Chapter 20

Frat boys and biker gangs.

That seemed to be the target audience for Fight Night.  At least, based on the front yard of Theta Mu Delta.  It was all baseball caps, white button-downs, cute floral boob shirts, leather pants, mullets, tattoos, black scary boob shirts.  Great wafting clouds of cigarette smoke. A lot of pushing and shouting.  It looked like maybe he’d see a fight before he even got inside.

He had been to a few frat parties in college.  They were always like thirty guys and eight girls drinking screwdrivers around a pool table.  Fun enough, but you kind of felt embarrassed to be there. At Berkeley, fraternities were like the uncoolest thing ever.  They had to beg people to join.  They couldn’t even do hazing because all the pledges would just quit.  Looking at the front yard of Theta Mu Delta, he was pretty sure fraternities in New Buffalo didn’t have that problem.

He was across the street, leaning against a wall while he waited for Rona.  Greek Row was on the East side of campus, halfway between his apartment on the south side and Rona’s dorm on the north, so they were meeting here. 

“Yo, teacher!”  

Some random Brandon punched Gavin on the arm.  He was holding a bottle in a paper bag.  His girlfriend was stumbling just behind him in skinny jeans and stripper heels.

“This guy.”  He pointed at Gavin like he couldn’t figure out how best to sum up the obvious truth about him. “This guy’s class was so fucked up.”

“Who?” said the girl.

Gavin squinted at the guy.  He was completely generic: Pacers cap, freckles, half-assed goatee.  Maybe he had been Gavin’s student at some point, but there’s no way Gavin could have picked him out of a lineup.

“Oh fuck, that book with the blood.”  The guy bent over himself, hiccupping like he was about to fall on his head, but he grabbed the girl’s hand and straightened back up.  “Dude.”  He draped himself over Gavin’s shoulders in a kind of goodbye hug. “You’re fucking sick.”

“Nice running into you.”  Gavin said.  “Good luck with your semester.”

The guy pulled his lady friend out into the street and towards the party, both laughing, the girl wobbling on her stilts.

Fucking Rona Gomez.  He liked hanging out with her, but she always came up with the most annoying things to do. 

When she finally did show up, maybe ten minutes late like Marjorie Mendelssohn, she was with some guy.  Some punk-looking townie guy. He was tall and skinny and stoop-backed with a lot of black leather and metal studs everywhere.

“Gavin, this is Dylan,” Rona said.  The guy made a point of extending his hand before Gavin did, and his handshake was firm.  Like, way too firm.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Dylan said.

Funny. I haven’t heard anything about you.

He looked sort of familiar.  Gavin pictured him at a cash register.  Maybe he worked at White Castle or Seven Eleven or something.  Gavin really didn’t want to make conversation with him.  Luckily, it seemed mutual.

“I’m gonna head in,” Dylan said.  “Rona, I’ll text you or something.” He turned and crossed the street, hands in pockets, walking fast.  

“Who’s that?”

“I don’t know.”  Rona pushed her hair out of her face and looked at the crowd that Dylan was disappearing into. “I just met him on the way here.”

Oh!

So the guy wasn’t her actual friend or anything.  Not like Gavin, who was her friend, officially.  She had said it in the car that night: they were friends.  Gavin wanted to tell her not to talk to random hooligans, but of course she was a grown woman and could do whatever she wanted.

They crossed the street and cut through the crowd, who smelled just like they looked, cigarettes and sweat and beer.   And then there was a giant porch, with people on lawn chairs and an old sofa, passing a bong shaped like a skull.

Just inside the door, two Brandons were sitting at a folding table.  Gavin expected them to ask for ID—did they card people at frat parties?  But they just pointed at a jar on the table, with a sign: Donations for Alcohol and Medical Personnel.  Rona dropped in a twenty for both of them.

“Want a beer?” she asked.

Please.  He had never needed a beer quite so badly.

She grabbed his hand.  It seemed kind of intimate, but he was still wearing his leather gloves, so their skin wasn’t touching or anything. She was more leading him through the crowd, the way girls do when they don’t want to get separated. She walked quickly, like she knew just where she was going, down a hallway and into a giant kitchen, where the keg was sitting in a bucket of ice.

“You’ve been here before?” he asked.

“A couple times.” 

She poured two beers from the keg in that expert way he remembered from when he was an undergrad, back when it was important to look cool when you did things like that.  She was wearing a ripped black denim miniskirt—probably the same one as that time she slept on his couch—over some kind of thick black leggings.  Her hair was loose, a wild tangle down her back. If you had to put her into the Greek or biker contingent of this party, you’d have to go with biker.  And Gavin’s polo shirt and blue sweater would make him Greek, by process of elimination.

She handed one of the beers to him and lifted her glass. 

“To Maddy,” she said, like maybe she was still trying to make him feel guilty about the adopted baby in No No Not Now.  Whatever.  Maddy wasn’t even a real person and her baby wasn’t a real baby.  He clinked his plastic cup against Rona’s and drank. It was cheap piss-beer with a metallic smell, but it tasted kind of perfect anyway.

The fights weren’t starting until at least eleven, so Rona found them a corner of a couch to sit on.  The room was packed, with a gaggle of Ashleys on the other half of the couch, and bikers standing around talking about fighting.  Dylan came into the room a couple times, but he left as soon as he saw Gavin.

It was surprisingly cozy to sit in a pile of their own coats and drink cheap beer and talk about trees.  She told him about the Eucalyptus that were common in northern California where he grew up.  They were an invasive species, they were highly flammable, they had caused the giant fire in the Oakland hills.  When they catch on fire, they explode!  It was pretty interesting, actually.  She got up twice for more beer.  The second time she returned with cups of something clear.

“Gin,” she said.  “They were waiting for a new keg.”

Nothing like crappy gin, straight up.  Gavin didn’t even care.  He was in one of those moods where it didn’t matter what he drank.  It just felt really nice to be drinking.  It’s fun to be friends with your student.  Just friends.  It was fine.  He liked it.  He should do this more often.

Rona didn’t seem to mind the cheap gin, either.  Her forehead looked kind of sweaty and her cheeks were flushed pink, which looked nice on her.  She should try wearing some colors besides black and gray, Gavin thought.

“Tell me about your job presentation thing,” she said.  “I heard it went pretty well.”

What do you mean, heard?  It wasn’t the kind of thing everyone was talking about.

“Sinder told me,” she said. 

 “Oh, Sinder.”  Bad answer. Bad. “When did you talk to him?”

“Last weekend. We went to the Medical History Museum in Indianapolis.”

She kept sipping her gin and playing with a strand of her hair like nothing was wrong, like it was completely normal that she had—she must have—gotten in Sinder’s car and driven to another city.

Okay, think. There were so many problems here, Gavin couldn’t figure out which one to think about first. A) Why was she hanging out with Sinder?  B) No fair. Gavin got sensory deprivation and fight night and Sinder got a  freaking museum?  C) They better not be having sex, or he was going to kill Sinder.

“He didn’t tell you?” Rona said.

“Oh, yeah, maybe he did.”  Like I would forget. “I think he said something about it.”

“It was really cool.  Lots of organs in jars and skeletons and stuff.”

Oh god, did she make that face in front of Sinder?  The inspired-Rona face, eyes wide, not quite a smile. The thought made Gavin want to puke nasty gin all over some biker.

“Just so you know, nothing’s going on with him,” she said.  “We’re just friends.”

Oh!

“Like me and you are friends.”

“Right.”  

His heart was pounding like he’d just swerved away from a car crash.  Why did it even matter? If Rona was his friend, he’d have to be okay with her having, you know, a boyfriend.  He was okay with it. Just as long as she didn’t, like, talk about it. And not Sinder. Or Dylan.  This night was actually kind of stressful.

“I know it would be weird for me to date your roommate.”

“Whatever,” Gavin said, finishing his gin. 

<Chapter 19

Chapter 21>