My neck was itching like a fat man around dinnertime from the starchy collar of the tuxedo I had on for my wedding to my aunt. Yeah, my aunt.
I was standing there—hand on neck, fingers scratching furiously underneath my greasy hair and tight collar—in the hallway of my high school, the last person in the drink line. The people in front of me were dressed up, too. Some of them were my relatives, but I didn’t recognize everyone. The line was moving slow. The bartender mixed drinks from large plastic handles of Dark Eyes Vodka. Everyone was drinking vodka. Vodka tonics, vodka cranberrys, screwdrivers, all vodka drinks. The hallway smelled like rubbing alcohol.
There were tons of purple and gold—my high school colors—flowers stemming from dark green vines sitting in baskets atop the old blue lockers with rusty edges that lined the hallway. The old cafeteria was to my left. The library to the right. The vines and flowers grew down around and over the blue paint of the lockers slowly, curling and stretching out like snakes slithering through sand. Standing in line, I watched the vines and flowers move up and down the lockers, covering them, making the blue paint and rust spots less and less visible.
No one else seemed to notice.
“Hey man,” I heard from over my shoulder, “Congratulations!” I turned around and saw my pal Red running down the handicapped ramp on the left of the fluorescent-lit hallway, about twenty yards away. “I didn’t even know you were getting married. I had to hear it from your mom. Thanks, dude!” He jumped over the handrail of the ramp and landed miraculously behind me in line. “Try the vodka,” he insisted. “I picked it out this morning. I thought it was a good theme for a wedding.” Red also wore a tuxedo.
I nodded.
“Dude,” he said, “Why are you marrying your aunt again?” Red bounced up and down on the heels of his rented patent leather shoes. He has the tendency to do this when he’s excited. Bouncing up and down and grinning like a goon is something I’ve known Red to do for a long time. “It’s a long story,” I said.
He looked down at the red rose on his lapel. “This is a long line, brotherman.”
Red—Red Wiener if you want his full nickname—had been my best friend since third grade when we used to walk home from school together. One cold January day, after weeks of walking the same route without talking, Red started picking up frozen dog turds and throwing them at me. His chubby, flushed cheeks vibrated with the giggles. To the best of my recollection, he was bouncing up and down on his heels then, too.
Red fingered the rose on his tuxedo jacket, but kept his eyes on me. I noticed little drips of blood leaking out from where the bobby pin held the rose—which seemed to be overflowing with liquid, like a heart ready to explode—to his jacket. Drops of blood smeared over the tips of Red’s fingers. “So why you getting married again?”
I watched Red’s fingers fiddle with the rose and the blood that trickled over them, over the back of his hand, seeping into the cuff of his shirt. “My family’s making me.”
Red didn’t notice the blood on his hands. He was still curious about the wedding. “You do something wrong or something?”
“No.”
“Then what gives?” Concern splashed across his face. Like if I said the word, he’d drive me out of there. Tires screeching, smoke on the asphalt, a mad dash getaway.
Blood slid down his lapel and hand onto the forearm of his white shirt and tuxedo jacket. The wet blood saturated the jacket, giving the black fabric a strange, wet shine. He still didn’t notice, waiting for my answer.
“Well—,” I started to answer, but the line moved forward one person and Red nodded at me to move ahead like he was in a hurry. I stepped forward. This seemed to satisfy him. I began again. “She’s divorcing my uncle and my family isn’t okay with it ‘cause they have three kids so they nominated me and I beat my cousin in the vote, he’s only ten, never really had a chance, and now I’m here.” I stared at his bloody fingers and the rose on his lapel, throbbing, heaving up and down like a sprinter’s chest after a race. “They didn’t want the kids growing up without a father, I guess.” I pointed at the pulsating mess on his tuxedo jacket. “Uh…Red—.”
He cut me off. “Wow! Congratulations! What a great love story!” Red slapped me on the back with his soaking hand, a smile streaming across his face like silly string shooting out of an aerosol can, his legs bouncing up and down again. “You know what this means, right?”
I kept pointing at the throbbing flower on his jacket.
“It means you lose.” He shook his head, still bouncing.
I didn’t follow.
Then, Red began pulling something from underneath his tuxedo shirt, smearing blood all over the front buttons. He struggled with his tuxedo, not trying to interrupt its smooth lines and folds. “Just wait,” he said, his smile never wavering. He undid his cummerbund, leaving a smudge of blood across its silver lips, and dropped it on the linoleum floor. He kept pawing at his shirt. Suddenly, he paused and looked up at me like a father looks at a relative when his son misbehaves.
“Fuck it,” he said, undoing his belt, unzipping his pants. Crimson still dripped from the rose down the front of his jacket and shirt.
Finally, pants around his ankles exposing boxer shorts with little green golfers on them, he had what he was looking for. He clutched a framed picture tight against his chest, squeezing more blood out of the rose, the picture smothered against his body, red dripping down over the frame and the cardboard behind it.
“What are you doing?” I looked around, hoping my family wouldn’t see him bouncing behind me in the drink line, bloody as hell, pants on the floor clutching a picture. In any situation, that’s embarrassing.
“You lose the bet,” he kept saying over and over again, waving his finger at me like I had just done something naughty.
People started crowding around.
The flowers and vines reached out from the bottom of the lockers, starting to curl out on the white linoleum floor.
“Hey buddy!” Red’s bloody hand on my shoulder now. “You lose now you’ve got to say goodbye to Tori.” Red grandiosely held the picture up over his head and slowly turned it around, showing it to me. The rose beat furiously. Blood poured from his chest in buckets.
The picture was of Tori Spelling. She was wearing a white sweater and gold earrings that dangled from her floppy ears. Dark roots sat ugly like rotten weeds on a golf course underneath her bleach-blond hair.
“Say goodbye, baby!” Red kept shouting.
Everyone was looking at us and listening to Red like he was making sense. His shirt was saturated, its dripping red tails hanging loosely over the green golfers on his boxers.
My parents were standing next to us now. I looked at Red like I wanted him to stop. I didn’t want to try and explain this to them.
My mother placed her hand on my tuxedo-padded shoulder. “Now say goodbye to your childhood crush,” she said in a high-pitched motherly voice, like she was asking me to clean my plate. “Do like your friend Red Wiener says.”
“I don’t know what he’s talking about.” I looked at my mother for some matronly understanding and she just frowned, disappointment glaring on her face like the dark roots underneath Tori Spelling’s platinum hair.
Red brought the picture back down to his side, his other hand over the beating rose, blood squeezing through his fingers. He looked so sad, no longer smiling. He touched his cheek, smearing blood across the side of his face, feet steady on the ground.
“Oh, honey,” my mother said, hand still on my shoulder, “don’t let your friend down.”
“Son,” my father said, stepping closer to me. “Do what you’re supposed to.” He stood arms folded, glaring at me.
Everyone in the circle around us, my whole family and some people I didn’t recognize at all, nodded their heads yes.
The flowers and vines kept stretching out from the foot of the lockers, running towards me and all the people by the vodka bar, overlapping and mingling within themselves, twisting and turning, the vines making complicated knots and the flowers blooming huge purple and gold pedals.
I felt sweat in my armpits and on my chest. My collar kept itching. With one hand on the back of my neck, I said “Okay.”
Red smiled again. Bounce, bounce, bounce.
My parents looked at each other like they taught me well. Couples in the crowd hugged. I took the picture from Red.
“Umm…bye, Tori,” I said, holding the picture out in front of me with one hand, eye level, still itching with the other. My neck became more and more aggravated.
“Now kiss it.” Red said, the goon. He clapped his hands and little specks of blood flew all around him, dropping to the white linoleum, leaving tiny puddles at his and my feet.
Everyone waited. The vines and flowers started wrapping loosely around people’s ankles. No blue paint or rust was visible on the walls.
“Kiss it. Come on and kiss it,” Red kept saying.
People had stopped talking, all I could hear in the hallway was the faint scratching noise of leaves brushing over linoleum. My parents stood arms folded, warning me not to misbehave.
I kissed the picture.
Applause shot up from all around me like cannons going off. My father hugged me. My mother hugged Red, stifling his bouncing. When she let go, blood stains covered her white dress up to the shoulders of her cardigan. She looked like a butcher.
“You’re ready to be a man, son,” my father whispered in my ear, close enough to kiss me.
“Thanks.” I didn’t know what else to say.
The crowd clapped and cheered. Some held up banners and signs with my name on them.
I didn’t know what to do so I excused myself from line and said I had to go to the bathroom.
People kept cheering. They nodded and looked at me with faces that told me they understood. The banners and signs bounced up and down above their heads. I waved like Miss America.
I think it goes without saying that I didn’t want to marry my aunt—no matter what the vote was—but everyone seemed so excited about it. Like it was something I should do, needed to do. I didn’t want to let everyone down. They had gone through so much trouble.
I walked through the crowd of people past where my old locker used to be, now covered in the purple and gold flowers and vines, down the corridor towards the old locker room. I turned the corner and saw football players fully clad in purple jerseys and yellow helmets. I stopped for a second and wondered why they would have scheduled a football game on the day of my wedding.
At the top of the hallway, the players made a crease for me to pass through. Each held their hand out to give me a low-five.
My old football coach, Coach, stood at the far end of the corridor on a little green bench, giving a pre-game speech. The crease collapsed behind me as I walked down the corridor, slapping low-fives. The players rammed their helmets into each other as I passed by, moving down the ramp towards Coach.
“Did you see what that kid said in the paper?” he yelled, holding up a newspaper clipping showing a picture of the Twin Towers in New York City with giant holes and flames scattered across their frames. The headline read: Bin Laden Most Likely Responsible for 9-11 Attacks. “Did you hear what that kid said?” Coach repeated over and over again, the words reverberating, ricocheting off the walls in the corridor. In front of his bench, I stopped and looked straight up at him. Cocking my head like that only made my neck itch worse.
Coach, wearing a baby blue jogging outfit, raised his arms to hush the players. “You know what?” he said casually, his head bobbling around, surveying his team. “We’re gonna make them EAT THEIR WORDS!” With this, he took the newspaper clipping, crumpled it up in his hands and stuffed it in his mouth, swallowing it down, beating on his chest as he did so. The team roared and slapped their shoulder pads against each other and the concrete wall. Over the shoulders and heads of the players, up at the top of the corridor, I saw little specks of purple and gold blooming slowly around the mouth of the hallway, the vines growing and stretching green over the walls and ceiling, sliding down, gaining momentum, towards me and Coach.
Some of the vines slid off the wall and covered players, pinning them against the concrete. They just kept on hooting and slapping each other high-fives and banging into each other, even the ones wrapped up in vines and purple and gold
