Shrimp (4 page)

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summer in New York meeting my bio-dad and his kids for the first time. So fer gawd's sake, didn't I deserve one wild night since I have been all about reformed-girl Cyd Charisse lately? I haven't touched a drink or even a joint in almost a year, since boarding school.

But still, no way was I going to hook up with any Irish pub guys, no matter how many pints of Guinness they brought me. An almost-kiss against the wall is one thing, but going past first base with an eye toward home base with a random guy is a whole other ball game. I'm not a skank like that, my prior batting average notwithstanding.

"So," I said to Helen. "Do you like the red-haired guy or the goalie guy? Because I need to get home."

"Please!" Helen said. "Neither. I like free beer. But it's a school night, CC, get real."

She grabbed my hand and dragged me back into the crowded pub before Eamon and his buddy even noticed we'd given them the slip.

One more beer, right? Damn, I didn't even know I liked beer before tonight, but those Guinnesses were tasty and filling. Who needs dinner? But soon I was sitting on top of a bar table, surrounded by a pack of guys eyeing my long legs dangling over the bar ledge and asking what songs I wanted them to fire up on the jukebox. Do guys really think any young female with any semblance of musical taste would actually
want
to listen to Jimmy Buffet? Let me just pause a moment to insert a finger down my throat.

I sent one guy off to cue up the Ramones on the box before the Jimmy Buffet guy could get there--please, S.O.S.,
go
--while I tried to figure out if I could hit up any of these fine male specimens for a ride home without worrying

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about him hitting on me. The mathematics of that equation multiplied by the chemistry of how I would sneak inside my house without my mother noticing and get right into the shower to get rid of the smoke and beer smell and, yeah, possibly puke out all this beer while I was in the bathroom anyway, well, all this head work was literally making my head spin.

I looked down from the red exit sign I'd been staring at, wondering if I had enough cash for a taxi home, when I saw exactly the last person--besides maybe some evil dictator like Stalin or Pol Pot--that I could possibly want to have standing in front of me at the table ledge, glaring at me like I was busted, big time.

Alexei the Horrible said, "Well, if it isn't the Little Hellion. Let's see, if memory serves, last time I saw you was about two summers ago when you conned me into taking you to a movie and I didn't find out until later the only reason you wanted me to go was because the movie was rated R and your mother had forbidden you to see it. That would make you how old now?" Alexei wrote a fake equation in the air with his index finger. "Oh yeah, still not old enough to be in this pub."

Since Alexei the Horrible has been away at college or I was away at boarding school, it's been my privilege to erase the unfortunate fact of his existence in the long time since I've last seen him. He is Fernando's godson, practically Fernando's son because Alexei's dead father was Fernando's bestest friend in the history of the world, like a brother to him. My stepdad, Sid, about wishes Alexei were his godson too. He thinks Alexei is the most promising young man, fine upstanding blah blah blah Ivy League undergraduate since

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like the dawn of time. Sid-dad wrote Alexei's college recommendation letter, he helped Alexei get the big scholarships to finance the fancy education. Sid-dad is apparently not aware, as I have been since age eight when Alexei kicked me off my own new trampoline when no one was looking because he said I was a spoiled little princess and didn't even know how to use my own toys properly, that Alexei is, in fact, an overconfident overachiever uptight driven faux intellectual stuck-up suck-up (everything Shrimp is not).

But he also might be able to save my ass. 'Alexei," I said. "Please, please, please, can you give me a ride home?"

It was funny to watch a guy as big as Alexei squirm. He was a state champion wrestler in high school and is one of those people who downs protein shakes like they actually taste good. Alexei said, "What's in it for me?" Luckily I didn't have to answer because Alexei added, 'Actually I told Fernando I would stop by to help him move some furniture around. But still, helping the Little Hellion out, I don't know."

Fernando has moved into the apartment at the side of our house now that Leila, who used to be our housekeeper, moved back to Canada. Fernando's always been more like an uncle than a family employee, anyway, just one who knows the back streets to the freeway and makes kick-ass empanadas. Fernando has a long red scar running down the side of his leather face that he got during the civil war in Nicaragua, and I think that's why Sid-dad originally hired him, because Fernando is kind of scary-looking, until you find out Fernando's this close to being a Care Bear--that is, unless he's major pissed at you for having to retrieve you in the middle of the night from your boyfriend's. My stepfather

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is the CEO of a company with thousands of people working for him, but I think Fernando is the only employee Sid-dad actually trusts. I also think that while technically Fernando is the family driver, less technically but not officially, Fernando's status of driver is just a cover-up that saves Sid-dad from acknowledging that he has hired a security-type person for our family, while at the same time saving Sid-dad the trouble of having to find parking spaces.

I jumped off the bar table and stood eye to eye with Alexei, which had to be some sort of irritation to him because he likes little girly-girls, all petite and giggly and lip-glossed, who can't look him in his icy eyes like an equal. I knew I was supposed to be serious and busted and all that, but my insides were buzzed nice and my face couldn't help but break into a smile at Alexei. And for the first time possibly in the ten years in which it's been my unfortunate circumstance to be acquainted with him, Alexei smiled back at me. The smile was a strain on his Slavic face of red cheeks and high cheekbones and bushy eyebrows--really, he shouldn't smile, ever. 'Alright, Cyd Charisse," he said. "I'll give you this one. But you owe me. Big time."

I said my good-bye to Helen and left with Alexei the Horrible. The price of the ride was this: lecture. What if a cop had been in the bar and asked to see ID? What was I thinking? Did I honestly expect that all the guys just wanted to buy beer for me, that they had nothing else on their minds? How could I be so naive? High school girls, even wild ones like me, should not be hanging out in places like that.

Oh, old man much? I had a nice little nod off going while Alexei told me about how he was taking a semester

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off from Fancy University and would be spending the time back home in San Fran working on some project that would look
great
on his resume. Snore.

Alexei the Horrible handed me one of those disgusting Listerine breath strips before we walked into my house. "You smell like Guinness and Marlboros," Alexei said. "Just go along with what I say."

My parents were in the study leading off from the main hall as we walked by. When he saw us standing at the study entrance Sid-dad said, 'Alexei! What a surprise!"

Alexei said, "Look what I found at the bookstore on Clement Street. Very noble of her to want to take the bus, but I was on my way over to see Fernando, anyway."

Nancy looked up from the pile of invitations on her lap. She sniffed. "Who smells like smoke? And"--my mother scrunched her perfect little nose up--"do I smell beer?"

I was a little woozy but Alexei propped my back with his hand just as my legs were feeling like they needed a rest from this standing business. Alexei said, "Me. I was at the pub watching
Monday Night Football
with some buddies when I saw Cyd Charisse through the window, walking out from the bookstore across the street. Cyd was commenting on the smell the whole car ride over too. No, Cyd, I won't be mad if you hit the shower now instead of come help me unload boxes at Fernando's."

My parents really have blinders on when it comes to Alexei the Horrible, because football season hadn't even started yet and no way would Alexei care about watching a pre-season NFL game being played in, like, Japan. Sid-dad said, "Thank you, Alexei. Can you stay a while, talk about your semester off?" I hiccupped, and Alexei's hand in my

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back shoved me toward the stairs. I sprinted up to my room before Nancy could invite me into the study to look at fabric swatches or something.

When I reached my room I shut the door behind me and stood against it, breathing heavily, primed for a major shower and mouth wash.

That was close. And now I owed Alexei the Horrible. Fuck.

A postcard was propped up on my bed pillow. It was a tourist postcard from Fiji, picturing a beautiful dark lady with black hair down to her waist, wearing a grass skirt and bikini top, doing one of those luau-whatever dances at a campfire on white sand with an azure tropical ocean and magenta sunset in the background. A colored pencil drawing was taped on next to her, picturing a short white surfer guy with dirty blond hair and a platinum blond spiked patch at the front. He was standing next to the dancing lady, playing the bagpipes.

Sigh. Bagpipes always make me feel weepy and sexy at the same time, and the one person who knows that about me had written on the other side of the postcard,
Miss me?
The card was signed with a pencil drawing of a pink-veined piece of raw shrimp.

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*** Chapter 5

Perhaps it didn't
bode well for my senior year of crap school, I mean high school, to start it with a mild hangover, but there ya go.

Helen was in just as bad shape as me. She had her hand against her forehead when I found her in the cafeteria at lunchtime. "Oh," she groaned. "Headache. Hey, who was the guy you left with last night? He could give a girl serious trapped-in-the-tundra fantasies all night."

The skin on my arms crawled like worms were creeping underneath it. "SHUT UP!" I said. "My stomach is just starting to feel better--don't say things like that. Alexei the Horrible is an annoying protégé of my dad's. I hate him, except I kinda owe him now for helping me skate past the parents last night. But if you ever see him again, don't let on you think he's hot. ICK! His ego is bigger than those Hulk biceps he has."

With this sarcastic grin on her green-lipsticked mouth Helen said, "But you're all about Shrimp, right?" I stuck my tongue out at her. Her likewise response flashed a tongue piercing. Ouch.

All these arty types who are friends with Helen and Shrimp sat down with us at the cafeteria table, a totally new experience for me. If I were Cyd Charisse, private investigator, creating a flowchart detailing the lunchtimes of the past school life of Cyd Charisse, reformed bad girl, it would look like this:

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Helen handed me a vitamin C packet. She said, "Mix this into your water to help with the hangover. Do you want to come over tonight to help me dye the copper hand out of my hair? I am so grounded for life if I don't get it out today, but I was too wasted to do it last night."

This guy sitting next to Helen, with a Ronald McDonald clown-color Mohawk of red hair and black eyeliner smudged

36

around both his eyes, said, "Helen of Troy, you oughta leave the copper hand--it rocks." He turned to me. "So with Shrimp gone, is anyone at this school gonna actually get to know you now?"

I was startled enough by the question, but even more startled by the Crayola assortment of Mohawk and asymmetrical '80s-cut heads of dyed hair that popped up at his question. There must have been seven sets of eyes, more with eyebrow piercings than not, waiting for my answer.

I was all,
I guess so?
This was as close to being in a clique as I have ever been. Don't think that means my skin's about to experience some piercing/tattoo body art makeover situation just cuz that seemed to be the popular form of self-expression at the table. I have a high pain threshold, but it's an emotional one, not a physical one. And the secret fact about me is I am a big ole priss. Still, actual almost-friends in my own peer group. At the rate I'm going I'll be a cheerleader by graduation.

Everyone wanted to know about Shrimp--where was he? I mentioned the postcard from Shrimp in Fiji, but people had heard other rumors. By the time I finished my PB&J sandwich and gave the apple to Helen and kept the pudding for myself, Mission Shrimp had determined that Shrimp was away from school because of any of the following: (1) He was building grass huts for the natives in Papua New Guinea; (2) he had been adopted by a tribe of spiritual fishermen in Tahiti; (3) he was in New Zealand applying for citizenship so he can become the next great Kiwi surfer; or my personal fave, (4) he's on tour in Romania, where he is apparently a huge pop star.

I was almost disappointed to have the mystery solved