by Diana Wieler
Bad Boy
Bad Boy
Diana Wieler
Copyright © 1989 by Diana Wieler
Seventh paperback printing 2005
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We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program
the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through
the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) and the Ontario Arts Council.
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Wieler, Diana J. (Diana Jean)
Bad boy
ISBN 0-88899-083-9
I.Title.
PS8595.1534B 32 1989 jc813'.54 C89-093427-4
PR9199.3.W544B32 1989
Printed and bound in Canada
For my husband, Larry,
who relived his moments
of hockey glory for me,
over and over and over.
ONE
THE music was blaring, a solid wall of sound that pressed A.J. Brandiosa against the wall. His shoes were vibrating; he counted at least thirty 200-pounders bouncing and bobbing under the orange lights. No wonder the floor shook. A.J. could envision the newspaper headlines: “Beer Barrel Polka Kills 100” or “Dancers Bring Down the House.” It was enough to make him smile.
It had been a summer of weddings. There were 40,000 people in Moose Jaw, but it had never shrugged off the small-town feeling. Weddings were entertainment, a place for the old folks to whirl once again on the dance floor, a chance for the not-quite-nineteens to get over to the bar. It didn’t matter if you knew the bride and groom or not. Once the buffet table was cleared, weddings were fair game for anyone wearing a tie. And nobody seemed to mind — “What the hell? My Lori’s only gonna get married once, if we’re lucky. Have a beer, kid.”
A.J. crossed his arms over his chest and felt the fabric of his dark suit stretch dangerously. The suit was only a year old, but he knew he could rip the seams if he tried. One quick tug, like touching his elbows together, and it would give. He was almost tempted to try.
At sixteen, A.J. was short and stocky, with wide palms and broad shoulders and muscled thighs that pushed against the seams of his suit pants. His dark hair curled when it grew too long, and for that reason he kept it short. It still curled, over his ears and behind his neck. “Like Pavarotti, so handsome!” his aunts cried.
They were faking it, of course, the Italian bit. A.J.’s family hadn’t seen its home town of Caserta for eighty-five years, and his aunts only knew Pavarotti because they’d watched him on TV.
A.J. was watching a girl. He liked the way her brown hair curled in around her bare neck, and the way she threw her head back when she laughed. So what if her pink satin dress was stretched a little tight across her backside?
A.J. wasn’t chunky anymore. Ten months of sweating it out with a second-hand weight set in his friend’s basement had made the difference. But your mirror had its own memory. It knew where all the bumps used to be, and it would never let you forget it. A.J. was the last guy in the world who’d write somebody off over a little extra padding.
Others would, though. Pink Satin had been sitting with her girlfriends all night. None of them seemed to be dancing.
So come on, he kept telling himself. He must have taken a dozen deep breaths, getting ready to walk over, but somehow he was still standing against the wall, a half-glass of warm beer in his hand.
A.J. looked left and right. Where was Tully when you needed him? His friend was so good at this kind of thing, introducing himself and breaking the ice. He didn’t agonize over it or use stupid lines; he didn’t come on like a jock. He just pulled up a chair and started talking. Pretty soon the girls would be laughing, then dancing, and A.J. would slide along, caught up in the current of the night.
Except it wasn’t happening. The boy stared sullenly at the dance floor. The polka had melted into Dean Martin. Dean Martin, for Pete’s sake. Why did he come to these things?
Something slammed into his right side, and his drink shot out of the glass and onto the carpet. A.J. whirled around, cursing. It was Tully. The bump had been a friendly hip check.
“You shouldn’t jump me like that,” Tully grinned. “You know I can’t see a thing with these dark glasses.” He pulled them out of his pocket and held them up.
Tulsa Brown was an illusion. He was taller than A.J., and from a distance he looked lean. But A.J. knew where the muscles were; he knew the time Tully had put in on the weight bench. When they were in junior high, A.J. could outwrestle his friend every time. It had been a game. A.J. was still fifteen pounds heavier, but it didn’t seem to matter anymore. When they went at it now, A.J. found himself grappling for an advantage. If he let down his guard for a moment, wham! Tully would take him down.
Tonight Tully was flying. His suit jacket had disappeared, and his rumpled sleeves were up over his elbows. He’d wrapped his tie around his forehead like a headband, and his cedar-gold hair stuck out at crazy angles. He looked just like himself.
A.J. waved his hand in front of his nose. “Geez, Tul. What’s your cologne? Eau du Miller Lite?”
Tully beamed. “So I’m sloppy.”
“And you’re getting sloppier, every beer. Hold off a bit, hey? Don’t forget — we’re in training.”
“Right. Three more polkas and home we go. I can hardly handle the excitement.”
Tully was cheering him up, as usual. A.J. felt lightheaded and silly and a little braver. He glanced over at Pink Satin. “Go tell the DJ to pick up the pace about twenty years, Tul. Something we can dance to.”
Tully’s eyes lit up. “Hey, I’m game if you are.” He put his hand on A.J.’s shoulder. “But you know, people will talk.”
“Jesus!” A.J. pulled back, flushing crimson. But his friend was laughing, and it drew him in.
“You goof,” A.J. grinned sheepishly. He jerked his head towards Pink Satin’s table. “Those two.”
Tully studied the girls. “Lucky kids. They’re just begging for it, I can tell by their eyes. Well, let’s not let them suffer any longer.” He started across the room towards the disc jockey’s table, stumbling just once.
It worked. As the last refrain of “Tiny Bubbles” was fading, the sound system burst into a fifties rock classic. Hope shot up inside A.J. like a geyser. This was perfect, just perfect! Pink Satin and her friend were looking wistfully at the dance floor as it filled with the under-thirty crowd.
A.J. fidgeted in beat with the music. He saw his friend weaving his way back through the crowd and gestured at him to hurry.
“Come on, come on,” he muttered under his breath. Just then, a hand clamped around his arm.
“A.J.! How’s things? How’s your father? Look at you, I can’t believe how you’ve grown!”
A.J. felt the night swirl and sink. “Uh, hi, Auntie Marie.”
She was short and stout with cheeks that burned bright with rouge. “I saw your name in the paper. Famous! I cut it out for my scrapbook. What’s it all about, anyway?”
“Hockey, Auntie Marie. I made the Cyclones, Triple A.” He knew she had no idea of what that meant. “They publish the names of all the teams’ players.”
She wasn’t listening. Still clutching A.J.’s arm, she leaned across him and hollered at a nearby table.
“Mike. Mike! It’s A.J., can you believe it? Come say hello.”
Miserably A.J. looked over at Tully, who had shown up at last and was killing time by playing air guitar. Rocking and writhing, he was in a world of his own, with the music and an imaginary guitar.
A.J. managed to catch his friend’s attention, and rolled his eyes. Tully winked. Relatives were a hazard of any wedding.
Then Uncle Mike’s cigar breath assaulted him. “So you’re a hotshot hockey player now. Good for you. Our family’s as good as anybody. We’ll show those bastards, eh?”
A.J. felt queasy, as if he had been caught in a lie. It was true, he was on the Cyclones’ roster. He was listed as a defenseman in the newspaper article Marie had clipped and saved. But the newspaper had printed the facts, not the story.
This wasn’t A.J.’s first shot at the Cyclones. The year before, he and Tully had both signed up for the five-day tryouts. Tully made it to day three; A.J. was cut almost instantly.
It had stunned him. For almost seven years A.J. had played defense, and he thought he played it pretty well. He’d had no trouble getting on community club teams. Coaches started calling him in late summer. But playing for Riverside or Eastend — that was bulldozer hockey. The Cyclones were Triple A and Triple A was just below Junior, and that was something else altogether.
Tully had shrugged it off. “Your loss, guys!” he’d cried, thumbing his nose at the arena. To A.J. he had said, “Well, that’s genetics for you. We just didn’t get our share of the Triple A chromosomes.”
But A.J. couldn’t kid about it. The thought that he’d underestimated the competition, or worse, overrated himself, smouldered inside him.
“We didn’t train hard enough,” he said when he could finally talk about it. “We didn’t try hard enough.”
In October he’d started running windsprints. A.J. hated running, he was plagued by side cramps, but he knew it would build up his lung capacity. Just before Christmas, he’d bought a second-hand weight set that seemed to fit better in Tully’s basement than his own. The first few nights he’d stumbled home like an arthritic gorilla, unable to straighten his arms.
“Take it easy,” Tully had kidded. “The Olympics aren’t for another four years.”
“I’ve got focus,” A.J. had said.
“You’ve got tunnel-vision.” But within a week Tully was doing arm curls while A.J. was on the bench. He took to it so naturally — the squats, the leg lifts, the rowing — that A.J. shook his head. He despised “natural athletes,” but no one could hate Tully.
That winter they played for a decent club team, Tully as a winger and A.J. on defense. Most other evenings they spent in Tully’s basement, puffing until their T-shirts swam and the windows steamed.
Sometimes Tully’s sister, Summer, crept down the basement stairs, sitting so quietly that they didn’t notice her at first. Summer was fourteen then, but somehow smarter and sharper than A.J. could remember being at fourteen. She was small but wellrounded. Her behind reminded A.J. of a pert upside-down heart. She had burntgold, almost brown hair, and a mouth that could puncture from fifteen paces.
“It stinks in here,” Summer would say suddenly. “And you’re both a dripping, sweaty mess. I didn’t know the infantile pursuit of machismo could be so utterly disgusting.”
A.J. would blush, as much over “machismo” as “dripping, sweaty mess,” but Tully would drop what he was doing.
“My darling baby sister,” he would say, smiling wickedly. “Come give your brother a big hug.”
Summer would shriek and bolt up the stairs. Tully would tear after her, trying to wrap his sweaty body around her. Resting on the bench, A.J. would reach for a towel and self-consciously wipe himself down. She made him feel awkward, whether she noticed him or ignored him. But he was infinitely glad the weight set was in Tully’s house.
Tryouts for the Cyclones began at the end of August. The grueling workouts seemed easier this time. A.J. found he could slide from a skating drill to ice push-ups without too much trouble. But he wasn’t as confident as the year before; he wasn’t as anxious to put himself on display. Weight training wouldn’t make him a better skater; windsprints wouldn’t improve his passing. And he knew he had a few bad habits.
A.J. had the tendency to watch the puck on his stick, afraid he would lose it. “Get your head up, Brandiosa!” Coach Landau called, again and again. A.J. tried, but the minute the pressure was on, the moment he stopped thinking about it, he slid back to his old way. In a scrimmage on day three, he was slammed into the boards by a vicious shoulder check he never saw.
A.J. dropped, the wind knocked out of him. He was on the ice a full minute, struggling with the pain and embarrassment. Defensemen were supposed to dish it out, not take it.
Coach Landau skated over, full of concern, but as soon as he saw A.J. was all right, he glared at him.
“There are honest mistakes and there are dumb mistakes, Brandiosa. You can guess which kind that was.”
A.J. staggered to his feet, sick with himself. That’s it, he thought. He’d be gone at the end of the day. Damn it. Damn it all to hell.
But by some miracle he wasn’t cut, and once he got over the surprise, he threw himself into practice on days four and five. The final roster was posted on a Friday and A.J. sidled up to it cautiously. He tried to set his face so that whatever happened, it wouldn’t show.
When he saw his name, he read it three times, numb. The next minute Tully was pounding him on the back.
“Holy mother, aren’t we something! This team is going to the finals at last. They finally got us, the lucky dogs!”
Tully’s jubilance spilled over, and A.J. was suddenly awash with it. He felt his guts uncurling. The horrible week was over and they were on — he was on. He couldn’t help the stupid grin that cracked his stony mask. He was high.
A.J. was on the verge of whooping it up with the rest of them, when he saw Landau heading over, his arms full of equipment. The coach paused near the cluster of boys.
“Glad to see this enthusiasm,” Landau said dryly, “but remember, I’ve got another list. There are a dozen guys who are waiting for one of you to slide. You’ve got to keep your heads up.” He looked at A.J.
By the time you hit Triple A, the guys said, you couldn’t kid yourself. You knew what kind of player you were. A.J. knew. But in case he didn’t, Coach Landau’s eyes were telling him now.
Marginal. The word seemed to rattle in A.J.’s head like a ball-bearing, even though no one had said it.
That afternoon he took home his new jersey, number 27, rolled up with his equipment in his duffle bag. And he took home the word, wondering how he was ever going to shrug it off.
Now Uncle Mike was driving him crazy. He had a drink in one hand and A.J.’s lapel in the other, and for over an hour he’d been pounding the facts of life into the boy’s brain. It was profound information, things like, “You wanna eat — you gotta work,” and, “Don’t ever go into the landscaping business. You’ll ruin your back.”
A.J. was bored and irritable. It was getting close to midnight and the party was deteriorating. From the corner of his eye, he saw Pink Satin get up and leave.
He shifted tiredly and let out a deep, disgusted breath. Why did old people ignore you most of the time, but become determined to “shape your life” the moment you had something better to do?
“Guidance,” Uncle Mike was saying. “Young people don’t have no guidance. That’s why they’re screwing up — drugs and crap.”
So where were you, A.J. thought. Where were you and everybody else at Christmas when Dad and I made a turkey — a $25 turkey, for Pete’s sake — and nobody had the guts to show up.
“Don’t get me wrong.” Uncle Mike dug his finger into A.J.’s chest. “It’s the parents’ fault. Don’t have no discipline themselves, never mind the kids. Out ’til every hour of the gol’d
ang night, do whatever the hell they please. No respect for home and family.”
A.J. felt the words snag, like a fish hook on an underwater branch. Back up, he thought. Make an excuse to get away.
“We been married twenty-seven years, Marie and I,” Uncle Mike continued, “and do you think it’s been easy? Do you? Do you? Hell, no!” Uncle Mike almost toppled over. “But I stuck by her and she stuck by me, the way it says in the Bible.”
A.J.’s stomach was on fire. He could hear all the warning signals in his head; he knew these sounds. Go, he ordered himself. Go now.
But the old man had draped a conspiratorial arm around the boy’s shoulders and was leaning on him heavily. His fetid smell — sweat and smoke and rum — was all around A.J., pinning him.
“Listen to me, A.J. All cats are grey in the dark. It’s family that counts. Promise me something, hey? When you get married, you’ll do right by us. A good girl, not like, you know … the wrong kind. Promise me…”
“Shut up.”
“… you won’t go screwing around where everybody can see …”
“Shut up!” A.J.’s arm shot out, a reflex. He didn’t even feel the pressure of contact, but Uncle Mike staggered back, banging into a pillar. His drink tumbled to the carpet.
A.J. could envision himself grabbing the old man’s shoulders and slamming him against the pillar. He could see it and he wanted it, and it scared him. He took a step backwards.
“You’re drunk, Mike,” he said, his voice barely audible. “Go home and sleep it off.”
Uncle Mike stared back, his eyes bulging. A.J. turned and pushed his way through the crowd, heart pounding, cheeks burning.
He kept going until he was out of the dark dance hall and in the hotel lobby. The bright lights made him dizzy. He sat down on a couch between the pay phones and the front desk.
What was that, A.J.? he asked himself. He’s almost sixty years old. You didn’t have to push him. All right, so he’s obnoxious. He’s always been obnoxious. You’ve put up with it for sixteen years. What the hell was that?