The Orange Curtain (30 page)

They were sitting on the front bench seat of Rogelio’s chopped and lowered 1950 Mercury, with the grill changed to a set of chromed vertical bars like shark’s teeth. It was just about the coolest car she’d ever seen.

“What color you going to make it?” she asked. It was all gray primer now.

“I thought candy-apple maroon. You know, that lacquer paint that makes it look about a foot deep.”

“Yeah, way cool. And tuck and roll seats?”

“I can get that cheap in TJ, though everybody says they put rotting cabbage inside the tuck and rolls. But that’s lies. TJ does good work if you know where to go.”

“Of course it does. Do you know what the fight in there is about?”

“Oh, yeah. Your dad’s gonna really be in the doghouse a while I think. He came back looking even more beat up than last time, but he told Mar some Viet Nam woman he met on the job down there and he had a thing for a while. He came back to say he was sorry and he wants to work on staying with her, if she’ll let him. Mar’s a bit put out, you can bet.”

“I can guess. My dad does have a little trouble sometimes keeping his pants zipped.”

They both fell silent during a particularly loud bit of yelling from Marlena and something that sounded like glass breaking.

“I guess affairs like that only really happen when other stuff in the relationship is going wrong,” Maeve said. “But I don’t remember him doing it to mom. He just got drunk and introverted when he lost his job. Then she started seeing some guy at work who was nice to her and that flipped dad out.”

“Yeah, it’s worse when women do it.”

“It is
not!
”

“Well, you know, you can get pregnant with somebody else’s baby.”

“That’s not what you meant, though. You think women have to be faithful while men get to go gallivanting around all they want.”

He thought about it a moment. “Yeah, I guess that’s not fair, is it?”

“No way.”

“Wanna make out a bit?” He looked away shyly and fondled the chrome slam-shifter set in the floor.

“Rocky, I’m only thirteen and three-quarters.”

“No kidding.
Wow
, I’m sorry, Maeve. Honest, I didn’t know. You seem so old and smart and stuff. And you’re, you know, like, growing pretty
big
.”

“Thanks for the offer. You’re a really sweet guy.”

Something else in the house broke and they both winced.

“What do you think of my aunt?” he asked.

“I think she’s really really super. Her heart is right up there in front for everybody who needs it.”

Rogelio nodded. “Yeah. She had a bad time, too. You got to ask her about it sometime. One of these days I’m gonna get some carnales together and go down and pound on some biker trash who really dissed her bad when she was young.”

“Is violence the answer to everything?”

“No, but sometimes you just gotta stand up to be a man.”

“So that’s what being a man is.”

He ran his hands around the tiny steering wheel which was made of welded, chromed chain links. “Yeah, I think so. So what do you think of your dad?”

“What do you think of him?” she countered.

“He’s a good guy to me, really listens to me. To tell the truth, Aunt Mar is hard to handle sometimes and he’s pretty good with her. What do you think?”

She leaned back in the seat and rolled her head a bit. “Well, outside of this zipper problem that he seems to have when some woman makes herself available, I’m pretty crazy about him. Do you know who King Canute was?”

“Huh-uh.”

“It’s an old legend. This old English king loved giving orders and he went down to the ocean one day and told the tide to stop coming in. I always picture Canute in a big gold throne out in the breakers, screaming at the waves to stay back.”

“That’s your dad?”

“Sort of. It’s like this bad tide is coming in and hurting people, including dad. And he’s like a rock standing up out there in the ocean where the tide is going past and kind of yelling at it to stop. He’s not stopping much of it, but he’s not giving up either.”

Rogelio chuckled. “Yeah, I can see that. Your old man tried so hard to get me a computer operator job and I just couldn’t do it.”

“I’ll bet you can do it.”

He grimaced. “I tried but it scared me.”

“Could I help you study up for it?”

He glanced over at her, surprised.

“We can make out a bit, if you want,” she added. “But you can only touch my breast through my bra.”