Korê in New York

What happens when a kid refuses to leave the past behind? What happens when the past won't go away? Read on and don't worry about the emotional damage.

1. Accidental Espionage

   Saturday night, our villa at Rialitee Resort in Providenciales in the Turks and Caicos turned into an impromptu beauty parlor/fashion show. I thought everyone had gone through most of this before we went to the islands. After all, a trip to the islands in Feburary requires you to try on last summer’s clothes and still see if they fit, and to replace what does not fit with expensive, out of season items or at least clean stuff that fits. I’d all ready washed the salt and chlorine out of my hair and the sweat off my body. I had enough clothes for a spare clean shirt for the evening and I wasn’t gonig anywhere that needed a skirt and stockings as far as I could tell. Do I have to tell you that I considered the whole primping and preening exercise somewhere between pointless and unnerving?

   Kayla Sidlow also left out the most important part of mother and teen dressing together. She did not sniff either of her daughters. Surely you all know about the maternal sniff test. The stinky part of stained and stinky is very real.

   Instead, Kayla Sidlow joined in the “fun,” admiring her daughters’ choice in jeans and scrutinizing the various outfits they tried on and then tried on again, mixing and matching for the fun of it. Eventually they graduated from the clothes themselves to accessories. Then they took off the accessories and played with their makeup. I had to remind myself that there was no boyfriend and no one was going on a date unless Kayla was going out dancing with Marcus. Social lives are really grownup things and even old people’s things when you stop to think about it.

   The beauty parlor/fashion parade was still going full tilt when Mr. Sidlow arrived. He glanced around and gave the whole thing a look somewhere between boredom and disgust. It is easy to forget that men were once boys (For some reason it is easier to remember that women were once girls, but maybe that is because I am female.) but if one can remember that, Mr. Sidlow’s look made complete and utter sense.

   “Is it all right if I order in supper?” asked Mr. Sidlow.

   “I’m going out,” I announced.

   “And where?”

   “PeKing Buffet,” I answered. “Level S1 Building 3.”

   “Kore’s going to stuff herself,” replied Davida.

   “Go then…” answered Mr. Sidlow. “And where are you going after supper?”

   “Official teen activities,” I had a name for it. “They have a club with a DJ, stuff like that.”

   “I wish my own daughters were as easy to please,” answered Mr. Sidlow.

   “You don’t…” laughed Kayla.

   “Not really,” Marcus corrected himself. Then he turned to Davida, Margolin, and the guest, Hannah. “You’re not even going to invite Kore to the Tiqi Club?”

   Margoin stared at the villa’s recycled, bamboo floor. Davida stifled a laugh nearly turning purple. Hannah just shook her head.

   “How do you feel about not getting invited?” Marcus asked me.

   I shrugged. “I don’t usually go to clubs,” I answered. I don’t miss what I never had so the whole thing was kind of stupid. “OK so you’ll be down at the children’s building again,” Marcus Sidlow tried to fashion an insult.

   “Yup,” I sighed. “Quick study,” I thought.

   “Then I should expect you back here around 1am. Your family does everything by the clock don’t they?”

   “We can tell time if that’s what you mean,” I really should not have been so snotty.

   “It’s not a pleasant way to live,” Kayla tried to explain. Whatever lesson she wanted to give me went right by me. I’m not a quick study for a lot of this bullshit.

   A half hour later after wearing and pointless talk half of which I probably did not understand, I headed out to Building 3 to get supper. I enjoyed the pleasant walk from one of six major buildings to another. The map had clear paths. If there were sercret passageways, basements, and service tunnels which there well may have been, I did not know them, but I was not going to be here long enough to learn them. Now that would be an interesting assignment for the world’s suckiest spy.

   I found Building 3 and entered via the beach entrance. Level B is beach. S stands for subterranean which is how I knew there were basement service tunnels. If you have a basement, you probably have more than one level and probably have tunnels for linens and all kinds of other good stuff that goes on in a hotel behind the scenes. The PeKing Buffet was all fake Chinese restaurant decor, red laquer, paper lanterns, and gold trim in Chinese characters. I wish Chin had been with me. I’m not sure she can read Chinese, but she can decipher the characters used for decoration like calligraphy.

   I scoped out the buffet. They did not serve pepper steak which is one of my favorite Chinese dishes as long as it has enough peppers. The restaurant did have a custom stir fry. I got pork with lots of Chinese vegetables including plenty of cabbage. Good Chinese is nearly always half vegetables and it does not have to be flaming hot. Dad can eat it much hotter than I can. I do like some Chinese mustard spread carefully and plenty of rice with my meal, and a pot of hot Chinese tea.

   I sat enjoying my repast and trying to regroup my thoughts into something coherent like a plan. My thoughts wouldn’t group. I was glad to be eating alone and away from the Sidlows who were like a low frequency version of the Fast Crowd or maybe all the Fast Crowd stuff was just out of place on a vacation island.

   I thought about the Arena and how similar the food on this island was to that place and how similar the activities were. Each person could be pampered according to his/her wishes. I was sure they did serve pepper steak somewhere. There were several other casual Chinese/Asian restaurants. You could tell if a restaurant was casual by the absence of a little bow tie next to its name in the restaurant list.

   I thought of how many people this resort must employ and all these restaurants, and my mind went to the Caucuasian beach person or grounds keeper or whatever his title was. He was younger than the youth counselors and not here for a “fun job.” Could he be an out of work auto worker, a washed up sailor, or something else? I thought once again of my sing-song rhyme and felt my stomach clinch. Then I told myself that if I was really curious, I could talk to the groundskeeper and find his story. Then I’d know the truth. There was no point being scaird of phantoms.

   I walked all around the island, from one building to the next on the outdoor paths after supper. It was a transition time between day and evening activites. The sky turned from pale blue, to turquoise, to saphire, to black. There was no real sunset that took its good sweet time like in New York or Scranton. I did not care to watch the sun. I tried to take mental pictures of the buildings and match them up with eateries and other attractions. It was amazing how much and how easy just taking a walk was. Everywhere the paths led to other paths and probably to corridors as well. You could just walk and walk and you were totally unrestricted. You never hit an “Authorized Personnel Only” sign or a fence or a pier that dwindled away to water and rotten wood. Even at the gap there were bridges between Buildings 4 and 5. I don’t have to tell you this is very unusual.

   It was doubly unusual beause Rialitee was a place of rank, status, and gradations of all sorts. Just a few hours with the teen activity counselors and a look in the map with index had taught me that. There were casual, semi-formal, formal and restricted restaurants. Most guests did not have access to everything. For teenagers, there were places that were adult-only and places that were adult-only by custom, and then places marked general. General meant teens could use them and probably kids too. Adult only by custom meant that the youth counselors had to obtain permission to bring a group. Individual teens and spontaneous visits were forbidden.

   One could, I realized have a very good time at Rialitee enjoying just the general and casual areas. Star Corps, who designed this resort, had figured out a way of making an otherwise happy vacationer feel deprived or that he/she was missing something or that he/she was superior over others. “Very clever,” I thought with disgust.

   ---

   I shoved the map back into my purse and descended toward the beach at Building One. White Christmas lights shown from the Teen Pavillion’s wrap-around porch. At the base of the pier, a casual but adult only by custom club had attracted a small, subdued crowd of grownups. The club had a live band. The band was tuning up. Stray notes wafted across the sand.

   I entered the teen pavillion to find a line waiting for the computers and electronic games. Downstairs was the “nightly disco.” It was a disco. There was a DJ, a counselor named Dominic from New Jersey or Jersey Dom as he called himself. He was plump and the kind of kid other kids picked on except as an adult he could be funny. He asked me how I enjoyed the high dive today. I told him it was only a high jump for me. He laughed. “Not many girls go off the high dive even if they only jump.”  I told Jersey Dom about sweet Craig’s private diving lesson. “My form sucks,” I added.

   Dom laughed and said. “Keep working on it. It will get better.”

   I realized Dom could have made some kind of joke about my form as in it being my appearnce, but he didn’t do it. Like the accessible paths around the island, Dom’s absence of a joke meant something. “What kind of music do you like, Kore?” Like Craig, Dom got my name right.

   “Electronica but sweet and dancable and also some humor and Broadway stuff.”

   “I should have known,” laughed Dom. “How many high school girls ask for those show tunes. How’s New York?”

   “Pretty good,” I replied. It had been very good. We’d saved a large proportion of middle and high schools from going Academic Optional, but I wasn’t going to explain all that to Dom who worked for Star Corps/ECBAS/Youth Voices.

   “Are you from New York?” I asked. Dom switched to an automatic play list and went through his files of MP3’s on his computer screen.

   “New Jersey.”

   “Are you a college student?” This was my standard interrogation for Youth Counselors.

   “Yeah… but I’m taking a semester off?”

   “Where do you go to school?” I asked.

   “Hofstra on Long Island,” and then he took a breath. I knew who else went to school at Hofstra. Well Rotten Robbie could rot in Rikers. He’d tried to kill both RoAnn and me. I remembered him happily swinging his little friend, a baseball bat with a spike riven through it, the kind of little friend which says you mean business.

   “You like it there?” I asked.

   “I’m a grad student. I commute.”

   “What do you study?” I asked.

   “Clinical psychology.” Dom shook his head. “Kore can you do me a favor?”

   I hadn’t expected this. “Depends what it is,” I asked.

   “Well, Craig was impressed with you this afternoon. You are happy to be here. You’re willing to learn new things, and you seem to be enjoying yourself.”

   “So…”

   “I’d like you to be an example for the rest of the kids here. A lot of them really don’t like being shoved into teen activities. Maybe they want to be with their parents.”

   “Maybe they want to be at Tiqi,” I spoke its name.

   “That too….I don’t think Tiqi is much better than here. There’s no live band.”

   “But Troy DiVilliers may showup,” I replied.

   “Or Karen Fish, or Angelina…”

   “How about Marta Arrowhood,” I answered.

   “Her too… There’s no rational way that kids to to Tiqi. It’s all who you know, even if the kids were in the know back in their groups, some groups are more equal than others. It makes for a lot of bad feeling.”

   “So what can I do about it?” I asked. This really was an ECBAS problem. Still part of me was willing to cooperate if what Dom asked was reasonable.

   “Lead by example. Hannah and Amanda are going to be working the floor teaching social and group dancing. I want you to dance with enthusiasm. I even want you to ask a boy or two to dance if we have partners and help start a conga line if we have lines. Can you do that?”

   “And what do I get in return?” I thought.

   “Sure,” I replied, “on one condition.”

   “What condition?”

   “I get to have breakfast with the counselors tomorrow,” I thought fast. “That is if you eat in an unrestricted spot.”

   “I’ll see if I can arrange it,” Jersey Dom answered.

   All in all it was a pleasant evening. I have no experience with school dances, so I was glad that Hannah gave dancing lessons. I danced with Hannah as the volunteer and later, I asked the tall, macho boy who shared the eighteen foot platform on top of Building 4 with me to dance. His name was Jacob and he didn’t want to dance at first.

   “I don’t know how,” he told me quietly.

   “Didn’t they teach you in gym?” I asked. Gym for girls always includes social dancing and we had just had a lesson. “Just do what Hannah taught you.” I went over the steps for a partner dance. Later I pulled Jacob into the conga line along with another girl. The girl with horn rims refused to participate. She sat with several other girls looking like the poison of misery.

   We had snacks at midnight. I just drank soda. The boys stuffed themselves. Jacob took me aside and asked who I was. He had learned to pronounce my name and did not call me Cori or Corey. That was a good start. I told him I was from New York City and went to Brooklyn Tech.

   “That’s a nerd school,” Jacob said. Like Dom he was from New Jersey. He was from Upper Saddle River.

   “I only go to school half days,” he explained. “My dad wants me taking lessons with a tutor so I don’t fall behind.”

   “Are you in ECBAS?” I asked.

   “Fuck yeah….everybody is in ECBAS except the real dweebs and rejects.”

   I shook my head. “My school is resistant,” I told Jacob. He didn’t get it. I handed him one of my Young Achiever’s Business Cards.

   “Fuck!” the boy said.

   “How long can you serve two masters?” I asked.

   “You’re not afraid of what other kids will say?”

   “I heard it all when I was in middle school.” It was fun talking tough.

   “Shit, I don’t know…to go over to the other side. My dad would have a fucking orgasm.”

   “Do you know any kids who might want to join?” I asked.

   “Yeah..I do but we keep it secret. That’s why having a tutor is such a good thing.”

   “It’s not good forever. You know what’s going to happen to kids on the bottom with ECBAS?”

   “No…”

   “Go out in the morning and watch the people who set up the beach,” I said or the people cooking and serving your food. “The people who are on the bottom are just going to get jobs and do the work for everybody else and I think you want better.”

   “You sure…” Then Jacob shook his head and told me. “Let’s dance.”

   A bit before 1am, the party in the Kids’ Disco broke up. Hannah caught me as I was leaving. “Dom, Amanda, and I wanted to thank you for being so helpful tonight,” Hannah told me. Then she pressed a post-it into my hand. “Don’t sleep in,” was all she said. Under the bright lights of the peer where the band was no longer playing and an automatic playlist of MP3’s sounded, I glanced at the writing on the Post-it. “General Cafeteria #2 — Level S4 Building 5 6:45am Sharp!!!!”

   I was going to need to ask for a wake up call for tomorrow morning. I could probably do it by calling the desk in Building Two which was our “Building” for our section of Villas. The numbers instead of names gave Rialitee a very raw feel, but only the right places had names that made one feel personal and loved. That after all was part of the effect.

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