In a gluttonous episode late the night before, shredded wrappers of every stripe already spread near our feet, next to the grilled cheese sandwich machine we used as an ashtray, we had ordered six buffalo wings, with bleu cheese, and a small cheese pizza, mostly out of a lack of other options. The pizza being average and the wings being exceptional, we went to sleep regretting that we had not ordered wings alone, and more of them.
Early the next afternoon--under a similar set of circumstances--now hungry and unwashed, we decided to try them again.
So Michel and I went out, in his mom's red Honda hatchback, to pick up 24 hot wings (with bleu cheese) from the pizzeria down the street.
On the car's bumper was a heavily faded sticker that said
“SAVE GREENLAWN” in big green letters. Near this, behind a red circle with a diagonal stripe running through it, was the logo of CVS drugstores.
Michel’s mom was a nutritionist who worked for the United Nations on various humanitarian aid efforts. His mom and dad had met at Cornell, at graduate school, after which they moved briefly to Santa Monica, where Michel had been born. After that, June’s work had taken all of them to Africa, where, ostensibly, her expertise was in greater need. As a consequence, Michel had grown up--for the most part--in various sections of West Africa. He had lived in Niger, and Burkina Faso, and Mali. To bring this up casually in conversation, when strangers finally inquired, often after having waxed poetic about their own, suburban upbringings, was one of Michel’s favorite things.
He had arrived in college with an uncertain manner and a stern, confused look on his face, before he settled in, stopped running, and started smoking weed. I didn’t run to begin with.
During the next four years he rocked an assortment haircuts that were intended to be ironic before they became earnest. He cut his hair short and close like Mike Tyson and wore it with a part shaved into it near his left temple. He rocked an afro, cornrows, and dreadlocks. Briefly, towards the end of our junior year, when his hair had gotten long and amorphous from months of disinterest, he faded it into a foot-tall pillbox like Kid from House Party.
Now, over a year after our graduation, he was wearing it close and well-groomed, taking math classes for enrichment nearby at Stonybrook, and tutoring physics to children and adults in the area who he advertised to in the local newspaper. Often, though—mostly, perhaps--he just sat around in his parents’ basement and didn’t do
shit.
When we came back his grandma's car was parked in the street and his little sister and her friend, the neighborhood busybody girl with two ponytails and purple eyeglasses, were standing in the driveway.
"We went in to get the tape and we saw your mess."
They put their hands over their mouths and laughed before they ran away towards the white Honda hatchback that sat, exhaust smoking, waiting, in the street. Michel was visibly disturbed.
Later, we went out to smoke a bowl in the garage because Michel refused to smoke in his backyard out of fear of the girl with the purple eyeglasses. "She's like the girl in a Roald Dahl novel," I said. Michel nodded in assent and puffed, scowling. "The one who gets killed because she found out something she shouldn't have."
In front of me was the Suffolk Life newspaper. It's bottom headline read: "Defribrillator Bill Dies In Ways & Means Committee". He was a good man, Bill. I'll always remember him walking around with that defibrillator...
"Don't worry about it dude. I can't believe you're worrying about it."
He denied being worried about it. I noted, again, that it was very, very cold in the garage, and that it was sunny outside. Michel looked beyond the fence that separated us from the neighbor's house.
"You know what makes it warmer?"
He looked at me earnestly before moving towards the button that operated the garage's sliding door.
"Closing this..."
"That is
totally fucking ridiculous, dude."
He protested as he moved closer to the door mechanism.
"This is not my idea of a good time man! Standing in a dark garage with the door closed--in February--getting high because we're too afraid of the ten year old girl next door to go outside. At 23."
Michel was abashed; was embarrassed for both us; we went inside.
