How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater (5 page)

“Does this outfit look all right?” she asks Paula. “Edward picked it out.” (Okay, I admit it: I'm living vicariously through her. If guys could get away with wearing elf boots, I would.)

Paula gives Kelly a quick appraisal. “New Wave Barbie,” she says. “It comments on both consumerism and trendiness.”

“Is that good?” Kelly asks.

“You both look great,” I say, putting my arms around them. I'm in my Willy Wonka outfit: purple velvet tailcoat with jeans and red high-tops. Simple, but elegantly sloppy.

Paula lifts a stray hair off my jacket. “You're certain Natie understood, right?”

“Yeah, I just explained to him that five was kind of an awkward number.”

“Absolutely,”
she says. “It's not like this is
officially
a double date, though it is possible Doug might think so.” She brushes at her skirt, which she made out of the ruffles from old tuxedo shirts. “I'm more concerned for Natie's feelings, really. We wouldn't want him to feel left out.”

“That's nice,” Kelly says.

Paula pops open a compact and checks her teeth for lipstick. “I'm concerned for Doug as well. For me this is just another evening in the city. In fact, I've scarcely given it a second thought . . .”

That's because she's shared thoughts three through thirty with me on the phone.

“. . . but with Doug it's entirely a different matter. This could be a life-altering experience for him.”

She's interrupted by the growl of a muffler and we look up to see Doug's old Chevy run a red light and tear into the parking lot, pulling into a space marked
SHORT-TERM PARKING ONLY
without so much as slowing down.

“Oh my God, does my hair look all right?” Paula asks.

I look at her curls. “New Age pre-Raphaelite. It comments on both . . .”

“Oh, shut up.”

Doug leaps out of the car, his cowlick-y hair still wet from a shower, and sprints across the parking lot, unbuttoning his khakis as he jogs toward us and tucking in his wrinkled oxford. “Sorry I'm late,” he shouts. “I had to pick up Nate.”

Nate?

We turn in unison toward the car and see Natie lumbering out of the passenger seat, squinting at the sun like he's a groundhog on the second of February. Shielding his eyes, he smiles and waves to us as if there were nothing remotely strange about his being here.

Paula gives me a pop-eyed silent-movie look.

“Wow,” Doug says, laughing at nothing in particular, “you guys look great. I'm sorry, I don't have anything cool to wear.”

“Never fear,” Paula says, flinging a meaty arm in the air for emphasis. “Madame Paula's House of Couture, she never closes.” She shoots me one last dirty look and then narrows her eyes on Doug, a leopard going in for the kill. “Now let's see . . .”

She circles around him, humming “Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets” and supplying the percussion with her jangling bracelets and flamenco finger snaps. It's a bit much in the light of day, actually, but I figure since she's playing Miss Lynch in
Grease
she needs outlets for expression.

In one swift move she flings off her vest and snaps it like a matador before easing it over Doug's broad shoulders, then slides off her piano-key tie and lassos him around the neck, pulling him a little too close. Dragging him along as she does a few impromptu tango steps, she sashays over to the
Lost in Space
lunch box she uses as a purse, removes a button that says
UNIQUELY MALADJUSTED,
and pins it to his chest.

I've got to give her credit. He looks like one of us now.

“I was getting too hot with all that on, anyway,” she breathes at him, and she unbuttons one, no, two, then (yikes!) three buttons on her shirt, flapping it to fan herself and, of course, give Doug a preview of her nineteenth-century hooters.

“What about me?” Natie asks.

“Yeah, here ya' go,” Paula says, squashing her porkpie hat on his cheesehead.

She musses her curls in the manner of a 1950s Italian movie star and clears her throat as if she's about to make some kind of pronouncement when a champagne-colored Jaguar slides into the parking lot and pulls up next to us. We all turn to look at it.

When they make the movie of my life, this will definitely be a slow-motion moment.

I can't see her face as she steps out of the car, hidden as it is by a shiny black wall of hair, but I'm immediately struck by her endlessly long legs, slender and firm in a pair of ivory Capri pants, and her bony, almost boyish, torso braless under a silk camisole, the breasts small but alert. She flips her straight, silky hair just like a girl in a shampoo commercial and tilts her cocoa-brown face toward the sun, revealing cheekbones like shelves and a long, tapering nose, onto which she slides an enormous pair of Jackie O sunglasses.

“Who is
that
?” I whisper.

Doug devils me a grin. “That, Teen Angel, is my date,” he says. “Nate here explained the thing about, y'know, five people being a funny number.”

I don't dare look at Paula, and couldn't even if I wanted to. I can't stop staring at this . . . this
model
in front of me. I've seen her once or twice in the Workshop office but always assumed she was a grown-up.

“Who is she?” I hiss.

“Her name is Ziba,” he says.

“Zebra?” I ask. Who the hell names their kid Zebra?

“No, Zeee-bah. She just moved here.” He beams at her admiringly. “Is she hot or what?”

Even in a pair of gladiator sandals that lace up around the ankles, Ziba is still taller than the rest of us, I'd say close to six foot, and she has to lean way over to talk to her mother through the car window. I assume it's her mother because she, too, is beautiful and elegant and Ziba kisses her goodbye on both cheeks, European style. Her mother hands her an ivory silk scarf and a beaded clutch purse, then waves a manicured hand our way like she knows us (which she doesn't) as the Jag slowly slides away.

Doug tugs on his new vest and struts over to Ziba, smirking like a little boy who just got a pony for Christmas. Ziba takes her time wrapping the silk scarf around her head, crisscrossing the ends over the architecture of her neck and shoulders, the way you see in old Audrey Hepburn movies. She inclines her head so Doug can do the European two-cheek-kiss thing, which I must say he manages to pull off without looking too retarded. I make a mental note to practice this gesture until I can accomplish it with grace and ease. I glance up for the first time at Paula, whose left eye is twitching like she just drank something sour.

Ziba marches over, hips swinging like a runway model, and sticks her arm straight out to give each one of us a firm handshake as Doug introduces us, something I've never seen another teenager do.

“Well,” Paula says, trying to look chipper, “we better go or we'll miss the train.” I'm just about to feel sorry for her when she grabs her lunch box in one hand and Ziba in the other and says, “Now, I'm fascinated to know, what kind of name is Ziba? Let me guess. Is it Indian?”

“No, it's Persian,” Ziba says, emphasis on the “purrrh.”

“Persia
!
”
Paula squeals, pulling Ziba toward the station. “You must tell me
all
about it.”

Paula wasn't a National Merit scholar for nothing. Faced with insurmountable competition for Doug's attention, she solves the problem neatly by monopolizing Ziba's attention instead. I know her feelings are hurt, but she's too fair-minded to blame Ziba for it, and I can tell she can't help but admire someone who has the good sense to do the Audrey Hepburn scarf-on-the-head thing and carry a beaded clutch bag.

But if Paula's banter fills the train ride, Ziba's mere presence dominates it, and we all make minor adjustments to accommodate her. Natie rattles on about everything he's ever read in the
New York Times
about the Middle East, explaining to those of us who only read the Arts & Leisure section that Persia is the ancient name for modern-day Iran. He also guesses rightly that Ziba's family had to get out in 1979 when the Ayatollah came to power, although she doesn't volunteer why and we don't ask. Personally, I prefer to revel in the mystery where she's concerned so I just try to seem droll and blasé. Doug, on the other hand, tries to act all worldly and Continental because he's spent summers with his mother's family in Germany, like that's got anything to do with Persia.

Ziba doesn't say much, but sits with her long legs crossed, her head tilted at the most flattering angle, a closed-mouth Mona Lisa smile indicating that perhaps she finds us amusing, perhaps ridiculous, I can't tell. In the course of a one-hour train ride we do discover through various reluctant responses that, after fleeing Iran, Ziba lived outside of Paris, then outside of Washington, D.C., and now, of course, outside of Manhattan. “My parents think it's best to raise children outside of a city,” she says in a voice that's deeper than Natie's. “They're wrong, of course.” I nod in agreement, although I can't decide whether she's insulting us or not. “Ever since I arrived here I've tried to spend as much time in New York as possible, so naturally when Douglas mentioned this little excursion . . .”

There's something about her calling him Douglas that irks me, like she's poaching my Pygmalion project but, on the other hand, I can't help but feel grateful to meet a kindred spirit. Clearly I'm not the only one who feels this way. Compared with Ziba's understated elegance, Kelly and Paula both look like they're wrapped up as birthday gifts, and by the time we arrive in New York, Kelly's ponytail has migrated to the back of her head and she and Paula have discreetly discarded whatever bangles and bows they can.

As I watch Paula lead the way from Penn Station to Times Square I see that she's gained something, too: Ziba's gestures. It's as if she's inhaled her essence—the brisk runway-model walk, the provocative tilt of the head when speaking to you, the flip of the hair. She'll make a fine actress, Paula. We pick up tickets and try to get into Joe Allen's for dinner, but it's packed, so we have to settle for one of those New York delis where they act like they're doing you some big favor by overcharging you for a sandwich.

Paula and I have both seen
A Chorus Line
before—twice—but I'd go every weekend if I could. For you people out in Iowa who don't get any real culture, I guess I should explain that
A Chorus Line
is about these dancers who are auditioning for a Broadway show. The director asks them to talk about themselves so he can get to know them better and they do all these numbers about their childhoods and their ambitions and who they really are. They talk a lot about what it's like being a teenager and the stuff they say and do is exactly the kind of stuff that Paula and I say and do all the time. Our absolute favorite character is Bobby, the one who went down to busy intersections when he was a kid and directed traffic. Even better is the story he tells about breaking into people's houses—not to steal anything, just to rearrange their furniture.

That is so us.

But I relish every brilliant, inspired moment. This is who I'm determined to be—an actor/singer/dancer—no, I take that back, this is who I
am.
These people are my tribe, my destiny. I know it.

I can't wait for my life to begin.

Afterward, Doug, Natie, and I wait in the breezy open plaza of Shubert Alley while the girls pee. I ask Doug what he thought of the show.

“That was a great play, man,” he says, his bright blue eyes gleaming. “I didn't know you could say ‘fuck' in a play.”

I make a mental note to teach Doug to only refer to dramas as plays. He probably calls original cast albums “soundtracks,” too. I've got my work cut out for me.

“And I can't believe there was a song called ‘Tits and Ass.' Man, that was comical, I was laughin',” he says.

I want to ask him if the show meant anything to him, if he could identify at all with the characters' anguish and frustrations, if he understood the sacrifices we artists make for our craft and our careers.

“Yeah, that was comical,” I say.

Wuss.

The girls return from the bathroom, chatting among themselves. (What is it about peeing together that makes girls bond?) But as they get closer I see that Ziba and Paula are actually having an argument.

“All I said was that the characters were full of self-pity,” Ziba says, her voice dark and low.

“Wallowed,”
Paula says. “You said they
wallowed
in self-pity.” She turns to me. “Ziba said she found the show
masturbatory.”

“I thought it was pretty hot, too,” Doug says.

Ziba lights a cigarette. “All art is masturbatory,” she says baritonally.

There's a brief silence while we try to figure out what the hell she means.