An Election of Words

2 Alma Mater By Travis West

After making his rounds through the school gymnasium, shaking hands, signing a few books, taking photos, recognizing most of the faces and pretending to recognize ones he didn’t, Mike needed a drink. As one of the two famous alumni of his graduating class, he had expected a busy evening, but the amount of attention surprised him; funny how a string of successful novels made those who had never given previous notice suddenly remember their favorite memories of him. He didn’t think he would ever get used to it, but he supposed old best friends he’d never had came with the territory.

He contemplated the makeshift bar situated at one end of the gym. His thirst for a gin and tonic bordered on lust, but Dave Everhardt was bartending. In school, Dave was one of those guys, loud and obnoxious, who gave Mike a hard time, altering his last name from Buxton to Butt-Ton. Mike never feared Dave, but he didn’t necessarily want to converse with him either. The self-serve punch bowl would do for now.

With a cup of punch in hand, he found a spot against the wall to stand and observe the entire gym—the old schoolmates, aged and changed, bits of conversation drifting in from all directions, and, by God, the Secret Servicemen at every entrance. Mike never would have guessed he’d be searched entering a class reunion.

“Surreal, isn’t it?”

He turned toward the direction of the voice, saw no one, then looked down upon a mass of red curls atop a doll’s face. “Betsy Hurley? My, you look exactly the same. How’ve you been, Bite-Size?”

She raised an eyebrow at the old nickname. “You wish you could bite into this, Butt-Ton. Keep dreaming, and it’s Ludlow now.”

“You got married. Congratulations.” Mike raised the punch.

“Save it. I’m going through a divorce.”

“Ah, divorce. I had one of those.”

“I heard. 60 Minutes.”

He considered her for a moment. “Yes, very surreal. Since you’re getting divorced does that mean you might be available for that bite?”

Betsy punched him in the hip, playfully but not so lightly and smiled.

“You’re an asshole.”

“Just like old times, sister.”

“Besides”—she gestured toward the Secret Servicemen—“aren’t you waiting for our future vice president?”

“Nadine? Possibly. Probably … yeah. Who knows if they’ll win though? The election is still three months away.”

“They’ll win. Wow! A bestselling novelist and a United States Vice President from Cortez High School. From the same class no less. I never would have imagined.”

“Me neither, to tell the truth. I’m surprised the school isn’t swarming with media.”

“They don’t know she’s coming. You did though, huh?”

“Just wishing, I guess.” He hoped he didn’t blush and give himself away.

“Have you kept in touch with her?”

“No,” he lied.

“Is she the only reason you came tonight? You missed our ten- and twenty-year get-togethers.”

He almost lied again, then thought better of it. “Yes.”

“That’s fair. You didn’t miss much.”

“I missed you, Bets. I missed seeing Richie Meyer before he passed away. I missed Nadine. Even Glenn Cooper.”

“Nadine’s never made it. Although she’s obviously expected tonight. Glenn Cooper, you haven’t missed anything. He’s wasted himself.”

Mike had his own reasons for avoiding Glenn, his high school best friend. “The thing about Glenn is he—”

“He’s right there,” Betsy interrupted.

Mike searched the gym but didn’t see the face he was sure he would recognize.

“Oh no, no!” Betsy began run-walking across the gymnasium.

Mike followed; beyond Betsy, he saw a tall, thin man, balding and gray, almost nose to nose with one of the Secret Service agents. That’s Glenn. God, he’s worse than I’d imagined.

Everyone in their class may have been pushing fifty, but Glenn looked an unhealthy sixty-five, his face terrained with crags and gullies. His eyes revealed his drunkenness.

“I was her boyfriend, pal,” Mike heard him declare as he approached. “I loved her. Do you? Huh? You better protect her with your goddamn life, or you’ll be answering to Glenn Cooper. That’s my name.”

“Glenn!” Betsy shouted. “That is enough. Take a seat before you get in trouble.”

Glenn faced her. “This is none of yours, Betsy. I’ve known you since the sixth grade. Don’t you cunt up on me now, girl.”

Betsy gasped in disbelief, but he had already returned his attention to the agent.

“Nadine Simoneau—Senator Nadine Simoneau—is a greater treasure than you’ll ever understand, even if her politics don’t exactly align with my own. You ever seen her naked, buddy? She ever let you touch her—”

“Glenn Cooper!” Betsy cried out. “Stop this.”

Through everything the agent hadn’t moved.

Glenn grinned deliriously. “Are you guys like those Royal Guards, not allowed to move or speak? What if I did this?”

To everybody’s disbelief, he flicked the man’s nose, a thwack filling the appalled silence.

The agent reacted faster than Glenn, spinning him against the wall with the offending hand pinned to his back.

Without thinking, Mike stepped forward. “Please stop. Don’t arrest him. I’ll take him home and ensure he doesn’t return. Just let him go, please.”

Other Secret Servicemen congregated around them, speaking into walkie-talkies.

“Back up, sir, unless you want to join him,” the agent said. He applied more pressure to Glenn’s arm, extracting a yelp of pain.

Never one to use his celebrity for gain, Mike decided the circumstances warranted an exception. “Sir, you may not recognize me, but I’m Michael Buxton, author of Sunny Concern and Doomsday Daydream. Surely, you’ve seen the film adaptation of Sunny Concern. Huge blockbuster, earned Anjuli Russell an Oscar for her portrayal of Sylvia.”

The agent paused. “You’re Michael Buxton?”

“I am.”

“I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I loved both of those books. Plus, the one about the rock band.”

“Jimmy Truant. I’m a personal friend of Senator Simoneau. Let Mister Cooper here go, and through the senator, I’ll see that everyone in your—retinue? squad?—gets an autographed copy of all three books. On top of that”—Mike outstretched an arm to address his fellow alumni—“we all put away our phones. Right? That way we keep this incident to ourselves, and off the news. Please delete any video you’ve taken of this confrontation, alright, people? We’re not doing this for Senator Simoneau. We’re doing it for Nadine Simoneau, class of nineteen ninety. Do we all agree?”

Only a few attendees had their phones in hand, but those who did, assented and clicked their delete buttons.

“Please get him out of here, Mister Buxton.” The agent released Glenn, who walked to Mike’s side, mumbling under his breath.

Mike put a hand around his skinny bicep and whispered close to his ear, “Goddammit, Glenn. Shut the f**k up if you don’t want to go to jail tonight.”

Glenn nodded ruefully and staggered toward the door.

“Mister Buxton …” The agent who had restrained Glenn approached. “Mister Buxton, thank you for your help. By doing so, you’ve allowed Senator Simoneau to attend as planned. My name is Jeremy Brubaker, by the way, if you’d be so inclined to personalize the autographs.”

Mike smiled and shook the agent’s hand. “You got it, Jeremy Brubaker.”

A rare thunderstorm released its deluge onto Phoenix as Mike drove Glenn home down streets which had lost familiarity with time. Leaving the school, the two men didn’t speak beyond Glenn giving his address. He lived in Mesa. Given the rain, Mike estimated an hour and a half to drive Glenn home and return to Cortez, which did little for his anxiety. He hoped he would return in time to see Nadine.

“Betsy doesn’t like me anymore,” Glenn said. “She’s hated me since the time we stuffed that snake down her blouse in biology class. Boy, Miss Axelrod was pissed.”

“We? The way I remember, it was all you. Betsy doesn’t hate you. If she did, she’d have let you keep running your mouth to the Secret Service and watched how that played out for you.”

“You thought you were some big hero back there, didn’t you? Famous writer guy saves the day. You didn’t think twice jumping on this grenade.”

“Consider it a favor to Nadine.”

“A favor to Nadine.” Glenn, Mike came to realize, was drunker than he’d previously thought, little hiccups and involuntary groans escaping between words.

“You always were jealous of me and Nadine, weren’t you? I had the girl you couldn’t have. Everyone was jealous of the Coop. Although you finally got one over on me, didn’t you?”

Mike felt a twinge of panic. “What are you talking about, Glenn?”

“I’m talking about the summer after graduation. After Nadine broke up with me. You two got really tight. So, tell me, how was it, sleeping with her?”

Mike stopped the car at a red light. “Glenn, I did not sleep with Nadine.”

Glenn shrugged. “Okay.”

Nadine broke up with Glenn within the first week following graduation, but they remained friends, or continued to play the part. Mike, Nadine, and Betsy, as the only ones in their small friend circle to be college bound, became confidants as they planned moves from home, sharing their collective fears, dreams, and grand aspirations with each other. Glenn went straight to work for his father’s landscaping business, which also hired Richie Meyer.

Independence Day was on Wednesday that summer. The following Saturday, Betsy would be the first to leave. A July 4th bash was planned at her dad’s property in Scottsdale; her dad was infamous for supplying Betsy’s get-togethers with alcohol, so, of course, they expected a huge turnout.

Mike and Nadine found themselves alone that Monday. They hung out in his room, smoking pot and listening to Disintegration by The Cure. Tentatively, he’d taken her hand, which had led to kissing. Kissing led to … He always remembered the music. Disintegration. How fitting, as everything slowly disintegrated from that moment—his life in Arizona, his friendship with Glenn. None of his relationships came to fiery, crashing halts. They were merely set aside for later, then forgotten, collecting dust.

On the Fourth, Nadine drove them all to Scottsdale; she and Glenn sat in the front, Mike and Betsy in the back seat. Everyone groaned when Nadine forced them to listen to The Bangles, her favorite band. She cranked the volume on “In Your Room,” locking eyes with Mike in the rearview mirror, sharing information only they knew—the song was a secret. During the guitar solo he broke eye contact to find Glenn staring at him.

Glenn had passed out, and Mike gently shook him awake. Getting him from the vehicle to the front door was a chore.

“You all left me behind. I was so popular then. People liked me, but no one’s wanted to see me in years.”

“No one left you behind, Glenn. People grow up. Sometimes they grow apart.”

Glenn grunted and crawled onto the sofa, his back to Mike. “I’m good here. You can go.”

Mike stared at the back of his head for a moment, then made to leave.

“I hate you.”

Mike paused, hand on the doorknob, then left without looking back.

The first thing he noticed was the absence of official-looking vehicles. The reunion appeared to have transformed into an actual party but gone were the Secret Service conducting personal searches at the entrance. Mike ran to the doors, hopeful yet already knowing he had missed Nadine. In a way, it was karmic, as if Glenn had planned his drunken outburst to strategically prevent Mike from seeing the woman who had haunted them both since high school.

He entered the gymnasium. A mirror ball threw tracer beams of light onto middle-aged dancers drunk with alcohol and nostalgia.

“You’re a true hero, Michael Buxton.”

Mike turned toward the direction of the voice, saw no one, then looked down. “Hey, Bite-Size. I missed her, didn’t I?”

Betsy Hurley (Ludlow now, but she was getting divorced) smiled up at him. “Here, yes. Turns out, she only made the trip to see the two of us. The rest of these saps just got lucky. I told her I’d be holding the vice president to a White House tour, VP-style.” She laughed, then held out an envelope. “For you. Looks like I’ll be taking a rain check on that bite, Butt-Ton.”

Shunning discretion, Mike opened the envelope and read.

Michael,

Betsy told me about your unplanned excursion.

I’m sorry you had to clean a mess you didn’t make. It sounds like someone hasn’t let go of the past. In some ways, Glenn isn’t the only one. This weekend is my only true respite for the foreseeable future, and I wanted to spend it here, visiting with you, Betsy, and whoever else I could see. You won’t believe what song is playing right now! I’m sitting with Betsy as I write this and The Bangles just came on—that song! So I’m making an official “campaign decision.” Long ago, we shared something special “In Your Room.” This time, I’ll be waiting “In My Room.” I’m staying at the Biltmore. My security detail will be expecting you. Have your ID ready. They will put you through the ringer, but I can make it worthwhile. Let’s catch up.

Nadine

Betsy was smiling. She knew. “You’d better go, Michael.”

“Betsy, thank you for still being my friend. I’m sorry I never contacted you—ever—during the last thirty years.”

“You’re forgiven. Just don’t let it be another thirty. I made Nadine promise me the same. Now go!”

Mike gave Betsy a long, tight embrace, viewed his old high school gymnasium one last time, then headed for the exit.