Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, The - Junot Diaz [69]
Really? The look he gave me — still breaks my heart, even after all these years.
Really. You have to listen to me, though.
Oscar scrambled to his feet. Placed his hand over his heart.
I swear an oath of obedience, my lord. When do we start?
You’ll see.
The next morning, six a.m., I kicked Oscar’s bed.
What is it? he cried out.
Nothing much, I said, throwing his sneakers on his stomach. Just the first day of your life.
I really must have been in a dangle over Suriyan — which is why I threw myself something serious into Project Oscar. Those first weeks, while I waited for Suriyan to forgive me, I had fatboy like Master Killer in Shaolin Temple. Was on his ass 24/7. Got him to swear off the walking up to strange girls with his I-loveyou craziness. (You’re only scaring the poor girls, O.) Got him to start watching his diet and to stop talking crazy negative — I am ill fated, I am going to perish a virgin, I’m lacking in pulchritude — at least while I was around, I did. (Positive thoughts, I stressed, positive thoughts, motherfucker!) Even brought him out with me and the boys. Not anything serious — just out for a drink when it was a crowd of us and his monstro-ness wouldn’t show so much. (The boys hating — What’s next? We start inviting out the homeless?)
But my biggest coup of all? I got dude to exercise with me. To fucking run.
Goes to show you: O really did look up to me. No one else could have gotten him to do that. The last time he’d tried running had been freshman year, when he’d been fifty pounds lighter. I can’t lie: first couple of times I almost laughed, seeing him huffing down George Street, those ashy black knees of his a-shaking. Keeping his head down so he wouldn’t have to hear or see all the reactions. Usually just some cackles and a stray Hey, fit-ass. The best one I heard? Look, Mom, that guy’s taking his planet out for a run.
Don’t worry about them jokers, I told him.
No worry, he heaved, dying.
Dude was not into it at all. As soon as we were through he’d be back at his desk in no time flat. Almost clinging to it. Tried everything he could to weasel out of our runs. Started getting up at five so when I got up he’d already be at his computer, could claim he was in the middle of this amazingly important chapter. Write it later, bitch. After about our fourth run he actually got down on his knees. Please, Yunior, he said, I can’t. I snorted. Just go get your fucking shoes.
I knew shit wasn’t easy for him. I was callous, but not that callous. I saw how it was. You think people hate a fat person? Try a fat person who’s trying to get thin. Brought out the mother-fucking balrog in niggers. Sweetest girls you’d ever see would say the vilest shit to him on the street, old ladies would jabber, You’re disgusting, disgusting, and even Harold, who’d never shown much in the way of anti-Oscar tendencies, started calling him Jabba the Butt, just because. It was straight-up nuts.
OK, people suck, but what were his options? O had to do something. Twenty-four/seven at a computer, writing sci-fi monsterpieces, darting out to the Student Center every now and then to play video games, talking about girls but never actually touching one — what kind of life was that? For fuck’s sake, we were at Rutgers — Rutgers was just girls everywhere, and there was Oscar, keeping me up at night talking about the Green Lantern. Wondering aloud, If we were orcs, wouldn’t we, at a racial level, imagine ourselves to look like elves?
Dude had to do something.
He did, too.
He quit.
It was a nutty thing really. Four days a week we were running. I put in five miles myself but with him it was just a little every day. Thought he was doing OK, all things considered. Building, you know? And then right in the middle of one of our jogs. Out on George Street, and I looked back over my shoulder, saw that he had stopped. Sweat running down everywhere. Are you having a heart attack? I am not, he said. Then why ain’t you running? I’ve decided to run no more. Why the fuck not? It’s not going to work, Yunior. It ain’t going to work if