Little Boy (36 page)

“You sure that’s a good idea, Boss?” he
asked. “I mean, what about what happened in Virginia? Did that help
ya any?” He had a point: I was more paranoid than ever since
Virginia. But the beer made it all seem so logical.

“I don’t know,
consigliere
,” I said.
“If I were to fuck a girl tonight, man, nothing that bothers me
about Maria would ever bother me again.”

Kyle rubbed his chin in doubt. At the time, I
had a good reason for wanting to meet a girl. But
good
is a
relative term, isn’t it? The more I thought about Maria and her
past and her lying, the more I figured that a one night stand would
make up for it all. I reasoned I could replace my sinister opinion
of Maria with passionately pleasant thoughts of some other girl.
Only then would I stop worrying about Maria. Sounds like a load of
shit, huh? Well, it really made sense at the time. “If I could just
get a back-up girlfriend again,” I said, “then all would be
well.”

Kyle sat in silence, mulling my statement
over. I ordered another beer.

“I don’t know,” he said, “maybe you should
just try to forget about this shit without cheating. I mean, you’re
going to the Academy next year, Maria loves ya, what more could ya
want?”

At that moment, three girls, two Asian, one
Hispanic, skipped into Kearney’s. I chugged my fifth beer and
pointed them out to Kyle. Like hunters eyeing three deer in the
woods, Kyle and I, without uttering a word, descended upon
them.

Not two feet from these chicks, with a clear
mission to accomplish, my mind drew a blank.
What the fuck am I
doing? How can I possibly get a girl to fuck me tonight?
As
quickly as these thought entered my jittery head, they were
vanquished by Kyle’s smooth operation.

“Can we buy you a drink?” Kyle asked them.
“Sure,” responded one of the Asian girls. All three giggled.
Hook, line, and sinker
, I thought.

The music in Kearney’s pounded continuously,
so we could hardly hear their names. The one I liked, though, was
Maggie. Maggie Rodriguez, a stunning Latina with cinnamon skin and
exhilarating green eyes. Her thick hair draped her shoulders like a
blanket. It was the color of a crow.

Goddamnit it, she’s hot
, I thought.
Do you think I’m cute?
I asked Maggie with the flicker of my
eyes.

Yes
, she answered, with a glint of a
smile.

I asked her where she was from, about her
classes, and told her she was beautiful about a thousand times.
“I’m a senior,” I repeated more than once. She seemed to like
hearing that. I was so confident

Whenever I had a girlfriend, my confidence
level went through the roof. Hell, even if I was rejected, I’d
still have someone to go back to. The fact that these chicks were
freshman furnished me with a remarkable hubris unlike any that I’d
felt before. The more Maggie spoke to me, the faster her lashes
flapped like a butterfly’s wings, repeating, with each flap,
Yes, yes, yes! I want you, A.J.!
Her white mini-skirt and
red top allowed her to glow like no Colombian girl I’d ever seen
before. As I stood there yessing her to death, Kyle, loyal
consigliere that he was, kept his distance entertaining her Asian
friends. Maggie and I went through the obligatory teenage bullshit:
“Where are you from?” “What’s your favorite movie?” “What kind of
music do you like?” “How old are you?” But I was hardly listening.
I ached to stuff my face between her big brown tits and inhale her
cleavage.

I don’t remember much about her, but I do
remember that Maggie was fifteen, and lived in Elmhurst, a few
blocks from the bar. I think the schools in Elmhurst are like
ninety percent immigrant. To her neighbors, she was just another
non-white girl amidst the Indian restaurants and Chinese take-out
places. To me she was exotic. As different as Maria was from me,
Maggie was my diametrical opposite. Her nights, she told me, were
spent hanging out on her stoop, meringue blaring from boom boxes
down the block, smoking pot and sipping cheap wine, trying to keep
the ugliest of the hoods from groping her body, flirting with the
best-looking ones. Saturday night at Kearney’s was the highlight of
each week, worth sporting her best clothing and donning a layer of
makeup. She was pretty but poor.
I’m gonna be her knight in
shining armor
, I thought.

Maggie was roughly Maria’s height and weight,
but thinner and bustier. Had I not been so drunk by that point, and
so close to passing out, I would’ve nestled my face into her bosom
and suckled her chocolate nipples. But I didn’t. I played it cool.
And as Kyle talked with her friends, Maggie and I walked outside to
smoke a cigarette. It was pretty cold outside, and smoking, of
course, was allowed in the bar. But, for some reason, we felt
compelled to listen to each other in private, almost as if some
brand of unique fate had brought us together, and we wanted to let
it play out.

We hit it off at first. Maggie found
everything I said funny and I enjoyed her conversation. She was
Puerto Rican, with two brothers and three sisters. She said the
only reason she went to Stella Maris was because she got some sort
of music scholarship. Her father ran off when she was five.

Shockingly, I discovered all of that
information within the first ten minutes or so. I couldn’t believe
it. For some odd reason, Maggie was baring her soul to me, in front
of a run-down bar on Queens Boulevard. She said she’d never had a
serious boyfriend because she didn’t trust most guys enough to like
them. “All of my boyfriends have been hoods,” she said, stressing
the last word as one might say
cancer
. I said that might be
because her father had run off when she was a kid, imprinting her
mind with a negative idea of men. She agreed whole-heartedly, and,
I thought, fell in love with me at that moment.

To give you an idea about the state of my
mind that night, when Maggie mentioned that she’d had “plenty of
sex,” and, in the same breath, that she’d once “fucked two guys at
once,” I didn’t think twice about it. Looking back on it now—I
mean, think about it—she was fifteen years old, and yet she’d had
“plenty” of sex!—I could’ve caught syphilis or AIDS or
God-knows-what. But I didn’t give a shit, I didn’t care. All I
wanted to do was carry out my plan.

After talking for what seemed like hours, we
stood, silently, holding hands and smiling. Maggie shivered in the
frigid night, not minding the silence a bit. Her nipples pierced
her silky blouse; whether she was cold or excited or both I didn’t
know. Her long eyelashes went
blink, blink, blink
as the
cold breeze whipped its way down Queens Boulevard, carrying with it
stray garbage. I sensed it was my duty to help her. Clearly, she
was too sexually promiscuous for a fifteen year old. I was shocked
by everything she had said. In fact, I was a little jealous. Then I
wondered:
Is she telling the truth?
Is she really bashful
about fucking so many guys?
Is she a nice kid from a rough
neighborhood—
or is she just a slut?
With each shiver I
questioned her motives. But she looked so cute and sexy. The longer
the silence grew, however, the more curious about her and attracted
to her I became.

But what the hell did I care? All I wanted to
do was impress her, and fuck her. I interrupted the serenity and
told her that I wanted to be a pilot in the Air Force, that I was
probably going to the Academy in Colorado the next fall.
Unimpressed by my confident plans, she answered with an
oh-so-elusive look that I’d been watching for all night. It said:
Who cares? Just fuck me.

“So, what’s your whole name? Margaret?”

“Actually, it’s Magdalena. But I don’t like
that name, so I tell people to call me Maggie. Magdalena sounds so
stupid.”

“I think it’s a beautiful name.” I really did
like it. “What do you do for fun? You said you come to Kearney’s
each weekend?”

“Pretty much. All I ever do is come to
Kearney’s,” she said, as she curled her fingers toward her face and
glanced at her red polished nails. “It’s the only bar around here
that doesn’t card.”

“Well, maybe you should get a boy to bring
you somewhere nice, like a museum. Or Central Park. That’s where I
like to go with my girlfriends.”

“Oh, do you have a girlfriend?”

Quick as lightening: “No!”
Down, boy,
down
. “I mean no, no I don’t.”

“Wow. Central Park! I’ve never been there on
a date or anything.”

“I’ll take you, Maggie. Just name the day and
I’ll take you.” She was all smiles. I felt better than I had in
months. I really felt like I could show her a whole new world out
there.

“You live fifteen minutes away, and you’ve
never been there?”

“No,” she said. “But I can’t wait to go with
you.” She looked up at me and smiled.

“And you’ve never been there, right?”

“No, papi, I’m tellin’ you,” she insisted. I
loved her accent! She was so fucking hot.

Maggie seemed interested in my conversation
as well as my looks. Her little eyelashes flapped. Her smile
revealed a string of pearls. Her face beamed. She probably wouldn’t
have minded if I’d bent her over the trash can and fucked her right
there on the boulevard. Sounds dirty, huh? But trust me—those are
the kinds of looks she was giving me. Even though I knew I could
make a move anytime, I just stood there, talking and laughing. I
don’t know why, but I continued to ramble on, waiting for the right
moment. “You remind me of this plane used in World War II, the
Consolidated B-24 Liberator.”

“Huh?”

“I told you, I’m really into jets and
planes.”

“You did? Oh yea,” she giggled.

“And some people,” I said, only people I
like, remind me of different aircraft. The Liberator was a neat and
compact jet. Just like you.”

“What did the Liberator do?” I was so pleased
to hear her ask that question. Other girls had asked it. But not in
that accent!

“It was the priMegan long-range bomber
aircraft of the U. S. Army Air Force during the second world war.
It was mass-produced. They made over eighteen-thousand of them.”
She didn’t give a rat’s ass about my love of planes, but at least
she faked some interest, and that’s what felt so marvelous.

“Cool,” she responded. “I can learn a lot
from you. You’re real smart.”

I thought:
There’s a lot more besides
planes that you can learn from me.
I said: “I’m real
smart?”

“Si, estas muy inteligente.”

“Soy muy inteligente,” I said, proudly.

“No,” she corrected me. “Estoy…”

“
Estoy
muy inteligente,” I said.

“Si, muy bueno,” she approved.

Magdalena looked up at the stars and blew a
ring of smoke. The train rumbled below and

shook the sidewalk. I placed my arm around
Magdalena and kissed her.

Chapter 18

Critical Mass

Easter Sunday was two days later. Like most
Catholic families in Queens, our family began the day in church at
ten in the morning. Sitting in the pews as the choir bellowed its
festive, joyous songs—
Haaaaaallelujah! Haaaaaallelujah!

As the music shook me, I felt a mix of joy
and sorrow, of accomplishment and regret.

Hallelujah!
I exploded into Maggie,
just as I had in the back seat of my Skylark on Good Friday. In my
head I heard her screaming with ecstasy as my body tingled in
nervous delight. Echoes of two naked strangers sharing a guilty
pleasure in the middle of the night danced in my head. You’d think
having sex with a girl like Maggie would feel lewd—but no. She was
as sweet and innocent and fresh-smelling as Maria on New Year’s
Eve. That night, she was the sweetest girl in the world.

Hallelujah!
As awesome as it was, I
couldn’t help but feel dirty. In retrospect, no other night has
ever killed me like that one did. In that church, the one I’d been
going to all my life, grief enveloped me with each passing moment.
It smacked me in the face at the peak of the ceremony, as the last
rows of parishioners stood up to receive their communion. Although
I seldom attended mass, when I did go, I received communion. Not
that day. I was so caught up in my thoughts—the scent of Maggie’s
body, the grip of her hands, and an choking guilt—that I neglected
to rise as communion was handed out.

Hallelujah!
Hallelujah!
Halleeehhhhhh-lujaaaahhhh!

And then, during the moment of silence
between the end of communion and the beginning of the closure of
the ceremony, I reached critical mass. As I knelt before the altar
staring into a crucified Jesus, I sensed something that I hadn’t
experienced throughout the duration of my relationship with Maria:
GUILT.

Perplexed by that emotion, I raced out the
church door and lit a cigarette. When you guys approached me amidst
the crowd that had just been let out, I was lost in a state of
confusion, ensconced by haze of smoke. “You have to go pick up
Maria soon,” Dad said. “We’d better get going.” I smashed the
cigarette butt underneath my heel and followed my family back to
the car.

A few hours later Maria and I were driving
along the Interboro Parkway, en route to Fresh Meadows. We were
silent but happy. I tried not to think about Magdalena. Again, I
was conflicted by thoughts of her soft lips and the look on Maria’s
face if she only knew. But I tried not to think about that
stuff.