“Who the hell buys a Choco Taco?” Zay-Rod asks as we scan the ice-cream freezer at my local Circle K. It’s late Friday afternoon, the day before the new and improved Coq Au Vinny gets reintroduced to the world at the Gilbert Farmers’ Market, and I’m trying to make sure to enjoy every second of my free time.
“I thought that was a Mexican thing,” Betts says, and Zay-Rod and I share a look.
“It’s a Mexican thing like Taco Bell is Mexican food,” Zay-Rod says.
“Oh come on. Doritos Locos? That shit’s the bomb!” Betts says as he grabs a Klondike.
We don’t even need to comment on that one. I grab a Twix, because caramel. Zay-Rod, an ice-cream purist, picks himself a Drumstick.
After we pay the lady with the scratchy cigarette voice, we unwrap our treats and start the walk back to my place. We’re pooling. My mom is the favorite mom; she grills the best hot dogs and makes the best tamales, so it’s usually our pool where we hang, and we usually wait until she just happens to be home from work. There’s that sizzling summer noise that’s actually cicadas but sounds like the sidewalk is blazing, and I can feel the sun attacking the skin on the back of my neck as we walk up Noche de Paz toward my street. My Twix ice-cream bar is immediately softer than it should be due to the heat, so I snarf it down in two bites. Olives that have fallen off trees and have been ground into the sidewalk dot the asphalt, and we have to step over an occasional gray and dying palm frond.
“So here’s my imitation of Zay-Rod doing a slam poem,” Betts says, handing me his Klondike. He keeps walking and he clasps his hands in front of his chest, which is actually what Zay-Rod always does for some reason whenever he does his slam poetry in front of the church in downtown Phoenix on Third Fridays. It’s a monthly street party where we hang out and eat food off trucks and sneak sips of beer out of paper bags.
“A frog comes out of its shell. The sun beats down, hot, hot hot, and the frog, seeking shelter, finds a … tree … and” — at this point he does this thing where he unclasps his hands and raises his arms like he’s exalting the heavens. It’s a pretty spot-on imitation straight from the Zay-Rod canon — “the powers that BE stomp the little frog.” He stomps. “Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.” I can’t help but crack up because it’s not a terrible impression, and Zay-Rod punches my shoulder.
Betts continues. “The frog needs to go back to his shell. I am that frog! I am that frog!” Betts pulls his hands back down, clasps them again, and then does a big, exaggerated bow, and I pump my fist like crazy.
“What’s your damage, dude?” Zay-Rod asks. “First off, frogs don’t have shells, dumb ass. Second off, you suck at poetry. Third, try doing something other than sitting on your fat ass. See how that goes.”
“Good comeback,” Betts says.
Zay-Rod grabs the Klondike out of my hand and Betts says, “Hey!” and reaches for it. Zay-Rod opens the wrapper and takes a huge bite, and a piece of loose chocolate falls onto his white T-shirt. He swats it off but it leaves a skid mark.
“Serves you right, ass,” Betts says, grabbing his Klondike back. Zay-Rod lets him take it and pulls off his soiled shirt.
He says to Betts, “You’re the kind of dude who peaks in high school. By twenty-five you’re gonna be bald as fuck, with a big gut like your dad.”
I laugh at that one too, because yeah, I can totally see that.
“And you,” Zay-Rod says, pointing his index finger at me. “You should have my back but of course you don’t because you’re so stupid. I think your mom and dad were brother and sister.”
I roll my eyes. “At least they aren’t father and daughter, like yours,” I say, and Betts tries to high-five me. I pull away, and when he stumbles forward, I push him onto the concrete.
“Ouch!” he says. “You crazy? The sidewalk is eight thousand degrees.”
He stands and we walk on in silence, enjoying our snacks. Betts brings up the idea of hitting the batting cages over in Kiwanis Park. Coach warned us we better stay in shape over the summer and hit once in a while. So far we haven’t done either. Zay-Rod vetoes that idea.
“So the kid, Jordan. He’s gay,” I say.
“You thought he was,” says Betts.
“Well now I know for sure.”
“You gonna bone him?” Zay-Rod says. “Or you did already.”
I punch him in the shoulder. I hate that shit. When I don’t answer, Betts jumps ahead of us and does this imitation of me that isn’t even close.
“I’m Maximo. I’m a Romeo. I make the boys all …”
I give him the finger. “You need a rhyming dictionary?”
“I was gonna go with ‘grow-me-o.’ ”
“Glad you didn’t,” I say.
“Do you like him?” Zay-Rod asks.
I laugh, but the guys don’t laugh back. “No. I don’t know. Not really,” I say.
The truth is he’s got a lot of shit going on. I’m not like in the market for drama. And at the same time, he’s so damn cute. I say, “I hope my mom is doing tamales.”
“Maximo always changes the subject when he likes a dude,” Betts says.
“Betts always talks about me in the third person because he can’t conjugate a verb,” I say back.
Zay-Rod is still stuck on Betts’s imitation. “Frogs in shells. Why in Jesus do I continue to hang out with you? You’re too stupid to live.”
As we go in through the open side fence to my backyard, Zay-Rod turns his trash-talking assault on me. “You’re the least Mexican Mexican, dude. You think you so fly because you dark and shit, but you a big old Klondike. Brown on the outside, white as shit inside.”
“Go write a poem about frogs,” I say. My mom is in the backyard, starting up the propane grill. I hear the two clicks and then the roar of the flame as she hits the lever.
“You want hot dogs?” Mom asks.
“What? No tamales?” I say back, and she frowns at me.
“Ungrateful,” she says, and she starts scraping off the grill.
“Zay-Rod says you and Dad are brother and sister,” I tell her.
She laughs. “Xavier. You were always my favorite but now I don’t know.”
Zay-Rod laughs. “Sorry, Ms. Gutierrez.” She smiles at him to show she’s kidding.
I strip off my shirt and jump into the pool. The water is still cool enough that it’s somewhat refreshing. When I go under, my head spins crazy. I like to think the heat doesn’t bug me, but it’s like 114 out and we just walked a mile. It gets to me some.
As I find my equilibrium and come up for air, Betts jumps in just about right on top of me, knocking me back underwater. My head spins again and for a second I feel like I’m going to drown.
I thrash my arms, and my brain goes somewhere weird.
“I’m gonna jet,” I say. Kevin’s dorm room.
He smirks, and he sits on my legs. “Nah,” he says. He’s smaller than me, but something about this move is so brash that I don’t even counter it. He sits on my calves and pushes down, and I am stuck. I have to laugh. What else can you do but laugh?
And suddenly I’m at the bottom of the pool and I cannot move. Time slows. I open my eyes. I feel like nothing can touch me. Like if I screamed, no one would hear. And they wouldn’t. For some reason, this terrifies me, and I don’t know why.
Then I feel a pull on the bottom of my red swim shorts. That unfreezes me. I struggle to the surface, swat Betts in the neck, and grab my shorts away from him before he can get them off.
“Why do you want me naked so bad?” I ask, trying to catch my breath.
Zay-Rod jumps just about right in between us, and this time, while we are under, Zay-Rod succeeds in pulling down my suit.
“What the hell, dude?” I say when my face once again emerges from the salt water. “When in the world has there ever been two gayer straight dudes than you two? You can’t keep your hands off me.” I bend over and pull up my shorts. I can hear my mom laughing at the grill.