Black Mamba: Part II

Black Mamba (Part I)

And now, Part II...


 

Stacey was jittery with nerves as he set up the tables of snacks and drinks and ice.

Buck watched him from a chair out on the lawn. “We better get that fire started soon.”

Stacey balked. “Bucky, you should get the fire started. I’ve been doing everything else while you’ve been lounging there going on and on about your ridiculous ‘excavation site’.”

“Fucking Safety Stacey. Man, sometimes I think you have little to no faith in me.”

“That is exactly what I have Bucky — little to no faith.”

Buck grinned at him and Stacey couldn’t help but roll his eyes in amusement. The two of them were on the very cusp of graduating and with Buck’s folks away in Europe for the month, they decided it was the perfect time to throw a preemptive celebratory bash. More so, and Stacey had thought it to himself as they had quietly discussed it at the back of algebra, he knew Buck would invite Robin because of their current far-too-obvious tango, and that was good. Robin would definitely bring along her cute friend Min. Those two were hardly seen apart at school.

Stacey’s mind was on Min as he set out plastic cups and emptied bags of corn chips into Buck’s mothers’ serving bowls. The poem had been what had first stuck to him. The girl was pretty, of course she was, but he didn’t want to be that kind of guy, even though he knew he was. He was just like everyone else who would be at the party tonight, but Min — there was something about her. Something else. She was so quiet, and yet so close to Robin, as if the two of them were bound by blood instead of friendship. Sometimes Stacey couldn’t really understand it, the girls just seemed like such opposites.

Stacey!

Buck was calling from where he still slouched in his chair.

Stacey shrugged and gave up. He scuffed through the dirt and over to the crude fire pit they had dug earlier that day. As he started tossing in chunks of wood from the pile and scrunched up newspaper pages, Buck similarly started his inevitable interrogation.

“So, this Asian bird.”

“Don’t say Asian bird, Bucky. She’s Chinese and her name is Min.”

“Oh my god, Safety Stacey, why are you being so precious about this?”

“I’m no being precious, you dick. I just like her. And you should know her name, she’s Robbie’s best friend.”

Buck hauled himself out of the chair to grab another beer from the table. “I only need to know Robbie’s name, she’s the one I’m banging and she’s the one I want to continue banging. Speaking of, please tell me you’re gonna bang Mindy tonight?”

Stacey was on the edge of angry, but he bit his tongue on what he really wanted to say. “It’s Min, not Mindy, and no, we’ve barely even spoken.”

Buck cracked open the beer and it fizzed up out of the can. “Woah!” he said, shaking his hand over the dirt. “Anyways, what was I saying?”

“Something about being an impolite, racist oaf?”

“Ha, ha. Very funny.” Buck crossed his eyes idiotically. “No, what I’m saying is that is perfect. If you don’t know her that well, you can bang her and not have to worry about anything else. You made it nice with that Latino chick for like weeks without having to bother with the back and forth bullshit that I get from Robbie.”

“Jesus Bucky, don’t say Latina chick. Her name was Cindy and she was Portuguese. We dated, casually, and it just didn’t work out. I wasn’t using her.”

Buck picked up the matches from the table and came over to the fire pit next to Stacey. “Cindy,” he repeated, “sounds very fucking close to Mindy, doesn’t it old boy?”

Stacey didn’t bother with a response this time. He crouched down and started rifling through the pile of wood for the larger pieces.

Buck seemed to feel the tension. “Look buddy, I’m sorry. I’m only having a go because you seem to really like her, yeah?”

Stacey shrugged. “I guess I probably do. I don’t know…” Stacey paused, remembering that day in english class. “Did we have eleventh grade English together?”

Buck scoffed. “The fuck would I remember?”

“Nothing, I just…”

“Go on, spit it out Safety Stacey. I know you’re tryin’ to tell me something right now. May as well go ahead.”

Stacey worried he was about to blush, but he stood up and willed himself to be the Stacey that most people knew him as. “There was that day that we had to read out our poems.  You didn’t even write one, remember? Anyways, that was the first day that I really noticed her, Min. She read out her poem and it was called ‘From The Trees’ and it was not at all what I was expecting.”

Buck was poised with his beer just an inch from his face, his eyes narrowed; the cogs were turning; he was remembering. “Wait — wait wait wait. I do fucking remember that day.”

Stacey was almost taken aback. “You remember her poem?”

“No, not the poem, the day. It was free ice cream day at the caf.”

“What?” Stacey was pretending he didn’t remember that fact, but of course he did.

The devilish expression on Buck’s face was not a good sign. “Oh. My. God.” He took a step back, feigning shock. “You salty dog! Here I am, thinking Safety Stacey is a reformed man. Thinking that he likes girls because of poems and rainbows and unicorns.”

Stacey shot Buck the bird but at the same time he was gritting his teeth, bracing for what he knew was about to come.

Buck paused again, savoured the moment before he took the kill shot. “I know you know what I’m talking about. Free ice cream day?”

Stacey said nothing.

“At the caf?”

Stacey stayed silent.

“We sat outside on the green, and it was like a million degrees out, and we were on that bench opposite Robbie and her little Asian chick friend, and the ice cream was melting down onto their hands and they were licking it up, and I said, damn I wish Robbie was licking my —”

“Don’t even fucking say it.” Stacey was standing up and his tone was mush angrier than he had meant it to be.

Buck held up his hands in forfeit. “Dude, I was only gonna say that you were thinking the same thing. I know you would never say it out loud, like me, but there’s nothing wrong with thinking it.”

Stacey looked off into the trees. He wasn’t really angry, he was more embarrassed. Of course the ice cream thing had stuck in his mind. He had watched Min as she carefully — delicately — licked melted pink ice cream from her fingers and wrist. He had been almost hard just at that. But that wasn’t it.

It had been the poem. He hardly paid attention in English class, let alone for stuff like poetry, but something about Min’s quiet voice and measured pace had pulled him in. He couldn’t remember the words. He remembered the poem — it was aggressive, violent in a way, and she used swear words, which Mrs Heller had said was okay but shouldn’t stand as an opening for everyone else to include cussing in their work.

Stacey remembered the ice cream as well, and he wondered what her tongue felt like. Was it sweet like melted ice cream? Was it wet? Was it warm?

He knew he wanted Min, but he knew they were from different places. Not that she was Chinese. It was that he was a big idiot and she was intellectual and withdrawn. He was a jock in most ways — he had a reputation that she had no doubt heard about — but he hoped he was more than that. He wanted to be more than what most people thought about him. He wanted to write poetry as good as Min’s. He wanted Min.

Buck’s face was serious when Stacey finally looked up. “Safety Stacey. I'm sorry I was a dick. It’s been a while since you liked a girl — actually I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you like a girl before — so let’s leave this baby to burn a little,” he said, looking at the growing fire, “and go check out my awesome excavation site where we are gonna find some stuff that’s gonna make us so uber rich.”

Stacey gave in. “Fine. Just please promise me that there won’t be any goddamn snakes out there. I hate snakes.”