He began to bicker with Charlie and Cannon over the bullying, but I couldn’t hear the words. Still, I couldn’t look away. He had the strong stature of the bullies. He wore their white T-shirts and cable sweaters, but his compassion made him look out of place with them. Like a dandelion in between two thorns.
He caught my gaze. Thank the stars he was ambling through West Egg’s courtyard just in time to save me further embarrassment.
Does he remember that night?It was not that long ago, yet felt like it happened in another universe.
I nodded at Jay, worrying my expression was too blank to show how truly grateful I was that he’d stopped the antics.Is there something more to say?I wanted to ask.
I determined that there wasn’t, so I went about my way.
The menaces made me even later to field training than I wasin the first place, and I caught the bus once everyone else was already on. Mr. Dennis admonished my lateness, and I offered an apology and shuffled to find a seat as people chuckled at me. I found an open spot next to Vinny and he glared at me when I sat down.
“You got cream on your face,” he said, and turned toward the window as the bus took off.
His tone was tense and unexpected. We’d just shared pieces of ourselves the other night and I thought we could be friends. But I couldn’t shake the feeling, from his behavior now, that I’d misread that entirely.
I put in my hours at the Francophone Hotel, closing the elevator gates and saying, “What floor?”
I’d make four dollars a day for this work. It almost made wearing the tight green vest with the goldW.E.pin worth it. Almost.
I repeatedly checked my pocket watch for the day to end, and when it did finally, I took my last trip down to the main floor with a great sigh of relief.
Vinny was in the lobby when I arrived. I saw him on the other side of the sea of students, chatting to some of his other friends I didn’t know. I waved, and he didn’t wave back.
Did he not see me?I was sure he did and pretended I wasn’t there. That hurt like a bat to the chest. Vinny was the only person I might be able to make a friend out of at school.
On the bus, I took my seat beside him, and he pretended not to see me again. “I was trying to get your attention before,” I told him.
“Oh,” he said, turning to the window with disinterest. “Didn’t realize.”
What is wrong with me?I wondered, all through the ride. I sat there, feeling the awkwardness around us. Had I done something? Said too much?
The silence stretched between us through the ride. Each time I looked over, he seemed even farther away. I had this gut feeling I’d lost him already.
By the time we made it back to the dorm, the tension was a knot I couldn’t undo. Vinny went straight to his bed, barely looking at me as he set his things down.
He started up a jig piano record on the gramophone he’d brought from home. The upbeat tune filled the room as he moved back and forth between the bathroom and the bedroom, humming to himself, picking out his hair.
The piano music bounced off the walls, but it didn’t break the tension. I lay back, staring at the ceiling as he got ready for bed. And when he finally returned for good and was pulling back the top sheet of his bed, I turned and asked, “Did I do something?”
He stopped and looked at me. “What are you talking about?”
“You ignored me today at the hotel,” I said.
“I ain’tignoreyou. You showed up late to class with sperm on your face.”
My mouth dropped open. “It wasdonut cream,” I corrected him, with haste, as I sat up in bed. “And I couldn’t stop it! Charlie and Cannon targeted me the moment they saw me.”
Vinny looked unimpressed with my excuse. “You could’vewiped it off before getting on the bus. Ever think of that?”
“I would have had I known it was there. There’s barely enough time in my schedule to pause for a snack much less care about what’s on my face.”
“You ought to care,” Vinny said, and from his expression, I knew to take him seriously. “Have you seen this place? These folks got enough against us already, making us work elevators all day and calling it an education. You got to do better, man.”
Heat rose from my chest to my face as I considered the implications of not being “presentable.”Would I be kicked out of here?I reached up and felt my artificially softened hair, thinking about the hoops I had to jump through already. There were too many!
Vinny reached into his dresser drawer, pulled out a black piece of cloth and tossed it to me. “Here,” he said. “When you do that to your hair you got to wear a scarf to protect it at night.”
“Oh,” I said, draping it over my head. “Thank you.”
