Read Losing in Gainesville (9781940430331) for Free Online Page B

wore. The tic fades. “I’ll do my best.”
    â€œCan we get a pizza first?” Kelly asks, looking up from the engrossing, engorging magazine. “You should order us some pizza for helping you out. C’mon, Phil Spector. Your workers are hungry.”
    â€œDidn’t you guys just eat? You were at Gatorroni’s!” Mouse looks to Ronnie, to Kelly, back to Meghan, regretting the invite extended to the males in the room, but they happened to be there, seated outside at the front patio of Gatorroni’s by the Slice—Meghan, the nnnnnugget from the pointless Gen Ed class he was getting through in order to graduate, and the next table over, the study in contrast that heightened Meghan’s, well, everything—Ronnie and Kelly—who looked lost, more than a little pathetic—Kelly with the bandaged yellowed forehead, holding an iced-napkin to his tongue, Ronnie, as disheveled as Mouse had ever seen him, picking at the final crumbs and sauce dollops of what had been a mammoth sausage calzone. Mouse was on his bike, pedaling home from the library, saw Meghan sitting there, pulled the bike off University onto the sidewalk and bellowed a goofy “Helll-luuuuuuu” to her, and she smiled that overbitten smile, and—shee-yit gotdamn! The things Mouse could do with her!
    The right side of Meghan’s face tic’d and tic’d. Mouse noticed the flute case she had there on that greasy gray table, and the plan for the rest of the day formed instantly. (Chance encounters like these happened all the time in Gainesville, part of the thrill of never knowing exactly what kind of youthful adventure you’d get up to.) “A flautist!” Mouse exclaimed. “I need your help recording the greatest song ever made.” Mouse flashed his false-tooth smile, and the scraggly knotty brown hair hung to his shoulders . . . and the moustache is bushy-big and his goatee grows to a Satanic point, but that smile! Meghan finds it sooooo disarming, while Ronnie, who watched from six feet to her right, smiled because he knows all-too-well Mouse’s m.o. with the nnnnuggets, the way he smiles and will soon rhyme when he says things he knows girls might find creepy. “Yes, that’s right!” Mouse continued. “The greatest song ever written, and I’m feeling good, you know—heh heh heh and not just because my friend Ronnie here . . . ” (Mouse pointed to Ronnie, who looked up from the calzone’s remnants long enough to mumble a “Hi,” and that was their introduction.) “. . . just moved to Gainesville, but—and we all need to do this—I was going to go to the tittie bar today for the all-you-can-eat buffet?”
    â€œOh God,” Ronnie said, licking the grease off his fingers. “You’re still going on about the tittie bars and the buffets.” When Mouse lived in Orlando for two years, a half-hearted student at the University of Central Florida, it was a focal point of many a conversation, and the women around him either laughed or groaned or both, but they never walked away, “creeped out,” as Jan Brady might have said.
    â€œBut you know how great it is, Ronnie! You’ve gone!”
    â€œWhatever,” Ronnie said, still hungry, looking for any piece of uneaten calzone on the red tray, no matter how small. “It’s just boobs.”
    â€œJust boobs,” Mouse said. “No no no! It’s too late today—shit!—but if we could have gotten there before 4 p.m . . . ”
    â€œ. . . And get only one of their watered-down drinks,” Ronnie interrupted, having heard this spiel countless times.
    â€œ. . . Yes, that’s right, Ronald, and around 4:30 they get the buffet going, and . . . ”
    â€œ. . . And it’s all-you-can-eat buffet food on plates in front of you and jigglin’ titties