Bridge of Sighs (37 page)

When I see Buddy Nurt again, I’ll offer him money for my father’s jacket. I don’t want him wearing it.

O
NE
S
ATURDAY AFTERNOON
a month or so later I was standing in the popcorn line at Newberry’s when I felt something pillowy soft on my elbow and heard a familiar voice say, “So, Lou, do you miss me?” The pillow, of course, was Karen Cirillo’s breast. She was accompanied by the two girls who’d shoplifted at Ikey’s—pale, skinny apparitions compared with Karen, who was voluptuous as ever. I was amazed she’d acknowledged me in front of them, and in Newberry’s of all places.

I stammered that, yes, I did miss her, which was true, though it was also true I didn’t miss her cadging me for free cigarettes. Now that Buddy wasn’t stealing from us anymore, Ikey’s was doing better. The renovation was well under way, and next week we’d close for a couple days so the old exterior wall could be knocked down and the meat cases from Manucci’s installed. My uncle was supervising, to make sure it was all done right, claiming things had always been messed up at Manucci’s. Then, my mother said, we would reopen with a flourish.

So far, to my surprise, Uncle Dec had been dependable, showing up on time—no great challenge, now that he was living upstairs—and prepared to help out. I hadn’t expected him to be a good worker, but he was. He still referred to my father as Biggy and me as Bub, though otherwise he’d toned down the relentless kidding. For his own part, my father seemed to have drawn a mental line down the middle of the market, granting each of them a separate realm of responsibility. While he was still distrustful, I could tell that he, too, was impressed by how seriously his brother was taking things, and he appreciated it when he consulted my mother on important matters, even if that courtesy was seldom extended to himself. They seemed to have agreed that she was the brains of the operation, as well as a natural go-between.

My uncle continued to regard me warily. I’d had two more spells since the first one he witnessed, and it was as if he’d concluded I was having them on purpose, to gain attention. At the very least I was shirking my duty to figure out what was causing them. I’d have gotten about as much sympathy if I’d been a bed wetter. “Quit drinking out of the crick, Bub,” was Uncle Dec’s advice each time he learned I’d had another episode. “He’s fine,” my father would assure him. “Don’t you worry none about our Louie.” To which my mother would add that the Cayoga was poisoning everyone in town, not just me, and then the subject would turn to cancer and who else had been diagnosed recently. The Albany newspaper was running cancer stories every week now, articles our local paper continued to dismiss as rabble-rousing.

Karen took the Jules Verne book I’d been reading in the popcorn line and quickly scanned its pages, pausing briefly at the illustration of the giant squid, then handed it back to me, her curiosity, as always, completely satisfied. “You going to the show?”

I said yes and asked if she was, too.

“Probably,” she said. “You want to sit with me, Lou? I’m all alone.” I glanced at her girlfriends, puzzled. Weren’t they going to the show? Neither seemed to object to Karen’s rather loose definition of solitude, though it struck me as vaguely insulting. And where was Jerzy? Had his house arrest been extended to weekends now? Or had the two of them broken up? When I offered to buy Karen’s popcorn, she said, “Sure, Lou,” like she wondered why it had taken me so long to offer. “Them, too?” she said, indicating her girlfriends. When I opened my wallet to take out another dollar, I felt the pillowy softness at my elbow again and saw that she’d leaned forward to see how many other dollars might be in there. “Lou’s rich,” she told her friends. “He works like a hundred hours a week.”

Popcorn in hand, we headed next door to the theater, joining the long line there. “You gonna pay for me, Lou? Like on a date, or some shit like that?”

I did a quick calculation and was relieved to conclude that I had just enough, though I wouldn’t be able to get the soda I’d counted on. A small price to pay. That I might actually be “on a date, or some shit like that” with Karen Cirillo took my breath away.

“Them, too?” she said, again indicating her girlfriends.

I said no, I had just enough for us, feigning greater regret than I felt, because being on a date with all three of them was a far lesser thing than being with Karen alone. Only when I showed them did they reluctantly dig into their purses.

Preferring not to watch them fish for quarters, I turned away, just in time to see Perry Kozlowski, Jerzy Quinn’s best friend, come slouching up the street toward us. Only now, seeing Perry, did it occur to me that my being with Karen at the matinee would be reported to Jerzy. I turned back to my companions, but not before noticing an odd thing. Perry seemed to be talking to someone who wasn’t there, a fact he himself seemed to realize at that same instant. Stopping in his tracks, he retreated a few steps and appeared to study something in a shopwindow with urgent interest. I might have accepted all this—“at face value,” to use my mother’s favorite expression—had the window in question not belonged to a dress shop.

Inside the theater, I followed Karen and her girlfriends to the very back row, where she and Jerzy always sat. It was understood that this row was reserved for them and that once the lights went down and the movie began you weren’t permitted to turn around and watch them make out. As I said, Jerzy seldom showed Karen any sign of public affection, but the dark theater on Saturday afternoons was the exception. The speculation about just how far those two went in that back row was endless, but nobody dared more than glance. Nan Beverly and whatever boy she was with always sat down front and when their heads came together for their first kiss there were as many interested spectators as there were for any kisses enacted on-screen.

We were no sooner settled in the back row than I noticed we’d drawn the attention of kids throughout the theater, who were turning around in their seats to stare. Was that Lucy Lynch sitting with Karen Cirillo? The envy of the East End boys would have been deeply pleasurable had it been envy alone, without the fear I also recognized in their expressions. One East End boy actually got up and came over to where we sat, leaning down the row and whispering, loud enough that Karen and her friends could hear as well, “What’re you
doing,
man?”

“Nothing,” I said, adding weakly, “we’re just friends. She used to live upstairs over our store.” And I was glad now that I’d bought popcorn for all three girls, not just Karen. That was the point I’d emphasize if anyone misunderstood. Still, I thought it might be wise to ask where Jerzy was, which I did now, trying to sound casual, like I was hoping he’d show up, in which case I wouldn’t mind moving down the row to sit between Karen’s girlfriends.

“Who knows?” Karen said, like it wasn’t her job to keep track of her boyfriend. “Why? You afraid he’ll show up and find us here alone?”

The girlfriends were leaning forward to grin at me now, and again I marveled that they seemed not to mind that their physical presence counted for so little.

“Big guy like you,” Karen went on. “I bet you could take Jerz, no problem.”

Replying to this comment was tricky, of course. If I gave the slightest indication I agreed with her, by Monday morning everybody in school would know I’d claimed I could whip Jerzy Quinn, and then there’d
have
to be a fight.

“So, where are you living now?” I said, pretending the subject of who was tougher didn’t interest me.

“Some dump,” Karen confessed cheerfully. “You wouldn’t know the place.”

“I might,” I said, though I thought she was probably right.

“You know Berman Court?”

I sat up straight. “I used to
live
on Berman Court. Number seven.”

Now Karen turned to regard me, as if curious why I’d lie about a thing like this. There was no doubt she was looking at me either, not some point over my shoulder. “That’s where
we
live,” she said. “Seven Berman Court.”

I felt a chill, like you do when you encounter a coincidence that doesn’t really feel like one. I was almost afraid to ask the next obvious question. “Ours was the flat on the third floor.”

“You’re shitting me,” she said. “Which room was yours?”

I described my old room, with its small, high window overlooking the stream below.

“That’s the one they gave me, too. Kids always get the worst one.”

The idea that we’d both been naked in the same room and now were sitting together in a dark theater caused my heart to skip a beat. It was all incredibly intimate and scary, and I again felt the need to change the subject. “Who’s ‘they’?”

“Buddy and my old lady. Who else?”

“Buddy’s back?” I said, astonished.

“He went someplace?”

“I thought he went away. The police—”

“Buddy won’t be gone till he’s dead.”

Just then the lights in the theater began to dim, and when I faced the front I became aware, to my surprise, that the seat on my right was now occupied.

“You remember Lou?” Karen said, leaning forward so she could talk directly to her boyfriend. “From the store?”

Perry Kozlowski must have stopped at the snack bar for a soda, because he now sidled down the row in front of ours, stopping at the seat directly in front of me. Handing the soda to Jerzy, he knelt in the seat, facing me. “How come you’re sitting next to Karen?” he said. “She’s not your girlfriend.”

“Lou bought my ticket,” Karen said, sounding bored. “Also my popcorn. Which is more than I can say for some people.”

The coming attractions were on now, and Jerzy, the apparent object of Karen’s remark, seemed totally engrossed in them. He took a sip of soda, then passed it across me to Karen, who took a sip and passed it back, ignoring her girlfriends. I knew better than to take a sip myself, though the popcorn was suddenly dry as dust in my throat.

“So you think if you buy her ticket, she’s your girlfriend?” Perry said.

I told him no, that wasn’t what I thought.

“You think if you buy her a bag of popcorn, she’s gonna what? Let you feel her up or something?”

I assured him that this wasn’t what I thought either. I was hoping Karen would come to my defense, but she also seemed engrossed in the coming attractions, so for the longest time Perry just knelt there staring at me.

Karen finally said, “Lou’s not that kind of guy.”

“That true?” he said, smiling at me thinly. “What kind of guy are you?”

“I don’t know,” I told him, the safest reply I could think of under the circumstances.

An usher appeared in the aisle then, fixing Perry in the beam of his flashlight and motioning for him to turn around in his seat, which he did until the usher left, then he resumed his former posture. “Let’s you and me take a walk, Lucy.”

“See you later,” Karen said, without actually looking at me, when I got up. “Thanks for the popcorn.”

Jerzy stood to let me by, his attention still on the screen, then settled into the seat next to Karen. Perry motioned for me to follow him, which I did, figuring he intended to take me out into the alley, but instead we went out into the lobby. There he lifted up the velvet rope, with its
KEEP OUT
sign dangling, and led me up to the balcony, then down to the front row of the creaky, condemned structure. From our perch we could track the usher below by his flashlight. Directly below us were Jerzy and Karen, her girlfriends also having moved off somewhere. He was holding Karen’s hand, and the two had slumped down in their seats, but to my surprise they weren’t up to anything. Perry noticed where I was looking and elbowed me. “If you’re still thinking about Big Tits, forget it,” he said, his voice low, confidential, almost friendly. I’d just about concluded he meant this to be a warning, then he added, “Nobody home.”

Below, in the company of his West End friends, Perry had been all menace. Now it seemed we were suddenly pals. After a moment he chuckled, at something on the screen, I thought, though nothing funny had happened there. “Damn,” he said. “I thought you were going to pee in your seat down there.”

“Why were you so mad?” I said, which in truth was only half of what perplexed me. The other half was
Why wasn’t he mad anymore?

“Who, me? That was for show. Like I care if you feel Karen up.”

“Then why—”

“You crossed the line.”

“What line?”

“What do you mean what line? The line.”

“I didn’t—”

“You didn’t know? I could tell that. Now you do, right?”

Actually, I wasn’t sure. Had I crossed the line by paying for Karen’s popcorn? Her ticket? By sitting next to her instead of between her friends, where apparently a person could sit and still be alone? Or was it the row itself I wasn’t allowed in?

“It’s like Division Street,” Perry explained. “You gotta know where you are. You gotta know
who
you are. Anyhow, it’s over. Forget it. And like I said, Cirillo’s all tease. You don’t believe me, ask Jerzy.”

As if I would. “Why doesn’t he—”

“Dump her ass? ’Cause he’s pussy-whipped, is why.” He shot me a sidelong glance. “You know what pussy-whipped is?”

I’d heard the expression before, maybe at Ikey’s or the Cayoga Diner. It was the sort of thing a man would say if somebody said he had to go home or his wife would get mad. The sort of thing Uncle Dec might say about my father if he was in one of those mean, kidding moods. So I nodded. Yeah, sure, I knew what pussy-whipped meant.