Thrill Kids (5 page)

M
ANNY WAS THE FIRST
to arrive, at three minutes after eight. He sat forward uncomfortably on the edge of the straight-backed chair in the Raleigh living room, rubbing his hands together. He wore his best suit, a thinly pinstriped cord, pressed and clean. Actually it had belonged to Irving, but Irv had worn it only once or twice before he enlisted, and after he was killed it had been cut down for Manny. Whenever he put it on, his mother invariably said the same thing: “I remember the day your brother and I went to buy that suit. Afterward we ate chow mien in Longchamps, and saw ‘The Big Sleep.’ Humphrey Bogart was in it.”

Manny straightened his carrot-colored clip-on bow tie and cleared his throat. He sat dumbly while Bardo settled himself back on the couch opposite him.

“What’s the matter?” Bardo asked him. “Are you nervous?”

“Uh-uh. I mean, no.” “Take it easy, then.” “I guess I’m early.”

“No, you’re not, mister. You’re on time. I like punctuality. It shows self-discipline.” “You said eight,” Manny said.

Bardo took his silver nail clipper and file from his pocket and worked on his fingers as he talked. “I understand you like snakes, Pollack.” “I’ve got one.” “That’s what I understand.” “I call him Sincere.” “May I ask why?”

Manny shrugged, grinning a little, blushing in a pleasant way. “I don’t know. I guess because that’s the way he looked to me. He was in this box poking around in the grass, as though he had to hide himself or something, because people in the store there said, ‘Oh, look — eeee!. A snake!’ You know how people are.”

“Infinitely immature,” Bardo said. “The snake is one of God’s most graceful creatures.”

“People think they do harm,” Manny said, “but they don’t. Kinds like Sincere — the kings, and kinds like bulls and milks — they
help.
I mean, they eat rats and mice and things.”

Bardo said emphatically, “Exactly! They rid the world of many filthy rodents. They move swiftly and surely upon their prey, and they kill with dignity.”

Manny leaned back in the chair and crossed his legs. “You know,” he said, “most snakes really walk on their ribs. They grip the ground with the sharp edges of the scales on the lower sides of their body. It’s the muscles inside that pull them along the ground. Did you know that?” There was a short silence then; Bardo was paring his nails with the clipper, not looking at Manny.

Manny said, “I get too wound up, I guess, when it comes to snakes.”

“Not at all! You ought to be a herpetologist, Pollack. You seem infinitely interested in herpetology.”

“Thanks.” Manny smiled. He paused before he spoke again. “That’s someone who knows all about snakes, huh?”

“An
authority
on them.”

“I wasn’t sure. I thought that was probably it.”

“You really ought to be a herpetologist, mister.”

“I never thought of that. I mean, it just never occurred to me I could do something like that. Around snakes and all.” Manny crossed his arms on his chest, his face alert with the expression of one who has made a significant discovery. “Gee, Bardo,” he said. “Maybe I will!”

“Of course you will, mister!”

“I just — never —
thought
of it,” Manny said, as though he were talking to himself now. “It never occurred to me.”

Bardo continued to discuss the snake, dwelling again on its value as a killer of filthy rodents, but Manny sat only half listening, off on a flight of fantasy. He imagined himself telling his mother and father, Dr. Mannerheim too: “Well, I’ve made up my mind I’m going to be a herpetologist.” He was still thinking of this when Ivy Raleigh came into the living room.

“Pop to, mister!” Bardo said.

Surprised by Raleigh’s sudden terse tone, Manny looked across at him, and saw Bardo on his feet.

“Pop to!” Bardo barked again. “A lady is present!”

Manny stood up slowly, uncertainly. Ivy Raleigh was smiling, moving forward to take his hand. “Hello, there,” she said. “You mustn’t let Bar order you around. What’s your name, dear?”

“I don’t mind, ma’am,” Manny answered. He took her hand and pumped it awkwardly. “I’m Emanuel Pollack.” He wondered why he felt like adding, “I’m going to be a herpetologist.”

“What would you like to drink, Emanuel. Coke? Ginger ale?”

“I don’t know,” Manny said. “Whatever’s easiest.” “They’re both easy. What’ll it be, hmmm?” Manny said, “Gee, I don’t care. I — ” “Coke rots your teeth, mister,” Bardo announced. “Have ginger ale.”

Ivy chuckled, winking at Manny. “That’s just
his
theory, Emanuel. You have what you feel like having.”

Pollack hesitated. Then he said, “I guess I
will
have ginger ale, if you have plenty.”

• • •

Claude McCoy was eager to begin this evening with Ivy, but he knew he would have to wait in the elevator of 1011 Fifth until old Henry was good and ready to take him up. He did not really mind the wait. McCoy was not an impatient man. Other men hurried, and they often stumbled and fell and frequently were unable to right themselves. Other men’s grasps exceeded their reach. McCoy’s did not.

“Do it slow and do it sure” was his motto. The words were typewritten on a piece of release paper that hung above his desk in the U. P. offices of the News Building.

“Hell of a motto for a newspaperman!” a colleague had cracked once. “Speed! That’s the motto for a guy in this business.”

“You’re still green,” McCoy had told him. “Someday you’ll stop fighting the wire. Someday
you’ll
be the wire’s boss, and some skin’ll get a chance to grow over those raw nerves.”

McCoy did not believe in being neurotic. He believed a man ought to pull himself up by his own bootstraps when he was down, and he didn’t believe there was any man who couldn’t if he had the guts. Associates of his who paid half of their salary every week for visits to a psychiatrist did not command Claude McCoy’s respect. He was unable to fathom why they were not able to help themselves. One of the reasons he was first attracted to Ivy Raleigh was the fact that she was so refreshingly uncomplicated for a Manhattan career woman. As he learned to know her better, and as he became aware of the way in which she had faced her personal difficulties and disappointments, his attraction for her deepened into admiration, and eventually adoration. If he had had to choose one word to describe Ivy, he would not have chosen beautiful, industrious, intelligent, charming, or loving, though she was all of these. He would have chosen wholesome.

McCoy was a man in his forties who looked like a man in his forties. His somewhat round face was neither young nor old, but pleasingly mature, and remarkably lacking in signs of dissipation or anxiety. His eyes were lustrous, with laugh lines at their corners, and his head was balding. He was average in height, and his form leaned to the heavy side, though he was not fat. McCoy believed in exercising the body as regularly as the mind, and he had just come from a swim at the University Club. As he waited for Henry in the small elevator, a boy entered and stood beside him. McCoy glanced at him with amusement, noting the loud yellow shirt, the peg in his pants, the long yellow hair that came to a tail at the back of his head. McCoy thought of Bardo Raleigh, and how different he was from most youngsters. Sometimes his difference vaguely irritated McCoy, for while Bar and he always met each other on firm, man-to-man ground, he was unable to unbend when he was with the boy, unable to grow close to him or fond of him. He liked Bar well enough, but he often wished he were the kind of lad a fellow could take to the World Series.

When Henry ambled into the elevator, both McCoy and the boy spoke at the same time, both saying: “Five.”

Henry said, “Both going to the Raleighs’, huh?” in a flat, matter-of-fact voice. In all the years McCoy had been going up and down in that elevator at 1011, Henry had never once taken the floor for granted.

The boy beside McCoy said, “I’m going there, man. Can’t say for him.”

He didn’t look at Claude until Claude said, “I’m going there too.”

He glanced up at Claude then, a friendly and rather skittish smile slanting his lips. “You going to Bardo’s party, man?” he asked.

“I’m going to see
Mrs.
Raleigh,” McCoy answered.

“Yeah? I don’t know her.”

“You’ll meet her.” Claude grinned. He said, “My name’s McCoy — Claude McCoy.”

“I go by the name Flip myself,” the boy said.

“Did you go to school with Bar?”

“Who, me?” Flip’s face beamed with pleasure. “Naw! I mean, like I couldn’t make that scene. I’m strictly local talent.”

McCoy laughed then, and so did Flip. Flip said, “Bardo, there, he’s a real gray cat, you know? Like, gray matter and all. Crazy!” “I dig it.” McCoy chuckled.

“Yeah?” Flip looked at him in surprise. “You speak a little Chinese yourself, huh?”

“I’m really pretty square, man,” McCoy admitted.

• • •

Johnny was late, but he walked slowly. He had kissed a girl.

He passed by the National City Bank on the corner of Ninety-first Street and Madison Avenue, and he touched the red brick with his fingers. For the first time now he felt the night around him, enveloping him, hiding him like a curtain. It was hot. It was a night when the lucky people sat in rooms with closed windows, air conditioners on; and a night when the unlucky people complained, perspired, drank beer or tea or lemonade, and talked of winter. It was a quiet night. The
Conquest of Everest
was playing at the Trans-lux down at Eighty-fifth. Tomorrow, rain was forecast. But tonight bare-legged women wore their sheerest summer dresses, men mopped their brows and said, “Jesus, the heat!” and yellow dogs slept panting in shop doorways.

It was the night of the second day of August in the year 1953, and Johnny knew how the breast of a young girl felt.

Inside a store along the avenue, a radio played. It was a summer when the same song was heard over and over and everywhere:

A man and woman passed Johnny, and he heard the man say to her, “Well, why didn’t you wear your blue dress? I
told
you it was a scorcher tonight.”

Johnny thought, they’re married. They dress and undress in front of each other, and they don’t even think anything about it.

A big black tomcat sat staring sadly out of the window of a delicatessen. Johnny thought of her black hair. Then he thought of the whole thing over again. Why had she made that noise when he touched her there? What did a noise like that mean?”

One day at the store something had happened that Johnny remembered now. A boy was waiting up by the soda fountain for a girl he was going to walk home, but she wasn’t in any hurry. She was standing by a booth talking to these other girls. Finally the boy shouted, “Hey, beet head. Are you
coming,
or are you just breathing hard?” She was so mad at him she wouldn’t walk with him. Johnny remembered he had remarked to Flip, “Girls are loony, huh? Why should she get so p.o.’d just ‘cause a guy calls her ‘beet head’?”

Flip had said, “That wasn’t it, man.” His shoulders had shaken with laughter. “That’s a good one, huh, Wyle?”

Johnny decided he’d better stop thinking about it. He had to. He crossed Madison and went down Ninety-fourth Street toward Fifth. Bardo Raleigh left him cold. He wished Flip had never given Raleigh his phone number, and he had not been asked to his party. Flip and Manny and he could have had more fun just hanging around the store, the way they’d done other nights. Raleigh thought he was the Prince of Wales or something. Who
fenced,
anyway?

Before he turned in at 1011, he saw a boy and girl locked in an embrace on a bench across the street. Ah — love-bitten, smitten, smitten, sittin’ in a damn old daze, he thought to himself. He walked through the door of the apartment house laughing and snapping his fingers. But still he couldn’t stop thinking: Why did she make a noise like that when I touched her there? What does a noise like that mean?

T
HEY HAD SPENT
two and a half hours in the apartment at 1011 Fifth, and now they stood outside the building. They were restless and unsure about what to do next. They had devoured six bags of potato chips and a dozen bottles of soft drinks, and Bardo had done most of the talking. Manny had listened eagerly to him; Johnny had thought about something else, something he could not stop thinking of; and Flip had sulked. It had really hurt him more than it had made him mad when Bardo had greeted him by saying, “Your shirt is tawdry, mister. Your shirt is infinitely gawdy and tawdry and without any taste whatsoever, mister.” That fellow — what was his name? — McCoy. He had taken up for Flip.

“It’s O.K.,” he had said. “I think it’s O.K.!” She had too, Mrs. Raleigh. She had said, “Bar, you
are
a crab tonight. Flip has a nice shirt on.”

Bardo would not relent. “I found it offensive,” he had answered.

They had decided to go out in a random, haphazard way, an hour or so after Mrs. Raleigh left the apartment with McCoy. Bernie’s was still open, but no one suggested going there. No one suggested going anywhere. Standing idly at the curb in front of the building, they watched the star-peppered night sky and smelled the muggy August air. Flip shinned up the pole holding up the canopy, let his feet dangle a moment, and dropped back to the asphalt. Johnny traced the crack in the sidewalk with the toe of his shoe and whistled an aimless tune through his teeth. Manny sank his hands into the pockets of his trousers and stared vacantly at the faces of the passengers riding the Fifth Avenue bus up to Washington Heights.

When Bardo began walking, the three straggled along with him, like dogs roving in the night, looking for nothing special, wandering around. Manny caught up with Bardo and walked beside him. Flip and Johnny strolled listlessly behind.

“He’s a crazy cat, huh, Wyle?” Flip said. “Like, what “he said about my shirt.”

“Uh-huh,” Johnny answered. The funny thing about a girl’s body was that it was full of soft, strange, secret places.

“I never had anyone say things like that to me. You know?”

“He’s a jerk.”

“It’s crazy in a way. I mean, I don’t mind him. Even when he sounds off like he did, all about gawdy and tawdy and all that. He’s got class, you know? Like he calls his old lady by her first name. Me, I’d get my head bashed in.”

“She’s not so old,” Johnny said. “She’s got a swell figure.”

“He’s educated. You go to old Yale-jail, you meet up with a million guys like that, I bet.”

“I’m not going to college,” Johnny said. “I might just get a job and get married or something dumb like that.” Christ! To take your clothes off in front of a girl and not think anything about it. Day in and day out. It was queer to imagine it.

“Who needs college, anyway?” Flip snorted. “I seen a lot of them Joe Colleges come into the place and think they’re hot. Make with the big-deal line. ‘Lookit the beer mugs.’ “ Flip raised his voice and imitated the high, squealing voices of the girls who came with them. “And ‘Lookit the little bandstand. What a cute place.’ Jeez, I mean, why don’t they say something in college if it’s such a big-deal language?”

Johnny said, “I was up on the roof with this screwy girl tonight and — “

“Oh, Christ in a big square bucket!” Flip interrupted him abruptly. “I forgot to get my goddamn hair cut.” He drew a finger across his throat. He said, “Curtains!”

Then they were all standing together on the corner of Ninety-sixth Street and Fifth Avenue, waiting for the light to change.

When it did, they walked across the street, and Bardo pointed toward a small park surrounded by bushes and a black iron gate that stood open. “As a youngster,” he announced, “I played in this area.”

Manny said, “Gee, so did I, Bardo. Me and my brother used to seesaw here. That’s funny, isn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t say so,” Bardo answered.

“I mean, it’s a coincidence, Bardo.”

“Yes, it is, mister,” Bardo agreed.

“I bet Johnny did, too,” Manny said enthusiastically. Over his shoulder he asked Johnny, “Did you, Wyle?”

“Some,” Johnny said. No bells had rung when he kissed her; no dizziness, nothing. Just surprise. And he liked it. And then
that
happened. On television, when those good-looking guys got in a clinch with those long-haired, chesty dolls that wore the slits up their skirts in smoky night clubs, did it happen to them too? Was there some way a guy could stop it?

They were entering the small park now.

Flip said, “I’m going to have a swing,” and he sauntered over to the swings set in a row between two poles. The chains creaked as he sat down. He sang,
“Oh,
he flies through the air with the
craziest
ease, the daring young cat
on
the flying trapeze.”

Johnny reached down and picked up a handful of sand from the sandpile, sifting it through his hands. Bardo stood on one side of him and Manny sat down on a bench. Flip was singing at the top of his lungs, making the swing go higher and higher.

“You’re rather reticent this evening, Wylie,” Bardo commented. “Problems?”

“No,” Johnny said. “I don’t know.”

“We ought to pep you up, mister. You’re in the dumps.”

Johnny shrugged. “It’s hot, I guess.”

“We all need pepping up,” Bardo said. “Except Herr Heine.”

“Better not call him that to his face.” “Herr Heine? Why not?”

“He doesn’t like stuff like that. German stuff. He gets sore.”

“Now, I don’t know why he should,” Bardo said.

“At school once a guy called him Hitler, and Flip darn near killed him. I never saw him so mad.”.

“He should have been proud,” Bardo said. “Hitler was a great, great man.”

“The Jews didn’t think so.”

“You believe that propaganda about Hitler picking on the Jews, mister? You believe that archaic theory? Hitler was above that. Hitler had nothing
whatsoever
to do with who was responsible for that little game. Herr Hermann Göring, fortune-hunting husband of an epileptic! Married for money; then
ran around.
Herr Hermann Goring, a whoremonger who gave Roehm a blood bath because Roehm was unfortunate enough to be a homosexual. Göring, mister. Göring is your man. Not Adolf Hitler.”

Johnny said, “I don’t know about those things.”

“Hitler was a soldier and a gentleman!”

“O.K.” Johnny said. “O.K. Cripes, don’t get so excited!”

“You ought to get your facts straight about Der Führer before you make erroneous innuendoes, Wylie. A man who’s going to be a lawyer ought to be very careful to get his facts straight.”

“I’m going to be a soda jerk,” Johnny said, “so I don’t have to.”

Flip leaped from the swing then, leaving the wooden seat to snap in the air and bang back against the iron pole, twisting the chain so that it spun and rattled. He landed in the sand at Manny’s feet. “Look, Ma, I’m dancing!” he chortled. Manny grinned down at him. Flip stood up and spanked the dirt off his trousers, then ruffled Manny’s hair playfully. “You old snake charmer, you!”

Manny said, “Did you ever hear of such a thing as a herpetologist, Flip?”

“I hear you talking but you can’t come in,” Flip answered airily, and he turned and called to the others, “Let’s mosey along. The night is young and
we’re
so
beau-
ti-ful!”

Again the four started walking in the capricious attitude that dominated the evening. Flip’s spirits were improved; he was amused now, and Manny had grown contentedly quiet. Bardo snapped his fingers in a persistent marching rhythm, and shuffled his feet until he was in step with Wylie. Johnny pulled a twig from a bush he passed, stuck it between his teeth, and alternately bit and sucked on it. They went out of the park and up on the path between the stone wall along Fifth Avenue and the road separating them from the reservoir. Cabs sped past them, and except for the headlights of the fleeting taxis and the few widely spaced street lights, the way was not brightly lit. At intervals, ahead of them, there were benches.

“The police exercise their horses over there.” Manny pointed toward the bridle path that circled the reservoir. “I was going to be one once.”

Flip jumped up on an empty bench. “A horse?” he said. He spread his hands above his head and did a mock jackknife dive to the ground.

Manny said seriously, “No, a policeman.”

“They ought to get less exercise for their horses and more for themselves,” Bardo said. “This area is infested with loiterers.”

Flip picked up a stick and banged the tree trunks as they moved along.

Johnny saw the pair first. They were almost hidden from view, on a bench pushed off to the side of the lane, facing the four. They were a boy and girl, lying down on the bench. His white shirt showed in the glimmer of light, and a gold charm bracelet on her bare arm, which was wrapped around his shirt, sparkled in speckled darts of illumination.

Johnny whispered, “Hey, lookit! Lovers.”

“Man, oh, man!” Flip giggled. “They’re really going to town.”

“Golly!” Manny said. “Sweethearts.”

They all stopped and watched, and Bardo snapped, “Dis-gusting! That guy must think he’s some kind of a wise guy. Bringing a girl here!”

“Anything could happen,” Manny said.

“Yeah, like it
is
happening!”

“Let’s sneak up on them,” Johnny said. “Let’s watch them.”

“Let’s scare hell out of them!” Flip said. “Let’s sneak up and give ‘em the old spook scene!” “No, let’s
watch,”
Johnny said.

Bardo’s curt tone cut into the conversation. “We’ll approach them directly, like
men!”
he announced. “Come on!”

He led them, marching ahead of them, while Flip and Johnny followed like obedient sheep, and Manny shuffled behind without much confidence. When Bardo reached the bench he commanded the startled boy, “Pop to, mister! On the double!”

“Huh?” The boy sat up, bewildered. His hand fumbled to button his shirt, which was half open at his chest. His black curly hair was tossed and wild-looking. His dark eyes blinked up at Bardo confusedly.

“Never mind that.” Bardo slapped the boy’s hand away from his shirt. “On your feet, green-belly!”

The boy stood up. He was taller than Bardo, but not really tall. He wore blue jeans with his white shirt, and moccasins on his feet. His face was lean and bony, like his body, and he had a Latin look and a. slight accent. He mumbled, “I don’t have no money. I’ll give you what I got. Forty cents.” He started to reach into his pocket, fumbling nervously.

Johnny stared at the girl. She was fixing her blouse. Her face was white and frightened, and she looked very small, but built well and rounded. Her dark hair was piled on top of her head and held in place by a cheap rhinetsone clip shaped like a wishbone. She wore a flimsy peasant blouse through which her pink bra and slip could be seen, a multicolored cotton skirt, and scuffed loafers on her bare feet.

She pleaded, “Don’t hurt us. We didn’t do anything.”

Johnny said, “We aren’t going to hurt you.”

The boy was trembling as he searched his pockets. Bardo barked, “We don’t want your filthy money, mister.”

“Thinks we’re pirates.” Flip laughed.” ‘At’s good. The Central Park Pirates.”

Manny snickered too, unenthusiastically.

“Then what do you want? What do you want?” The boy’s voice became more desperate.

“What’s your name, mister?”

“Carlos. Carlos Rodriguez.” He was shaking. The girl sat behind him, her hands folded tightly in her lap, her wide, wet lips quivering.

“Carlos, let me ask you a question. Why did you bring this young lady here? Will you answer that?”

“Yeah, man,” Flip put in. “Like, what do you think this is, a hotel or something? This ain’t a hotel. This here’s a park.”

“We walked here,” the boy answered.

“I don’t think you understand, Carlos. Why did you bring her here? For what purpose?”

Johnny said to the girl, “You don’t have to be scared of us.”

“Naw,” Manny said.

The boy trembled. “I — I brought her here to — smooch.”

“To smooch,” Bardo said disgustedly. “To
smooch.”

“Man, like I think you was intent on more than smooching with this dame, Carlos.”

“My colleague is right,” Bardo said.

“What’s the matter?” the boy said. “What’s the matter?”

The girl whined, “Don’t hurt us. We didn’t do anything.”

“The matter, mister,” Bardo said, “is that you intended to molest this girl, mister. You brought this girl here to molest her.”

“Cripes, Bardo!” Johnny turned his back on the girl and picked at a piece of bark on a scrawny young tree beside the bench. Manny listened to Bardo without moving or looking at the girl any more.

“It’s against the law, mister,” Bardo said. “You can go to prison for that.”

“Man, like, he ought to have some discipline,” Flip said.

“You are one hundred per cent correct, Herr Heine.”

Johnny shot a quick look at Flip to see his reaction, but he saw only a smile and bright, self-assured eyes. Maybe he had not heard.

“Leave him alone!” the girl suddenly shouted, jumping to her feet. She punched Flip’s leg with her fist. “Leave Carlos alone! Bully!”

“No,” the boy told her, trying to push her back with his nervous hands. “No, Linda. No.”

Bardo put his arms behind his back, clasping his hands there, standing very erect. “Linda,” he said coldly, “I want to know something.”

“Bully! Bully!” she shouted at him.

Flip grabbed her by the arm and held her tightly, hurting her. “Watch your crazy tongue!” he said. “You want it cut out of you?” He reached into his pocket.

“I want to know something,” Bardo persisted. “I want you to tell me something, Linda.”

“You’re hurting me,” she said to Flip. He had something in his hand that was ebony-colored and shining in the dim light.

“I want to know if you came here with Carlos this evening to smooch.”

“Sure. Sure. We came together. There a law? Oww, Jesus,” she whined. “My arm!”