LARRY AND ME GOT to be friends in third grade. He was my neighbor across the street. We hung out. Rode bikes, tossed a ball around, the usual. That guy was good at every sport he tried. Junior high, I started playing bass and Larry picked up the drums. I think he mostly figured it was a way to meet girls. He never was that good. But we had a lot of fun hanging out in his parents’ basement fooling around. Us and these two other guys, one on lead guitar and one on rhythm, and there were always a couple of girls hanging around, wanting to shake a tambourine or sing. We called ourselves The Suckers.
Besides the band I couldn’t say he had any special interests. I mean, the guy liked to party, liked to go off-roading when he had the chance. He might light up a toke, but nothing major. He was just what you’d call a fun guy. Easygoing. Always ready for a good time. Loved his folks. Loved dogs.
Sure he dated. The guy wasn’t queer. But no one serious in high school. He was just having a good time.
After we graduated, Larry started working full time at his folks’ restaurant and I got kind of serious with my band. Playing clubs over at Little Paradise Beach, even in the city sometimes. I guess you’d call us your basic metal band. Man, you want chicks? Let me tell you. Get a guitar.
He saw Suzanne at the mall one day, handing out perfume samples, and he said that was it, love at first sight. He still wore his hair long back then. She was real cute, that blond hair and all, although it always kind of freaked me out the way you’d be talking to her and you could see right up her nostrils. They started going out pretty steady right off.
I remember this New Year’s Eve party they were at, just a couple weeks after he met her. She had this video camera with her, and she was going around asking people their New Year’s resolutions, like it was going to be on the news. Everybody was loaded, basically. Guys were saying stuff like, “Ball a lot of girls,” or, “Get laid in a convertible.” You get the idea. But Larry, his resolution was, “Find someone really special and settle down.” I remember because everybody laughed when he said that. It was such a weird thing for a guy to say, and especially Larry, who always seemed like such a party guy. And he kept going on about all this other stuff, how when he found the right girl, he’d buy her the biggest diamond and a sports car and he’d take her out dancing every Friday night. “I want to make Mrs. Larry Maretto the happiest woman in America,” he said. “Maybe the universe.” Poor jerk meant it too.
And like I said, a lot of people laughed hearing him talk that way to the camera. Maybe Suzanne did too, I don’t know. But I figure he made enough of an impression, because who do I see the very next weekend, dancing over at Shooters? Suzanne and Larry. And he’s looking at her like he’s hypnotized. Which I guess he was.
After a month or so, I guess she told him they were getting too serious, she still wanted to date other people. I’d run into Larry at the gym, and he’d be by himself, just mooning around. This was a guy that was ready to party seven days a week, and now he’s talking about saving up to make a down payment on a condo. He tells me, “Sooner or later, Chuck, you got to grow up and think about your future.” And it’s looking like his future is Suzanne, he says.
He buys her a dog—a puppy, don’t ask me what kind. Alls I know is, the goddam mutt never shuts up. She names it Walter, after Walter Cronkite. She had a thing about anchormen she told me. Get this: anchormen and heavy metal stars. “One thing I know,” he says. “If Peter Jennings or David Lee Roth ever called up Suzanne and asked her to meet them at their hotel or someplace, she’d be out of here.” Well, my girlfriend’s pretty crazy about Axl Rose. But I don’t know. You like to think you can count on a person. To hang around.
Anyways. Come April, maybe, Jeannie and me cook up this plan of driving down to Florida. Don’t laugh, but Jeannie wants to see Disney World. Larry hears about it and says how about if him and Suzanne come along, they both got vacations coming. So the four of us take off for Orlando, drive all night, make the trip in two days, that’s how crazy we were.
Most of that trip we took to Florida is kind of a blur. We worked our way through a lot of six-packs on that trip. All except Larry, actually. Who was never that big of a drinker.
Suzanne on the other hand. She was a real maniac on the trip. I’d never seen her like that before—and never did again, I can tell you. From the minute we left town and hit the highway, it was like she was let out of jail. She wanted to play this Aerosmith tape over and over, super loud. Every other word out of her mouth was fuck. Fucking drivers, fucking traffic, fucking New York Thruway. In the middle of the night one time, somewhere in Pennsylvania, she actually mooned a toll booth operator. You wondered if she was on drugs only she wasn’t. Larry hated that stuff. Even grass.
He was so much in love with Suzanne though, I don’t think he cared how dumb she was acting. He just kept trying to kiss her, make out with her. We took turns but mostly they sat in the front seat on account of he was in the best shape for driving. One time she actually had her face in his lap, if you know what I mean, while he was in real bad traffic. You could tell he was embarrassed. “Not now, Susie,” he’d say to her. “Wait till the motel.” She just laughed. Come to think of it, that trip was about the only time I ever heard her laugh.
Once we get there, we do the whole bit. Ride those little boats where they keep singing “It’s a Small World.” The teacups, the pirate ships, this 3D Michael Jackson movie they got. Suzanne gets her picture taken with Mickey Mouse. Larry buys one of these Goofy hats with the ears flopping down. Suzanne kids him about it, but you can also tell she doesn’t like it. She keeps trying to get him to take off the damn hat. He doesn’t want to. “You look stupid,” she says. “You look like a nerd.” He takes off the hat. But right then I remember thinking it was like we’re back in third grade and he’s this little boy again.
We stayed at this nice hotel, the four of us. Larry was making real good money at the restaurant at this point, so he said, It’s on me. Room service, Jacuzzi, cable in the room. The works. Sirloin steak for dinner. Banana daiquiris like they’re going out of style. I mean, we were going strictly first class.
Our last night in Orlando, Larry buys Suzanne these two stuffed dogs, and they’re hugging each other. Like one is him, and the other one’s her. Then we go see the fireworks over at Epcot Center, and Larry and Suzanne are making out pretty good while these fireworks are exploding all over the place. I guess you’d have to say the whole thing was about as romantic as it gets. Must of been, because after, when the four of us were heading back out on the monorail, Larry holds up Suzanne’s hand, and she’s got this big diamond on her finger. “What do you think of this?” he says. The whole thing makes me a little tense, you might say, on account of Jeannie’s right there, and I know she’s thinking, OK, where’s my ring?
But we took their picture, the two of them, with the stuffed dogs. I’ve still got the picture, if you want to see it. That’s more the way I remember Larry, before he got all serious and cut his hair. Grinning like he always was back in those days.
But the thing that got me—well now, of course, looking back, it seems more important than it did at the time—was the way she only held his hand while Jeannie was taking the picture. The minute the flash went off, she let go.