'That's what your mama called me last night.'
The kid stared at him for a moment, then laughed, and suddenly it was like one of those sitcom schools.
He had made his first friend in Napa.
As simple as that.
'What's your real name?' the kid asked.
'Dion,' he said.
'I'm Kevin.' He gestured magnanimously around the room. 'And this is hell.'
It wasn't as bad as all that. The subject was boring, but the teacher seemed nice, and since it was the first day he let everyone out early so they would have time to find their next class. 'Where you off to now?'
Kevin asked in the hallway.
'Algebra II.'
'Whoa.'
'What do you have?'
'English. Then Classical Mythology, then PE, then Rock History, then Economics.'
'Looks like we have two more classes together,' Dion said. 'Mythology and Rock History.'
Kevin frowned. 'Together? What do you think we are? Butt buddies?'
'I didn't mean--' Dion began, flustered.
'I thought I saw some pixie dust on your shoulder.' Kevin backed up, shaking his head. 'I'm out of here.' And he headed down the hall, disappearing into the crowd which began streaming out of the line of doorways as the bell rang.
Dion stood there stupidly. Apparently he had crossed over some behavioral line peculiar to the subculture of this school, said the wrong word in the wrong way, and had offended his new friend. He worried about it all through math. But when he took an empty seat near the window of his Mythology class an hour later, Kevin sat down next to him as if nothing had happened.
Obviously Kevin's abrupt departure was a perfectly ordinary way of saying good-bye around here.
He would have to remember that.
Dion scanned the room, scoping out his fellow students. Kevin followed his gaze and commented on each individual who came under his scrutiny, revealing tidbits of gossip, information, personality quirks, but he shut up quickly when the teacher entered the room. Mr. Holbrook, a tall, thin man with an angular, bird-like face, put his briefcase down on the desk and strode directly to the blackboard, where he began writing his name in clear block letters.
He was followed through the door by the stairway girl from Dion's dream.
Dion blinked, held his breath. The resemblance was truly remarkable. The girl was wearing fashionable fall school clothes, and her hair was curled and hanging free rather than straight and tied up, but the similarity between the two was nothing less than amazing. His eyes followed the girl as she sat down in an empty seat in the second row.
She was gorgeous, almost unbelievably gorgeous, and she had about her a reserved, almost shy quality that made her seem even more attractive and which immediately distinguished her from her dream double.
He wanted to ask Kevin who she was, but it was clear from the silence of the classroom and the unyielding rigidity of the writing teacher's back that talk would not be tolerated during this period.
He settled in for a long hour, content merely to look. After a short introduction, Mr. Holbrook called roll, and Dion discovered that her name was Penelope. Penelope Daneam. It was a nice name, a conservative, old-fashioned name, and he found that he liked that.
Like everyone else, Penelope looked around as each name was called, connecting names with faces in her mind, and Dion grew increasingly nervous as the alphabetical roll call drew closer to S.
'Semele,' the teacher called. 'Dion?'
'Here,' Dion said. He stared down at his desk, too timid to look up at her, too embarrassed to meet her eyes. When Mr. Holbrook called the next name and Dion finally did look up, her attention was elsewhere, on the new student.
Smooth move, he thought.
As the period dragged on, he found himself tuning out the monotonic drone of the teacher to focus on the back of Penelope's head.
Maybe tomorrow he would contrive to sit closer to her.
The hour was as long as he'd expected, but finally the bell rang. Dion moved slowly from his seat, watching through jostling bodies as Penelope rose and picked up her books. The pants she was wearing were not tight, but she had been sitting in such a way that when she stood up they unintentionally rode up the crack of her buttocks.
Kevin noticed the object of his attention and shook his head. 'Rapidly approaching the Isle of Lesbos, bud.'
Dion looked at him, surprised. 'What?'
'She likes 'em fileted.'
'Fileted?'
'You know, de-boned. No dick.'
'You're lying.'
Kevin shrugged. 'I call 'em the way I see 'em.'
'She's not a lesbian.'
Kevin casually grabbed the sleeve of a student pushing past them toward the door, a heavyset guy carrying only a Pee Chee folder. 'Hank?' he said. 'Penelope Daneam.'
The big guy grinned. 'Cat lapper.'
Kevin let go of Hank's sleeve, turning back toward Dion. 'See?'
Lesbian. He wasn't sure he believed it, but he didn't disbelieve it either. He watched her exit the room and disappear into the crowded hall. A lesbian. He had to admit that the idea was rather exciting. He knew he probably didn't have a chance in hell with a girl that beautiful, particularly with his lame opposite-sex conversational skills, but at least he'd been provided with additional fuel for his fantasies, provided with not only the image of her naked but with the image of her in bed with another girl, doing exotic, forbidden, only partially imaginable things.
'Stuff a sock down your pants,' Hank suggested as he stepped past them.
'Works every time. When she sees that bulging bohannon, she'll be yours.'
'Yeah,' Kevin added. 'Of course, when you whip down your pants and she sees the Vienna wiener you really have, she'll dump you faster'n you can say 'tough titty kitty.''
Dion laughed. Fileted. Cat lapper. Bohannon. He liked the creative obscenities, the idiosyncratic descriptions used by the students here.
In Mesa, guys were either 'fags' or 'dicks,' girls 'bitches,' and the primary adjective used to describe everything else was 'shit.' The weather was either hot as shit or cold as shit, a person was dumb as shit or smart as shit, a job was hard as shit or easy as shit. In Mesa, shit possessed a number of contrary properties.
But the language here seemed to be more colorful, more interesting, more intelligent As did the people.
He might like living in California.
'Come on,' Kevin said. 'Let's get something to eat.'
Dion nodded. 'All right,' he said. 'Lead on.'
* * *
The bus dropped her off at the foot of the drive, and Penelope shifted her books to her left hand, taking out her key, opening the black box, and punching the security combination with her right. The winery gates swung slowly and automatically open. The warm afternoon air was permeated with the rich scent of the harvest, a heady, organic fragrance that overhung the grounds like grape perfume, thick and redolent, undisturbed by any breeze. She breathed deeply as she walked up the winding asphalt road toward the house. She loved the smell of the harvest more than anything, more than the deeper, stronger scent of the pressing, much more than the tart odor of the fermenting processes to come. She had heard it said that olfactory memory was the strongest, that olfactory associations carried the most emotional weight, and she believed it. To her the fresh natural fragrance of the newly picked grapes always conjured up feelings she connected with childhood, joyous, happy emotions not linked to any specific event, and it was at this time that she was most grateful that her mothers owned the winery.
