Adam Levin - Hot Pink

I said to the lisper, “I know what’s a shibboleth, and Sensei Mike’s no shibboleth. And you’re no Jephthah, either.” It came out wormy and know-it-all sounding. I sounded like I cared what they thought of me. Maybe I did. I don’t think so, though.

“Are you jogueing?” he said. “Whud gind of brude are you? Do you offden find yourthelf engaging in meda-converthathions?” He pronounced the t in often , the prick, and on top of it, he turned it into a fucken d .

All those guys laughed anyway. It was funnier to them than the shibboleth joke. It was the funniest thing they’d ever heard.

And I was sick of getting laughed at. And I was sick of people asking me questions that weren’t questions.

I pulled on Byron’s arm and he moaned. Cojo slapped him on the chops and the lisper stepped back into the crowd to hide.

The crowd started shifting. But not forward. Not in any direction really, not for too long. It swelled in one place and thinned in another, like a water balloon in a fist. It was in my fist.

I saw the lisper’s head craned up over the shoulder of a guy who’d snuck to the front, and that’s when I knew.

They didn’t stop creeping up at the patio because they were scared of what I’d do to their friend and his arm. They stopped at the patio to give us space. They stopped at the patio so I could do whatever I’d do to Byron and they could watch.

I said to Nancy, “You and Tina go get the car, okay?”

Nancy reached in my pocket for the keys and whispered, “Be careful.” Then Tina kissed Joe. The girls ran off. It could’ve been a war movie. It could’ve been Joe and I going to the front in some high-drama war movie. It was a little hammy, but that didn’t bother me.

As soon as I was sure the girls were clear, I asked Joe, with my eyes and eyebrows, if he thought we should run for it.

He told me with his shoulders and his chin that he thought it was a good idea.

Then I got an inspiration. I started yelling at the top of my lungs: “AHHHHHH!”

The whole crowd went pop-eyed and stepped back and stepped back and kept stepping back. I got a huge lung capacity. I think I yelled for about a minute. I yelled till my throat bled and I couldn’t yell anymore. Then I dropped Byron, and we took off.

Nancy was just pulling out of the parking spot when we got to the car. Some of the sickos from the barbecue ran out onto the street, and one of them was shouting, “We’ll call the police!”

We still didn’t know Sensei Mike’s right address and the girls decided it was probably better to get out of Glen Ellyn, so we headed back to Chicago. When we got to the Christamesta house, Tina and Joe went inside and I followed Nancy around the neighborhood on foot, not saying anything. I don’t know how long that lasted. It was dark, though. We ended up at the park at Iowa and Rockwell, under the tornado slide, sitting in pebbles, our backs against the ladder. Nancy opened her purse and pulled out a Belgian beer. I popped it with my lighter and gave it to her. She sipped and gave it back. I sipped and gave it back.

I’ve told a lot of girls I was in love with them. There’s some crack-ass wisdom about it being easier to say when you don’t mean it, but that’s not why I didn’t say it to Nancy. I didn’t say it because every time I’ve said it, I meant it. If I said it again, it would be like all those other times, and all those other times — it went away. And silence wasn’t any holier than saying it. Just more drama for its own sake. All of it’s been done before. It’s been in TV shows and comic books and it’s how your parents met. And there’s nothing wrong with drama, I don’t think. And there’s nothing wrong with drama for its own sake, either. What’s wrong is drama that doesn’t know it’s drama. And what’s wrong is doing the same thing everyone else does and thinking you’re original, thinking you’re unpredictable.

I said, “Maybe it’s cause he wanted racing stri—” and the sound cut off. My throat was killing me from the yelling and it closed up.

Nancy said, “Your voice is broken.”

And that was an unexpected way to put it, drama or no.

I swigged the beer again and told her, all raspy, “Maybe it’s racing stripes. The guy wanted racing stripes.”

“What?” she said.

“Don’t ‘what’ me,” I said. I gulped more beer. I said, “He wanted to paint racing stripes and the city wouldn’t let him. There’s a code against painting stripes on city vehicles. So every day he ties the balloons on the grille. And maybe that’s a half-ass way to have racing stripes, but then maybe he figures stripes on a garbage truck aren’t really racing stripes to begin with, so he doesn’t mind using balloons. Or maybe he does mind, but he keeps it to himself because he’s not a complainer. Maybe he just keeps tying balloons on the grille, telling himself they’re as good as racing stripes, and maybe one day they will be.”

“That’s a sad story,” Nancy said. She carved SAD! in the pebbles with the bottle of beer.

“How’s it sad ?” I said.

Under SAD! she carved a circle with an upside-down smile.

“It’s not sad,” I said.

She said, “I don’t believe that.”

“But I’m telling you,” I said.

She said, “Then I don’t believe you, Jack.”

And did I kiss her then? Did Nancy Christamesta close her eyes and tilt her head back, away from the moon? Did she open her mouth? Did she open it just a little, just enough so I could feel her breath on my chin before she would kiss me and then did I finally kiss her?

Fuck you.

Many of the stories in here were begun — and a couple or three of them finished — while I attended the Syracuse University MFA Program in Creative Writing. My time there was invaluable to me, and to this collection. It was also inexpressibly joyful. Thank you, teachers: George Saunders, Arthur Flowers, Mary Karr, Mary Gaitskill, Christopher Kennedy, Mary Caponegro, and Brooks Haxton. And thank you, early readers, workshopmates, and alumni pallies: Christian TeBordo, Salvador Plascencia, Eric Rosenblum, Phil LaMarche, Thomas Yagoda, Erin Brooks Worley, Keith Gessen, Ellen Litman, Laura Farmer, Miciah Bay Gault, Stephanie Carpenter, Rebecca Curtis, Adam Desnoyers, Jeff Parker, Nina Shope, Christian Moody, Sarah Harwell, Courtney Queeney, Chris Narozny, Christopher Boucher, and Daniel Torday.

Thank you, Eli Horowitz, for always showing me — or at least trying to show me — what I’ve been failing to see. This book is better than it was before you read it.

Thank you, Adam Krefman, Juliet Litman, Michelle Quint, and the rest of the McSweeney’ses for all the energy you’ve put into making this and the last one happen.

Thank you to the editors of those publications in which stories from this book originally appeared: Jodee Stanley, Jordan Bass, Rob Spillman, Danit Brown, Elizabeth Hodges, and Michael Archer.

Thank you, Adam Novy and Sid Feldman, for not telling me to go away when I was young and annoying(er) and didn’t know what to read.

Thank you, family, Atara and Lanny and Paula and Rachel Levin, for way too much to even pretend to begin to name — for all those things that make you the second-hardest people in the world for me to properly thank.

Thank you, Leslie Lockett, Leslie Lockett, Leslie Lockett, Leslie Lockett, Leslie Lockett, Leslie Lockett, Leslie Lockett.

Adam Levin is the author of the novel The Instructions , a finalist for the 2010 National Jewish Book Award for Fiction and winner of both the 2011 New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award and the inaugural Indie Booksellers Choice Award. For his short stories, Levin has won the Summer Literary Seminars Fiction Contest, as well as the Joyce Carol Oates Fiction Prize. His fiction has appeared in publications including Tin House, Esquire , and New England Review . He lives in Chicago, where he teaches Creative Writing at the School of the Art Institute.