugar cubes?” Linda asked, picking up a bag.

“Yeah. They’re for my morning coffee.”

“So you have nothing to eat in this room besides sugar cubes and beer,” I summarized.

“You know who else likes sugar cubes?” Jane asked, a sneer on her face. I turned to her expectantly. “Horses like sugar cubes. Don’t they Dallas?” she turned to him.

“I guess so. Do they drink coffee?”

“Sometimes they do. Sometimes they do.”

Jane’s roommate, that center of gossip, informed Jane that several drunken Kennedy boys had changed Gershwin’s sign, and were suspected to have also put LaVerne’s bike on the roof. Feeling as though we got away with it, Linda, Jane, and I decided to go to the mall. However, getting off Eckhart’s campus was always a problem as no one we knew had a car. When I visited Eckhart as a perspective student, the Admissions Office had told us Tampa had a bus service to downtown, and there was a stop right across the street. After we left Dallas’s room, Jane, Linda and I headed across the campus to the bus stop. Although it was mid-October, the day was a scorcher, and it was in the high-80s at 11 in the morning.

“Are you sure this is the right spot?” I asked Jane after we’d been standing across the street from Eckhart’s visitor gate for fifteen minutes.

Jane pointed up at the sign for the bus and shrugged. Ten minutes later the bus finally pulled up. It was nearly empty, so Linda and I sat together in the middle with Jane in the seat across from us. The mall was a good twenty minutes away from campus, and the bus lumbered toward downtown Tampa. The neighborhoods surrounding went from pleasant pink and yellow houses with pools to greyeing townhouses and apartments, some with boarded-up windows. No one said anything, but I could feel Linda’s grip tighten on her purse as more people got on at the next stop. They were mostly men and all dressed shabbily and smelling of cigarette smoke or worse. I had heard downtown Tampa was a seedy place, but I didn’t know the bus from Eckhart to the mall would be a direct depiction of such. I felt unbearably suburban and completely cliché as I tightened the clutch on my own purse. I tried to convince myself we were not in any danger, but the bus became full and at the next stop, a young black man carrying a paper bag sat next to Jane. He glanced at the three of us and sneered as he held the paper bag up to his lips and gulped something down.

“You girls on your way to work?” he asked, eyeing us up and down.

“No. We’re going to…” I couldn’t bring myself to say the mall. I glanced helplessly over at Jane. Linda was staring out the window.

“Out.” Jane said.

“Right on,” her seat companion replied, taking another gulp from whatever was in the brown bag.

The bus population slowly petered out, and only a few elderly women remained by the time we reached the mall. I was glad to take in the fresh air as I stepped off the bus; I hadn’t been off campus since the night my parents had taken us out. It felt like I had once again joined the real world.

“What now?” Jane asked, her voice slightly subdued. I could tell none of us were looking forward to the ride home.

“Dallas’s birthday is tomorrow,” I replied.

“So?”

“We should buy him a card.”

“I can’t believe you still like him. He’s so strange,” Jane said.

I shrugged.

“Well then
, you
should buy him a card. And sign it, Love Always.”

“Shut-up,” I told Jane as I held the door out for her and Linda.

Our first stop was a music store, where I bought a new CD to add to my Madonna stash.

“Third Eye Blind?” Linda asked. “I don’t think I’ve heard of them. What do they sing?”

Jane glanced down at the CD. “Yeah, Tammy, what do they sing?”

“Oh, you know, that song that’s always on the radio. It reminds me of the beach.”

“
How’s It Gonna Be
?” Jane said.

“When?” Linda asked.

“No,” I said, flipping the CD over and scanning the song list. “
Semi-Charmed Life
.”

Jane just shook her head.

We passed the Disney store, and I saw a small stuffed crab in the display next to the window, the one from the movie
The Little Mermaid.
I flashed to the dinner with my parents and how Dallas had sang the song from the movie. I knew immediately it was the perfect present, and upon receipt of it, Dallas would finally realize I was the perfect girl for him. I stopped in to buy the little guy for six dollars.

Purchases complete, I asked Jane and Linda if they were ready to go wait for the bus. Linda looked down and fiddled with the clasp on her purse.

“How much do think a cab would cost?” Jane asked.

Linda looked up, “Probably not that much split three ways.”

In the end, we paid eleven dollars apiece for the taxi. It was worth every penny, for not only did we not have to take the bus back to campus, but I had managed to buy Dallas a birthday present and I doubled my CD collection in one day.

When we got back to my room after dinner the next day, Jane nodded at the crab. “You should go give it to him now.”

“Nah. He’s probably at Volleyball.”

“But we went through all that trouble to buy the damn thing. The least you could do is give it to him.”

“I don’t want to go over there alone.”

“Tammy, stop being such a baby.”

“I’ll give it to him later.”

“Today’s his actual birthday. You bought it, you should give it to him. I’ll walk over with you.”

“Fine.” I grabbed the crab off my desk. I didn’t bother to buy wrapping paper or get a card after all. I didn’t want to look like I was trying too hard. I carefully removed the price sticker, but kept the tag on so he’d know it was new.

Jane walked with me to the Delta complex, but she paused next to the computer lab. “I’ll wait out here.”

I continued on slowly, the trepidation mounting. The door to Ibsen stood propped open. “I can’t do this,” I called to Jane as I turned around and headed back toward her.

“C’mon, Tammy, Get over it. Sroot the Free!” Jane moved past me to walk up the pathway to Dallas’s dorm. “Oh shit...”

Through the glass window of Ibsen, I could see Dallas’s door opening and someone coming out.
Please don’t be Sonofabitch
. Despite the fact that we’d been hanging out with Dallas on a semi-regular basis, we’d managed to avoid having any contact with Ian. But it was Dallas who walked into the hallway holding his water bottle. “What are
you
guys
doing
here?” he asked through the doorway, peering down at me, standing at the bottom of the ramp up to Delta. If only Jane wasn’t standing directly at the entrance to his dorm, it might have looked like we were merely walking by. Like we don’t have the right to walk past his complex. Eckhart was a free campus last time I checked. But that was all it took for me to completely lose my nerve.