Part Twenty One

“Now explain to me why you call yourselves misfit toys,” Moira said. The conversation and laughter had slowed considerably as the half-dozen students shoveled Preacher’s turkey and mashed potatoes and gravy and stuffing and broccoli and cranberries and black-eyed peas and yams and biscuits and a few adventurous types even tried the sauerkraut which, Preacher said, he didn’t like but he’d heard was a Maryland Thanksgiving tradition.

(These were the same people who had tried his homemade hummus and his hand-mixed guacamole earlier. And who would be sucking down his pumpkin and world-famous chocolate meringue pie later.)

“Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” a few students said simultaneously around mouthfuls of food.

“The children’s song?” she said, doing a pretty good job on the food herself.

“The TV special,” Preacher said. “The stuffing in the blue bowl is an experiment. The stuffing in the red bowl is the normal stuff.”

“Just how experimental?” a pudgy girl named Amy asked. She lived in Portland, Maine, but couldn’t get home because she worked at a WaldenBooks and had to be at the mall first thing Friday morning.

“What TV special?” Moira said.

“Cornbread, walnuts, and cranberries,” Preacher said. “The kid’s program. You know, animated reindeer, Burl Ives…”

“It’s good,” Mark said, his mouth full.

“The TV show, or the stuffing?” Moira asked.

“The stuffing. The TV show is pretty bad. It’s just sort of a nostalgia thing.”

The girl plopped a large spoonful of gold-and-burgundy stuffiing on her plate.

“You’re all too young for nostalgia,” Moira said.

“We’ll be sticking it in the VCR once we’re all in a calorie- and tryptophan-induced stupor,” Mark said, He-Who-Was-Banned-From-His-Home.

“When will this music be over?” a freshman named Greg said, wrinkling his nose at the tape that was playing.

Preacher slammed his fork down on his plate. “Bad-mouthing Kitty Wells? In my house!” He jumped to his feet in mock rage.

The others, who were used to his musical tastes, just laughed, and Greg (who had looked tense) managed a smile of his own.

Greg’s family was in Anchorage and a flight home just wasn’t in the cards that year.

“No, seriously, when this is over, go put in a CD, whatever you want,” Preacher said, sitting down. The stereo was in the living room, but the housemates had put speakers throughout the first floor. “What’s the difference between nostalgia and history?”

Preacher was the only Misfit Toy in Moira’s class, although the others all knew her by sight and by reputation – it was a small school. But she was on her best behavior fulfilling her unofficial duty of attending Preacher’s annual dinner, and the other students – who had been more than a little apprehensive at the thought of eating a meal with her – had quickly relaxed around her.

The wine helped. The ones who didn’t like wine were assuaged by the two six-packs of Harp that she brought with her.

“If you were born before the event occurred, it’s nostalgia,” she said. “If it happened before you were born, it’s history.”

“And Rudolph was first aired in --” Mark said, and pointed at Preacher without looking up from his plate.

“1964,” Haywood said. “So Rudolph is only nostalgia for those of us born before 1964.”

“OK, so I am a doddering old hag,” Moira said, laughing. Greg looked at a senior named Chris Mackey, who had the same retail-related reason for being there as Amy. Chris looked back. Both of them had noted the way Moira filled out her sweater, and neither of them had thought “old hag.”

“So, like, Vietnam is just nostalgia?” the last of the Misfits asked, a girl named Patty Warnick. She was one of those kind of girls who can’t stand to say nothing for too long, but at the same time had no sense of humor at all. Consequently she said things like that when everyone else was kidding around. Patty was a preppy girl from Rhode Island. She told everyone that she couldn’t go home because her family always went skiing in Switzerland over Thanksgiving.

“Yes, dear, eat your peas,” Moira said.

Afterwards Moira sat in the living room with the rest of them and watched the crudely animated special. “The storyline of the Lions game was much more compelling,” she said, halfway through. Greg and Preacher had given her a crash-course in American football before dinner.

A few of them laughed. A few of them glared at her. Preacher sat with a half-smile on his face. He thought she was much more beautiful when she wasn’t trying to be glamorous. Before the show was quite over he got up and went into the kitchen and brought out both kinds of pies and stacks of plates.

Like everyone else, Patty managed a slice of each despite complaining about being too full. Patty had missed the first few minutes of Rudolph while purging in the bathroom, and repeated the feat after dessert. When she came downstairs the second time Moira was sitting on the big chair-and-a-half, rummaging through one of Preacher’s boxes of tapes.

“Where does he find this stuff?” she asked the younger woman.

The others were in the kitchen and dining room clearing and cleaning and getting in one another’s way.

Patty shrugged. “What I want to know is, where does the money come from?” she said, softly, looking over Moira’s shoulder at the jumble of tapes. “He doesn’t act like he’s rich but he always seems to have money – for his car, for this place, for new tapes and CDs. He gave my friend Beth money for a train ticket home for the weekend.”

“Hey, are you playing Trivial Pursuit with us?” Mark asked, sticking his head in from the dining room.

“Perhaps in a bit,” Moira said.

Mark and Chris and Greg set up the board, called into the living room for Patty to turn up the Doors CD that was playing, and drank more beer; Moira and Patty had a quiet and fairly intense conversation, punctuated by Moira refilling the girl’s wine glass; Amy helped Preacher finish the dishes. There wasn’t much left to do in the kitchen; Preacher was one of those annoying hyper-efficient clean-as-you-go cooks. At one point Amy was putting something back in the refrigerator and Preacher had to reach over her to put a bowl in the cupboard overhead and he playfully put his hand on her bottom to warn her he was behind her and she didn’t know whether to scream or pass out so she just stood there, bent over, her face in the refrigerator, her eyes wide, her face red.

“How are we doing teams?” Greg called in. It just seemed natural that Preacher would make these sorts of decisions.

“How about,” Preacher said, turning back to the sink and utterly unaware of the arrhythmia he’d caused by his brief contact with the girl, “me and Mark, and Chris and Amy, and Moira, Greg, and Patty.” All Johnnies essentially major in Trivial Pursuit, but Greg was a freshman and Patty wasn’t that bright, so Preacher figured they needed Moira the most; and Chris and Amy were both single, and each year’s dinner had yielded at least one hook-up, so…

“You should run a restaurant,” Chris said to him, halfway through the game. “I love my mother, but your food put hers to shame.”

“I should do a lot of things,” Preacher said.

“Name the Hebraic folklore objects allegedly used by Mormon founder Joseph Smith to read the Book of Mormon,” Moira said, looking at one of the cards.

“Urim and Thummim,” Preacher said, without consulting with his teammates.

Greg looked over Moira’s shoulder. The actual question had been “How many presidential elections did Franklin Roosevelt win?”

“That’s not the question,” he said.

“Yes, but this one was too easy,” Moira said.

“Yeah, but how do we know he’s right?” Greg responded.

The others laughed.

“He’s right,” Moira said.

“How could I make up Urim and Thummim?” Preacher said.

“Are you a Mormon?”

Preacher had a bottle of beer to his lips when the question was asked.

“Never.”

“How many presidential elections did Franklin Roosevelt win?” Greg said.

“Four,” Preacher and Mark said at once.

“See?” Moira said.

“Seriously, dude, restaurant,” Chris said again.

“Yeah, what are you going to do when you graduate?” Amy asked him.

“I have no idea,” Preacher laughed. He rolled the die. “History or Sports?” he said to Mark.

“Sports,” Mark said. Preacher moved the token.

“You should think about a restaurant, seriously. Cooking school. Restaurant management school,” Chris said. He read from the card. “Who holds the NHL’s single-season scoring record?”

Preacher looked at Mark.

“I’m from Virginia, and I’m gay. What the hell do I know about hockey?” Mark said.

“When in doubt,” Preacher said, “the answer’s either Gretzky or Bobby Orr. I’m gonna say Wayne Gretzky.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Wayne Gretzky.”

“Son of a bitch,” Chris said.

“If I was going to go to cooking school, I wouldn’t need to be here,” Preacher said. “I guess I’m going to some sort of graduate school, though, right? I mean that’s what you do at St. John’s. you get a degree in Trivial Pursuit, and then you go to graduate school to actually learn something useful. Unless… do you think they’ll have a barnstorming Trivial Pursuit team by the time I get out of here?”

“Seems unlikely,” Mark said. He rolled the die. “Entertainment or Science?”

“Entertainment,” Preacher said. “The problem isn’t finding something I want to do, really. It’s eliminating things I want to do. Maybe I can get a master’s in Trivial Pursuit, too. Hopkins offers an MLA, I think.”

“On what network were The Honeymooners first presented?” Amy said.

“Thank God, a TV question,” Moira said. “He knows all the film and music questions.”

“NBC?” Mark guessed.

“Sounds good to me,” Preacher said, thinking to himself, DuMont.

“NBC,” Mark said.

“No, DuMont,” Amy said, taking the die.

Preacher and Mark won it – Denny McClain was the last major-league pitcher to win 30 games, taking 31 in 1968 – and the others retired to the living room. It was getting late but nobody wanted to leave. Preacher went into the kitchen to throw away some empties. Moira slipped in after him.

“I told you you’d have a good time,” Preacher said, softly.

“I did have a good time,” she said. “And I think you might have a great time.”

“You’re not suggesting something extracurricular, are you?” he said, leering a bit.

“No,” she said. “I’m talking about the fact that both of those little girls in there are aching for a trip upstairs with you.”

“Get out of here,” he said. “Patty has a boyfriend, and I barely know Amy.”

“Trust me,” Moira said. “The one told me as much, and while you haven’t noticed it, that rather Rubenesque blonde girl has done everything but throw her knickers at you tonight.”

Preacher laughed. “Not interested,” he said.

“Ordinarily I’d applaud your taste,” Moira said, “one’s too fat and the other’s a gold-digger, but in this instance I think you’re again showing a lack of imagination.”

The smile left Preacher’s face and some tension crept back into his shoulders. The sound of his friends in the living room grew far away.

“They’ve both been drinking, they’re both randy as cats in heat, and they’re both in a holiday mindset,” she continued. “With a fairly small amount of effort I am quite certain you could coax them both up there.”

Preacher sighed. “And then what?” he said. “As you point out regularly, I have enough trouble with one.”

“You have enough trouble with me,” she clarified. “Their standards are lower.”

“Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that was true,” Preacher said, “there’s the matter that I still have to go to school with them after this. There are repercussions from that sort of thing. Maybe not when you’re involved, but when normal people are involved, there are repercussions. One or both of them is going to really regret it later, and I’m here with the fallout. Patty’s boyfriend will find out. Amy will realize that this doesn’t make us a couple. And I have to deal with it.”

“I think you’d be surprised to see how these things work themselves out,” Moira said. “To the extent that they regret it later, they’ll both be too ashamed to tell anyone else what happened.”

“And this makes it OK, to you?” he said.

She shrugged.

“Are you telling me that I have to do this?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “We’re not there yet. I’m telling you that I release you from your vow of chastity if you agree to do it. But you have to put it in your journal.”

“No way,” he said.

“I think you’re making a mistake,” she said. He was unmoved.

She left, slightly angry, shortly thereafter.

Mark stayed the night and slept in Nick’s room. Preacher stayed up late and wrote in his journal, the one Moira had insisted they both keep so they could learn more about how the other gender experienced sex. He wrote it knowing that on Monday when he went to her house they would exchange journals and read about it. And when he was learning about how the Mare’s Trick felt when he was insufficiently rigid, and into which of the three categories she had placed each of her week’s orgasms, she would read this:

The fact of the matter was that she knows I don’t want to sleep with anyone but her. Whether she urged those two on me because she thinks it will cure me of that feeling, or because she feels the same way and is trying to overcompensate, the end result is that those two would have just been pawns in all of this. She has no qualms about doing that to people. I’m in this voluntarily, with my eyes open. But it is repulsive to me to even think about doing this to people who have no idea what’s going on. It would have hurt them, a lot. And it would have hurt me, too. And I think in the end she knew that. She knew it, and that was what she wanted, too. Because she has decided that we can’t have a normal relationship, even though I think she wants it almost as much as I do. So if she hurts, everyone else should hurt, too.

She read it, and if she thought it was true, she didn’t say anything.