by Paul Griffin
When we get back, I set down a pot of cool water. While Boo’s drinking I go to the other side of the roof. “Boo, come.”
She looks up, gets back to her water.
“Boo, come.” This time I show her inside my hand, peanut butter wiped on it.
She bolts across the roof to lick my palm clean. I try it again and again, then without peanut butter, and still she comes to me every time, even if it’s just for a scratch under her jaw. Now is the hard one: “Wait.”
Nope, dog won’t stop following me, her peanut butter man.
“Wait.” I say it strict and deep as I walk away from her, but she keeps following me. She’s too tired for training after all our walking. I pen her and rest with her. By mid-afternoon I can’t stand it anymore, dreaming of Céce but not seeing her.
I’m not on the schedule tonight, but I show up at Vic’s Too just at the time Céce is getting off brunch shift. I wait out front, by the mailbox.
Her mom comes out first. Her hair is dyed bright pink. She has a Band-Aid on her nose, but she’s smiling her pretty gold teeth. Her eyes are pink too, means she danced hard with the bottle last night. I want to help her, but my experience is adults get mad when kids try to help them. She musses my hair. “Couldn’t stay away even a day.”
I can’t tell if she’s talking about Vic’s Too or Céce, and either way I’m too sick with the crush to pretend I’m not interested in her daughter. She knows. She winked at me when she caught me staring at Céce last night.
Céce comes out kind of mopey.
“I gotta go buy limes,” her mom says.
“For your cornbread, ma’am?”
“For tonight’s bar fruit. Lime cornbread, though. You’re a genius.” Mrs. V. pinches my cheek and heads off for the market.
“Hey,” I say.
“You’re not on the schedule tonight,” Céce says.
“Happened to your mom’s nose?”
“Ask me about her hair instead.”
“Okay?”
“When she gets depressed, say like when her only son is leaving in a week to go get himself killed, she dyes it a bright color. Last time it was orange.”
“What triggered that?”
“When my grandfather died. She went to the funeral with her hair blow-dried to look like a flame. She wanted me to do it too.”
“You got the prettiest hair, though.”
She rolls her eyes, hand on a cocked hip. “What do you want from me?”
“I just want to be with you. You want to go for a walk? Hit the park maybe. There’s a couple of sweet hiking trails. I was gonna bring Boo, but it’s too hot. You like the country?”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Doing what?”
“You have me up on that roof last night, and it’s like, I don’t know.”
“I know.”
“You know what I mean?” she says.
“I know. I don’t know. I’m an idiot.”
“I mean, it’s like if you want to be friends, that’s okay, but I just have to know which way you want to go.”
“No, I definitely don’t want to be friends. I mean I do too. Hell, look, I got something for you.”
“More dog-training advice for the dog I don’t have. Can’t wait. Lay it on me.”
I pull the stickpin from my pocket. It’s kind of crusty with sweated-up dog biscuit crumbs. There’s this dot of chipped glue where one of the diamonds fell off. Damn.
She takes it gentle from my hand and stares at it. Now that she’s holding it, I see it’s way not good enough for her. For the prettiest girl you ever seen, you need to do better than a junky piece of plastic that like a kid in fourth grade would give to a crush. And on top of that you can tell it isn’t a real C to begin with. She shakes her head. Knew I should’ve gave her the phone case instead. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m just the lamest.”
“It’s so, so beautiful.” She pins it to her shirt, and she’s misty in those dark brown eyes. She grips my hand. I let her keep it. We thread fingers tight all the way to the park. “I’m afraid to ask you,” she says. “That guy in the alley.”
“Which guy?”
“The one you’re flipping tens to.”
“He told you?”
“I saw you from the window.”
“Spy, huh?”
“Mad?”
“Never be mad at you.”
“Just so you know,” she says. “I trend toward intensely emotional.”
“I like that about you. That emotional stuff.”
“I should be on meds,” she says.
“You are a med.”
“I’m a med?” she says.
“You’re like a happy drug to me. You’re kind of like perfect.”
“What?”
“I went on a ride once at one of those fun parks. It’s sort of a coaster. I forget the name of it, but it kind of makes you want to puke. It’s real cool. The freefall thing. That’s what it’s like with you.”
“The puke-inducing freefall?”
“I mean that from the bottom of my heart.”
“Okay, so I’m looking at you right now, right?”
My eyes flick to hers, then away. “Looks that way.”
“I feel myself leaning in,” she says.
“You are. You have a cherry gum smell on you. That’s like my second-favorite flavor.”
“How I’m holding off from ramming my tongue down your throat, I have no idea,” she says.
I have no answer to that. I’m pretty sure I’m about to drop backwards and smack my head on the trail rock, and then she’s going to be ankle deep in dumb brains.
“But first I have to know about this guy you meet behind Vic’s every day, in the alley. What’s his name, your friend? You don’t know, do you? Yet you give him money.”
“He needs it.”
“But you need it too.”
“I got, I have enough to spare somebody a little.”
“But why you?” she says.
“Somebody has to lend him a hand, I guess.”
“You’re not lying to me, right? I can’t tell because you won’t look me in the eye.”
Still can’t look her in the eye. Wouldn’t be able to say the stuff I’m saying. “Never lie to you. Promise and swear.”
“I’m praying you’re for real.” She says it more to herself than to me. She grips my jaw and turns my head so I have to look at her. “Mack Morse?”
“How’d you find out my last name? Tony told you, right?”
“I saw it on your time card,” she says.
“You really are spying on me.”
“You’re a curiosity.” She kisses me and leans back to look at me. I try to work up the courage to kiss her back, because who knows if this will happen again, her getting all mental like this. A breeze starts up the trail and dips and comes back stronger and stays. I’m trembly, and I look her in the eye as I lean in to kiss her, till my eyes cross. We smack mouths a little too hard. “Damn, sorry. Did I chip your tooth? No, you’re good.”
“You too.” She sucks my bottom lip. I feel her breathing on me, from her nose, on my mouth. Sounds gross but it isn’t. It’s warm. She breathes fast and light like when a pigeon lands on the bench top real close to you and they look at you with a cocked head like you’re a freak and you can see a purple rainbow on their wings.
We’re standing there, hugging, our hearts punching each other. “You want to go sit under that tree, in the shade?” she says.
This is so perfect right now. Right here. I can’t move. I can’t open my eyes. Ninety-odd degrees and my teeth are chattering. “Let’s just stay like this,” I say, and she’s my world, and I’m her satellite coasting through the stars.
THE SIXTEENTH DAY . . .
(Saturday, June 27, just before dinner shift)
CÉCE:
He comes into the walk-in for take-out Parmesan and finds me having one of my spontaneous meltdowns. I’m an ugly crier, face gets all scrunched up. M
ortified he’s seeing me like this. “I’m totally PMS-ing.”
“I don’t mind.”
“I do.”
He sits next to me on the cheese wheel and puts his arms around me. He’s thin but really strong. I bury my head in the space between his neck and shoulder. “I think I’m getting snot on your shirt,” I say.
“A little snot never killed anybody,” he says. “Not right away anyway.” And that’s the exact moment I fall in love with Mack Morse. My mouth aches from all the kissing this past week, like I’ve been doing push-ups with my lips.
“I got six points lower on my SAT II bio than I thought I would.”
“That’s better than seven points lower. Better than nine lower too, for another example.”
“Carmella was so drunk last night she fell asleep on the toilet.”
“Better than wetting the bed.”
I tell him about The Anthony Nightmare.
Mack Morse doesn’t tell me to stop crying or try to hush me. He doesn’t even say it’ll be okay. He just lets me talk, and he listens to me. And he strokes my hair.
“Three days, he’s on that plane, and I’ll never see him again. I swear, I just feel it.” I pull a slice of cheesecake, and we split it. “That commencement scene was insane. The whole place exploded when they called his name. They were cheering, Cooooooch, and To-ny, To-ny, like at the end of Rocky.”
“I heard of that movie. I wish I could have seen it.”
“We’ll Netflix it.”
“Tony’s graduation, I meant.”
Somebody had to stay back to line cook lunch. Vic trusted Mack enough to leave him in charge. Here I am bitching, and I didn’t even think to ask him how he made out. Holding down the fort at the Too isn’t easy when all you have for help is Marcy. “How was lunch?”
“Slow. I think we turned fourteen. One big take-out hit, though. Forty pies. Some slow pitch tournament going on up at the reservoir fields.”
“Did Marcy at least spin a couple of the pies? No, because she was worried about her nails. The cuticles. Getting flour in them. I’m gonna kill her.”
“She was a bit, well, blue today, I think.”
“She wants to jump you, and she’s pissed you won’t look at her. Blue. You mean bitchy.”
“I’d never say that about a girl. Come to think about it, I probably wouldn’t say it about a dude either. Yeah, nah, I definitely wouldn’t. For a dude who was acting nasty I would probably say he was being a—”
“Mack?”
“Yeah?”
I know him two weeks, and I feel compelled to tell him I love him. But that would be like giving a guy a blow job on the first date. Must keep impulsive psycho persona in check. Must. Not. Scare away this boy. “Kiss my neck.”
He does.
“You know I’m bananas, right?”
“My favorite fruit,” he says.
We talk between kisses. “Have no idea what I want to do with my life,” I say.
“Because you can do anything you want.”
“Yeah right.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Right. Look at all the stuff you do so great. Doing good in school. Looking after your mom. Being a good sister. A good friend to Marcy, the best girlfriend to me.”
“You did not just call me your girlfriend.”
“Pretty sure I did,” he says. “You’re gonna draw blood from my neck, you bite any harder. It’s got to be tough choosing from a ton of opportunities. It’ll come to you, what you’re called to.”
“How ’bout you?” I say. “Your dream life. What’re you called to do?”
“Tell you what, right about now, I’m hoping it’s being with you.”
“Before I suck your tongue out of your head, two questions.”
“Tell ’em.”
“1.a., do you or do you not love cheesecake?”
“I love what you love.”
“Totally correct answer. 2.b., do you or do you not believe in ESP?”
“If you do.”
“Has to be yes or no.”
“Let’s say I have a picture in my half a mind. I see you and me at the fun park, on that freefall thing. If that comes true, then I guess I’m seeing the future.”
“Can you read my mind?”
“Oh, yeah, of course,” he says.
“Then what am I thinking?”
“Right now?” He puts his hand up my shirt.
“You are a mind reader.” I pin him against the tiramisu tray. The stickpin he gave me digs into my boob. I know this is corny, but I’m never taking it off. I’m seeing stars, flashing lights. A phone camera flash. Marcy jumps back from the door.
“We just got Facebashed.” I run to bitch her out, and I smack right into Carmella, arms crossed, tapping her foot.
Mack comes out with his hand in his pocket to hide his hard-on and ducks out the alley door to where he keeps the delivery bike. “Sorry ma’am,” he says as he goes.
“Sorry Ma,” I say as I try to squeeze past her.
“Just a minute, sister. C’mere.”
“I gotta fold napkins, babe.”
“Don’t babe me, chica. Look here.” She leans close and looks into my eyes. She nods. “Okay.”
“Okay what?”
“Let’s just keep it that way,” she says.
“What are you not talking about?”
“You know what I’m not talking about.” She grabs a rack of pizza dough and swings it into the front kitchen.
I follow her, head down.
“Slut,” Marcy hisses.
“Not yet,” I say.
“Prude.”
Vic’s reading the paper. He puts it to the side, dips his head, and looks over his glasses at me. “How’s the studying coming?”
“Huh?”
“Hello, the G and T?”
“Yeah, no, good,” I say. “Ready to rock.”
“Define circumspect.”
I shrug.
“Look it up.” He winks as he heads out to the bar.
Now it’s just me and Anthony. He’s got his arms folded and he’s nodding. “Better be good while I’m gone, kid.”
“You practically smashed us together in the first place, so shut the flip up.”
He headlocks me and knuckles the top of my head.
“I’m still not going with you to the airport.”
“Yeah, you will. After an hour’s worth of Ma’s begging and your repeated, adamant refusal, you’ll fly out of the house as Ma is pulling out of the driveway.”
“Will you stop being such a dick? You’re hurting me.” I pinch his arm to free myself of his headlock.
Marcy was right: Mack pinches the inside of his wrist sometimes.
(Three days later, Tuesday, June 30,
morning of the nineteenth day . . .)
“Céce Vaccuccia, you need to stop hugging your pillow.” Anthony is at my door with a basketful of folded laundry under his arm, rifling balled socks at me. “I’m being generous, using the word hugging. Let’s go, breakfast is on the table.”
“I’ll die if I have to eat another slice of cornbread.”
“Then you’ve been spared, because this morning she made corn muffins.”
A last sock ball bounces off my head.
Total sex-dream hangover. My tongue hurts, means I was glomming in my sleep. Alarm clock says 7:30, and for a second I think it’s a school day, but this is the day. He’s leaving this afternoon.
He makes me go with him to say good-bye to his teachers. They’re cleaning up, getting ready for summer school, which is always crowded around here.
“Oh man, another Vaccuccia?” Anthony’s English teacher says. “Say it ain’t so.”
It ain’t so. I’ll never fill my brother’s shoes.
Everybody tells him they’re proud of him and praying for him. “Not that you need prayers,” Mrs. Hardwick says. “You’re going to be just fine, Anthony.”
He’s going to be in a war zone in six months. He has nine weeks of basic
training, and then they send him to San Antonio for specialized training for sixteen weeks, unless for some reason he doesn’t make it through boot camp, which is impossible. The guy runs a 4:30 mile and his GPA was 98.61.
He signed a 68-W contract: combat medic. My big brother. For all intents and purposes a father to me, even though he’s only three years older, thanks to the fact that my crazy mother is a loser magnet. In the back of our fridge is this leftover takeout that’s been there for three months, and that’s longer than any of Ma’s idiot boyfriends ever hung around.
Here’s my problem with the 68-Whiskey assignment: Take out the line medic, and you cripple the platoon. 68-W’s get shot at a lot.
The airport is mobbed. Mack and Ant do that man-hug thing: bang chests, pound backs way too hard—guys are idiots. Next up is Carmella. She’s got her head buried in his chest, and she’s bawling. He’s laughing as he whispers something to her, and pretty soon she’s laughing. Next up is me.
I am so out of here. I turn away, but he pulls me back and swings me off my feet. He throws me high, like when we were kids in the public pool, and he taught me how to swim. He lets me drop, breaking my fall at the last second. I’m trying not to be light-headed, but my stomach is still floating up there, and I can’t help smiling. When he puts me down, I shove him away and run for the parking lot. I am not saying good-bye. If I don’t say it, maybe he won’t die.
I won’t even be able to talk to him for the first couple of weeks, and then only for a couple of minutes on Sundays, if the drill sergeant feels like letting them use their phones. No e-mail either.
Ma hangs on to Mack’s arm as we walk back to the Vic-mobile. He gets the door for her. “Such a gent, Mack.” She settles in behind the wheel. She’s wearing giant sunglasses, her hangover hiders. You’d never know she’s been crying if you didn’t catch the tear splat on her boob. She’s smiling, but her lips are trembling. “Your ESP giving you anything on this one, babe?”