by Terri Favro
The two of us stared at ourselves in the mirror, shoulders touching. We looked amazing — no longer high school girls from Nowheresville, we had been transformed into the cool, sophisticated girls in Seventeen.
Downstairs, Mr. Holub was waiting for us by the car. I’d never seen him so dressed up. He was wearing a suit, tie and shiny brown shoes. His black hair had been slicked down so that he seemed to be all forehead.
We were on our way to see Larry Kowalchuck, also known as The Shark. Sandy explained he was a rich guy who gave money to people who couldn’t get it from the bank. That’s what a loan shark was: someone who helped out people in a bind. And he was half Ukrainian, so Mr. Holub could trust him.
“If they both speak the same language, why does he need you? Or me, for that matter?” I asked.
Sandy dabbed bubble-gum pink gloss on her lips. “The Shark only does business in English. And he’s a playboy, like James Bond. He likes having young chicks around. Keeps things relaxed while he’s doing business.”
Niagara Falls was always busy, but that day it was quieter than usual because of a cloudburst. Table Rock House, at the brink of the Falls, was empty except for a large Mennonite family around a table near the cash, the men in blue shirts and suspenders, the women in bonnets and long dresses. Outside, a group of Hare Krishnas in orange robes and yellow raincoats chanted a mantra: Hare krishna hare krishna, krishna krishna hare hare . . .
The Shark was smoking in a booth at the back, an ashtray in front of him overflowing onto a placemat printed with recipes for Fifty World-Famous Cocktails. He was younger than I had expected, his fair hair long to his shoulders and carefully blow-dried, his blond moustache shaggy. He was dressed in blue jeans and a denim shirt unbuttoned to expose a medallion in the shape of a circle with an arrow poking out of it — the “male” symbol — nestled in a mat of curling chest hair. When Mr. Holub shook hands with him, the Shark smiled and semi-respectfully half-stood. He looked at Sandy and me and gave a low whistle.
“You could be a fashion model, sweetheart,” he told Sandy; then, to me, “As for you, you look like Snugglegirl material. I’d bet you show up in a Playboy centrefold one day.”
His eyes really did look like a shark’s, but instead of being dead black, they were an empty ice blue. He stared at me for so long that I had to drop my eyes.
“Sit here, sweetheart, I won’t bite,” he said, patting the seat beside him.
He stood to let me into the booth, then slid in next to me so that I was sitting between him and the wall. He immediately put his arm around my waist and pulled me so close that my hand had nowhere to go but the top of his leg. The Shark looked at me hungrily, as if I were a bologna sandwich.
“That’s more like it,” he mumbled.
The waitress was glancing over at us from the counter where she was gathering up cutlery and napkins to set our table. I tried to will her over to our table, but one of the Mennonite men signalled for his bill and she turned her back on us. I watched in despair as she disappeared through a set of swinging doors.
“We talk business now,” said Mr. Holub.
“We talk business when I say we talk business,” answered the Shark. He leaned back to take another drag on his cigarette. His knee rested against mine. Under the table, he took my hand and moved it from his leg into his lap. When the waitress showed up and said, “What can I get you?” he let go of my hand.
“Ice cream floats for the girls,” he ordered.
“Vanilla, strawberry or chocolate? Neutron Coke, Mountain Dew or 7-Up?” asked the waitress, her eyes on her notepad.
“What you want, girls? It’s on me,” said the Shark.
Sandy ordered strawberry ice cream in 7-Up. When the Shark nudged me, I said, “Same for me.” Mr. Holub ordered coffee.
“And for you, sir?” said the waitress to the Shark.
“Glass of water.”
The side of my body pressed against him was damp with sweat.
“So, I’ve heard your idea,” said the Shark to Mr. Holub. “Takeout Russian food, but it’s really Ukrainian? Why don’t you call it takeout Ukrainian food?”
“Is easy for people in this country understand,” explained Mr. Holub patiently. “You say ‘Ukrainian,’ they not know how is different from ‘Russian.’ ‘Russian,’ they think Kosygin, Cosmonauts, Bay of Pigs, Sputnik.”
“And that makes them buy your food?” asked the Shark skeptically, leaning back in the booth.
The waitress returned with the drinks on a tray; she set the ice cream floats in front of Sandy and me. They came in huge frosted glasses with long-handled spoons. I tried to push the ball of ice cream down into the 7-Up, but I couldn’t eat because I was focused on the Shark’s hand, which had worked its way under the back of my leg.
“Sputnik Burgers might not be a bad idea,” mused the Shark.
As he carried on his side of the conversation, with Sandy busily translating back and forth, the Shark slid his hand under my bottom and rubbed his thumb against the crotch of my panties. I couldn’t stand the sensation for another second without screaming; I also didn’t want it to stop.
As if reading my mind, the Shark pushed aside the crotch of my panties and in one quick thrust, plunged a finger into me. Then, a second. In and out, push pull, touching me in places I’d never let Kendal go while his thumb worked lazily at the lump between my legs. I spread wider for him. Allowed myself to be impaled on him. All the while, the Shark continued to smoke casually with his free hand. I kept my eyes fixed on the place mat, staring at the pictures of all those cocktails. Sidecar. Gibson. Old-Fashioned. Rob Roy.
“Somethin’ wrong with your ice cream, darlin’?” asked the Shark, leaning in close. Tobacco on his breath. I shook my head.
Kitty-corner to me, Sandy’s face had turned the colour of raw fish. The Shark was driving a hard bargain. Sandy was trying to explain to her father what the Shark meant by “compound interest.” Sweat beaded on Mr. Holub’s forehead despite the air conditioning in the restaurant.
Since the Shark wanted to bargain in English, Mr. Holub was going to try. “I think about America. A chain. Like McDonald’s. You know McDonald’s, Larry?”
The Shark leaned over the table, jabbing his finger at Mr. Holub and Sandy. “I’ve been to McDonald’s in Buffalo about a hundred times. But they don’t sell varenyky. They’ve got hamburgers, fries, soda, things Americans like to eat.”
As the Shark made his point, he pushed a third finger inside me. Something snapped like an elastic band, followed by a sudden gush between my legs, a telltale cramping and shimmer of nausea.
Uh oh.
“Excuse me, I gotta go to the bathroom,” I said weakly.
The Shark grinned at me, slid his hand out of my panties and squeezed my thigh. “You’re excused. Wouldn’t want you to wet yourself, sweetheart.”
I walked quickly to the ladies’ room. Outside, the chanting of the Hare Krishnas continued in the rain. Flashes of yellow and orange fabric rippled past the wet windows.
. . . hare rama hare rama, rama rama, hare hare . . .
The bathroom was empty. I went into a cubicle and pulled down my panties and sat for a few minutes, letting pee dribble out. I tried not to imagine the Shark’s skin cells, his — what did they call it in science? — epithelia floating around inside me. When you became a woman, it seemed your body belonged to everybody.
My panties were bloodstained — the start of my period, unpredictable as usual. But the raggedy, stinging pain in my crotch told me that some of the blood had come from the Shark’s sneak attack. He had clawed away my virginity, exactly the way Mrs. D.P. had described.
I slipped a tampon out of my purse and inserted it. Then I stuck my fingers down my throat. I didn’t have much in my stomach, but it made me feel better to show my body who was boss.
I walked back to the table slowly, relieved to see
money sitting in the little black tray for the waitress. Mr. Holub was saying something to the Shark, who nodded and shrugged. “Sure, they can go. For now.”
For a second, the Shark’s blue eyes caught mine and hung there. Then he looked away.
Sandy and I went outside. The drizzle and spray off the Falls soaked us in seconds. I wished I’d brought an umbrella. I thought about telling her what had happened under the table. But if I said it out loud, then it really had happened and wasn’t just me imagining things. I’d be admitting I just sat there and let the Shark do dirty, sexy things to me. I had always been told to be polite to adults, to obey, but still, I could’ve pushed his hand away.
I reminded myself that we were all going to be dead soon anyway, when they dropped the Bomb. What did it matter who did what to whom.
Without talking about it, Sandy and I started walking. Soon we were standing at the brink of the Falls. It was always my favourite place to enjoy the view, but it was also everyone else’s. In hot weather, the stone wall was blocked by tourists in shorts and golf shirts, holding ice cream cones in one hand and balancing little kids on the wall with the other. I’d heard that sometimes mothers accidentally-on-purpose let their kids fall in, but it never made the papers because if it did, everyone would be doing it. Such mothers usually ended up being straitjacketed and shipped off to Toronto, never to be heard of again.
There were no children on the brink of death that day, only a clutch of people who looked like they might be from India, wearing plastic ponchos and posing for pictures in the mist — the kind of thing that caused my father to roll his eyes and point out that there wasn’t enough light for a decent photograph. But they seemed to be having a good time, probably because they’d soon be going home to India with pictures of this grey, cold, drab place.
I stared down at the brink of the Falls. It was amazingly shallow, but the speed of the water meant that if you stuck just one finger in, the force of the water would sweep you over. This was all due to physics.
The only exception was a scow that had broken away from a tugboat upriver and had been swept toward the Falls. A historical marker told the story: in 1918, two men on board the scow opened the hatches, sinking it low in the water and grounding on rocks at the brink, where the water is deadly fast but shallow. The men were rescued with a line shot out from the hydro station — they had to scramble across it at night, because they didn’t know how long the scow would stay on the rocks before it went over the Falls. One man went crazy and ended up in a lunatic asylum. The other spent the rest of his life telling the story to people in bars. The scow never did go over. One day, it still might.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” Sandy asked.
“An astronaut,” I said.
“That’s a little kid answer. Girls can’t be astronauts. Pick something real.”
Usually, I would have given her an argument — by then we knew that the Soviets had trained a woman cosmonaut, even though she hadn’t gone up — but I felt defeated.
“Dunno. What about you?”
“A stewardess,” said Sandy.
I thought about that. “Good idea. It would be cool to be able to fly away from here any time you liked.”
When Mr. Holub and the Shark came out the front door of Table Rock House, Mr. Holub had a big smile on his face. Sandy joined him and the two walked ahead, talking excitedly. The Shark put his hands in his pockets and fell in beside me.
“I’ve got to see you again,” he said in a low voice.
“I can’t,” I said, keeping my eyes on the parking lot sign.
“Come on, you have to. Soon as I saw you, I knew you were something special. You know how?”
I shook my head and kept walking.
“Chemistry. Your body talking to my body. Telling me things about you.”
“Oh, yeah, like what?” Despite everything, I really wanted to know.
“Like, you were itching to have your cherry broke. See, there are these things called pheromones that I can smell on some girls. Natural chemicals. You’ve got ’em in spades because you’re naturally sexy.”
“I don’t believe you,” I muttered, although I was starting to wonder if I hadn’t heard something like this from the Donato twins.
I could hear him breathing faster over the staccato clip of his cowboy boots on the wet pavement. “You’re very mature for your age.”
“Really?” I said. I was sort of starting to believe him. “But I’ve already got a boyfriend.”
The Shark gave a soft grunt. “He break your cherry yet?”
“No,” I said.
“Know why? You were waiting for me to do it. In the olden days, special girls like you were given to the king first. In Shipman’s Corners, I’m like a king.”
“But I’m only fourteen. Well, almost fifteen.”
He shrugged. “Who gives a shit about age? I’m twenty-eight. Nature doesn’t care how young or old you are. You need sex like orange juice. It’s good for you. Your pheromones say I’ve got to conquer you.”
“But how are you going to find me?” I liked the idea of being naturally sexy, and even the part about being conquered, which sounded romantic, as if he was going to bring me chocolates and flowers. I just didn’t want him showing up at our house during supper.
“You kidding? I got your scent on my fingers. I’ll sniff you out like a bloodhound. See you around, little girl.”
Before I could say anything more, he strode ahead, slapped Mr. Holub on the back and disappeared into the crowd of chanting Hare Krishnas and ice cream–eating Mennonites.
In the Charger, Mr. Holub switched on the radio. The comforting sound of Walter Cronkite’s voice swelled up, telling us that President Nixon had approved the biggest underground nuclear test in history in the Aleutian Islands and that the Soviets were threatening retaliation. Blah blah blah — I’d heard all about it from Duff. According to him, the test would heighten the Cold War and lead to World War Three in eight years. Maybe that wasn’t a big deal. I was starting to think the simplest way out of my problems was for the world to blow up.
“What were you and the Shark talking about on the way to the car?” asked Sandy.
I shrugged. “Chemistry.”
Sandy laughed. “You’re always boring people with that science stuff.”
* * *
I asked Mr. Holub to drop me a block away from my house. When I got home, I ran upstairs and pulled off my dress and panties, sticking them between the mattress and box frame of my bed. Then I drew a hot, hot bath. Scalding hot. I got into the tub as it filled and put my face directly under the tap, letting it flow over my head. I pulled off the false eyelashes, taking most of my real lashes with them. Like everything else that day, it hurt, but this time the pain was a distraction. A punishment, like the Shark punishing me. There was something irresistibly dangerous about him. I wondered if the chemicals in my body were already calling out to him. Shame and excitement flared in me simultaneously.
When I got out of the tub, I caught sight of my wet pink face in the mirror. I looked like a shaved cat. I was going to have to cook up a lie to explain my lack of eyebrows and eyelashes. And it was going to have to be a doozy.
A rap at the door. “Debbie?” My mother’s voice.
“Yeah?” I said.
“Your friend is on the phone.”
“Tell Sandy I’ll call her back.”
“Not that friend,” said Mom. “The paper boy.”
I opened the door. When Mom saw my face, she crossed herself. “Marone.”
“Sandy and I were trying out a new look and she got a little carried away with the tweezers. It’ll grow back,” I said.
Mom shook her head and walked away.
I went to the hall phone by the Virgin’s nook. As I picked up the receiver, her downcast blue plaster eyes caught mine. Watch yourself,
kid.
“Hello?”
The déjà vu was powerful and immediate. I mouthed Kendal’s words along with him: “Meet me at Postapocalyptica?”
I glanced at the kitchen door where Mom was descaling the tea kettle. “I thought you wanted to cool it,” I said to him.
A pause. “I’m sorry. I was mad. I didn’t mean it.”
Now it was my turn to hesitate. “I’ve got bad cramps. Let’s wait a couple of days.”
“I don’t care if you’re on the rag,” said Kendal. “It’s not like we’re going to do anything. I’ve got some new comics.”
I closed my eyes. “I’m not in the mood for more Zapruder! right now, Kendal.”
“No more Zapruder!, I promise. I’ve got a new one called Deviation and an amazing Silver Surfer. Meet me tomorrow at noon.”
I tried to imagine myself sitting in the derelict candy store, reading comics with Kendal like a little kid, after what had happened with the Shark that day. But there was no way to refuse him without more discussion; it was quiet enough in the kitchen that I suspected Mom was already eavesdropping. So I agreed.
“Great, see you then,” said Kendal, adding, “I love you.”
“Right. Yup. Me too,” I answered, and put the phone in its cradle.
Back in my room, I lay down and hugged my pillow. The cramps were getting steadily worse, as if God was poking me in the tummy. I decided to put what happened with the Shark on a dusty shelf of my brain, like the cubbyholes behind the cash desk at Cressie’s, where long-forgotten valuables gathered dust, their owners never bothering to come back for them.
I went into the bathroom to change my tampon. Even though I hadn’t eaten anything, I managed to throw up some clear liquid. It left a bitter taste in my mouth but it was satisfying to get out every speck that had entered my body that day. I was purged now, inside and out. I was ready for the Bomb to fall and destroy me and every last man on Earth.
eleven