The World Played Chess (15)

From the back seat, in the midst of some inane conversation, Cap said, “Holland, give me one of your beers.”

“I’m not giving you one of my beers. You still owe me for the movie.”

“Come on, just give me a beer.”

“Drink your own,” Billy said.

“I did.”

“You drank a six-pack already?” I asked. Not believing Cap, I turned and looked over the back of the front seat at empty cans littering the floor, along with the empty cardboard box. “Holy crap.”

“What?” Cap said. “How many do you have left?”

“Four, and I just cracked the second.”

“What, are you nursing up there?”

“I’m drinking like a normal person. How have you not had to pee?”

“Don’t mention peeing,” Mif said. “We’ll all have to go.”

“Yeah, we wouldn’t want to miss the plot of the movie,” Billy said. He’d voted for Alien.

“Vinny B., let me have a beer,” Cap said, turning his attention to the guy with the most.

“I was going to bring them down to the jobsite tomorrow. They keep a cooler and drink beer after work.”

“Wait a minute.” Mif laughed. “They’re paying you and giving you beer? Do they need another laborer?”

“Shit, I’ll do that job,” Cap said. “Give me a beer, Vinny B., come on.”

I handed back the remains of my six-pack. It was easier than arguing the rest of the night.

Cap immediately appropriated the box. “What do you want for them?”

“Nothing.”

“Bullshit.”

“I can’t drink them. I told you, I got to work in the morning. Just leave me a couple to put in the cooler so I don’t look like a mooch.”

“Like Cap,” Billy said.

“Where are you working?” Mif asked.

“A remodel in Burlingame. Five bucks an hour under the table.”

“What?” Mif’s voice again rose in inflection and volume. “Seriously, can you get me a job?”

“It’s a small crew.”

“Ask them if they got any more openings. Five bucks an hour and beer.” Mif also came from a large family and, like me, what he made went toward paying his college tuition. Unlike me, he was not headed to a community college, but to Cal Berkeley to play rugby. Billy was headed to Santa Clara to play baseball and Cap would play baseball at San Diego State. I felt like the odd man out. For the graduation brochure, I’d opted to put “undecided” beside my name as my college choice, too embarrassed to put “community college.”

“I could have used you today.” I told them what my job had been. “I threw up twice and nearly passed out.”

“Our esteemed editor in chief, jumping in pools fully dressed and throwing up on the job,” Mif said.

“I got to piss.” Cap shoved open the back door.

“You think?” Billy said. “Your back teeth must be floating.”

“Damn it,” Mif said. “Now I got to piss. I told you not to talk about it.”

I reached for the door handle, but Billy stopped me. “You’ve only had one beer.”

“You’re telling me I can’t pee?”

“Come on, man, don’t leave me here alone. People will think I’m beating off to Peter Sellers.”

I laughed and shut the door. Billy and I could hear Ed singing Serra fight songs outside the car. Billy looked out his window and laughed. I looked over. Ed was doing push-ups in the parking lot.

“Great,” I said. “That shouldn’t attract any attention.”

An explosion echoed on the pavement. “M-80,” Billy said. “A quarter of a stick of dynamite.” Smoke filtered between two rows of cars to our left. Overhead, five or six bottle rockets exploded, leaving red-and-white trails before snapping and popping near the movie screen. Horns honked.

“When does Santa Clara start?” I asked Billy.

“Orientation is late August.”

“You get a roommate yet?”

“Nah. Later in the summer.”

I envied my friends going off to college, even if they were not traveling very far. I envied them having just a single roommate. I had shared a room big enough for two with three of my brothers—until my parents added on a family room at the back of the house and turned the downstairs room into a bedroom. I got it after my three older sisters and John moved on to college.

“My brother John had a roommate at Davis who became catatonic and cut off his hand,” I said.

“Bullshit.”

“Swear to God.”

“He cut off his hand? That’s impossible. He’d pass out before he finished.”

“No. He put it on a train track.”

“Oh shit.”

“I know. Right? At least my brother had a room to himself for half the year.”

“And nightmares,” Billy said.

Ed sang the “Padre Whisper,” a fight song that culminated in his spelling out “P-A-D-R-E-S” at the top of his lungs. Our friends in the two adjacent cars were now sufficiently inebriated to join in the chorus. People yelled at them to shut up, which only caused our friends to yell louder. More bottle rockets went off over cars and another M-80 exploded nearby. I had experienced this too many times to not know how it was going to end.