Steph had plans with Troy after services. She let this slip on the way back, forcing Grandma Bernice to have another conniption fit. The woman basically only existed in different levels of shrill. She clutched her purse so hard, her knuckles turned white.
“After holy services, you are going on a date?” Grandma Bernice squawked.
Steph twisted a lock of hair, let it bounce. “Yeah, with the pool boy.”
“That goy? What-what-what?” Grandma Bernice nearly fell to her knees. “Hashem, take me now. There’s no reason to go on.”
“Ma, it’s fine,” my mom said with a renewed spirit. Barry could tell. They walked closer to one another, the electricity sparking between them.
“A shanda,” Grandma Bernice said, as if she was ready to spit. And then she kept saying it over and over.
“I’m gonna play with the cats,” Jenny said, rubbing her hands together and slipping into the condo before we could realize that meant doom for Grandma’s “pussies.”
“I give up,” Grandma Bernice cried and followed Jenny inside.
Barry and Mom had put their hands in the backs of each other’s pockets.
“I love you, Bear,” Mom said, her head on his shoulder.
“Hey Jude,” he said and started singing the Beatles song through a wide smile.
“So, you’re seeing Troy again?” I asked Steph, batting my eyelashes to mock her.
“You’re coming too,” she said. “He has to watch his little sister.”
“O…kay,” I said, thinking of the wad of toilet paper getting flushed down the temple’s toilet where I professed my love.
After we changed back to normal people attire, we waited for Troy’s car to pull up. When it did, he rolled down the window so Steph could lean in and they could make out. He practically swallowed her face. Getting in the back with Heidi, she barely looked at me.
“Hey,” I said.
“Yeah. Hey.”
“What you got there?” I asked, since the car was dark, and she had cards in her hands.
“Garbage Pail Kids,” she said, and showed me one named Adam Bomb of a baby-faced kid whose head was exploding in a mushroom cloud. I could relate.
“Yeah, cool, I know those.”
“I like fucked-up shit,” she said.
“Who doesn’t?”
Steph finally got in and swiveled around. “So, this is the plan. We’re going to a drive-in movie. They actually have those here. You two can watch from the top of the car.”
“Why the top?” I asked.
“Because we’ll be getting it on inside,” Troy said, winking through the rearview mirror.
“If you’re lucky,” Steph said, swatting him playfully.
The movie was Gremlins. I’d seen it before and loved it, so I was cool with seeing it again. I knew the parts when the Gremlins turned bad could be scary, and I told myself to be there for Heidi if she needed me. Barry had given me some cash so I bought Heidi Sno-Caps and Sour Patch Kids and a small tub of popcorn we could share. We climbed on the roof of the car and could hear Steph and Troy bumping uglies below with an “oh yeah, oh yeah,” moaning from them both through the crack in the window.
The moon was almost full, a perfect backdrop to my first date, not just with Heidi but with any girl. I situated the popcorn between us so our hands could have a buttery meeting.
“I hate popcorn,” she said. “The kernels always get stuck in my teeth.”
“Yeah, me too.” I tossed the popcorn over the side.
“That was actually pretty rad,” she said, and I caught her first sorta smile.
“I will eat those Sno-Caps, though,” she said.
I passed them over, and she munched as the movie started with the little old shop in Chinatown and the old Chinese man with a translucent eye. The father, finding Gizmo and buying him as a gift.
“Gizmo looks like my ex-boyfriend,” Heidi said.
“Ex-boyfriend?” I gulped. How could she already have ex-boyfriends?
“He had these big eyes and was fuzzy all over.”
“And you couldn’t get water on him.”
“That was funny.” She took off her bracelet and snapped it against her arm as it coiled back around.
“I heard a kid died from one of those, the metal fell out and sliced his wrists,” I said.
“You are a morbid fucker, aren’t you?”
“Uhh…”
“Don’t worry, I, like, deface tombstones and stuff. I’m as morbid as they come. Happens when your parents die.”
She said this, staring at the moon, as if it was nothing.
“You don’t have parents?”
“Car accident,” she said, reaching for the Sour Patch Kids. “Like, I was really little. Troy remembers them. I have, like, hazy images. So, yeah, morbid.”
I was aware of my beating heart, afraid to say the wrong thing.
“Who do you live with?”
“Grandfather, hence being in Boca. He’s…I mean, he’s really old and doesn’t leave his TV chair very much. But it beats a foster home, and Troy looks after me. He’s…I mean, he’s like mental, but he’s not so bad.”
“I can’t imagine not having parents,” I said, which I knew was exactly the wrong thing to say. “I’m sorry, I—”
“No one knows what to say. Like, it’s awkward. I usually like getting it out of the way as soon as possible and moving on. Hi, I’m Heidi, I have dead parents. I should just wear a name tag. So, what’s your story?”
“Uh…I dunno. We’re visiting my grandma.”
“Yeah, I got that.”
“My dad lost all his money in the stock market, and they took our house, so we’re down here while we figure out our next step.”
“Didn’t expect that.”
“Neither did we.”
We felt a foot banging against the ceiling, bouncing us.
“Looks like the passion is ramping up,” Heidi said, rolling her eyes.
“Can I have some Sour Patch Kids, too?” I asked, and we touched fingers as she passed them over.
I will kiss this girl. Maybe not tonight, but before our time in Florida ends. I will know what a kiss from Heidi is like.
I inched a little closer, and we stayed that way for the rest of the movie, our bodies lightly touching. Her breathing going heavy at the scary scenes, and me having the courage to reach over and hold her hand.
When we got back to Grandma Bernice’s condo, Barry was outside in one of the lounge chairs by the pool. He was wearing Herb’s old slippers with a bathrobe, not a great look.
“What the hell is Dad doing?” Steph asked, putting her face in her hands.
Barry shot up as we approached, pivoting from foot to foot. He was jittery, rubbing his nose, likely from a line up there.
I turned to Heidi before Barry’s inevitable onslaught.
“I had a great time.”
She’d been looking out of the window. “Yeah, me too,” she said, not averting her gaze.
“Maybe another movie sometime?”
“Maybe.”
One of her shoulders shrugged. She seemed sad. I wondered if it had to do with her parents. If she forgot about them most of the time and then suddenly a memory snuck up. It was too dark to tell if she was crying. When we held hands at the movie, it had been brief, sweaty—I counted the seconds. Made sure to do it with Mississippis, as if that could draw out the time even longer. She had painted her fingernails, but they were chipped like a little girl’s. After she pulled her hand away from mine, she chewed on them like they were a saving grace.
“Bye,” I said, racing out to avoid any more awkwardness.
Barry grabbed me by the collar.
“Hold on,” he said. “I need you to stay.”
He patted the hood of the car and stuck his head through the window.
“Want to talk to you for a minute, son,” he said while Troy remained looking cool. This wasn’t the first time a girl’s dad wanted to have a “talk.”
Steph slinked out of the car, her face burning red.
“I’m so embarrassed,” she hissed at Barry before running inside.
Troy turned back to Heidi. “I’m gonna leave the radio on for you.”
Heidi shrugged her other shoulder.
Troy turned it on, “Here I Go” by Whitesnake cutting through the night. When he got out and closed the door, only the hum of it could still be heard.
“Yeah, Pops,” he said, flipping back his hair.
Barry beckoned him away from the car, and we reconvened by the pool.
“Your daughter’s a cool girl,” Troy said, making sure not to show any sweat. “I’ve been treating her well, swear.”
“I don’t care about that,” Barry said, and Troy’s eyes went wide. “I mean, obviously I care about my daughter—lemme explain.”
He pointed for Troy to sit and paced back and forth.
“What kind of man are you, son?”
“Man?”
“I mean, morals and such.”
“Dad?” I asked, trying to save him because it seemed he was coked out of his gourd.
“I told you, I’m treating your daughter well.”
“You eighteen?” Barry asked.
“Yeah, but just,” Troy said. “Steph’s sixteen. Is that what this is about?”
“It has nothing to do with Stephie,” Barry said, exasperated. “Aaron, explain to him what we do.”
“Uhh…”
“Go on, lay it all out there.”
“Ev-ery-thing?”
“Ever break the law, son?” Barry asked, getting in Troy’s face. We were standing over him now, watching him squirm. I could see an element of his put-on cool evaporating. He reached into his front pocket, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, lit one up.
“Old man, I’m not sure what you’re getting at,” Troy said, inhaling hard.
“What if I said I had a job for you?” Barry asked.
“Dad,” I said again, yanking at his bathrobe, but he didn’t budge.
He swatted me away. “No, no, Aaron, this is good, trust me.”
Troy flipped his hair back. “What kind of job?”
“There you go,” Barry said, shaking his shoulder. “Now we’re cooking. A marvelous opportunity.” He lowered his voice. “What’s your situation at home?”
Troy told him about his grandfather, who took care of them, but basically sat in his TV chair all day, his parents, who died.
“You want out of Boca, don’t you?” Barry asked.
Troy exhaled through his nostrils and gave a nod.
“Then I’m your fucking golden ticket.”
Barry launched into a diatribe about how we wound up in Florida, starting with the stock market crash, then me robbing a convenience store, the two liquor stores he and Mom hit, and finally, our pièce de résistance, the bank in Virginia.
“No fucking way,” Troy said, shaking his head in disbelief.
“Way,” Barry answered him. “But here’s the sitch, we’re one man short to really pull it off on a bigger level. With Steph as driver, that only leaves three of us to take care of all of the variables since little Jenny won’t have a gun.”
“Of course not,” I said, catching his eye that refused to stay focused.
“Right. Of course not. So, we need an extra hired hand with a gun.”
Troy took one last puff and put out the cigarette on the heel of his Converse.
“What’s my cut?”
“I knew,” Barry shouted, a little too loud so I shushed him, “I knew looking at you exactly who you were.” He clapped his hands. “You’re in, aren’t you?”
“I’m listening,” Troy said.
“There’s six of us. You get one-sixth of the cut.”
Troy shook his head and started to get up. “One-fourth.”
“That’s highway robbery!”
“I’m supposed to get the same amount as a little fucking girl? Hell no.”
This had already unraveled too fast, the idea of a non-Gimmelman joining our gang, even though I knew it was inevitable and first had the idea. How could we trust Troy yet? I barely trusted any of us.
“One-fifth,” Barry said, extending his hand. “Take it or leave it.”
Troy didn’t shake. “Leave it.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Barry said, scurrying after Troy because he started to walk away. “One-fourth, one-fourth, but…you gotta get your own gun, and afterwards, you forget we ever existed. Steph included.”
“That’s cold, man.”
“Can’t take the chance.”
I wanted to pull Barry aside, but he was too full of fuel to be deterred. Did we really want to give this schmuck a fourth of our take?
“Holy shit,” I said out loud, not meaning to. If Troy broke ties with Steph, that would mean I’d have to do the same with Heidi.
Barry and Troy glanced my way, but were too in the heat of an argument to pay me much mind.
“Sure, Pops, you’ll never hear from me again.”
Barry’s white teeth gleamed from the reflection of the moon.
“All you need now is a mask,” he said.
I wandered away from them back to where Troy’s car was idling. Whitesnake changed to Cinderella’s “Don’t Know What You Got (Till It’s Gone),” the lyrics fusing with my soul’s yearnings. How much more time would I have to kiss Heidi before we’d be roaring away in the Gas-Guzzler?
I mimed for her to roll down the window, the music streaming out. She had been crying, her face wet. She rubbed her eyes, made them redder. I burst forth, planting a kiss on her lips. Did she kiss back? Hard to say. I was too overwhelmed by my sudden actions to process. It may have lasted a second. It may have even been minutes. She tasted of cherry ChapStick. When I pulled away, the sky greeted me with a thousand stars, more than I’d ever seen in New Jersey. Twinkling just for us. The song ended, and the DJ started talking. A commercial for auto parts. How everyone should get their mufflers checked. This perfect first kiss. We didn’t say anything to each other as I backed away. She seemed less sad. Not quite a smile, but no longer a frown. The commercial, still blaring. A deal on hub caps, too. Two for one. Moshe’s Auto Mart. Two twenty-two Northwest 2nd Avenue. Open every day from eight to eight. Refer a family member and get a coupon. For all your automotive needs.
Barry and Troy came back, arms slung around each other’s shoulders.
Heidi rolled up the window, frosted from the humidity.