All American Boy (19 page)

“Fuck you, Wally!” David tossed his Ring Ding at him. It bounced off of Wally's shoulder and rolled across the floor.

“Oh, lookit the little girlfriends having a spat!” Freddie Piatrowski shouted from the next table. “Whatsa matter, girls?”

Wally let it drop. David acted sulky for a while but eventually forgot about it, and they went on being friends.

“Hey, queerhead!”

Wally looks up. He's wandered over to the playground behind the church, and now some boys playing basketball have started taunting him. He pays them no mind. He just watches them through the fence. He likes the way their shorts inch up their asses when they shoot the ball. He stuffs his hands down deep into his pockets and rubs his cock through his jeans.

“Faggot, want to suck my cock?”

One boy approaches the chain-link fence and pulls down his shorts. He sticks his cock through the fence at Wally. It's very small and pink. It hangs through the fence like the trunk of a tiny sick elephant at the zoo. It disgusts him.

He returns home.

His father is asleep in his chair. His shirt is still off. He smells of grass and sweat. His chest rattles as he sleeps.

Wally finds his mother in the kitchen ironing. “Shh,” she says. “Your father's asleep.”

“I can see that.”

“Where did you go? Did you quarrel with him again?”

Wally doesn't answer. He opens the refrigerator and takes a gulp of milk straight from the container. When he closes the door his mother is looking at him reprovingly.

“
What
?” he asks, daring her to say something.

Anything.

But she just goes back to her ironing.

He thinks of the phone and starts to breathe in quick little gasps.

He walks into his parents' room and takes the phone, its long cord trailing behind, twisting sinuously down the hallway.

“Why are you taking the phone in your room again?” his mother asks.

He ignores her, locking the door behind him, the phone cord pulled through the space at the bottom.

He unbuttons his jeans and lets them fall to the floor. From his closet he removes the polyester pants his mother bought him at Grant's. He pulls them onto his legs, snapping and zipping up the front. How tight they are. How smooth and shiny. He admires himself in the mirror. He moves his hand around to his butt, reveling in the tightness of the fabric across his cheeks. His cock goes rock hard.

“Fuck man,” he whispers. “Fuckin' ass.”

Lying facedown on his bed, he rubs his cock against the mattress, imagining John Travolta and his tough, Italian friends getting blow jobs as they wore pants like these, Donna Pescow on her knees in the backseat servicing them all. He rolls over and reaches under his bed for his jar of Vaseline. It's almost empty, with lots of finger valleys and pubic hairs. He unzips his pants and pulls out his cock. He begins sliding his fist up and down the shaft.

Maybe the Corvette guy is home.

The push button tones make his cock jump in his hand.

Ringing
…

His eyes stare straight into the mirror.

Ringing
…

“Hello?”

“I want—”

“What are you doing in there?” It's his father now, rapping at the door.

“
Hello
?” the guy on the phone demands.

Wally whispers. “I want to suck your cock.”

“Speak up. I can't hear you.”

“What are you doing in there with the phone?” his father shouts.

Wally cups his hand over the mouthpiece. “
I want to suck your cock!
”

“Who are you talking to?”

“Who is speaking?”

“Answer me! Who is on the phone?”

“
Who is this
?”

Wally slams the phone down. Damn them both! Damn them both to hell!

“I'm talking to David,” he shouts. “It's about homework.”

His father grumbles as he moves away from the door.

Wally presses the numbers again.

“
Hello!
” The Corvette guy is clearly pissed off.

“I want to suck your cock.”

“You want to do
what?
”

“I want to suck your cock!”

Pause. “Who is this?”

“Would you like that?” Wally's voice is breathy and he's pumping his cock harder.

“No.” Dial tone.

Wally slams down the receiver.
Why didn't he just say
fuck
?

He hesitates. He needs to climax.

He pulls out the soiled phone book and flips through the pages until he finds the exact number he's looking for.

Push tones. Oh, God …

Ringing
…

He pumps his cock, watching his reflection in the mirror.

Ringing
…

“Answer the phone,” he mutters.

Ringing
…

Oh for God's sake, hurry up and answer the fucking phone!

“Hello?”

His throat is tight.

“Hello?”

“I want to fuck you.”

“Excuse me?”

“I … I want you to fuck me.”

“Oh.” There is a long pause.

“Would you like that?” Wally asks.

“Would you?”

Oh, shit, he's talking. Wally can feel his cock getting ready to burst.

“Do you have the right number?” the voice asks him.

“Yeah.”

“Do you realize you're talking to Father Carson?”

“Yeah.” Wally imagines those deep eyes and those tight black pants. He imagines the priest's hands bearing down on his shoulders, snapping his bones, tearing his cartilege.

“I see.”

He needs to climax. He pumps his cock so hard it actually hurts a little.

“Why don't you tell me who this is?”

Why can't I come? I want to shoot so I can fucking hang up
.

“Why don't you tell me why you want me to fuck you?”

Jesus fuck he said it he said fuck and I'm coming I'm fucking coming! Fucking priest, he said
fuck
!

The cum shoots hard and splatters against the mirror. Wally falls back on to the bed and groans into the phone, the cord stretched taut across his chest.

He hears the priest say, “I told you that you were welcome to call me if you needed to talk.”

He jumps up and crashes down the receiver.

It's suddenly very quiet in his room. Silent except for the yelps of the boys throwing the football in the street.

“Are you finished with that goddamn phone?” comes the voice of his father again. “I need to call the radio station. I know the answer to the prize question.”

Wally just lies there. His cock curls up like a raw shrimp nesting in his wet kinky pubic hair.

“It was Edie Adams!” his father is shouting. “She was Our Miss Brooks. Did you hear me? Bring me the goddamn phone! We could win a hundred bucks here!”

Wally doesn't move, waiting for the phone to ring.

“Open this door! What are you doing in there? Jesus Christ, we could win a goddamn hundred—”

Wally just stares at the phone.

“Oh, forget it now,” his father growls through the door. “Somebody just called in with the answer. Forget it now. Just forget it now.”

At last Wally stands and cleans his mess off the mirror with Kleenex. He peels off his tight polyester pants and slips back into his jeans. He carries the phone out to his father.

“It was Eve Arden,” he tells him.

His father glares at him. “Don't you think I know that? They just said it. Get outside and finish mowing the grass. Don't you think I know it was Eve Arden?”

Wally doesn't go outside. He just sits and waits for the phone to ring all day. But it never does.

12

WAITING FOR THE VAMPIRE

“There is a very good reason I have not allowed myself to die, not for more than a hundred years,” says old Mr. Samuel Horowitz, the oldest man at the Hebrew Home.

“And what's that, Mr. Horowitz?”

“When I was a young boy in Russia, back in the days of the tsars, I was bitten by a vampire, and now I am afraid to die.” He opens his eyes wide. “I am afraid that when I die, I will rise from my grave as one of the undead.”

Regina Gunderson, new to her job as an aide at the Hebrew Home, wasn't expecting this. Nobody warned her about vampires.

“You don't believe me.” The old man shifts in his chair and looks out the window. It's a bright January day. Samuel Horowitz's old black eyes blink against the day.

“The light hurts my eyes, you know,” he tells Regina. “Has, ever since.”

Regina offers a small laugh. “There aren't such things as vampires.”

“You think not? You are wrong. In Russia, there were vampires. And one of them came to my home. Invited by my father, in fact. They must be invited, you know. They cannot enter a place unbidden.”

“Oh, I see.”

“His name was Count Alexei Petrovich Guchkov. He was a most charming man. Tall and handsome and dark. I was just sixteen. My father had money. They all hated my father because he was a Jew, but he had money, so they tolerated him. At least for a little while. Count Guchkov would come to our house and my mother would offer him wine, but he would always refuse. I found him mesmerizing. I could not take my eyes off him.”

“Mr. Horowitz, here, have some tea—”

“You think it was merely a schoolboy fancy? You are wrong. One night, a cold black winter night, with the moon in the sky and the snow anxious to fall, he put his warm lips on mine and kissed me, with my parents just a few feet away …”

“Oh, please, Mr. Horowitz …”

“He kissed me, Miss Gunderson, and I liked it. He awoke in me passions I had forgotten from another life, passions that I have never felt since. His lips were warm but his hands were cold, but that was all right by me, especially when he moved his hands down my neck and over my shoulders, down between my legs …”

“Oh …”

“And then he pulled me into him, his strong arms wrapped around me, and I surrendered, willingly, eagerly, as he sunk his teeth into my throat and drank my young virgin blood.”

Mr. Horowitz is quiet. He lets out a deep, long, labored breath and resumes looking out the window. Regina says nothing. She just sits there, breathing. Finally, with trembling fingers, she lifts Mr. Horowitz's cup of tea to her own lips, and drinks.

“I want to have my hair cut short and dyed black, like Elizabeth Taylor's,” Rocky says, admiring herself in the mirror. She's blond, with tiny, delicate features. “Chase just adores Elizabeth Taylor. More than Sophia Loren now. Remember, Gina, how all he could talk about was Sophia Loren?”

“Yes,” Regina says, sitting behind her on the bed.

“We're going away.” Rocky looks at her sister through the mirror. “Chase is taking me on a little getaway trip.”

“Oh, no, Rocky, please. I hate it when you go away.”

“Now don't start with me, Regina. You'd think you were a child. Now relax. We'll only be gone for three days.”

“
Three days?
Oh, Rocky, you shouldn't—”

She turns around to glare at Regina. “Now don't start. I'm twenty-one years old, Gina. I've wasted enough time.”

Regina knows better than to debate her sister. She tries to quiet the terror that's surging even now up into her throat, that's constricting her arms from moving, that's popping out as sweat on her palms and cheeks. She watches her sister move over to the window and pull on her hose, not caring if the neighbors can see.

“So where are you going?” Regina asks finally.

“We're going on an
airplane!
” Rocky tells her, wide-eyed and big-mouthed, and for a moment Regina wants to slap her—slap her right across the face—but then pushes the thought away.

“We're going to St. Croix! It's in the Virgin Islands. We own it. The United States, I mean.”

Regina says nothing.

“Can you imagine, Gina? White sandy beaches and a big sun overhead. And the water's so crystal blue and clear you can see the brightly colored tropical fish.” She pauses, as if expecting her sister to voice disbelief. “It says so, in the brochure.”

Regina gives her a small smile.

“Isn't it just too divine? It was Chase's idea. He's paying for the whole thing! His father's given him some time off from the bank. Of course he doesn't know Chase is taking a girl, but Chase has got him fooled good.” Rocky flops down on the bed next to her sister, clutching the pillow to her chest and squeezing it. “Wasn't I lucky to find him?”

Regina stands and walks over to the mirror. She discovers her eyes. They stare back at her, big blue orbs, like the balls on the pool table Papa used to shoot.

“Rocky,” she asks, not turning around. “Do you believe in vampires?”

But her sister has left the room.

“It was the year 1868,” Mr. Horowitz tells her the next day. “I was a boy of eleven. Ever since then, I have been determined to stay alive. But it has been a life of fear. It has gripped me every night, the fear that I will not wake, that instead one cold night I will open my eyes to find myself in a coffin, the lust for blood overpowering me!”

“Please, Mr. Horowitz, please don't start talking that way again.”

He eyes her. “Are you Christian, Miss Gunderson?”

“Yes.”

“And you work here, as an aide in the Hebrew Home?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, that is why I noticed the difference, why I thought you might believe. The Jews have stopped believing in such things. We have seen too much horror at the hands of men to believe in such things as vampires anymore. But we believed once. Have you ever heard the story of the Golem, Miss Gunderson?”

“No, Mr. Horowitz, and please, don't tell me. You'll frighten me more.”

The old man moves his head against his pillow. His hair is still thick and white, loose around his face, a face of old bark, of a thousand crevices, of years of pain and anguish and scattered moments of joy, but mostly of fear.