Joe College: A Novel (27 page)
Read Joe College: A Novel Online
Authors: Tom Perrotta
The guy ignored me. “It takes a lot of gall to walk into a bowling alley wearing something you stole from another bowling alley. A lot of gall. Do you have any idea how much a pair of these shoes costs?”
“Four dollars,” Matt told him, reverting to his normal voice.
“You got a smart mouth,” the counterman told him in that same flat tone. “I’m fifty-eight years old with a bum leg, but I’m about two seconds from jumping over this counter and kicking your ass.”
Matt cowered like a mime, his face a mask of exaggerated fear.
“Can you believe this guy?” he asked me. He had that frenetic, out-of-control look in his eyes, the same one he had when he launched into that stupid imitation of my dancing at the party.
Things were drifting in a bad direction. I grabbed him roughly by the wrists and forced him to look at my face.
“Listen,” I said. “I have an idea. Why don’t we just rent another pair of shoes. We’ll pay the money and everyone will be happy. Just tell the man your shoe size.”
Amazingly, I seemed to get through to him. He closed his eyes for a second or two, trying to calm himself down. Then he nodded and opened them again.
“Nine and a half,” he told the counterman, capping the request with a patently insincere smile.
“No halfs,” I broke in, trying to help him out.
Instead of reaching for another pair of shoes, though, the guy picked up the phone next to the cash register and began dialing. When he was finished he looked at us, cupping one hand over the mouthpiece.
“If you leave now maybe you’ll be gone by the time the cops get here.”
“The cops?” I said. “You’re calling the cops?”
He turned away from us, speaking loud enough that we’d be sure to hear him over the background noise.
“Frank? This is Lou. Lou from the bowling alley. I got a couple
troublemakers down here. College kids. You wanna send a car? Thanks.”
troublemakers down here. College kids. You wanna send a car? Thanks.”
Matt was shaking his head, grinning like this was the best thing that had happened to him in years.
“This calls for civil disobedience,” he said, dropping onto his knees and curling into fetal position on the grimy linoleum floor. “Lock arms! Go totally limp! Call the ACLU!”
“Do what you want,” I told him, stepping over his body on my way toward the exit. “I’m getting the hell out of here.”
Matt wanted to
go to Cousin Butchie’s after that, but I told him that all the topless joints were closed on Monday night, an excuse that sounded fairly plausible despite the fact that I’d made it up on the spot. After my misadventure with the Squidman I’d had little desire to visit another go-go bar, and I had even less desire to visit one with Matt. God only knew what sort of trouble he’d get us into at an establishment full of all-but-naked women. We settled instead for the calmer alternative of a pitcher at the Stay-A-While and the promise of an early night.
go to Cousin Butchie’s after that, but I told him that all the topless joints were closed on Monday night, an excuse that sounded fairly plausible despite the fact that I’d made it up on the spot. After my misadventure with the Squidman I’d had little desire to visit another go-go bar, and I had even less desire to visit one with Matt. God only knew what sort of trouble he’d get us into at an establishment full of all-but-naked women. We settled instead for the calmer alternative of a pitcher at the Stay-A-While and the promise of an early night.
“Here’s to New Jersey,” he said. “Where you can go to jail for wearing the wrong shoes.”
“To New Jersey.” I touched my glass to his and took a sip of Budweiser aged to the perfect degree of flatness by the expert staff at the Stay-A-While. “You don’t know the half of it.”
“Did you see that guy? I thought he was gonna have a stroke or something.”
“It was bizarre.” Now that we were out of there, I could more fully appreciate the irony of nearly getting arrested as the accomplice to a person wearing an illegal pair of bowling shoes on the same day I’d suffered no consequences whatsoever for hitting someone in the head with a baseball bat. “Those shoes must be a real sore point for him.”
Matt puffed out his chest, re-creating his finest moment.
“This is slander!” he bellowed. “It’s knavery, pure and simple.”
“I thought he really was going to jump over the counter and kick your ass.”
“For a principle like this, I’d be willing to get my ass kicked,” Matt declared with a grin. “How’d you like it when I hit the deck? I was all set to break into ‘We Shall Overcome.’”
His eyes were bright; I could see how much fun he was having reliving the incident, how exciting it was to reflect on a dangerous moment after you’d escaped it unscathed. There had been a similar expression on Chuckie’s face as he’d paraded me around the warehouse that afternoon, telling everyone the story of how I’d held off four goons on my own with a baseball bat—“It was like Sergeant Fucking York!” he’d insisted, over and over again—and how lucky those bastards were that he (Chuckie) had broken it up before the whole brunch of them were lying in the dirt with their heads split open like watermelons. All I had to do was stand at his side, nodding modestly like Gary Cooper to confirm the report of my bold deeds. I wasn’t relishing the prospect of returning to the warehouse in the morning to another hero’s welcome only to inform my admirers that I was throwing in the towel, that there was no way in hell Sergeant York was going back to the battlefield. Just thinking about it made me want to crawl into bed and stay there for a week or two.
“What’s wrong?” Matt asked. “You seem a bit distracted.”
“Sorry. There’s just all this bizarre shit going on.”
I waited for him to probe a little deeper, but all he did was nod sympathetically and pour me another beer, filling the glass in tiny increments, like a mad scientist mixing his secret formula.
“Your father’s a nice guy,” he told me. “You should hear him talk about you.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s just so unbelievably proud of you. It’s like no one in the world ever went to Yale before.”
“Your father must be proud of you too.”
Matt shook his head. “He thinks I’m the world’s biggest fuck-up.”
“You?” I smiled. “A fuck-up?”
“I know.” Matt shook his head. “Once these misconceptions get started, they take on a life of their own.”
“Still,” I said, “he’s gotta be a little proud. How many other car salesmen have kids who got into Yale?”
Matt looked puzzled for a second, then waved away the question like it was smoke.
“Nah,” he said. “Now he just thinks Bart Giammati’s a fuck-up too.”
The glasses that came with our pitcher were small, the size of juice glasses at a diner. You could finish them off in a swallow or two, and Matt and I were feeling solicitous toward one another. As soon as my glass was empty, he filled it, and I did the same for him. Before long, the pitcher was history.
“It’s too bad,” I said. “That beer was starting to taste pretty good.”
The bartender must have heard me. He finished rinsing a few more glasses in a tub of brown water topped with a thin layer of soap scum, wiped his hands on the towel tucked into the waistband of his pants, and shuffled over to our end of the bar. He picked up the empty pitcher and moved it in front of our faces like a hypnotist.
“Another one, fellows?”
“I don’t know,” I said, checking with Matt. “We’ve got to get up at four in the morning.”
Matt glanced at the clock. He rubbed his chin, adopting the demeanor of a person involved in a complex cognitive operation.
“It’s still pretty early,” he mused. “I don’t see that our impending work obligations necessarily preclude further consumption.”
I looked at the bartender, shrugging as though the matter were officially out of my hands.
“You heard him,” I said, happy to pretend for the moment that four in the morning was a long way off. “Bring it on.”
There are two kinds of drunk drivers: the ones who know it and the ones who don’t. I was the first kind. My mind was racing a little too quickly, so I tried to compensate by driving very slowly, turning and braking with great care, as though maneuvering my way through a blizzard.
“Jesus,” I said. I was perched way up on the edge of my seat, squinting through the dirty windshield. “Visibility’s not so good.”
“Maybe it would help if you turned on the lights,” Matt suggested.
“Good idea,” I said. Even one light was an improvement.
The Stay-A-While was in Springville, only a few miles from my parents’ house. It was an easy drive sober, over before you knew it. That night, though, Springville Boulevard seemed to last forever. It was like some crew of practical jokers had blown through town while we were in the bar, stringing up traffic lights at every possible intersection in a diabolical effort to prolong my misery and confusion.
“I’ll tell you what’s weird about
Measure for Measure,”
Matt remarked as we negotiated the tricky stretch of the boulevard that runs past Nomahegan Park. “Can you imagine living in a place where you can get the death penalty for premarital sex? Would that be a drag or what?”
Measure for Measure,”
Matt remarked as we negotiated the tricky stretch of the boulevard that runs past Nomahegan Park. “Can you imagine living in a place where you can get the death penalty for premarital sex? Would that be a drag or what?”
“Don’t talk,” I instructed him as we puttered past the county college, moving at about the clip of a riding mower. It felt to me like the truck was standing still, the world rushing madly at my windshield. “It’s hard enough for me to concentrate as it is.”
“You’d be a dead man,” he announced, patting me consolingly on the shoulder.
“Me? What about you?”
“In my own mind I’m a virgin.”
I tightened my grip on the wheel as I turned off the main road onto the squiggly back streets that cut through Cranwood and into Darwin. Somewhere around here, back when I was in high school, Jill Arnott drove a driver’s ed car over somebody’s front lawn and into their house, crashing right through the wall of the family room.
No one was hurt, and she said that the people who lived there were cooler about it than you might have expected. Matt leaned over and turned on the radio. After a couple of commercials, the David Bowie song “Changes” came on.
No one was hurt, and she said that the people who lived there were cooler about it than you might have expected. Matt leaned over and turned on the radio. After a couple of commercials, the David Bowie song “Changes” came on.
“Mind if I turn on the radio?” he asked, about halfway into the song.
“Be my guest,” I said, riding the brakes through the unexpectedly sharp curves of the residential streets.
A feeling of preliminary relief washed over me as we crossed the border into Darwin and “Changes” segued into “Dust in the Wind”; we weren’t there yet, but we were getting close. Matt reached over and turned up the volume.
“Oh man,” he groaned, drumming on the glove compartment with both hands. “I love this song.”
“‘Dust in the Wind’? Are you serious?”
“You don’t like it?” He stared back at me, mirroring my incredulity. “It was my high school anthem.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s kind of bleak.”
“That’s the whole point.”
“What’s the whole point?”
“That we’re dust in the wind,” he said, nearly shouting to make himself heard over the lugubrious strains of the song. Something about this concept seemed to amuse him, and he laughed out loud. “Dust in the wind, dude.”
That didn’t seem like much of a point to me, and I was about to say so when I was struck by the realization that, impaired as I was, and despite the fact that I hadn’t the heard the song in years, I knew all the lyrics by heart. Matt did too; in fact, he’d rolled down his window and begun shouting them to the sleeping town.
He seemed to be enjoying himself, so I figured what the hell. By the time the chorus arrived I was right there with him, broadcasting the mournful news at the top of my lungs.
Dust
in
the wind
in
the wind
All we are is dust in the wind
“Oh shit,” I said.
“‘Dust in the wind,’” Matt continued, both hands pressed over his heart, his exuberance undiminished by the fact that he was on his own again. I was too busy to sing; it was all I could do to pull the Roach Coach over to the curb without actually driving it up onto the sidewalk in front of Mr. B’s Pet Supplies and Grooming, my own heart pounding as the flashing red lights painted their swirly designs on the glass of my sideview mirror.
I had a
hard time falling asleep, but it wasn’t because the bed was spinning or anything like that. Getting pulled over had gone a long way toward sobering me up, and throwing up afterward had taken me the rest of the way there. A bad taste lingered in my mouth, a sour sediment that four glasses of water and a marathon Listerine session hadn’t washed away, but my head was clear, my thoughts racing in the darkness as Matt snored peacefully beside me in his sleeping bag on the floor.
hard time falling asleep, but it wasn’t because the bed was spinning or anything like that. Getting pulled over had gone a long way toward sobering me up, and throwing up afterward had taken me the rest of the way there. A bad taste lingered in my mouth, a sour sediment that four glasses of water and a marathon Listerine session hadn’t washed away, but my head was clear, my thoughts racing in the darkness as Matt snored peacefully beside me in his sleeping bag on the floor.
I hadn’t gotten arrested for drunk driving. I hadn’t even gotten a ticket for the broken headlight, which was the reason I’d been pulled over in the first place. The cop who came swaggering up to my window, shining a flashlight in my face and barking at me to hand over my license and registration, suddenly burst into a big grin when he realized who I was.
“Danny?”
“Yeah?” I said, cringing at the light, struggling to locate a face in the blinding glare. “Who’s that?”
The cop snapped off the flashlight and took a couple steps back from my window so I could get a better look.
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