Brotherly Love (17 page)

Everything is easy for Jimmy Measles.

The sidewalk narrows under some scaffolding, and
Peter steps behind Jimmy Measles and Michael, and watches them from
the back. Michael has combed his hair back over his ears on both
sides, the way Jimmy Measles does, the way Fabian does; it meets in
the center of the back of his head.

"Now these chicks, man," Jimmy Measles is
saying, "let them suck you and then get rid of them. They’re a
pain in the ass later. Always wanting you to give them something, or
saying they want to go with you. Sometimes they say they’re going
with you even if they aren’t."

"Shit, man," Michael says.

Jimmy Measles nods, and looks quickly over his
shoulder to include Peter in the conversation. "They feel guilty
after they blow somebody, so they try to get you to go with them, it
makes them feel better."

He laughs suddenly; he and Michael laugh together.

"Sometimes, you even got to promise to do that
before they’ll blow you, but it don’t count. It’s just
something they like to hear before they do the deed .... "

He turns again to Peter, his smile stretches slowly
all the way across his handsome face. It is the kind of smile that
makes Peter wish he could smile the same way back.

"Nothing to worry about, my man," Jimmy
Measles says.

Michael turns and looks at him too. "He ain’t
worried," he says.

They cross Broad Street and wait on the other side
for the bus. Jimmy Measles looks at one of them, then the other, and
then suddenly he laughs. "So youse want to get blown," he
says.

The bus stops in front of them, dripping and filthy,
the brakes as loud as the engine. The door opens and they climb up
the steps and stop while Jimmy Measles pays all the fares, dropping
three quarters into the coin box. The bus jerks forward as they are
walking to the back and Peter is thrown ahead, as if he were being
pushed someplace he does not want to go.

They sit down, Jimmy Measles and Michael on one
bench, Peter across from them on another.

Jimmy Measles dances in his seat, his shoulders
moving back and forth. He pulls his fingers from imaginary holsters
and points them at Peter. "So, my man," he says, "you
ready?"

Peter looks up and down
the empty bus. "So who are these guys who want to beat you up?"
he says.

* * *

T
hey take the C bus to
Market, and the elevated train out to Forty-sixth. Peter can see the
line of dancers waiting outside the Arena door before he gets off the
train.

Some of the girls he recognizes from television; he
knows how they dance. They are wearing coats and jackets over their
skirts, it looks like they all have new shoes. They are chewing gum,
smoking cigarettes, doing little dance steps there in line.

Some of the girls call to Jimmy Measles while he is
still on the stairway leading down from the elevated stop. They leave
their places in line when he gets to the sidewalk, half a dozen girls
all around him, pressing against him, pressing against Peter to get
close to Jimmy Measles.

Michael is caught in it too. Peter sees his hand
touch a tall girl’s knee and then disappear up underneath her
skirt.

"Jimmy, baby," one of them says, "I
got something to show you." He stops walking to look at the
girl, and she turns her head and pulls her shoulders back and moves
underneath her skirt exactly the way the woman in the back of the car
had moved when Peter was inside her.

Jimmy Measles watches, smiling, until she stops.
"Maureen, you know you can’t do that shit on television,"
he says.

He walks toward the door, Michael hurrying to stay at
his shoulder, as if he is afraid to be left behind with the dancers.
Peter looks up and down the line for someone who might beat up Jimmy
Measles, but no one seems to mind that he’s there, or even that he
is going to the front of the line ahead of them.

Peter walks a few steps behind, thinking they ought
to get in the line with everyone else.

Jimmy Measles smiles at the guard on the door—a
man, not a kid—and pats him on the shoulder. Then he and Michael
walk past, into the building, and Peter goes in after them. They walk
beyond the studio entrance into a hallway that says AUTHORIZED
PERSONNEL ONLY—NO ADMITTANCE. Peter stops to look at the sign, but
Jimmy Measles motions him to follow along, dancing as he points the
way.

At the end of the hallway is a door, marked MANAGER.
Jimmy Measles knocks twice and then goes in, without waiting for an
answer. Peter stops at the entrance and looks inside. A plump,
pale-skinned man with curly black hair that has been oiled until it
looks wet is sitting behind the desk, a bottle of vodka sitting with
him. There is a glass next to the bottle, empty except for the ice.
The man’s face is red and his lips are wet.

"Jimmy," he says, "how you doing, my
man?"

"Alan, my man . . ."

Jimmy Measles steps behind the desk and kisses the
man on the cheek. There is something out of place in it, it is
somehow too familiar, too easy. Not formal, the way the Italians kiss
each other. "So, who’s this‘?" the man says, looking at
Michael.

Peter stays where he is in the doorway.

"This is my man Michael and his cousin Peter."

The man looks from one to the other and then at
Jimmy. "How old are they?"

"Phillip Flood," Jimmy Measles says.
"That’s Phil the Roofer’s kid, and that’s his nephew."

The man gets out of his seat, shorter than he had
looked sitting down, swaying slightly, and leans across the desk to
shake Michael’s hand. Everything is easy with Jimmy Measles.

"So," he says, falling back into his chair,
"you guys are dancers, are you?"

Peter looks at his size 9 1/2 U.S. Keds basketball
shoes, the laces knotted where they’ve broken, and tries to imagine
them dancing on television.

Michael is nodding his head.

"We were wondering," Jimmy Measles said,
"could we use your office a few minutes before the show. A
little business . . ."

The man smiles and gets to his feet. "It’s
yours, my man," he says. He stands up suddenly, and stumbles as
he passes through the door, smiling at Peter with unfocused eyes.
 
Jimmy Measles goes out of the room a
moment later, and Michael walks behind the desk and tries out the
man’s chair. Behind him, on the wall, are pictures of the man with
Fabian, Bobby Vinton, Bobby Rydell, Dion, Frankie Avalon. Most of
them are autographed the same way. For my good pal Louie, all the
best. . .

Peter steps into the office and looks around. There
are stains on the floor and the sofa, and a sweet, dirty smell that
somehow goes with them. No windows to air the place out. Michael
opens a drawer of the desk and looks inside, then another drawer. He
is still going through the man’s desk when Jimmy Measles comes back
through the door towing the girl from outside. Maureen. He closes the
door and she sees Peter, and stops dead. They look at each other, and
in that moment he is sorry for coming. Sorry for her, sorry for
walking to the front of the line, sorry for what he wants.

"What’s he doing here?" she says. And
then she sees Michael too, and starts for the door. Jimmy Measles
holds on to her hand, smiling.

"They’re all right," he says, pulling her
back.

She looks at them again. "Not him," she
says, meaning Peter.

"I’ll do you and him . . ." and she nods
toward Michael, "but not him." Jimmy Measles looks at Peter
and winks.

"He just wants to watch," he says.

She looks at Peter again, deciding. "I ain’t
doing this," she says, and moves again for the door. Jimmy
Measles pulls her back. Either he is stronger than he looks or the
girl is not trying very hard to get out of the room.

"I don’t like the way he’s lookin’ at me
already," she says. Peter wonders how he and the girl became
enemies. He looks another direction, thinking she is about to start
yelling. She is on the edge of that, but the room is quiet.

Peter walks back toward the door, intending to leave,
but when he gets there Jimmy Measles is running his hand up and down
the girl’s back and she has closed her eyes, so she can’t see him
anyway. Jimmy Measles knows how to touch girls, he sees that. He
leans closer to her and puts his face in her hair. He whispers to her
and she nods, without opening her eyes, and in that same moment Jimmy
Measles looks at Peter through the girl’s hair, and smiles.

"But not with him," she says suddenly.
"I’ll do you and the fat one behind the desk, but not him."

"Let him watch."

"He can watch, but that’s all," she says.
"I ain’t doing three guys."

Jimmy Measles unbuckles his belt and unzips his
pants. Peter sees his erect penis at the same time the girl does. She
rolls her eyes, as if this were an old problem, and then drops to her
knees in front of him.

"Just a minute," he says. "Wait a
minute, will you?"

He lifts one foot and then the other, taking off his
pants, and then carefully folds them and lays them across the desk.
He puts his hands on top of the girl’s head then and she picks a
piece of lint off his penis and then, as Peter watches, the penis
disappears into her mouth. When it is gone, all the way in, Jimmy
Measles winks at Michael, who has come up off his chair to watch.

"Take two extra seconds," he says, "and
you don’t walk around all day in wrinkled pants."

Michael’s lips are open and he is breathing through
his mouth.

The girl’s head moves back and forth under Jimmy
Measles’s hands, her eyes are closed tight, her own hands clenched
in fists at her side. She could be sucking a lemon.

Peter stands still. Her lips roll back into her mouth
as she slides into him, until Peter cannot see her lips at all, then
bloom as she pulls away. He studies Jimmy Measles’s face—it has
changed now, lost its wink, and he is fixed on the girl’s head as
if he were angry.

It comes to him that he doesn’t want to push his
penis into somebody’s mouth because she wants to be a dancer on
Bandstand anyway. It comes to him that he is sorry for her, and that
she sees it. It’s the reason she won’t blow him.

Jimmy Measles’s hands tighten into fists around her
hair and he closes his eyes and slams himself against her face. The
veins stand out in his neck.

A second later, the girl coughs, begins to choke, and
semen appears in the corner of her mouth and then runs down off her
chin.

She tries to pull away, making choking noises, but
Jimmy Measles holds her by the hair and moves himself in and out of
her mouth until he is finished.

Then, gradually, he relaxes his fist and his face and
his neck, and the girl drops back away from him, wiping her chin and
mouth with the sleeve of her blouse, and sits on her heels.

Jimmy Measles carefully retrieves his pants and puts
them on, checking for creases. She looks at Michael. "C’mon if
you’re comin’," she says. "We’re going to miss the
whole show."

The words pass across Michael’s face. He comes
around the desk, unbuttoning his pants as Jimmy Measles had done,
taking them off, folding them and laying them across the same chair.
Taking a long time to fold his pants.

His penis looks small and scared. She looks at it and
then appeals to Jimmy Measles.

"We ain’t got time for this," she says.

"Don’t pay any attention," he says to
Michael, "that’s the first dick she ever saw that wasn’t
hard."

She frowns and then, giving in, she holds Michael’s
penis between her finger and thumb and guides it to her mouth. He
puts his hands on top of her head as Jimmy Measles had done, but she
pulls away and slaps at his arm.

"Do you mind?" she says.

He shakes his head no, and she puts it in her mouth
again and begins moving in and out, perhaps half an inch each
direction.

Jimmy Measles takes the seat behind the desk and
smiles.

"She isn’t bad, is she?" he says.

Michael shrugs.

She works on him for what seems like a long time and
then pulls away again.

"C’mon, Jimmy," she says, "he can’t
even get it up."

Jimmy Measles leans forward across the desk to see if
that is true. Her words cross Michael’s face again; tiny muscles
shake.

"Maybe it’s too many people in the room,"
Jimmy Measles says. "Some guys don’t like having nobody
watch."

He smiles at Michael, but Michael is looking at the
girl kneeling in front of him.

"Shit, they’re starting the music," she
says.

Peter listens, and hears the faint sound of
Bandstand.

"They’re just warming up," Jimmy Measles
says. "There’s plenty of time." She takes Michael’s
penis in her mouth again and her movements now are more determined.

Jimmy Measles stands up and heads for the door. "Me
and Peter are just gonna wait outside," he says. Michael watches
them leave, looking as if he would like to leave with them.