The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)

The Chess Club

Previously: "A Virgil of Your Own Inferno" 

Carson holds your eye. You find his stare unendurable, and look everywhere except at him.

"Look, I'm sorry," you say. "I didn't mean to—"

"It's okay. Fact is, we've been lucky you're the first guy we've ever seen out here who might've spilled something. In fact—"

He breaks off, to cast you a critical eye up and down.

"Well, I was gonna say you could help give us some cover." He peers at you closely. "Did you come out here looking for some action?"

You hate the way the question makes your heart seem to plunge toward your knees. "Well, uh—"

"How much money did you bring?"

"I got, like, almost twenty."

"Twenty!" Carson practically has a heart attack right in front of you. "You expected—! Jesus, you are a virgin!"

"Hey, fuck you, man! And keep your voice down!" You glance around to see how many people could have heard.

"You need at least a hundred if you're going to have even a little fun out here. You know how much stuff costs? And if you were counting on going upstairs—"

"I just want to meet someone! Jesus, is that a crime?"

"It is if you're planning on cheaping out! Look—"

He puts a hand on your shoulder and gently steers you back to the table where James is still slumping.

"You didn't know what you were getting in to," he says, "you jumped in with both feet without looking. Happens to the best of us. Now you know. Just hang out with me and James, we'll help cover you." He pulls out a chair and tries to push you into it.

But you resist.

"I came out with Patrick and some other guys," you tell him. "I should go hang out with them, at least for a little. And they came with a bunch of girls, too, so I—"

You break off in embarrassment.

Carson doesn't look impressed, but he doesn't look angry, either. James looks away, and takes out a cigarette.

"Just be careful, man," Carson says. "Remember what I told you."

You nod, and turn to shamble off toward where you saw Patrick earlier. Not until you're halfway across the floor do you realize that Carson didn't invite you to come hang out with him and James later.

* * * * *

Patrick isn't at the table where you saw him, but some of the guys you came out with are. Most of them have their phones out, but they raise their heads every so often to glance about.

"Hey, is Patrick around?" you ask the table. "Dean?"

"They're someplace," says a doughy-faced kid whose lank, curly hair is plastered to his forehead with sweat. He looked up from the girl he was grinning at to say it, and now looks back down to resume grinning at her. No one else seems to pay you any mind.

"Hey, can I get in here?" you ask the guy sitting at the end of the booth. He's a Hispanic kid with a soft, babyish face, wearing a black sweatshirt and a gold chain around his neck.

He gives you a quick, sidelong glance up and down before turning away. "What you want in here for?"

"To sit down."

"You think you belong here?" He grins across the table at a white kid with a blonde crewcut who is relaxing with a cigarette—or maybe it's a joint—in the corner of his mouth.

"I came out with Patrick and them!"

"He came out with Patrick and them!" the guy mimics you with a sniggering laugh. The kid with the joint grins back. No one moves or pays any attention to you. Not even Lacie's kid sister, who is squirming hard up against the skinny, brown-headed boy she was entertaining earlier at the restaurant.

"Oh, fuck this," you snort, and you stomp off feeling very small and impotent.

But where can you go?

* * * * *

Luckily, you're rescued by Patrick.

He is standing in the atrium, just outside the massive dance hall, out of which music is blasting with the force of a supernova. His head is bouncing and jerking forward and back in time to the music, and he is swaying slightly on his feet as he searches out the floor inside. But there are only wriggling shadows in there, backlit as they are by the smoking-hot lights from the stage on the other end of the room.

Patrick jerks his head around as you lay a hand on his shoulder.

"Oh, hey!" he screams at you over the shriek of the music. "You looking f'r—?" Most of his words are lost in the musical bray. "Sara!" he shouts at you a couple of times when you shout "What?" back at him. "You looking for Sara?"

You gesture him to follow you back deeper into the atrium, where you can at least make yourselves heard by shouting. "You looking for Sara?" he asks you again.

"I dunno! Maybe?"

"'Cos if you aren't—! I thought you weren't, so I was gonna—! You know!"

"Well go ahead! Where's Dean?"

"Getting something at the bar, I think! Or using the pooper!" He grins. "You having fun?"

You think of the table you were at, and shrug.

"Well, give it a chance, man! Relax!" He grips and massages your shoulder.

"I'll go look for Dean!" You start to turn, but Patric grabs your elbow.

"Yeah, let 'im stick close to you!" he shouts. "He kinda likes to curl up into a ball when he comes out to this place!"

I don't blame him, you think.

* * * * *

After roaming through most of the bar—and noticing that James and Carson have gone—you find Dean sitting in a corner at a small table with two other guys. You don't recognize either of them, and neither of them make much of an impression on you. One of them is smoking a cigarette, as is Dean, and all three have beer bottles in front of them.

"Hey Will!" Dean calls as you approach.

"Hey! Patrick said to come look for you, keep you in circulation or something."

Dean shuts his eyes and lifts his brows in a kind of shrug. He is slouching bonelessly in his chair, so that you wonder if he's already drunk or stoned.

"Siddown, keep me company for a bit," he says. "Then I'll come with and keep you company. You know these guys?" He indicates his friends with sloppy wave of his cigarette. "This's Andrew 'n David. We went to middle school t'gether, they're at Eastman now."

"Hey." You give them both a cursory wave, then glance around to snag a free chair from a nearby table.

"It was Will's idea to come out here," Dean says as you take a seat. "He's not leaving till he's punched his ticket three times upstairs."

You stare at him. Then, when it finally dawns on you what he's saying, you guffaw nervously at his two friends. They laugh in reply, but not in a mean way.

"You come out here a lot?" asks the guy that Dean tapped as "Andrew." He has brown hair, cut fairly short, but not so short it doesn't puff out in loose curls. He's lean and you have the impression he's pretty tall. He's dressed in an unbuttoned denim shirt draped over a black t-shirt.

"Not a lot," you confess.

"This is, like, only my second time coming out here," he replies. "First time was with my ex-, so it has, like, bad associations for me."

He puts his cigarette to his mouth, takes a short hit off it, and grinds it out in the filthy tin tray in the middle of the table.

And something about the way he moves—the way hit sipped at the cigarette, held his wrist while putting out the butt—and the way he talks makes you think, Gay.

Not that this bothers you, especially. But you do turn to the other guy. "What about you?" you ask.

"I don't have an ex-," he says with a cheerful smile. "So this is all—" He spreads his arms expansively.

"Yeah, I never came out here with my ex-." You wince inwardly at this feeble attempt at small talk.

"You know anyone here who wants an ex-to-be?" Dean asks. He is leaning so far to the side that it looks like he's going to fall over. "Will's on the prowl." There's a bitter undertone to his words.

"Why aren't you back at the other table?" you ask him. "With all the other guys?"

"I saw my guys here," he says. "We were in chess club together." He lifts his chin to peer back the way you gestured. "Them's all Tiffany's troop anyway."

"Tiffany's troop?" you ask, but Dean answers by closing his eyes.

Something about his attitude irks you, and you lean over to punch him lightly in the shoulder, rousing him. "Hey, c'mon man," you chide him. "You come out here to sleep?"

He rouses himself, glances at his friends, who are now primly silent (in the case of Andrew) or preoccupied with their phone (in the case of David), then with a wince heaves himself to his feet.

"I don't really dance," he says as slumps on his feet, looking around the room.

"I don't either. But you don't wanna just pass out here, either." You knead his shoulders. "Let's go find some girls to dance with!"

He stumbles a little as you propel him gently toward the saloon's exit.

But on the way, he weaves over to the table where the rest of his friends are.

"I'm going to dance now," he tells the few who look up. "After I'm dead of embarrassment, burn me like a Viking."

"What do you usually do when you come out here?" you ask after you've got him in motion again. "If you don't dance?"

"Chat up girls."

"Well, let's find a girl you can dance with, and then chat her up."

You can't believe you're trying to tell Dean how to score. Maybe you're really trying to tell yourself?

You steer him onto into the dance hall, and push him toward a girl who appears to be gyrating in place by herself. Dean freezes up. But when you poke him in the small of the back, he shakes himself loose, and like a rusty piece of machinery starts to move in rhythm to the beat.

You watch him a moment, then look around.

* Find a dance partner of your own: "Pick-Up at the Warehouse" 
* Return to the saloon: "Dates That Don't" 

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 5)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)"