Now Is the Hour (28 page)

Myself, I'd been transformed into a wheelbarrow of Redi-Mix cement, either that or a big block of Kraft extra-sharp Cheddar cheese. When I looked over at my arm and hand, they were ridiculously poised just above the front edge of the seat, my middle finger and my index finger and my thumb perfectly formed waiting to grab the cigarette lighter when it popped out, and my little finger, there it was, how embarrassing, sticking up the way English people drink tea.

Then outside just like that, it wasn't sunset. It was dark, dark inside too, headlights passing.

On the radio, the guy was singing
So tired, tired of waiting, tired of waiting for you.
So I started singing
So tired of waiting
too.

That's when it happened all at once, the way it does with laughter. Coming up fast from so deep and hard your belly hurts. When the lighter finally popped up, my whole body spazzed, which made Billie let out a little scream, which made me let out a little scream. She cut a fart too, which was so fucking funny. Even with Sis, I'd never heard a girl fart before. We laughed for I don't know how long for a while there, just staring at each other no sound coming out of us except for gasps.

When Billie had herself calmed down, and she thought she could speak, Billie said:
Waiting for Godot.

Billie spit
Waiting for Godot
out of her mouth more than said it, and maybe you had to be there, but she barely had
Waiting for Godot
out of her mouth, and we were holding our stomachs again, our bodies slamming around inside the pickup, arms flailing, feet kicking, high screams, laughing like a couple of damn fools.

Billie Cody. Laughing is how I met her.

I got my hand steadied enough, and I held the lighter to the end of her cigarette. Billie puffed away, and the end of the cigarette started fire, and the smoke started.

In the orange light of the cigarette lighter, behind the bloodshot tear duct cancer, it looked like Billie's eyes were blue.

After our cigarettes were lit, and after laughing like that, it was real quiet again like before when we were staring at the cigarette lighter. I thought maybe we might start in on it again, but this time we didn't laugh. It was just the radio and some song and us in the dark smoking. I was back to being Redi-Mix cement or extra-sharp Cheddar. Billie looked down at her fingernails. Her fingernails were small too, like her toenails, and they were painted dark blue too.

Can I have a sip of your beer? she asked.

Billie's red hennaed hair rats poked up through the white neon light of the Snatch Out sign. I handed her over the Budweiser. Billie tipped up the bottle, took a swig, handed the bottle back to me. When I put the bottle back to my lips, I tasted pink.

Say, I was thinking, Billie said. You want to go on a date?

My tongue on my lips, beer mixed in with pink.

Sure, I said.

You would? she said. Even after I farted?

Before that night, I'd never heard a girl fart, and I'd never heard a girl say
fart.

I wanted to say
yes
right off, and my mouth was right there, but I stopped. The reason I stopped was because even though I didn't know her name, I knew she was a junior at Highland High School. She was a year older than me and wasn't Catholic, and I was just a sophomore at Saint Joe's.

Then: Sure, I said. But, I mean, are you sure you want to go out with me?

I'm only a sophomore, I said.

This was the moment when everything stopped, and all there was was Billie Cody and her cigarette. You know how each of us does things over and over, things nobody else does, or if they do they don't do it so particular? For instance, the way Mom gritted her teeth, or her eyes got gold, or Sis always stuck the fingernail of her index finger between her two front teeth, or Dad pushed back his black hair off his forehead.

Here's something Billie Cody always did. With the cigarette. I think she knew she was doing it. Bille was into theater, and I think she practiced. Then maybe at some point, she'd done it so much she didn't know anymore.

Anyway, that evening in the Snatch Out was the first time I saw her do the cigarette thing.

Her left arm across her belly under her breasts, Billie cupped her right elbow. The cigarette was always in her right hand. Her right hand connected to her right arm, her right arm connected to her right elbow, her right elbow rested in her left-hand palm, Billie Cody's right arm connected that way at the elbow, came to life as something of its own. A windshield wiper, a wand, a pointer, a metronome, the minute hand of a ticking clock, one of those lawn sprinklers that spurt spurt spurt, then razzle razzle, back to spurt spurt spurt again. A jab, a poke, a twirl, a wave of disgust, any kind of emotion really, sarcasm, joy, terror, surprise, the fuck-you finger, a blossom bursting forth in the morning dew, a fist and forearm up your ass, you name it, Billie's right arm could do it. Always, always with the cigarette in her hand at the end of the arm, the exclamation point to whatever it was Billie had to say.

Plus her mother was half Italian and half Jew.

Like I said, theatrical.

Billie's right arm, the hand, the cigarette, did a little tornado by her ear, then she lowered the cigarette to her knee. Tapped the ashes off the cigarette onto the floor with her index finger.

You're old for your age, Billie said. And besides, I liked how you handled that guy in the hospital.

The scared place in my chest jumped up into my throat.

What guy? I said.

You know, Billie said, the Indian guy.

You saw that? I said. How did you see that?

I was standing at your door with everyone else in the hospital, Billie said.

Everyone else? I said. Who was that?

Billie inhaled, Bette Davis, on the cigarette, blew the smoke out her nose. I could blow smoke out my nose too now that I had my nose drilled.

Three nurses, the doctor, Billie said. The woman next to me with the gallbladder, and the candy striper.

I inhaled, blew smoke out my nose.

What did you see? I said. The lights were out.

The cigarette in Billie's hand, the way Monsignor sprinkled the audience with the holy water font.

I saw a lot, Billie said.

Those hospital gowns, I said.

Yes, Billie said, I saw that. But I'm talking about something else.

The smoke in the cab, the headlights of the cars, “My World Is Empty Without You” on the radio, the big rats of Billie's red hennaed hair sticking up through the neon of the Snatch Out sign.

Finally.

Finally somebody saw and somebody knew the worst thing, the most shameful, the curse of my soul my life gathered around.

Who knows where my breath was. My shoulders were up around my ears. The helpless feeling in my arms. I braced myself for what Billie Cody was about to say.

But Billie didn't say what I thought she'd say. Billie didn't say I saw into your soul when you fought George Serano, a queer man, and you're queer too.

Billie said: I saw somebody scared. I saw somebody defending himself and yet, Billie said.

Billie's arm went down like a speedometer going from eighty to zero. She stuffed out the cigarette in the ashtray in the dash.

You were kind, Billie said. Very human.

Maybe tears couldn't come out of her eyes, but that doesn't mean Billie Cody couldn't cry. I don't know if she cried right then, but I remember her as crying. Maybe I'm remembering with what I know now, and she didn't cry.

What I know she did was put on her white plastic sunglasses with the dark green glass. Pushed them up on her nose.

My heart felt so wide open, and the scared place in me wasn't scared, and I loved God so much right then, and out of the blue the whole world was crying.

Then: You're a Cancer, Billie said. Aren't you?

I swear, this girl was magic.

How can you tell? I said.

At the hospital, she said. On the insurance papers. June 30, 1950.

Then: I'm Pisces, Billie said. Water signs. That's good. Pisces are the most beautiful women, except for me.

Meet you here? she said. Seven-thirty?

The way I looked at Billie. That great laugh of hers in her big chest that seems to take over her whole body.

Our
date,
she said. Next Wednesday.

Yah, I said quick. Yah, Wednesday for sure. Seven-thirty's cool.

The quiet again. Quiet and dark, we were both sitting in again. Billie quick reached around, pulled on the door handle, opened the door. When she reached back like that, just then the headlights of a passing car, and I saw the size of her breasts. They were enormous.

By the way, I said, have you noticed that all of a sudden there are Indians everywhere you go?

Billie got out and slammed the door behind her hard.

Technicolor Pisces, theatrical smoker, woman of mystery, kneeling beatnik, blue-toed existentialist, intellectual snob. In her heart of hearts, Billie Cody was an Idaho girl.

Only an Idaho girl can slam a pickup door like that.

We're surrounded, Billie said.

An empty cab, the French smell going with her, I snuffed up all the clean fresh French that was left. Outside the window just her face on that side of the pickup. Billie's big red hennaed hair rats, white plastic glasses over her plugged-up tear duct eyes. Billie's big smile all over her face.

Who are you? she said. General Custer?

Just curious, I said.

Then: Say, what's your name? I said.

Billie, she said, like in Billie Holiday. Cody.

I reached across the seat and stuck my hand out through the window for her to shake.

Billie Cody, I said, Rigby John Klusener.

But Billie didn't take my hand.

Rigby John Klusener, she said. Yes.

On Pole Line Road, a cop car flashing red and white.

Red and white flashes on the world, headlights, dark. With the tip of her finger, Billie ran her finger along the ridge of my red-and-white-flashing knuckles.

I know who you are, she said.

All week I looked forward to next Wednesday.

There was a couple of times, though, I freaked out about going out on a date with a girl, and how should I act. After all it was my first time, and there was nobody to talk to about what happens on a
date. In fact, I couldn't even tell anyone I had a
date.
Father Arana would've said something hip and cool, then asked if my parents knew, then he'd have started in on venial sin and mortal sin and what the differnce was. Mom would've run screaming for the rosary. And forget about Dad. Sis would've laughed and then probably threatened to tell Mom and Dad. But I had my bases covered there. Sis still hadn't told Mom and Dad she was dating Gene Kelso. Sis's excuse was De Sales Club too.

With the money I had saved that Sis never got to, I bought some English Leather and new Mennen underarm deodorant and some Barbasol shaving cream and my own Gillette razor, even though I really didn't need a shave — still don't really, only on my chin and upper lip, and I think now that I'm a free man I'll let my mustache and goatee grow.

But I did try shaving that Wednesday when I got home from school. Dad wasn't home so he couldn't show me, even if he was home he wouldn't show me, so Sis and Mom showed me, and they didn't know shit about shaving your face. They just knew about armpits and legs.

Mom's eyes got a real weird look when she first saw my face lathered up. I hadn't seen that look in her eyes ever before, so I didn't understand. But now that I look back on it after all that's happened, it's pretty clear. There I was, her little boy, doing something she'd seen only grownup men do.

In the bathroom, the fluorescent lights were on. Mom was on one side of me, and Sis was on the other, and the three of us were all looking in the bathroom mirror. Mom's almond-shaped hazel eyes, mine, Sis's black eyes she got from Dad. Mom and Sis were making faces in the mirror like they said you're supposed to make faces when you shave. Both Mom and Sis had their heads tilted left, and they were pulling the skin taut on the right side of their faces by screwing up their lips. But when I tilted my head left and pulled the skin taut on the right side of my face by screwing up my lips, when I pulled the razor the first swipe down my cheek, instantly that whole right side of my face was blood, blood mixing in with the white Barbasol shaving cream, everything pink.

Mom and Sis went screaming females out of the bathroom. They were covering their heads, covering their eyes, screaming. Then they both fainted. I haven't told you that yet. Something both Mom and Sis do when they see human blood. Mom was the first thud. Out like a
light right there on the blue-and-white-checkered floor. Sis made it to her bedroom, crawled under her bed, and
then
fainted.

There I was a bleeding face like in a horror movie, and Mom was lying on the blue and white squares of the kitchen floor, twitching, and I didn't even
know
where Sis was.

No wonder I turned out the way I did. Just look at the help I got.

What a fiasco.

When I got in the pickup to go to De Sales Club, I had pieces of toilet paper stuck all over my face. Sis wouldn't even look at me. Don't ask me how I'd done it, but I'd even cut my ear.

Billie didn't say anything about my face right off. You know that first moment when you first look at somebody, and you can catch what her reaction to you is? Well, I looked at her hard in that moment when Billie rolled down her window and looked up out of her mother's white Pontiac Bonneville and saw my face.

Billie's face, no grimace, no horror, no holy shit, what the fuck happened to you.

Then, after Billie looked at me, I thought maybe it was all in my head that I looked like I'd took a bite out of a chain saw, so I quick reached and turned the side mirror so I could look at myself. It was not pretty.

Billie opened the door to the pickup, stepped up, put her butt on the seat, slammed the door. It was all I could do to look at her. She looked nice. She had her hair pulled behind her ears. No tear duct cancer, her eyes were clear and blue. A blue oxford shirt this time, the same gold chain necklace with the open palm hanging between her breasts. I tried not to look at her breasts, but with Billie you had to look at her breasts because, well, there they were. Two large melons just down from her chin. The black pants with the stirrups, black strapped shoes with a low heel. Blue toenails. The French smell.