To Die For (15 page)

All I can think is, it’s got to be a trick. They’re trying to nail him for something. But that don’t make no sense neither.

“So,” I says. “You going to do it again?”

“I got to,” he says. “Now I just got to have her.” He’s going crazy.

This is when she gets out of her car and walks in the school, right past us like she done all the other times. Nothing unusual. Only Jimmy there, you think he might just have a terminal hard-on. “Hey,” he calls out to her. “We getting together after school or what?”

“Gee,” she says, “I guess not. I’m interviewing the guidance counselor today.” Cool as a goddam iceberg. Jimmy, he’s standing there dying. She wiggles that butt of hers and pushes open the door.

“Wait a second,” he calls to her. “There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

“You look so serious,” she says to him. “Did somebody die?” Then she laughs this laugh of hers, where she kind of throws her hair to one side and, I don’t know, bites her lip or something. Alls I know is, right then the cunt looks like she’s sixteen years old. Cock tease is the name for it.

“I was thinking,” he says. Then he just stops, like he don’t know what to say next.

“Oh yes?” she says. “Well, we’d just better send out a news flash to all three networks, hadn’t we?”

“No,” he says. “I mean, I had some things I need to talk to you about. About the video and stuff.”

“Well OK,” she says. “Stop by my place tonight.” Then she’s gone, and it’s like he’s melted into a puddle on the ground. You ever seen a dog sniffing after a bitch in heat? That was Jimmy.

“So,” I say to him. “Was she good?”

Jimmy looks at me, and I swear the boy has tears in his eyes. “You wouldn’t understand,” he tells me. “This isn’t just about sex. I’m in love with her. She cares about me. In my whole life, she’s the first good thing that ever happened.”

A
FTER
J
IMMY STARTED WORKING
on this video with Mrs. Maretto, I got to admit I was happy for him. I should’ve known it was bound to lead to trouble, but he just seemed so excited all of a sudden. He was taking all these showers, shaving, buying hair gel, so I figured a girl was involved, but I thought it was Lydia, the heavyset one. I even waited up for him one night and sat him down. I had this speech all planned about birth control. “Take it from me,” I said. “You don’t want to go having a kid when you’re sixteen.” Right after I said that I felt bad, because of course the kid I had when I was sixteen was him, but he didn’t even seem to notice to take offense. He just said, “Don’t worry, Ma, nothing’s going to happen.”

“Famous last words,” I told him. “Young girls think they’ve got some magic out there protecting them. They don’t know anything.”

“You don’t have to worry about anybody getting knocked up, Ma,” he told me. And of course he was right about that. But don’t I wish all I had to worry about now was some girl making me a grandmother.

A
FTER WE DID IT
that time it was like I was on drugs. I had to have it. I thought about her every minute. They could make one of those fucking TV ads about me. This is your brain. This is your brain after you’ve had sex.

I’d wake up with a boner, same as always, only instead of stopping there, it kept happening all day long.

I’d be combing my hair and I’d remember how it felt, her fingers in my hair, and I’d start shaking. I’d hear “Home Sweet Home” on the radio, that was playing when she gave me a ride in her car, and all of a sudden I’d be sweating like a pig. I’d pick up the phone to dial her number, hang up, pick up the phone again, start to dial. Hang up. I knew I wasn’t supposed to do that, but it was like my dick was on fire and the only thing that would give me any relief was hearing her voice. Just walking down the street I’d think, man, everybody must know what’s on my mind. I read someplace there’s this disease where you have a hard-on that never stops. That was me.

I still don’t get it, how there can be this feeling that’s so good that when you don’t have it, it feels worse than anything you ever felt before. My balls ached. I felt like I was going to throw up. I’d open my mouth to say something, and my voice would crack like some fucking seventh grader.

All day long I’d wait for the moment when I’d get to see her. But when I got to see her, that was even worse. Seeing her and not getting in her pants, you know? Seeing those perfect smooth hands of hers, with those red fingernails, and remembering how they’d dug into my back. I’d remember seeing them pressed into my skin. I could never understand how she did it, acting so calm and cool when I saw her at her condo or Pizza Hut, knowing what she was like in the backseat of her car when it was just her and me fucking. Hearing her clear her throat, that way she always did, and remembering how she’d scream when I was on top of her. Her hair pulled back in that little ponytail, and it used to be hanging all loose over my chest. Her bra straps just barely showing through her blouse. Her nipples making these two little stick-out places when she wore a certain kind of shirt. How could people keep acting normal around that kind of thing? Didn’t everybody see? Was it just me?

Sometimes I’d wait for her out by her car. Lean on her hood, light up a stink butt, then another. There’d be a whole pile of them on the ground all around me by the time she showed up. I’d try and act casual, like I just happened to drop by, but my leg would be shaking.

“So,” I’d say. “You got any plans? You want to take a drive?”

Meaning in her car, of course. The whole thing being out of my control. Her car. Her house. It was like I was her puppet. It was all up to her, and whatever she said went.

She’d laugh. She always laughed, this way she had, where the sound of laughing came out, without her face looking she was laughing. “What am I going to do with you, Jimmy?” she’d say.

What did she think? “Fuck me, I hope,” I wanted to scream at her. “Put me out of my misery, like some dog that’s got rabies.” Which was about as messed up as I felt most of the time.

Then she’d reach up—she was so small and delicate, she only came up to my nose, maybe—and brush my hair out of my eyes, like something a mother might do, only not my mother. “You are such a silly boy,” she’d say. Alls I could do was stand there.

She always had a million places to go. “Hmm …” she’d say. “I haven’t been to aerobics in two days. I’m getting so fat it’s disgusting.”

I told her I’d wait for her if she wanted. I didn’t have plans at the moment. Or any other moment, if you want to know the truth.

“
But
…” she’d say. “We don’t have a thing for dinner back home. I really should go to the store. Larry’ll kill me if I ask him to bring home pizza again. God, what’ll I make?”

What was I supposed to say to that one? I know some great recipes?

“I was thinking maybe we could drive out Langley Road,” I said. “Out past the trailer park.”

Then she’d laugh again. “Now why would I do a thing like that?” she’d say. And then just when I thought I’d have to beat my head against the side of her car, she’d open her door and tell me to get in the other side. Then she’d gun the motor and turn on the radio, not even looking at me. Look at her hair in the mirror. Check this list she kept on the dashboard that told her all the errands she needed to do. Pick up his shirts at the cleaners and shit. “I have thirty-five minutes,” she’d say. She had a little timer on her watch that set off a beep when the time was up.

But thirty-five minutes was enough for me. I was always ready. Only problem I had was holding it in that long. And then knowing once it was over I’d have to wait a whole day or maybe two before I got it again. Because the minute she dropped me off at the Sunoco station back in town, even before her car disappeared at the stoplight, I could feel it starting again. That same feeling of needing it. The more you had the more you needed. Whatever you got it was never enough.

A L
HASA
A
PSO IS
a very sensitive kind of dog, very high-strung. And Walter is even more sensitive than average, so you can imagine. Which I could relate to, being a sensitive person myself.

I’ll give you an example. It’s kind of intimate, but this is the best way I can think of to convey to you the kind of feelings inside this little puppy of mine. And how easily hurt he can be.

Larry and I were in our bedroom one morning, and he wanted to, you know, make love. Mornings weren’t a usual time for us, due to our busy schedules, but I guess he’d gotten a little carried away on this particular occasion.

The thing was, Walter slept downstairs in this bed we had for him in the kitchen, but he always liked to come into our room in the morning, as soon as he woke up. He’d jump up on the bed—just getting up there, mind you, wasn’t easy, but he would jump his little heart out, trying, until he finally made it. And then he’d come over and lick my face and curl up on the pillow next to us. Truthfully, I’d have to say he always preferred me. I think he was a little jealous of Larry getting to sleep with me, while he had to stay in the kitchen, you know.

So anyway, this particular morning, we were having sex, and we didn’t hear Walter coming in. But looking back on it, I have to guess that the sounds we were making must’ve scared him—I’m not saying we were like some X-rated movie or anything, but you know how it goes. I suppose he thought Larry was hurting me. And being the brave little dog he is, with no sense of his own limitations, he jumped right up on the bed without our seeing him until the moment when Larry let out this yell of pain. It turned out Walter bit him. Right on the behind, if you want to know the truth.

I thought it was kind of funny myself. I mean, he wasn’t badly hurt or anything—mostly just surprised. I took Walter in my arms and comforted him, but how do you explain to a dog about something like that? All you can do is reassure them that you love them and you’re there for them.

Larry, on the other hand, didn’t seem to show much patience in this regard. Not everybody can understand the way dogs think, I guess. I just happen to be one of those people with a kind of sixth sense, that can identify with them. But before he even had a chance to think, Larry had picked Walter up by the scruff of his neck and tossed him on the floor, like he was an old towel. “Sometimes I wonder if maybe this dog’s plotting to do me in,” he said. “So he could have you all to himself.”

We laughed about that. Because of course, Walter would never do such a thing. He was just following his natural animal instincts, I told Larry. Just like we all do.

H
ER OLD MAN WAS
going to be away at some pizza-making convention in Las Vegas. So I figured we’d be fucking seven days nonstop. Only she kept putting me off. One night she’s got to go to her mother’s. Then she says she’s got to do something to her hair, don’t ask me what. It looked fine to me. There she was, rid of him, we could’ve been balling all night. And she’s getting her hair done.

Wednesday, Thursday maybe, I can’t stand it no more. I show up at her work, where she always told me never to go, and I walk in her office and I don’t care who hears me. “I got to see you,” I say. “I can’t take it.”

“Be quiet,” she says. But when she sees I’m not going to shut up this time, she says, “OK, come on out to the parking lot where we can talk.”

I told her I felt like she was dragging me along on a string, and it’s tied to my balls. I told her I feel like I’m going to bust if there’s one more day like this. It’s like I’m a goddam drug addict.

“Wait a second,” she says. Then she touches me in this way she has, on this place on my neck that when she does it I just can’t hardly breathe and she knows it. She puts her hand down my shirt and pets me right where I got my tattoo.

“Didn’t you ever hear the expression good things are worth waiting for?” she says to me. “Why’re you in such a hurry? We got all the time in the world.”

I tell her it don’t seem like that. It seems like when I was a little kid, waiting for Santa. Don’t ask me why, he never brung what I wanted anyways. But still, you couldn’t sleep, just thinking about it.

It’s just she’s got a lot on her mind, she says. She’s trying to get our video all finished up. She’s getting ready to go talk to her boss about expanding the weather broadcast. And then she got to attend to her roots, she says. Guys just don’t understand, she says, and she’s laughing. And it kind of feels like she’s laughing at me.

“OK, little boy,” she says to me. “You can come over to my house and play tonight. In fact, you can even come for a sleepover.”

It’s a long walk over to the condo development, but I don’t want Russell or nobody driving me over and giving me a hard time. This is personal like. I don’t want to talk about it or nothing. I want to concentrate.

So it’s nine-thirty, ten o’clock when I get there. TV’s on. She’s watching some Barbara Walters special, eating pizza. They got Sylvester Stallone on. Barbara Walters is asking him why he keeps changing girlfriends. Why he don’t settle down and marry one of them or some shit like that. “Well, Barbara,” he’s saying, “there’s a lot of great girls out there. It’s kind of like picking an ice cream flavor. You have a hard time narrowing it down to one.”

I tell Mrs. Maretto that’s not where I’m at. She’s all I need. All I want. All I’m ever going to want. I could look at her forever and never get tired of her. I don’t need to fuck nobody else, now I’m fucking her.

“When was the last time you took a shower, James?” she asks me.

Yesterday, I tell her. It was probably more likely the day before though. And I don’t want to be worrying the whole time that I might smell bad or something. So I say, “You want me to jump in the shower?”

“Good idea,” she says. “Then I can see the Tom Selleck interview.”

I never was in a place like that. You walk into the room it’s like you’re in a flower garden, there’s all this perfume smell. Carpet on the floor instead of linoleum and shit. There’s this light that when you turn it on, it’s red. Turns out when you stand under the light bulb dripping wet and bare-ass naked, it makes you so you don’t get cold.