“Can we make a serious promise to never go back to Hacienda?” Flipper demanded while he cut into the large chimichanga.
“”Hacienda is for white people who are afraid to go to Mexican neighborhoods, “ Ross stated, opening up a taco and pouring green sauce over it. “The portions are small and the drinks are watered down.”
“I think it’s good,” Jimmy shrugged.
Flipper looked at him almost in disdain and then gestured to his food with his fork.
“But is it as good as this?”
“You’ve got a point.”
“I could eat beans and rice everyday,” Macy said “Why don’t I eat beans and rice every day?”
They were at El Loco, the all night Mexican restaurant on the edge of Walter, Michigan, a town place surprisingly full of Mexicans, and they were, at the moment, four of the six people eating.
“We could stay for breakfast,” Jimmy suggested.
Ross yawned.
“No,” he said.
Macy shoveled beans and rice and chicken and a tortilla onto her plate, but yawned too.
I was wide awake, but this is what’s going to put me to bed,” she said.
“It’s been a weird night,” Ross said.
“Maybe it’s because they were playing D and D,” Jimmy joked. “Maybe this is what the Devil feels like.”
“I don’t know what the Devil feels like,” Macy said. “But D and D s boring as fuck and those folks in the coffee shop are losers. Except Ben Steger, no, even Ben Steger.”
Ben Steger was the very tall, chisel jawed but awkward bronze haired guy who was also part of Cup of Joe and was currently the DM for Dungeons and Dragons.
“It’s not that he’s cool,” Macy amended. “It’s just that I think having sex with him would be like fucking a horse.”
“Because he’s so tall?” Jimmy looked at his cousin while Flipper snorted.
“Why else?”
“Just cause he’s tall doesn’t mean he has a huge cock.”
Ross was busy with his chicken and tortilla wrap and had no time for this discussion.
“Maybe,” Macy accepted, “but I feel like he does. I feel like it’s enormous.”
Ross yawned again and Flipper said, “Alright, enough. Let’s wrap this up, and we’re going back to campus. Let’s be real friends and let Ross get some sleep.”
Jimmy nodded, and Macy went for boxes. When they went to pay she put her card out before Ross could and said, “It’s the least I can do.”
Ross, yawning, did not disagree.
On the way home, Ross asked, “Why didn’t Bernadette come?”
“You know she’s boring,” Macy said of her roommate, “I can’t get her to do anything.”
“You can stay with me if you want,” Ross said.
Macy thought on this, then said, “I’ll go to my room. Unless, like, you need someone to stay with you. You know how sometimes you want company.”
“We were all supposed to be staying together tonight?” Flipper said.
“Is that still a thing?” said Jimmy.
“Whatever’s a thing,” said Ross, “I’m going to sleep in ten minutes, and Macy, you are welcome to stay. You should. I like that idea. Even if my back will regret it in the morning.”
“What time is it?”
“Don’t ask that question.”
“It is 5:07.”
“I said don’t ask!”
They were tramping up the three flights to Abelard Hall, and when they arrived at the top floor, the men’s floor with that bare looking ping pong table in the threadbare lobby, Ross handed Macy his keys and said, “I’m off to the bathroom.”
His body had surprised him, and while he locked himself into a stall, either Flipper or Jimmy came in to piss at the urinal, and then when Ross had finally come out, his door was open and his keys were around the inside knob, but Macy was gone, so he assumed she was in the bathroom as well, and Flipper was dozing in the chair.
“Jimmy went to shower,” he said wile Ross lit a little votive candle under the Virgin Mary and crawling onto his bed, turned his face to the wall. Macy entered and picked up the comforter at the foot of the bed like a fisherman’s net, and threw it over them both, and before Flipper could say another word, she was asleep too.
There was only the little desk light on and the mild snoring of Macy and Ross when Flipper saw Jimmy, towel around his waist, walking out of the showers and back to his own room, and Flipper had dozed off when he woke up and saw Jimy returning in pajama pants and tank top, wet hair combed into two bronze colored wings and pulling a little cot into the room.
“Here we all are,” Flipper said, turning on his side in the large chair and realizing that Ross had probably slept just fine in it.
“Like bugs in a rug,” Jimmy said. “Like bugs in a rug.”
“You awake?” Jimmy whispered.
“I can’t sleep,” Flipper said from the chair where he had slept for about an hour and a half.
“How did you know I was up?”
“Sensed it.”
“Did you sleep?”
“Never did. Still the weirdest night.”
“Almost not night at all,” Flipper said.
He pushed himself out of bed. Beyond the blinds the sky was paler blue, the herald of morning, and Flipper said “I need a shower. I should have taken one when you did. I think I want a beer. Is a beer wrong at six a.m.?”
“Nope,” Jimmy said. “I could go for one too.”
“Well, it’s in my room,” Flipper said, stepping over him, and then headed down the quiet hall, Jimmy pulling Ross’s door close behind them. Abelard Hall was built like a T, and Ross’s room was on the left of the horizontal bar, but down the hall, three doors up was Flipper’s room, and he opened his door, pulled two beers out from the mini fridge and gave one to Jimmy while he sorted out his toiletries, put out a pair of shorts, and then turned his back to Jimmy, stripped efficiently and headed for the shower room. He could feel that it was morning, but the odd energy of the night had not passed, and he had become on of those nasty white people Ross talked about who hadn’t showered in the three days. The water was good and hot and the beer was cold and fizzy, and when he came back he was refreshed and felt like saying fuck class. Jimmy was drinking beer and smoking a joint, and if this had been an ordinary dorm with an RA it would have mattered but this was the senior dorm and there was no supervision, so Flipper just took a hit and sat down to drink, He casually applied deodorant and lotion and combed his hair while Jimmy turned on the radio and the Sylvers were singing real low.
“We used to play out in the rain
Your mother scolded us
She said that we were bad…
She said that we were bad…
I thought I'd better go on home
stepped it up and
You watched till I was gone
Ooh, girl, you looked so sad…”
Flipper was humming along, and they were passing the joint and feeling mellow, and he opened the mini frige and gave Jimmy a second beer while he was finishing his. And now Jimmy, whose voice was not bad, was singing along:
“Can you remember the rain?
Can you remember the rain?
You left me for somebody else
Now I must face life by myself.”
And now, Jimmy, cigarette, held tightly between his lips, wiggled low in the chair beside the refrigerator and put his hands in his pants, and then he was stroking himself and Flipper thought of pretending to ignore it, but his penis was out now, arced and thickening and so Flipper said, “It’s that kind of party, huh?”
“Jimmy’s eyes glittered through slits and this was the Jimmy Flipper knew, the Jimmy of seduction who had nailed three upper class girls at freshman orientation, the Jimmy who made girls scream, and it shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise that Jimmy’s desires extended to this moment in this room.
Jimmy’s legs opened wider as he comfortably stroked himself and smiled like the Cheshire Cat.
“I dunno man,” he murmured, “I guess it is.”
And then Flipper unwrapped his towel, and he was already hard, and he leaned into the drawer and pulled out some Vaseline, and he squirted some onto his hand and gave some to Jimmy and they both sat in the six a.m. room quietly masturbating while the sky turned grey. It all made a lot of sense now, the weirdness of the night, the inability to sleep, the strange itch, everything leading to this moment and how all of this had to eventually leave Ross’s innocent room. Flipper stood up, weak and horny and moved the four feet between himself and Jimmy, pressing his cock into Jimmy’s mouth and groaning with satisfaction as Jimmy slurped on him. The old song faded to a new one, and neither of them registered it. Flipper closed his eyes and buried his hand in Jimmy’s hair and Jimmy’s hands grasped his hips, his fingers tickling the cleft of his ass.
CONCLUSION OF CHAPTER TWO
