I told this to the principal, Mr. Bell, and he seemed impressed. “See, I told you that you wouldn’t regret your decision to come here. Those private schools may be less of a challenge but the rewards are bigger here. You’re doing God’s work now,” he said. I laughed because I thought he was being facetious. But he was dead serious. I cleared my throat. God’s work. Oh, boy. I really needed to take my job more seriously.
“So you all ready for your trip?” Lashelle asked as Mr. Bell walked away.
“Yeah, gonna do some shopping this weekend.” I would have gone shopping anyway.
“Oh, Filene’s Basement is having a big sale on swimsuits. You’re going to the Caribbean, right?”
How do I get away from her?
“Which country again?”
I told her and I felt as if she were quizzing me. As if she suspected that I might be lying and she was retesting to see whether I’d be able to keep my facts straight. She was really getting on my nerves, and her butt seemed even bigger than usual in that tight gray skirt. Didn’t she own a mirror? Or a sense of decency?
“Gotta head home,” I said, and grabbed my bag. I left her standing there.
As I drove home, the temperature dropped. Gosh, it was late March and the weather still would not break! But it had been a good day; I’d gotten my kids to talk, and it seemed that several of them had even read the text. I turned up the heat in the car. Now if this weather would just warm up.
Chapter 10
Our apartment is large but you couldn’t tell that from the clutter. Mountain bikes, skis, sneakers, posters, canvas paintings, frames, books are everywhere. I don’t mind the mess; most of the books belong to me. Kelly describes our décor as creative chaos. But whenever we have visitors they look around and say with awe or disgust: “Wow, you guys have a lot of stuff.”
Kelly, God bless her, thought it would be a good idea to have Whitney and her Tunisian over for dinner. She loves everyone who she thinks may share her hatred for capitalism, the G8, and status symbols. When I told her about Max, she pooh-poohed my worries. She thought it was quite admirable that Max was refusing to register with the USCIS. She thought the PATRIOT Act was unconstitutional on many levels, and thus it was okay for Max to ignore it. And put us all at risk for a raid, Elián González style.
But when Max entered the apartment I could see how Whitney had temporarily lost her mind. He was something to look at. Tall, dark olive skin, and light green eyes. My goodness, did all Tunisians look like that? And how long was the flight? Turned out, he was some kind of racial mutt; his dad was Tunisian and his mother was something else. Thank goodness for race mixing.
“Can I smoke?” he asked with a French accent. Whitney couldn’t take her eyes off him. I liked to watch her go all goo-goo over him; it made me want to laugh.
Whitney pulled out a lighter and I wondered when she’d started carrying one; she sure didn’t smoke. Kelly blanched and Max began losing points immediately.
“Sorry, dude. We don’t allow smoking in here,” James said, his mouth full of tortilla chips.
Max nodded, expansively, as if to say: You sissy Americans and your silly hang-ups about secondhand smoke and lung cancer. You are such cowards, I say!
What I was wondering was how could a Ph.D. student so “passionate” about finding a cure for a deadly disease like diabetes be a heavy smoker. I asked Whitney later and she said that his work was very stressful. Uh, okay, that explains everything.
His work, Max told us, as we sat in the living room eating the hors d’oevres that Kelly had made—chips, salsa, and a rather sad imitation of those avocado egg rolls that the Cheesecake Factory makes—involved putting proteins under certain extreme conditions and then leaving them overnight in the lab. He apparently sometimes has to wake up at two or three in the morning to go to the lab to see how the proteins were doing. My eyes were glazing over. I mean, I was glad there were people like him who were willing to spend their lives studying molecules and babysitting proteins so the rest of us could live long, healthy lives. But why did I have to listen to all the gory details? The only person not pretending to be interested in Max’s oratory was Whitney. And I was 100 percent sure she’d heard all of it before. Is that what good sex does to people?
I only grew more and more annoyed at dinner. The conversation turned to politics and James and Kelly were on fire.
“Oh, it’s total treason what the Bush administration has done….”
I had to tune out. What was Drew doing? Was he thinking about me? Would it be rude if I excused myself to go sneak a peek at my e-mail?
“I don’t care if they deport me!” Max exclaimed, his fine nostrils flaring and his green eyes darkening. “The work I am doing here will benefit Americans more than any other people in the world. I will not report to their immigration bureau! How dare they?”
Yeah, I thought, but you’d better be careful. You’ll be chilling in Guantánamo Bay in a hot minute if they ever catch you.
“You’re quiet tonight,” Whitney said. And my mind jerked back to faking interest in the present.
“Oh, just a little tired, that’s all.”
“Have you decided on spring break yet?”
Kelly and James looked on eagerly.
“I’m leaning toward going. We’ll see.”
“What is going on with the spring break?” Max asked.
Whitney and Kelly filled him in and I sat there feeling a bit pathetic. I wasn’t sure that I wanted this guy knowing all the particulars of my relationship, er friendship, with Drew. Whom I’d never met.
Max’s eyebrows kept going up and down and he kept smiling at me slyly.
“You should go,” he said finally, slapping one hand on the table. “It sounds like an adventure. He might be your soul mate.”
I could only laugh. I really hated that guy, I decided. It’s like he was just saying those things to move the conversation forward. Or backward, any which way that led to him. What in the world was Whitney doing with him? Oh, yeah. Green eyes. Good sex.
“Let me tell you about the last time I was in the Caribbean…”
Aha!!! He always had a story to tell.
Later, after Max and Whitney had left and James had gone off to sit at his laptop, Kelly and I cleaned up the kitchen.
“What do you think of him?”
“Of Max?”
She was stalling, so I elbowed her in the ribs.
“Okay, Okay. He’s kinda…kinda stuck on himself. And phony. But he seems really smart. And sexy. And I know that’s a big thing for Whitney. They’re both eggheads. But…”
“He’s an ass.”
“Um…Yeah, definitely.”
We laughed so hard James asked us what was so funny.
“Think he’s gonna hang around long enough for Whitney to see through him?” Kelly giggled.
“I don’t know,” I said, really wondering. “I’m hoping she’ll drop him in a couple of weeks. I think all it might take is one more conversation about the proteins.”
We burst out laughing