16
That evening I waited for Max Pilsner and Sal Infantino outside the locker club on the corner of Washington Avenue and Jefferson Davis Highway. We were going into town, and they were inside, changing into civvies. I was in dress whites, wearing the two green stripes of the lowly airman deuce. I’d have to wait until payday to buy civvies or until my father could figure out how to send me a box of clothes in the mail. The line of palms leading to the base looked stately in the fading late-afternoon light. The weeds, pines and palmettos in the fields seemed more lush. Across the highway there was a place called Billy’s, with a sign in the window offering a Happy Hour From Five to Seven Ladies Welcome. There was a flag outside at half-mast (mourning Hank Williams, I supposed) and about a dozen cars nuzzled against the front wall. The town was down the highway to the left. About a hundred yards away, back in the pine trees, I could see the white spire of a church.
I watched the traffic. A few cars. A big truck. And then I saw a woman in a yellow T-shirt and dungaree shorts pedaling a blue bicycle. Her legs were lean and cabled with muscle and I thought vaguely about drawing them. She had a baseball cap pulled tight on her head and she was wearing sunglasses.
And I realized it was her.
The woman from the bus.
Here.
In Pensacola.
I was frozen for a few seconds and then started toward the highway. A garbage truck roared past me.
“Hey!” I yelled. “Hey, miss …”
But almost as quickly as I’d seen her, she was gone. Around the bend of the highway, past the church and out of sight.
And then Max and Sal were there, Max in a tight-fitting T-shirt and starched jeans, Sal in a flowered rayon shirt, busy with palm trees and surf and beaches. I glanced at the highway again, tense and anxious but somehow feeling better. I wanted to chase after the woman in the yellow T-shirt, call a taxi, get on a bus. Too late. But at least now I knew she wasn’t in far-off Palatka. She was here. In Pensacola. Where I could find her.
“You must of gone for a pump, Max,” Sal said. He hit Max on the shoulder with the heel of his hand. “Your muscles got a hard-on.”
“Up yours, Sal.”
“Max works out,” Sal said to me, as we started across the highway, waiting for a break in traffic. I wanted to move fast, to get on a bus, to catch a glimpse of the woman, my woman. They moved too casually. “They got a gym on the base so small you can’t get three pairs of sneakers in it at the same time. Somehow Max gets in there and lifts dumbbells. When he wears a T-shirt, like tonight, he always goes for an extra pump.”
“Pump this,” Max said.
“Hey, Max, I know a girl that wants to suck your lats.”
Max growled as we hurried behind a slow truck to the far side of the highway, then said, “Hey, I’m so horny, I’d pay a dog to lick my hand.”
Sal and Max told me to stay out of Billy’s. It was the Old Salt’s bar, the headquarters for Red Cannon and his friends. We walked past the joint to a bus stop just short of the Baptist church. A painted billboard said: WHAT IS MISSING FROM JES S? U R. A smaller sign under the billboard advertised square dances every Friday night. I couldn’t remember what day it was. Thrown off by the holiday. I didn’t ask, afraid of their laughter. Devlin: So hip he doesn’t know what day it is. I looked at another sign, above a small white cross: GOD BLESS YOU HANK.
Sal pointed at the sign.
“You know what’s missing in Jesus, Max? You are.”
Max turned to me and shook his head. “It’s the water they got up in The Bronx.”
Sal said, “Now these are the real goyim.” He saw the notice for the square dance. “I gotta take you there some Friday night …”
“Not me,” Max said. “I hear they commit ritual murder in there.”
“Absolutely true,” Sal said. “But only on Jews and spades. They take you in back, tie you up, and check to see if you’re, one, circumcised or, two, can balance a basketball on your dick. You can do either, that’s enough, a sign from God. Then they beat you to death with Bibles wrapped in argyle socks. Whatever’s left, they sell as bait out in the Gulf.… So we’d have to disguise you as an Irishman. Teach you the words to ‘Danny Boy.’ Get you a plastic foreskin …”
The bus arrived and we got on. Max and Sal sat together and I took the seat behind them. All the way into town I looked for the woman in the yellow T-shirt and baseball cap, pedaling a blue bicycle. I didn’t see her. But I was certain I would find her.