Something she said really got to me, I guess. I could hardly sleep. I watched the clock record the passing of minutes. I dozed awhile, then woke to stare at the clock again.
I really wanted to be Patsy’s friend, not just over the phone, but sitting in class, standing in line in the cafeteria, riding the bus. I wanted Patsy to want me, Vinnie Gold, to give her a valentine. But I remember a conversation my parents had once when they were still getting along, still loved each other the way they were supposed to.
I was maybe ten, and they were just talking when my mom said, “Remember Paul?” and they both laughed. It was a little bit mean-sounding.
My impression was, Paul was a real clown. Which was what I called a jerk back then. So I asked, “Who’s Paul?”
And Mom said, “I dated him in high school.”
“You guys didn’t go to high school together, did you?” I was pretty sure. Mom was from Long Island and Dad was from Milwaukee.
“No, no,” Dad said. “But your mom told me about all her guys. I told her about all my girls.”
I was ten, so I shrugged, but it made an impression on me. And what I knew now, no matter what happened between me and Patsy from here on out, once she knew it was me making these calls, I would, someday far in the future, be the guy she remembered as someone who loved her, yeah—but what a clown.
I really didn’t want to be that guy.
And now it was too late to be any other.
The next morning I did just what Patsy asked, true to my word. I told Mr. B that she needed Italian names for an assignment. But he didn’t know that many Italian names.
“Let’s see. I had an uncle named Salvatore. My brother was named after our father, Roberto.”
Left to his own devices, he’d made breakfast—bread with a circle cut out of it and fried with an egg dropped into the empty circle.
“You can cook?”
“Sure, I cook,” he said. “I’ve been a bachelor a long time. But in my mother’s house, the wife cooked. And your mom was so excited about the kitchen, I thought she must love cooking. So I stopped when I got married.”
“Till this morning,” I said.
“I like eating,” Mr. B said. “Breakfast especially. Donuts are okay, but I need something to keep the chill off when I’m standing on that field. I need hot food.”
“Looks great.”
“There’s plenty here for all of us,” he said.
“So. Names?” I handed him two plates.
“There’s, uh, Mario and Giuseppe and Giovanni. You think that’s enough?”
“Sure. How many could she need?”
“What are you two talking about?” Mom asked as she whisked into the kitchen for a glass of juice.
Mr. B was still in pajamas. I was in my sweats, but I’d taken to sleeping in the ones I’d wear the next morning, so in a way, I was in pajamas too. Mom was already dressed for work, a little tornado of energy.
“The neighbor girl needs some Italian names for some project or other,” Mr. B answered, shrugging.
Packing her little travel bag with heels, appointment book, her purse, and the red thermos, Mom said, “Sounds like the project is to get closer to you, Vinnie.”
Actually, I’d meant to tell them I had a date with Patsy on Wednesday, but it felt weird now. Really weird. “I hardly know her,” I said, dipping into the cereal box I’d been munching from.
“That’s what I mean.” Mom noticed what I was doing. “Don’t eat standing up. And don’t eat straight out of the box.”
Mr. B set the plates on the table, where sliced tomatoes lay on a small cutting board. “Hungry?” he asked her.
“Not yet. I’ll get something at work.”
I sat down across from Mr. B, who forked a tomato slice onto the top of my egg and toast. He said, “I don’t see you making any friends, Vinnie. Are you getting along okay?”
“Fine,” I said, attacking my meal with knife and fork.
“Who’ve you been hanging around with?”
“Nobody in particular,” I said around the first delectable bite.
“Out of particular, then,” Mr. B said with a note of real concern.
Mom said, “Dom—”
“I’ve gotten to know a few kids,” I said quickly. “Just nobody I want to hang around with.”
“How about girls?”
“Dom!”
I stood up, downing the rest of the egg and half the fried bread in two quickly swallowed bites. “I’ll get around to girls,” I said as I dragged on my backpack. “I’m heading out for my run.”
“I’ll drive you to school,” Mr. B said, rising from the table.
“No. No. I’m still working up to being seen on the track.”
But I’d eaten too fast and my energy drained away as I jogged to the end of the block. I walked toward the bus stop. I saw Patsy there, and then I saw Biff coast up to the corner from the other side of the block.
The girls walked over to the car and talked to him for a minute. Even Patsy. Clearly, she had accepted an apology for Biff’s behavior. Did that mean she’d accept mine?
After a minute, she got into the car with him and he drove off. I could hardly believe my eyes. Okay, they were headed in the direction of the school. But he was history. Wasn’t he history? Does attempted rape get a second chance? Why didn’t she get him to find her some Italian names if she thought he was so terrific?
I couldn’t make myself go stand and wait for the bus and have to listen while Brown Bunny commented on this turn of events. I headed back the other way. Steamed, I kept on walking in the wrong direction.
When I turned around, I was already late to school. I ran one block, then walked one. My throat didn’t burn, but I couldn’t expect to win a race if I couldn’t run much farther than a block. It occurred to me that I might have chosen the wrong sport.
If I didn’t regret my commitment to become a track star enough, Mr. B had singled me out for some special attention, even though I missed half the class. He nodded to me approvingly several times, the way he does with his football team. I felt like a complete fake.
Sometimes you can’t win for losing.
Biff was in the locker room afterward. He was in some mood, talking about putting the wow on some girl. I’d already sneered at the dance posters on the way to class, and what he had to say held no interest for me.
But he had a willing audience in the guys standing around the locker room. They received his next line with an encouraging nod of their heads, and several slaps to the arms.
“So I put a hand on her shoulder in this fatherly way, ya know how I mean, and I brought her up real close, and I said, ‘I really like you, Patsy, better than any girl I ever knew.’ She was eating it up, I swear, and I let my hand drift.”
Anticipatory moans urged him on.
“I was thinking I’d have to sit like that for a while to get her used to it”—ol’ Biff wasn’t one to be rushed through a story he was enjoying so much—“but when I moved in to kiss her, she about swooned—”
I can’t stand guys who do this. I really can’t. But mostly I couldn’t stand listening to Biff do this. I wanted to be the one to say those things to Patsy, do those things with Patsy. Not under the exact same circumstances, of course, but I wanted to be the one. So sue me.
“I went ahead and slid my hand right onto her boob. It did her in, man! I mean, she was so …”
I slammed my locker door, interrupting the party for a split second. Then their heads swiveled back to ol’ Biff. “She’s such a babe, you know, just ripe for it—”
Girls haven’t been that uneducated since the Middle Ages. If then. “You’re a real jerk, you know that?” I said.
“Huh?”
That was Biff, but even I could hardly believe what I said. There was nothing to do but follow up. “Some guys talk like that before they’ve done it. And then either they grow up or they keep on talking about the girls who are nice to them because they have a problem. So which one are you?”
Right then, I was aware that all eyes were on me. It was as if my peripheral vision had widened to take in all the amazed faces. And I don’t think it was my imagination that some of those faces wore a sheepish expression. Not one of Biff’s avid listeners believed a word he said. Which was not to say they weren’t happy to listen and repeat every word to anyone who’d missed show time. The other thing that hit me, I had instinctively chosen the one accusation guaranteed to get under Biff’s skin.
But all that took a heartbeat. And that was all I had.
I don’t think he knocked me out, but I don’t remember hitting the floor. I just remember opening my eyes and going on talking. “No guy worth shit talks—”
He was right on me and knocked the breath out of me, but I kept on talking whenever I could put words together.
“… about a girl … like that … Probably she … wouldn’t …”
I was crying, but I didn’t realize it at the time. I hardly even noticed Biff pounding on me. All I saw was his stupid face in front of me like a red moon and this sound, something roaring all around us. Then somebody grabbed him off me.