Shrimp (11 page)

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One of my favorite noises in the world is the rapid-fire sound of customers browsing CDs at Amoeba Records, a rhythmic sound throughout the huge used record shop that almost sounds like it comes from an automated machine:
clickclickclickclick.
Over this noise Autumn was explaining to me about her new vow of celibacy. She's not dating and she's not looking--she's just trying to have fun her senior year. Next year she'll get back in the game, when hopefully she'll be going to Cal, if she gets accepted, which she surely will because she's this brainiac who could be the poster girl for the dream candidate at the Berkeley Admissions Office-, part African-American, part Vietnamese, part Irish and German, and a lesbian. But for now, Autumn says, she can't find a high school girl she's attracted to who will actually admit to being gay, and she's tired of hanging out with the surfer dudes because they're all, except for Shrimp and Wallace, basic sexist pigs who let her surf with them even though behind her back they snicker that chicks aren't strong enough to ride the harsh Ocean Beach current. And the reason they let her surf their waves with them is the remote fantasy that said permission will somehow allow them later access to some girl-girl action. Boys truly are idiots.

Helen was trading in some CDs in another part of the store so I asked Autumn, "But what about Helen? Why don't you date her?"

"She claims not to have decided but I am here to tell you--she's not gay. She might be bi a little, but I'm pretty sure her very few girl-kissing adventures have been mostly for the benefit of making her mother crazy. I mean, have you seen Helen with the Irish soccer guys?" We looked up

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to see Helen flirting with the sales guy at the trade-in counter, their heads both tipped back in laughter because something about the Patti Smith CD was either hysterical or sexy. Even on Haight Street, where grunge Gen Xers + hippie throwbacks + homeless punk kids + yuppie chic = a street with great stores and a lot of scary attitude, Helen could make friends. Maybe that's just Helen--she's one of those rare people like Shrimp who just knows everybody, talks to everybody, likes everybody: a natural extrovert.

"You can't be completely gay," I said. "What about Shrimp?"

There is something about Autumn, how she looks you straight in the eyes, how she projects this natural warmth, that I couldn't doubt the sincerity of her answer. "Shrimp was this one-time thing. Like, I needed to be sure about my sexual preference, and he was just this very safe person to experiment with. And he was feeling kind of sad and confused and..."--her hand touched mine over a Smiths CD import--"...I really am sorry it happened if it's hurt you so much."

Autumn does make it difficult to dislike her. It's a very annoying trait.

I shrugged off her hand but said, "Don't worry about it." I may, in fact, even have meant it.

Helen popped up next to us. "Guess who's over in the jazz section? Aryan! And guess what section he's flipping through? ACID JAZZ! He needs to be brutalized for that. C'mon." Her wide pink face glowed as she stared into the next room. We lingered at the entrance to the other room long enough to see Aryan finger a Kenny G CD. This was just too much, and we all three started laughing so hard we

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nearly doubled over. We laughed so hard people around us started laughing too, for no reason other than how hard we were laughing. Not that the situation was
that
funny, but somehow our mutual giggles fed and built off each others', the fact of our laughter becoming funnier than the joke, until all three of us collapsed in hysterics on the hardwood floor.

I had probably met Aryan before Shrimp's party when I was working at Java the Hut, if he's part of that whole crowd, but I didn't remember him--after a while all those beautiful surfer guys, with their amazing bodies, identical vocab, and substandard intelligence (but who cares, see Amazing Bodies, above) kind of meld into one, except for one-of-a-kind Shrimp. Usually if you remember one surfer dude you're really just remembering their collective unit. But now Aryan surely stood out of the crowd. He looked up at all the noise and, seeing us, his sun-kissed face went totally pale and you could almost see his mop of curly blond hair turning into fried frizz.

"Hey, Aryan," Helen called over to him from the floor. "I think I see the Yanni CD you dropped on the floor. It's just to the left of your Vans, like next to the Mannheim Steamroller vinyl LP."

I have no idea what a Mannheim Steamroller is, but just the sound of the name was enough to send Helen, Autumn, and me into a deeper round of laughter. We were now laughing so hard tears streamed from our eyes.

Aryan stomped over to where we were lounging on the floor. His eyes were mad but that didn't stop him from checking out the rear-end view of Autumn's denim miniskirt flailing on the floor from our hysterics. Up close and in

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daylight, I could see that Helen's nickname for him was just right. He was tall, lean, and perfectly proportioned, blond-haired and blue-eyed, but with a determined jut to his walk, like you could see him in a uniform saying
"Heil!"
but his uniform would be a skateboarding one and his
"Heil!"
would be pledging loyalty to some Left Coast leftie-crazy like Jerry Brown.

"Dude," he said to us, straight-faced and clearly not sharing our humor in the situation. "That's so funny I can't stop laughing." He stomped over to Nirvana, I guess trying to salvage his cool.

"Uh-oh," Helen said. "I better go over there and make it up to him. Should I let him use my trade-in credit?"

Autumn and I both shook our heads. "Just be nice," I told Helen. "You don't need to make it up that much. Don't waste a fifty buck trade-in on a crush."

Autumn nodded in agreement. She said, "Kenny G? C'mon, he had it coming. But I can't just stand by and watch you try to make it up to him, cuz I know he'll take advantage of the situation and pretty soon you'll have agreed to take his latest bimbette to get a fake ID. How 'bout CC and I go to the Goodwill store and then meet you at the crepes place in half an hour?"

Helen said, "Yeah," but she was already on her way over to console Aryan, like she'd practically forgotten us.

The weird thing is, I had no objection to Autumn's plan. Okay, I admit it. I like the Autumn wench. Get over it.

Later, when we were sitting at the crepes place and Autumn and Helen were sharing a crepe with heaping veggies and cheeses while I had opted for a plain Nutella crepe, I interrupted their chatter.

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"Tell me about Shrimp?" I asked, feeling like my heart was going to combust for wanting to know about him, to hear about him from friends who'd known him much longer than I.

There was a time when being as wild as I wanna be meant popping E numbers with Justin and not bothering to use a condom when we fooled around, or staying over at Shrimp's and not caring if my parents noticed at all. But asking this question of these girls--and finding out its answer--felt much, much wilder and riskier.

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*** Chapter 13

I
was sitting
in my room quietly on Sunday night, actually doing homework, when I felt this
presence
behind me. I took off my headphones and spun around from my desk to see my mother standing just inside my door, her eyebrows creased, mouth half open, like she couldn't decide whether or not to say whatever she had to say.

"What?" I asked. Her look indicated I was going to get grief for something I did, or she was going to take another stab at lobbying for us to take a weekend away to look at colleges, or worst of all, shouldn't I consider some decoupage in my room?

Nancy hesitated, and then, as if deciding only at that very moment to go through with what she had to say, replied, "What's the 'status' between you and Shrimp?" She actually used the finger quotes for
status.

God, what is her problem? Why does she want to know everything about me?

"Our 'status,'" I answered, also using the finger quotes, "is we're 'just friends'"--again with the finger quotes. 'Are you happy?" Nancy is the one who, for all her taking me to the gyno and seeming to have come around at least to the idea of Shrimp, is also the person who grounded me last summer so I couldn't see him. Sometimes in the new peace I can appreciate my mom in a new way and I know I can trust her, and sometimes old wounds die hard and I can forgive

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but never forget. And the Shrimp subject is still the most vulnerable one in our fragile peace.

Nancy snapped, "What does that mean, Am I happy? I think I've made it
quite
clear that I am amenable to the two of you having a relationship again, hopefully one that could be less headstrong, maybe a little slower and more cautious. What do you think, that I actually want you to be unhappy?"

"I don't know. Do you?"

She sighed in frustration. 'Are you
trying
to make me crazy? I wanted to do you a favor, reach out to Shrimp, and you just..."

"What favor?" Whatever her scheme is, it can only be bad, bad, bad.

"I'm organizing a charity art auction for the children's hospital. I thought I would commission Shrimp to create a piece." Charity galas in Nancy's crowd mean an opportunity for rich people to compete for who can look the most anorexic in outfits and jewelry that cost more than it would take to settle a homeless family in an apartment for a year, all under the guise of being "for the kids."

"He won't do it," I informed her. Shrimp's way too cool for that bullshit scene.

"How do you know?"

"I just know."

"Well, Miss Know It All, then why is he downstairs right now in the study with Dad talking about the supplies he'll need and..."

"Nuh-uh!" I threw frickin
Moby Dick
onto my bed and rushed downstairs while Nancy trailed behind me blabbing something about, "When I called I didn't think he'd come over this minute."

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And for real, Shrimp was sitting at Sid-dad's antique mahogany desk, his dirty blond hair pulled up into a tight ponytail on top of his head, a hairstyle that made him look like a mini sumo wrestler. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt buttoned to the top with a proper necktie hanging from the collar, and board shorts. Fashion icon--NOT. So hot--YES.

He looked up at me. "Hey."

Oh, no, not with the
heys
again.

Sid-dad said, "May I get you a drink, young man?"

"I make the perfect martini," I pointed out. I do. Sid-dad taught me to make them when I was little, and he still pays me a dollar every time I make him one.

Sid-dad patted my shoulder. "That's a good one, Cyd Charisse."

"I'm going by 'CC now," I corrected him.

Sid-dad nodded seriously. "I'm so sorry, CC. How about I get some Cokes from the fridge? Your mother's culinary skills are expanding and I think she's gone to heat some Trader Joe's vegetarian dumplings in the microwave. Maybe soon she'll graduate to full-fledged stove use." He chuckled as he walked out of the study, but he turned back once, shot a last glance at Shrimp, and I'm fairly sure I heard him mutter under his breath, "Odd duck."

I hadn't seen Shrimp since the Just Friends incident at the party at his house, but I had learned a lot about him in the meantime from Helen and Autumn. I almost felt deceitful, going behind his back to get to know him, but isn't that what girls who are friends are supposed to do--talk about love interests, analyze, dish? If so I am right on track with this chick friendship thing.

I know some interesting things about Shrimp and his

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fam now. For instance, I learned that Iris had another family before Billy, Wallace, and Shrimp. She was like some bored housewife in Florida, married to a cop, and she had a ten-year-old daughter. Then she met Billy, who had sold her some weed, and she left her husband and kid to start another life with Billy. Just up and left, and then was asked to never return, apparently. So there is some motherless older sister of Shrimp and Wallace's wandering around somewhere, probably the same age as lisBETH--go figure. But the whole past, I guess, and the fact that Iris and Billy dumped Shrimp on Wallace's doorstep so they could cavort around in Papua New Guinea supposedly teaching English and building bridges or whatever, has left Shrimp with some serious abandonment issues. I am not the first girlfriend he's broken up with before she could break up with him.

I
am
the only one who is his true love and who will stay by his side and in his heart for as long as he'll let me-- provided he ever lets me back in.

But yuck, I couldn't forget that crush-on-my-mom comment. I get goose pimples of disgust on my arms just thinking about it. Then again, maybe that's what he gets whenever he thinks of me having a crush on his bro, but maybe his goose pimples are from genuine jealousy and not disgust, because let's be real, Wallace and me are a hookup that actually could happen, though never would.

I stood over Shrimp on the other side of the desk where he was sitting, sketching with charcoal.
"Are
you doing this to get back at me?" I whispered.

He looked up, his deep blue eyes blazing back into mine. "No," he said. "I'm doing this to get
to
you." His head cocked back down and he returned to his sketching.