In college right away I learned the best way to hit on a guy is to hold his hand if you know him at all. It’s that easy. Pick one, walk beside him as he cuts across the overly kept grass of the broad, open campus or the wide sweep of psychedelic mushrooms on the football field, and wrap your arm through his. This’ll make him nervous but he won’t want to show it. Act like the hand holding, the arm wrap, is normal, because it’s not far-off anyway. Ask him a question, and look into his eyes when he answers. Laugh when you can. He’ll follow you anywhere.
A picture of Kyra with a famous football player, taken on a nude beach and torn from a Spanish newspaper, fell from a notebook as she continued her unpacking. She reached for it and stuck it to our mirror with chewing gum.
Kyra, who’d seen me looking, put a finger to my ribs and mouthed the words, “Go with him.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
I said, “I run the 880, in the spring.”
It was easier than would have seemed possible to walk alongside the steel tables, behind the giant walk-in, and out into the cafeteria to fill the pitcher. The dishwashers had their radio on loud. I tried to climb back out the window with the plastic pitcher in my teeth, but started to gag and had to drop the pitcher straight down to Craig instead.
When he pointed, I sat down. There was no place else to sit besides on one bed or the other unless you were going to sit on top of one of the tall, built-in dressers, leaning against the mirror with your feet dangling, the way Kyra and I did. He pulled a bottle of Bacardi from his closet and put ice in a plastic cup. He said, “That’s all I’ve got.”
