The Wanderers (22 page)

Things were going bad, and he was returning to his old ways, smoking two packs a day, taking eight-hour naps, not eating, finding secret meanings in every new song he heard. Buddy looked up at the Pepsi clock. Ten to ten. Fifteen minutes to go, then he could walk in five minutes late like he did every Friday night, just to show her how cool a man could be.

When Buddy came to the door he started to kiss Despie, but she turned her head, and he wound up lipping her ear. "Whadya wanna do t'night?" He frowned.

She shrugged. "I don' care."

"You wanna go to the Duke?"

"If you wanna go."

"You wanna stay home?"

"If you wanna stay home we'll stay home."

"You wanna go to Nathan's?"

"I said I don't care, you deaf?"

They drove to Nathan's in silence. Under death-white overheads Buddy counted a number of flies that took off and landed on their small Formica table. Despie took a piss. They each drank a grape soda, walked once around the pinball machines, and headed home.

Turning the car into the Sprain Parkway, Buddy floored the accelerator, one eye on the road, one eye on Despie. She yawned and took a cigarette from his shirt pocket.

"Who do you think you are, Steve McQueen?"

Embarrassed, Buddy slowed down. "What's wit' you?" he asked.

"What's wit' you?" she countered.

"Nothin'. What's wit' you?"

She ignored him, turned up the radio very loud, and stared out the window, moving her head and legs in time to a song they both hated.

"I rolled two-o-five tonight."

Nothing.

"Joey rolled two-twenty."

Exhaled smoke ricocheted off the window to Buddy's side. "What's wit' you, you got the rag on or somethin'?"

She turned abruptly toward him, her face glowing with rage. "You wish!"

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

She turned up the radio so loud that Buddy couldn't recognize the songs anymore.

At two in the morning Buddy sat drunk and alone in the dark, hunched over the kitchen table—his head buried in the crook of his elbow, a cigarette dangling between relaxed fingers. He burned a hole in his mother's oilcloth. The insect volume of a weak transistor radio wafted through the kitchen. He thought of Humphrey Bogart in "Casablanca" sitting at that table alone in the middle of the night getting drunk and flipping out over Ingrid Bergman. There were no more ice cubes. He poured a fourth Scotch in a milk glass, added half as much cold water from the sink, and resumed his posture at the table. He couldn't think of the song that made Humphrey Bogart crack up. He tried to figure out what his and Despie's song was. He once dedicated Smokey Robinson's "You've Really Got a Hold on Me" to Despie over the radio. That was it Their song. He thought of the painful sweetness in Smokey Robinson's voice. He took a big gulp of Scotch and almost vomited. The phone rang.

"Yeah?"

"What you mean, yeah."

"Despie!"

"I'm pissed as shit at you."

"For what?" The Scotch curled his teeth and made his ears burn.

"You don't give a shit about me!"

"Whada you talkin' about?"

"Forget it."

"Forget what?"

"None of your goddamn business!"

She slammed down the phone. Buddy lurched forward. He couldn't believe he could get so drunk by himself. He took another gulp. The phone rang again. Buddy fell down and banged his head. "Ah fuck ... yeah?" He lay on the floor, pain like an ice pick right over his eyes.

"You wouldn't marry me even if I killed myself."

"What?"

"I thought so."

"What's goin' on with you?"

"You don't know what true love is." Buddy's eyes were walking around somewhere in the back of his head. "You don't know what true love is ... do you?"

"What?" His eyes came back but now the kitchen was walking around.

"Do you want me to tell you what true love means to me?"

"What?"

"True love means standing by the person you love through thick and thin."

"What time is it?"

"And do you know what true love means especially to a woman? Do you know what a real sign of true love is in a woman? True love in a woman means wanting to have the baby of the man she loves."

"Yeah I know. Is it really three-thirty?" The numbers on the sunburst clock were holding hands.

"And do you know what true love in a man is? True love in a man is
wanting
that woman who loves him to have his baby. Don't you feel that's what true love is? Huh?"

"What? Yeah." Buddy realized that a sure-fire way of vomiting was thinking about raspberry ice cream coated with chocolate.

"Do you love me, Buddy? I mean do you feel true love for me? Because I really feel true love for you, and I just would like to know if you feel true love for me?"

"Yeah." He contemplated sticking a finger down his throat and ending it all.

"I'm glad to hear that, Buddy. I'm very glad to hear that..."

Buddy hallucinated a six-foot-high raspberry sundae and tasted bile on the back of his tongue. "...because I'm pregnant."

"Uh-huh..."

"I'm very glad to hear that, because I'd probably kill myself right after I hung up if you weren't going to stand by me, and if we weren't going to get married. But now I can go to sleep."

"Sleep."

"I love you, Buddy."

"Sleep."

Buddy awoke in the morning to find himself curled on top of the washing machine. The phone was somewhere in the washing machine making siren whoops. He groped for the receiver and grabbed a fistful of puke. Recoiling he leaped to the floor and did a small dance of pain as his head and lower back competed for attention. The clock said seven-thirty. The Wilson's Scotch bottle was empty, and the milk glass lay busted on the linoleum. The transistor radio played on in its minute scratchy voice. The toilet flushed. Fuck and double fuck. He recognized his mother's cough. He bent down to pick up the empty bottle. Somebody punched him in the forehead and down he went, sitting on the floor, his back against the washing machine.

"G'morning, honey ... what're you doing up so early?" Buddy's mother shuffled into the kitchen, the tail end of a cigarette between her lips, a fresh one in her hand.

"I don't feel so good." Buddy slipped the empty bottle behind his back as his mother lit the new cigarette with the smoldering filter of the old one.

"You want some coffee?" She wrinkled her nose. "Jesus, what a stink!"

Buddy hoisted himself to his feet, kicked the Scotch bottle behind the refrigerator, and tried to close the washing machine. It wouldn't close completely because the receiver was still laying in the vomit and the cord kept the top ajar.

She put on a pot of coffee and turned around to look at Buddy. His shirt and pants had folds in them like an accordion. Everything was splotched with puke. "How was your date with what's-her-name, honey?"

The question filled Buddy with a vague but nagging dread. Something happened last night, or he had a real drag of a dream—something about something about Despie. "It was good."

"I'm glad. I gotta get dressed. I'm going to Helen's mother's funeral." She put out the second cigarette and shuffled out of the room, leaving the coffee to burn.

Buddy daintily picked out the receiver from the washing machine, wiped it off, and put it back on the hook. He turned off the coffee and started the washing machine—to wash out the puke.

Buddy's mother came back into the kitchen in a bra and girdle. "You wanna zip me up, honey?" she asked, her back to him.

"Zip you up what?"

She stared at him blankly for a second, then raised her eyebrows, opened her mouth in a small o, and lifted her fingers to her lips. "Jesus!" she giggled and slapped Buddy weakly on the shoulder. "I forgot to put my dress on." She exited again. Buddy flash-focused on something Despie said about true babies last night or something.

A splash of dropped keys in the hallway signaled the return of Buddy's father from his job as night manager of Times Square transient hotels. The washing machine made noises like a Colonial Sand & Stone concrete mixer as it hit the rinse cycle. His mother started belting out opera in a voice like a singing saw. The door slammed.

"Who the hell is doin' a wash?" Vito Borsalino came in, throwing his travel bag at Buddy's head. His eyes were puffy red disks. "You doin' a wash? You doin' a wash?" He advanced on Buddy, slapping him around the ears. "Your father comes home he gotta listen to a fuckin' washin' machine? Hah? Hah?" Buddy retreated into the dinette under the steady barrage of slaps. "You gonna do me in? You gonna do me in?" Suddenly he stopped as he picked up the siren of his wife's singing over the roar of his own voice and the din of the washing machine.

"AHM THE BARBA AH SA-VI-I-I-I-LLE, AHM THE BARBA AH SA-VI- I- I- I -I-LLE, AHM THE BARBA AH SA-VI-I-I-LLE."

The tiny motor that ran the two facial ticks in Vito's face clicked into high gear. The corner of his left eye started dancing, the right corner of his mouth started jerking up and down.

"AHM THE BARBA AH SA-VI-I-I-I-LLE, AHM THE BARBA AH SA-VI-I-I-I-LLE."

Turning from his son he tiptoed into the bedroom.

"AHM THE BARBA AH SA-VI-I-I-I-LLE, AHM THE, EEEAAGH!"

Buddy heard furniture crash, slaps and snarls echo through the foyer, a grunt from Vito followed by a sharp intake of breath from his mother, the wet slap of a fist in contact with soft flesh, a crack that was either wood or bone, and then heavy breathing.

"You wanna do me in? You wanna do me in, bitch? Hah? Hah? Hah, bitch?"

"NNNFF ... NNNFFF ... NNNNNFF ..."

"Sing! Sing! You rotten
cunt!
"

"NNNNGGG ... NNNNNGG."

Buddy ran to the bedroom and saw his mother in a head-lock, trapped between the beefy forearm and rib cage of his father. Vito's bald head was carmine. A thin rope of saliva looped from his mother's lips to her leg. Vito had an ashtray in his free hand, and he raised it to throw at Buddy. "Get outta here, you sonovabitchbastad!" The washing machine started making noises like a jet taking off as it hit Final Spin. "Shut that fuckin' thing off!" He flung the ashtray in Buddy's general direction, but Buddy was back in the kitchen frantically pulling and pushing knobs and dials and plugs until the washing machine shuddered, kicked, and died.

"NNNFFF! NNNNGG! NNNNFF!"

"Sing, bitch! I wancha to sing!"

Did she say she was pregnant?!!

Buddy gasped and fell back against the washing machine as the whole conversation ran through his head like an electronic news bulletin above Times Square. He staggered into the living room ignoring the sounds of his wrestling parents. He sat back in the armchair amid the din and pondered the future. Only spies and niggers got abortions, so that was out, besides, Despie would go to hell along with the dead baby and probably him too, so the only thing to do was get married, and besides, he really loved Despie, and they would get married anyway sooner or later, and this way they wouldn't have to sneak around when they wanted to fuck, but pregnant women can't fuck anyway. At least he would be out of this shit-dump and away from these two asswipes, and it wasn't like he couldn't hang around with the guys anymore, and now at least he wouldn't have to jerk off, and at least he wasn't sterile like Big George, and he could get the fuck out of fucking Leander Tully and get a job. He really loved Despie like nobody's business, and the wedding would be boss, and Tommy Tooky could get the Zircons, and maybe they could get them cheap and rent out the dance floor at the Duke. Nobody would have to know she was knocked up—besides love was love. SHADDUP! SHADDUP! Buddy leapt to his feet, ran into the bedroom, and screamed at his parents. They were rolling around pummeline each other. They stopped in midroll, staring in animal dumbness at their son.

Buddy clenched his teeth and his fists. His breathing became asthmatic. He grabbed one of the remaining lamps in the room and threw it against the wall over their heads. They flattened against the floor.

"Whadya crazy?" his father shouted. But Buddy was gone.

***

Buddy sat in a hardback chair in the middle of the living room. Despie and her weeping mother sat huddled together in a corner of the couch against the wall. Al Carabella paced up and down in front of Buddy. Buddy held his knees and rocked slightly. Every time he looked at Despie her face was four slits of reproach. Her mother's mouth was contorted into such a convulsion of silent grief that Buddy found it hard to believe that all he'd done was bang her daughter.

"You got a job?" Al Carabella barked. He was short, red, bald, and thick like Buddy's father. He rocked on the balls of bis feet as if any second he would explode into violence and go for Buddy's throat.

"Nah, I ain't graduated yet."

A sneer. "Awright. I'll getcha into the printers. You twenny-one? You gotta be twenny-one."

"I ain't eighteen yet."

"Jesus Christ ... you goddamn kids ... Jesus Christ." Despie's mother started weeping, and Despie hugged her. "You got a place to live?"

"Nah ... I..."

"Jesus Christ ... no job ... no house ... nothin' here." All tapped Buddy's forehead. "It's all down here." He grabbed Buddy's crotch and squeezed. Buddy yelped and almost fell over backward. "Jesus Christ ... you goddamn kids ... awright ... you live in the basement ... we got wood paneling." Buddy nodded dumbly. "Despie, take your mother and go upstairs now. I wanna talk to him."

Despie almost carried her mother past Buddy, who avoided her murderous glances.

"Awright, Borsalino, I wanna have a man-to-man talk." He pulled up a chair in the middle of the living room almost touching Buddy's knees. "Look, I ain't a hard guy. I was your age once an' I used to put 'em away like there was no tomorrow. But one thing ... I never did it with nobody's daughter." He stared at Buddy and stabbed him in the chest with a cigar-like finger. Buddy stared at the ground. "Not only did you do it wit'
my
daughter, but you knocked her up, you dumb wop." Buddy blinked hard, trying not to cry. "Awright, like I said, I ain't a hard guy an' it takes two to tango an' all that bullshit. For all I know, she's been bangin' away since junior high school, an' you're the first jerk to get caught. It don't make no difference to me. Now, the thing is you knocked her up so you gotta pay the price an' do the right thing."