Teen Angel (20 page)

As she sat there, Sonny scouted for some good entries she could steal for her own stall in the third-floor girl’s room.
EXISTENTIALISM BEGINS WITH RESPONSIBILITY … I’ll suck your soul if you blow my mind … The men, they come and go/ talking of Proust and fellatio …
She’d seen some bad ones but these were the worst. What, did English teachers use these crappers? And who the hell was Sartre? And Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream?

Ruben stood up when he saw her and they walked out of the theater holding hands. There were a dozen prostitutes strutting outside, trying to flag down cars on their way to the George Washington Bridge. They wore these Shirley Temple wigs and had cleavage that looked as fat as someone’s rear end, like they were mooning you from up top.

“That’s a pimp,” Ruben said, pointing to this small Puerto Rican guy wearing a black leather coat. He wasn’t even sexy looking.

“How do you know?” Sonny whispered as they turned the corner.

“Watch him.”

They ducked into the doorway of a closed coffee shop. He walked over to three of the girls. When he smiled, Sonny noticed he was sucking on a golden toothpick. One of the women seemed to get mad at him and walked away. He didn’t follow her. Instead, he put his arms around the two other girls.

It was a brisk night but not freezing, and with Ruben’s arm around her Sonny felt snug and extremely contented. The amazing thing was that his arm actually fit around her. Most guys would have to stand on tiptoe and they still couldn’t reach around her shoulders. With Ruben, Sonny didn’t have to walk with her knees bent, shoulders slouched, and her neck shrunken like she was some ugly turtle trying to slip back into its shell. She almost felt graceful
next to him, as if they were a pair of giraffes who hovered over the jungle eating coconuts from the tops of trees. The rest of the world had short legs.
But did he like her?
Sonny weighed every word from Ruben’s lips on her own scale that went from “he likes me” to “he thinks I’m an asshole.” And even though they talked about school and some of the kids, his softball team, Roy’s french fries, she weighed the intonations of his voice, the look in his eyes, the quality of his smile.
Maybe he liked her
.

Ruben had been her true love since the day she entered Humboldt. He was in eighth grade then, and she used to always walk past his classroom but never looked inside, of course. And he looked so tough, yet Sonny detected a warmth in the way that he once smiled at a little seventh-grade turd like herself. Well, he didn’t exactly smile. But that was when she wrote his name in the third-floor girls’ room second stall to the right, and it became a shrine to her love for him. His name was in other places too but nobody knew it. She had created a private name for them that she scratched on all her desks in the school. L.B. + P.S. FOREVER. L.B. LOVES P.S. P.S. LOVES L.B. LOVERBOY AND PRINCESS SONNY. It was her secret. And now he was walking with her, laughing at her jokes, rubbing his third finger in the palm of her hand.
And she knew what that meant
.

They passed the Medical Center on 168th Street. Mike had been born there. Sonny remembered her father taking her to see her mother and how she held this ugly, wrinkled baby who looked more like a grapefruit. All it did was scream. When Sonny wanted to hold it and grabbed for its legs, her father pulled her away.

“I know this place about four blocks from here,” Ruben said. “Are you getting tired?”

“No,” she said. “I was just wondering, do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“Sure. I’ve got one brother and two sisters. I’m the youngest.”

“Yeah? You’re the baby?”

Ruben nodded, smiling. “What about you?”

“I have this bratty little brother named Mike and …” she began but changed her mind.

“And what?” Ruben asked.

He listened to what she said. Should she tell him? Would he think her mother was a slut? “And my mother is pregnant.”

“That’s great!”

“What’s great about it?”

“Well, you’re going to have another baby around. They’re so cute. One of my sisters has this little kid named Rafael. I’m the uncle. He crawls around and even says a few words.”

“But you don’t have to live with him,” Sonny said. “You can’t imagine what a pain a little brother can be. You gotta take him wherever you go. And he’s always screaming his head off.”

“Maybe that’s the way my sisters felt. I don’t know. But if my mother was going to have a baby, I’d be real glad.”

“Well, I think it’s gross,” Sonny concluded.

They stopped in front of a bar with a neon sign in the window which flashed LUCKY SEVEN LOUNGE. “This is the place,” Ruben said.

“You’re kidding.” She had passed this place on her way to school many times but never thought decent people went inside. It was a bar.

“I know the guy who runs it. He’s a good friend so he’ll serve us,” Ruben said, taking her hand.

She held back. “You mean liquor?”

“No, milk and cookies. Come on. You’re with me. There’s nothing to worry about.” He opened the door.

That’s what worried Sonny. She peeked inside and saw a couple of figures hunched over the bar. It was dark and smelly.

“WILL YOU CLOSE THE DOOR!” the bartender screamed. “You’re letting in cold air.”

“I’m not really sure I want to go in there,” Sonny said, trying to
back out. “Couldn’t we go for a soda or something? How about an
egg
cream at Liggett’s?” If she closed the door behind her, it would all be over. Her life, that is.

“Cool it,” Ruben said. “I told you my friend runs this place. You don’t have anything to worry about. Now let’s go in already.”

“I told my mother I’d be back early …”

“DO YOU UNDERSTAND ENGLISH?” the bartender yelled. “SHUT THE DAMN DOOR.”

“You’re embarrassing me,” Ruben whispered. “Come on.”

He had planned the whole thing so he could rape her in the back room and leave her there for everyone else. Then she would be murdered. And killed and slaughtered. And die. No one would ever think of looking for Sonny Palovsky there. “Let’s twist again like we did last summer …” The jukebox would muffle her screams. She still had one foot out the door and could run for her life.

“WOULD YOU FOLKS MAKE UP YOUR MIND. IN OR OUT?”

“Sonny …”

Goodbye. It was short but sweet, her life. She should have gone to the Inwood Jewish Center. So a couple of pimply drips with dandruff on their sports jackets would ask her what high school she was planning to go to. So what.
Ruben, have mercy on me. You probably won’t believe this but not only am I a virgin but I’ve never done anything. I swear. I haven’t even got my period yet
. He held her hand firmly in his as they walked through the bar.

What a dive. Sonny could hardly believe she was sitting in this cesspool. Some nigger chick with enough cleavage hanging out of her shiny red dress to fill five of Sonny’s stuffed brassieres plus some left over to pad her rump was asking her what she wanted.
Why, I think I’ll have urine on the rocks
.

“I don’t like it in here,” she said, smoothing her new blue dress over her legs.

Ruben ordered a rum and Coke for her and a beer for himself. “Listen, will you trust me? Please. I told you he’s a friend,” he said, nodding to the bartender.

He brings them all here. That’s how he scores. And the bartender was in on it too. Right now he was probably mixing a 1000-proof special of whiskey, gin, Scotch, tequilla, and bourbon, and then pouring in a drop of cola just for color. Sonny arched over the table to try to see what he was doing.

The bartender was fat and black. He wore a gold medallion of
JFK over his sweater and he was an unbelievable Chubby Checker fan. He just kept playing twist records. Maybe someone told him he looked like Chubby.

When the waitress returned with the drinks, Ruben paid her with a ten-dollar bill. Sonny peeked into his wallet and saw a big wad of dollars. How could he have so much money? He must push heroin to the little kids in Highbridge. Maybe he was a hit man when he wasn’t on the school patrol. He killed rich widows like that guy on
Surfside Six
. No. With a certainty that took her breath away, Sonny figured out what Ruben did: he was a pimp. Why hadn’t she thought of it sooner? All he was missing was a gold toothpick-with his purple shirt and matching handkerchief in his black sports jacket. She looked under the table and, sure enough, his socks were purple too! And right now, he was trying to recruit another girl-namely, yours truly, Sonny Palovsky-for those perverts who liked their women
very
long and lean, and virginal. But once she lost it
once
, that was it. She’d no longer be a virgin. That’s why he pointed out the pimp to her.
You worm, you
. Sonny eyed him suspiciously.
You shit
.

He raised his glass of beer and indicated that Sonny should follow. She did. He tapped her glass and then took a large swill of his beer. Sonny just held hers to the light.

“Aren’t you going to have any?” he asked.

She was inspecting her drink to see if there was a Spanish Fly floating around in it. That’s what
they
did. They dropped it in some unsuspecting girl’s drink and suddenly it turned her into a nympho. She had to have it. She went nuts. She did it with every man and when that was all done, she ran out into the streets like a raving maniac.
I need it! Fuck me! Screw me! I’ll go nuts unless I have it!
It would take a lowlife P.R. to invent such a thing. Spanish Fly. Sonny had heard stories of good (not nice) girls who accidentally ingested it in a cherry coke, chocolate milk, orange drink, even an
egg
cream. And then it was all over for them. They could never do
anything again. They couldn’t even sit still. All they thought about was S-E-X. They got pregnant, dropped out of school, and eventually ended up on the streets. The horny bastard should be shot. Even if she had no idea what Spanish Fly would look like, she was sure she’d recognize it in her drink. If there was some evil thing floating around, especially if it had wings, she’d know.
“Why, there’s a fly in my drink
.” No one was going to turn her into a sex maniac. Over her dead body. Well, maybe she’d choose life over sex.

“What are you looking at?” Ruben asked.

“Oh, um, the colors are so pretty in the light.”

“You are really weird,” Ruben said. He put her hand in his.

Here it comes. The make. Sonny stuck her stirrer into the drink and came up with a maraschino cherry. It looked clean. She took a bite of it, then another one and swallowed it. It had no wings. She decided to take a cautious sip. It felt tingly cold. She took several more sips.

“How do you like it?” Ruben asked.

“Sort of. You know, I’ve drunk before,” Sonny said. Manischewitz wine, which her mother served on the holidays in glasses the size of thimbles. And then as soon as she took a sip, her mother groaned, “Oy. You see, it goes right to my feet. No, I can’t have any more.” And she kept saying to her father, “Heniek, be careful. Don’t drink too much. You’re going to get drunk.” Sometimes her father wanted a schnapps on a Saturday night. She shook her head disapprovingly.
“We
don’t drink,” she told Sonny. “The Irish drink. So do the Puerto Ricans and the colored. Americans drink. But we don’t.” And now Sonny was sipping a rum and Coke that tasted strong enough to drive her father’s Dodge, but it was delicious.

“I like it,” Sonny said happily, smacking her lips loudly.

Ruben smiled. “You are weird, Sonny. Everything about you is weird. The way you look, the things you say. I never met anybody like you. But the weirdest thing is that I really like you.”

“Is that supposed to be a compliment or something?” Sonny asked. But she loved it. He thought she was weird which meant she was special, in a way. She wasn’t ordinary like everything she said was the same thing everyone else said. She was weird. Ruben’s saying that made her feel bolder. She finished off her rum and Coke in one swallow that almost made her eyeballs pop across the table like Ping-Pong balls.

“I’ll have another one of these. But please leave off the Spanish Fly.” She laughed at her own joke.

“What are you talking about?” Ruben asked, amazed. Then he laughed too. “Are you sure you can handle another one?”

“I told you,” Sonny said. “I can hold my liquor. I come from a family that keeps Manischewitz in business.”

“Who’s he?”

“Not he, it’s a kind of wine.”

“I never heard of it,” Ruben said.

“You wouldn’t,” Sonny said. “Thank God.”

The waitress came to the table and Ruben gave her the order. When she returned with the drinks, Ruben paid her again. Sonny noticed the green wad of bills once more.

“Here’s to Eliot Ness of
The Untouchables
,” Sonny said, bumping her glass into Ruben’s so hard she almost cracked it. And since the sound came between Chubby Checker records, the bartender looked at them.

Ruben shrunk back. “Lower your voice,” he whispered. “How come you said that about Eliot Ness?”

“Listen,” Sonny said loudly, “I want you to level with me. Okay? Are you a pimp? Is that how you make your money?”

Ruben cracked up. “You are the weirdest! I mean, weird is weird but you’re the
worst
.”

“Are you? I won’t blow your cover.”

“You serious? No, you wouldn’t be.” He slapped Sonny on the back. “Sometimes your sense of humor is the pits.”

“Ruben, I want to know.” Sonny took another long sip from
her drink. And suddenly, it began to happen. She had forgotten to check it for Spanish Fly. She could feel it floating inside of her,
down there
. She grabbed the seat of her chair.

“You’re serious. Where did you get that idea?”

“I don’t know. Your clothes and all. I mean, I can put two and two together.”

“My clothes!” Ruben exclaimed. “I don’t believe this. Okay, you remember the scene when George Chakiris went to the dance at the gym–”

“God! He was wearing a purple shirt and–”

“Yeah, well, I thought he looked so cool.”

“Well, how come you have all that–money.” Sonny was beginning to sweat and get horny.