Adam Levin: Hot Pink

Joe says, “I said, ‘What.’”

“I’m sorry,” the guy says.

“Sorry for what?” Joe says, and now he’s crossing the street and I’m following him.

I say, “Easy, Cojo,” and this is when I learn something new about how to intimidate people. Because even though I say “Easy, Cojo,” I’m not telling Cojo to take it easy. I’m not even talking to Cojo. I’m talking to the guy. When I say “Easy, Cojo,” I’m telling the guy he’s right to be scared of my friend. And I’m also telling him that I got influence with my friend, and that means the guy should be scared of me, too. What’s peculiar is when I open my mouth to say “Easy, Cojo,” I think I’m about to talk to Cojo, and then it turns out I’m not. And so I have to wonder how many times I’ve done things like that without noticing. Like when I told my mom I’d kill her and waved the empty thing at her, I wasn’t really threatening her, it was more like I was saying, “Look, I’ll say a stupid thing that makes me look stupid if you’ll help me out.” But that was different from this, too, because my mom knew what I meant when I said I’d kill her, but this guy here doesn’t know what I mean when I say “Easy, Cojo.” He gets even more scared of Joe and me, but he gets that way because he thinks I really am talking to Joe.

I say it again. I say, “Easy, Cojo.”

And Cojo says, “Easy what?”

And now the guy’s stopped walking. He’s standing there. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“Cause why?” Cojo says. “Why’re you sorry? Are you sorry you nodded at me like I was your son? Like I was your boy to nod at like that? I don’t know you.”

“I’m sorry,” the guy says. The guy’s smiling like the situation is all lighthearted, but it’s like yawning after tapping gloves on your way back to the corner. A lie you tell yourself. And I’m thinking there’s nothing that’s itself. I’m thinking everything is like something else that’s like other something elses and it’s all because I said “Easy, Cojo” and didn’t mean it, or because this guy nodded.

I think like this too long, I get a headache and pissed off.

I put my arm around Cojo. I say, “Easy, Cojo.”

“Fuck easy,” Cojo says to me. And when Cojo says that, it’s like the same thing as when I said “Easy, Cojo.” I know Cojo isn’t really saying “Fuck easy” to me. He wouldn’t say that to me. He’s saying “Fear us” to the guy. But I don’t know if Cojo knows that that’s what he’s doing with “Fuck easy.” That’s the problem with everything.

“Give us your fruit,” I tell the guy.

“My—”

“What did you say?” Joe says.

“Easy, Cojo,” I tell him.

Then the guy hands his grapefruits to me.

I say to him, “Yawn.”

He can’t. Cojo yawns, though. And then I do.

Then I tell the guy to get out of my sight and he does it because he’s been intimidated.

Nancy Christamesta is no whore at all. And I’m no Jesus, but still I want to wash her feet. Nancy’s so beautiful, my mind doesn’t think about fucking her unless I’m drunk, and even then it’s just an idea: I don’t run the movie through my head. Usually I imagine her saying “Yes” in my ear. That’s all it takes. Maybe we’re on a rooftop, or in the Hancock Building Signature Room, the sixty-ninth-floor one, looking at the city lights, but the “Yes” part’s what counts. It’s a little hammy. I’ve known her since grade school, but I’ve only had it for her since she was fourteen. It happened suddenly, and that’s hammy too. I was eighteen, and it started at the beach — sunny day and ice cream and everything. Our families went to swim at Oak Street on a church outing and I saw her sneak away to smoke a cigarette in the tunnel under the Drive. There’s hypes and winos who live in there, so I followed her, but I didn’t let her know. I waited at the mouth, where I could hear if anything happened, and when she came back through, she was hugging herself around the middle for warmth. A couple steps out of the tunnel, her left shoulder-strap fell down, and when she moved to put it back a bone-chill shot her posture straight and a sound came from her throat that sounded like “Hi.” I didn’t know if it was “Hi” or just a pretty noise her throat made after a bone-chill. I didn’t think it was “Hi,” because I was behind her and I didn’t think she’d seen me. I wanted it to be “Hi,” though. I stood there a minute after she walked away, thinking it wasn’t “Hi” and wishing it was. That was that. That’s how I knew what I felt.

Now she’s seventeen, and it’s old enough, I think. But she’s got this innocence, still. It’s not she’s stupid — she’s on the honor roll, she wants to be a writer — but Joe and I were over there a couple months earlier, at the beginning of summer, right when him and Tina were starting up. They went off to buy some beer and Nancy and I waited in her room. Nancy was sitting in this shiny beanbag. She had cutoff short-shorts on, and every time she moved, her thighs made the sticking sound that you know it’s leg-on-vinyl but you imagine leg-on-leg. I had it in my head it was time to finally do something. I lay down on the carpet next to her, listening, and after a little while I said, “What kind of name is Nancy for you, anyway?”

Nancy said, “Actually, I think Nancy’s a pretty peculiar name for me. But I always thought that was because it’s mine.”

See, I was flirting. I was teasing her. It was my voice she was supposed to hear, not the words it said. But it was the words she heard, and not my voice. It was an innocent way to respond. And I didn’t know what to do, so I told her she was nuts.

She said, “No. Listen: Jack… Jack… Jack… Does it sound like your name still?”

It completely sounded like my name, but I didn’t say that because hearing it was as good as “Yes” in my ear and I wanted her to keep going. I wanted to tell her I loved her. Instead, I said it . I said, “I love it.” She said, “Jack… Jack…Jack. I’m glad, Jack Jack.”

If she didn’t have innocence, she’d have heard what my voice meant and either shut me down or flirted back at me.

When we got to their house on the day of the nodding guy, she was sitting on the stoop with a notebook, wearing flip-flops, which made it easy to admire the shape of her toes. Most people’s toes look like extra things to me, like earrings or beards. Nancy’s look necessary. They work for her.

Joe went inside to find Tina.

Nancy said, “What’s with the grapefruits?”

I said, “We intimidated a man. It’s all words.”

“I don’t like that spoon,” she said. “I clink my teeth. It chills me up.” She was still talking about grapefruits.

“They’re not for you,” I said. “They’re for your parents.”

“What’s all words?” she said.

I said, “You don’t say what you mean. You pretend like you’re talking about something else. It works.”

“A dowry goes to the groom, not the other way around,” she said.

I said, “What does that have to do with anything?”

She said, “Implications. Indirectness. And suggestion.”

Was she fucking with me? I don’t even know if she was fucking with me. She’s a wiseass, sometimes, but she’s much smarter than me, too. And plus she was high. I would’ve taken a half-step forward and kissed her mouth right then, except I wasn’t also high, and that’s not kosher. Plus I probably wouldn’t have stepped forward and it’s just something I tell myself.

“Come inside with me,” she said.

She kicked off her sandals and I followed her to the kitchen. It’s a walk through a long hallway and Nancy stopped every couple steps for a second so that I kept almost bumping her. She said, “You should take your shoes off, Jack. And your socks. The floor’s nice and cold.”