Enraged, Tommy bent and scrubbed at the dried stain. When Angelo and Papa Tony went out, Mario bent and took the brush from him. “Here,” he said, “I’m sorry. I should’ve been more careful. I’ll clean it afterward, okay? Turn around.”
Tommy turned as Mario dropped the heavy cape over his shoulders. Personal thoughts dropped away as he arranged the loop at his throat. He had learned to relax now, to enjoy the crowd noises as they crossed the ring. A flutter of the dusty wind pulled the ladder away from them, and Papa Tony turned and said briefly, “Wind’s too high, Matt. No triple. Finish with the two-and-a-half.”
Mario, opened his mouth to protest, then shrugged. “Yes, sir.” But he gave Tommy a tiny wink as they stepped off on the platform.
“It’s not the wind that’s too high,” he whispered. “It’s me.”
After each performance, as they were dressing in the rigging truck, Papa Tony always brought up any faults he had noticed. Today he snapped, “Tommy, when Matt is flying, keep your wits about you! The audience is watching him, yes, and you must do nothing to distract their attention from him, but you are not invisible! You must not stand there and let your shoulders slump and your mind go away somewhere else!”
Tommy accepted the criticism meekly and went on hanging up costumes. The others went, but he stayed behind, spreading out Mario’s cape, attacking the lingering stain with a bottle of dry-cleaning fluid.
In the mirror he saw Mario step back inside the truck.
“You shouldn’t use that stuff with the door shut, Tommy—it’s poisonous. Read what it says on the label: Use in well-ventilated place, “
“I didn’t use that much.” Tommy did not look up as he folded the cape and put it into its assigned place. Mario closed the door again, then came and put his hands on Tommy’s shoulders, turning him gently around. In spite of the familiar leap of excitement and anticipation inside him, Tommy pushed him away.
“What’s the matter, Lucky? I wanted to talk.”
“Well, I don’t,” Tommy said. “Save it for Sue-Lynn. You don’t owe me any explanations.”
Mario laughed soundlessly. “My God, the girl didn’t lose any time, did she?”
“Is it true, or isn’t it?”
“Is what true? Sure, I screwed her—she’s been chasing me from here to Halifax.” Mario sounded immensely amused.
“You mean you deliberately—” Words failed him. “You deliberately—”
“Damn right I deliberately,” Mario mocked his tone, still laughing. “I figured I could trust her to have it all over the lot before matinee. That was the easiest lay I ever had.”
“The way I heard it, you were practically engaged.”
Mario chuckled. “Nuts. Sue-Lynn just wants people to know the star flyer would give her a whirl.”
“But how could you—” Bitterly confused, Tommy fell silent.
“Listen, kid,” Mario said, his face darkening, “I don’t know where you got the idea I have to account to you for every damn thing I do.”
Tommy took the folding chair and began to fold it flat. He said, “If you can’t figure out where I got that idea, you’re not very smart.”
“Seems to me you’re the one who’s not very smart. Damn it, kid, you’re old enough to use your head about this kind of thing. All we need—I’ve told you this often enough—is for your folks to hear some of that talk—well, what Little Ann told you she’d heard about me. And you know and I know what that was. There’s no harm in Susan; she’s a nice girl, kind of dumb—”
“Like me,” Tommy said, all his bitterness surfacing.
“Oh, Christ, Lucky—” Mario broke off. Summoning patience, he said, “Mainly, she talks too much. All we’d need would be for your father and mother to hear that stuff and get to thinking about it At worst, your father would shove me in jail—if he didn’t feed me to the cats first—and put you in a reform school. At best—at very, very best—he’d get me fired, and it’s for damn sure you’d never fly with the Santellis again. Is that what you want? Now, come on,” he coaxed, “quit acting like a stupid little kid! Now the girl’s got something else to talk about, and now maybe that particular hunk of gossip will curl up its toes and die once and for all.”
Tommy said stiffly, “Yeah. You’re a very noble, self-sacrificing character. I noticed.”
“Listen!” Mario’s face congested with sudden wrath. “In your own words, if I want to take a girl out, or neck with her, or even screw her, I am damn well not going to get down on my knees and ask you for permission!”
“Fuck the whole circus if you want to, includin’ the camels! See if I care!”
“You watch your language,” Mario said, his voice low and angry. “That kind of talk won’t get you anything but a mouthful of loose teeth!”
“You watch the buttons on your goddamn pants and let me watch out for my own language,” Tommy snarled, beside himself with humiliation and rage. Mario lifted his hand, poised to slap him; Tommy picked up the folding chair. Mario grabbed it and, after a short sharp struggle, wrenched it away. He put it behind him.
“All right, Tom,” he said, gently, “maybe I do have to take that kind of talk from you. I guess you’ve got the right. But if you get in the habit of talking that way, someday you’ll say something like that in front of Angelo or your dad. And when that happens, don’t come crying to me when you start picking up your teeth.” He stopped and swallowed and put down the chair. “Look, you acted kind of funny before the show, so I wanted to come and see if there was something—but okay, if you want to take it this way, okay. Just don’t you hang by your teeth waiting for me to come around and apologize again! Next time you’ll be the one comes crawling!”
“Crawling, hell!” Tommy yelled at him. “You can kiss my ass!”
Mario retorted, with a wicked grin, “Not till you apologize.”
“You filthy—” Tommy sprang at him. Mario sidestepped, grabbed him by the shoulders, and held him away. Tommy tripped him, held him off balance, and they rolled to the floor together. Really angry now, Mario seized a handful of Tommy’s hair and pushed his face into the dirt on the floor of the rigging truck.
“You want a mouthful of filth, I’ll damn well give it to you! And not the way you want it, either!”
Tommy twisted loose. “I’ll make you eat dirt for that, you sonofabitch!” They rolled together, kicking, punching, toward the door of the trailer.
The door burst inward and Angelo stood suddenly silhouetted against the evening sunlight. “Jesus,” he gasped, “what’s with you two? I could hear you yelling all the way down to the bullpen!”
Mario let go of Tommy quickly and said, “I was just working him over—he gave me some fresh talk.”
Simultaneously Tommy said, “I sassed him and he was going to make me apologize, that’s all.” He heard himself and was shocked at the instinct that made them spring to each other’s defense.
“Get up.” Angelo prodded Mario with his foot, manhandled Tommy by his shirt collar. “Beating up on the kid, Matt!”
Tommy squirmed loose. “He wasn’t beating me up,” he protested. “I got fresh with him and he told me not to butt in his business.”
“Yah!” Angelo grunted angry skepticism. “You two. Kiss and scratch. Siamese twins one minute, goddamn dog and cat the next minute, worse than a pair of fairies from that damn fool ballet school of yours!” But he had said it offhand, not meaning it, and Tommy managed to breathe again. “I thought when we left Johnny behind we were through with this kind of stuff. Okay, you brats. Shake hands and make up. You going to behave like little kids, that’s how I’ll treat you. Shame on you both,” he grumbled, “knock-down-and-drag-outs at your age!”
Sheepishly Mario stuck out a hand. “I shouldn’t have said what I said, Tom. Okay?”
Tommy said, just as stiffly, “I shoulda minded my own business like you told me to.”
Angelo surveyed them, frowning. “Damn kids,” he said. “Okay, Tom, get your work finished up and scram.
Matt, your girl friend’s waiting for you out by the grease joint.”
But he stood in the trailer door and watched them go off in opposite directions, still frowning a little.
~o0o~
The blistering heat of Texas gave way to the dry winds of Oklahoma. The season dragged on into its last few weeks. One evening in early September, it was too hot for immediate return to the trailers. The next day was a Sunday layover; the routine of the teardown had not yet begun. Tommy and Mario, mingling idly with the late stragglers on the midway, lingering for the evening cool and drinking iced orange pop, struck up a conversation with two girls who had recognized them as the flying team. He supposed they were eighteen or so, pretty, vacuous-looking girls with frizzed hair standing out, too curly, around identically sharp, pale little faces, dresses much too tight for their rounding figures, and quick, demanding eyes.
It was by no means rare for admiring fans to come around after a performance, to ask foolish or intelligent questions, to try to scrape up acquaintance with the performers. Often there were girls, with shy or bold faces, sometimes with a brother or vaguely hostile escort hovering in the background; Tommy had learned how to banter with them, pleasantly, without antagonizing the background males.
This pair seemed a bit sillier than usual. Amazed, he saw that Mario was turning on the full blaze of his charm for the older of the girls. Taking his cue from Mario (things had been roughly patched up between them; not the old closeness, but at least they were speaking again), Tommy answered the other girl’s foolish questions and countered with offhand remarks. When, to his surprise, Mario touched him on the shoulder and said, “What about it, Tom? Let’s get the car and go out on the town. I could use a beer and a sandwich. You?”
“I have to tell my folks.”
He told his mother that they were going to town with a couple of girls they had met; she listened vaguely while he put on a jacket and tie. Mario had the Santelli car at the gates. Tommy got into the back with one of the girls, while in the front seat the other slid close to Mario, making some inane remark about one-armed drivers.
“What’s your name?” Tommy asked.
“Priscilla. My sister’s Helen.” She did not volunteer their last name or ask his. She slid close and put her arm around his waist. “C’mon, let’s get friendly.”
The girl beside Mario was giving directions. After a time they pulled up in front of a dingy place with an orange neon sign that flashed beer. Tommy felt some slight unease, remembering the last time he had been inside a bar, but as if in answer to some question Mario’s girl said, “It’s okay, they knew us here—they never ask questions,” and they went in.
It was noisy, crowded, and none too clean. They sat in a booth with oilcloth seats, eating hamburgers and drinking beer. Tommy drank his, not liking the taste, trying to keep up his end of the conversation. Priscilla was eighteen, she told him; she and her sister worked in a mill and their father wouldn’t let them make dates. “But we have our fun, you bet,” she snickered. “We never go out with anybody our father knows.”
After finishing his beer Tommy found himself talking more freely. Priscilla hung on his words, and he felt flattered, eager that she shouldn’t compare him unfavorably with Mario. Mario looked handsome and flushed, his blue Western shirt open at the neck, his arm around Helen’s shoulder. He was telling small anecdotes and stories in a way Tommy had never yet heard him talk to an outsider.
How would I know? I never saw him around outsiders. Not till now.
They sat over another round of beer and then left. Mario’s girl told him where to drive, and Tommy was not entirely surprised when Mario stopped the car in a deserted lane.
Priscilla had been snuggling against him since they left the roadhouse; Tommy pulled her closer and kissed her, and she did not protest.
From the front seat he heard murmurs, soft giggles, creaks and rustles, and muted laughter. Priscilla murmured, “Bashful, aren’t you? I like bashful boys. Better than the wolf kind, anyhow.” In the car she seemed somehow warmer, prettier, soft under his hands and his exploring mouth; she did not stop his questing hands as Little Ann had done, merely laughed. The random sounds from the front of the car were mysteriously exciting. He realized, not forming it clearly into words, that he was standing at some kind of crossroads; a confusion of curiosity, resentment, and a kind of hidden spite drove him on. He knew that these were all the wrong reasons for what was happening, felt momentary doubts, then a kind of confused relief; at least he would not be shown up as inadequate or somehow abnormal. The girl giggled at a certain crucial moment and he felt sudden loathing, felt sick and filthy, hating her, hating himself for what he had done. If this was normal, he decided, to hell with it. What had he said? I wouldn’t do it unless I liked somebody. Yeah. Famous last words.
He was silent while the girl straightened herself around, pulling her dress smooth where it had been tucked up under her body, dragging a comb through her hair with a sharp little upward toss of her head at the end of each stroke. He did a little straightening himself, hating the whole fumbling business. It wasn’t worth it, damn it, it just wasn’t worth it!
After a while Mario leaned over the back of the seat and asked, “You kids about ready to get going?”
“Yeah, sure, any time,” Tommy said, hating the smugness in Mario’s voice, hearing it echoed in his own. Priscilla took Tommy’s hand in hers and he endured the hot, dampish touch. The back of Helen’s hair was tumbled all over her head. It had annoyed him when Priscilla combed her hair, but the other girl’s uncombed sweaty neckline disgusted him worse. Her collar was not clean.
Mario started the car. Helen said something to the effect that they probably had a girl in every town.
“Two,” Mario replied cheerily.
“You better let us out around the corner,” Helen said as Mario turned onto the street where she had directed them. Mario complied, then seized Helen and kissed her, a prolonged kiss. Tommy, aware of the necessity and the convention, followed suit. But he could hardly conceal a sigh of relief as the two girls got out.
Mario drove down the street a little way and stopped. “Come up in front, why don’t you?”
“Okay.” Tommy climbed over the seat back. Mario was smiling into the distance, and Tommy said sharply, “Real pleased with yourself, aren’t you?”
“Why, not especially,” Mario said, with that maddening good nature. “I thought you might be, though.” Suddenly he mashed the accelerator to the floor and they took off down the dark street Like a bat out of hell, the motor racing and whining. “God damn them all, damn all the stupid broads in the world!”
Edgy, empty, sick, Tommy shut his eyes. Why, why, why? The rush of wind on his face did nothing to cool it. At last the wind abated a little; Mario had slowed the car. He said at last in an odd, empty voice, “You see, Tom? It doesn’t mean a thing. Not a goddamn thing. Why make such a big deal out of it?” He drove another mile or so without a word. Then he said, not looking at Tommy, “Listen, it’s after midnight. Your parents think you’re with me. My folks think I’m out helling around. If they compare notes—which they won’t—we’ll think of something to tell them—say I got drunk and couldn’t drive and we slept on the floor at the girls’ house or something. Why not spend the night in a motel someplace, okay?”
Tommy felt something odd happening to the stiffness in his face. “You wouldn’t even sit in a bar with me—said the barkeep had spotted us. Now you think we can stay in a motel without anybody getting wise?”
Mario stared at his hands. Tommy could still smell the girl’s face powder.
“Any motel that still has vacancies this time of night isn’t going to be picky. And this car’s got California plates.”
The small row of tourist cabins was dingy and dark, but a greenish neon sign still burned: vacancy. Mario left him in the car, but Tommy heard, through the open door of the little office, Mario’s deep voice answering the night clerk’s. He came out, stuffing change in his pock
et, then slid under the wheel again and steered the car into place before the end cabin.
Inside it was small and stuffy. Mario switched on the overhead light and the fan, looked briefly at Tommy and away again. Tommy sat down on the chenille spread, and Mario said, “The motel industry has made a million dollars out of the fact that a double comes cheaper than twin beds.”
Tommy stared at the floor. “You told me at rehearsal I wasn’t ready for a double.”
“Hell,” Mario said, deadpan, “I’m going to make you sleep on the floor. What are you, queer or something?”
Undressing, Tommy realized that the smell of the girl was still on his skin. He stood in the shower, scrubbing himself fiercely with the midget cake of Lifebuoy soap, letting the hot torrent wash off his disgust. Mario came and edged into the stall beside him. He was very quiet, but at last, wiping soap from his face, he said, just loud enough to be heard over the drumming water, “Every damn time some female shit tells me I’ve got a good body, I want to take a knife to it, or something.”
Tommy shivered under the hot water as Mario continued, still in that icy, rigid tone, “That was a lousy thing to do to you, Tom. I wanted you to be sickened, disgusted. To know it doesn’t mean a damn thing. But I shouldn’t have done it. It—it doesn’t have to be like that. Not nasty. I’ve had girls and—and enjoyed it. No big charge, it isn’t my style, but it can be a—kind of a nice thing. A—a friendly thing. I should have had the common decency not to spoil it for you. I’m a—I’m a low-down, filthy bastard!”
Tommy turned and put his arms around Mario. They were both wet and slippery with the strong soap. “Stop that!” he demanded. “God damn it, stop it! I can’t stand it, that’s all. Every goddamn time you start in callin’ yourself names we end up havin’ a big fight! Just stop it, that’s all, just shut up!” Mario twitched in his arms, and for a moment Tommy thought he was laughing, but he wasn’t. “I’m sorry, kid. God, I’m so sorry. If I could make it up to you somehow—”
Tommy held him tighter, under the water that had suddenly turned icy cold. He said, shivering, “You don’t have to. You have. Just by—by being here.”
The Catch Trap Page 33