Swim That Rock (23 page)

“No, not all of it.”

He begins to move the bills with the tip of a pen like he’s afraid to leave his fingerprints on them. “How much am I looking at here? What, six grand?”

“Fifty-seven hundred and fourteen dollars.”

“You’re walking around with fifty-seven hundred dollars in your pocket at what — fifteen, sixteen years old?”

“Fourteen.”

“Fourteen?” He looks over at the guy by the door. “Hedge, you hear that — Christ, he’s gonna be bigger than you someday.”

“Doubt that,” Hedge says, patting his belly.

“Where’d you get all this?” Vito looks at me.

“Does it matter?” I’m starting to feel that buzzing feeling spread through my body.

Vito looks at Hedge and puts his palms up. “Would you believe the set of coconuts on this kid?” Vito points his finger at me. “Now, you listen to me, you little snot. I’ve been very generous. Your mom hasn’t made a payment in well over six months. You’re lucky to still have that diner.”

The buzzing is in my head now, so loud I can hardly hear him.

“And another thing, if I was a bank I would have repossessed that place months ago. Your dad used to make all his payments on time. What’s the problem? Your mom drinking away all the profits?” He looks to Hedge and they both chuckle.

“My mom doesn’t drink,” I say sharply.

“Well, maybe she should. Probably get herself a new man.”

I explode. Flying through the air, both hands outstretched, my fingers like talons going for his throat. I feel someone grab the back of my pants, and I stop midair and come crashing down on the edge of the desk.
Bang!
I drop to the floor, and I can feel my right eye swelling shut and the warm, wet sensation of blood leaking from my forehead.

“Hedge . . . why’d you do that? He’s just a kid.”

“I didn’t do nuthin’. I just grabbed his belt when he lunged at you.” Hedge lifts me up into a seated position on the floor to inspect the damage to my face.

“Clean him up and get some goddamned ice on that eye.” Vito comes from around the desk and yells out into the bar. “Paul, get a bag of ice in here, quick.”

My eye has totally shut now, and I can feel the swelling clear down to my cheek.

Paul comes running in with a bag of ice and stops short when he sees me on the floor. “What the —”

“Ice, ice.” Hedge is waving his hand impatiently. Paul hands him the bag of ice and backs away toward the door.

“It was an accident. The kid fell over the chair,” Vito says to him. Paul nods and leaves the office, and even through my one eye, I notice a glimmer of doubt on his face.

Hedge grabs my hand, sticks the ice in it, and then presses my palm against my eye. “Twenty minutes on, ten minutes off. Got it?”

I nod as cold waves immediately start to numb my face and hand. Vito moves to the chair in front of his desk and leans in close to me.

“That wasn’t nice, kid.” He steals a glance at the open door and talks to me in a harsh whisper, putting his finger inches from my nose. “I don’t give a crap who your father was. You and your mom owe me forty-three hundred dollars by the thirty-first, or I’m taking that diner, understand?”

I nod silently.

“Good, I’m glad we’ve got that straight.” Vito slaps me gently on the cheek, and I want to bite his fingers off. “Hell, at least I can turn it into something that’ll make a profit.” He gets up and grabs his jacket off the wall and heads out the door.

Hedge lifts me up to a standing position as easily as if I were made of straw. My knees give out and he catches me.

“Steady there, tiger,” Hedge says.

Vito yells over his shoulder. “Paul, give Hedge a hand with the kid.”

Paul comes in and throws one of my arms over his shoulder, takes me from Hedge, and guides me to the door.

“You’re a little wobbly, that’s all. You’ll be all right.” He looks at my eye. “That’ll go down tomorrow. I’ve had a hundred of those.”

When he gets me to the door, I drop the ice and break into a run. I’m dazed and wobbling. I must look like I’m drunk.

I stop beneath a streetlamp in front of the liquor store and open my eyelid, exposing my eye to the light. The brightness burns, so I guess I’m not blind in that eye. My other eye is tearing, and it takes me a second to get my bearings. I start to jog down Water Street toward home.

My entire body is shaking as I move down the street, and in my head I’m playing out a hundred different scenarios that all end with me punching Vito so hard in the face that my hand comes out the other side like the way it happens in a cartoon. Each time I imagine it, the vision becomes goofier. By the time I get to the Riptide, I’m imagining I have these giant quahogs for hands and I’m batting his head back and forth like one of those blow-up punching dolls that keeps wobbling upright no matter how hard you hit it.

I’m laughing to myself as I open the screen door to the kitchen and step inside. Robin and my mom are there. My mom has her car keys in her hand. She drops them to the floor, runs over, and pulls me in so tight I can hardly breathe.

“Oh, thank God.”

“It’s okay, Mom.” My voice is muffled in her hair.

She pulls away and twists my face into the light. “What happened to you? We were worried sick. Dave Becker came by to check on you hours ago. He said you started in from the beach at the same time he did.”

“I’ll get some ice,” Robin says, grabbing a dishtowel from the counter as my mom leads me into the restaurant like a Seeing Eye dog.

“How did this happen? Did you get into a fight?”

“No, nothing like that.”

Robin comes back and hands me the dishtowel filled with ice. “Twenty minutes on . . .”

“And ten minutes off, I know,” I say, taking the ice and holding it to my face.

Outside, a cop car pulls up to the front and Robin unlocks the door. The cop, who I recognize as Sergeant Justy, gets out of his car and pokes his head inside. “So you found him? He’s okay?”

I hide my face behind the dishtowel and give him the thumbs-up sign.

“He’s okay.” My mother waves him off. “Thanks, Ralph.”

Robin and my mom are all smiles at Sergeant Justy as he gets back into his car and pulls away.

Then they both turn on me.

“So now we want some answers, buster,” Robin says.

“Tell us what’s going on, Jake.” My mom has her hand on my shoulder, and her eyes are pleading.

So I tell them how I worked the beach in Gene’s boat and how Tommy was there and how we did really good and made almost twenty-seven hundred dollars.

“And then you went to the Italian-American Club, didn’t you?” My mom’s hand goes up in front of her mouth.

“I thought I could convince Vito to give us some more time.”

“
He did this to you?
I’m going to kill that son of a . . .”

“No, Mom, it’s not like that. He didn’t do anything. It was an accident. I was such an Unco, I fell over his chair and smacked my head on his desk.” I’m pleading with her to calm down.

She grabs my chin between her thumb and forefinger and turns my head to face her. “You swear to me those guys didn’t touch a hair on your head. You swear to me, Jake Cole.”

“I swear, Mom. I fell.”

“You pull a stunt like that again, and I’ll bust the other eye,” Robin says, heading back to the front door and turning the lock.

My mom pulls me into her arms, and I rest my head on her shoulder. “It’s okay now. It’s over, Jake.” She starts rocking me slowly, and I just want to sleep right here. I feel myself drifting off, and the next thing I know, Robin and my mom are helping me up the stairs.

I climb into the tiny bed and I’m gone.

I force my good eye open and stare at my alarm clock through the crust and film of a hard night’s sleep.

3:45.

I am not sure if it is a.m. or p.m., but the sun shining through my window nudges me out of my haze. I feel like I could sleep through the night, but I know my mom, Darcy, and Robin have been working hard getting ready for the cabaret, and I should probably get downstairs and help out. The problem is, I feel like I’ve been run over by a tractor trailer. As I swing my legs over the side of the bed, my feet drop to the floor like anchors. My hands are clenched together as if they are still holding the rake, and I’m afraid to look at them. Searing-hot pain shoots up each arm as I work my fingers open. There are smudges of blood on the sheets. I’m not sure if it’s from my blistered hands or the cut above my eye.

I’m a mess.

After taking inventory of the damage to my body, I take a hot shower. The water in the bottom of the tub is a mixture of mud, salt, sweat, and blood. I watch in a trance as it swirls down the drain. I dress and head downstairs.

Mom, Darcy, and Robin are running around, setting up everything. They have Christmas lights strung from the ceiling. The tables and booths have white cloths over them with candles stuck into old mayonnaise jars filled with sand.

“Afternoon, sleepyhead.” Darcy zips past me, shaking some paper streamers in front of my face. “Wow, you look . . . you don’t look so good.”

“The last twenty-four hours have been a little rough.” A humongous understatement, but I don’t want to be a bummer right now because they all look really excited about this cabaret thing.

“How are you doing?” My mom comes rushing over and touches my face tenderly.

“I’m okay.”

“So what do you think, Jake?” she asks, surveying the room.

“It looks nice. Festive. What can I do to help?”

“Well,” she says, clapping her hands together, “I need you to run over to Tom Brennan’s and pick up the lobsters. He donated fifty lobsters for tonight; isn’t that great? Take the wheelbarrow. And when you get back, I need you to help build the stage for Robin.”

“Stage?” I look over at the pile of wood in the corner.

“Of course. She’s gotta have a stage. This is her big debut.” My mom smiles at Robin as if Robin were her daughter. “Look, I even had the jukebox fixed, and Angelo from across the street lent us his sound system.”

I must have a depressed look on my face because my mom pulls me over to one of the stools, and as I sit, she takes hold of my shoulders and looks me right in the eyes.

“Jake, I know this is all a little over-the-top, and it’s probably a silly idea, and maybe I’m crazy for thinking we are going to raise enough money tonight to keep this place, but at least we can go out with a bang, right? What I am trying to say is, let’s just have fun tonight. It’s a party.” She pulls me into a hug, and I can feel her tears on my cheek. “Oh, Jake, I know how hard you worked to save this place, and I know how much it means to you, how much your dad means to you. He would be so proud of you right now.” She pulls back and runs her fingers through my hair. “I am so proud of you. You’re the best son a mom could ever have.”

I don’t want to get all mushy with my mom, especially with Darcy there, so I get up to leave. “I’ll go get those lobsters now, but I don’t know how to build a stage.”

“I don’t need a stage. I’ll probably sing only a couple of songs,” Robin says.

“You are going to have a stage, Robin, and I don’t want to hear another word about it,” Mom says, wagging her finger like a conductor. Then she turns to me. “And somebody will help you, Jake, I am sure of it.”

I head out the back door, and I can hear Darcy running after me. I slow down, and she catches up at the side of the house.

“Jake Cole!” she yells out like the principal at our middle school.

“Darcy Green!” I say back to her in a similar tone, but I don’t look up as I empty the rainwater out of the wheelbarrow.

“Tommy said you were amazing out there yesterday.”

“He did?” I glance back, and she’s got her hands stuffed into her pockets.

“Yeah. He came by earlier looking for you, but I told him you were sleeping, which you were, and he told me to tell you that next time,
he
gets to be the captain.”

“He said that?” I laugh.

“So much for the whole
I gotta do this alone
thing, huh?” she says, imitating me from yesterday. “Oh, and he was also blabbering on about this Janna girl that was out there, but he must have been seeing things, right? You told me yourself there weren’t going to be any girls out there.”

“Aw, come on, Darce,” I plead for forgiveness.

“I’m just messing with you.” She laughs. “I actually just wanted to come out and tell you that I’m proud of you too. I heard things didn’t go so well at the Italian Club.” She’s pointing her finger to her eye and staring at mine.

“Yeah, not so good.”

“Bastards.” Darcy kicks some shells on the ground. “How much do you still need?”

“Too much,” I say, walking away from her with the wheelbarrow. As I’m walking, I know it’s wrong, but I can’t face her. I feel shattered.

“Jake?”

“I gotta go.”

Walking over to Tom Brennan’s with the wheelbarrow, I’m totally depressed. There is a hole in my stomach that all the fried-egg sandwiches in the world could never fill.

Getting back to the Riptide with more than a hundred and twenty pounds of lobsters in a wheelbarrow is not easy. I have to stop every fifty feet or so to pick up the escapees. I push the wheelbarrow over the curb in front of Muldoon’s, losing control, and dump half of them onto the sidewalk. A couple guys from inside come out to help.