Nineteen

In the morning I called Al.

“You going to school today?” I said.

“Listen,” she said. “I trimmed off the singed parts and I must’ve dropped about ten pounds yesterday. I look gorge. Sure I’m going.”

We met at the elevator.

“My mother said maybe I should stay home today,” I told her.

“Mine too,” Al said. “I guess they think we’re wimps, that we can’t take the stress of daily life in the big city. Little do they know. We have to go and inform the troops of the battle in progress, n’est-ce pas?”

The elevator door creaked open, revealing Sparky and his mom. Sparky was sulking, probably because he was on his leash. He hates his leash. His mom says he doesn’t like to be confined.

“Hello,” we said. Sparky’s mom waggled fingers at us in greeting.

If only the elevator had been crowded, we could’ve said we’d wait for the next one. But it was just us and her. And him.

We got on.

“Thank you for a nice time,” Al said right off. “We looked around for you to say good-bye, but we couldn’t see you. It was a nice party.”

Her mother would’ve been proud of her.

I nodded and smiled agreement.

“Well,” Sparky’s mom said, “a party is what gets the blood stirring. What are one’s friends for if not to come to one’s parties? We must all hang together or we hang alone. Isn’t that right? Josh loved meeting you girls. He said he just loved it. He had the best time. Isn’t he a darling boy? His friend is too. What was his name? Oh, I’m so bad about names. Some days I can hardly remember my own. I’m off to the beauty salon. I feel the need of a facial. I must drop Sparky off at his day-care center. They love him there. They just think he’s the cutest thing. He’s such a dear little one, isn’t he?”

Al and I both smiled. Behind Sparky’s mom’s back, Al rested the toe of her sneaker on Sparky’s head. He lifted his lips and sneered, then he raised his eyebrow at her too. Sparky has only one eyebrow, which stretches across both little eyes. It’s one of the things that makes him so outstanding.

“We’ll do it again soon, girls,” Sparky’s mom said.

“Not on your tintype,” I said, under my breath.

“Just think.” We stopped at Lexington for the light. “We’re lucky to be alive.” Al was very serious. “We might be dead. We owe Big Al a big debt.”

“Maybe we should send him some flowers,” I said.

“That’s a good idea,” Al said. “I wonder what name we should use? I mean, he’s got all those aliases. Maybe instead of sending flowers, we should visit him in the hospital.”

“What hospital is he in?” I said.

Al shrugged. “We can stop by the health club today after school and ask. They’ll probably know.”

“You think the health club is still there?” I said. “I mean, a fire bomb usually levels everything it hits, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Al said. She so seldom says “I don’t know” I was momentarily flabbergasted.

“Polly called last night,” I said. “She says Thelma’s on standby for the tea dance. She has a new dress and everything, and Polly says her cousin Harry is all psyched up about Thelma because he’s never known a girl with that name before and he thinks it’s kind of cute.”

“Harry sound like a twerp,” Al said.

“Well, Polly says we’ve stalled long enough,” I told Al. “She says we have to decide today if we’re going. Do you want to go to the tea dance on a blind date or don’t you?”

“No,” Al said. “If I knew how to tea-dance, I might. But I haven’t the faintest idea, so I’m not going. Furthermore, my experience with blind dates has probably warped me for time immemorial.”

Trouble was, I wanted to go. But I wasn’t going without Al.

“As a matter of fact,” Al went on, “my experience with blind dates has not only warped me, it has probably ruined my life. I may never get married, have two kids and a station wagon and a Jacuzzi in my bathroom. Or a sauna in the backyard, in addition to a Weber cooker for barbecues. Do you realize what one terrible blind date can do? It can louse you up forevermore.”

“I didn’t think it was that bad,” I said.

“My standards are much higher than yours,” Al told me. “I want a blind date to have manners. I want him to stand up, not loll all over on account of if he stands up he’ll blow his midget cover.

“Besides,” Al said, “I don’t have anything to wear to a tea dance.”

“The dress you wore to your birthday party would be terrific,” I said. “That dress is very becoming.”

“You sound just like my mother,” Al said. “If I wore that taffeta dress, then you’d wear your taffeta dress and we’d look like a mother-daughter combo. I’m the mother and you’re the daughter. I look much older than you. That’s because I’m stout. Stout people tend to look older than skinny ones.”

“I’m not skinny,” I protested.

“Where does that leave me, then?” Al said.

“What happened to you?” Martha Moseley screeched. “You get caught in a bear trap?”

Martha’s vassals, lined up single file behind her, tittered.

“The bomb got my nose is all,” I said. “Watch TV for further developments.” Before I knew Al, I never would’ve been able to handle Martha Moseley.

“Ms. Bolton,” Al said, “did you know Al’s Health Club was fire-bombed yesterday? It just missed us.”

Ms. Bolton’s eyes got wide. “I was planning to go there to work out yesterday,” she said. “Then my fiancé turned up and we went to the zoo instead.”

“Your fiancé!” Al said.

“We didn’t know you were engaged,” I said. “We were planning on fixing you up with a nice blind date, only we couldn’t find one.”

“I’m getting married at Christmas,” Ms. Bolton said. “Here.” She took a snapshot out of her wallet and showed it to us.

“He’s a hunk,” Al said.

“He’s very good looking,” I told Ms. Bolton.

“Thanks,” she said.

We went by the health club on our way home. It was boarded up and there were police standing around, in case of looters, they told us. They didn’t know anything or, if they did, they weren’t telling us.

“I have to call Polly and tell her if we’re going or not,” I said.

“If you want to go, go,” Al said. “But count me out.”

“I’m going,” I said. “I’m calling Polly and telling her I’m going.”

“So go,” Al said. “Go ahead.”

I knew she didn’t really think I’d go without her. It was time I taught her a lesson.

“Me and Thelma will make quite a pair,” I said. “She’s incredibly shallow, but shallow in a deep way, if you get my meaning.”

“You’ll be sorry,” Al said. “All right for you, go.”

“Don’t be a sorehead, sorehead,” I said.