After Gary left I felt like a hermit crab that had lost its protective shell. But as it turned out I didn’t have to wait long to find a girl who liked improving boys.
Gary was only gone a couple hours when the girl next door spotted me, just as he said she would. But since I was becoming more like him, it seemed right that she would want to meet me.
I was holding a metal bucket full of ashes from the papers and journals I had burned in the grill. I was thinking of my own burned remains when a high-pitched voice called out, “Hey, you.”
I turned and looked across our dead yard toward the chain-link fence between us and the other side neighbor.
A girl stood there.
I turned away and threw the ashes into the nasty canal. They spread across the surface like a burn scar. Then I turned back in her direction.
“Hey,” she said, a little more confidently now that she’d caught my eye. “Over here!”
She waved her hand back and forth like a child waving a little parade flag. She had to be the girl Gary did not want me to talk to, but she seemed so nice and innocent.
I liked her immediately, even if I didn’t have the words to describe why. I probably should have looked uninterested at that moment and walked away, but Gary had said that once I saw her I wouldn’t be able to stay away from her, so I was just following his prediction.
“Hey,” she said again, and stood up on her toes. “I’m talking to you, so don’t ignore me.”
I just stood there feeling my heart beat. She was his ex-girlfriend and must have given him the pink teddy bear with her name, Tomi, written on it. She looked like a genie with a triple bun of brown hair and a round face and eyes as if she were from the Far East—Singapore or Jakarta—someplace exotic where it was possible to be a saffron sunrise of light captured in a bottle and end up released as a sunset in Florida. That seemed impossible, but I guess the impossible was just what I wanted. I waved back to her as I thought to myself, Her hair is stacked up like a pagoda.
“Come over here and help me, please?” she asked politely. “I just want to ask you something.”
The way she leaned over the fence reminded me of a petting zoo where the animals know you have food in your hand and so they stretch their long necks and chests forward and push a bulge in the fence until it looks like it might just split apart.
It wasn’t only the way she pressed against the fence either. She had the kind of magnetic force my dad or uncles or older guys would talk about when they talked about trouble with women.
“Come on,” she said, and waved her hand at me. “I want to talk to you. Don’t be such a shy guy.” And her eyes and chin and smile sort of bobbed up and down with that joy of being alive, like a newborn pony.
I don’t know why I kept thinking of her as if she were a beautiful animal because she was so obviously a beautiful girl, but anything in nature that is beautiful is pure, and she seemed pure. Maybe that’s what I was thinking without putting the right words to it.
I glanced over at the Pagoda house even though I knew Gary was long gone. Then I took one step toward her, and the other steps followed.
I squinted and tilted my face forward because the sun was reflecting off the aluminum flashing along the edge of her roof and the ray of light was hitting me in the eyes. With my face bent to the ground she may have thought I was approaching her as if she were a goddess and I was unworthy of looking her in the eyes. She wouldn’t have been all that wrong.
As I walked across the crunchy brown lawn, darting waves of grasshoppers fled from around my shoes. It was as if I were splashing water—or walking on water. Maybe she was some kind of genie and had already put a grasshopper spell on me.
When I got closer to her fence the sun was blocked out by the roof overhang and I stepped into a shadow. I raised my eyes. “Yes?” I said.
“Did you see those grasshoppers?” she asked with some amazement.
I smiled. “Yes,” I said, nodding.
“They were beautiful,” she remarked. “When the light hit them they looked like colored glass.”
“I was squinting,” I said, “and couldn’t see that.” I glanced over at Gary’s house again. His warning was pretty magnetic, too.
“Do you have a cigarette?” she asked, and held two fingers across her lips as if she were taking a puff of one. She had very nice lips and they looked like colored glass.
“I don’t smoke,” I said, and shrugged.
“That’s not what I asked,” she replied. “Can you get a cigarette? I’ll split it with you.”
“We don’t have any,” I replied, and for some crazy reason I said, “And my friend Gary isn’t around or I’d get some from him.”
Suddenly the cigarettes were uninteresting to her. “I know you know Gary,” she said in a singsong way, and shifted her weight from one leg to the other. “Well, I know him, too,” she said, but with a little venom.
“He lives next door,” I said stupidly, and nodded toward his house.
“Don’t I know it,” she shot back. “I’ve been there one too many times, if you know what I mean.”
She said that like she knew him in a special way. I could feel myself getting jealous because I wanted her to know me in a special way.
“Well, can you go get me some cigarettes?” she asked nicely. “I have the money and I figure you have a bike.”
“Sure,” I agreed. I had nothing else to do. I didn’t have to mow the grass, although Dad did say I should rake it so that it looked like combed hair on a flat head. He was joking at first and then he talked himself into saying, “Sculpt it into a navy insignia—like an anchor.” He showed me the crest on his navy ring for a template.
Suddenly the girl turned on one foot, like a dancer.
“I’ll be right back,” she said. “Let me get the money.”
I stood there watching her quickly run toward her back door and she looked more like a woman than a girl. Maybe that’s when I should have run toward my back door so that Gary wouldn’t know a thing. But I stayed like a little puppy eager to please her as my eyes mindlessly drifted toward the Pagoda house.
She returned faster than I expected. When she got to the fence she looked at me like she was about to laugh.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she remarked. “It’s just that you’re staring at that house like it’s after you.”
“No,” I said, hiding my thoughts behind a lie.
She held out a man’s wallet. “There are a few leftover bucks in there,” she said. “Get something for yourself.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I’m fine.”
“Well, when you come back I’ll tell you a story about that wallet,” she said pointedly, and dipped her head as a silent promise. “And that will be your reward.”
“I’d like that,” I managed to say, which led me to ask, “What’s your name?”
I asked even though I knew.
“Tomi King,” she said. “I’m quarantined to my house because I just flew home on a plane and some baby had whooping cough or the measles or the plague, so I’m not allowed to spread it—if I have it, that is.”
I covered my mouth as if I were yawning, but it was because of the germs. I was a little like my mother when it came to the fear of germs. I turned my head to one side and took a deep breath.
“Pick any brand,” she said. “I like surprises.”
“I’ll be back soon,” I said, and trotted around to the front of my house and hopped on my bicycle.
I pedaled down to Gus’s Gas Station in a jiffy. He charged kids more for cigarettes than adults, but that was okay. It wasn’t my money. When I opened the wallet to pay I saw there was a corner of paper folded over into the license slot. I pulled it out and examined it. It was a pilot’s license. The name on it was Johnny Foil.
I didn’t know what to think of that, but Tomi had said she’d tell me the story, so I hopped back on my bike and headed home.
She was waiting for me right where I had left her and she waved her hand in that flag-waving way like before and it felt so good to have someone happy to see me.
“Hi,” she called out as I marched toward her in a straight line as if I had no choice.
I held up the pack of cigarettes.
“Oh, Kents!” she said, and clapped her hands together. “My favorite.”
She reached across the fence for them, but I held them just beyond her grasp. “Are you going to tell me the story of this wallet?” I asked. “Like you promised?”
“You read my mind,” she said, and I put the Kents and a pack of matches in her soft, open hand.
“Do you know Suzy Pryor?” she asked, and sat down on her side of the fence.
“She’s my sister’s best friend,” I replied, and slowly sat down on my prickly grass.
“Good,” she said as she opened the cigarette package and plucked one out with her long nails. She lit it, inhaled, exhaled, and pulled her shoulders way back as if she were a bow ready to launch an arrow. And then she did.
Very quickly she said, “I didn’t like Suzy very much. But now I do and I’ll tell you why in a minute. So Gary had a ‘thing’ for Suzy, but she didn’t care for him and his ways. She had a boyfriend—a rich kid named Jordan Abernathy. She met him at church. Anyway, he would show up in a shiny black Lincoln driven by a chauffeur and the chauffeur would park in Suzy’s driveway and open the door for Jordan, and then Jordan would stroll up to her front door with flowers and call on Suzy. It was pretty weird for around this crappy neighborhood but really nice, too, because Jordan was a good guy even though he was like Richie Rich in the comics. He was cute, though not that cute, but his money made up the difference. Well, because Jordan was really nice to Suzy and gave her gifts and took her to good restaurants Gary got all worked up. He claimed Suzy was just after the money and all and was using Jordan, and if anyone else came around with some money she’d leave Jordan in a split second. Gary was just plain old jealous because he didn’t have any money, and his smile and those awful shoes and that motorcycle jacket weren’t getting him anywhere.
“And then the most amazing thing happened. Just over by Gus’s Gas Station, across the street, is an old abandoned golf course.”
“The fenced-in one,” I quickly remarked, having just passed it on my bike ride.
“It’s all grown over—like a jungle,” she added. “I used to go there with a lot of friends and hang out. Well, an airplane movie was being filmed above it so that the planes would look like they were flying over Africa or the Amazon or somewhere lush. There were three airplanes. Two were old World War I biplanes and the other was a modern camera plane. Anyway, the old planes were flying this way and that, pretending to have a battle, when something went wrong and one of the biplanes brushed wings with the camera plane. And that biplane came crashing down on the golf course. The other two planes made it back to the airport, but the third plane blew up when it hit the ground.
“As it turns out, Gary was over there because that’s where he used to hang out instead of going to school. So he sees it hit and runs toward it. The plane was made of canvas and wood, and with the fuel tank smashed open it was all on fire. Gary spotted the pilot in his seat and he was on fire too, and trapped in the wreck. So Gary runs into the fire, grabs the burning pilot, and pulls him out. But he was dead. So Gary being Gary he took the guy’s wallet.”
“Johnny Foil,” I guessed.
“Yep,” she replied, and then said, “I could use another cigarette.” She seemed to take her time getting the second cigarette out of the pack, but when she did she lit it right up.
Once she exhaled she slowly shrugged as if the story were pressing down on her shoulders. “Anyway, there was a thousand dollars in the wallet because that’s what the movie people paid the pilot. The police spread the word about the missing wallet because the theft was so foul. But Gary didn’t take a cent of the money and he goes and gives it to Suzy and says to her, ‘Now you don’t need Richie Rich. You got your own money and a real man. So forget him because you are mine now.’
“She didn’t go for that. She just told him, ‘I’ll stick with Jordan.’ So Gary leaves the wallet on her doorstep and walks away angry. Well, nobody knows what happened next, but Jordan mysteriously stops coming around for Suzy. Someone said Gary threatened him and he went running off to boarding school or something. And Suzy told me this really good part—she took the full wallet and hid it and then told Gary that if he ever bothered her again she’d call the police and show them the wallet and tell them that he stole it and gave it to her. She thought it was pretty sick that he thought he could just buy her love with a dead man’s money. Her hiding the wallet was pretty smart because that threat kept Gary from bothering her and so he started looking around for another girlfriend.”
Then she paused and took a long drag on her Kent. “Well, without going into details, something happened between me and Gary and I got pregnant.” She looked away from me after she said that.
“What?” I said quietly, maybe sounding a little confused. Or young. Or stupid.
“Don’t make me explain the birds and the bees,” she said, as if she were tired.
“Was it Gary?” I asked, knowing it would be, but I just had to hear her say so.
“Who else?” she sort of groaned. “And so I was in big trouble last year and my parents don’t have any money and I needed to be sent away to this depressing place for unwed mothers to have the baby. Gary vanished into some juvie joint, so he was no help. We didn’t know what to do. Hide me indoors for nine months? Then Suzy shows up at my front door one night, really late, and hands me the wallet. ‘This should belong to you,’ she said. ‘And I’m really sorry because he’s a creep.’
“‘He is,’ I said to her. ‘He sure is.’
“‘I didn’t spend a cent of it,’ Suzy says. ‘It makes me sick just to have had it.’
“She was an angel to me. So I got the wallet and took out the cash and I told my parents ‘the boy’ gave it to me and they were so desperate they didn’t want to know the truth—but they knew deep down it wasn’t right. So I got sent off for months and had the baby and it went to a nice family and now here I am—right back where I started.” She lit another cigarette.
“So that’s a true story?” I asked.
“Of course it is,” she said, raising her voice. “I wouldn’t lie about all that just for a cigarette.”
At that moment her mother leaned out the sliding door. “Tomi,” she called. “It’s time to come in for a while and help with supper.”
“Okay,” Tomi called back over her shoulder. Then quickly she turned to me with the wallet in her outstretched hand. “So I gave you that story. It’s like a special gift, and now I want you to give me a gift in return—I want you to give this back to Gary,” she said intently. “Put it in his hands and ask him what it means, and see if he has the you-know-whats to tell you the truth as I have. And if he lies, then I don’t think you’ll want to be his friend much longer.”
Then she stood up and smiled at me and slowly patted my hand like I was a special pet. “Well, thanks for getting me the smokes,” she said, then headed for her door but not before she paused and looked back at me over her shoulder. “See you around,” she said, and I knew I wanted to be seen.
I stood up and headed for our door, realizing that she’d just told me that if I got rid of Gary I could be her friend. That was something to think about because she was so nice and honest and all the warmer feelings I shared with my mother were stirring inside me like a soft pet circling before lying down for a nap. And there were other feelings too, but those I kept to myself.
When I entered the house my sister was just inside the door and glaring at me with her hands on her hips.
“You should leave that girl alone,” she said firmly. “She’s a nice girl.”
“I’m a nice guy,” I replied smoothly. “I was just talking to her.”
“Well, I’ve been told she’s had a rough time lately, so no funny business,” she warned.
“What do you mean by that?” I asked.
“Keep your hands to yourself,” she replied. “Growing up is hard enough without creeps pulling you down.” Then she turned and retreated to her room, and when she closed her door it was like putting the period on the end of a sentence.