We Need to Talk About Kevin_ A Novel - Lionel Shriver [201]
Despite his avowed disinterest in your work, Franklin, Kevin was about to launch Kryptonite’s most successful advertising campaign to date.
By 3:20, giggling with self-congratulatory glee, the first BSPA winners were starting to arrive through the main entrance from the lobby, which remained unlocked.
“Personal hygiene, my momma!” Soweto declared.
“Hey, we’re bright and shining,” said Laura, tossing her silken brown hair. “Don’t we get any chairs?”
Mouse crossed to the equipment room to scrounge some fold-ups, but when he came back reporting the room already locked for the day Greer said, “I don’t know, it’s kind of neat this way. We can sit cross-legged, like around a campfire.”
“Puh-lease,” said Laura, whose outfit was—scant. “Cross-legged, in this skirt? And it’s Versace, for Chrissake. I don’t want to stink it up with sit-up sweat.”
“Yo, girl,” Soweto nodded at her spindly figure, “that close as you gonna come to sit-up sweat.”
Kevin was able to listen in on his prizewinners from the alcove, an inset shelf on the upper level; so long as he remained against the back wall, he couldn’t be seen from below. The three stationary bicycles, treadmill, and rowing machine had already been dragged away from the alcove’s protective railing. Transferred from the duffel, his stash of some hundred arrows bristled from two fire buckets.
Enticed by the marvelous echo, Denny emoted a few lines from Don’t Drink the Water at the top of his lungs, while Ziggy, who made a habit of flouncing around school in a leotard and tights to show off his calves, couldn’t resist making what Kevin later called “a big queeny entrance,” dancing a series of turns in pointe position across the length of the gym and finishing with a grand jeté. But Laura, who doubtless thought it uncool to ogle fags, only had eyes for Jeff Reeves—though quiet and terminally earnest, a handsome blue-eyed boy with a long blond ponytail with whom a dozen girls were known to be smitten. One of Jeff’s salivating fans, according to an interview with a friend recorded by NBC, was Laura Woolford, which more than his mastery of the twelve-string guitar may have explained why he, too, was christened Bright and Shining.
Miguel, who must have told himself he was unpopular for being smart or Latino—anything but for being a little pudgy—promptly plunked himself on one of the blue mats, to burrow with knit-browed seriousness into a battered copy of Alan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind. Beside him, Greer, who made the mistake common to rejects everywhere of assuming that outcasts like each other, was busy trying to engage him in a discussion of NATO’s intervention in Kosovo.
Dana Rocco arrived at 3:35. “Come on troops!” she rallied them. “Ziggy, that’s all very dramatic, but this isn’t ballet practice. Can we get down to business here? This is a happy occasion, but it’s still after-hours for me, and I’d like to get home before Letterman.”
At this point, the cafeteria worker arrived, carting a tray of cellophaned sandwiches. “Where you want these, ma’am?” he asked Rocco. “We got a order from Mr. Bevons to provide refreshments.”
“Wasn’t that thoughtful of Don!” she exclaimed.
Well. It was thoughtful of someone. And I have to say, the sandwiches were a nice touch, that little garnish of an authentic school occasion. But Kevin may have been over-egging the pudding a bit, and the gesture would cost him collateral damage.
“Ma’am, my shift’s over now, you mind if I shoot