He giggled.
Danced with Kate, spinning her around.
In the kitchen, Samuel held the bottle up to the candlelight, saw in the wine’s chilled rose color more than a blend of red and white. A mixture of red shades swirled around flakes of cinnabar as the wine’s cold liquid surface, sparkling with the whiteness of frost in moonlight, refracted into his eyes the light from Kate’s.
Samuel stuffed meatballs into his mouth, smeared his face with spaghetti sauce.
“I’m on the warpath!” he shouted, stood on a chair and holding one palm high, circled and whooped.
Kate helped him down.
“I think we should make love!” he said and hugged her. “Make love, get it? I know you don’t like the word, but I do! I like love. No, I love love! How does your heart feel?” He put his hand on her breast, touched his own chest. “Mine is beating so fast! How do I look?”
He ran to the bathroom mirror.
“My eyes are red! I’m the devil! And hungry!”
Kate stood by her waterbed surrounded by candles, the radio playing low.
“Kiss me,” she said, the words drifting softly to him. He did…his lips barely touching hers. “Now take off my clothes.”
Samuel peered down at the ties on one shoulder, blinked, trying to focus. His fingers suddenly thick and clumsy, he fumbled with the straps, finally untying the knot.
“There, I did it!” He retied them and laughed.
“Don’t be an ass,” Kate said. She slipped out of her jumpsuit and got into bed.
Samuel jumped in, bounced up, and slid along by the rolling motion of the waterbed, landed hard on top of her.
“No foreplay?” Kate asked, her dark eyes swallowing him. “Stay where you are,” and she pulled his pants down.
His heart opened.
The world became her.
She didn’t have to say it.
Samuel knew Kate loved him.
“You have work tomorrow,” she said when it was over.
“Yes,” his voice soft against her neck, his arms around her.
“You’d better sleep at your place. I wouldn’t want you to be late.”
Samuel dressed and quietly left the apartment.
Inside silver drops raining from the moon, he whirled, his arms outstretched. To the sky’s thousand twinkling eyes! To the river of wind carrying the happy sounds of birthday parties finally inviting him in! To the lost girl, Mary Wiggins, Samuel shouted:
“Kate!”
“Goddammit, quiet out there!” the manager yelled.
“I love you,” Samuel tried to whisper.
“I love you too,” Lipman answered with a snicker.
Samuel slept peacefully, until hearing the Night Crawler’s motorcycle fire up in the middle of the night.
The yellow ball…
He worked at the gas station and looked old, but I was 11. Maybe he was just in his thirties.
What was his name?
Duke. I think his name was Duke.
There were pickup games of basketball and sometimes I got to play, always chosen last. I don’t remember if Duke ever talked to me but I do remember he brought with him a yellow basketball.
I had a yellow ball too but it wasn’t a basketball, just one that Minnie got me. On a summer afternoon, I took it to the playground and shot around by myself. The ball was light. The wind carried it away from the rim, but I had fun.
“Did you hear what happened?” Charlie Kincade asked the Moose the next time the playground kids let me play basketball with them.
“No,” the Moose answered, wiping snot on his sleeve.
“Someone stole Duke’s basketball!”
“Yeah, and I know who! Dipshit over there! I saw him shooting baskets with it!” Twice my size in weight and height, he elbowed me in the stomach.
“Thief!” the kids chanted, pointed, and pushed me.
I ran away.
Now I’m back, standing outside the Moose’s house.
“I didn’t steal anything!” I yell toward his bedroom window. “It was my ball! Come down here so I can beat the shit out of you!”
He stays hidden and afraid.
14
Samuel didn’t want to hurt her feelings.
What if she finds out?
He looked around, worried Kate might see them, then hurried to the car.
Susan floored the red, Triumph convertible, her blonde hair flowing backwards in the wind. Samuel’s coarse hair didn’t move. He remembered sitting in the auditorium of a college class and admiring the long, straight hair of the boy in front of him.
”I love a white shirt and tie on a man,” Susan said. “You look so handsome.”
“Thank you,” Samuel said, blushing. He’d never been called that before.
Probably the Old Spice helps.
Kate had been right about the wine staining his pants, Samuel glad he had more than one pair of his favorite style, all black.
Kate…
Guilty about going out with Susan, he felt even worse after glancing at her legs and fringed mini-skirt.
“I thought we could try the Studio, it’s a restaurant I saw advertised on TV,” Samuel said, again looking back at the road. “I found a theatre still showing Summer of ’42. The movie sounds interesting.”
“Maybe we should buy burgers and birch beers at Royal Castle, then park under the stars!” Susan said.
Samuel took a deep breath.
“Don’t look so nervous, Mr. Baas! I’m just kidding! Are you afraid of me?”
“Of course not.”
“That’s cool.” They sped south down Dixie Highway.
“Where are we going?” he asked her.
“To Coral Castle! Some guy named Ed built it himself using tools made out of auto parts. Everything’s stone. There are chairs, tables, a sundial and half a moon. It’s totally fab! He did it for his girlfriend who ditched him. She thought he was a dwork and to get her back, Ed gave her a castle! Isn’t that romantic?”
“Did she like it?”
“Wasn’t interested in going there. Too bad for her. She missed out on its special power.”
“What’s it do, make people fly?” Samuel joked.
“You’ll see!” Ignoring the car horns and angry looks of the drivers she cut off, Susan continued weaving in and out of traffic. A few minutes later, she suddenly veered into the parking lot of a tire store closed for the night and turning off the Triumph’s headlights, drove to the back of the building.
“We’ve got to be quiet,” she said after parking at the edge of a field.
“I don’t see the castle,” Samuel said.
“You will. Ready? Don’t slam your door.”
Through bull thistle, the spiny leaves snagging his pants, and patches of high, rough bladed quack grass, Samuel stayed close to Susan, the night moonless and dark. Beyond a cluster of Australian pine, she led him to a clearing, the walls of the castle in front of them.
“It’s closed,” he said.
“Why else come here?” Susan said. “I know how to get in around back.”
“What if we get caught? We’re trespassing.”
“No, just sneaking in! Anyways, you’re a lawyer. You’ll know what to say!”
She darted ahead.
Samuel thought about the conference room, the protective space within the safe routine of his daily life, where, in air-conditioned comfort, he signed eviction notices, the only s
ound the smooth glide of his pen across paper.
I should have been grateful for my job instead of daydreaming about selling Stallion with Gary.
Now, a step away from arrest, he realized if that happened, he would be fired—unless his father made a call. But Samuel knew he wouldn’t ask him.
I was eight when I stopped telling him about bullies. I have a girlfriend, a best friend; I’ve been drunk and gotten high. I made my gray world a happy one, I can handle this. I’ll hitchhike back or maybe there’s a taxi. All I have to do is stand on Dixie Highway and wait.
Swaying in the wind, pine branches moaned their lonely sound.
He joined Susan at the wall.
“There’s a gap here where we can squeeze through,” she said. “It’s easy. I’ve done it before.”
They entered near the nine ton coral gate. With Susan guiding him, Samuel passed lumps of stone indistinguishable to him in the night.
“That’s the well. This is the sun couch. Love the chairs!” She flopped down on one, Samuel bumping his knee while trying to see his way. “Here!” Susan took his hand. “I want to show you something.”
At a rectangular shaped piece of limestone, she moved his fingers over words carved into the rock.
“I know them by heart: ‘Notice. Be careful. Anything you do on these premises is at your own risk.’” She squeezed his hand hard. “Isn’t that fantastic! Come on, Ed is waiting!”
Half pulling Samuel along, Susan crossed with him in front of the grotto of the three bears and at the two story tower climbed narrow rock stairs, Samuel behind her, their footsteps loud inside silence surrounded by stone.
“This is Ed,” she said reverently. “He lived here.”
Samuel blinked, and moving closer, was able to make out the black and white cardboard cutout of a man in a dark suit.
“He wasn’t very big,” Susan said. “Took him twenty-eight years to build the castle. What helped him was the magnetic field. People don’t fly here, silly. Magnetism floats boulders into the sky! Feel it!” Holding her arms high, she slowly moved them up and down. “It’s pushing me now! Right toward you!” Her breasts touched his chest.
He jerked back as if her body had arced an electrical current into him.
“Do you like me?” Susan asked.
“Yes…you’re nice…”
She put her leg between his.
Lights flashing from below cast red slashes on the walls.
“The cops! This way!” She bolted down the steps, Samuel after her. He tripped and tore his pants at the knee, hobbled on, Susan taking an escape route she obviously knew well. They made it out of the castle and into the pines.
“Are you OK?” she asked him as they headed into the weeds.
“I’ll live,” Samuel answered, his knee throbbing, another pair of black pants ruined.
At the end of the field, Susan stopped and peered through the tall grass.
“Quiet now,” she whispered while scanning the parking lot, Samuel behind her. “All clear! Hurry!”
Susan reached the car first, Samuel barely getting his door closed as she sped away laughing.
“We’re Bonnie and Clyde! What should we do now, Mr. Baas?”
“Go home.” Eyes closed, his head back, he let the air rush over him.
“Your hair is like an Ed carving. How cool is that!” She continued talking, Samuel trying not to listen.
At Gables Court, and quickly out of the car, he turned to leave.
“Can I come over again?” Susan asked.
Ready to say no, he saw Kate kiss a bearded man and, holding his hand, lead him into her apartment. Samuel kept staring at the closed door.
“I could see your apartment now,” Susan said.
Samuel got back in.
“Drive, anywhere. I don’t care.”
“Right on!” Ten minutes later she turned down a dirt road and parked in the woods. “Want to have some fun?”
“Sure. Why not.” He moved close to kiss her, pulled her hand away when she grabbed his crotch.
“Something wrong?” she asked, breathing fast, her eyes large and luminous. “It’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“I just need a second. This is a little too quick.” Then he saw it again, what he had noticed when she came to take his lunch order his first day of work.
Susan looked like a child.
“How old are you?”
“Old enough.”
“I mean it, Susan. Tell me.”
“Seventeen. Don’t look so shocked, Mr. Baas. You won’t be my first. I’ve gone out with older men before. They all enjoyed it. I promise, you will too.” She didn’t try to act the seductress, a young girl clumsily mimicking what she thought looked sexy: head tilted, lips pursed, lots of blinking. Instead, she stared intensely at him, her eyes narrowed, focused and knowing.
Samuel got out and ran…from what he might have done if Susan had been older. Sex. Raw. Fast. Lustful. Without love. In revenge because Kate had kissed a bearded man.
At the pool, he sat exhausted and sweaty but unable to look away from her door. Flying out of clouds of chlorinated air, the mosquitoes finally drove him inside.
He slept, but not before crying.
15
My hair is kinky.
My hair is stiff.
“It doesn’t move!” Mary Wiggins says, pointing at it and laughing.
“Ringo!” the boy called out, looking at me.
“I’m Paul!” I yell back. “The cute one!”
My nose continues to grow…
Samuel awoke from his nightmare. Although still tired, he got dressed and left to pray.
Across the street from Gables Court, on an expansive area of the church’s property, congregants had run in sack races, eaten snow cones and hotdogs at family carnivals, raised money for missionaries by selling baked goods. But this morning only Samuel crossed the neatly cut grass, its trim length and greenness aesthetically compatible with the lawns of the large homes in the neighborhood.
He hurried toward the entranceway of the large, white stucco building, its block shaped antechamber abutted on the right by a tower with steeple and cross. Inside the high roofed main section, families were already in their pews.
A heavy set woman smiled at Samuel and moved over so he could sit down. The women wore dark dresses and pearls, the men, white shirts and ties. All the children were combed and scrubbed. Dressed in their church clothes, they looked like miniature adults, childhood apparent only in the overly large bows fastened to the little girls’ hair.
In this white room, the light through a stained glass window behind the altar held Samuel, the colors neither vivid nor gray, but softly suspending him inside a drifting peacefulness. The pastor’s quiet voice and the congregants respectful listening helped him understand the message of the window’s cross and dove.
I am like those sitting here.
We wear the same clothes.
Hands clasped, he bowed his head and prayed, not to God or Jesus, but to whatever existed beyond this life, his father’s world and van Gogh’s ear; to the entity that had given him the values he shared with his fellow worshippers in this Baptist church.
“Thank you,” he said to the woman next to him, got up, and left.
Kate had shown him the consequences of giving in to desire: betrayal and emptiness. It hurt. He vowed to live according to his beliefs and every Sunday join those like him in church. Spiritually refreshed, almost happy, he walked back toward Gables Court—stopped in the street when seeing Kate smile and wave
at him.
“Hi!” she said, joining him. “You’re all dressed up. Did you have to work today?”
“I went to church,” Samuel answered.
“Really? Why?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me. I’m curious why someone Jewish would sit and listen to people praise Jesus. I’m starved. Let’s have lunch and you can tell me. There’s that new restaurant, the one that gave me the pizza we didn’t get around to eating. Remember?”
He did, and the moment that night when he fell in love with her.
“I’m not hungry.”
“OK. We’ll just stand here and get run over.”
An approaching car stopped, inched forward, stopped again. Finally driving past, the old woman in the long shiny Cadillac scowled at them, her eyes small behind the thick lenses of her tilted, off-center glasses.
“I’d rather die young than look like that,” Kate said.
“Where’s the restaurant?” Samuel asked.
“Not far. But we’ll have to drive.”
“Gary gets dibs on the car first,” he said, walking away.
He knocked on the Jersey boys’ door.
It’s open,” Gary called out.
Samuel stepped over boxes of Stallion. Stacked cans of the additive lined the walls. The apartment smelled of smoke and beer.
“How’s it going, buddy,” Gary said, looking up from a table cluttered with papers, thick phone books in front of him. “I’m planning new routes, one for each day of the week.”
“Good idea,” Samuel said.
“Yeah, because now I’ll go to the right places! The mistake I made was trying to interest auto stores in Stallion. What I will do now is hit gas stations. They’re perfect for this stuff! People drive in, buy gas, Stallion will be an easy sell. All the attendant has to do is tell the driver that it increases mileage.”
Gables Court Page 7