The Temptations of St. Frank (2 page)

Dom pulled over to the curb and turned off the engine. They got out and walked toward the group.

“What the hell's goin' on?” Dom said.

“Like I'm supposed to know?” Frank said, a little annoyed with his friend's cocky walk—chest out, long strides. They were in someone else's neighborhood for chrissake.

An old guy with thick yellow-white hair and a face as lumpy as a potato turned around and scowled in disgust. “Hell!” he said, pointing to the landfill. “Vee leeve in hell.” He had a thick accent, and he was really pissed off.

Dom went up to the man. “What do you mean, you live in hell?”

“In hell!” Potato Man snapped. “You do not know
hell
?
There
is hell!” He pointed with a crooked, wicked-witch finger. “Burning, burning, all the time, burning!”

Frank sniffed the air, but it didn't smell all that bad. No different from the rest of north Jersey.

Potato Man shook his fist. “Everybody sick! Everybody die!”

Frank remembered a film clip he'd seen of Lenin standing at a podium, shaking his fist the same way. Or was it Trotsky? He couldn't remember.

Potato Man scowled at them when they didn't react properly to his outrage. He dug into his shirt pocket and pulled out a worn newspaper clipping. He unfolded it with shaky hands and thrust it at Dom. “Here. You read.”

Dom looked at it and passed it on to Frank. The headline said, EXPERTS CLAIM BURNING LANDFILL IS A HEALTH HAZARD.

“You read!” the old man said, smashing his finger into the clipping in Frank's hand. He scowled deeper. “Read!” He took the clipping back, folded it, and put it in Frank's shirt pocket. “You read!” He abruptly turned around and stomped off toward a group of potato-faced old people just like himself.

“What the fuck's with him?” Dom said.

“Huh?” Frank was distracted. He was staring at the pleated gray skirts of the Mother of Peace Academy for Girls uniform and the two girls who were wearing them. Frank focused on their bare legs, hems hiked well above the knee, skirts belling out around their asses. Frank's heart was doing a Ginger Baker tom-tom beat. It was Yolanda and her friend Tina.

Tina turned around and spotted him as if she had sensed him staring. She flashed her ironic—or was the word sardonic? he wasn't sure—half-smile at him. Tina was tall and on the skinny side. Her hair was dirty blond, and she wore it short with short bangs—too short in Frank's opinion. She had big eyes, but they had dark rims under them as if she needed a good night's sleep, even though she never seemed sleepy. Just the opposite. She had a quick wit and a sharp tongue. She wasn't bad looking really—she just wasn't Yolanda.

Yolanda was as tall as Tina but better built with shapelier legs and actual tits. She had long light-brown hair that hung below her shoulders and small but penetrating eyes. She was a little shy—but not retarded shy like some kids—just quiet, which made her kind of mysterious. She was a closed door that Frank wanted to open.

Both girls were very smart. Honors students. He regretted for the millionth time that he wasn't in 4H, the senior honors class at St. A's, because if he was, he would've been able to take the special coed honors physics class. It was the only coed class either school offered, and it was held first period at St. A's. He would have seen Yolanda in class every day, and they would've been dating by now because, face it, the geeks in that class all had slide rules for dicks. No competition whatsoever.

If only…

Yolanda turned around and started walking toward him, and his stomach clenched. This was what he'd wanted, to run into her, but he didn't expect it to happen this quickly. He wished to hell Dom wasn't there, dreading what embarrassing thing his friend might say. She had her books in her arms, carrying them close to her chest the way girls do. But she wasn't looking at him. In fact she hadn't even noticed him. She veered off toward Potato Man and put her hand on his shoulder, rubbing it affectionately. Frank could see that she was talking to Potato Man, and he wondered if they were speaking Ukrainian. Even though he'd been lusting after her for months, he'd only heard her voice a few times. He wasn't sure, but he thought she had the tiniest trace of an accent. Of course he might have just imagined it because he wanted her to be exotic.

She glanced over her shoulder and looked at Frank. At least he thought she was looking at him. He tried to read her expression, but she turned away and he couldn't tell if she had recognized him or not. If she had, her lack of reaction wasn't a good sign. Maybe she disapproved of him because he wasn't in the honors class. Maybe she hated him. But why would she hate him? She didn't know him. Was it because he was here in her neighborhood, on her turf? What the fuck? This wasn't
West Side Story.

Or worse, maybe she just didn't give a shit about him. Maybe he was nothing in her book, not even worthy of a reaction one way or the other. Maybe she preferred nerdy boys. Maybe that's what got her hot—guys with high GPAs and early acceptances into top-shelf colleges
with scholarships.
Maybe she didn't care that the Beatles had broken up. Maybe she liked classical music, opera, highbrow stuff. Maybe she thought guys who liked rock'n'roll were low class and beneath her. Fuck, he thought, they would never get together. It was doomed from the start.

“Yo,” Dom said. “Who's the chick?”

“What?” Frank had been so involved in the rise and fall of his yet-to-be-but-never-will-be relationship with Yolanda, he hadn't noticed Tina walking toward them, looking right at him with her little sly-cat smile, hugging her books and covering up the bust she didn't have.

“What're you doing here?” she said to Frank. They kind of knew each other from school. He always hung out in the yearbook office in the morning, which was next to the physics lab. They'd said hi a few times, but he didn't think she knew his name. “Do you live near here?”

Frank tried to think up a plausible excuse for being there, but he couldn't come up with anything. He shrugged. “Just hanging out.”

“Here?” She gave him a skeptical look. “Why?”

“I dunno. Just checking out the…” He nodded toward the landfill. “You know.”

“Yeah, it's really bad.” She frowned at the smoldering landscape. It was the first time Frank had ever seen her with a serious face.

Dom said, “So what're all these people doing here?”

The breeze blew wisps of hair across her cheek, and for a moment Frank thought she was pretty cute. She looked down and moved the hair off her face with a graceful sweep of her fingertips. When she looked up again, she was looking at Dom. “Who're you?” she said.

“This is my friend Dom,” Frank said.

But she didn't pay any attention to him. She only had eyes for Dom. She pointed to the cigarette in his hand. “Can I have one of those?”

“Sure.” Dom took a pack of Marlboroughs out of his shirt pocket, tapped one out halfway, and held it out to her.

She took it and held it to her lips, waiting for a light.

Dom struck a match, but the wind blew it out. He moved closer to her and struck another match, cupping his hand around it and the cigarette in her mouth. It took a second to get it lighted.

“Thanks,” she said, exhaling smoke as she moved the hair out of her eyes again, this time with the cigarette in her hand. She was incredibly sexy, sexier than Frank ever imagined she could be.

“So what're all these people doing here?” Dom asked again.

“Complaining. They come here all the time. They think the stuff burning underground is toxic and that it's gonna kill everybody.” She brought the cigarette to her lips.

“Is it true?” Dom asked.

She shrugged. “Some of the old people have a hard time breathing. Like Yolanda's grandfather.” She nodded toward Potato Man. “But they're, you know, old.”

Frank focused on the trails of smoke blowing across the landfill. It could be toxic, he thought. It didn't smell terrible, not like burning tires and shit, but he'd read somewhere that sometimes the most toxic stuff doesn't smell at all. And truckers dump all kinds of chemical crap around here, any place they can get away with it. Everybody knew that.

“Tina!”

Frank recognized Yolanda's voice as soon as he heard it, high and sweet. She waved to Tina, calling her over. Yolanda was at least three car-lengths away, but Frank could see the sapphire-blue of her tiny eyes. She had a concerned expression on her face, but she didn't seem to know that he was there. She was focused on Tina.

“I gotta go,” Tina said, and hurried off toward Yolanda, taking one last drag off her cigarette before she flicked it into the gutter. She looked back and flashed a flirty little cat grin, blowing smoke out the side of her mouth. But who was she looking at? Dom or him? Frank couldn't tell.

She walked over to Yolanda and Potato Man, who was holding onto Yolanda's arm, and took his other elbow. The three of them started walking away, slowly because Potato Man couldn't go that fast. When he started to cough, they all stopped. It was a harsh dry cough that rattled his whole body. He coughed for nearly a minute. Frank felt bad for him, but he couldn't help staring at the girls' legs from behind as they stood on either side of the old man. Yolanda's legs were definitely the winners, but Tina's skirt was hiked up higher, showing more thigh.

“Is that her?” Dom asked. “Yvonne?”

“Yolanda. The one with the long hair.”

“You're backing the wrong horse, pal. Go for the other one.”

“Tina?”

“Definitely.”

“Really? Why?”

“Your girl's a prude.”

“How can you tell?”

Dom shrugged. “You can just tell. Look at her.”

Frank looked. He kinda saw what Dom meant… maybe. But maybe not.

“Trust me. Tina's the one. Definitely. The other one? She'll just jerk you around.”

“You really think so?”

“I know so.”

Yolanda, Tina, and Potato Man started walking again. Frank stared at them, studying the girls. Compare and contrast. He knew what Dom meant, but he still liked Yolanda better.

“Look,” Dom said, “if you don't want Tina, maybe I'll ask her out.” He took a slow drag off his cigarette, staring at Tina with squinty John Wayne eyes, the Marlborough Man on the toxic plains.

Frank had a sudden urge to punch him in the face. He didn't want Dom going after Tina.

But he didn't say anything.

Assholes in the government were talking about getting rid of the student deferment for college kids because too many people were complaining that it was only poor kids who were getting their asses blown off in Vietnam. There were rumors that the government was going to start some kind of lottery system, putting the 366 days of the year in a big hat and picking them out one by one. You get a low number, you got a pretty good chance of getting a rifle, a buzz cut, and an all-expenses-paid trip to the Mekong Delta. Get a number in the middle of the pack, you get an ulcer worrying that you're gonna get called up. Get a high number, you pray that the goddamn war ends before they get to you. Goddamn fucking Nixon.

Frank had no intention of going to Vietnam. The war was fucked, and he knew for a fact that it really messed up the guys who went there. He had a cousin who had actually enlisted. The guy wasn't even on the front lines—he was a fucking garbage collector in Saigon. But one day, out of the blue, a sniper took a shot at him. The bullet hit the garbage can he was carrying and saved his life, but the experience spooked him for good. He got jittery and paranoid and was never the same afterward. Well, fuck that. Better Canada than Vietnam, Frank figured. He just wondered what the hell it was like up there. How cold did it get in the winter? Did they have any good FM radio stations? He had a feeling it was probably pretty boring up in Canada. Everybody wearing snorkel parkas and using maple syrup on everything.

“No one in the building before eight o'clock, gentleman!”

Frank's head shot up. He looked toward the voice, thinking it might be Mr. Whalley, the school disciplinarian, even though it didn't sound like him. But it was just Tina standing in the open doorway, scowling the way Whalley always did. She'd gotten Whalley's words right, but her imitation of his pissed-off walrus voice was girly and pathetic. She grinned her little cat grin at him, hugging her books to her chest. His eye went directly to her thighs and the hem of her skirt, remembering what Dom had said about her.

“What're you doing?” she said, stepping into the small, jam-packed office. It was cluttered with chairs, a couch, a table, and the big desk, which was wedged into the corner farthest from the door with a tall beige file cabinet right next to it. To get behind the desk, a person had to step onto the desktop and drop into the chair as if it were a fighter cockpit. Frank liked that seat. It was cozy and commanding.

“What if Mr. Whalley catches you here?” Tina said.

Frank shrugged. He didn't worry about Whalley. The fat-ass bastard was never subtle—you could hear him coming a mile away. Whenever he patrolled the hallways before school hours, trawling for guys violating the eight o'clock rule, he would always bellow,
“No one in the building before eight, gentlemen! Walking jug for anyone I catch in the building!”
Mulvaney Hall was four-stories tall with high ceilings, and Whalley's booming voice carried loud and clear all the way from the first floor. Whenever Frank was in the yearbook office, which was most mornings, and he heard Whalley coming, he'd just close the door, lock it, and turn off the lights until the man was gone. Frank had done this dozens of times since school had started in September, and the only reason he risked getting caught was because of Yolanda. Every morning she was out in the hallway with the other honors girls from Mother of Peace, waiting for first-period physics. For some reason, the girls could be in the building before eight but not the boys.

The first time he saw her, she was sitting on the floor, with her legs stretched out, ankles crossed, writing in a loose-leaf binder on her lap. It was lust at first sight. He prayed that she would look up and notice him, but she didn't. And here it was April and she still hadn't noticed him, not the way he wanted to be noticed. That's why he came up here every morning, to get her to notice him through the open door of the yearbook office, him in the cockpit behind the desk with his take-out cup of coffee and a copy of
Ramparts
or
Crawdaddy
or the newspaper in front of him
,
his tie loosened, top button undone, cuffs rolled up, trying to look cool, hoping she would look at him and give him an opening. Unfortunately they hadn't gotten much farther than hi, how ya doin', mainly because she was shy and her ever-present friend Tina was always around, and bigmouth Tina did all the talking. All year he'd been waiting for Tina to be out sick so that Yolanda would be alone, but Tina was healthy as a horse and was never absent. He wished the landfill smoke would get to her, just for one day, so that he could talk to Yolanda by himself.

“You're gonna get caught one of these days,” Tina said.

But Frank wasn't listening. He was looking past her, looking for Yolanda. He saw the other three nerd girls from Mother of Peace (all of them skanks) but not Yolanda.

“She's not here yet,” Tina smirking, reading his mind.

Frank didn't respond. He didn't want to acknowledge that he liked Yolanda even though Tina had obviously figured it out. He also thought it was kind of rude and insensitive to show that he liked Yolanda because it might hurt Tina's feelings. And besides, who he liked was none of Tina's business.

Tina dropped her books on the couch and plopped down on the end that touched the desk. “Can I have a sip?” She pointed to his cup of coffee.

He stared at her. Drinking from his cup was kind of a boyfriend-girlfriend thing. What if Yolanda saw her drinking from his cup? And why was Tina asking anyway? Was this a come-on? He looked at her Olive-Oyl legs. She did have a cute face, he thought.

She reached for the cup and helped herself. “So what were you doing in my neighborhood yesterday?” She took a sip, looking at him over the rim. “You working for the Mafia?”

“What?”

How did she know? he thought. Well, not him or Dom, but Dom's father.

“The goddamn landfill,” she said. “That's who owns it. The mob.” She took another sip. “And the church.”

“Are you tripping or what?”

“No. It's the truth.”

“You're telling me the mob and the Catholic Church own that dump? Together? You're high.”

“I swear. The Mafia owns most of the land, and the church owns the part that borders on the cemetery.”

It was Frank's turn to smirk. She was crazy. “Who told you that?”

“You know those old people you saw yesterday? They hired a lawyer, and he did the research. The owners are the Diocese of Newark and some company that's a front for some Mafia guy.”

Frank saw mug shots of Dom's father in his head. “So why doesn't this lawyer sue their asses off?”

Tina shrugged, her bottom lip on the rim of his cup. “The owners say the smoke isn't toxic. They say they did tests that prove it. But our lawyer had his own tests done and they say different. So the court says they have to do more tests before anyone can sue. But the Mafia guy must be paying off the judge. They're all crooked. That fire has been burning underground for over ten years. They tried to put it out a few times, but they can't.” She took another sip, then held the cup out to him.

He glanced through the doorway, looking for Yolanda. “You can finish it,” he said. He didn't want Yolanda to see them sharing spit. “So how do
you
feel? Are you sick from the smoke?”

She put her wrist to her forehead and went into a dramatic coughing fit, throwing her head back against the couch. God, she was weird.

“I'm okay,” she said. “I guess.”

“What do you mean, you guess?”

“The toxins get into your body and poison you slowly. You don't know it's happening till it's too late. That's what the lawyer says.”

“What about Yolanda's grandfather? He was coughing his lungs out yesterday.”

“Yeah, but that's from three packs of Camels a day.”

“Oh…” Frank thought about this invisible toxic crap getting into Yolanda's body, killing her slowly.

“So who's that guy you were with yesterday?” Tina said.

“You mean Dom?”

“Your friend. With the big car.”

“Yeah, Dom. We went to grammar school together.”

“Where does he go to school now?”

“West Orange High.”

“He got a girlfriend?”

Frank didn't like where this was going. Why was she so interested in Dom? He was too rough around the edges for her. She needed someone more like Frank. And he was kind of thinking about it now, looking at the wet spot on his cup where she'd sipped his coffee. After all, Dom had given Tina his seal of approval. Sure, she was kind of nuts, but she wasn't that bad. In fact she wasn't bad at all. She was easy to talk to, easier than Yolanda. And she had that cute little cat face.

“So does he have a girlfriend?”

“Who?”

“Your friend Dom. Is he going out with anybody?”

Frank shrugged and thought about lying, telling her that Dom was engaged, that he was getting married next week, that he'd gotten some girl pregnant, that he got drafted and was going to Vietnam soon.

“I dunno,” he said. “Dom's always with a different girl.” Which wasn't a lie. Dom dated a lot of girls but no one in particular.

“He's kind of cute.” Tina stared at him, her little cat grin getting slyer and slyer as she watched for a reaction. Did she think he was jealous? Hell no!

Frank didn't say anything and neither did she, but she kept grinning at him, waiting for him to say something. Frank felt that she was putting him on the spot. It was a put-up-or-shut-up moment. He felt he could maybe make something happen with her right here and now if he really wanted to, make her forget about Dom just like that. But the door was open, and Yolanda was going to be out there in the hallway any minute now if she wasn't out there already.

She uncrossed and re-crossed her skinny legs and licked the rim of his cup, waiting for him to say something.

Do it, he thought. Yeah, maybe just do it. Dom says she's the better bet. Just–

“NO ONE IN THE BUILDING BEFORE EIGHT O'CLOCK!” Mr. Whalley's voice thundered up the stairwell. He sounded close, maybe as close as the floor below. Fuck!

“IT IS NOW SEVEN-FIFTY, GENTLEMEN! WALKING JUG FOR ANYONE I CATCH INSIDE MULVANEY HALL. NO EXCUSES, NO EXCEPTIONS!”

Fucking asshole! Frank thought. He hated Whalley's guts. Everybody at St. A's hated Whalley.

He whispered to Tina. “Close the door, lock it, and turn off the light. So he doesn't catch us.”

She grinned at him as if she were a deaf mute and had no idea what he was talking about. She sipped his coffee and didn't move.

“Just close the door and turn off the light.” He pointed to the light switch on the wall. He'd do it himself, but he was stuck behind the desk, afraid he'd make a racket if he climbed over it.

Whalley's voice boomed up the stairwell. “IT IS NOW SEVEN FIFTY-
ONE,
GENTLEMEN! WALKING JUG FOR ALL OFFENDERS, SENIORS INCLUDED. NO EXCEPTIONS!”

Jesus! Frank thought. It sounded like Whalley was climbing the steps to the fourth floor. The sneaky prick must have kept his mouth shut until he got to the third floor.

“IF YOU ARE HERE, I WILL FIND YOU, GENTLEMEN!”

Frank pointed to the door, pleading with his eyes. Books, newspapers, and magazines were piled high all over the desk. If he climbed over, some of them would fall and Whalley would hear.

“Close the door,” he mouthed to her, clasping his hands together and begging.

“WALKING JUG! GUARANTEED!”

But instead of just doing what he'd asked, Tina unbuttoned the top two buttons of her blouse and threw her legs up onto the couch, her skirt almost up to her crotch. She lounged on her elbow and gave him a creamy-dreamy look as if they'd just done something.

Tina! What the fuck're you doing?!?

She lay back and closed her eyes as if she'd just had the biggest fucking orgasm in the world. He couldn't take his eyes off her thighs.

Tina! You bitch!

Her legs really weren't that bad.

“AH, MR. GRIMALDI!” Whalley's voice attacked the room like a flash flood, overwhelming it, taking up all the space and all the air. In the dripping wake of his voice, Whalley stood in the open doorway, the evil fat-ass Walrus King. He had a face like Popeye's—right down to the pipe clenched in his teeth—but he was fat. His beady walrus eyes swept across Tina who was stretched out like a raped Sabine woman. The Walrus King sharpened his gaze to lethal pinpoints, took the pipe from his lipless mouth, and aimed the stem at Frank. “I'll see you in my office after school, Mr. Grimaldi. Two-forty-five. Sharp!”

He scowled at Tina. “Button up, young lady, and get to your class. I'll be talking to your Sister Superior about this. Go!”

Tina sat up, buttoned her blouse, and headed for the doorway. She glanced back at Frank and arched an eyebrow, giving him the sly little cat grin. Whalley stepped aside so she could pass, and Frank saw the Mother of Peace nerd girls gawking from the hallway. Yolanda was at the front of the pack.

Fuck! Frank thought. He tried to read her expression, but she turned away as soon as Tina joined them and scurried into the physics lab with the others.

Whalley aimed the pipe stem of doom at Frank's face and glared at him, not saying a word.

What the fuck does he want me to do? Frank thought. Say something? Not say something? Defend myself? Beg for mercy? What?

The walrus finally spoke, slow and ominous. “Two… forty… five, Mr. Grimaldi. Do not… be… late.” He turned and waddled out the door.

The 8:00 bell rang like a drill going through Frank's head.

“Fuck,” he said under his breath as he reached across the desk for his coffee cup. It was light in his hand. He shook it. Nothing. Tina had drunk it all.

It was gonna be a bad day.