A light comes on in the apartment over the door, and
then the curtains in one of the windows are pulled aside and he sees
a woman looking down at the car. She lifts her hand to her mouth and
then Peter sees the point of her cigarette glow red. The smoke rises
like another curtain.
His uncle appears behind her. The boy sees him in
silhouette, almost as a shadow. He sees him touch her.
The woman turns then and disappears into the room. In
a moment, two men come out of the bar, arguing, one of them holding a
bottle.
"I told you a hundred fucking times," says
the one without the bottle. "How many fucking times I got to
tell you?"
The other one does not answer. He stands in one place
on the sidewalk, claiming it.
"You hear me? I ast you a fucking question,
John. I ast you a fucking question, you say the answer, right?"
The man without the bottle moves closer as he says
that, his right hand is a fist hidden just behind his leg, as if it
were a weapon. The man with the bottle waits; and in the car, Peter
waits too.
"I’m givin’ you one more chance," says
the man without the bottle. As he says that, he takes a step closer,
into the place on the sidewalk the other one has claimed. He lifts
his hands, as if to sing.
"You’re my brother," he says, "so
I’m giving you one more chance . . ."
And as he says that, the bottle arcs in the air and
comes down across the side of his face. He staggers and turns halfway
around, as if to walk away, but then turns back, lowers his head and
charges.
When the door leading to the apartment opens, the two
men are lying on the sidewalk, locked into each other’s headlocks,
hitting each other without leverage, biting each other . . .
The woman stops for a moment to watch them. She is
wearing a housecoat and hairy slippers, there is a cigarette between
her lingers, lipstick marks on the filter. Peter sees every detail.
The men yell and roll one way, then another.
"Youse two again," she says, and walks
around their bodies and then crosses the street. She opens the back
door without looking inside, and he smells her perfume even before
she is in the car. She does not look at him until she has closed the
door. Black specks of mascara hang in her eyelashes and there is
lipstick on her teeth.
"You smoke?" she says.
He shakes his head no.
She puts the cigarette against her lips and as she
pulls the smoke out, her face glows. She moves the cigarette away and
then, using the same hand, she reaches across Peter’s chest and
touches the far side of his neck, pulling him. Her fingers are cold
and the heat of the cigarette is somewhere under his ear. He allows
himself to be pulled.
He smells her perfume, and then her hair spray, and
then her lipstick. Her hair is stiff against his face. Her eyes move
across his and then he feels her mouth pressing against his, and then
feels her tongue in his mouth. Then her tongue is gone, and in the
hole that leaves she blows the smoke in her chest into him. She moves
away slowly, straight back, looking into his eyes.
She is smiling. "So now you smoke," she
says.
She puts a hand on his chest and pushes him back
until his head is resting in the corner between the seat and the
window. "What else don’t you do?"
He shakes his head, not knowing what to answer. On
the periphery of his vision, he sees the two men still lying on the
sidewalk. They are fighting quietly now, without words. Her housecoat
falls open and he sees bruises, and then the tuft of hair between her
legs; he notices the color of her fingernails.
Her hand moves up his leg, touching his penis through
his pants, then opening his zipper.
"Jesus,"
she says when she has it out, "you’re bigger’n your uncle
already."
He stares at her hand, the painted fingernails. The
feel of her cool hand. A bead of liquid appears at the mouth of his
penis, then breaks and slides down the side. She lowers her face into
his line of vision.
"Don’t tell him I said that, okay‘?"
she says.
He shakes his head no.
"That’s the kind of thing might piss him off,"
she says. She shakes her head. "You never know with Phil .... "
She leans back until her hair spreads out across the
seat and then, still holding him by the penis, she lifts her
legs over his shoulders and pulls him down on top of her.
"Your uncle’s scary when he gets mad,"
she says.
She moves his penis until he feels it touching
something wet. "You know what that is?" she says, teasing
him now.
He nods his head.
"That’s a nice wet pussy," she says.
"Your uncle said you didn’t know what a pussy was, wanted to
start you off with the best there is."
She watches him a moment, waiting. He doesn’t know
for what. "Push," she says finally.
And
he pushes in, and she closes her eyes.
And someplace behind him, he feels his uncle
watching.
Peter looks down at himself in the dark, and sees the
glistening of moisture on his penis as it moves back and forth into
the opening in this woman; he realizes this is the place his uncle
puts his penis too.
And he closes his eyes, holding that idea, and the
idea of his uncle somewhere behind, watching, and pushes as deep as
he can into this hole.
Poisoning him.
That is his thought.
"Jesus," he
hears her say, "you’re a natural .... "
* * *
S
he leaves the car with no
more ceremony than she entered it. She closes her housecoat when he
has finished, fits her feet into her slippers, and gets out. He
watches her cross the street and then, before she reaches the door of
her apartment, she kicks at the two men still lying on the sidewalk.
"Would youse two move it somewhere else for
once?" she says. And then she steps over them, walks through the
unlocked door, and is gone.
Peter steps outside the car, feeling the cool air on
his face. The men lie motionless on the sidewalk. He hears music from
inside the bar. He is tired and a disappointment settles over him. He
wonders if that is really the best pussy there is. He doesn’t think
so, it struck him as ordinary.
He stumbles onto the idea that all women may think
their pussies are the best. How would they know?
It is another half hour before his uncle appears in
the doorway. He hikes his pants as he steps onto the sidewalk, and
stops halfway across the street to light his cigar. Peter gets back
into the car to wait for him.
The smell of her is everywhere. Her perfume, her hair
spray, her pussy. It stirs him, he cannot understand why. It seems
possible to him now that pussy is better before and after than it is
when you’ve got a penis in it.
He wonders if that is the secret.
His uncle smiles at him a moment—waiting for some
sign, as if there is an agreement to seal. He reaches across the seat
and I rubs the top of Peter’s head. Peter feels the weight of his
rings. His uncle puts the key in the ignition and starts the engine.
"So," he says, "I suppose now you want
to drive my car." Peter doesn’t answer. His uncle laughs and
pulls into the street.
"My first piece of ass," he says a few
minutes later, "I was fourteen years old. How do you like that?"
The boy shakes his head.
"Went to a house up on Diamond Street and caught
a dose first time out of the gate." His uncle drives quietly a
moment, smiling, remembering it. The streetlights pass over his face
and throw shadows across the pockmarks.
"I always said my kids wouldn’t have to go to
a whorehouse to find out about pussy."
He looks at Peter then in a strange way. "That’s
what people want for their kids," he says, including Peter, "a
better life than they had themselves."
The car is quiet a few blocks.
They miss the light at Broad, and somehow, in the
absence of motion, the silence between them is agonizing. Somehow in
the absence of motion, there is nothing there in the car but the man
and the boy, and the thing the man has done to him.
"You’re a quiet kid, you know that?" his
uncle says.
Peter can’t think of anything to say; he says
nothing.
"When I got pussy the first time, I couldn’t
stop talking about it," he says. He waits for Peter to answer.
The light changes, the boy’s uncle does not move to cross the
intersection. He sits, looking at the boy, waiting for him to say
something. Getting mad. The boy searches for words and there aren’t
any there.
A horn blows behind them, his uncle ignores it.
"Sometimes, I think I brought you two up all wrong," he
says. "That you don’t do nobody no favors making things easy."
The horn blows again, and his uncle slams the car’s
transmission into park and steps outside, leaving the door open, and
stands in the headlights of the car behind them. The horn goes
silent, and his uncle gets back inside.
The traffic light turns red, and his uncle drives
through the intersection.
"What you like," he says, calmer now,
almost back to the house, "is to know where somebody stands."
Peter looks at him and knows what he is asking.
"I mean, I don’t care if a guy’s quiet or
loud, as long as I know whose side he’s on." His uncle looks
at him again, making it a question.
Peter doesn’t answer.
"Things get tense, the guy you got to think
about isn’t your enemy, it’s the guy you don’t know if he’s
your enemy." He looks at Peter. "I’m telling you this for
your own good," he says. "That’s the guy that gets you,
the traitor."
"I’m no traitor," Peter says.
His uncle stops the car in front of the house. His
cigar has gone out and he lights it, cupping his hands. The smoke
rises to the ceiling, looking for a way out. His uncle smiles.
"I never thought you
was," he says.
* * *
A
month later, late at
night, the house begins to fill. There are men from the roofer’s
union, who work for Peter’s uncle, and there are Italians. The
young ones who have come to the house before to complain about the
old man Constantine.
Who want to take what he has away from him, but don’t
have the balls to try.
The first tap at the front door wakes Peter up. He
lies still, staring at the ceiling, and listens to the voices
downstairs.
"It’s done," the man says.
"No fuck-ups?" his uncle says.
"No fuck-ups."
In a moment there is another noise at the door, and
Peter edges out of bed and walks barefoot over the cool floor to a
spot near the top of the stairs to listen. He presses his back into
the wall, hearing the breath come in and out of his mouth. "No
fuck-ups?" one of the Italians asks.
"No, everything’s good," his uncle says.
Another knock at the door.
His cousin comes out into the hallway then, and makes
his way down to the place where Peter is standing. He smells of
cigarettes and hair oil.
"They was outside the place on Twelfth Street,"
someone says downstairs. "Never seen a thing."
"What about the others?" his uncle says.
"The others ain’t a problem," the Italian
says.
"Jesus," Michael whispers. Peter turns to
look at him. "They did Constantine."
"Bullshit," Peter says.
He is telling the truth, though. Michael makes up
things he would like to be true, but this time Peter sees it’s
happened. His cousin smiles at him in the dark. His voice is
trembling and happy. "We did Constantine."
Peter hears his uncle’s voice again and it is
trembling too, but in a different way.
"What do you mean, they ain’t a problem,"
he says.
"They ain’t a problem," the Italian says.
"They’re all old men. Let them move to Arizona and buy green
pants for the golf course."
The room downstairs is suddenly quiet. Peter feels
his cousin smiling at him in the dark.
"What did I tell you?" he whispers.
"The deal’s still the same .... " his
uncle says.
"Nothing’s changed."
But something has changed. Peter hears it.
"We run our business, you run yours," his
uncle says. "Nobody comes around wanting to be consultants."
It is quiet again.
"As far as we’re concerned," the Italian
says.
"What about the old guys?" his uncle says.
"They’re out of it too, right? You’l1 take care of that."
"Shit, they’re a hundred years old."
"What’s that mean, they’re a hundred years
old?"
"It means you did us a favor with Constantine,
we leave you alone," the Italian says, getting angry. "It
don’t mean we hold your fucking hand. You got a problem with the
old guys, you take care of it yourself. It’s your business."