Adam Levin - The Instructions

Your loyal blowhard friend who betrayed you,

Benji Nakamook

The tower of my Tower of Restraint dream explicated, I returned the letter to its envelope. Then I climbed off the hood of the car I’d been sitting on — a maroon Ford Escort I was pretty sure was Botha’s — and made my way out of the parking lot.

Ten steps along, a limo crept past me, a stretched SUV with a jacked rear axel. Its wheels were chrome-spinnered, and its plates read NEWTHING, its custom-made hood-ornament a gold-plated microphone. The men in the back hung cigar smoke out the windows, and when it parked beside the dumpster Blake Acer had bombed — his blood clung like rust to the second WE — I saw they were Boystar’s dad and Chaz.

Chaz waved a hand to beckon to a woman who was chanting, “Unaccept-able,” into her celly. She stepped out of her heels and ran tiptoed to the limo. She leaned through the smoke and kissed Chaz on the cheek, and it was boring so I looked away.

The lot had gotten busier. More roadies hauled more implements down the semi’s tongue-like ramp: speakers, footlights, a soundboard. Techs inside newsvans keyed at rugged-looking laptops; dish antennas rotated and bowed. A curious bandkid leaked gooze out both nostrils while a high-haired Ashley did a curtsy at a cameraman. Some Highway 61 guys fought about a chapstick and three talking heads traded sugar-free chiclets, smiling like it hurt when smitten Jennys turned to gape. Two of these Jennys manned a table at the curb. Across their foreheads, in lipstick, was INDIANS. In front of their table, girls stood ten-deep, waiting in line to get their own foreheads INDIANS’d.

As I approached the front entrance, June leapt from the shrubs. She bit my shoulder, and I called her Jellybean and pinched her hip til she wiggled. The smell of her hair got me warm and relaxed, and we bumped each other sideways as we staggered at the building like our legs were manacled.

I think I’m friends with Benji again, I told her.

“You never weren’t,” she said.

I said, How long do pep rallies last here?

“A period.”

Good, I said. Can you get sent to Nurse Clyde a few minutes after third starts? I’ll do the same thing and we’ll meet up like yesterday.

June said she’d do it and we entered the school. The Sentinel halted us just past his booth. No surprise there — we’d both ditched detention. “Two of you: Office,” the Sentinal said.

June said, “You office.”

Jerry didn’t hear. He asked me, “How’s your mom?”

I flashed him the Look of The End.

He pretended confusion, and we followed him through Main Hall.

Boystar flyers were all over the place, taped to anything flat and stationary. Support pillars were plastered with red and white construction paper. Matching streamers hung in clusters from the ceiling like curtains. Jerry before us, we tore as we went. Helium balloons nodded and swayed, the taut lengths of ribbon that anchored them to locker-vents angling sharp in our wake. June freed a balloon and pulled out its plug. She aimed at my face, let fly, and I ducked it. It spiraled six feet and fizzled on an Ashley. She glowered at June, and June flicked the plug at her. The Ashley’s INDIANS went crumply.

Just outside the Office, sitting on a dolly, was the spotlight I’d seen in the parking lot. Inside, Brodsky’s door was closed. Empty ISS desks crowded the floor, and Pinge was smiling at a notepad. She wrote something down for a big, blushing roadie, who was leaning one-handed on the border of her blotter.

We sat in the waiting chairs we’d fallen in love in. June put my hand on the weapon in her pocket. She narrowed her eyes and bit on her lip, digging her nails in my wrist.

Miss Pinge slid the notepad across her desk.

The roadie pushed his bangs back and asked of her softly, “This your home or your celly, ladyfriend?”

“Shh,” she said, seeing us.

The roadie said, “What?”

Pinge chinned air in her own direction and the roadie leaned way over the desk. This blocked Pinge’s sightline, I saw my moment, and I kissed June’s neck and the kiss made her gasp.

I’d started by her ear and was going toward her shoulder, about to, with my free hand, squeeze her thigh so she’d gasp more, but a guy with a soulpatch was standing in the doorway.

He lifted one lip-corner and gave me the cockeye = “I can see what you’re doing, there, but I won’t tell.”

I liked him.

“The hell, Raymond,” he said to the one who loved Pinge called Raymond. “We’re chewed we don’t get a move on already.”

“Just a minute,” said Raymond.

“Are you the lighting guys?” June asked the soulpatch.

“We’re the lighting grunts , cutiepie.”

“Installation experts,” said Raymond.

“We push the lights on dollies, hoist the lights on guywires, secure the lights to their end-locales, and finally we plug them in. After that we go smoke in the truck.”

“We also gotta calibrate—”

“We don’t gotta calibrate nothing. The only other thing we do is what I already told you, but backward to the truck. That’s why you stay in school there, cutie. So’s when you meet someone you want to date with, you don’t feel pressured to prevaricate about calibrating when in fact there’s no calibrating you do.”

“Jeez, Tony,” said Raymond.

“Hey,” said the soulpatched Tony, chinning the air at Miss Pinge. “She cares about you don’t calibrate? Then pretty or no, she’s the wrong girl for you. Let me tell you, Miss: Raymond here is a progressive rock and roll musician of the temporarily defunct funk-metal genre. His talent is genius-par. World was fair, he’d be rich and famous already. We both would cause he’s my cousin and we got a band together, Blaine the Minority, and I’m not so bad at bass he’d ditch me once he made it, but even if I was that bad at bass, he wouldn’t ditch me, because he’s a good friend, and if you think that’s common in this world, you live a truly blessed life, but also you got another think coming, and you should think that think twice or even three times first.”

“Excuse me, sir,” said someone behind him. Tony moved and I saw it was Shpritzy.

Miss Pinge sent Raymond away with a hand-pat. Tony followed at his heels and made wet kissing sounds.

The Five had entered the Office with Berman.

The Levinson told me, “A friend of ours: Berman.”

Berman chinned air at June and gave her a wink. June chinned air back and did not give a wink, and that might have reassured me, but for all I knew June couldn’t wink — I knew I couldn’t wink — so for all I knew, she’d have winked were she able. It happened, however, that she was holding my hand, and she certainly could’ve given it a reassuring squeeze, but no squeeze came, and I wasn’t reassured. Reassured of what, though? That she didn’t still like him? Well… yes. Except why should I want reassurance of that? They’d broken up. They’d never kissed. They didn’t speak. Above all, June and I were in love. I wanted reassurance because she’d gotten winked at, but it wasn’t her fault that she’d gotten winked at. It was Berman’s fault. He shouldn’t have winked. He shouldn’t have gotten me wanting reassurance. Especially because there could be no reassurance. That’s what was chomsky. To think that a hand-squeeze would reassure was chomsky. Had June squeezed my hand, I wouldn’t feel reassured; I’d only wonder why she thought I wanted reassurance. I’d worry that she thought I wanted reassurance because Berman’s wink was, in fact, worth worrying about. = If June had squeezed my hand, I’d want more reassurance. And I saw it was good that she hadn’t squeezed my hand. Which isn’t to say I stopped wanting reassurance, but that all at once I saw what needed doing, not to me or for me, but by me: I had to tell Berman not to wink at my girlfriend. Had he not been an Israelite, I’d’ve thought of that sooner, gone straight to confrontation. Instead of burning sweaty seconds lamely sorting useless feelings, I’d have risen to my feet and said, Don’t you fucken wink at her.