At sixteen, Delaney was an older woman—a rich older woman—who drove a cherry-red BMW convertible, a birthday gift from her father. As if that wasn’t impressive enough, Delaney had a reputation for being somewhat advanced. (We called it something a little different at the time.) We saw the way she sauntered around the pool in the tiniest string bikinis, undoing her top while she sunbathed facedown, exposing ample side boob (which we heard had also been a gift from Daddy). She loved to flirt and did not discriminate, shining her bright sexual light on everyone—married men, black caddies, and lowly bag room boys.
John and I both developed a crush on Delaney, viewing her more as a potential sexual conquest than as a girl we thought we could actually date. At some point, we placed a far-fetched bet—twenty-five bucks for every base one of us got to with her. Over the course of the summer, we managed to work our way into Delaney’s social circle through another bag room boy who knew some members, and the bet no longer seemed so unrealistic. Then, one evening in early August, in addition to getting a blow job from Delaney in the backseat of her convertible, I earned myself seventy-five dollars from John. A true windfall. Unfortunately, word got out about our escapade—and I was fired. Delaney tried to intervene on my behalf, but her father quickly squelched her campaign for justice. He also told her she could never see me again, which only fueled our interest in each other, as those things have a tendency to do.
We ended up going all the way a few nights later, which should have earned me another twenty-five dollars from John, but I didn’t charge him. It just didn’t seem right to get paid for your first time, especially with a girl as hot as Delaney.
“Did it cross your mind that this was a sexist, demeaning bet?” Bonnie asked as she sipped her tea.
“Yeah,” I said, sanding away. “I think it did. A little. But it wasn’t her first time. Besides, I got the feeling she was using me, too.”
“So you were using her?”
“At first. When I made the bet, yeah.”
“But then?”
“But then I started to like her. A little.”
“And how was she using you?” Bonnie drilled away. “Also for sex?”
“I like to think so,” I said with a smirk.
Bonnie smiled back and shook her head.
“I’m kidding. Delaney could have slept with anyone….I just made her feel like even more of a rebel.”
“How so?”
“You know ‘how so.’ Sleeping with a bag boy—a status that was beneath her. She got off on bucking the system, whether in the form of her swimwear or her choice of screws.”
“Did she tell you that?”
“Not in so many words. But she talked about that shit a lot. Money and social class. She even used that word a lot. Classy.” I rolled my eyes, feeling the inferiority all over again.
“So you didn’t feel like…star-crossed lovers?”
“No. I felt like a pawn,” I said. “Then, one night, she really went too far.”
“Uh-oh. What did she do?” Bonnie asked.
“She used the expression salt of the earth to describe my mother.”
Always getting it, Bonnie winced, then groaned.
“Yeah. I kinda lost my shit. I told her it was a condescending expression,” I said, envisioning Delaney sitting on the cement floor of my basement, sipping from a can of Budweiser, calmly insisting that the term was a compliment—synonymous with sweet and wholesome.
I told Bonnie how I had asked Delaney what about my mother came across as sweet or wholesome when all she had done was say, Hello. Nice to meet you. Would you like a drink? We have Diet Pepsi and OJ.
Bonnie laughed a hearty, openmouthed laugh. “And her reply?”
“She got defensive. She didn’t like getting called out. She liked doing the calling out….But I pressed her. I asked if she’d ever call a doctor or lawyer ‘salt of the earth’? Or if there were any country club members who she would describe as ‘salt of the earth’?…She said no, because they all ‘sucked.’ I remember thinking that they couldn’t all suck, any more than all single mothers were ‘salt of the earth.’ But I dropped the subject. I figured it didn’t matter enough to argue about it.”
“Why didn’t it matter enough?”
“Because she didn’t matter enough,” I said with a shrug. “I was over it. Her. Right then and there.”
“So you broke up that night?”
“Yup,” I said, not admitting that we’d actually had sex a few other times before I decided, once and for all, that I didn’t want to be the guy she slummed with.
It didn’t take Bonnie long to give me her full hypothesis. She didn’t use the words chip on your shoulder, but more or less that’s what she said. Basically, she concluded that I’d felt used by Delaney, my self-esteem damaged by both her and the whole Belle Meade Country Club experience. Somewhere deep within myself, she believed, I believed that I didn’t measure up—and afterward sought out people and situations where I’d feel less vulnerable to rejection. The irony, of course, was that I ended up with Beatriz, who ultimately left me, too, hence reinforcing my fears and sense of isolation. Bonnie’s words, not mine.
Her theory made good sense, but for the fact that I didn’t spend a lot of time dwelling on the past. Nor did I think much about my present lack of friendships. In fact, the only time I really thought about my social life at all was when Lyla pointed it out, sometimes in the form of concern (“You should go out more, Dad”) and sometimes in the form of an accusation when I would tell her she couldn’t do something (“You want me to be like you and have no friends?”).
But then all this happened with Finch, and suddenly I did feel a little lonely. Lost. It kept striking me as pretty pathetic that I had nobody to discuss the situation with.
Which is how I remembered that I actually did have someone to talk to. So I drove over to Bonnie’s.
“You think it’s weird how few friends I have?” I asked her pretty much out of the gate, as we stood in her kitchen and she fired up her stove to make us tea. Tea was the starting point of all of our visits.
“Weird? No. I wouldn’t use that word. You’re an introvert. Not everyone needs a posse,” Bonnie said, stressing the word posse. She loved to sprinkle in what she considered to be current slang—although she was usually about a decade off.
“But I had a posse as a kid. Before Beatriz,” I said.
Bonnie nodded. “Yes. I remember you mentioning that. One of the fellows was the guy who got you the golf course job?”
“Yes. John. Also Steve and Gerard,” I said, giving her a rundown on our foursome, how we had grown up together, roaming around the woods near our neighborhood as boys, then coming of age with a backdrop of beer, pot, and heavy metal music. When I think back to high school, I think of that group of guys, plus John’s longtime girlfriend, Karen, as cool as any dude, sitting around and just shooting the shit, talking about everything and nothing. Our favorite topic was how much we hated Nashville, at least our part of town—and how much we wanted to get the hell out of there and have lives different than those of the grown-ups grinding it out in low-paying jobs around us. With the most book smarts and drive among us, only John actually succeeded in doing that. He went to Miami of Ohio for undergrad, Northwestern for business school, then landed on Wall Street, trading bonds, smoking expensive cigars, and wearing his hair all slicked back like Michael Douglas playing Gordon Gekko. Meanwhile, I went to junior college for three semesters before running out of money and going into carpentry, and Steve and Gerard went into their respective family trades, becoming an insurance salesman and an electrician. The only real twist in the story is that when John and Karen broke up, she ended up dating Steve, then breaking up with Steve to marry Gerard. It was a wonder we’d survived those breaches of the man code at all.
“So who do you now consider your closest friend?” Bonnie asked as her kettle began to whistle, then screech. She grabbed the handle with an oven mitt, moving it to a back burner, instantly silencing it.
I smiled and said, “Other than the lady who stiffed me for the tree house?”
Bonnie laughed and said, “Yes. Other than that old bat.”
I shrugged, explaining that the four of us, sans Karen, still tried to meet up when John came back to town to visit his folks every other Thanksgiving or so, but the dynamic felt a little forced.
“So are you lonely? Or is this about something else?” Bonnie said.