Anyone But You (2 page)

The sprinklers and fire alarm both suddenly ceased—
way to go, Dad!
I offered Mr. Smith a tentative smile.

“Uh … refill on your water?” The soggy and crippled food critic was obviously in no mood for my lame attempt at humor, so I hugged my knees and fixed my gaze on the wall to my left. Nearly all of the treasured photos on our walls had been pelted with water, and I couldn’t help but hope the flimsy frames were barriers enough to preserve them. I used the edge of my apron to wipe the glass of the photo nearest me, which hung two feet above the floorboard, too low to have ever caught my attention before. Two boys stared back at me from the black-and-white image. They were standing in front of an old-fashioned pushcart with their arms slung over each other’s shoulders. Wearing identical white aprons and newsboy caps, they couldn’t have been older than thirteen. What struck me most was the fact that the young men were grinning from ear to ear. Senseless as it seemed, these unknown faces angered me. How dare they smile so callously in the face of my family’s ruin! In the lower right-hand corner of the picture, faint pencil markings scribbled in the white border told me when and where the image was taken:
The Chicago World’s Fair, 1933.

T
WELVE YEARS OLD WAS TOO YOUNG TO DIE—
especially on some thrill ride at the Chicago World’s Fair. You simply couldn’t trust that the guy in charge of the safety switch had an IQ greater than a sock monkey. Or what if the engineers had cheaped out on nongalvanized screws, and the whole tin contraption was
this close
to crumbling like day-old biscotti? I was justifiably cautious. Benny had a simpler way of describing it.

“Sissy.”

“I am not going up on that thing. You can’t make me.” Craning my neck, I squinted into the sun. Rivulets of sweat, prompted either by the June heat or my sudden panic, threatened to spill down my neck into my collar. I swiped my skinny elbow across my brow, attempting to mop up.

“C’mon, Nick,” Benny said. “You’re breaking my heart!”

“You promised me a naked lady, not a date with certain death.”

“We’ll see Sally in all her peach-bottomed glory soon enough, but she doesn’t go on stage for hours. Besides, I promise you,
this
view will be just as good as
that
one. Well, almost, anyway. Trust me on this.”

Trust me on this.
I’d heard that line a million times from Benny and recognized it as a harbinger for trouble. My skeptical eyes scrutinized the glass and aluminum “rocket car” trams suspended high above the two man-made lagoons perched on the edge of Lake Michigan. Snaking toward the entrance to the Sky Ride’s elevator was a crowd eager to plunk down twenty-five cents to catch the million-dollar view of the colossal fair’s expansive Midway, home to all of the expo’s rides and amusements.

“We shouldn’t waste five dimes on this,” I said.

“Oh, does the widdle baby need to wide the ponies instead?” I could feel my cheeks flush.

“If we spend it all now, we’ll have nothing left for tonight.”

“We’ve got enough to spare. Thanks to me.”

I’d been a neurotic namby-pamby this morning when Benny suggested we hop the turnstiles to avoid the fair’s fifty-cent admission, but I had to hand it to him. My clammy palms aside, our stealth maneuver—which he’d been crowing about all day—meant we actually had money in our pockets to splurge on a few amusements, the main attraction (for us, at least) being the ample-bosomed goddess, Sally Rand. Her fan dances could make even the devil himself blush, or so it was said. Benny and I had only heard secondhand accounts of her mesmerizing undulations behind strategically placed ostrich feathers. Buoyed by our wanton imaginings of this burlesque beauty, we had weeks ago devised a plan to see her here in the midst of our city’s epic extravaganza. Having scraped together what small change I could, I was racked with guilt. I knew better than to spend money on something so unsaintly, considering the minor miracles it took for Ma to pay our landlord each month. But that wasn’t the only thing eating away at me this hot afternoon. While I’d never admit it to Benny, the prospect of our first girlie show had my stomach all in knots. For starters, two knobby-kneed kids were guaranteed to get booted from a burlesque show quicker than you could say “hoochie-coochie.” I pictured my pal and I being hauled away by the scruff of our necks, some hard-assed cop notifying our disgraced parents. When I suggested this likely outcome, Benny merely offered up another customary “trust me,” leaving my anxiety at an all-time high.

Because here’s the thing: I
did
trust Benny. If he said he could get us into the show, then he would. Using his wit, his charm, or the face old ladies could never seem to resist pinching, he’d get us in all right—maybe even front and center. And that’s what ultimately had me feeling shakier than a two-legged table: Me, at a striptease. You may as well drop an elephant onto an iceberg. I’d been trying to tell myself it was a triumphant rite of passage. I was a healthy,
almost-
adolescent male whose only real experience with the human female form had been pictures of the Venus de Milo and clinical images from our life sciences seventh-grade textbook. So to see a real naked lady with an actual head and complete appendages? A month ago, I was throwing around all kinds of twelve-year-old bravado at the prospect, but now that it seemed a certainty, I was feeling the jitters. On top of that, going twenty-three stories skyward in what amounted to a giant sardine container wouldn’t help quell my growing nausea. I racked my brain for more reasons we should move along to some other amusement when Benny, as if reading my thoughts, shoved an index finger in each of his ears.

“I’m deaf to your excuses, so don’t even start. Let’s get in line.” I inched into the queue with him, but didn’t intend on staying.

“You go ahead, Benito,” I said, clearing my throat after I spoke. “I’ll just wait down here for you. Get a soda or something.”

“Grow some hair on your chest, already,” he said with a sigh, as if he sported anything beyond peach fuzz. “You’re in the best clothes you own. If the worst happens—” He drew a finger across his neck, morbidly. “—at least you’re casket-ready.” He glanced down at the cuffs of my trousers, which hit about an inch too high above my ankles. “Prepared for a flood, too, I’d say.”

“This from the boy who glued cardboard to the soles of his shoes this morning.”

“Lay off.” Benny looked genuinely irked by this reminder of how hard up our families were. “Someday I’ll be richer than Wrigley. You can say you knew me when.”

If confidence was any indication of success, this was probably true. Still, I scoffed and glanced again at the silver gondolas ferrying passengers back and forth over our heads. Arguing with Benny about the Sky Ride seemed to sum up our friendship in a nutshell. He was the one with his head perpetually in the clouds, while I was the grounded one. His antics were audacious, dazzling, and larger than life, whereas doorknobs and telephone directories were more intriguing than yours truly.

“Hey, you two jokers, inch forward!” A brusque, hairy, and well-nourished man in a fedora hat and rolled-up shirtsleeves had gotten in line behind us. Benny turned around pointedly and cocked his head at a forty-five degree angle, his unwarranted moxie on full display. As I cringed, Benny leaned closer to me, then said loud enough for the man to overhear:

“Looks like ‘The Human Ape’ escaped from the
Ripley’s Believe It or Not!
show, Nicky. Who’da thunk a steady diet of bananas could account for such massive girth?” I clenched my jaw and glared at Benny.
Stop before you get us both killed.

“What? We’re
kids.
What can he do to us?”

“Move it or split,” the man muttered, apparently unruffled by my friend’s obnoxious remarks.

“Tarzan’s getting impatient,” Benny said. “Listen, Nick, forget the ride. This is
our
day. The only thing I want is for me and you to root up some memories we can tell our grandkids about some day. Minus the part about seeing naked bazoombas.”

“Really? Because I can just picture bouncing those future tots on my knee: ‘Kids, you should have seen the size of ’em!’”

“All I’m saying is, if you really don’t want to do the Sky Ride, then we don’t do it.”

I was grateful to my pal for this out, but his kindness only left me more conflicted. I hated being the damper on his devil-may-care zest for life. He never held it against me, but I knew I was dead weight around his ankle rather than a proper sidekick. Why couldn’t I have been more like him? Why did I have to be so
me
?

“I’m really sorry, Ben.”

“Nah, cut it out.” He gave my ear a flick—his way of being conciliatory. “I thought it might be good for you, that’s all.”

“Good for me how?” I wondered, rubbing absentmindedly at the sting he’d inflicted.

“I just thought being up there, getting to see how big the world really looks, you might … oh, never mind.”

“I might what?”

“You might wake up, I guess.”

I furrowed my brow, not wanting to admit that I knew exactly what he was talking about. “Aw, hell, Nicky,” Benny continued. “You need to open your eyes. Live a little. Are you going to spend the rest of your life assuming the worst? Because the worst doesn’t always happen. It usually doesn’t, in fact. We’re kids, we should be having fun.”

“I’m
fine
with fun,” I said. “I’m just not fine with
this
fun.” Benny glanced off down the Midway and shoved his hands in his pockets.

“When you’re ninety-years old, you’ll regret what you didn’t do more than what you did do. But never mind, what do I know?” he said, shrugging off our tension with a smile. “This is the World’s Fair! We came and we saw, now let’s conquer! We’ve still got to check out the trained fleas!”

At that moment, shrill feminine giggles erupted from the line of people waiting to ascend the Sky Ride elevators, and we both homed in on a group of young girls, indistinguishable in their straw cloche hats and pretty summer dresses. Naked ladies terrified me, admittedly. But fully clothed girls? Sure, I was interested. This group was worthy of a whistle (though I prayed Benny would refrain).

“Or,” Benny murmured, nudging me in the ribs, “we could take Cupid’s wings and fly?” My pal had a way of sweeping people up in his vortex, and though I was more resistant than most, his powers of suggestion were hard to resist. After all, Benny provided one thing I wasn’t usually able to drum up on my own: the sense that something exhilarating could (and just might) happen. With his little lecture still gnawing at me, I reached into my front pocket and rustled for change.

“I’ll go,” I relented. “But you owe me.”

We stepped into the elevator a scant few minutes later, and then I felt my stomach lurch as we ascended. Had I just made a decision I’d live to regret?

• • •

From my seat on the lower level of the gondola, I contemplated a screw in the ceiling, refusing to shift my gaze to the windows that surrounded me on all sides. I could hear Benny about six feet away, his face pasted to the glass as he prattled on excitedly. By my count, he had uttered the phrase “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” fourteen times since we’d been up here. The theme of the World’s Fair was “A Century of Progress,” which seemed a misnomer if ever there was one. Just because you couldn’t see the bread lines and shantytowns from way up here didn’t mean they’d ceased to exist. I gripped my thighs nervously with my hands, trying to tell myself this was just like the ‘L’ train—only
a lot more
elevated.

“Aren’t you going to check out the view?” The voice coming from my right-hand side was high pitched yet delicate—encouragement enough for me to dart my eyes in her direction. I quickly glanced back at the ceiling, hoping my cheeks weren’t as red as they felt. I remembered her from the gaggle of girls we’d seen standing in line. “Kittens,” Benny had called them, as if he was some society gigolo. She’d been decidedly shorter than the rest of the group. From the glimpse I’d just gotten, she appeared to be around my age, and she was cute, in a Norman Rockwell kind of way. Cascading from under her summer hat were two ponytails the color of brass. They hung in perfectly sculpted ringlets, like springs. She had rosy cheeks and lips that looked poised to say something precocious. I sat like a complete clod, too paralyzed to make eye contact, let alone speak.

“Why’d you even come up here if you don’t want to look?” Her question almost sounded like a challenge.

“Why aren’t
you
looking?” I asked. She sighed and fiddled with a small pearl stud in her earlobe.

“My mutton-headed big sister and her friends told me to scram.” She rolled her eyes and nodded her head toward the right side of the gondola, where five older girls were oohing and ahhing at the vista. “I’m pretending to sulk.”

“Doesn’t look like they care.”

“Yeah, well, they’re annoyed with me. At least, Trudy is. She’s mad that Mother forced her to let me tag along. As if I want to hang out with
her
. So, you afraid of heights or something?”

I could hear Benny still running his mouth on the other side of the gondola and realized it was rare to find any girl, let alone a cute one, conversing with me instead of my Casanova counterpart. Moments like this? Well, they just didn’t happen to me.

“I guess I’m a little afraid of heights,” I replied after a moment or two, instantly mortified that those words had escaped my mouth. Why not just lift up my shirt and advertise my yellow belly?

“Our insides
would
turn to pudding if we fell,” she confirmed, unfazed by her own dire observation.

“Uh-huh,” I stammered, sounding about as eloquent as Frankenstein’s monster.

As quickly as it had begun, our conversation came to a standstill. I knew it was my turn to volley back a retort, but my brain and tongue felt stuck in drying cement. Wishing I could psychically beg, borrow, or steal some witty remark from Benny, to whom they came as naturally as breathing, I glanced again at the girl. I wanted to tell her that her eyes were the same color as the blue hydrangeas in our window box at home, but that would have been totally cornball. With the image of “blood and guts pudding” ricocheting in my brain, I was rendered mute.