Out of Whack (20 page)

       Gotta love hyperbole.

       Travis sighed. “I’ll have to think about it.”

       There was a knock at the door. “That’ll be Laura,” I said. “Think quick.”

       “Why do I get the feeling I don’t have any real power in this partnership?” Travis asked.

       I opened the door, revealing Laura looking positively radiant as she held her nose and grimaced at The Smell. “What deity did you blaspheme to get stuck in this place?” she asked.

       “All of them,” I replied.

       “Hi,” she said to Travis. “I’m Laura.”

       “I know. Seth has told me all about you.” My good buddy Travis said this in such a way that it implied a detailed physical description, inside and out, plus a catalog of moans.

       “Oh, really?”

       “Uh-huh. Seth is nothing if not thorough.”

       “Well,” said Laura, “he’s told me very little about you, but I understand that you’d be extremely receptive to the idea of me joining your group. No problems with it whatsoever.”

       “Uh-huh. Seth is nothing if not full of shit.”

       “Would you like a root beer?” I hastily asked Laura.

       “Sure,” she replied, then continued speaking to Travis. “Look, there’s no commitment here. If you don’t like me, or I don’t like you, or I don’t like Seth’s scripts, or Seth doesn’t like the way my left earlobe bobs when I talk, then we can just forget the whole idea.”

       I hadn’t noticed the thing with her left earlobe before. It was seriously sexy.

       “All right,” said Travis, “I’m willing to try this out, only because Seth and I have been through so much together, and he’s got blackmail material out the wazoo.”

       “I’m glad to hear that.” Laura checked her watch. “Like I told Seth, I can’t stay because I have a study appointment, but what do you two say to dinner tonight?”

       “That sounds great,” I said.

       “Travis?”

       I had no way to signal to Travis that I would enjoy this dinner a great deal more if his presence were non-existent. But he knew that, right?

       “Sure, I’d love to come,” he said.

       Yep. He knew it.

       “How about Cecil’s? It’s a casual seafood place, not too expensive. Eight o’clock?”

       “That works for me,” I told her. “But Travis, didn’t you have that French club meeting?”

       The only foreign language Travis knew was Pig Latin. But I hoped he’d take the hint.

       “Darn, that’s right,” said Travis, feigning disappointment. “I’m not going to be able to go.”

       “Well, maybe next time,” Laura said.

       “Yeah, maybe next time. They probably aren’t going to do anything important in French club tonight anyway, so it’s not that big of a deal. Should we meet here or at the restaurant?”

       Evil. Travis was an evil, evil man.

       “How about we meet outside Tanglewood Hall about a quarter to eight so I don’t have to actually come inside this place?”

       “Sounds good,” said Travis. “We’ll see you then.”

       “I’ll be there.” Laura smiled at us and left the room.

       “She certainly seems like a nice young lady,” Travis observed as he shut the door. “Very well-mannered. Good breeding.”

       “You prick,” I said, only half-kidding.

       “Me? Prick?”

       “Would it have been so difficult to restrain your jerk tendencies for one night? Why not give Chi-Mao a call and see if her grandmother needs some more entertainment?”

       Travis shrugged. “I was invited on a social outing. I felt it would have been impolite to refuse her kind offer, and my rude behavior would have transferred to you in her mind because of our status as close friends, and therefore her opinion of you would have diminished and I would have done you no favors by letting you have dinner alone with her.”

       “No, you’re just trying to be a prick.”

       “I owe you some prickish behavior for last night. So quit griping. We’re doing this for Out of Whack. Oh, before I forget, there’s a message on the answering machine for you.”

       I went over to the answering machine and pressed play.

       “Hi, you have reached Seth and Travis’ room,” my recorded voice said. “We’ve recently lost a number of close friends and relatives in phone-related accidents, and therefore cannot bring ourselves to answer at this time. But if you leave your name and number, we’ll get back to you after therapy cures the problem.”

       Beep.

       “Hey, this is Mike Garrett, editor of
Gleefully Disturbed.
You’re not gonna believe this, but I’ve got some bitchin’ news about the magazine. Not only that, but I’m gonna be close to Trade Point this weekend, and we ought to get together. Seth? Hey, Seth, you there? Hello? Seth? Aw, shit, I must be talking to his goddamn answering machine! Son of a bitch! [
muffled
] Shut up, wench! If you’re such a freakin’ genius how come you locked the keys in the rental car? Yeah, yeah, bite my morning wood! [
clear again
] Listen, Seth, give me a call at, um, I don’t know the goddamn number here. [
muffled
] What’s the goddamn number here? [
clear again
] Nobody knows anything in this place! Just call the operator, get the number for Rebecca Weiss, and give me a ring. Talk to you then. [
muffled
] Are you really gonna wear that? It makes you look like a—”

       Beep.

       “He’s a rather jolly fellow,” Travis noted.

       I didn’t much want to give him a call, considering that the man was a reprehensible lunatic. But he was a reprehensible lunatic who might possibly publish my story, so I got the number from information and called.

       “Yeah?” asked an unbearably shrill female voice.

       “May I speak to Mike Garrett?”

       “Who?”

       “Mike Garrett.”

       “Who?”

       I spoke more slowly. “Mike Garrett.”

       “Who?”

       “Is this Rebecca Weiss?”

       “Who?”

       “I think I have the wrong number.”

       “Oh, wait, wait...I thought you were saying Mark Garrett. Yeah, Mike’s here. MIIIIIIIIIIIIIKE!!! TELEPHOOOOOOOOOOOONE!!!”

       “Yeah?” said Mike after a long moment, just enough time for my ears to stop ringing.

       “Hi, this is Seth Trexler. You left a message on my machine.”

       “Hey, Seth. Yeah, look, I’ve got some cool news about
Gleefully Disturbed.
I was at a red light when this dipshit rear-ended my Datsun, and it’s like, fuckin’-a, whiplash! I had him so scared I was going to sue his ass that he emptied his bank account to keep it out of court. So now I’ve got a new distributor, and we’re looking at a circulation of about ten thousand copies. I can pay you for your stories from now on, man! A hundred bucks!”

       “Really? That’s great!”

       “Hell yeah it’s great! I’m putting stretch marks in my Levis just thinking about it. So, anyway, my girlfriend and I are here visiting this hellhound she calls a mother, and I’m getting to the point where I’d rather have the skin on my nuts melted off with an iron than listen to her mouth for another two seconds. [
muffled
] I know you heard me! I wasn’t trying to be subtle, dog-woman! Woof, woof, woof! [
clear again
] Still there, Seth? I’m about an hour from Trade Point, so I was thinking that my girlfriend and I could drive down there this evening and take you out to dinner. Maybe you could tell me some other ideas you’ve got for the magazine. What do you say?”

       “Oh, you know what, I’ve already got dinner plans for this evening,” I told him.

       “Going out with a babe?”

       “Yeah, actually.”

       “All right, Sethie! Wet her down and make her squeal! Where’re you two going?”

       “Well, it’s three of us, actually. My roommate’s coming along. We’re going to a seafood place called Cecil’s.”

       “Cecil’s? Man, you take her to Cecil’s and you aren’t getting so much as a toenail down your pants. How about this? Since your roommate is screwing things up for you anyway, why don’t you let me take the three of you out to someplace expensive? Chicks love expensive places. We treat her to a five-star restaurant and before dessert she’ll have her tongue so far in your right ear it’ll be sticking out the left.”

       Okay, so, what would you have done? If
Gleefully Disturbed
really was going to become something spectacular, well, I wanted to be part of it. But there was also no way in hell I was going to cancel my dinner with Laura.

       Perhaps Mike would behave himself in an upscale environment. Maybe things would go smoothly.

       And maybe I’d quit school to live as a hermit and devote my life to yodeling.

       I thought about it until Mike spoke: “Hey, Seth, you dead or something?”

       “What time?” I asked.

       “How about eight?”

       “Could we make it eight-thirty, in case Laura wants to change her clothes beforehand? She was expecting casual seafood.”

       “Oh, yeah, give her a chance to switch to the crotchless panties. No problem. I’ll pick you up at your dorm—how do I get there?”

       I gave him instructions (“follow the smell”) and hung up. So, I was going to be having dinner with the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen, and not only was my smart-ass best friend coming along, but also my appalling editor and his girlfriend.

       How bad could it possibly be?

       Hahahahahahahahahaha!

“My Elegant Dining Experience”

       “Seth, if you don’t stop pacing, you’re going to wear a hole in the carpet,” said Travis.

       I would have continued pacing, but he was being serious. We were going to have to enforce a No Shoes rule to keep from wearing through to the sewage tunnels below and being eaten by giant alligators. Laura had been very receptive to the idea of a fancy dinner, even though I told her that Mike was “interesting.” She’d returned to her room to upgrade her attire, leaving me to pace and listen to Travis attempt to calm me down.

       “This is going to be the worst night of your life.”

       “Please shut up.”

       “This is going to be a nightmare from beginning to end. Twenty years from now you’ll wake up screaming with memories of this evening. Your face is going to be permanently locked into an expression of pure terror.” Travis put an expression of pure terror on his face.

       “You could improve the situation by staying home.”

       “Nope. I wouldn’t miss this for anything.”

       “What’s this sick thrill you get from torturing me?” I asked. “Are you trying to make up for not getting spanked sufficiently hard when you were born?”

       “Nah, I’m just filling your head with worst-case scenarios. No matter how bad things turn out, and we both know that they can turn out pretty darn bad, they won’t be as awful as I’m predicting.”

       “Thank you so much for your kind effort,” I said. “If there were more people like you in this world, I’d be so giddy you couldn’t pry the grin off my face with a crowbar.”

       Travis checked his watch, which showed a man screaming in pain as his arms (the minute and hour hands) were twisted around in unnatural positions. “We’d better get going. We don’t want to miss a second of this exciting evening.”

       We walked out of Tanglewood Hall just as Laura was approaching. She was wearing a sleek black dress, and mere words cannot express how beautiful she looked. (Pretty neat way of getting out of a potentially difficult paragraph of description, huh?) My heart went from pitter-patter to BAH-BOOM, BAH-BOOM when I saw her. In stiletto heels and light makeup, it was all I could do not to pour concrete over her to preserve her beauty for the ages.

       “Wow,” whispered Travis under his breath. “She looks better than Betty Boop.”

       “Hi, Laura,” I said. “You look pulchritudinous tonight.”

       Where the hell had
that
word come from? And was it good?

       Laura gave a radiant smile. “Thank you.”

       Yeah, it was good. Now I remembered. I’d heard it on a popcorn commercial or something.

       “And you’re looking very handsome,” Laura told me.

       She was lying, of course. I looked like I should be sold in stores as Dork-in-a-Sack. I hadn’t really planned on visiting any dining establishment of a higher class than Gus’ Greasy Grit Emporium, so I was forced to make do with slacks and a sweater with a squished bug stain on the collar. Travis wore a nice dress shirt, but no tie, since we’d been unable to find a single person in all of Tanglewood Hall who knew how to tie one.

       “Mike should be here any minute,” I said, feeling like I was foretelling the arrival of an ancient evil that was arising one hundred years to the day after it was first vanquished. I’d never smoked in my life, but God, I needed a nicotine patch.