The Taming of the Drew (24 page)

Drew turned to me and a cold snap dropped the temperature 85 degrees. He said, too carefully, “You agreed to take naked pictures of me. For
money
?”

Celia leaned forward and said, “It wasn’t cheap” at the same time that I wailed, “I don’t do naked!”

In the Arctic silence, Tio said, “Dude, you were in the Dean’s office — didn’t you already hear about this?”

“You want to know what I was doing in the Dean’s office that day? I was thinking
why
do I have to sit here when I’m
tired
. I’m
hungry
. I haven’t done
anything wrong
. And I’ve still got a
ton
of homework to do.
That’s
all that I was paying attention to.” He took a deep and shuddery breath, “Besides, back then, I didn’t know who any of
these people,
” he looked at me like I was despicable, “were.” With that, he turned and stalked to the trees.
 

My fury roared through me and I couldn’t see anything but a narrowing strip of green field. I don’t know who I was angriest at in that moment, myself or Celia, but I certainly didn’t want to waste the chance of having Celia standing right there in front of me.

“You,” I said, one hand on my hip, one index finger poking her in the chest, so that she took a step back. “You’re going to tell me right now exactly why you wanted those photos. You hear me?”

The Greenbacks were jostling and bumping again like they might panic, and I knew in a moment of clarity that they were afraid of me, and what I might do, but I didn’t care.
 

Celia, her face tight with fear, blinked and said, “My parents are lawyers,” in a tiny voice.

I stood even taller. “YOU think I care? Go ahead, sue me. All you’ll get is my Dino-Dog uniform!”

She blinked in confusion, then said, “No. What I mean is that
everyone
in my family is a lawyer and,” (she held out a hand, palm up, to stop me before I could interrupt in my towering rage) “I’d rather
die
than be one.”

Okay. This was Viola-level confusing, and it threw me off my line of attack.

I stood with one hand on my hip. “What do you mean, you’d rather die than be one?”

As I looked calmer, Celia seemed to get more panicky. “I’ve got two older sisters, and an older brother, and uncles, and four cousins, and two aunts and they’re, they’re all…lawyers.” She said it like being a lawyer was some horror-movie, soul-destroying event, where you found a body-pod in the basement closet and knew the person you loved was gone forever. “I won’t do it. They can’t make me!”

Helena, Phoebe, Viola and I exchanged glances. I felt my rage crash away like a wave, leaving a gritty, smelly residue, like sand in my mouth. No one could fake this kind of fear.

“What’s all of this got to do with the photos,” I asked.

“I took,” Celia looked embarrassed, “see, I took one of those Cosmo quiz kind of things and it said I wasn’t good at
anything
except, well, gossip. And celebrity news. So I thought if I started early, and there are lots of places like teen mags and online sites that’ll pay a lot for a candid photo of a famous hot football player. That’s how you break into the business.”

There was a mushroom cloud of horror that detonated and rose over our group. Finally Tio said, “Let me get this straight. You mean, you actually
want
to be, as a career choice, one of those slimy, scum-sucking…paparazzi?”

Celia blinked, then said, “Better than being a lawyer.”

No one knew how to argue with that, and no one knew where to look. The silence got deeper and more miserable, and Celia’s face got redder, until Gonzo blurted from the back, “Hey, leave her alone.”

It looked, though, in the next moment, that Gonzo had mistakenly said absolutely the worst thing possible.

“Listen to me, you Academy freaks,” Celia said, vibrating with fury. “You’ve got no right thinking you can feel sorry for
me
. Those pictures are mine. I will find those photos, or I’ll have somebody’s head on a plate. That’s my last warning.” She turned and stomped her way back to University.

We headed across the grass and I drifted farther behind everyone else. I realized halfway there that I couldn’t face Drew and all the Greenbacks, waiting in the trees. Maybe on a better day I could, but I’d already taken too many hits, and had too little sleep. Stress hummed inside me like an overtuned violin string, ready to snap. I turned and hurried back, to hide in the girls’ bathroom.
 

***

Tutoring was, well…let’s just say that I realized halfway through that somewhere in San Quentin, there was probably at least one death-row inmate who, at that exact moment, had both more personal space, and a better attitude about life, than I did.
 

Thirty minutes of sub-zero rapid-chill had passed when the Dog said, his face pointed aggressively at the computer monitor, “You took photos of guys in the locker room.”

Then I, channeling some insane Celia-instinct, blurted, “I wasn’t actually paid.” I saw his jaw clench and I said, “I mean, Celia’s parents kept the money, I don’t know why she still thinks the pictures are hers.”

It was horrible.

Another ten minutes passed, me sitting twisted on the edge of my folding chair, the tip of my nose almost touching the styrofoam wall barrier of the cube. Curtis and Nate were whispering again (probably having a repeat blame-fest) while Bianca and Tio were in the side study-room.

The Dog said to the computer monitor, “She paid you to take a picture of me. So why snap all the other guys? Are you starting some high school
porn
industry?”

I couldn’t help it, I gasped, loud enough to attract attention from a circle of surrounding cubes. I stood, my chair collapsing in shock and clattering over. The Dog kept his shoulders hunched, his chin forward and his eyes on his monitor. I spoke to the back of his head. “I
told
you, I don’t
do
naked. Are you listening? NO ONE was completely naked. Not you, not the other guys.”

A shocked silence filled the tutor hall, but I didn’t care, I blinked hard to clear the suddenly swimming image of Drew as he half-turned in the chair for the first time.
 

I kept going, unable to stop, not sure what was driving me, or why it was suddenly so important to get it out, to make him understand. “I didn’t know which one was you — that’s the
only
reason I went after the whole football team.”

There was a quiet
yikes
behind me and I whirled to find Tio staring, wide-eyed at me.

“I don’t think,” Tio said to a quiet so profound you could hear a distant rattle of a ventilation shaft as the air-conditioning kicked on, “that’s how you really want to phrase it, now is it, Kate?”

I held my paperback against my chest and looked around. Faces topped cube walls in all directions. One guy elbowed another guy and gave a leery snort.

Drew half rose from his seat, one hand out, “Kate — ,” he said.

But I turned and fled, doors exploding open in front of me. I made it to the walkway and heard his voice shout behind me, “Kate!” but I kept running, sprinting now with my bag banging against my hip. I heard feet pounding behind me and then Tio’s voice shout, “Drew. Let her go.”

Thankfully, he did.

***

I probably shouldn’t have been surprised the next morning when cars of guys kept pulling into Dino-Dog, but the first time, I was. A heavy, sweaty, flabby-cheeked guy with greasy pale-brown hair side-parted and his bangs flattened into a Clark Kent forehead curl, was the first. There were three other guys bumping him forward and watching. The brown-haired guy leaned his belly on the counter and said, “How much?”

Some radar went off inside me. Instead of answering, I crossed my arms and said, “Prices are posted on the wall.”

The guys behind him burst out laughing at that, which wasn’t funny. “What I mean is, how much for you to handle my wiener,” he asked, then added, “personally.”

A red flush steamed up my face, even as anger boiled inside me. I lifted my three-foot serrated tongs and clacked them at him. He flinched and took a step back. I smiled an evil
I sooo dare you to cross me
smile and said, “Order, or get out.”

It happened three more times that day. Let me just say, there are only so many wiener, hot and foot-long jokes guys can make before it gets extremely predictable.
 

The second time, the guys didn’t realize Mr. Gremio was kneeling below the counter, checking an extension cord that needed replacement. I’d even forgotten he was there, so I was almost as shocked as the guy (this one lank and pimply) when Gremio sproinged up, grabbed the Dino fly swat we kept in a clamp underneath the edge of counter, and, without hesitating, swap-swap-swapped the guy around the head and neck.

“Hey!” the guy shouted. “Are you
crazy
!” Gremio didn’t stop. The swapping only ceased when the guy stepped so far back Gremio couldn’t reach him, even by leaning across the counter.

Gremio shifted the knot of his clip-on tie and said, “Sorry,” like he wasn’t sorry at all, “thought I saw a wasp. Wasps, major hazard of the meat industry, you know.”

The guy rubbed his head and said, “You’re insane. You could get sued for that.”

Gremio gave him a condescending smile. “And how was I to know you don’t have a life-threatening wasp-allergy? Huh?”

The guy and his friends left in a stumbling, grumbling, backward-looking angry mood. Without buying anything.

Gremio turned to look at me.

Even though I hadn’t asked for any of this, I felt a heat wave of embarrassment so intense, my hands got even damper than the Dino-Dog usual.

Gremio said, “Are you now trading sex for drugs?”

“NO!” I shouted and something snapped inside me. “Stop with the crazy drug talk. I mean it. I didn't do
anything
. And don’t you
dare
ask me to pee in a cup. I’ve had about as much humiliation as a person can take.”

He narrowed his eyes at me. God knows, I’d never spoken to any boss, ever before, like that, much less Gremio, the king of formality. Even though Mr. Gremio ran a pretty strict outfit, Dino-Dog was a joke to the rest of the business community. It would be impossible to find another job if I was fired from the Dino-Dog.
 

The breeze died and steam rose from the boiler to surround us. I felt my upper lip tremble so I pressed the back of my hand against it.

Gremio gave a cough and said, “Keep the swatter close. Old trick of the trade.” He bustled, repositioning the fly-swatter back in its holder under the counter, taking longer than seemed necessary, to give me more time, I think. He stood, and smoothed the embroidered words of his shirt flat. “If that doesn’t do it, missy, you just let them know Mr. Gremio’s on duty.”

He turned to go hide in the back again, this time muttering as he passed “Deterrent, that’s the key. Probably I ought to get a sign. Big enough to see from the street. Manager On Duty:
Gremio
.”

By the end of the day, if a carload of guys arrived, I served with my tongs in one hand and a crusty fly swatter in the other. And here I thought, before that Saturday, that nothing could make an end-of-shift Dino-Dog server look less appealing.
 

Live and learn.

***

I must have looked shakier than I realized, because my mom knew something was up, even if she couldn’t put her finger on what, exactly. In the half an hour that I had before our doorbell started ringing, she drifted into my room twice and put an absent-minded kiss on my head. When I leaned forward in the bathroom to put on make-up, I heard a tink and looked down to see a plate on the counter, a warm brownie in the middle of it and an icy-cold half-glass of milk beside it. Her voice called to me from where she was already heading back to the kitchen, “I thought you should enjoy one, before everyone gets here, while they’re still warm. Sometimes it’s hard to sit and eat when you’re hosting the party.”

My nerves were a rush-hour pile up. A thought would come zooming out of the fog of my emotions and collide into a fiery ball with the others. It was like I couldn’t steer or brake or anything. What if my mom found out that high school guys were coming to Dino-Dog to ask me to handle their wieners? Or that Mr. Gremio wanted me drug-tested? It’d be negative, but does the fact that you’re getting drug-tested go on your record somewhere? What would Drew say about the locker-room pictures? Would he rip into me again in front of the others? What if Tio was still mad about the felony threat of the camera hanging over him? What if someone let slip our secret about buying the trees to Drew? What if the Dog got disgusted with my boring party and headed out to find his friends?
 

The carnage slowed for a second and a thought drifted in, that, hey, a lot of my nerves were because of Drew, and then the doorbell rang.
 

I stood, took a deep breath, and thought, well, here goes nothing.

My mom was holding the screen door open. On the top concrete step stood Bianca, smiling and looking breathtaking, and on the step behind her (but still taller despite the step’s difference in elevation) stood Drew, scowling and staring off at the side of our apartment building, as if he wanted to be anywhere but here.

Bianca handed my mom a cellophane-covered paper plate and walked in. “My mom says hello, Mrs. Baptista.”

I was shocked to see Bianca throw a casual arm around my mother’s neck and give her a quick hug. And then more shocked that my mom wasn’t the least surprised. In fact, Mom was more interested in the plate, tilting it to see what was inside.

“Baklava!” said my mom, “how thoughtful of Eileen.”

“Homemade. She said it’s your favorite.”

My mom opened cabinets and I was appalled to see her hiding the plate of Baklava in the far corner of the (not-so) secret goodie cabinet and closing the cabinet door with a satisfied click.

“I’ll have to space those out, because I know hell will freeze over before Eileen hands over that recipe of hers.”