by Paul Griffin
“He’s been talking to me,” she says.
“Bit of a meddler, Vic is, huh?”
“He knows what he knows.”
“Just do what he says, and you’ll be fine.”
She’s got a good grip on my hand. “Then we should just do what he says.”
“I keep this Bible box hidden under my bed. It’s pretty full of money, enough for the school. I need to spend it anyway, before my old man finds it. I just want you to be proud of me.”
“I’m proud of you.”
“I want to get rich for you, you know?”
“You don’t have to get rich for me.”
“I’m gonna do it anyway.”
“Just keep kissing me.”
“I tell you, Céce.”
“Tell me.”
I want to tell her I’ve got a picture of us. Her and me together forever. But it’s too soon. “I’ll tell you sometime.”
“Tell me now.”
“Sometime.” I smile and look away and she tries to get me to look at her, and we’re practically wrestling till we end up in a cuddle. We’re on our backs and holding hands, and she’s looking at me and I’m looking up at a sky that’s got just one pretty little cloud in it shaped like a bent top hat. Boo tries to wiggle between us, and the fireworks start. They’re far away. The crackles are soft, and the hiss can’t reach me. The lights are bright and pretty and red, white and pale blue, and it occurs to me: I’m happy.
THE THIRTY-EIGHTH DAY . . .
(Sunday, July 19, late morning)
CÉCE:
Marcy shows up at my house with a bag of wet laundry. “My mother’s drying a blanket. I’ll be forty-six by the time the thing’s not damp anymore.” She pulls out my clothes to dry hers, and then she yanks open our fridge. She taps a head of lettuce and says, “I’ll have that,” and sits and waits for me to serve her. Our ratty old Maytag drones eeeooooeek-clu-clump, eeeoooeek-clu-clump as it spins Marcy’s Skechers.
I rip the lettuce twice, dump it onto a plate that might or might not be clean, squirt it with expired diet dressing, this raspberry vinaigrette thing that tastes like mouthwash, not to mention it’s been left out of the fridge since yesterday. “Here you go, Queen.” I slap down the plate.
“You can’t spare half a carrot?” she says.
Here I am with my PBJ, licking Skippy off the knife. Totally nick my tongue. “Canned beets?”
“Bleh. Like an ant farm in here.”
“Cornbread crumbs.”
“Idea: vacuum. You guys fuck yet?”
“What? No.”
“Serious?”
“How many weeks should I wait before I give him a blow job?”
Marcy sneezes Orange Crush. “Weeks? Are you flippin’ retarded? The only rule with bj’s is never on the first date, except if the date lasts longer than six hours. What are you waiting for? Céce, face it, he’s a summer distraction, jump and dump.”
“He’s the one.”
“Oh. My. God. This is sad. Look, here’s the math: Céce Brainwave Vaccuccia plus Mack Moron equals zero. He should be with somebody like me.”
“He’s not a moron, okay? He has . . . Look, you don’t know him.”
“And you do? What, you been together a month yet?”
“Since Anthony dropped the hint, it’ll be forty days this coming Tuesday.”
“What are you guys doing for your anniversary? You are so gay. Cheech, this boy has one purpose in your life: to break you in.” She pulls my hair to bring our faces close so I have no choice but to look into her totally overdone eyes. Quarter-inch-thick makeup coats her cheeks. The girl came over here to do laundry. “By summer’s end you’ll have screwed each other a hundred and fifty times—hopefully. At that point, you’ll be thoroughly sick of each other. Perfect. He’ll move on to some other crappy dishwasher job in some new crappy restaurant where he’ll bone some other cutie-pie waitress, and you’ll move on to some new crappy school after you rock the G and T, and you’ll bone some new cutie-pie guy, except this one will have an actual working brain. New is good, chica. Ripping out your heart for a guy who didn’t finish junior high? Not so much.”
“You. Don’t. Know him. You don’t know us. We see each other every day.”
“So do me and you.”
“Yeah, but me and Mack don’t get sick of each other. We do stuff together.”
“Hunting for satellites up at the reservoir with his nastylooking pit bull? I’d rather tweeze my mother’s shoulder hair.”
“We tell each other things.”
“What things?”
“We treasure each other’s secrets, Marce. This is forever, him and me. I feel it.”
“ Yeah, and I’m so sure he feels it too. Wake up, Céce: He’s after you for your rack. I gotta get outta here before I blow a half a head of rotten iceberg all over your kitchen. Call me when my sneakers are dry.”
I’m trying to lead the ants outside with a rotten banana when my phone rings. Note to self: Either get a new phone or figure out how to change Hannah Montana ring tone.
“Yo!” Anthony says via live video stream courtesy of a handheld phone.
“Yo,” I say.
“Where’s Ma?”
“Put her in the shower on a plastic lawn chair with a sippy cup full of high-test coffee.”
“Nice!”
“Oh my god, why are they not feeding you down there? What happened to your hair?”
“Forget about me. What’s up with you? Quick, I have like two minutes before my sergeant gets back. Why so mopey, sis?”
“Marcy’s a bitch.”
“C’mon, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing. The G and T. I’m just nervous about it.”
“Liar. How’s Mack?”
I fail miserably at trying not to grin. “He doesn’t own a computer, and he hates TV. He doesn’t own a phone.”
“And this means?”
“Opposites attract.”
“Knew you guys would work out. The peace medal. It’s doing its thing.”
“It’s so doing its thing. My ESP is in overdrive: We’re meant to be together. It’s real, Ant, the way I feel. I swear.”
“A hopeful Céce Vaccuccia. Stunning. Yo, I gotta go. Tell Ma I love her like a crazy person.”
Sunday nights we close at nine. Dinner shift is almost over. Mack’s helping me restock. We’re upstairs grabbing linens and each other. I push him against the wall and suck his lips. “If I told you I had a really important request, and that I needed you to say yes, would you ever say no to me?”
“If it’s that important, then no.”
“I want to go to your place.”
“I don’t think—”
“Don’t think. Just say yes.”
He nods, but he’s miserable. “Hopefully he won’t be home,” he says.
We walk down this dark dirty alley lined with old mattresses, to the basement. The lights are on. We hear staticky music. “He’s home,” Mack says. “Let’s go to the roof.”
“I want to see your room.”
“My room?”
“What you hang on your walls, baseball crap or movie posters. Whether you’re PS3 or Wii, the color of your bedspread.”
“Céce, I sleep on a foldout cot in the kitchen. There’s nothing of me in that place, except that Bible box full of money, and even that’ll be gone soon.”
“At some point, don’t I have to meet the people in your life?”
“The only person in my life is you. Please. The roof.”
Up here, above the streetlight glare, no moon, I see lots of satellites. The wind comes cool, and the sheets float. Pigeons leave the hutch roof, circle and resettle.
I’m sitting cross-legged, scratching under Boo’s jaw. Boo’s sitting between my legs, facing me. Her head rests on my shoulder to look at Mack, who’s sitting behind me, against the half wall that fences off the roof. He’s giving me the most righteous neck rub. “It occurs to me,” I say.
“Uh-huh?�
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“I have a pit bull in my lap. This pit bull has a massive head. This head is largely jaw. This jaw is less than six inches from my face, and I, a face bite victim, am petting this pit bull, and my hands aren’t shaking.”
“I’m telling you,” he says.
“You’ve cured me.”
“You cured you.”
“In a month. Gently. Little by little. Unbelievable. I’ll take her.”
He kisses me, but I push him away.
“Under one condition,” I say.
“Anything,” he says.
“The first night she sleeps over, you sleep over too.”
He’s quiet.
“Tuesday night. My mother’s going down to the shore to get trashed with her friend, this other Bud Light bride from high school. Julie has this popup camper for the overnight. Carmella won’t be home till late Wednesday afternoon.”
“Céce, sneaking behind your mom’s back like that—”
“Mack? I’m sick of dry humping in the graveyard, you know? Of bringing ants home. I want to be indoors with you. To be with you, indoors.”
He stops rubbing my neck. He gets up. He crosses toward the far side of the roof, and Boo follows. “Wait,” Mack says as he keeps walking away.
But she won’t. She only stops when he stops, and she leans against his leg. He can’t get her to quit following him.
“You’re up in the country and she’s off leash,” he says. “She sees a jackrabbit on the other side of the road with a truck hauling down it. You’ve got to be able to stop her in her tracks before you can call her back to you.” He studies Boo. “It’s the last thing she needs to learn, and then she’s perfect.”
“Instead of wait, try stay.”
“You can use whatever word you want, so long as you use the same word every time.”
“Stay is better.”
“Try it.” He heads across the roof. Boo follows.
“Boo, stay,” I say.
The dog stops and sits and looks back at me.
“Boo, come,” I say.
She comes to me for a belly scratch.
Mack jogs across the roof and chucks his arm over my shoulder and kisses my forehead.
“Before she found you, she must have been trained with that word,” I say.
“Nope. You’re magic.”
Boo wiggles between us and slashes our legs with her tail and play-barks at us to stop glomming.
Pounding beneath our feet gets me jumping. “What is that?”
Mack frowns. “Larry. He’s banging on his ceiling with a ball bat.”
Some dude shrieks up the breezeway, “Make that dog stop barking, dirtbag. Hey, you hear me up there?”
Mack yells down the breezeway, “It was just for a second, all right? It’s over now.” He’s so calm and strong with the dog, but now he’s off-kilter. He’s pinching the inside of his wrist again. “You won’t ever hear her again, all right?”
“Motherless liar,” Larry yells up.
“What’d you say about my moms, old man?”
“Mack,” I say, but he doesn’t hear me.
“I hear that dog bark again, it’s dead,” Larry says.
“What’d you say about my moms?”
“I’ll tell her you said hello,” Larry yells up. He’s snickering.
Mack’s eyes are spacey, the way they were that night with those two dudes on the motorcycles. He’s pinching his wrist so hard. I stop him. I hold his hand.
“Just keep holding my hand,” he says. “Don’t let go.”
“I won’t.”
He’s trembling. I lead him into the hutch. He slumps against the wall. I crack him a Sprite and sit next to him, and he rests his head in my lap. I trace arcs across his forehead with my fingertips, until the fret lines soften.
“You’re the only one,” he says.
“The only one?”
Boo’s upset because he’s upset. She wiggles next to him and nudges his hand with her snout, but he won’t pet her. I reach out to Boo.
“Don’t,” Mack says. “Wait till she’s not scared. If you pet her when she’s scared, you’re rewarding her fear. My mom taught me that. Sorry. I keep telling you the same stories. About my mother, I mean. Hell, I guess it doesn’t matter.”
“What doesn’t?”
“You were gonna find out sooner or later. You might not want to be with me after I tell you this. But you need to know it, the truth about me.”
Now I’m afraid. This is it: He’s going to tell me he killed somebody. Please, don’t let this be over. Don’t let us be over. “Tell me.”
“I’m afraid that someday, I’m gonna do something really bad.”
“Like . . .”
“Like something you can’t fix. I get so mad sometimes.”
“Everybody gets mad.”
“Not like this. Not like me.” His eyes shimmer. They’re brown, but for some reason they seem dark blue now. “You’re the only one who can keep me from doing it.”
“Doing what?”
“Losing it.” He looks away. “I had this counselor once who tried to teach me a trick. She said when I got mad, I should put myself in a favorite dream and live there until the anger left me. But it never worked. Because my dreams all seemed so far away. But now with you, when I’m near you, holding your hand . . . If I fly off and wreck somebody, they won’t let us be together anymore. As long as you’re with me, it’ll be okay.” He strokes Boo’s neck. Her tail slaps the floor at his touch. She rolls onto her stomach for a belly rub. He gives her a quick scratch and squeezes my hand. “Tuesday night. I’ll stay over your house, Céce.” He checks the moon. “It’s getting late. I better get you home.”
He gets up and tries to help me to my feet, but I say, “Wait. I need a minute to think about this before I do it.”
“Before you do what?”
“Shh, just gimme a sec.” What does that mean, something you can’t fix? I have no doubt he can cause some serious damage—he’s all muscle. He’s all heart, though. All mine. He needs me.
He’s right: As long as I’m with him, it’ll be okay. “Okay,” I say.
“Okay what?”
I pen the dog and grab the sleeping bag and go to the back of the hutch and spread it out under the open ceiling hatchway.
He looks at the sleeping bag. He looks at me. “This can’t be a one-shot deal,” he says. “One of those, you know, you try this out to see what it’s like, and then you move on.”
“Never leave you. I promise.”
His fingertips trace the lines of my ribs. I can feel his heart beating through me. The tip of his thumb rides a soft slow circle around my belly, winding into the button. I feel myself breathing faster as his thumb arcs down, and his fingertips are at the band of my underwear. Under the band now . . .
It happens fast: We’re naked. He’s kissing me everywhere. “You got any—”
“Yes,” I say. The ones they give you in school. To carry with you, just in case.
His hands are shaking as he gets ready and my hands are shaking as I help him and then it happens and I take in the biggest breath and then another one and I can’t let the air out of my lungs. Hot tears coast over my cheeks into my ears. I’m holding his face and touching his open lips, and still I can’t breathe, and he’s looking at me. Looking into my eyes. And he isn’t turning away. And finally I let the air out, but right away my lungs pull in another huge breath, and I can’t breathe, don’t want to breathe, just want to stay like this.
“You done this before?” he says.
I shake no, and somehow I whisper, “You?”
“Not like this.” And he’s shivering and I’m shivering and I swear the sky is shivering. Through the hatchway the stars are falling and drifting down on us like that first soft snow, the kind that comes at the end of the fall.
(Sunday, July 19, late night)
MACK:
I can’t stop looking at her. She’s all goose bumps. She’s curled into me and shiveri
ng, but the room smells like heat. I got my arms around her. She’s looking up through the roof hatch. Boo snores on the other side of the wall. “I’ll introduce you to my old man,” I say. “You’re going to be coming over here all the time, and you’ll run into him sooner or later.”
We just stare into each other and smile for a bit, me and this beautiful girl, her long bangs half covering her face. I brush back her hair to see her eyes better. “Céce, I’m not like him, okay? I have my mother in me, not him.”
A squirrel peeks in through the hatch.
She yelps and digs her nails into me. “They’re everywhere. You can’t even hang your laundry anymore without one crawling into your bra and making a hammock of it.”
“I’m not real familiar with that situation.”
She wrinkles her nose and nose-to-noses me. “Hey?” “Hey back.”
“I’m gonna be coming over here all the time?”
I kiss her full and hold her and tell her, “I wanna do it again so bad. To be with you. Can we?”
“Make the squirrel stop watching us.”
“Tsst!” I say, and the squirrel jumps away.
“This is Céce.”
“Chee-chee?” the old man says all slurry. He’s flopped back in front of the TV with a box of doughnuts, crumbs all through the hair of his chest, too bombed to stand up.
“Hello,” Céce says. She shakes his hand, and the old man won’t let go. She doesn’t like the way he’s looking at her.
I don’t either. I didn’t think he was going to be this bad. He’s eyeing her head to toe, and slow. “Reckon we better be going,” I say.
“Nice to meet you, Mister Morse,” she says.
“Nigha meea.”
I have to get in there to pull his hand from hers.
He winks at me, gives me a thumbs-up. “Attaboy, Cario. Thaw you wuzza.” He burps. “Faggot.” A loud commercial comes on and his eyes drift to the TV.
We’re outside. “He called you Cario,” she says.
“My name. Macario.”
“What’s it mean?”
“Blessed.”