Where It Began(21)

Sure I’m building up steam; I am smoking from hotness by association. Sure I have a whole lot more going for me, the entire whole lot consisting of Billy and my new wardrobe. If Billy likes me, suddenly everybody but a few stray Muffins like me. Not that they actually like me like me, they just act like they like me. And it isn’t as if I mind all that much.

Mind—please. I want more all the time. When Billy walks by in the library when I’m sitting there with Anita trying to figure out the workings of the periodic table and he bends down and blows just faintly on the top of my head and ruffles my bangs with the tips of his fingers, I have to bite my lower lip just so I won’t shiver with joy in too obvious a way.





XVI


IF I HADN’T BEEN SO CRAZED ABOUT MAKING SURE that Billy would keep liking me around the clock, it could have been completely fun.

It definitely eliminates any shred of boredom or dead time in my life because the thing about being with Billy is that you have to be made up and ready to roll 24/7. He likes to drive and he likes company.

“How is it you’ve lived in L.A. all your life and you’ve never been anywhere?” he says.

And he doesn’t mean chic places on Sunset with bouncers, where I also haven’t been. He means the best Pho 999 for Vietnamese noodles so far out on Sepulveda, it is almost at the far end of the Valley; he means hickory burgers on the red faux-leather stools at the counter at the Apple Pan on Pico; ribs with bikers who seem to have dropped in from a 1950s time warp at Dr. Hogly Wogly’s; Versailles for Cuban plantains and black beans in Culver City; and tacos at La Canasta, which is somewhere so far south and east of downtown that it looks like some whole other country. He means that field in Westchester where you can lie on the hood of the Beemer and watch the planes taking off from LAX at night and the Cajun place at the Fairfax Farmers’ Market that has homemade yam potato chips fried up and ready to eat by ten a.m.

I remember that perfectly: the taste of the yam chips and their crunchiness and the grease on my fingers, how you couldn’t get enough, and at the end, you dig the last little shards out of the corners of the little paper box they come in.

“How do you know all these places?” I say. “Do you just cut school and drive around Monterey Park looking for pork bao?”

“I get bored easily,” Billy says. “You want to roll?”

He likes to tell Agnes that Andy is helping him study for precalc. And then driving up to Santa Barbara for hotdogs and sauerkraut at the only dive on State Street open after midnight, then turning around and driving back. He likes telling Agnes that he is doing community service (Condition of Probation #17) at a fictional downtown homeless mission and then driving to San Juan Capistrano to listen to ska at a bar—only, he has to bribe the ticket guy because even though Billy has the excellent ID of an actual twenty-two-year-old guy named Lars from St. Cloud, Minnesota, I don’t.

He could have told Agnes he was going on an overnight NASA expedition to Mars and she would have bought it.

I, on the other hand, don’t have to make up anything. I just say, “Going with Billy. See ya.” Vivian couldn’t have cared less if I had my head in his lap all the way to San Diego on a school night, which I didn’t, just so long as the stick shift wouldn’t mess up my makeup and reveal the un-cute Old Me lurking underneath, thereby jeopardizing my girlfriendhood and metamorphosis into a kid she actually might want.

“How is it that you’ve never had a corn dog in Eagle Rock?” he’d say.

And I would say, “Beats me.”

And he would take down the rag roof of the Beemer and that would be our destination.

The other thing is sports. Endless sports. Obviously, I have to attend water polo matches near and far, which turns out to be a not un-fun game to watch, with a whole lot of splashing and yelling, and muscular boys in Speedos. It soon becomes apparent that Billy’s one area of school spirit involves sitting around at all Winston varsity events and patting his friends on the butt. Who knew that all varsity jock boys have a fixation that makes them watch all other varsity jock boys play all other sports except golf? This includes fencing, where they all pump fists for the other team’s guy by mistake half the time because they can’t figure out who made the touch.

“How is it that you go to Winston and you’ve never been to a home game?”

“I’m not that into sports, Nash. I mean, I like them now. I like watching you rule the pool and all. I just wasn’t that into it before you enlightened me.”

“Well, what are you into, Gardiner, other than eating international junk food and decorating things?”

“I’m into international junk food? Have you ever noticed who’s leading these fun expeditions to Rooster Shack to eat fries with the Crips?”

“That would be Americana,” he says. “Have I taught you nothing?”

“I’m into art,” I say. It kind of comes out of nowhere, but once it’s out, it’s out. Okay, I am into art.

And it seems like he can handle it because he says, “Well, I hope you’re very good at art, because you are currently hanging with the undisputed king of water polo.”

Apparently, this is not one of Billy’s more egregious exaggerations. On our late-night jaunts, sometimes we end up at Sam Deveraux’s fraternity house at USC, which seems to have a permanent, twenty-four-hour party going on, and where we are always welcome because Sam was the water polo equivalent of a linebacker back when he was a senior and Billy was a varsity starter in tenth grade.