The Roy Stories (17 page)

 

Shattered

Roy was walking to his after school job at the Red Hot Ranch when a girl about his age, whom he did not know, came up to him and said, “Isn't it terrible? I just want to scream.”

Roy looked at her face. The girl was crying but she was still pretty. She had blonde hair and gray eyes. At closer inspection, Roy realized that the girl was older than he'd first thought; she was about eighteen or nineteen.

“Isn't what terrible?” he asked.

“You didn't hear?”

“I don't know,” said Roy. “Hear what?”

“The president's been shot. He's dead.”

Fresh tears shot out of the girl's eyes and poured down her cheeks.

“Can you hold me?” she asked him. “I need to be held, just for a few seconds.”

Even though he was two or three years younger than the girl, Roy was at least two inches taller. He put his arms around her. She sank her head into his chest and continued sobbing.

“I'm shattered,” she said. “I never imagined anything so terrible could happen.”

“Do they know who shot him?”

The girl moved her head side to side without taking it off of Roy's chest.

“A woman shouted it from the window of a bus.”

“Maybe the woman was crazy,” Roy said. “Maybe it didn't happen at all.”

“No, it happened. I've been walking for blocks and blocks and other people said it, too.”

The girl remained in Roy's embrace for about a minute before she pulled away and wiped her face with the end of her scarf. It was a windy, cold day; the sky was overcast. Roy could feel snow in the air.

“Thank you,” the girl said. Her gray eyes were bloodshot. “This is the worst thing that ever happened to me.”

Later that night, after Roy had gotten home from work and watched the news on television, he thought about what the girl had said, that the assassination of the president was the worst thing that had ever happened to her, even though she was not the person who had been murdered.

When things go wrong, Roy decided, people are shocked by the discovery of their own lack of control over events. Perhaps now the girl would understand just how fragile the appearance of order in the world really was. All Roy wanted to think about was how pretty she was and how good it felt to hold her.

 

A Day's Worth of Beauty

The most beautiful girl I ever saw was Princessa Paris, when she was seventeen and a half years old. I was almost seventeen when I met her. An older guy I knew from the neighborhood, Gus Argo, introduced me to Princessa—actually, she introduced herself, but Gus got me there—because he had a crush on her older sister, Turquoise, who was twenty-two. This was February of 1963, in Chicago. The street and sidewalks were coated with ice, a crust of hard, two day-old snow covered the lawns. Princessa attended a different high school than I did, but I had heard of the Paris sisters; their beauty was legendary on the Northwest side of the city.

Argo picked me up while I was walking home from the Red Hot Ranch, a diner I worked at four days a week, three afternoons after school and Saturdays. It was about eight o'clock when Gus spotted me hiking on Western Avenue. He was twenty-one and had worked at Allied Radio on Western for three years, ever since he'd graduated from high school. Argo had been a pretty good left-handed pitcher, I'd played ball with and against him a few times; he was a tough kid, and he had once backed me up in a fight. A gray and black Dodge Lancer pulled over to the curb and honked. I saw that the driver was Gus Argo, and I got in.

“Hey, Roy, where you headed?”

“Thanks, Gus, it's freezing. To my house, I guess. I just got off work.”

“Yeah, me, too, but I got to make a delivery first, drop off a hi-fi. Want to ride over with me? Won't take long.”

“Sure.”

“Your old lady got dinner waitin'?”

“No, she's out.”

“Okay, maybe we'll get a burger and coffee at Buffalo's. I just got paid, so it's on me.”

“Sounds good.”

“Ever hear of the Paris sisters?”

“Yeah, everybody has. You know them?”

“I'm makin' the delivery to their house. I been tryin' to get up the nerve to ask Turquoise Paris to go out with me for two years.”

“Are they really so good looking?”

“I'd give anything to spend one day with Turquoise, to have one day's worth of her beauty.”

“What about the other one?”

“Princessa? She's almost eighteen, four years younger than Turquoise. I only saw her once, at the Granada on a Saturday. She's a knockout, too.”

Gus cranked up the blower in the Dodge. The sky was clear black but the temperature was almost zero. The radiator in my room didn't work very well; I knew I would have to sleep with a couple of sweaters on to stay warm. Argo parked in front of the Paris house and got out.

“Come in with me,” he said. “You can carry one of the boxes.”

Princessa opened the front door. She was almost my height, slender and small-breasted. Her lustrous chestnut hair hung practically to her waist. Once I was inside, in the light, I took a good look at her face. She reminded me of Hedy Lamarr in
Algiers
, wearing an expression that warned a man: If you don't take care of me, someone else certainly will. Princessa's complexion was porcelain smooth; I'd never before seen skin that looked so clean.

“You can just leave the boxes on the floor in the living room,” she told us. “My father will set it up when he gets home.”

“Who's there, Cessa?”

Gus Argo and I looked up in the direction from which the voice asking this question had come. Gene Tierney stood at the top of the staircase. Or maybe it was Helen of Troy.

“The delivery boys,” Princessa answered. “They brought the new hi-fi.”

“Tell them to just leave the boxes in the living room. Daddy will set it up later.”

“I just did.”

The apparition on the staircase disappeared; she wasn't coming down.

“Thanks, guys,” said Princessa. “I'd give you a tip but I don't have any money. I can ask Turquoise if she does.”

“No,” Gus said, “it's okay.”

He glanced at the top of the stairs once more, then walked out of the house.

“My name is Roy,” I said to Princessa.

“Hi, Roy.” she said, and held her right hand out to me. “I'm Cessa.”

I took her hand. It felt like a very small, freshly killed and skinned animal.

“Your hand is warm,” I said, holding it.

“My body temperature is always slightly above normal. The doctor says people's temperatures vary.”

“It feels good. Mine is cold. I wasn't wearing any gloves.”

She withdrew her hand.

“Could I come back to see you sometime?” I asked.

Princessa smiled. Hedy Lamarr vanished. Princessa had one slightly crooked upper front tooth the sight of which made me want to kiss her. I smiled back, memorizing her face.

“It was nice to meet you,” I said, and turned to go.

“Roy?”

I turned around. Hedy was back.

“You can call me, if you like. My last name is Paris. I have my own phone, the number's in the book.”

I went out with Princessa a couple of times. She talked about her boyfriend, who was already in college; and about Turquoise, who, Cessa told me, was a party girl.

“What's a party girl?” I asked.

“She gets fifty dollars when she goes to the powder room, sometimes more. My parents don't know.”

I didn't ask any more questions about Turquoise, but I did repeat what Princessa told me to Gus Argo.

“Fifty bucks for the powder room? You're shittin' me,” he said.

“Does that mean she's a prostitute?” I asked him.

“I don't think so,” said Argo. “More like she goes out with visiting firemen who want a good lookin' date.”

“Visiting firemen?”

“Yeah, guys from out of town. Salesmen, conventioneers.”

Many years later, I read Apuleius's version of the myth of Psyche and Amor. Venus, Amor's mother, was so jealous of her son's love for Psyche that she attempted to seduce Amor in an effort to convince him to destroy his lover, which he would not do. Venus even imprisoned Amor and ordered Psyche to go to the underworld and bring up a casket filled with a day's worth of beauty. Eventually, Jupiter, Amor's father, came to his son's rescue and persuaded Venus to lay off the poor girl.

I remembered Gus Argo telling me he would have done anything to have had one day's worth of Turquoise Paris's beauty. My guess is that he never got it, and I doubt that he knew the story of Psyche and Amor. Gus just didn't seem to me like the kind of guy who'd spring for the powder room.

 

The Peterson Fire

It was snowing the night the Peterson house burned down. Bud Peterson was seventeen then, two years older than me. Bud got out alive because his room was on the ground floor in the rear of the house. His two sisters and their parents slept upstairs, above the living room, which was where the fire started. An ember jumped from the fireplace and ignited the carpet. Bud's parents and his ten- and twelve-year-old sisters could not get down the staircase. When they tried to go back up, they were trapped and burned alive. There was nothing Bud Peterson could have done to save any of them. He was lucky, a fireman said, to have survived by crawling out his bedroom window.

I didn't see the house until the next afternoon. Snow flurries mixed with the ashes. Most of the structure was gone, only part of the first floor remained, and the chimney. I was surprised to see Bud Peterson standing in the street with his pals, staring at the ruins. Bud was a tall, thin boy, with almost colorless hair. He wore a Navy pea coat but no hat. Black ash was swirling around and some of it had fallen on his head. Nobody was saying much. There were about twenty of us, kids from the neighborhood, standing on the sidewalk or in the street, looking at what was left of the Peterson house.

I had walked over by myself after school to see it. Big Frank had told me about the fire in Cap's that morning when we were buying Bismarcks. Frank's brother, Otto, was a fireman. Frank said Otto had awakened him at five thirty and asked if Frank knew Bud Peterson. Frank told him he did and Otto said, “His house burned down last night. Everybody but him is dead.”

I heard somebody laugh. A couple of Bud's friends were whispering to each other and trying not to laugh but one of them couldn't help himself. I looked at Peterson but he didn't seem to mind. I remembered that he was a little goofy, maybe not too bright, but a good guy. He always seemed like one of those kids who just went along with the gang, who never really stood out. A bigger kid I didn't know came up to Bud and patted him on the left shoulder, then said something I couldn't hear. Peterson smiled a little and nodded his head. Snow started to come down harder. I put up the hood of my coat. We all just kept looking at the burned down house.

A black and white drove up and we moved aside. It stopped and a cop got out and said a few words to Bud Peterson. Bud got into the back seat of the squad car with the cop and the car drove away. The sky was getting dark pretty fast and the crowd broke up.

One of Bud's sisters, Irma, the one who was twelve, had a dog, a brown and black mutt. I couldn't remember its name. Nobody had said anything about Irma's dog, if it got out alive or not. I used to see her walking that dog when I was coming home from baseball or football practice.

Bud Peterson went to live with a relative. Once in a while, in the first few weeks after the fire, I would see him back in the neighborhood, hanging out with the guys, then I didn't see him anymore. Somebody said he'd moved away from Chicago.

One morning, more than thirty years later, I was sitting at a bar in Paris drinking a coffee when, for no particular reason, I thought about standing in front of the Peterson house that afternoon and wondering: If it had been snowing hard enough the night before, could the snow have put out the fire? Then I remembered the name of Irma Peterson's dog.

 

Door to the River

Roy read in a science book about a parasite that lives in water and enters the skin of human beings, goes to the head and causes loss of sight. This condition, Roy learned, was sometimes called river blindness. Soon after he'd read this, Roy was taken on a Friday night by his cousin Ray to Rita's Can't Take It With You, a blues club on the West Side. Ray was twenty-two, six years older than Roy. Ray had recently enlisted in the Navy and wanted to celebrate before leaving for boot camp the following Monday. The cousins were accompanied to Rita's by Ray's friend Marvin Kitna, an accordionist in a polka band who had been to the club several times before.

“The Wolf's playing tonight,” Kitna told Roy and Ray. “He's gettin' up there, but he's still the best.”

Roy, Ray and Marvin Kitna were the only white patrons that night in Rita's Can't Take It With You. Kitna seemed to know almost everybody there, from the two bartenders, Earl and Lee, to many of the customers, as well as the two off-duty Chicago cops, Malcolm and Durrell, who were paid to provide security. Roy let his cousin and Kitna order beers and shots of Jim Beam for the three of them. The waitress, whom Marvin addressed as Dolangela, and who favored them with a dazzling dental display of gold and silver, did not ask any of them, even Roy, for verification of their ages.

Roy slowly sipped his beer and kept his mouth shut. He did not touch the shot of bourbon. The Wolf put on a great performance, crawling around on the stage, lying on his back while playing guitar and emitting his trademark howl. Ray and Marvin Kitna got up and danced a couple of times with girls Kitna knew. Roy was content to sit still and take in the show.

After the boys had been there for about an hour, a girl came over to their table, pulled up a chair and sat down between Roy and Ray.

“Hi,” she said to Roy. “My name's Esmeraldina. What's yours?”

“Roy.”

“You got beautiful hair, Roy. You mind do I touch it?”

“No.”

Esmeraldina ran the fingers of her right hand through Roy's wavy black hair.

“You Eyetalian?” she asked him. “You an Eyetalian boy, huh?”

Roy shook his head. “I'm mostly Irish,” he said.

“Pretty Eyetalian boy with turquoise eyes.”

Esmeraldina draped her left arm around Roy's shoulders while she played with his hair.

“Just go along with her, Roy,” said Marvin Kitna. “She won't bite.”

“Oh yes, I do,” Esmeraldina said. “I surely do can bite when a particular feelin' comin' on.”

She poured Roy's shot of Beam into his glass of beer and picked up the glass.

“You mind do I take a taste?” she asked Roy.

Roy shook his head no and Esmeraldina drank half of the contents.

“What's that particular feelin' you're talkin' about, Esmeraldina?” asked Roy's cousin.

She grinned, revealing a perfect row of teeth unadorned by metal, and replied, “When a man get under my skin, crawl all up inside so's I can't itch it or see straight. Happens, I ain't responsible for myself, what I do until the feelin' wear off.”

“How long's that take?” asked Marvin Kitna.

“Depends on the man,” Esmeraldina said.

“Like river blindness,” said Roy.

“What's that, honey?”

“A water bug swims in through a person's pores up to their head and makes them go blind.”

Esmeraldina stared for a long moment into Roy's eyes, then she kissed him softly on the mouth.

“I bet you know all kinds of interestin' things, Roy,” she said. “You want to dance with me?”

“Sure.”

Esmeraldina picked up Roy's glass and finished off the shot and beer before they headed to the dance floor. Jimmie “Fast Fingers” Dawkins' “All for Business” was playing on the jukebox. She pressed her skinny body hard against Roy's and wrapped her arms around his back. Esmeraldina nudged him gently around in response to the slow blues. Roy guessed that Esmeraldina was in her early twenties but he didn't want to ask for fear she would in turn ask him how old he was and he did not want to have to lie.

“How old are you, Roy?”

“Old enough to be here,” he said.

“You pretty sharp. Sharp and pretty.”

“You're very pretty yourself, Esmeraldina.”

After the record ended, Esmeraldina took Roy by the hand and led him out of the club. It was cold outside, too cold to be in the street without a coat. Roy had left his on the back of his chair at the table. Esmeraldina did not have one, either; she shivered in her short-sleeve blouse as she walked him to the right, around the corner onto Lake Street. A few yards ahead of them, two men, both wearing short-brimmed hats, were arguing with one another. One of them pulled a gun from a pocket and shot the other man in the forehead. The man who had been shot flew off his feet backwards as if he'd been caught off balance by Sugar Ray Robinson's quick left hook. The shooter ran and disappeared under the el tracks. Roy looked at the man on the ground: his eyes were open and his short-brim was still on his head.

“Bad timin',” Esmeraldina said. “We'd best go back indoors.”

She and Roy hurried into Rita's Can't Take It With You, where Esmeraldina let go of him and lost herself in the crowd. Roy went over to the table where he'd been sitting with Ray and Marvin Kitna. They weren't there. Roy looked for them on the dance floor but he didn't see them. He took his jacket off the back of his chair and put it on. The music coming from the jukebox was very loud but Roy could hear a police siren. He saw Malcolm and Durrell, the security guards, go out the front door followed by Earl, one of the bartenders, and several customers. Roy ducked out, too, turned left and walked as fast as he could away from Lake Street. He could still see the dead man with a nickel-sized hole above the bridge of his nose.

“How could his hat have stayed on?” Roy said.