Cages by Chris Pasley

badass.  So I chugged that can as fast as I could,
trying to pour it past my taste buds.  I finished it with what I hoped
sounded like a satisfied gasp, intended to hide the disgusted snarl. 
    “Bobby!” Kenny called to the cooler guard.  “Looks like Sam here
needs another.”
    I drank at least two more, but I was starting to get a little
loose.  Or tight.  Isn’t that how Hemingway referred to it in The
Sun Also Rises?   Tight?  I was laughing easily now and Kenny
turned out to be a real funny guy.  He did an impression of Remi that was
spot-on.  The only harsh tone I remember at that point was when some
skinny kid approached him and asked for something, but Kenny had punched him
hard in the arm and he went away.   Even
the beer was starting to taste good.  The Blind Hall was a good place.
    “Hey,” Kenny said, getting really close to my face.
    “Hey,” I responded.
    “You a virgin, buddy?”
    I went quiet then, because I didn’t want to lie to my buddy, but I was
ashamed that my answer was yes.
    “No worries, man, everybody’s been there. But I can take care of that for
you.” 
    I must have given him a funny look because he punched me in the
arm.  “Not me, you idiot.  Girls.  I got girls here that’ll do
for you.”
    Another beer would have been a godsend at that point, to calm my
fluttering heart, but Kenny didn’t offer me any more.  “I don’t know,
Kenny.”
    “No worries, man, no worries.  We’ll start you off slow.” 
Kenny beckoned to the throbbing groups at the door end of the hall and one
shape peeled away.  She approached slowly, a skinny girl maybe a year
older than me.  No boobs, at least none I could see in the oversized shirt
she was wearing.  Black hair, sunken, hungry eyes.  “Hurry up over
here.  Now, Sam.  This is Gail.”
    “Hi Sam,” she said in monotone.
     “Hi.”  The buzz was starting to wear off a little, and that
sinister feeling was rising up again. 
    “You two go back to the end there and we’ll give you some privacy,” Kenny
said, pushing both of us toward the far side of the hall, where no one else had
gathered.  I held Gail’s hand, a limp collection of bird-bones. 
    “You look like a nice guy,” Gail said lifelessly.
    “I am,” I said, taken aback.
    She glanced back at Kenny.  “I really don’t want to do this. 
But I will if you make me.”
    Even through the beer I felt like a cad.  What was I doing
here?  I was the worst kind of scum. Taking advantage of people. 
Using them.
    She must have seen the confusion on my face, because she quickly offered
to pretend that we had done something, so Kenny wouldn’t think I was a
wuss.  She hugged me close, feeling more vulnerable than I would have
thought.
    “How did you get this way?” I asked, finally finding my voice. 
    “No small talk,” she said.  “It’s nothing special.”
    We waited out of sight behind the husk of a brand new outdoor air
conditioner unit abandoned here when construction fizzled for about fifteen
minutes, when she pulled hard on her hair and declared that had been enough
time.  Now that it was over we didn’t hold hands on the way back. 
She walked faster than me, pulled, I could tell, by whatever was in Kenny’s
front pocket.  He reached in and gave it to her.   She beelined back into her group.
    “She’s good, right?  My most popular.”
     Suddenly the nagging disappointment I felt was replaced by
relief.  Most popular is something you want to hear about an album or a
car.  Not about someone with whom you could have been sexually
intimate. 
    “Sam, I want to talk to you about something.  We’re friends now,
right?  Friends?”  Kenny put his arm around me.
    “Sure.”
    “Well, there’s some rumors going around.  Rumors about you. 
About Conyers.”
    I stopped breathing.  Had I been found out?  “I don’t know what
you mean.”
    Kenny frowned, the first time I had really seen him do so.  “What
you got going on with