Choir Boy (10 page)

“Her mom’s outta town for a few weeks. No mom, no friends. She may actually be talking without vetting. I’m hoping for un-vetted bliss.”

Wilson ran back into the congregation, which voided through the cathedral’s front door like a clogged sink. Canon Moosehead stood by the entrance shaking hands and explaining his sermon, even to people who tried to escape him. Wilson pushed through the throng waving the church patch on his blazer like a police badge. “Choir business, coming through.” Berry gave up and ran back to the side exit. He reached the front of the cathedral just as Wilson pushed out onto the steps. Wilson shook his head and raised his hands.

Berry saw the hem of Lisa’s floral skirt around the cathedral corner and heard Maura’s cackle. He grabbed Wilson’s arm and led him.

“Hey Berry,” said Lisa when the two boys approached. She smiled at Berry and he tried to label it knowing or innocent? “I met a friend of yours.” Lisa’s lean body stirred under loose cotton.

“Wilson, this is Maura,” Berry said. “She and I, uh . . .”

“Berry and I do volunteer work together.” Maura took Wilson’s hand in two fingers and a thumb. Her blonde locks caught the sunlight just as she drew Wilson’s eyes into her own. Berry heard Wilson’s breath falter. Then Lisa said hi to Wilson almost as an afterthought, and his attention swung back to her.

“Berry, your cathedral is so fun,” said Maura, slurping church coffee. “I’ll never look at a naked man nailed to a phallus the same way again. That sermon, especially, so trip-py. And you gotta love that holy diva shit you all wear.”

Wilson tried to talk to Lisa but she stared at Berry. This made Berry dizzy and channeled voltage through his guts.

“So do you mind if Lisa comes to lunch with us?” Maura asked Berry. “I was really enjoying hanging with her.”

“I don’t have to get home for a couple hours,” Lisa explained.

“Uh, sure,” Berry said. “Can Wilson come?”

All the Sunday brunch spots burst with church crowds. The four of them ended up at the Convincing Rye, a deli with wooden high chairs and tiny round tables. Families clustered all around the two boys in navy blue jackets, the peony-covered girl and the beauty in neon yellow.

Berry didn’t understand why Lisa was looking at him and ignoring Wilson. He worried that she was trying to fit him into whatever fantastic story Maura had told, and hunted for something else to occupy her mind. “I read up on that guy you mentioned, Roland whatsisname,” he said.

“Montreux,” Lisa said.

“He sounds majorly Koresh.”

Lisa stared at the cartoon Hasidim on the wall holding a plate of knishes. She didn’t answer Berry. The robed Jew had a long beard and the caption “Oy! Gott in Bagel.” Wilson heard the silence and talked to Lisa about sports cars.

Berry turned to Maura. “So ... do you think you’ll come back to church sometime?”

“Oh sure.” Maura glowed. “I feel a very warm energy there.”

Lisa cut off Wilson’s turbo engine rant. “So what kind of charity work do you do, Berry?”

“I kind of work with poor street women.” Berry looked at Maura to make sure he’d given the right answer.

“That’s just so heroic and amazing,” said Lisa.

“I’ve worked with street women too,” said Wilson. “Just the other day, I gave someone half a sandwich.”

Lisa ignored Wilson. “Your skin is so soft, Berry. What do you use?”

“I wash. I mean, I use pads and stuff.”

“I wash too,” said Wilson.

“I just bet you do,” said Maura, brushing Wilson’s chin with one finger.

Berry saw sandwiches on the counter and jumped off his chair without waiting for an announcement. He whisked the plastic tray back to their table and started unwrapping wax paper.

“This looks weird,” Wilson said of a beet-red meat within the folds of cabbage and bread.

“You stole my tongue!” a woman screamed from in front of the counter. Berry rushed back to the counter with the tray he’d grabbed and apologized piteously. By then, his group’s actual sandwiches were ready.

Maura somehow managed to eat a pastrami sandwich daintily and flirt with Wilson. She seemed fascinated by Wilson’s rambling about cars and youthful death. She stared into Wilson’s eyes, straw seductive in her mouth, while he explained how to ensure a deadly car crash instead of just a paralytic one.

Berry only realized halfway through his reuben that Maura might be distracting Wilson as a favor to Lisa. “You sounded good today,” Lisa told Berry.

“The choir’s been working hard,” Berry said. He wished he’d ordered more food so he could get up and fetch it. “We’re a suped-up high-octane singing machine. Wilson would probably have a better engine metaphor.”

“It’s okay,” Lisa said.

Berry bit his sandwich and looked up just in time to see Lisa giving him a smile that came from everywhere in her lithe face. Her tied-back blonde hair, agate eyes, and slender mouth made something more of that smile. Berry almost swallowed without chewing.

“My dad’s a poet,” Wilson told Maura. “He works at an ad agency, but that’s not what he does. You understand. Like my mom’s a sculptor even though she does medical billing. Nobody does what they really do.”

“I do what I do, but I don’t let anybody know I do it,” Maura said.

“Are you really going to be student body president at your school?” Berry asked Lisa.

“I go to a small school,” Lisa said. She ate potato salad one chunk at a time.

“Anyone can make a fast car,” Wilson told Maura. “It’s all about control and handling.”

“Oh yes. Handling is everything.” Maura ran a hand along her daffodil hip and Wilson swallowed.

“My mom says I’m too young to hang out with boys,” Lisa said. “I guess it’s okay with a chaperone.”

“And this is practically religious because we came from church,” Berry said.

After lunch, Lisa borrowed Maura’s cell phone and called for her ride home. Soon after, the Lexus pulled up outside the Convincing Rye and honked. Lisa kissed Berry on the cheek, hugged Maura, and waved goodbye at Wilson. Then she ran and got in the front of the Lexus next to a stern man in a turtleneck.

“So,” Wilson said to Maura. “Have you got a boyfriend?”

7.

Michael Dukakis and Lloyd Bentsen hit town fleeing technical glitches. Someone hacked the mainframe for their party convention. Mailings went nowhere. The campaign sputtered. At four in the morning local planning for the Dukakis visit still struggled with grassroots tangles. Marco met a firebrand girl when they both reached for the last half cup of coffee in the predawn craze. “You drink it,” Judy told Marco. “I’ll feed off your energy.”

After Dukakis came and went, Marco and Judy brunched together, their first or second date depending on what they counted.

Marco described a Cold War courtship to Berry. He and Judy had discussed Kremlinology for hours at the dawn of their love. It had turned competitive. Looking only at the latest translation of Pravda, which of them could tell more about the state of the Politburo and the Soviet power structure? Both Marco and Judy had fussed about geopolitics, Marco in a big-picture way, Judy in a detailed wonky way. What if Perestroika melted down or the cowboy stumbled on the button on his way out? These questions had dominated Marco’s flirtation with Judy. Before they’d met they’d both been poli-sci junkies and geopolitical wonks. They’d married two years later.

Berry soaked up his parents’ outdated knowledge scraps. He considered Kremlinology a metaphor; the world had divided into two halves, facing each other across a wall. They had resorted to the crudest divination to gloss the images of Dynasty and Dallas, Pravda and Tass. Now it was harder to make clear divisions. Berry wanted to be a Kremlinologist when he grew up.

Rat stared at Berry as he chattered about Uzbek unrest and problems with the ninth five-year plan. Berry realized all the Swans were giving him “nerd” faces too. He shut up.

“I think that’s the first time you’ve ever said multiple sentences in my social studies class,” Rat said. “I’m glad someone here can remember the weird old days.” He spent the rest of the class talking about Sputnik and the Cuban Missile Crisis. “We really thought we were going to be nuclear wintering on the slopes of Hell,” he said almost fondly. Berry felt his interest in school evaporating again. He was getting used to the idea that excitement could easily melt.

Friday evening after choir practice Wilson and Berry went out with Maura. They went back to the karaoke bar where Berry and Maura had met the first time. When Wilson went to the bathroom, Maura told Berry he should wear women’s clothes when they went out together. “I only wish I could pass as easy as you,” she said. “You bleach that mustache, you’ll look like a girl no problem.”

“Why would I want to look like a girl?”

“You have no idea how much fun you can have. It’s like movie star fascination. People just swoon. I could take you to the Booby Hatch and they’d love you. It’s even better than people thinking you’re grown thanks to that fake ID of yours. I mean, I wouldn’t want you to go pro or nothing, but if you ever did you’d make so much money. But you’re too young, you’re jail bait and all.”

Berry didn’t understand why he had to become so many fraudulent things just to stay one true thing a little longer.

Wilson came back and Maura changed the subject. “I mean, I could get the operation as soon as I scare up a mess of greenbacks, but then my earning potential would vanish up my new hole. Men don’t want a post-op the same as a pre-op.” Maura laughed and rocked the table. Wilson lost his place in the song book. He planned to sing “I Want Your Sex.”

“Not to mention it’s easy to get a botched job,” Maura said. “I’d hate to end up with labia that detach themselves without warning and fly across the room like a drunken butterfly, see what I mean?” Berry and Wilson both nodded, though Berry could tell Wilson didn’t get it. Maura looked earnestly into Wilson’s wide blue eyes. Wilson sipped his beer nervously, playing with his striped choir tie with his other hand.

“Oh sure,” Wilson said. “I can totally get with that.” Berry wasn’t sure if he should explain to Wilson what Maura was talking about. But Berry wasn’t a hundred percent sure he knew the details himself, and he didn’t want to weird Wilson out again.

“I mean, it’s something you only do once, right? And most people don’t even do it once. It’s something where you’ll totally want the absolute best job possible. You want a Cadillac, not a Yugo.”

Wilson perked up. Here was a subject he knew about. “Well, yeah. I mean, people always talk about the Cadillac as a great car. But if you’re talking raw engine power, you want something with a few more cylinders, along the lines of a Lamborghini or Corvette. Actually
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Maura interrupted by putting her hand on Wilson’s in a delicate gesture of confiding. “Wilson, I gotta know. If I get the operation, will you still. . . like me afterwards? Will you still think I’m sexy and interesting? I know Berry here will accept me no matter what.”

“Sure,” Wilson said. “I mean, you’ll still be able to walk and everything, right?”

“I sure hope so. If I couldn’t walk, that’d sure be a shitty operation.”

“Well, then I don’t see what’s the big deal.”

Maura suddenly leaned over and kissed Wilson. Not on the cheek, but on the lips. No tongue, but still. Berry watched Wilson’s eyes widen, then close.

“Oh Wilson,” Maura said. “You’re so sweet. You have no idea how many guys lose interest in girls like me once we no longer have that ‘something extra.’”

Wilson promised on a stack of beer coasters that he’d adore Maura no matter how many operations she had or what kind. Maura glowed. Later, Maura took Berry and Wilson back downtown to wait for their separate buses, then left. Wilson leaned over and said to Berry, “I don’t understand why she’s making such a big deal about an appendectomy anyway. ”

Berry shrugged. “Some people are sentimental about organs,” he said. He decided it was best if Wilson never learned the truth about Maura.

Berry got home at 9:47 PM, terrified he’d find a scowling mom on the phone with the cops. Instead Berry found Marco in his big recliner shredding a fat book a few pages at a time.

“Oh hey.” Marco glanced up at Berry. “Good day at school? Hey, would you mind stepping out for a few minutes, then come back in? Say fifteen minutes. I’m in the middle of something. Just, you know, walk around the building a few times.”

Berry went downstairs into the October chill, walked for a few minutes and bought a hot chocolate at the cafe on the corner with the last of his allowance. He saw a couple just going out for the evening and imagined all the two-fisted hard-drinking adventures they were set to have. After he’d finished the chocolate, Berry trudged back up to his apartment. Marco wasn’t around any more. Berry looked in the trash to see what Marco had been shredding. The trash was empty, but in a tied-off plastic bag behind the sofabed, Berry found a bundle of scraps including a cover that had read, “Divorce Made Easy.”

Berry knew about divorce from his classmates and choir -mates. It sounded like a vacation, only with more shouting, frequenter bathroom breaks, and better food. Especially if your parents shared custody, the result tended to be more toys than rules.

The next day was Saturday, but Maura had to work. “I make my own hours,” she said. “But Saturday’s my best night.”

Berry saw his mom twice over the weekend, so apparently she still lived there. She worked long hours and slept most of the time she was home, so Berry could never learn much from her seldom appearances. She was like a Soviet Premier.

Berry wondered if “jail bait” was like the lumps of food they put into roach motels to seduce bugs in. He pictured himself hanging in the doorway to the county jail, wearing a white robe like his choir surplice. Maybe they’d lash his hands and feet to the corners of the doorway. Then when some dumb roachy person came to grab Berry, he or she would fall through a trap door into the darkest cell. Everything about that fantasy excited Berry: the bondage, inspiring a doomed desire, even luring someone into shame. But even as he stroked himself at the thought of it, it troubled him. It seemed like the flipside of his true role, enticing people to God. When terror shook the breath out of Berry, as it did in the middle of the night and a few times a day, the idea of becoming a mockery scared Berry as much as people finding out about the pills.