Candace and Andrew Ferguson stood in front of their son’s gigantic portrait of his girlfriend. They’d driven up from Bedford that morning and had arrived on campus only minutes before.
“Is that a squid in her hair?” Mrs. Ferguson whispered to her husband. “And why are her teeth blue? Or are those her fingers?”
Mr. Ferguson furrowed his bushy gray eyebrows. “Where’s Tom?” he demanded.
“His play starts in an hour. I’m sure we’ll see him after,” Mrs. Ferguson soothed. “Here’s his girlfriend now. Be nice,” she warned. “She’s probably embarrassed to have her naked body all…rearranged like this. Especially in front of us.”
Tom’s mother was under the assumption that Shipley had already seen Tom’s painting. Not so.
“Hello.” Shipley kissed each of Tom’s parents on the cheek before turning to the portrait. “Oh,” she gasped and cupped her face with her hands.
She needn’t have worried about her thighs, or even that she was naked. Except for the neat white card tacked beneath the painting—“Shipley, December 1992”—she was virtually unrecognizable. Nothing was where it ought to have been and nothing was the color it was in nature. Her belly button was a green eye lodged between her breasts. One breast faced forward, an overripe yellow gourd, the other lilted to the side, a shriveled plum. Her legs were black talons sprouting from her stomach, her hair a mass of purple tentacles. And, in the middle of everything, an inexplicable red Macy’s bag—the only thing left unchanged.
“You made it!” Eliza bounded over and kissed Tom’s mother and father on the cheek. She poured each of them a glass of wine.
“What do you think?” Shipley asked her roommate, nodding at Tom’s painting.
“Well, it could be worse,” Eliza said. “At least you can’t see your cooter. Or maybe you can, but no one will ever know that’s what it is.”
“It’s very different,” Mrs. Ferguson offered.
“A major contribution.” Tom’s art teacher, Mr. Zanes, sidled up to them, sucking on a lollipop. Greasy tendrils of white hair clung to his drooping ears. “Shows you what can happen if you allow yourself to let go.”
“So this is good?” Mr. Ferguson frowned at the painting.
Mr. Zanes nodded, the lollipop bulged inside his cheek. “I would say so.”
“We should be proud?” Tom’s mother asked.
“I’m proud,” Shipley offered. Just because she didn’t like the painting didn’t mean it wasn’t good.
Mrs. Ferguson touched her elbow. “We’re going to the Lobster Shack for dinner after the play. We’re hoping you’ll come too.”
The Lobster Shack was a Maine fixture where Dexter students took their parents to gorge on whole lobsters, baked clams, and French fries, and returned stinking of fish and grease. Shipley’s mother wouldn’t dream of going there. Too fattening, too smelly, too déclassé.
“I’d love to,” Shipley said.
Meanwhile, Tom was getting ready for the play in the only way he knew how. The Grannies had run out of E. Stealing ether from the Chemistry lab was the next best thing.
“Ether is different,” Liam warned. “It doesn’t last. And you have to really go to town to feel the effects. It’s a short-term out-of-body super-high.”
“Sounds fine,” Tom said. All he knew was he could not stand up in front of an audience, pretend to get stabbed, and smear himself with fake blood, without the aid of chemicals.
“The Robin Hood thing is what I like about it,” Grover enthused on their way across campus. “Stealing from the rich and giving to…us.”
“Don’t worry, Geoff knows what he’s doing,” Wills whispered as the four boys tiptoed into Crowley, Dexter’s science building. The building was unlocked, suggesting that there were other life forms on the premises.
Geoff Walker, ether-knapping expert, was waiting for them. Tom had only ever seen the pale, wasted, ponytailed Geoff jogging the five-mile loop around campus or scraping the wax off Granny Smith apples in the dining hall. It was almost incomprehensible that he ever did anything else.
Tom pressed the button for the elevator. Geoff shook his anorexic head gravely. “That is not your destiny,” he said, leading the way to the fire stairs.
The ether was kept in a locked storeroom in the largest lab, on the fourth floor. Geoff had the key.
“I cut keys with my nail clippers,” he explained.
“Can we hurry this up?” Tom said. “I have to be onstage in half an hour.”
Inside the storeroom, two sizable brown glass bottles stood waiting on the shelf. The label read “Diethyl Ether,” and beneath that was a picture of red flames with the word “flammable” in black.
“No smoking,” Geoff warned. He removed one bottle from the shelf, unscrewed the top, and took a whiff. “Ah,” he said, smiling for the first time. He recapped the bottle and handed it to Tom. The other bottle he wrapped in a spare white lab coat and placed gingerly into his backpack.
“If you want to feel it while you’re up there, you’ve got to do it right before you go on,” Wills advised as he led the way back downstairs. “Just pour some on a rag and inhale.”
Tom held onto the bottle in his pocket. “Got it,” he said. He’d been on edge all day. Hopefully this would help.
“Here, you can use this,” Grover said when they were outside. He removed the red bandanna from his shaved head and handed it to Tom. “Good luck, son.”
Wills gave Tom a high five. “You’re the shit.”
Liam pulled Tom into a bear hug. “Break a leg.”
“Bonne chance,” said Geoff.
Tom headed off on his own toward the Student Union. The setting sun looked like Tang-flavored crude oil, dripping from the treetops. It was already December, but the weather was freakishly warm. The quad was littered with tired, overcaffeinated students sprawled on top of their discarded parkas, taking a break from cramming to enjoy the sunset. The day’s last gunshots resounded in the woods beyond campus as hunters all over Maine enjoyed the weather and brought in their seasonal quota of deer, quail, grouse, pheasant, fox, coyote, squirrel, raccoon, woodchuck, and rabbit. At midday the thermometer had skyrocketed to seventy degrees. Around midnight the temperature was set to drop, and a heavy snowfall would commence.
For his costume, Tom had settled on a plain white undershirt, a pair of black suit pants without a belt, and his battered Stan Smith tennis sneakers with no socks. Jerry seemed like the kind of guy who would pick up a pair of suit pants from the Salvation Army because he thought they would last a long time and they cost only fifteen cents. Tom thought he looked sort of like Marlon Brando in one of his old movies—Brando with a big bottle of diethyl ether in his pocket. He quickened his pace. He’d have to hurry if he wanted to get thoroughly intoxicated before the curtain rose.
Out in the Student Union visitors parking lot, Adam leaned into the open passenger-side window of his parents’ pickup and stole a french fry out of the greasy McDonald’s bag Tragedy had been carrying around with her all day.
“I can’t believe you said there’d be horseshoes,” he muttered.
Tragedy rolled her eyes. “The party will rock. You’ll see.”
Eli Gatz switched off the ignition and pulled on his droopy gray mustache. His blue eyes were wide and excited-looking. Adam could tell his father was nervous for him. Acting in a play was not something Eli had taken on during his tenure at Dexter. In fact, he hadn’t taken on much except Ellen and tab upon tab of LSD.
“Son, why don’t you run in and get ready?” Eli said. “We’ll stay here while your sister finishes her snack.”
Ellen sat in the middle of the pickup’s crowded cab, her stocky legs straddling the gearbox. “Her revolting snack,” she said, holding her nose.
“That’s what you get for raising me organic,” Tragedy quipped, stuffing her face.
Ellen leaned across Tragedy’s lap and admired her handsome son. Adam wore a gently worn charcoal gray 1960s J. Press suit, courtesy of Family C
lothes of Yesteryear. She’d bought a genuine raccoon fur coat for herself at the same time, just for a hoot.
“You look very smart, hon. We’re taking off for your Uncle Laurie’s right after the play. So break a leg, and have a wonderful party, but try to keep it in the barn,” she warned. “Or trash the house and get a girl pregnant—just don’t come whining to me about it.”
“Don’t worry, Mom,” Adam said.
A group of students headed inside the Student Union.
“Stay gold, Pony Balls.” Tragedy made the sign of the cross in the air with a french fry.
“Okay, see you guys.” Adam buttoned the middle button of his suit jacket and stepped away from the pickup, his body stiff with nerves. He and Tom really did have the play memorized, and Professor Rosen had been all smiles at rehearsal, but it was bound to feel different in front of a live audience—in front of her.
Oddly enough, their nightly rehearsals this past week had been almost therapeutic. Every night he got right up close to his jealousy and resentment instead of moping alone in his room. And each night Tom seemed more and more unhinged, muttering to himself and voraciously chewing gum, with paint all over his oversized, expensive clothes. Tom’s behavior gave Adam just the tiniest smidgen of hope. Wouldn’t Shipley prefer to be with someone clean and sane?
Professor Rosen was waiting for him backstage with two copies of The Zoo Story tucked under her arm. She wore a black turtleneck and pleated black corduroys. Her shiny short brown hair was parted on the side and combed neatly behind her ears. She looked very theatrical.
“Peter! You’re here.” The professor had gotten into the habit of addressing them by their stage names.
“Adam. It’s Adam.”
“Yes, well. Jerry is here too. So as soon as you’re ready I’ll go out and introduce you.”
Tom was seated on the wooden park bench where Adam was supposed to sit throughout the play, holding a red bandanna over his mouth and nose. Eyes closed, he inhaled deeply.
“Are you okay?” Adam asked.
Tom nodded, keeping his eyes closed. He inhaled again. Adam thought he could smell paint thinner.
“I’m going to introduce you now,” Professor Rosen said. She held up the copies of the play. “If for any reason you’d feel more comfortable reading from the text, that’s fine too.”
Adam and Tom shook their heads.
“Well, just know I have these, if you get into trouble.” The professor blew them a kiss. “Good luck, boys.”
Tom stood up abruptly and left the stage. Adam took a seat on the bench, his shoulders slumped. The lights went out. A single beam shone upon the red velvet curtain. Inside the glass-fronted lighting booth at the back of the modern, three-hundred-seat auditorium, Nick sneezed explosively.
Perched in one of the ergonomically designed front row seats, a beaming Professor Blanche sat with a sleeping Beetle tied to her chest with a yard of hemp fabric bought at the Common Ground Fair in Unity. There was a smattering of applause as Professor Rosen walked onto the black lacquered stage to greet the packed house.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for coming. It’s my pleasure to introduce two very talented freshmen actors, Tom Ferguson and Adam Gatz, performing The Zoo Story by Edward Albee. I read the play for the first time in college—a hundred and ten years ago—and it’s stuck with me ever since.”
Body twitching and saliva oozing from the corners of his mouth, Tom peeked at the audience from offstage. His parents were sitting in the front row. Shipley sat next to his mom, holding his mom’s hand. Eliza sat next to Shipley. The three of them whispered back and forth, giggling like nervous schoolgirls.
Professor Rosen bobbed up and down on the balls of her feet. Her hair was a helmet of copper beneath the spotlight.
“My seven-month-old has a thing for bubbles,” she said. “I blow them for him until my mouth hurts and I can’t take it anymore. He watches them, floating around in the air and bursting. Sometimes two bubbles bump into each other and float around together for a while until they both burst. This play is sort of like that—two totally separate bubbles colliding and floating around together, until they burst.” She clapped her hands together. “Pop!”
The spotlight dimmed. Tom staggered against the closed curtain so violently there was a murmur from the crowd. He shut his eyes, blacking out for maybe three seconds, maybe three hours, maybe an entire week. The curtain opened. The play had begun.
Adam took off his suit jacket, folded it carefully down the middle, and laid it on the bench. He loosened his tie, waited a few seconds, then pulled it off completely and laid it down on top of the jacket. For a minute he just sat there, looking out at the audience as if it were a baseball game. Shipley was in the front row. He scooted back on the bench and looked up at the ceiling. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Then he picked up his magazine, which happened to be the December issue of A Muse, Dexter’s literary journal, hot off the press. Shipley had written one of the poems. It was in the table of contents: “The Years Between Us,” a poem by Shipley Gilbert, page 11.
Tom swaggered in from offstage, shoulders twitching, fingers flapping, knees all wobbly, and an actual river of spit gleaming on his stubbly chin. “I’ve been to the zoo,” he slurred.
Adam was busy looking for page 11. He didn’t even look up.
“I said, I’ve been to the zoo. MISTER, I’VE BEEN TO THE ZOO!”
Tom’s voice was wet and throaty. His words were garbled and hardly intelligible. A few people in the audience tittered nervously.
Adam looked up from Shipley’s poem. He was pretty sure he’d only understood what Tom was saying because he knew the play so well. “Hm?…What?…I’m sorry, were you talking to me?”
Tom did his best to keep his eyes open. He couldn’t believe his parents were here. And Shipley, with her face showing and her body parts in all the right places. She looked sweet and unfamiliar, which would have added to her allure had he not been so completely out of his head. Ether was nothing like ecstasy. It was not a touchy-feely sort of drug. It did not arouse the senses. The only thing aroused in him was the screaming pace of his heart. He was alive—but barely.
He wiped the spit off his chin and waggled his head from side to side to keep from blacking out again. Honestly, the play gave him a hard-on every time he performed it. It was as if it had been written for him. He could feel it—he could feel it all over—and even though his mouth wasn’t quite working right, the audience was fucking in love with him, he could tell.
The boys roared through the first half of the play, easy. Adam kept his eyes on Tom, forcing himself not to look at Shipley. During the funny parts, he could hear his parents’ and Tragedy’s hooting laughter coming from way in the back.
Tom hawked up a big ball of phlegm and spat it out right there on the stage before beginning his monologue.
“ALL RIGHT. THE STORY OF JERRY AND THE DOG. What I’m going to tell you has something to do with how sometimes it’s necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly….”
He went on to tell the story of how he, Jerry, had a problem with his landlady’s dog. Jerry lived in a crummy boardinghouse in Manhattan, and this dog, who was black, all black, except for his constant red erection, growled at Jerry whenever he came and went. First, Jerry bought the dog hamburgers in an attempt to win him over. When that failed, he poisoned the hamburgers. The dog got sick but he didn’t die, and their relationship actually changed for the better. Finally they understood and respected each other.
At one point during the monologue, Tom got to say the words “malevolence with an erection.” Saying it felt awesome, like there were fireworks exploding out of his teeth. He couldn’t believe he got extra credit for doing this. Extra credit for talking about erections out loud in front of an audience—fucking awesome.
From up high in his booth, Nick had a perfect view of the front row. He watched as Eliza picked the cuticles of both th
umbs until they bled. She yanked at a thread in her black tights until it formed a large hole and then she picked at a scab inside the hole. She chewed on the ends of her dark hair. She clenched her fists together until her knuckles turned white. Sometimes she smiled. Eliza was a minor celebrity now that naked portraits of her were on display all over the art studio. Beside her Shipley looked very small and blond.
Tom was outrageously good. He stole the show, pacing and gnashing his teeth, spitting and gesticulating. Adam wasn’t bad either. He was the perfect example of the status quo—someone who doesn’t speak his mind and never steps outside the box. It was nice, how Peter was actually helping Jerry by sitting there, listening, just like he, Nick, was helping the creep who’d been sleeping in his yurt by not calling campus security.
First there was the pile of blankets and clothes. Then there was the book, Dianetics, which Nick had ignored. He was tired of seeking solace in platitudes. How could you get inner peace from an outer source? Then there was the stove Eliza had given him, which Nick had left unopened in its box. He preferred to eat in the dining hall, where he could fill his plate as many times as he liked, where there were croutons and eight different choices of salad dressing. He didn’t even have to do the dishes. A few days ago though, he’d gone out to check on the yurt and found the stove all set up. A still-warm can of SpaghettiOs lolled on the floor. Well, at least someone was using it.
Tom had just finished his long dog monologue. Now he and Adam were fighting over the bench. Tom pushed Adam and Adam fell on the floor.
Shipley squeezed Tom’s mother’s hand. “Watch out!” she cried. “He’s got a knife!”
Everyone in the audience craned their necks to look. A few girls giggled. Eliza nudged Shipley with her elbow. “None of this is real, stupid,” she whispered in Shipley’s ear. Tom was a surprisingly kickass actor. His voice didn’t even sound the same. And Adam was pretty decent too.