R.E.M. Part 6

The summer was over before Todd could blink.

In spite of his best plans, he had spent the long, hot months doing actual school work. Something about Kevin’s house encouraged it, or perhaps it was something about Kevin’s mother. Todd had been living there for a week or so when she told him that he was her guest and wouldn’t he please call her “Viki.” He slipped into the informality with unexpected ease. He had always known how to pass himself off as someone who belonged in the echelons of the rich and connected, but he had always known that he was a fraud.

Viki made him feel like the genuine article.

It was weird.

Three weeks into the summer term, a computer appeared on the desk in “his” bedroom. (The room was five times the size as his assigned dorm room on campus, which more than made up for it coming with a creepy portrait of Kevin’s grandfather.) He had mentioned in passing that Professor West was one of the few instructors who was absolutely anal about everything being submitted on disk instead of on paper, but he hadn’t expected anyone to do anything about it.

“That computer runs on the same platform as L.U., so there shouldn’t be any problems,” Viki told him casually when he stumbled over his thanks. “I’m surprised you don’t already have your own.”

“My dad’s not the most forward-thinking guy,” said Todd. “And I never asked for one.” The choice between a computer and a car, or a computer and beer money, was no choice at all. “There’s a computer lab at school and computers in KAD, and most of the professors don’t care if you turn stuff in written by hand.” He decided not to mention that he didn’t usually turn in assignments, anyway, because that would have required actually doing them.

Viki nodded. “There’s always a temptation to keep doing things the way we’ve always done them. I think that that’s a particular problem in the newspaper business. My father was a great innovator, and I’m often concerned that I don’t have his gifts in that regard.”

“If your father had any talents that you don’t-- and I really doubt that he did-- you make up for it by being this person who brings home a computer to make summer school easier for your son’s fraternity brother. If something like that occurs to you, the really important stuff would just have to.”

She smiled at him as if the compliment meant something. “Professor West and I have known each other for many years.” Of course they had. “He writes editorials for The Banner quite frequently, in fact.” Of course he did. “I’d be interested to see some of the assignments you’re writing for his class, if you’re comfortable sharing, that is.”

The thought of giving his work to Viki for approval was far more intimidating than the thought of giving it to a professor who saw thousands of student essays every year and sneered at them all.

And when Viki started telling him that he had a very real talent for writing, he wondered whether he had been the victim of an elaborate practical joke. He couldn’t remember that last time anyone had thought he was good at anything other than football or partying.

His visits to Rodi’s grew fewer and fewer, and so were Blair’s, so fixated was she on her Melador. At the end of the summer term, Todd went ten days in a row without seeing Blair or the inside of a bar.

His unintended ten-day streak ended abruptly when there was a tapping at his bedroom window. He looked hard at the portrait of Victor Lord, half-convinced it was responsible. There was something sinister about that man, even if his daughter and grandchildren were downright nice most of the time.

“Who’s there?” he asked, not too loud, because he didn’t want anyone to overhear and think he was crazy.

“Blair.”

“Blair?” he repeated, disbelieving. He shoved Viki’s tacky curtains aside. Sure enough, there was Blair on the narrow balcony that ran alongside his window. He couldn’t take his eyes off of her. He was going to have a new fantasy after this, yes he was. It was a failing on his part that it hadn’t occurred to him to imagine Blair-- or another hot chick, in his pre-Blair years-- climbing in his window.

“You gonna let me in?” she asked when he’d been staring at her longer than he’d intended.

He shook his head to clear out the dirty thoughts that had invaded. Not all of the dirty thoughts, of course. But enough dirty thoughts that he was able to function. Belatedly, he reached for Blair’s hand to help her inside. Instead of taking his hand, she thrust a six pack of Heineken at him and climbed through on her own.

“You could have come in through the front door, you know,” Todd told her as she plopped herself down on his bed.

Blair mock-gasped. “Dorian Cramer Lord’s niece be allowed into Victoria Lord Buchanan’s house? Never! They’d have to burn this place down if they knew I was here. They’re like the Hatfields and the McCoys.”

Todd laughed. He knew that there was some truth to that, although he didn’t know the details. 

“Viki likes you,” he defended. “She thinks you’re a lovely girl.”

“Did she say that before or after you started calling her Viki?”

“I know. Weird, Right?”

“She must like you a lot.”

“I like her.” It suddenly occurred to Todd that Blair was the only person he knew he could talk to about this. “It’s strange. I thought she would be this uptight, inbred, prissy, blue blooded pillar of society who was completely out of touch with reality.”

“Sounds about right,” said Blair, tongue firmly in cheek.

“But now I think she’s only mostly out of touch with reality.”

“I’ll tell Aunt Dorian. She’ll throw a party!”

“Don’t!”

“I thought you loved a good party,” said Blair, and Todd’s mind forcibly returned to the feeling of Blair’s legs on his neck, Blair’s hand in his, Blair’s lips near his cheek. They’d never come as close to sleeping together as they had that night, not that they’d been all that close at the Spring Fling either. But everyone from Blair’s aunt to Todd’s fraternity brothers was sure that they had.

“You know,” said Todd to Blair, “in KAD, there’s a rule. When a girl comes into a guy’s bedroom, if she sits on his chair, that means she’s there to talk. If she sits on his bed, that means she’s there to do other things.”

“This,” said Blair, her lips a whisper away from Todd’s, “is not KAD.”

“Not that I don’t appreciate the company, but why are you here?” She pointed at the beer. He snapped the tops off of two bottles, hardly leaving a mark on the nightstand at all, and handed one to her. “You came here to bring me beer?” he asked after taking a long swallow.

“Well, yeah,” said Blair. “I was afraid maybe you’d been banned from Rodi’s or something.”

“Did you miss me?” he teased.

“Yeah,” she said, and he couldn’t help smiling a little. “We’re friends, right?”

“Right,” he agreed. If that was all he could get, he would take it.

“Good. I thought maybe all this togetherness with the Buchanans changed your mind.” She stood up and inspected the portrait of Victor Lord more closely. “Or that they hypnotized you in your sleep with their creepy painting.”

Todd shuddered. It was a possibility. “I wasn’t sure whether Viki put me in here with that because she didn’t like me or because she did.”

“There’s no way she knows how scary it is. She must like you,” Blair decided.

“I think I’ll start throwing a towel over it before I go to sleep, just in case,” Todd decided.

“I’ve got a better idea,” Blair grinned mischievously and pulled a tube of bright pink lipstick from her purse. “He can’t do anything sinister wearing this shade. It’s a rule.” Todd watched, amused, as she scrubbed Victor Lord’s pale thin lips full and pink. Then he grabbed the lipstick from her and added a pair of matching pink earrings. Around the time they gave his hair a pink highlight, they started laughing so hard that they buried their faces in pillows so that no one would hear them.

When his sides ached so much that he had to stop laughing, Todd looked at the lipstick still clenched in his fist.

Melador.

“This is yours!” he exclaimed.

“One of my first samples,” Blair confirmed proudly. “That’s why I really wanted to see you. I wanted to show you. You listened to me talk about everything the night of the Spring Fling, and if you hadn’t been so nice I might not have been confident enough to go through with it.”

“You were going to go through with it,” Todd told her. He didn’t have any doubt. “You knew exactly what you needed to do.”

She looked soft and vulnerable, the way he felt when Viki complimented his writing. If there was ever a moment to kiss her, he thought this must be it. He leaned forward and she didn’t pull away.

There was a knock on the door. “Todd?” It was Jessica. Wasn’t she supposed to be in bed?

They jumped apart. Blair scurried into the closet. Todd was tempted to yank the portrait off the wall and throw it in after her, but he settled for turning out all of the lights except the one farthest from the painting. The deep shadow hid the alterations well enough. Removing the portrait altogether would have looked too suspicious.

He flung the door open. Jessica beamed brightly at him. “We had cupcakes at the last day of camp party!” she announced brightly. “Would you like one?”

“Sure,” he said, because he was deeply opposed to turning down food and because he couldn’t very well explain to her that cupcakes were one of the few foods that didn’t go very well with beer.

Jessica delicately extracted a carefully packaged cupcake from her bag and slipped past Todd to place it on his desk. She gasped, and Todd started to explain that it had only been a joke and he’d meant no disrespect to her grandfather and he would clean it off and couldn’t she be persuaded to not tell her parents or her brothers and he would take her and her friends to the mall every day for a week and wouldn’t that be fun?

“You’re not supposed to have beer in here,” Jessica said, scandalized. “I only got special permission to have cupcakes upstairs because it was the last day of camp.”

“You’re right. I’m really sorry. I’ll pour it out right now, okay?”

Regretfully, he dumped the last half bottle down the bathroom sink. It had been Blair’s, not his, but it was still a waste.

Jessica rolled her eyes. “I won’t tell,” she said, long-suffering like she’d had life too full of big brothers. “But don’t do it again.” She had a lot of her mother in her, and not much at all of her cowboy father.

“How about I take you and one of your friends to the mall tomorrow?”

She twinkled approvingly. “Okay. Goodnight, Todd.”

“Goodnight, Jessie.”

He closed the door behind her and almost shook with relief. Busted by a twelve-year-old girl. What had become of his life?

Blair slunk out of the closet, eyes sparkling harder than Jessica’s had. “The mall with Jessica and her friends. Sounds like a good time. Don’t let them buy anything that shows more than this.” She pulled the fabric of her stretchy top down to reveal most of her cleavage.

“Shut up,” he told her. “Do you have anything to clean that off?”

“Yeah, yeah.” She dug into her bag and withdrew a bottle of blue liquid and a packet of tissues. 
Together they restored Victor Lord to his rightful state, while Blair continued to make suggestions for what Todd should and shouldn’t do at the mall. “Have them tell the women at the makeup counters that they only wear Melador.”

“Melador isn’t for sale yet. You have, like, one sample.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s too early to start the buzz. And I have two samples.” She withdrew a  small bottle of what looked like moisturizer and squirted a dollop into her hand.

“Don’t put that on him,” Todd warned, still imagining how bad things might have been had it been Viki rather than Jessica who had knocked on his door.

“I’m not. I’m putting it on you.”

“I’m a football player!” he objected, but he didn’t move away. The thought of her fingertips caressing his skin was too enticing.

The moisturizer was soft and sweet. “You should make a line for men,” he told her. “Guys like to smell good too. But put it in plain boxes.”

“That’s a good idea.” She kissed his cheek where she’d just touched it. “You can come work at Melador if the football thing doesn’t work out.”

“You should come watch me play this season.” He’d seen what she was good at. It was only fair that she see what he was good at. Maybe if she heard a crowd of thousands chanting his name, she’d get rid of this idea that they were just friends and realize that since everyone thought they were sleeping together anyway, they might as well do it.

“Tell me when,” she said.

Todd had a plan.

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