Читать книгу Original Love - J.J. Murray - Страница 12

I wake up yawning with the sunrise and casually look over at the laptop. It’s on sleep mode, the green light blinking. I reboot, set it automatically to sign on to AOL, and head to the bathroom to piss away half a gallon of Earl Grey.

I know I’m setting the unofficial world’s record for longest piss when I hear, “You’ve got mail!”

I race from the bathroom, my pants still unzipped, and click on the “get mail” button. I have twenty-seven messages!

I double-click the first one:

Fuck you! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

I get seven versions of the above, five that say “kiss my ass,” one that says “kiss my black ass,” and thirteen messages that say one way or another: “No, I’m not Ebony Mills.” All are unsigned, and only one adds: “I hope you find her.”

The last message is another “I’m not Ebony,” but it intrigues me:

I may not be who you’re looking for, but I might know the Ebony you’ve been looking for. Write back!

Destiny (Ebony31582@aol.com)

And say what? How much more information does she need to know? And why is someone named Destiny using “Ebony” in her screen name? I reply with:

I knew Ebony Mills in Huntington from 1976-1981. We attended R.L. Simpson Junior High and Huntington High together. She used to live on Grace Lane, a couple blocks from where I lived on Preston Street.

Peter

I send the e-mail into cyberspace, then take a much-needed shower, leaving my dark hairs all over Henry’s tub. I’m only here to write, not to clean.

When I get out, I look at a full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door and analyze what forty years can do to a body. More salt than pepper in my hair. Wrinkles winging from my eyes to my receding hairline. Ear hair. Zits I’ve never been able to outgrow on my forehead and chin. Pores as big as pencil points. Gray nose hairs I can’t trim fast enough with a pair of fingernail clippers. Hairy legs except for my naked knees and ankles where years of pants have erased their memory. The single hair on my chest that grows up to six inches long before I notice and pluck it. The hair that grows on top of my nose. My teeth a series of root canals, caps, and cavities. Rainbow veins wherever I look. Mysterious bruises that take months to heal. Freckles that become moles. Toes gnarled from hitting bedposts late at night, one missing a nail.

I am not a pretty man.

I borrow Henry’s white bathrobe and slippers—he must go through lots of bleach—and return to the laptop.

No message yet.

Reduced to drinking instant coffee, I wolf down several slices of white bread slathered with strawberry jam. I dial Henry’s office and leave a message for him to call me immediately. When I’m writing, I don’t like any interruptions, especially the phone. The TV has to be off, only seventies music playing to inspire me.

“You’ve got mail!”

Though it’s probably my daily headlines from the Times, I rush over anyway.

But it’s from Destiny:

I know your Ebony Mills! We used to work together. Unfortunately, I don’t know exactly where she is right now (sorry). She’s even unlisted in the phone book. I wish I could help you more!

Since I think she’s still currently online, I try to Instant Message her using her screen name, Ebony31582:

I only have to wait a few seconds.

Seaford is just a ferry ride and half an hour in a car away from here! And Ebony still makes jewelry? She used to make dozens of those friendship bracelets, the ones you were supposed to let rot off your wrist, way back when.

I breathe a heavy sigh of relief, though I really shouldn’t. It isn’t as if I’m going to rekindle our romance twenty years after the fact. That kind of romance only happens in the movies. I feel like an awkward seventh grader asking the next question:

I stare at the screen for several minutes waiting for her reply, but Destiny is really gone. I try to IM her again, but “Ebony31582 is not currently signed on” flashes on the screen. I write her a quick e-mail:

Destiny:

Please feel free to reply or IM me anytime. I’ll probably be online off and on all day today.

Peter

Instead of painstakingly editing what I wrote yesterday—my usual procedure—I press on as rosy fingers of red sky steal across the bay.

Chapter 2

For Peter Rudolph Underhill, life with Dave and Hel Underhill was a trip, a gas, and plain outta-sight.

But Peter would be lying if he said that. Life with Hel and the Captain was a bad trip that ran out of gas long before Peter was born, and Peter spent most of his childhood playing out of sight.

By myself. Being an only child was rough. I had no one to play with or to boss around or to blame. I had no one ahead of me to take the brunt of my parents’ first attempts at parenting, no one behind to protect. If something ended up broken, I had to have done it. If something went missing, I was responsible for finding it since I had obviously lost it. There was no suspense at Christmas, no hand-me-downs, no fights over the last cookie, no giggling when a sibling got punished instead of me—and I got punished by spanking often. It wasn’t exactly spanking; it was more like lashing or flogging. “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” the Captain would say, his Bible open in front of him, a thin belt in his hand. “This is where it says in the Good Book that I can hit you.” I’d bend over a chair, my buttocks exposed to the world, and I’d have to count out the lashings: ten if I had only talked back to Mom, twenty if I hadn’t done my chores to the Captain’s satisfaction, and one time thirty for “borrowing” change from his coat pocket. The Captain ran a tight ship, all right, and a major part of that ship involved God.

Out of sight mainly meant church. Peter grew up in the Methodist church that baptized him as an infant, chastised him as a sinner until he repented at the ripe old age of four, and confirmed him as a member at twelve. Sunday school, morning worship, then the night service. Wednesday night prayer meeting. Friday night youth night. Five services every week.

Peter learned that God was not like his father, though God was indeed the “Captain of his soul,” that He was Peter’s heavenly Father with a capital F who would smite him for disobeying his parents. Peter prayed for his salvation every time he attended church, afraid that he would go for a long swim in the fiery lakes and rivers of Hell with a capital H if Jesus wasn’t in his heart when he died. Peter accepted Jesus as his Savior with a capital S so often that He with a capital H was getting frequent-flyer miles to Peter’s soul.

Peter was just never sure of his salvation, mainly because Reverend Epson’s son, Ian, smoked, had green teeth, and dressed like a member of the rock group Kiss. Ian wore high platform shoes, and sat in the front row with black and white greasepaint smeared on his face, sticking out his tongue at the little choir behind Reverend Epson. If a pastor’s son was such a hellion, then who was Peter, the son of the Captain and Hel, to get into heaven?

In between church and school, Peter stayed inside at home and tried to be good.

But that would be a lie, too. Peter did everything in his power to get out of that house, but the Captain wouldn’t let Peter “mingle among those heathen out there.” Instead, Peter was stuck with a thundering father who cursed him and drank heavily and read from the Bible, and a cloudy mother who nursed him and drank more heavily and kept everything “shipshape for the Captain” while secreting away a small fortune in change and small bills in Campbell’s Chicken and Stars cans in the pantry. “For a rainy day,” she once told Peter.

“Those heathen” were the Underhills’ many neighbors, none of whom were really heathens to Peter. They were the Melting Pot Players, appearing daily and nightly outside the balcony-seat window of Peter’s room. They were always more entertaining than the three channels on TV.

Peter used to watch his neighbors from his bedroom windows, wishing somehow that he and his family were more like them. Like the Tuccis next door, who spoke Italian and sat in lawn chairs smoking and drinking wine and laughing and talking with their hands and fighting. Or like the Hites across the street, whose old grandmother spoke only German, who used to cook out every nice day and ate bratwurst and wieners and drank beer from tall glasses and generally got fat together. Or like the Steins, who used to throw block parties with music and lights strung between trees over which they sometimes played volleyball while sipping Budweisers and coming out of the house with just-baked cakes and pies. Or the Mathers, whose father worked in New York City on a TV game show that featured a huge maze, who were always out in the street playing kickball and basketball and kick-the-can and street hockey and curb-to-curb football, sweating together as a family.

Peter’s father simply never went outside unless he had a “damn good reason.” He built a huge deck anchored to the slope behind the house to “raise the value of the house,” a house, Peter later learned, that had been creeping inch by inch toward that sandy slope and could one day tumble into the woods above Huntington Harbor. The Underhills ate out on the deck once. Once. Other than tending to the grungiest red and pink geraniums ever planted in the gaudiest white plastic planters on the front porch, the Captain did nothing to the yard except cut it once a week, never bagging or raking up the clippings and clumps, because “it’s good for the soil if you let it all rot.”

Peter saw his first Fourth of July fireworks shows from his bedroom window, wishing that he were rocketing over Huntington Harbor like the Apollo astronauts who were always doing something outta-sight on the TV. He spent most of his childhood in his room, cleaning, making his bed until pennies bounced off it, doing homework, reading books like Sounder and The Bermuda Triangle, building model ships and getting high off the glue fumes, and staring out into the woods behind his house, woods that sloped right down from the backyard deck past a dance studio to the sand and rock shore of Huntington Harbor. Peter was only a ten-minute walk from the water, but he could only go to the harbor when the Captain wanted to play sailor every weekend.

Other kids—like Eddie Tucci, Eric Hite, Mickey Mather, and Mark Brand—could stroll through Peter’s woods past the “Cave,” an old concrete cistern covered with graffiti, and disappear into the trees any time they wanted, coming back up the hill laughing and munching on Dolly Madison cakes or chewing on beef jerky or sucking down RC Colas in tall bottles that they bought at Milldam Bait and Tackle. Sometimes they wore baseball uniforms, other times matching football jerseys. They had freedom that Peter could only dream about. Each one of them was living a boy’s life; Peter only had a subscription to Boy’s Life.

“And then Mom left,” I whisper. “She freed herself, and that freed me.”

Peter would never be one hundred percent sure why his mother left, since he hadn’t spoken to her since that day in December 1975, and he hadn’t even gotten so much as a postcard, but one thing Peter knew for sure: Hel hated each and every sinew of the Captain’s salty, seagoing guts.

Peter had seen and heard the signs well before her departure. But because he was a child, he didn’t understand the sarcasm in his mother’s voice when she said, “We can’t possibly start the day without the Captain’s hot cup of damn Joe,” or “Everything is just hunky-fucking-dory, Petey.” He didn’t notice all the ingredients she bought at the pharmacy that she stirred into the Captain’s whiskey sours—“Just a little something extra special to help the Captain sleep.” He didn’t see the splotches on her face as bruises—just as gobs of makeup.

Christmas Eve 1975, another Christmas Eve service at the Methodist church. Dripping candles, wilting poinsettias, whining carols, never-ending prayers, Ian sticking his tongue out, the familiar reading from Matthew. Peter was twelve. During a guitar and flute performance of “What Child Is This?” his mother rose from the pew, kissed him on the forehead, said, “Be good, Petey,” and left the sanctuary.

“Woman always has to go to the head,” the Captain growled. He never lowered his voice, even in church, for he was always at sea, and this particular Christmas Eve he was swimming on a half-dozen whiskey sours. “She never could learn to hold her piss.”

And that’s the last time Peter ever saw his mother.

The next morning, after finding no Campbell’s Chicken and Stars cans in the pantry, Peter opened his gifts, and his father said nothing.

Nothing.

One day she was there, the next she was gone. Peter didn’t like God much for that, but he wasn’t going to tell Him. He had been praying for more freedom, for more excitement in his life, for something other than what he was experiencing every day. He wanted to tell God that He had missed, that His aim was off, that He was throwing too many breaking balls out of the strike zone. Though Peter was the one who prayed for the gift of freedom, his mother got to open that gift, and Peter became the Captain’s favorite Seaman Recruit to kick around from that day on.

Luckily, Peter knew where his mother had hidden the sleeping pills, the ones she used to crush to a fine powder and later slip into the Captain’s last whiskey sour of the day. Peter found that using a rolling pin was fairly effective and quieter than using the little hammer his mother had used, so he filled a plastic bag and emptied half of it into the Captain’s third whiskey sour the day after Christmas. The Captain was three sheets to the wind and out like the lights on the Christmas tree within twenty minutes.

Once Peter started powdering the Captain’s morning cup of Joe, he was finally free to roam the neighborhood…

Henry would want more back story here. He would say that I’m only scratching the surface, like the gulls outside my window swooping over the bay and dipping their wings into the foamy crests of waves. He would ask: “How did your mother’s leaving make Peter feel at the time? Won’t the reader find it hard to believe that it was ‘business as usual’ on Christmas morning without Peter’s mother there? And wouldn’t Peter’s father react in some other way than saying ‘nothing’?”

Maybe I’ve repressed a few things, but this is what I remember: the Captain sipping his coffee while I opened my gifts, eating limp bacon and watery eggs in the kitchen, going out on the Argo for our traditional Christmas Day cruise of Huntington Bay, and watching TV that night. Neither one of us spoke of Mom, and life continued pretty much as before the following day. Henry will have trouble accepting it, but Henry didn’t grow up with the Captain.

The phone rings. Speak of the devil.

“Hello, Henry.”

“How did you know it would be me?”

“A little birdie told me.”

“Okay, well, I got your message, Pete. Everything okay? How’s the novel coming?”

Which one? And I’m not “Pete” to anyone anymore. “Everything’s fine. I owe you some Earl Grey.” And your apartment is still far too white even with all the curtains open. I feel the need to spill something and leave a stain.

“Don’t worry about it. Will you have three chapters for me by Friday?”

“How about a preface and two chapters?”

“I’d rather have three chapters, Pete.”

Damn. There goes my afternoon. “Sure thing. You want me to e-mail them to you?”

“No, I’ll be coming down for the weekend. I’ll read them when I get there.”

But there’s only one bed, Henry. Oh, and the couch. “I’ll tidy up before you get here.”

“Having a wild party without me, Pete?”

My name is Peter. “Yeah.” Just me and some wild memories.

“Really? Who all is there?”

“I’ve only seen Carlton, Henry. I’m having a party of one.”

“Too bad. How’s the Poet looking?”

“I don’t know. Tan. Is he a Jets fan?”

Henry laughs. “Is he ever! Carlton hasn’t missed a home game since sixty-nine. I’ll bet he’s been wearing green.”

“Yeah.”

“He looks good in green. So how do you like the apartment?”

I still don’t have the advance money, so I lie. “You have the nicest place, Henry. It’s très chic.”

“Thank you. You don’t think the White Album is a bit much?”

“Oh, no. In fact, I think you should hang a picture of Barry White, too.”

“Funny. So I’ll see you this Friday?”

“I’ll still be here.”

“And if you want some scrumptious scallops and a place to forget your troubles for a few hours, go to Le Lethe. It’s just around the corner from you.”

“Henry, I can barely afford the rental car sitting across the bay.” The Nova is costing me fifty bucks a day just to get encrusted with salt.

“Tell the boys at Le Lethe that you’re a good friend of mine, and they’ll put it on my tab.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Take care, Pete.”

“I will.” Hen.

I hang up and check my e-mail. Nothing from Destiny. More Viagra mail. An offer to “Work at Home and Make $2000 a Week with Your COMPUTER!!!” An invitation to check out Mars Computer’s new laptop. I read the e-mail and chuckle over the company slogan: “Proving that High Price Doesn’t Mean Quality!” Another e-mail begs me to “UPGRADE YOUR LIFE for just $89.99!” Now that’s a bargain and a half. The last, from some dyslexic company playing on the fears and paranoia of a computer virus-plagued society, claims to be the only safe way to survive in the twenty-first century, because “If you stink your safe, your probly not.”

I delete them all and check the outline for my book:

Chapter 3: January 1976

 *street hockey

 *description of friendsMark BrandEric HiteMickey MatherEddie Tucci

 *meeting Ebony for first time

 *home; conversation with the Captain

 *perpetual tans

“Henry, you’ll just have to wait,” I say to myself. “I want to have a little fun.” I look at the white coffee cup, the rim stained with two days of tea and instant coffee. The cup looks good with a tan.

Chapter 3

Once the Captain fell asleep in his La-Z-Boy “commodore’s chair” one unusually warm Sunday afternoon a few days after Christmas, Peter escaped the house and ran down to the cul-de-sac at the end of Preston Street to watch a street hockey game up close. He used to watch them from his window, but it was like watching a hockey game on TV without the sound.

And everybody was there: Mark Brand, bony and blond with hands too big for his body; Eric Hite, who had no height, with shaggy hair and no athletic skills; Eddie Tucci, fat and red-faced, with puffy hands and a gigantic nose; and Mickey Mather, the only one of the bunch who had a crew cut and any idea how to play hockey. They each wore T-shirts with “P-Street Rangers” written crudely in black Magic Marker on the front, each with his own gray duct-taped number on the back. They used hockey sticks that had wooden shafts and plastic blades and smacked around a hard orange puck that Eric kept hitting into the sewer. Eddie was the goalie and wore what looked like couch cushions tied to his legs with shoestrings, a catcher’s mask, a goalie stick and a first baseman’s mitt.

Peter thought they were the coolest foursome on earth.

“If the sewer was the goal, Eric, we’d never lose,” Mark said as Eric squeezed through the gap between the sidewalk and the grate into the sewer. Then Mark noticed Peter. “What you doin’ out, Peter-eater?”

It was the rumor at Southdown Elementary, then at Woodhull, where only sixth graders could go, and now at R.L. Simpson Junior High that Peter was a soft mama’s boy, allergic to air and dirt. Peter had to wear a navy blue pea coat to school on every cold day, and a couple times he heard some kids calling him the “Flasher.” And since Peter didn’t play any sports, the others thought that Peter had to be gay.

“Just came out to watch is all.”

“Watch us lose is more like it,” Eddie said. “Blackberry Bruins are gonna kill us unless Eric quits fuckin’ around. Mickey, when’s Willie gonna get here?”

At the mention of Willie Gough’s name, Peter cringed. Willie was the meanest boy at Simpson, always picking fights with kids bigger than him—and Willie was smaller than Eric. But Willie never lost. Never. He’d always still be standing at the end, his knuckles cut to shreds, the other kid bleeding and crying for his mama.

“Willie ain’t comin’,” Mickey said, passing the puck back and forth as he ran toward the goal, which looked like an overgrown chicken coop. He cracked off a shot that nearly knocked over the goal.

“We can’t play ’em with only four, Mickey,” Mark said.

“Petey can play, can’t you, Petey?” Mickey asked Peter.

Peter had never played a second of hockey before in his life, but he lied and said he could. A few moments later, he was tearing off home to get a white T-shirt. The second he returned, Eddie made Peter a P-Street Ranger, taping the number seven on to Peter’s back.

Mickey handed Peter an extra stick, one with a chewed-up wooden blade. “It still works,” he said. “Take a shot.”

Peter lined up the shot and walked around the puck.

“This ain’t golf, Peter-eater,” Mark said.

Peter ignored him and slammed the puck into the goal from about thirty feet away.

A cul-de-sac street hockey legend had just been born.

But when the Blackberry Bruins showed up, Peter knew he was in trouble. They were all eighth and ninth graders from Simpson, and they had real Bruins jerseys and helmets, knee pads, elbow pads, and shiny new sticks.

“They ain’t so tough,” Mickey told me. “They just got more money.”

“First to ten wins?” a tall, skinny boy named Chad said.

“Gotta win by two,” Mickey said. “And no slashing.”

“We won’t,” Chad said.

Chad lied. The Bruins slashed the P-Street Rangers to death with their sticks, hacking at shins until the Rangers spent more time limping than running. The Rangers were down seven to two in less than ten minutes, Eddie flinching and turning sideways every time a Bruin took a shot, Eric whiffing on the puck, Mark fussing and cussing, yelling, “I’m open! I’m open! Pass me the damn puck, you guys!” Peter did the best he could, but he was so much smaller than the Bruin players and often got pushed away from the action.

Mickey called a time-out. “Okay, Petey, you play goal for a while, give Eddie a break.”

“Thank you, Peter-eater,” Eddie said, and he took off his pads. “I’m sweating to death.”

“Eric, you stay back with Petey,” Mickey said. “We’re gonna have to cherry-pick a little to get back in the game, so Mark, you hang out near their goal. Me and Eddie will try to feed you.”

Eddie tied the pads to Peter, the tops nearly reaching Peter’s chest. The pads definitely smelled like garlic. He handed Peter his goalie stick and first baseman’s mitt and slapped the catcher’s mask on Peter’s head.

“Don’t lose it for us,” Eddie said. “And whatever you do, don’t be a pussy and flinch.”

And Peter didn’t. That little orange puck hurt like hell when it hit Peter where the pads weren’t, and he would have to ice down his shoulder afterward, but Peter didn’t duck or turn away at all. They bounced one between his black high-topped Chuck Taylor sneakers, and squeezed one in behind him after he made a nice first save, but that was all.

Peter held them to nine.

Meanwhile, Mickey’s plan was working, because Mark was an excellent shot, using his bony elbows to get the bigger boys out of the way. And whatever bounced off the Bruins’ goalie, Mickey slammed home. Eddie simply got in the way of their players, and Eric tried to stay out of sight so Peter could see the shots better.

Just as Mickey scored the tying goal, Peter noticed a black girl walking toward the action. He had never seen her before, and he knew just about everyone in the neighborhood by sight after months spent perched at his window seat.

“What the hell’s she doin’ here?” Mark asked Mickey.

Mickey shrugged. “Free country.”

“It’s like we’re having an eclipse or something,” Eddie said with a laugh.

Ebony was dark, but she moved onto that cul-de-sac just like the poet said: “in beauty like the night.” Peter was smitten with Ebony Mills from the second he saw her. She wore an oversized New York Knicks jersey that hung down to her knees, straight-legged Levi’s rolled up at the bottoms, and Adidas sneakers, and her hair was in tight braids wrapped in a circle around her head.

And instead of being shy and waiting to be spoken to, Ebony marched right up and said, “Y’all need another player?”

I sit back from the computer and relive that moment. Mark looked at Mickey. Eddie looked at Mickey. Eric looked at Mickey. The Bruins looked at Mickey. I looked at Ebony. What must have been going through their minds! I only saw a shapely girl with a dynamite smile and more guts than I’d ever have. And that Mickey—damn, I wonder what he’s doing now. I need to thank him for what he said and did next:

“Sure. Eric, take a break.”

“I ain’t givin’ her my stick!” Eric shouted.

Mickey snatched Eric’s stick in a flash and held it out to Ebony. “You good on defense?”

Ebony rolled her neck, her chin making a constant circle in the air in front of her. “What, you think cuz I’m a girl that I can’t score?”

Mickey’s eyes got big. “Okay, you play forward. Eddie, you drop back.”

“Nah, nah,” Eddie said, puffing out his chest. “I ain’t gonna.”

Ebony stared him down. “Boy, you so fat that pigs be followin’ you home lookin’ for a date.”

And though Eddie was his teammate, Peter laughed out loud. This girl wasn’t afraid of anything or anybody. And her accent—somewhere between deep South and Brooklyn or maybe even South Brooklyn—was cool and beat the snot out of the dull “Lawn GUY-land” accents in Peter’s neighborhood.

I found out later that Ebony’s family had been part of the northern migration from Virginia after what Ebony’s mother, Candace, called the “first Emancipation.” They lived in Brooklyn until the “second Emancipation” in the late sixties and early seventies that brought them east to Huntington. Ebony was a mixture of street and country, African and a little Cherokee, and the overall result was honey with a heavy dose of vinegar and salt.

Eddie, who normally had a comeback for everything since he read those little paperbacks full of mean jokes, backed off to play defense without another word.

“Let’s play,” Ebony said…and the girl could play. She was almost as good as Mickey, stealing the orange puck away from one of the Bruins and scoring on her very first shot.

“What’s the score?” she asked.

“Ten-nine us,” Mickey told her.

Chad got up in Mickey’s face. “That don’t count. She ain’t on your team. She ain’t from your neighborhood.”

Ebony stepped over to Chad. “What don’t count?”

Chad ignored her. “It’s still tied nine to nine, and you gotta put Eric back in.”

“Excuse me?” Ebony said. “You sayin’ cuz I ain’t from this neighborhood that it don’t count?”

Chad turned to her. “Yeah. That’s what I’m saying.”

“Well,” she said, with a dynamite smile, “I am from this neighborhood. I just moved in over on Grace Lane.”

Which meant she’d be at Simpson once the holiday break was over. Peter hoped that she was in the seventh grade, but her body was definitely eighth or ninth grade, because of her breasts.

“Grace Lane ain’t Preston Street,” Chad said.

“And you ain’t shit playin’ hockey, boy,” Ebony said. “All the cool shit you got on, and you can’t play a lick. You just mad a girl scored on you. And you just scared I’m gonna score on y’all again.”

“I ain’t scared.”

“Prove it then,” she said.

We were all in that nowhere land between puberty and manhood, and to let a girl beat you—in anything—was like losing your penis. Chad didn’t know what to do or say that day, and I just had to say something.

“Why don’t you let her play?” Peter asked, though it came out more as a statement.

“You shut up,” Chad yelled at Peter.

Ebony then pushed Chad back. “Who you tellin’ to shut up, boy? You talking to”—she looked back at Peter and smiled—“what’s your name?”

“Peter.”

She put a finger on Chad’s chest. “You talkin’ to Peter, and he’s my boy. You don’t tell any of my boys to shut up.” Chad didn’t make a sound. He didn’t even seem to be breathing. “Now are we gonna play or what?”

“It still doesn’t count,” Chad said. “It’s still tied, nine to nine.”

“Whatever,” Ebony said. “Let’s play.”

They played on, but for only a few minutes more. Ebony bulled her way in for a stuff shot to put the P-Street Rangers up by one, and when the Bruins brought up the puck after that, Ebony stole it, fed Mickey through Chad’s legs, and Mickey faked out the Bruins’ goalie, leaving him lying in the street before tapping the puck into the net.

After the game, Ebony walked up to Peter. “Turn around.”

Peter turned around. He wasn’t going to argue with her.

“Number seven. That’s my favorite number, you know that?”

“Um, what’s your name?”

She smiled and looked down at the ground, proving to Peter that she had a shy streak as long as his own. That was really when Peter’s heart became Ebony’s, the image of her smiling shyness passing into his soul forever. “Ebony Mills.” She flashed her eyes briefly at him. “But you can call me ‘E’ if you like.”

“Okay.”

Then she turned to Mickey. “When am I gonna get a jersey?”

Ebony got her jersey that very day, talking Mark out of wearing number twelve.

The others had already fanned out to go home, and that left Ebony and Peter walking back toward his house.

“Are you gonna go to Simpson?” Peter asked.

“Where else am I gonna go?”

“I dunno. You could go to St. Pat’s like Eddie.”

“No, thanks. Them Catholic kids is too wild for me. I’m going to Simpson. You go there?”

“Yeah.”

“What grade you in?”

“Seventh.”

“Me, too.”

A seventh-grade girl with ninth-grade breasts? Peter thought. There is a God!

They arrived at the driveway of Peter’s house. “This is, uh, this is my house.”

“You got anything to drink in there?”

“Um, yeah. I could get you a soda.”

“You ain’t gonna invite me in?”

Peter wanted to, but if the Captain were awake…“My father, uh, he hasn’t been feeling too well.”

“Uh-huh.”

Peter knew that she didn’t believe him. “Actually, um, he’s probably asleep.”

“Right.”

Peter knew that she still didn’t believe him. “No, really.”

Neither said anything for the longest time.

“You gonna get me a Coke or what?”

“Oh, sure.”

Peter sneaked through the back door into the kitchen, heard the Captain’s snores like the gurgling of a clogged bilge pump, and returned to Ebony with a Coke. She wiped off the top of the can with the hem of her Knicks jersey, and Peter caught sight of the most beautiful belly button. She had the tiniest little “inny” no bigger than a licorice gumdrop.

“What you lookin’ at, Peter?”

“Uh, nothing.”

“Uh-huh.” She smiled. “You lookin’ at my stomach, right?”

Peter nodded.

“Bet you got an ‘outie’ with all sorts of green shit inside it.”

“I got an inny, too,” Peter said, hurt.

She squinted. “Prove it.”

There on his driveway after a sweaty game of street hockey, Peter showed a girl his “inny.”

She crouched lower to have a closer look. “Dag, boy, you got freckles like that all over?”

Peter dropped his shirt. “Most of them aren’t freckles. They’re moles, like this one.” He touched the mole just above his upper lip.

Then…she touched the mole under Peter’s nose. Her finger was cold from holding her can of Coke, and Peter nearly jumped out of his Chuck Taylors. “Does it hurt?”

“N-n-no.”

She pulled back her hand. “You cold?”

“Your finger is.” And it’s electric, he thought. Her fingers are made of cold electricity.

“Sorry.” She took a sip. “You got moles like that all over your body?”

“No.”

“Good, cuz they nasty.” She finished her Coke and handed it to Peter. “Thanks for the Coke.”

“You’re welcome.”

She smiled. “See you around, Peter.”

“Yeah. See you around…E.”

Without thinking, Peter floated in through the front door of the house, a hockey stick in his hand. Then, because he was still thinking of Ebony’s licorice gumdrop belly button and her electric ice-cold finger, he tripped on the carpet runner at the base of the stairs, and the hockey stick clattered against the wall.

“What the hell you think you’re doing out there, Pete?”

Peter slid the stick into the hall closet, ripping off his jersey and throwing it up over the second floor stair railing. “Just slipped, Captain.”

“Come here,” he said.

Peter walked into the TV room, hoping his face didn’t look as wind-burned and raw as it felt. It seemed as if the Captain hadn’t moved from his La-Z-Boy since Peter delivered his mug of coffee a few hours ago.

“I just slipped on the stairs, Captain.”

“You been upstairs all this time?”

Peter had already sinned by drugging the Captain’s coffee, so one more sin wouldn’t hurt. “Yes, sir.”

“Doing what?”

“Reading.” Okay, two more sins.

“Oh.” He reached for and nudged his coffee cup, a little spilling over the sides.

Peter held his breath. He’s hardly had any! Either I put way too much sleeping powder in his coffee, or he made another cup on his own and he’s really been awake all this time. Then he knows I must be lying!

The Captain took a sip and nodded his head. “You make a fine cuppa Joe, Pete.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“It’s cold now.” Geez, I used too much! What did he have, one sip? “But it’s not bad. Maybe a little too much sugar.” He held out the mug. “You mind warming this up for me?”

“No sir.”

“Just set it on the little eye on the stove. It’ll heat up just fine.”

Peter took his cup. White powdery particles stared up at him. I could have killed him! “Okay.”

Peter was almost to the hallway when the Captain called out, “And we won’t be going to church this evening! Something on the TV I want to watch!”

Peter nearly dropped the mug. They hadn’t missed a Sunday evening service since Peter was born, and today they had barely gotten up in time for the morning worship service.

Hel’s departure was getting cooler all the time.

Peter set the mug on the eye and turned the dial to medium, and while he waited, he focused on the coffee until it bubbled.

He also focused on the girl with the licorice gumdrop inny and the perpetual tan: Ebony Mills. She bubbled, too.

He had always been attracted to girls with tans. Whenever he and the Captain took the Captain’s Ford Country Squire station wagon down to the harbor and went out on the Argo, Peter would look for girls on other boats instead of paying attention to the Captain, which is probably why Peter never learned any of the ropes or how to properly sail a boat. He knew that he’d be a Seaman Recruit for life. Whenever they’d stop at any of the many marinas around Huntington, Peter would do his best to drag his feet whenever he saw some girls sunning themselves on other boats.

Once, at a marina in Northport, Peter had watched two older girls in bikinis lying facedown near the bow of their boat. Neither had her bikini top fastened in the back, and when the Captain blew the Argo’s horn, the tanner of the two looked up at Peter, giving him his first glimpse of a girl’s breasts. Since all he knew about breasts came from the Song of Solomon in the Bible, Peter could only compare them to little fawns.

I was so naive sexually. In sixth grade, Woodhull required all boys to sit with their dads or moms at a big sex education meeting complete with overheads, a movie, and a question-and-answer period, which was punctuated by a question asked by Timmy “The Squirrel” Bottomley, a bigger geek than me: “What happens if the male should urinate in the vagina of the female?” On the way home, the Captain had asked, “Anything you didn’t understand?” “No, sir,” I had replied. And that was the only time in my life that the Captain ever talked to me about sex.

The girl’s breasts weren’t little deer at all, though they had two little button noses. Her breasts were two-toned—circles of white surrounded by bronze. And even after she flattened out and giggled something to the other girl, Peter was still staring. It wasn’t so much that he had seen a girl’s breasts; it was more that he had fallen in love with the contrast there, how the white part stood out against the brown, how the brown drew his eyes more than the white, how the brown made the white so much purer, more natural, more innocent and clean somehow.

Which probably destined me to pick out the exotic, the sensuous, the tan for the rest of my life—except for Edie. What went wrong there? She didn’t have a cute inny, she didn’t have rough hands, she didn’t have long, shiny legs and flashing eyes. After Ebony, I had a cornucopia of the melting pot…but somehow I settled for Edie, who is whiter than this computer screen.

Which made him wonder that morning, as he watched the Captain’s coffee boiling to a froth, if Ebony’s breasts looked the same…or were they tan all the way to those little deer noses?

Jesus, twenty-five-year-old memories are making me horny. I have to cool off, and Henry needs another chapter.

I know, I’ll introduce Edie the Ice Queen into Ebony’s classroom. That will cool me off. Edie could probably solve global warming just by being.

Chapter 3

Since I already know how to write, while Professor Holt rambles on and on about syllabus this and course requirements that and due dates the other, I take a closer look at Johnny. I don’t grit on him out in the open, though. I sneak peeks by slowly taking off my coat while looking at him, gradually rolling my pen toward him then catching it—and his eye sometimes—and painstakingly repositioning my chair until I am almost facing him. It’s an art that I learned from watching the seventh grade hoochies in my classroom. They aren’t nearly as subtle about it as I am, but they are effective. I know the little boys are popping boners left and right in my classes because of them, a few of them even having to sit at their desks after the bell rings until their jenks get back to normal.

Johnny is sort of a C-minus in a lot of little ways, but the overall package is definitely a solid B. He does not have a handsome face—nose too big and bent, eyebrows looking like hairy spiders, ears sprouting gray hairs, skinny lips, cheeks and chin unshaven and scarred, hair too long and uneven in front. Taken apart, he’s a scary man. Put it all together under those coal-dark eyes, and he’s a relatively handsome scary man. His knuckles are bigger than they should be, big circular walnut-looking things, and his nails are way too short, like he chews them maybe. At least they’re clean. His arms have more hair than arms should have. I’ll bet I could comb and style the hair there. His arms are huge, muscular, his shoulders round, his neck pretty thick, his chest…probably so hairy a bird could nest up in there. I won’t even imagine the hair on his back.

Dag, he could be in the Mafia!

But he doesn’t wear a bowling shirt and polyester pants like those Mafia guys do in the movies. He sports a light blue oxford shirt, clean white T-shirt underneath, a thin gold chain barely visible, faded blue jeans, and black Nike hiking boots. He dresses kind of Wal-Mart, like me.

Then I see this pale blond girl standing in the doorway. She wears a tight light-pink T-shirt with the word “Angel” stenciled above her perky little breasts, the shirt leaving a gap where the whole world can see her pierced shiny white belly button. The girl has absolutely no hips, her legs are as skinny as broomsticks, and she’s standing with one pink shoe turned ninety degrees to the side, like she’s getting ready to do some ballet move.

“Pale Edie’s in the house,” I say with a smile. Coleridge had her down pat: “Her skin was as white as leprosy.” Like paper. And she was always in some pose or other, as if she were the subject of some artist painting her in dreamy pastel oils. I swear that she used to dress to match the furniture in the house—pastels and white chiffon for the living room, earth tones for the family room. Sometimes when I looked at her lounging around the house, sighing mostly to herself, I envisioned her as a model in the pages of L.L. Bean and Lands’ End catalogues. And those sighs drove me up the freaking wall!

I hear her sighing, only it’s more like a constant hiss, like air slowly escaping from a bicycle tire, like a foot sliding across a concrete floor, like fingernails scraping across a damn chalkboard, like the sound the Sidekick makes on cold days but I can’t find out where it’s coming from and the mechanic says I must be hearing things and it pisses me the hell off!

It’s that kind of sigh.

“May I help you?” Professor Holt asks.

“I think I’m supposed to be in this class,” she says softly, almost in a whisper but more like a murmur. I know her game. She’s trying to get our attention so we can see her, her matching pink-and-white angel’s outfit, and the two hours of makeup slathered on to her face. All the girl is missing is a halo.

Professor Holt falls for it, walking to the doorway. “I didn’t hear you.”

And that’s the first thing I ever said to Edie Elizabeth Melton, only daughter and youngest child of Edith Elizabeth Melton and William Strong, sister to William Strong, Jr., and Horace Strong Melton. I was grading papers in my classroom at Sewickley Academy, and there she was at the door, murmuring something, posing, sighing. Out of loneliness and a need that I still don’t understand, I pursued her—and she was everything I didn’t want in a wife. She was a debutante and dancer, a bleached-blond sigher, a daughter of privilege with dollar signs for eyes, and an all-around angel from hell who owned a horse, a car, and a boat named Edie E. by the time she was sixteen. She owned that “waif” look long before Kate Moss was even born. Told she had a dancer’s body by some ballet director kissing William Melton’s abounding buttocks, she became anorexic long before the term was well-known, taking brutal ballet classes that reduced her toes to stumps of calloused flesh. Since William Melton was on the board of a Pittsburgh arts council, she was a shoo-in for a spot in the Pittsburgh Ballet. It didn’t happen, so she settled for me, a teacher at her old school.

She smiles at the rest of us, as if we really give a shit. “I think I’m supposed to be in this class.” She hands him a piece of paper, jingling her fake-ass gold bracelets in the process. Oh puh-lease, honey. Get over yourself. You are just a late bitch who wants to make a grand entrance.

“You are…

Now what am I going to name her? Edith? Evie? Eden? Eve? If I make it too close to her real name, she’ll sue me for half of my money for the book. But at the rate I’m going, Edie wouldn’t want to admit that this character is her…would she? Who would admit, “I am that horrible person in that book”?

Edie might, especially if it involves money she didn’t earn.

I’ll just call her “Rose Goulet” for now. Where “Goulet” came from, I have no idea.

“You are…Rose, uh—”

“It’s pronounced ‘Goo-lay,’” she says.

She isn’t a rose, and that last name isn’t fooling anybody. It’s probably pronounced Goo-LEE or GULL-et. This isn’t the south of France. This is southwestern Pennsylvania where folks drink Iron City beer and root for the “Stillers” and the Buccos after a long week at the “still” mill.

“Have a seat, Rose.”

I see her scan the room with her eyes, her light brown eyebrows probably painted on, her blondish eyelashes as thick as cat whiskers. She has tiny ears, tinier gold earrings, a button nose, and two eyes made out of green coal. I’ll bet that she bleaches her hair, because her roots are dark brown. Her eyes come to rest on the empty chair on the other side of Johnny. One of her eyebrows rises, her skinny pink lips wrinkle, and she moves in on my man…

I look at the clock on my laptop: 3:30 P.M.! I’ve been writing for close to ten hours without food. Checking the word counts, I find I’ve composed over five thousand words. I haven’t written like this since—

I’ve never written like this. Why is that?

The white walls envelop but don’t distract me, the quiet focuses me, though the Poet’s loud wanderings on the roof sometimes have me writing in blank verse, the sheer purity of the view of Great South Bay inspires me, and maybe even the lack of food makes me hungrier to write. I’m losing weight and loosing words. I’m a monk in his cell transcribing founts of prose in fonts of Courier and Times New Roman. I’m a…

I’m about all out of words for today.

I log on to AOL and quickly click on a reply from Destiny:

Peter:

Sorry if I was rude by leaving so suddenly this morning. I am always late for work.

How long are you going to be on Fire Island? Any plans to get up to Huntington?

Destiny

Which could mean that Destiny is in Huntington…or Ebony is in Huntington. I try Instant Message again and find that Destiny is still online.

I have to catch my breath. I reread the script of the conversation. How the hell did “Are you in Huntington?” turn into “You are trying to ask me out, right?”

This is getting weird. Destiny isn’t Ebony, yet she is the best lead I’ve had to finding Ebony after five years of searching. But has she told me everything she knows?

Ouch. But she’s right.

“It’s not a date!” I shout at the screen.

“Geez,” I whisper. What kind of a woman is this?

My pre-advance advance won’t cover a Huntington Bay Village ristorante. And at the rate coffee shops are extorting their patrons for a cup of double mocha capuccino, I may not have enough for a glass of ice water at Xando. My Visa is almost maxed out, but I have a Discover card I rarely use.

“It’s not a date!” I yell again.

I sit glued to the screen, my fingers sweating on the keyboard. I know Destiny knows more than she’s telling. Five minutes pass. Nothing. I check to see if she’s still online, but Destiny’s gone. I scroll through the conversation again and realize two things: I am being manipulated somehow, and Destiny is much better at this than I am. I may be in some serious trouble. And how am I going to escape Henry? And why did I set up a Saturday night meeting a long ferry ride and an hour’s drive away from here?

But as the setting sun outside my window softly slips into the western horizon, I relax and feel the pull of the past calling me back to Huntington.

Calling me home.