The Girl Is Trouble (15 page)

“Why did he tell them that?”

“Pride, I guess. He didn’t want to hide who he was.”

“Do you think it would’ve mattered if he hadn’t said anything?” I asked.

“Of course not. And even if it did, it’s offensive, isn’t it? I mean, she’s acting like it’s his fault that they targeted him. Personally, I think he should break up with her.”

I didn’t know Denise very well. She seemed nice enough, but there had to be something off about her if she thought Paul hung the stars and the moon. “You really think this is worth him ending his relationship with her?”

“Eh. She’s whistle bait. She’ll find someone else. And besides, it’s not like they’re going to get married.”

“Because she’s not Jewish?”

“No, because he is.”

I was confused. “Isn’t that what I just said?”

Pearl lowered her voice. “Paul told me her parents don’t know. And that they’d never allow her to see him if they did.”

I probably should’ve been shocked, but after living most of my life on the Upper East Side, the situation struck me as par for the course. It was okay to be a Jew among Jews, but you’d best keep it to yourself in a room full of Protestants.

“Hey, Pearl Harbor,” called a boy to our right. “I hear it’s almost your birthday.”

“Bombs away!” said another boy as he chucked a wad of paper in her direction. It missed its target and fell to the floor.

“Ignore them. So how about we do another stakeout this afternoon?” I said.

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

She stared at the floor, where the paper missile waited to be picked up. “I promised my mom I’d come home right after school.”

“All right. Why don’t I do it by myself then?”

She looked lost for a second. “Why don’t we just take the day off?”

“Michael’s pretty anxious. I don’t think he’d appreciate our taking another day off.”

Her eyes finally left the floor. “It seems silly, though. After what happened to Paul, the note-writer probably wants to lie low for a while.”

“I thought you didn’t think that the notes and what happened to Paul were related.”

“I don’t, but if you didn’t want to get caught, you would probably want people to think that the person writing the notes and the people who beat up Paul were one and the same, right?”

It made sense, I guess, but it seemed like Pearl was making an awful lot of assumptions.

“Maybe tomorrow?” I said.

“Sure. Maybe tomorrow.”

The afternoon passed slowly but uneventfully. I dreaded going home. I couldn’t stomach the thought of being shut out of Pop’s office and passing the evening with nothing to do but obsess over what Mama had done in her final days. I thought about trying to angle a dinner invitation to Pearl’s. After all, it was the third night of Hanukah. It might be nice to celebrate with her and her family.

I waited for her in our usual after-school meeting spot, but she never showed. After ten minutes and no Pearl, I went back into the school and checked the hall where her locker was located. She wasn’t there. I went by the newspaper office and her other haunts, but they, too, proved fruitless. Feeling discouraged, I decided to walk the halls one more time, just in case she hadn’t headed home as quickly as she planned. That’s when I spied her in the upperclassman hallway, pushing a note through the vents of a locker.

CHAPTER

13

PEARL DIDN’T SEE ME.
I doubled back and turned a corner, hugging the wall while I caught my breath. Surely I hadn’t seen what I thought I’d seen. Pearl couldn’t possibly be the one leaving the notes.

Could she?

No. She was just leaving a note for someone completely unrelated to the federation. People did it all the time. Lockers weren’t just places we stashed books, lunches, and gym clothes—they were mailboxes where you deposited notes for friends on your way to your next class.

Except this was the end of the day. A day when she’d begged me not to do the stakeout.

Her footsteps started loud and grew faint as she headed down the hall away from me. She’d been in a hurry, that was clear. Was she worried she was about to get caught?

I was being ridiculous. This was Pearl I was talking about, Pearl who insisted on helping out the federation.

More footsteps sounded. I peeked around the corner and spied Judy Cohen, one of the federation members. I willed her to pick up her pace and walk past the locker I’d just seen Pearl at. No such luck. She paused at the door, spun her combination, and pulled it open. It took her only a second to find the note. She let out an audible gasp and then dropped the piece of paper. It floated to the floor, coming perilously close to her feet. She jumped backward to avoid contact with it.

She looked up the hallway, toward where Pearl had exited. I could tell she was about to look in my direction next, so I receded around the corner, out of sight.

This didn’t make sense. What would Pearl have to gain by leaving the notes? Clearly she didn’t believe what was written in them (just like Mama couldn’t possibly have espoused what Anna claimed she had). Was it revenge for being kicked out of the federation? If so, why drag me into it? Why insist that we help them figure out who was behind the notes if she was the one writing them all along?

I headed out of the building and into the cold, dark day. I didn’t want to go home, but the idea of confronting Pearl was even less inviting to me.

“Iris.”

I turned at the sound of the voice and found Benny standing behind me.

“What are you still doing here?” I asked.

“Detention. You?”

“Tutoring.” Why the lie? Pearl. I already felt like I had to protect her.

“Tell Pearl Harbor thanks for taking care of everything yesterday. Another absence would’ve given me detention until the end of the year. You get those passes?”

“She’s working on it.”

“You look rattled.”

“I’m fine.” I realized how hollow the lie sounded. How could I not be rattled with everything that had been going on? “I mean I have a lot on my mind.”

“Sure, and who could blame you.” He shuffled his feet. One of his shoes had a hole where the leather met the sole. “Where you headed?”

“Home, I guess.”

“You don’t sound too happy about that.”

I shrugged. If anyone knew how unpleasant my home life was these days, it had to be the boy who’d journeyed with me to Yorkville.

“You want to go somewhere for a while?”

With you?
I almost asked before realizing that it would be better to hide my surprise. “Sure. That would be swell.”

*   *   *

WE WENT BACK
to the air-raid shelter. The items we’d used the day before remained where we’d left them. I was surprised no one else used the space, but then I guess if you had the option of being in a nice warm apartment instead of a metal bomb shelter, you’d choose the more permanent residence in a second.

In fact, I was starting to second-guess our decision the minute we arrived. Had it been this cold the day before? Or had I been too upset to notice how I could see my own breath even when the door was closed?

“I have a surprise for you,” said Benny. He pulled a small bottle from his pocket. I thought it might be booze and was trying to think of how to politely decline. He unscrewed the top and, instead of taking a swig, poured it into the top of the Aladdin heater. “Can’t keep it going too long, but it’s something.” Within minutes, the heater began to cough a steady stream of warm air. We both moved toward it until only inches separated us from it.

And each other.

“That’s great. Really great,” I said. “Where did you get it from?” I don’t know why I asked. Probably just to make conversation. But the look on his face made me instantly regret it. “Oh,” I said. He’d stolen it; that was clear.

I’d been told Benny was a thief, that he was no stranger to trouble, but aside from trolling Harlem dance clubs and skipping class, I’d never seen him do anything wrong. It was unsettling to discover that the rumors were true. And, I must confess, for someone like me who had spent most of her life trying to walk the straight and narrow, maybe it was just a little exciting.

“I brought this, too,” he said, pulling a flask from his other pocket. This one was undeniably booze—I could smell it the minute he removed the cap. I’d drunk alcohol only one time before—the first night I went to Harlem—and had gotten in enough trouble with Pop to lose the taste for the stuff for good. But the idea of refusing it now, after responding the way I did to the kerosene, seemed like it would magnify our differences until the inches that separated us became miles. And right then I needed someone in my life that I could be close to.

“Want a tickle?” He offered it to me first and I took it without hesitation. Warmth passed through me, removing the little bit of chill the heater had failed to kill. I took another swig and closed my eyes as the booze took hold of me.

“Better?” he said.

“Warmer.”

“I thought for sure you’d turn it down.”

“I’m not a hair shirt,” I said.

“I didn’t say you were.”

Was he disappointed in me? Maybe I should’ve said no, but after the past twenty-four hours I needed something to get me through the day. “I guess you never really know what someone’s capable of,” I said, echoing Pearl. And how ironic that she’d been the one saying it. Was everyone hiding an awful secret from me?

I returned the flask to Benny and waited for him to partake, but instead of doing so, he replaced the cap and put it in his pocket. “Let me know if you want another swallow.”

“You’re not having any?”

He shook his head. “I don’t touch the stuff.”

“Why not?”

“Because maybe then I won’t turn out like him.”

There was a time when the idea of someone disliking their parents would’ve shocked me. Oh, my spoiled, rich friends sometimes went on about how they couldn’t stand their mothers or fathers, but that was about strict rules, limited allowances, and suffocating expectations. And I knew things would reverse with the next fancy party or expensive gift.

“Do you hate him?” I asked Benny.

“Hate takes too much energy.” He rubbed his hands together. Unlike me, he didn’t have gloves. I hadn’t realized that before. “What about you? If what that woman said is true, would you hate your mother?”

“No,” I said without thinking. How could I hate her? She’d always been good to me. Her sex life and political beliefs had nothing to do with me. “Besides, I know it’s not true. You should’ve seen Mama last Hanukah. You can’t fake that kind of faith.”

His face creased. “She was Jewish?”

“We all are.”

Benny made a little sound that I took to be surprise. Did my being Jewish bother him? I couldn’t tell. And, honestly? I didn’t care. “So why would a Jew go to Yorkville?” he asked.

“She was a German Jew. There was a time when Yorkville was her home.” Could she still have felt that way after the war started, though? It didn’t seem possible. Sixteen years ago, when Pop was courting her, it was a completely different place. Once Hitler came to power, there’d been a concerted effort to push the Jewish businesses out of the neighborhood. It was hardly a place where she would’ve felt welcomed. “And besides, Anna said she was with that man. He must’ve been the reason she went there. I’m pretty sure she was having an affair.”

“But why Yorkville?”

“Maybe he was another German. Or maybe they thought they wouldn’t be recognized there,” I said.

“So she’s having an affair and what? She decides to end it and the man kills her?”

I hadn’t made it that far in my thinking, but I’d read enough accounts of crimes of passion to know that circumstances like these were usually at their root. “It makes sense, right? And then the man tells everyone she was a Nazi to keep the police from investigating what happened.” I waved my glove-clad hands in front of the heater.

Benny took my hand. “You still cold?” he asked.

I was shaking, but it wasn’t from the temperature. “A little.”

His other hand joined his first, making a sandwich of mine. Despite my glove, I could feel his warmth radiating through the wool.

I put my other hand into the mix and let him gather both of them in his hold.

“That better?” he asked.

“Much.” I kept my eyes rooted on our hands, worried that if I looked right at him I’d be too embarrassed to let him continue touching me.

“Hey.”

I looked up at his voice and found him staring at me. Before I could untangle what the look meant, he leaned toward me and kissed me.

It was so much better than that first kiss we’d had weeks before. I’d been tipsy that time, too, and completely taken off guard when he kissed me on the dance floor. This time I was ready to feel his lips on mine, ready when one of his hands left my hold and gently eased into my hair. He tasted like penny candy, Royal Cola, cigarettes, and a flavor I had to imagine was his alone. It shouldn’t have tasted good, yet when he started to pull away, I put a hand on his neck and pulled him back.

His skin on mine, his lips on mine—I tried to memorize the sensation. I had plenty of time. This kiss went on for so long that I felt compelled to open my eyes to make sure I wasn’t boring him.

I found him staring back at me.

“Oh,” I said, and finally released the hold I had on his neck.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing.” We kissed again and this time I didn’t open my eyes and waited for him to be the one to pull away. Heat coursed from my lips to my toes and continued to boil even after he released me. “I’m not cold anymore,” I told him.

“Good.” His hand left my hair and again took hold of my hands.

We returned to silence and I wondered which of us would be the first to break it. I decided I would be the brave one and jumped right in. “What are you thinking about?”

“Did your mom look, you know, Jewish?”

“Huh?” It wasn’t exactly what I was expecting to hear him say.

“I was just thinking how it was in Yorkville the other day. It had to be like that last year, too, right? The way it felt like everyone was watching us. I was just wondering what it had to be like if you were Jewish.”