Boys of Life (29 page)

she's gone and recorded a hit and now it's playing On all the radius in America. It's nut impossible, is it.' 5 >rJ producer reads a men

tion in the newspapers about Tony Blair's wife writing SOngS,

Z PAULRUSSELL

thinks, Hey, this'll sell. And I wouldn't've hoard about it—they'd have kept it from me—only I recognize something about that song that saya Monica loud and clear.

I keep imagining what would've happened if she'd gone on writing songs.

It's this sad melody, the kind of sappy thing that'll drive you crazy it you listen to it enough—but I have to say, when I listen to it I remember Monica singing those sweet dumb songs to me in her dingy little apartment with the candles burning and boxes o\ take-out Chinese food, and I remember sitting there listening to them and thinking how this was somebody who was falling in love with me and what could I do!

In a way, that's how I think ot my whole time with Monica— what could I do? Everything fell into some kind oi place between us, one step at a time, and 1 kept knowing in some part ot me how it was all completely wrong and I should get out. But I kept saying At every step, what can I do.' I was tired ot Carlos and his movies. I was exhausted by the bars. I kept hearing these scary things about some new disease-that was starting to infect New York, and people like me —this is what they were saying—were its prune target. I didn't know whether I believed all that stuff or not, bur still it was worrying. It made me think It whether this might not be a pretty good time to jump ship. Nobody'd said it had to last torever, what 1 was doing, \la\be this WM the rime to make some kind ot chatl

I guess I'd finally gotten to the point where i wanted somebody to

to me. 1 COuld hear C Arlofl M) ttc .

nothing sate,"' but what 1 w an ted, artei all thos r Nl

little while.

B O Y S O F L I F E D

what happened?" I asked her. She was trying to catch her breath, gasping from laughing so hard.

"He pulled the trigger/ 1 the laid, "and the recoil knocked the

whole boat over. Flipped all three oi US right out into the water."

rear," I said. "Right in the middle oi the moccasins."

"Right smack m the middle," the said, "All three o\ us were veiling our heads off. we were each oi us so convinced a cottonmouth was heading right toward us."

"But you survived.'"

"We survived," she said. "But we gave up that notion about cleaning up the laki

"And now you're here," I told her.

"Now I'm here," she said.

"So it had a happy ending, you could say," I told her.

"You could say," she said. She looked at me—this look that made me remember that her brother had died.

"Let^ go," I told her. "Let's go back to your place for a nightcap."

I was drunker than I'd been in months. It was fun to be drinking ■gain, it brought back old times.

"I don't have any beer back at my place," Monica said.

"Is rhat a problem.'"

"No problem," she said and ordered two beers from the bar. Here." she told me. "Hide it under your shirt." The bottle was ice-cold against my belly, but it was a good feeling. I remember concentrating on that feeling even after we were outside the bar and had pulled our beers out into the open. I could feel that patch of cold fading on my skin the whole time we were walking east along Seventh Street, taking ^ui^ oi Rolling Rock, and suddenly she put her arm through mine— jusr slid ir through and all at once I knew definitely that we were going to have sex when we got back to her apartment. It was this cool wave passing through me even though it was early September and

sticky hot even in the middle oi the night. I remember saying to myself,

"I'm hnallv g get laid by a girl." It was iM, after all this time

and everything rh.ir'd happened —ir made me rhink back to Owen, to

lace and those girls we used to go our with. I thought—if I hadn't

met Carlos, maybe this i^ how my lite would've gone. The only rhmg

that's happened, I'd tell myself, i^ that now at rhe ripe age oi Twenty-

I'm final! n rrack.

I remember being reallv impatient at rhe door to Monica's ap.irr ment while she riddled with all the locks. I wanted u> be tnside that

□ PAUL RUSSELL

apartment and know what was going to happen next—so I leaned over and kissed the back of her neck, through her hait.

"Hey," she said, and put her hand to the back or her neck, and I kissed her fingers. That made her sort of giggle, and I knew everything

uoing to be okay, that we really were on the same wavelength with each other and so I could relax while she undid the rest of the locks.

Once we got inside we didn't say a word—we went right to her bed and undressed, and since it was so hot we just lay down on top of the sheets. Only then did we both start touching each other and kissing all over, like it was something we'd wanted to do tor weeks but we weren't sure the other person wanted it. I touched her breasts, which brought back Cindy and the back seat of Wallace's car in Owen, and how I used to get so excited when I'd manage to slip a hand up her blouse—it was great to be squeezing a girl's breasts again, it was great to feel how they just filled up your palm when you cupped your hand around them. I remember thinking, Why doesn't everybody have these. they're so much fun?

Otherwise it was pretty much like touching anybody's body that didn't have much hair on it— till I made what 1 guest was the big mistake o\ running my hand down her stomach and between her legs.

Suddenly it was the most depressing thing. There wasn't am dick down

there, and I thought with this kind o\ panic, What'm 1 supposed to do!

There's nothing to do anything with, I felt to empty 1 should've known

ri^ht then how we were never going to be meeting eaeh other on equal

terms. I should've gotten out oi It right then and there before the

lone. But you never know these things till later. 1 kept

feeling around down there trying to find something to <\^ something with. Finally bed m) dick and said, "Go ahead, go ahead and

She always had these othei words foi things. "M\ what'" 1 said.

"'I his thi! i slu- hel; tufl m\ dk k up inside her

me with Scott three yean befon tten pretty

,-. Jii k up loo oi but I'd nevei been Inside

* k what I'd expet ted She

u.se I u-lt tot.ilk lost up there, I fell like Ii wat slip

luse then mj

fhin^ to hol I I When thai happened, m\ dick di I

n oi her But she |ust took it in het hand, which made h : n be* V Into het

B O Y S O F L I F E D

The whole time we kept kissing and breathing right into each other's races, which was kind oi great.

"Yeah," she said when I finally got it in and managed to keep

hard tor a while. I u,b moving around inside her hut I couldn't feel a thing, just at the base of my dick where the muscles at the Opening to

her cunt were clamped around it. For the rest, I might as well have been floating in >pace.

But she seemed to be enjoying it. She kept tossing her head back and forth and moaning, and then I started to go soft again. I pulled OUt

"Hew" she said, "pervert." And she sort o( slapped me away.

So we lay there a while panting, and kissing now and then, and I thought, well, so that's that. It wasn't going to do any good trvin put it hack in her cunt—I was totally limp.

I wanted to cry, I felt so alone right then. But she did the sweetest thing— she took my soft dick and went down on it with her mouth, and in about a minute and a half she had me coming in this way that felt really good.

I slept there in her apartment that night—if you can call it sleep, since rhe guy who lived above her practiced his saxophone the whole night long. He'd been playing when we came in, this loud raucous stuff that was all honks and squeaks—but of course I was too excited by other thing! to pay much attention. But once we'd settled down to go CO sleep— I guess in all sex took about ten minutes between us, though by then we were both completely drenched in sweat—you could hear hi» iax coming loud and clear down through the ceiling.

Monica was sound asleep almost immediately, but all I could do

lie there- and trv to follow the ups and downs of that sax, tr figure out where the melody was in there with all those other notes. It wasn't so different, I gUCSS, from watching one of Caiios'fl movies, though that only occurs to me now. At the time I wasn't thinkin one bit.

Next morning, when morning finally came, I asked Monies how she could stand it.

"Stand what?" I guess I'd dntted otf to ileep sometime, because she was already up and standing in the shower. Only a litrle trickle oi •ning down—it hardly seemed worth it.

"The noise/" I veiled.

"Oh, Dominic. Yeah, well, yOU forget about ir. He's really famous,

□ PAUL RUSSELL

you know. He's a smack addict, he washes dishes at this restaurant, and then he plays all night."

"So what's famous about that?" I asked.

"Just listen to me," Monica told me. She was in a had mood, the way I guess you're always in a bad mood after you have sex with somebody you're already known before, and you're trying to figure out how things are going to be different from now on with them. "He gives this one single concert every year," she said. "People come from all over to hear him."

I could tell she felt that having that guy practicing upstairs was part of her apartment, like furniture.

While she was finishing her shower, I found a couple ot bagels in the refrigerator, and since she didn't have a toaster I tried them in some margarine. She must've thought that was fine. We drank coffee and ate those bagels, and stuff was okay between us—the sex hadn't upset anything between us at all.

□ PAULRUSSELL

"I always get the glamor parts," she said. But she went along. I think it probably wasn't the first time she'd gone along with something like that. And she and Monica got along great. I was a little worried at first, that my only friend in the whole city was this huge black woman, but Monica took Verbena totally in stride. "She reminds me oi this maid, Louise, we used to have when I was little," she told me. "Louise used to steal spare change from the dresser, so we had to let her go."

One day Monica heard about a car lot in Jersey City from some friend of hers who had a friend who bought a car there cheap. She decided that what we should do with our Saturday was grab Verbena and go car shopping in New Jersey.

She'd gotten these complicated directions to the lot: once we got off the PATH train we had to take a bus, and then in the middle ot nowhere change from that bus to another bus. It took us an hour And a half at least just to get there.

The whole time I kept thinking back to when mv mom used to take us to the shopping center in Paducah on Saturday afternoons, just for something to do, and Ted and me'd spend a couple hours wandering around the Woolworth's trying to sec who could pocket the most candy.

Car Country, the place in Jersey City was called. It was one ot about ten used-car lots on this one street, all looking more or less the

same, with an American Bag flying over each one, only Cai Country had the biggest flag. About the sue oi a football field.

It was incredibly windy thai day. The flags were all snapping on their flagpoles like- no tomorrow.

Our s ( ,|, is this gin with this name that sounded lib

tachu I never did hear it n^ht. Hi- M t those people who I

think actually likes being .» u ilesman He'd sold to so man\

, le who didn't have enough money to hu\ a re.tl CU that he didn't think the C81 selling wete nink In t.ut. it Seemed like the

milkier d the more he liked them

Hi ill) bald, hut he had this huge mustache lh.it lo

like 1 •• hairbrush to bl

: was his definite I 'his

he just e...t List week ft I man In Paramus

n his gai uld

m ten thoutand miles • iun^s be<

B O Y S O F L I F E □

i on your lire," Estachio said. "Ten thousand milca -guaranteed.' 1 Monica walked around the car, looking it up and down. "An Ed-

ihe said. "What do you know?" She ran her hand along the hood.

"So how much're you asking?" I thought it was pretty hilarious: Monica acting like she knew what she was talking about. Rut then n curred to me—maybe she really does know about cars. I think I liked it that just about everything I thought about her at hrst turned out to be wrong In one way or another later on. Usually in little ways, but just enough to keep me guessing.

The salesman thought about it. "Six hundred bucks," he said. "Prime condition. And after all, it's an Edsel. What more can you want

I didn't get what all the fuss was about—it just looked like a boxy old car to me. But Monica knew all about it.

"That s just great," she said. "An Edsel. You know," she told me And Verbena, "they named it for Henry Ford's son, and it was supposed to be the car of the future. They designed everything special, just tor it. But then nobody bought it, it was too far ahead of its time, so they stopped making it after only a year. But now they wish they'd kept on making them."

Verbena said she thought it was the perfect car for us. "The car ot the future," she said.

I wasn't so sure. I kicked the front tire.

"Wh\'re you doing that?" Monica asked me.

I ihrugged. I thought it was what you were supposed to do.

"They only do that in the movies," Monica told me.

"That's where he learned it," Verbena said, "was in the movies."