The Shadow Box (35 page)

The others at the table looked to Michael as if asking him to deal with this. Michael tried. He said his friend
meant nothing by it and this is scaring the girls. Give us a break, let us finish our pizza and leave. He asked
if he could buy them a beer. The drunker of the two
jabbed a finger against Michael's chest and leaned close
to his face.

”I live here, faggot,” he said. “You don't come to my
town and tell me what to do.” The other spit beer on
Michael's shoes.

The two other students kicked back their chairs. They
asked Michael if he needed any help. He saw in their eyes
that they hoped he'd say no. The owner stepped from
behind the counter with a wooden mallet in his hand. “Sit
down,” he said, “or take it outside.” Michael asked ev
eryone to relax. He suggested that just he and the factory
workers step into the parking lot and see if they can't
settle this peacefully.

He had both men down, and unable to continue, within
less than a minute. But the owner had called the police.
All three were arrested, charged with disturbing the peace,
and one had to be hospitalized for a possible ruptured
spleen. Michael was also charged with battery.

He might well have been expelled had not his Uncle
Jake called in a favor from a congressman who had close ties with Father Hesburgh, then president of Notre Dame.
All charges were subsequently dropped.

Soon afterward, he flew home for the Thanksgiving hol
iday. Moon met his flight at La Guardia Airport. They
took the shuttle bus to the far end of the long-term parking
lot. The sun had set. Michael asked him why he parked
so far away. Moon watched the bus drive off, then
knocked him to the ground.

He waited for Michael's head to clear. He said that Big
Jake had not asked him to do this. It was his own idea.
He had decided that Michael was in need of a lesson.

Michael got up off the ground twice. The third time, he
could not. As he tried to catch his breath—his face un
marked, however—Moon patiently repeated what he
thought he'd made clear earlier.

”I taught you to handle yourself,” he said, “so you
wouldn't get hurt. It wasn't so you could bust up some
klepto over a damned typewriter.”

“Moon
...
he took more than that . . . from a lot of scared kids.”

“Yeah, but you didn't know that then. I also didn't
teach you so you could take out two pieces of redneck
shit who hate you for gettin' what they'll never have.
What's
rule
one,
Michael?''

“Walk away. Try to walk away.”

“Did you?”

“Moon, I tried.”

“Not hard enough. What's rule two?”

“Never ask anyone to step outside.”

“That's rule three. Rule two is no Lone Ranger crap if
you can help it. Way I heard, there was people in the
pizza place who would have backed you.”

Michael hesitated, then nodded.

“But you wanted to show off. Wanted them coeds to
see what a tough grown-up man Michael Fallon is.”

Fallon grimaced. “It
...
wasn't that.”

Moon ignored the denial. “So now the whole school
knows. Is that good or bad, Michael?”

“Moon
...
I know. It was stupid.”

“Next guy you cross,” Moon told him, “he's gonna
say, ‘That Fallon’ s one tough son of a bitch. Got all these
moves. Maybe I better get me a billy club, maybe a gun,
come up behind him.’ You want people thinkin' like
that, Michael?”

“No.”

“When you say to some dude, ‘Let's step outside,’ he
knows you don't want to dance. He has any sense, he'll lay a bottle over your head right then and there.”

Michael said nothing.

“Even if he don't, you just gave away your edge and,
Mikey, you ain't good enough to do that. What you're
good enough for is to push most people around. That one
of your goals in life?”

“Moon
...
for Pete's
sake. That's two
fights since I
was twelve years old. I'm not a bully.”

“See you don't turn into one, Michael. See you don't
start to like it.”

He already didn't like it.

He wished Moon had never taught him all those things.
Anyway, what was the point of learning them if he was
going to get hammered by Moon every time he put them
to use?

Still, he knew that Moon was right. “If you have to do
it,” Moon always said, “do it quick, do it private, and
then walk away. Don't get a reputation. They take forever
to shake. And the surest way to get dead, in jail, or hit from behind is to have a reputation.”

It's also the surest way to have no close friends. He'd
learned, over the past few months, that notoriety was one thing and popularity was another. It seemed as if every
classmate he liked, or wanted to like, was suddenly keep
ing his or her distance. Those he did attract always
seemed, well, damaged in some way.

Especially the girls. A couple of them, who had paid
no special notice before, now found him exciting. They
said so, straight out. He could have taken them to bed in
a minute. He didn't for two reasons. First, they struck him
as the kind of girls who would have joined the Manson
family. The second reason was more honest. He was afraid
to even try. They might have laughed at him.

To hear all his male classmates talk, Michael Fallon had
to be the only virgin in the entire freshman class at Notre Dame. It was the one area of his education that both Moon
and Uncle Jake had neglected. Growing up Catholic didn't
make it any easier. When you grow up Catholic, with all
that emphasis on impure thoughts and monkish morals,
you end up feeling that robbery, arson, and even murder
must be lesser mortal sins than sex before marriage. That,
right there, he had often thought, probably
e
xplains the
Mafia.

In time, his notoriety faded. But Moon was right. It
never quite went away, even though he never had another
fight during his four years at Notre Dame. Unless you'd
count two bench-clearing brawls during football games.
But those were fun and essentially harmless. You couldn't
get hurt unless you were dumb enough to pull off your
helmet or to throw a punch at a face mask.

Yes, he'd gone out for the team because Uncle Jake
was right. Everyone always asked. He made it as a walk-
on in his sophomore year. He was never a starter but he
did make the traveling squad. Played in almost every
game. Not for long, but he played.

He had also joined the karate club for just one semester.
Long enough to know a few moves in case Moon decided
he needed more humility. It was a waste of time. Moon
would have clobbered the best of them. Not if they were
ready for him, necessarily, but that was the point. They
would not have been ready.

He was still a virgin until the beginning of his sopho
more year. And then he met Mary Beth. She was a fresh
man at St. Mary's.

Mary Beth, as it turned out, was a virgin as well but
she arrived in South Bend determined to get over that
hurdle as quickly as possible. It was she, actually, who
picked him to be her first partner. She knew none of that
other stuff about him. She simply liked him at first meeting and assumed, after two or three dates, that he would proba
bly know what he was doing.

He admitted the truth. She laughed, then quickly did the
same. She suggested that they learn together. For the next
several months, they did.

“When we break up . . .” she said to him one day.

“Who says we will?”

“Come oh, Mike. I'm only a freshman.”

“Well anyway, what?”

“After your next girl and my next guy, let's sneak off
and do it once more, okay? I mean, just to swap notes.”

You had to know Mary Beth.

To her, it made perfect sense to make this pact now because later you would have to call it two-timing. Doing
it in advance made this a one-time prior commitment that
would probably be of benefit to everyone concerned.

They did break up—when she thought it was time—and
they did meet again. Just once
. It was
at an airport motel before
she fiew back home to Tampa for the summer.

He wasn't sure how much he'd learned during their time
apart. He'd been with one other freshman and one South
Bend waitress. Enough to teach him that different women
have very different needs and that not all of them see sex
as a thing that should necessarily be enjoyed. Or that the
enjoyment should be mutual.

Mary Beth certainly did. She didn't do quickies. She
didn't do backseats or locked bathrooms. Mary Beth only
made love. She did it slowly, considerately, and, above
all, exuberantly. She did it in a way that could not be a
sin.
Fucking
might be a sin. Making someone feel special was not.

She never came back to St. Mary's. She decided, over
the summer, that she hated the cold weather and had for
gotten how much she loved and missed her parents. She
transferred to Florida State. They exchanged letters and
phone calls for a while but he never saw her again. Still,
she was, and would always be, a very special memory.