like Pen’s, but that involves a husband, and right now all of it feels out of reach, as the entire world seems to be racing straight at me.
This sort of brain breezing does me no good, and right in the middle of my pity party, a cute guy in a pink waistcoat, ruffles cascading from his neck—thirtyish, maybe, with a Mexican beer in his hand—plops down a seat away from me and breaks my muse. For a second, I think it’s all hope and possibility.
“Hello, my lady,” he says, clunking his beer bottle on the table, his eyes glassy with alcohol. “I’m Zach.”
“Hi, Zach,” I say, “I’m Mafuri.” I wait through the usual confusion as he tries to decode my name. Without the Franco garb, I imagine he sells sporting goods or manages the waitstaff at a family restaurant.
“Ma-fury?” he asks.
“No, no. Not like fury. Like furry. Ma-furry.”
Still confused, he leans back before the lightbulb goes on.
“Wait. You’re that Olympic surfer chick, right?”
Just then, a drunken scamp swoops by and slaps him on the back, rustling up a cloud of white powder from his wig.
“You!” he says, pointing at Zach as he stumbles across the banquet room, eyes frat-boy drunk. “You!”
Zach snaps his head in the guy’s direction and returns the cry.
“No, you!”
The words downhill fast come to mind as Zach turns to me with the beer bottle to his lips, and utters dick before he takes a sip and decides to make me the center of his attention. Elbows on the table, he leans in, pointing his beer bottle at me, and blinks as if to recapture me in focus.
“Holy shit,” he says, talking through the powder cloud. “Riding that wave took some sack. Sack! You’ve got sack, Ma-furry!”
“I suppose,” I say, following the unapologetic migration of his eyes to my boobs, which are smashed little moon pies that I worked and reworked to make into cleavage and that now feel the tingling discomfort of a glance turned into an outright stare.
As if on cue, the familiar guitar signature from Green Day’s “Time of Our Lives” crackles from the band’s amps and buzzinates across the room. I’m worried Zach’s going to ask me to dance—you know, get in close with his stale beer breath, try to nestle his head in my boobs or something—but just as I’m about to concoct an excuse to get up and vamoose, Nixon is there, standing just beyond Zach’s shoulder, done up like Little Lord Fauntleroy in a royal-blue satin waistcoat and white knee socks, hands waxing on and off to the music. He points at himself and mouths dance? I mouth back OK in an overexaggerated, theatrical way so that Zach will take the hint. He cranes his head around to see Nixon, turns back to me, unfurls his hand as if to present his rival, and says in a faux French accent, “Monsieur awaits!”
“Excuse me,” I say, getting up from the table.
As we make our way to the floor, I grab Nixon’s hand. It’s warm and boyish, and I follow the other mesdames and mesdemoiselles tugging men behind them to the wooden parquet. Penny wanted everyone to feel comfortable with the dance music, so she went old-school and got a Green Day cover band instead of a chamber ensemble. Out on the floor, old people sway sweetly, better times reflected on their faces. Nixon’s several inches taller, all rail and bones; his body, even on the cusp of eighteen, is still searching for a way to properly configure itself into an adult’s, and it shows as he tries to lead me hand-in-hand into a comfortable groove.
“You look awesome tonight,” he says, trying to find a rhythm.
“You, too,” I say. “Your wig looks so cool. I like how you tied off your ponytail with a paisley ribbon when all the other guys used black.”
“I try not to be a follower,” he says, sending me into an awkward spin. It’s a grown-up statement, and I can hear the insecurity in it.
“That makes two of us.”
Soon the music changes into a medley from American Idiot. For me, it’s a struggle to keep up in my giant dress. My usual dance moves are reduced to rodeo style: one hand hiking up the gown, the other above my head. The bell of my petticoat is doing its own stupid thing. Nixon goes for it, unabashed teenage whatever, arms flailing, shoulders rolling, buckled shoes toggling on the parquet floor. It’s not exactly Shakeem Dumar with his slick popping and locking, but it’s Nixon’s own thing, and isn’t that what self-expression is all about?
“You’ve got some moves!” I shout over the music. He seems to take the compliment as a confidence booster and does a three-sixty spin that almost knocks over a grandmotherly type. Nixon grabs her by the arm, steadies her, and apologizes.
“That’s enough for me,” he says, and we head back to the table to sit down. I grab the fan to cool me. Nixon struggles to undo his neck ruffles, all fingers, as if he’s a man choking, and goes for an untouched glass of ice water. Sweat streams down his young cheeks, so I fan him. He leans his head back, closes his eyes, and enjoys.
“That feels so good,” he says.
“Mind if you do it yourself?” I ask, and hand him the fan. “I need to take care of something.”
I grab my phone off the table to call my father. It rings, but’s there’s no answer.
“Like I need this drama right now,” I say, poking at my phone.
“Everything OK?”
“No.” I tell Nixon. “Sorry, but I’ve got to go.”
8
Honestly, is a rundown park in South Encanto where I want to be at ten at night, with its rapes and murders and drug deals that end in flying lead and innocent blood? But here I am, French floral lace gown and all—which isn’t exactly camouflage—standing in front of a rotting jungle gym, the tension of gangland on the park’s perimeter ready to go off like a loaded gun. I might as well put the word stupid around my neck in glowing neon, but the pinging blue dot on my phone says my Dad is somewhere nearby, and if I don’t find him soon and get him to a safe place, who knows what could happen?
My surf booties are a big comfort after those biting heels. I feel the squish of neoprene as I scurry into the park—and not a nice part with gardens and lily ponds, which it doesn’t have, anyway—and crunch through dried grass, cracked pathways, and dilapidated toilet structures that make you want to grab poverty by its neck and give it a good wringing. I cross a baseball diamond with a chain-link backstop that looks as if the grill of a truck rammed into it and left a permanent impression and then stop on the pitcher’s mound to check the tracking dot. I have no sense of why Daddy is wandering out here, of all places, miles from his home (and it would not be the first time), other than that he’s totally gone off again. It’s not that he can’t handle himself—he’s a five-time midshipmen middleweight boxing champion—but when he’s facing a gun, little good his fists are going to do.
I sweep the area, my booties and gown now dusty, determining which way to go. Just then, on the street a hundred yards away, a bad-ass pickup, with blacked-out windows, all big and butch and chrome, its knobby tires tacking against the pavement, growls by and slows, and though I can’t see the passengers, I have a terrified sense that eyes are upon me. I crouch down
