Frank Portman - King Dork

It all went back to Dud Chart. Sam Hellerman hadn’t tried to exempt me from the contest, as he had said. Quite 290

the contrary: he had set me up, as he had done with all the Hillmont High School Untouchables, organizing my presence at the party, and advising Celeste Fletcher on how to dress and behave to “push my buttons” effectively when I got there. My point value had been high, and she had wanted to win. Why such a complicated plan? Well, an ordinary Make-out/Fake-out would have been unlikely to succeed because I was well aware of the technique and was always on guard against it, almost maybe to the level of paranoia. There had been Make-out/Fake-out attempts the week before the party, in fact, which I had wiggled out of—maybe those had been part of Dud Chart, too. I don’t think you got any points for a failed attempt, so they had to figure out a trickier, more elaborate way. Plus, from what I knew of the Sisterhood, Celeste Fletcher is one of those people who just prefers things to be elaborate. Sam Hellerman is certainly like that.

In fact, the Fiona project had Sam Hellerman written all over it, even down to the name, which probably had had a subtle influence on me because it sounded kind of English and rock and roll had made me a devil-head Anglophile.

This had been at an early stage in the Dud Chart game, where the object had just been making out rather than something really serious and extreme like walking around Center Court. Her plan had only been to get to second base in a publicly observable setting. That, and not ladies’ week, was why she hadn’t wanted me to go down her pants, why she had directed my attention to her tits instead, and also presumably explains her stalling, constantly glancing around the room, and eventual sudden instigation of the making-out part. She had been waiting for the witnesses to show up. Witnesses.

How embarrassing.

As for Sam Hellerman, he clearly had his own little obsession going for Celeste Fletcher qua Celeste Fletcher, and 291

her true fake identity made some of his behavior just a bit easier to understand. He had been pissed off and jealous when, according to my slightly exaggerated account, he heard it had gone beyond second base, which hadn’t been the “deal.” On top of that, he hadn’t wanted me to find out the real story, not to mention his role in it. So he attempted to dampen my interest in the imaginary mystery girl and to draw my attention away from the real girl who stood behind her. He wanted Celeste Fletcher to be his imaginary fake girlfriend rather than mine. Pointing to Deanna Schumacher, who had been selected for her glasses and her distant location, had been a diversionary tactic that totally would have worked if I hadn’t called her up and if she hadn’t been the kind of girl who would say “you’d better come over, then” in that situation. That was just a crazy stroke of luck.

The basic scheme was clear almost as soon as I heard Celeste Fletcher say “mamelukes.” I filled in more details later.

In the meantime, we were just staring at each other, trying to guess what the other was going to do.

I don’t know what normal people would have done. The girl would flounce out of the room in tears. Or the boy would say something along the lines of “leave me, I would be alone.”

Or they would have a big, soul-baring conversation that would drag on deep into the night, until somebody eventually ended up hitting somebody else with a heavy object.

But we weren’t normal people. And this situation (a pretty hot girl standing in front of you with your name scrawled all over her in black Sharpie) doesn’t come up all that often.

Believe it or not. So what I did was, I reached out to touch the Trombone Chablis Ampersand breast and dipped two fingers under the T-shirt and bra from above. And what she did was to lean into me and to start sticking her tongue into my mouth and saying “mmmm.” Soon we were fully making out, and it 292

was just like at the party, except she wasn’t in Fiona costume, and I was in pajamas instead of my army coat, and instead of a sound track of distant mod-related music, there was only the sound of Mr. Aquino’s moaning.

Soon I had my other hand on the Chi-Mo breast and was moving the TCA hand down to the back waistband of her jeans so it was jeans-underwear-fingers-skin, and instead of resisting like before, she scrunched up so I could reach farther down, though it was a pretty tight squeeze. This was more like it. The autographs were getting smudged, so she said,

“You’ll have to redo these sometime.” Sounds good to me. If you insist.

Then, and you can believe it or not, I don’t really care, she reached her hand under the covers, said “Let me see if I can help you with that,” and started to give me what I believe is technically referred to as a hand job. Mind-blowing.

I was thinking that there was a fairly good chance of this developing into full-blown ramoning. At this point in the proceedings, however, Mr. Aquino’s moans got louder and he started to wheeze. “Someone’s coming!” I said. We shared an extremely brief slan look about that hilarious choice of words—yeah, because we slans love our sophisticated jokes—

but she quickly disengaged, straightened herself up, reached into her back pocket, handed me a folded note, mimed a little kiss, and left the room.

The new visitor, I kid you not, was Deanna Schumacher, wearing her IHA uniform. She and Celeste Fletcher glared at each other as their paths crossed at the curtain. I shoved the note down behind my pillow with Sam Hellerman’s envelopes.

“Who was that?” said Deanna Schumacher.

“Sam Hellerman’s illicit lover,” I said.

“She seems like a bitch.” She sat on the edge of the bed.

293

“You have no idea,” I said. Which was true.

Deanna Schumacher launched into her usual alternating hot/cold, mean/nice, hostile/polite routine. I’ll tell you one thing: navigating the twists and turns of a Schumacher conversation is way easier when you’re on prescription medication. It’s the only way to go. I just bided my time, till, as expected, she finally finished being schizophrenic and we started to make out.

“Let me see if I can help you with that,” she said, sticking to the script. But Deanna Schumacher had had a lot of practice with that sort of discreet, sheet-covered help and she knew what to do. It was just like in her room, with a similar sense of urgency and looming time limit, but also with perhaps a bit more confidence on my part. Everything went well, and there were no interruptions. And I was glad all over all over again. Then she left, calling me a jerk, reminding me that Mondays and Thursdays are best, and asking that I say hello to my mother for her.

R EADI NG MATTE R

When I was sure Deanna Schumacher had left the room for good, I retrieved Celeste Fletcher’s note. I had to laugh a little, because I hadn’t known what to expect, but I probably should have. It said my band rocked, blah blah blah, and there was a phone number; if I ever felt like killing some time I could call her. “Wednesdays are best, till around ten.” Hey, but what about the other day when her boyfriend works late?

Maybe that’s Sam Hellerman’s day. Or Shinefield’s. Well, at least the work schedule proved Celeste Fletcher and Deanna Schumacher didn’t have the same boyfriend. That sure would have complicated things.

294

She had written the note before she knew that I would have learned the Fiona secret by the time I read it. But it didn’t make much difference. Maybe I should have been more irritated by the deception, but without it, and without her having slipped up and my having realized it, the hospital make-out session wouldn’t have occurred, so I was mostly glad it worked out the way it did. Whatever. Celeste Fletcher was hot and I was more or less totally into her, details be damned. Though I had to admit, I preferred her in Fiona drag.