I knew he was joking, but it brought back the memory of the matted mess I used to wear on top of my head before I knew better. “No, I had a natural. Kind of like an Afro, but not picked out or anything.”
Again, I found myself waiting for something to click inside his head, for him to connect what I was saying with the girl who handed him a quickly written note fifteen years ago with her heart beating in her throat.
But all he did was finish chewing, before saying, “Really? An Afro? Nobody our age had an Afro growing up.”
I put my fork down. “Really? You never saw anybody at your high school who had an Afro? You never talked to anyone with an Afro?”
James actually thought about it, his eyes going to the ceiling like he was filing through his memory index. Then he said with such certainty that it chilled me to the bone, “No, every girl had braids or perms. No Afros.”
My heart dropped, because at that moment I realized that James hadn’t just forgotten who I was, he hadn’t even registered my existence.
It had taken every ounce of courage I had to go up to him outside that locker room, and giving him that note had been one of the defining moments of my life. But it had meant nothing to James. It hadn’t even made it into his High School Memory collection.
I knew then that he hadn’t had anything to do with the Farrell Manor trick. I could see the scene clearly now. Him standing there, innocent as a lamb on the porch, greeting Corey and not even noticing me as I approached the house in my yellow dress. I could see him not registering the ruckus or the calls of “Monkey Night” as I ran away.
Just like it didn’t occur to Andrew McCarthy that the rich girls were harassing Molly Ringwald before he met her in Pretty in Pink, it didn’t occur to James that his sisters had gone out of their way to make my life miserable and then finally play that trick on me.
James Farrell had literally not known that Davidia Jones, aka Monkey Night, was alive.
That might actually be a good thing, I thought.
Him not realizing that I used to go to his high school, that there had been a sad little girl who had hung the moon on him, made me Angry with a capital “A.”
And that Anger made any guilt that I might have had about the secrets I was keeping from James Farrell disappear. The Anger also made it easier to share breakfast with James Farrell. Made it easier to laugh with James Farrell like everything about us was new. And it made it easier to climb on top of James Farrell and finally fuck him in a bed.
It was as intense as the first time, and afterward he buried his face in my neck and asked, “Is it always like this for you?”
“No,” I admitted. “It’s never been like this.”
His lips curved into a smile against my neck. “Good. It would be weird if it was just me.”
. . .
Paul delivered me to the club doors about ten minutes before three p.m. in another one of James’s eighties cars. This one was a shiny black Mercedes 300SD with a noisy old diesel engine that ran on vegetable oil and made my arrival more than obvious when we pulled into the club’s parking lot. Paul cut off the engine and came around the car to open my door.
But I grabbed the Fred Segal bag, with my freshly laundered Strokes T-shirt and last night’s panties inside of it, and opened the door myself.
I ended up nearly colliding with him when I got out. Then there was another awkward wrestle as we both attempted to close the door after me. In the end, I just let Paul do it.
After the Door Fight, I pasted on my Stage Davie face and said, “See you later, baby” before starting to walk away.
“Yes, at ten p.m., I believe.”
I turned around. “You don’t have to come back for me.”
“Oh, I’m not coming back for you,” Paul answered.
I let out my breath, glad that I had misunderstood.
But then he said, “I’m waiting here for you.”
I looked from side to side, trying to understand what was going on here. “I have my own car.”