CHAPTER SEVENTEEN #2
“I’m not, um, planning to become anyone you don’t recognize,” Carver said to his father, with the hesitancy of someone walking near a cliff’s edge.
“I don’t know that I can convince you of the correctness of anything I’m doing, so I don’t want to waste our time arguing, but I hope you know that, at least.”
“Right,” Doug said in a gruff voice, and cleared his throat. “Ultimately, I guess, we don’t have any choice but to trust you.”
“Yeah,” Carver said with relief.
“I understand. I’m trying to understand.”
“I’ll see you back here at eleven,” Carver said with a nod. Doug returned the nod, and he went on his way.
Scott ended up being very glad to have Carver with him at the club.
Not only was he happy to assist with the manual labor, he was also the very wealthy son of two club members, and his presence made the BCC staff more friendly and pliable.
When Scott walked in the front door, a young woman in a green polo stopped him in the lavish entryway and snapped at him to wait where he was while she got her manager, an officious middle-aged man in a green polo.
He was giving Scott an admittedly deserved tongue-lashing for leaving his shit there for them to deal with, instead of taking care of it last night during the wedding’s breakdown and clean-up hour, when Carver walked up and his energy switched.
Suddenly the man was understanding and sympathetic while still being quite adamant that Scott get all his bullshit the fuck out of here right now.
“I’m here to do that,” Scott said, hands raised in surrender. “I — seriously, my bad, I get it, we’re gonna get all of it loaded up and out of your hair in ten minutes or less.”
“Perfect,” said the man, with a too-bright smile. “Wonderful. Mr. Novack, how are you today?”
Carver perched his sunglasses atop his head. “Excruciatingly hungover, feel like I got hit by a car.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, can we get you anything?”
“Any chance there’s a Red Bull lying around somewhere?”
“I’ll go have a look,” the man said. “You two can head back to the reception hall, everything’s there for you to load up, and we left you one of our dollies.”
“Great, thanks,” Scott said, immediately striding in that direction. Carver hurried after him. Once they were out of earshot, he said in an undertone, “Shall I cup the balls, Mr. Novack?”
Carver laughed. “They want me to join, that’s what it is.”
“Why would you join when your parents can get you in any time?”
“Well, they have to be with me, and if I want to use the golf course or the tennis courts or the sauna, it’s like twenty bucks for a day pass.”
“How much is this place a year?”
“Fifteen grand, but it’s like eighty just to get in.
Maybe more now, that’s what it was when my parents joined.
I mean, just the annual fee alone, that works out to…
” Carver took a second to think about it, his eyes traveling upward.
“About forty dollars a day? And they charge members for a guest pass on top of that. It’s a really impressive racket. ”
Scott shook his head. “The mind boggles.”
“And the thing is, it’s literally not worth it,” Carver whispered.
“Or maybe it is to my dad, I don’t know, since he plays golf like fifty times a week.
I hate golf, I’m too impatient. The idea of a sport where you hit the ball and then have to drive over to see what happened to it — it’s like satire. At least tennis is fun.”
“It’s bad for the environment, too,” Scott said, pulling open the door to the reception hall and holding it for Carver. Through the windows, they could see club members sunbathing by the pool and traipsing across the golf course.
“Wait,” Carver said, laughing as they made their way to where his remaining equipment was shoved into a corner, his cables piled up haphazardly by someone who had no idea how to wrap a cord. “I just remembered your thing about Caddyshack, your concerns about the abused gopher.”
“It’s a stupid movie,” Scott muttered, starting to quickly wrap and bundle the cables. He could feel a song idea starting to unfurl in his head, and unconsciously began to tap his foot to a beat to help himself figure it out.
“You know the gopher lives, right? That’s the joke.”
“Okay, I wasn’t actually upset about the gopher. It’s just an asinine movie. Every Chevy Chase movie is like nails on a chalkboard to me, I can’t stand that guy. That smirk he always has.”
“But Caddyshack is about class struggle,” Carver said with a grin, clearly fucking with him.
“No, it’s about how everyone involved in the movie was on coke,” Scott said, laughing. “Same with all the National Lampoon movies. Animal House. It’s this sinister, cynical cokehead energy, man. I just don’t like the view of the world they present.”
“You sound like David Foster Wallace,” Carver said. “I’m predisposed to like Animal House ‘cause it was inspired by ADPhi.” His eyes narrowed as he surveyed the scene, hands on his hips. “Did you really need two amps?”
“I like to run one clean, one dirty. Plus it’s good to have a backup.”
“That’s worth dragging an extra fifty pounds around?”
“Definitely. And the smaller one’s only forty pounds.”
“You know, in your own way, you’re kind of anal-retentive.”
Scott laughed. “That’s most musicians.”
Carver pointed at the larger amp. “Can I just start putting shit on the dolly and taking it out?”
“Sure, yeah.” Scott finished bundling the last cable and gathered them up in his arms, then grabbed a mic stand. He finally processed the ADPhi comment and said, “Wait, were you a frat boy at Duke?”
“Holy shit,” Carver said, laughing as he brought the dolly over and slid it under the larger amp. “I really haven’t seen you in a while, huh? Yeah, I was.”
They headed for the doors, and Scott propped one of them open with a doorstopper then let Carver go ahead of him with the dolly. “What was that like?”
“Honestly, I liked it. I think I got lucky with my pledge class, though.”
“I was always curious about it,” Scott admitted. “Curious about the whole college experience, I guess.”
“You would have hated it. You never would have made it past pledging.”
“Why? Did you get hazed?”
“Yeah, and when that shit started you would have just walked out. You have too much respect for yourself.”
“What did they make you do?”
“Nothing that bad. Everyone’s afraid of killing somebody and losing their charter, so it’s just supposed to be a little embarrassing. But some of it was, uh…”
Scott glanced over at Carver, who’d gone pink in the cheeks as he guided the dolly along. “What, you liked it?”
“Shh,” Carver said, even though they were completely alone in this hallway.
“Not all of it. Just, like — one time every pledge who didn’t drink enough that night had to line up naked so one of the brothers could paddle us on the ass.
He didn’t hit us that hard, it was just to embarrass us, but he was really hot, and I knew when he hit me I was gonna get a boner. I was scared shitless.”
“And?”
“He ended up stopping before he got to me because the frat president showed up at the house we were in, and they couldn’t let him see what they were doing ‘cause he was duty-bound to report hazing.”
“Was it always that homoerotic?”
Carver shrugged. “Not always. Often.”
Scott was more titillated by this than he expected to be. “Did you sleep with any of your brothers?”
“Oh, yeah, like ten of them.”
“Ten?”
“Don’t say ten like it’s a million. That’s basically every guy I fucked in college.”
“Ten frat boys is a lot of frat boys, is all.”
“They weren’t all the stereotype,” Carver said. “You know I like them sensitive, the poets and shit.” He winked at Scott, who glanced away, amused.
They reached the lobby, and a teenage BCC employee jogged up to Carver to hand him a Red Bull. Carver stopped pushing the dolly and got his money clip out to hand the girl a tip.
She started to walk away, then spun on her heels. “Sir, this is a hundred.”
“Is it?” Carver said. “Whatever, take it.”
“Wow, okay. Bet.”
Scott held the front door open for Carver, and a woman dressed for sunbathing shoved past them obliviously. It was an even more beautiful day now — clear, slight breeze, a vivid blue sky stacked with cumulonimbus clouds. “You in a good mood?”
“Yeah, weirdly, even though I feel like shit and my day is about to suck ass,” Carver said.
Scott got in front of him so he could help him carry the dolly down the club’s front steps. “I get it,” he said. “Like, the truth feels good.”
They sat the dolly down beside the trunk of the Maybach. Carver straightened up and produced the Red Bull, which he’d stuffed into his hoodie pocket. “The truth does feel good,” he said, cracking it open. “I mean, I’m not quite in the consequences phase yet.”
“Maybe there won’t be any.”
Carver laughed and took a sip of the Red Bull.
“I’m serious,” Scott said. “What’s the worst you’re anticipating? Pop your trunk.”
Carver dug his keyfob out of his pocket and opened the trunk.
“The divorce could get nasty,” he said, “as I’m married to an advanced alien intelligence.
” They bent to lift the amp together and heave it into the Maybach’s spacious trunk.
“Uh, I could get slapped with bad leaver status, which would impact my carry, but more importantly it’s a big reputational hit.
There aren’t, you know, a ton of people at my level. ”
Scott started packing cords in next to the amp. “That’s why they pay you the big bucks.”
“And that’s why I’m easy to replace. A lot of guys want to do this job.”
“Good, let them.”
Carver laughed. “I wish it was that easy,” he said, as they walked back inside. “And I know you, like, do your art for a living, so you look at me and you think, what’s the big deal about giving it up?”
“I actually don’t think that,” Scott said.