by Kim Savage
Yet Francesca heard only, “Do you have any other signs, or is this the only one?”
When they pulled up in front of the house, Francesca sprang from the car. Mr. Falso called to her.
“What’s your rush?” he asked, laughing nervously. Surprise in his eyes first, then worry. As if he didn’t like Francesca getting away from him, she thought. For the first time in years, she felt sated.
Francesca smiled as mildly as possible. “I have homework.”
* * *
Something in the Pignataros’ driveway caught Mira’s eye: a flicker of reflected glass on top of the Winnebago. She squinted out the window, the candle in her hand poised above the sill. Beyond the Pignataros’ house was a white fluorescent mess of strip malls and skeletal light poles illuminating empty parking lots. Farther to the west lay the vast black swath that was the quarry. If Piggy Pignataro was peeping into her bedroom from the roof of his RV, she wouldn’t be surprised. Tonight’s madness was right up his alley, with his special interest in succubi and sexy blue girl aliens, and any sort of fantastical intrigue involving half-dressed girls.
Behind Mira, in the darkened bedroom, a rustle. The sharp drag of sheets across a mattress.
Mira shivered in her thin nightgown and placed the candle on the sill. She should be attending to Francesca, but she stared out the window a moment more. The thought of a boy out there, even a boy who disgusted her, was a minor comfort. She felt so alone. Before her sister had slipped into her current state—what Francesca called ecstasy but what Mira thought might be a seizure—Francesca had forbidden her to call Connie, whom Mira needed most. Instead, Mira had betrayed her sister in the worst way possible: by telling their father. And at any moment, things were going to get embarrassing.
Francesca moaned.
Mira turned and rushed back to Francesca in her drenched nightgown, twisting atop her bed, feet caught to the ankles in a miasmic tangle of bed linens. Mira had placed votives in a line on the floor, and the flames cast shadows as Francesca arched and writhed, possessed by what infected her. Her eyes were closed and her mouth parted slightly. Not infected: that wasn’t the right word. Francesca’s trance, or whatever she had slipped into, didn’t seem unpleasant. Parts of Mira felt hot, stirred to feel what Francesca was feeling. She couldn’t watch, nor could she stop watching.
If Mira closed her eyes, she could put herself on the bed in Francesca’s place. She envisioned Ben over her, waves of desire inside her building. Her nightgown against her body teased her skin. He was a beautiful boy, broken, angular, and sharp as a blade, with long muscles in the bones of his hands, curving around his scapula, cording his neck. When he gazed at her, his eyes welled with hunger and fear. Mira loved him more for the damage inflicted on him, the kind of damage that her touch might heal. Mira imagined that the bad coach had hollowed out parts of Ben for Mira to fill. A co-mingling that might suffocate Mira’s own wrong urges.
Francesca’s head whipped from side to side in an unnatural, fast rhythm, her cheek thumping the pillow.
Selfish thoughts. Francesca needed her. Before she had become insensible, Francesca had told her to pray. So Mira dropped to her knees, her forehead touching folded hands.
The crunch of crushed stone under tires.
“Thank you, God,” Mira whispered into her fingers.
It was the sound of the red Miata pulling deep into the Cillos’ driveway. Mira imagined the driver running to the front door, compact under winter cashmere, propelled by purpose and heroic delusion. At her father’s voice, Mira’s face tipped upward and caught the moonlight. He barked flat commands before pulling the visitor inside.
Mira stood, wobbly. Soon Mr. Falso would run up the stairs and take control. He would see what Francesca was. Perhaps not the way she wanted, but she could convince her sister that it was to her advantage. She was practiced at this.
Back at the window, Mira plucked at her gown, letting the winter air off glass cool her. The distant rumblings within her own body were unmistakable. Something was growing inside her, a volcano that would run and run and take everything with it.
She ripped the drape shut.
PART 4
Cheek
OCTOBER 2016
Ben’s knowledge of what had gone down between Mr. Falso and Francesca was becoming a presence, detectable to Ben, something smutty sharing the space between them in the cramped front seat of the red Miata. He couldn’t stop animating Mira’s notes in his head, starring an actressy Francesca refusing to eat for heartache, and Mr. Falso, saying he couldn’t help himself (from what? Kissing her? Making love to her?), bemoaning their forbidden love. Even secondhand, and removed by time, it was too much.
He hated knowing these things about Mr. Falso. And now he had another note in his pocket—
Despite all he’s done, Francesca says she’ll forgive
him and turn the other cheek.
—one that implicated Mr. Falso in real wrongdoing, at least in the girls’ eyes. The note, which he only peeked at after finding it in Mr. Falso’s bedroom, was vague yet pointed: despite all he’s done. Ben stared at the extra folds of skin in front of Mr. Falso’s ear.
What did he do?
Now everything Mr. Falso did seemed suspect to Ben. Parking his car illegally behind Johnny’s Foodmaster to hike up the quarry. The whole idea of rock climbing, something Ben tried to quash but Mr. Falso had insisted on, wouldn’t have been a bad way of knocking Ben off, so his secret affair with Francesca would never be discovered. Ben suddenly wished he’d told Kyle where he was going, in case he never came out.
“You’re awfully quiet. Aw, you still tired, Benny?” Mr. Falso said.
“No sir.”
“Because you know real men sleep when they’re dead.”
Ben almost didn’t get Mira’s note. He’d had to beg Mr. Falso to let him use his bathroom, which was humiliating. But it had been worth it, because there in Mr. Falso’s dark bedroom that smelled like sleep and socks, into which they’d slipped during a youth group meeting because it was on the way to the bathroom, somehow, Mira Cillo had taped a tiny fourth note to Ben underneath the bottom of a Citizen of the Year trophy.
This was the first note that rang of true danger in leaving it. Though the fact that the trophy was dusty was not something Mira was likely to have overlooked. They’d knocked it over when Ben had lifted her to sit on Falso’s dresser. Ben understood its significance, and wouldn’t have taken long to find it. He hadn’t even flinched when he read Francesca’s name. By now, he was almost wondering what Francesca would do next. Ben knew vaguely that there was irony to the love of his life relegating herself to the sidelines in retelling her own story. But she wasn’t really, was she? Because it was Mira’s cheek that he’d touched in that bedroom. An unplanned and reckless dash into a dark room on the first floor, not entirely out of earshot of the other kids. She’d gotten up and signaled for him to follow, eye to eye, and he left a few seconds later. Mr. Falso had been on fire that day, high on his own healing, making everyone hold hands and pray a lot. When Ben and Mira finally escaped into the bedroom together, they were afraid to speak, and hiding in a grown man’s bedroom was maybe a turn-on. Mira’s eyes skittered across his face, unsteady, and she bit the side of her lip in hot concentration. Ben pushed her hair away from her right temple, where a vein pulsed softly. He stared at the vein, then a voice in his mind’s ear told him he had no time. He grasped Mira’s waist, which felt soft between his hands, and lifted her atop Mr. Falso’s bureau, loaded with manly elixirs, phallic awards, and the small things he pulled from his pockets every evening. A lucite trapezoid inscribed Citizen of the Year 2008 fell to the floor and thudded onto carpet. Mira gulped. Ben stared at the door, staying it with his vigilance. The act of lifting Mira by the waist had sparked something primal, and it made him powerful. He liked it.
“I need you to understand something,” Mira whispered. “I can’t help myself.”
Ben turned back to her and smiled like a cat. “
I can’t either.”
“Ever.”
“It’s okay,” he murmured, shaking his head softly. In the shadows, her upturned face was the color of candle wax, and impossibly sad. Ben needed to change that. He drew his fingers across the planes of Mira’s cheeks, sculpting change. Underneath Ben’s fingertips, Mira’s face grew warm. The downturns at the corners of her eyes lifted, her cheeks filled with blood, the ends of her lips rose. He stroked the contours of her face until the last traces of mysterious sadness were gone.
“You are the most beautiful girl,” Ben said, his thoughts careening ahead: future Ben and Mira cruising down the Mass Pike and farther, on foreign highways, top down and Mira’s hair tangled, Mira righting his befouled life just by filling the space beside him.
Mira had made a gruff noise and buried her face in his chest: self-conscious, Ben figured. The truly beautiful ones always were. Mira pushed off Ben and slipped from the dresser without a word. They needed to leave separately, stagger their reentry into the living room by minutes. Ben had stared at his fingertips, warm with the knowledge that he could make Mira Cillo happy.
Ben wondered if Francesca had ever been in Falso’s bedroom. Ben felt a prickle across the middle of his back as Mr. Falso banged on his window.
“You daydreaming again, big guy?”
“No sir,” Ben said miserably.
They mounted bikes—Falso’s souped-up mountain bike, a lesser one on loan to Ben—and rode on the same path Mira and Francesca had traveled, but headed to Little Q, a smaller, stand-alone pool blasted out thirty years after the original chasm, and the only part of the quarry, declared a Superfund site, that the government had successfully emptied. Newer blasting methods meant the walls of Little Q were smoother than the walls of its big cousin, with the same poison gases but none of the craggy footholds and ledges that marked the main hole. Climbers flocked from everywhere, rappelling up and down anchor points on its steep walls with their harnesses and their climber-speak (“Belay! Belay on!”). Their Ironman calls could be heard from the main hole. Like most of the kids who swam the quarry, Ben found them pretentious as well as a threat, since they could call the cops on the kids carrying their coolers full of beer if they bumped into them on the path.
They came to the spot where the path forked. To their right, the trail led to Little Q; forward, they would end up at the main water hole. To the left, they could hear voices and music carrying a half mile ahead. Ben wondered if anyone was on the Cillos’ ledge. Mr. Falso pulled ahead and spun his tires hard right, racing ahead toward the hollow, clipped yelps of the climbers. He felt conspicuous and lame showing up in shorts and a Red Sox hat, with the fat pack that Mr. Falso had thrown on his back. Mr. Falso had carried the larger bag of the two, which made Ben feel grateful and wimpy at the same time. The chain-link fence that traced the edge of the main hole had been ripped down at Little Q, and the edge of the cliff came fast. Ben dropped his bike and looked down. Climbers dotted the walls like colored spiders.
“Benvenuto!” Mr. Falso called from a tiny ledge twenty paces to Ben’s left and ten feet below. He had already scrambled down and was changing into clownish neon slippers. Next to his brown legs was a pile of ropes, harnesses, and helmets, along with the pack it came in. He smiled wide and pointed to an ancient rusty ladder bolted into the rock. “Only one way down, my friend!”
Ben smiled weakly. He knew he’d look like a putz if he made a big deal out of climbing down a ladder, the easiest climb he’d see today. He walked the twenty paces with a forced bounce and crouched, shaking the ladder to test it. It didn’t move.
Mr. Falso laughed from below. “If it held my weight, it’ll hold yours, skinny boy!”
Ben winced at that. It pissed him off, the way Mr. Falso was always showing off his muscles. Some guys thought he might shoot gear, but Ben thought his neck looked fine, and he didn’t exactly have zits or mood issues. Ben put his growing anger aside and descended, flakes of rust loosening under his hands. When he stepped off the last rung, Mr. Falso slapped his back so hard he nearly tumbled off the ledge.
Ben rubbed the back of his neck. “Do you do this alone?”
Mr. Falso grunted as he gathered up the harness, a coil of rope wound around one arm. “Can’t lie, Benny boy. I do come out here sometimes on my own. Helps clear my head. There are plenty of other climbers out here, usually, but you can’t rely on them to save you if you get into trouble. How does it go? Do as I say…”
“Not as I do.”
“Right. Have I told you how glad I am that you wanted to hang out today? I’ve been asking your parents if you’d like to hang with the F Man, just to talk, you know. They said you weren’t interested yet, but I won’t hold that against you. Drop you too fast, for example.” He smiled crookedly, showing a flash of wet teeth.
Ben cast his glance over Little Q and the rock he was about to rappel down. Some ancient machine had carved thick vertical grooves like an accordion pleat, and another machine hauled the rock out in refrigerator-sized bricks. Piles of bricks still littered the land around both quarries, with tufts of goldenrod and rooted saplings between.
“You’ll be needing these.” Mr. Falso tossed Ben a pair of cowhide gloves. “You’ve got the easy part. All you’ve gotta do is say ‘belay on’ when you’re ready to keep climbing down.”
Ben tucked his chin at the word.
“I say, belay? And you say … go ahead, say it!”
“Belay on,” Ben mumbled into his chest.
“You gotta say it louder, so I can hear you.” Mr. Falso pointed to the bottom of the chasm, at least one hundred feet down. “I’m gonna be way down there, remember?”
“You mean you’re not gonna be right next to me?” Ben choked.
“Of course not. Who’s gonna work the ropes?” Mr. Falso said. “Next thing, you’re going to ask me why the rock’s not plastic.”
“I envisioned us being able to, you know, talk. Mano a mano,” Ben said, aiming for Mr. Falso’s sweet spot.
“Climbing requires absolute focus. Especially when you’re new. You work hard, someday maybe you’ll earn these, my man.” Mr. Falso opened the inside of his flak vest and flashed a bunch of patches that looked to Ben like Boy Scout badges. Ben hadn’t even noticed him changing into it. Suddenly Ben had a terrified thought: that he’d been in the house when Ben was nosing around his bedroom, and that this was his punishment. It didn’t make any sense, but Ben still shuddered.
“We’ll chat over lunch. Now get in!”
Ben climbed obediently into the harness Mr. Falso held out for him, allowing himself to be trussed and buckled like a child. The process took a couple of minutes, with Mr. Falso explaining each step in detail. Ben felt the note in his pocket every time the harness shifted. Finally, Mr. Falso took a short step back, cocking his head.
“There! Exactly how I want you!”
The ease with which Mr. Falso had complete control of his life washed over Ben. One slippery knot or broken buckle could leave him broken on the quarry floor. He shot out a tight laugh that sounded more like a bark. “Good thing for me you know what you’re doing.”
“Indeed I do. Did you say your parents knew where you were going?”
Ben lied. “Yes! Yes, they do. They know I left the boat club with you to see Eddie at approximately 7:50 a.m. And that we went rock climbing after. And I’m expected home at four. I have to be somewhere. At four. So they’ll be looking for me, right away, if I’m even a minute late.”
“Good to know!” Mr. Falso called, already disappearing over the edge of the cliff, scrambling like an insect, rappelling down the slope with ease and speed. Ben thought of Mr. Villela scurrying across rooftops. Ben bet he’d be good at this kind of thing, but he was of a different generation: men who got exercise from physical labor that paid bills and put food on their tables, not muscles on their arms, or to kill time in an otherwise lonely existence.
Ben looked to the sky. There were no clouds, nothing that looked like heaven, only cold
blue and more cold blue.
“Belay!” Mr. Falso yelled, his voice tiny and echoing.
Ben crossed himself. “Belay on!” he yelled, securing his first foothold, and lowering himself down.
Within minutes, Ben got into a groove. It was a relief not to think about Mira. The rhythm of finding footholds and releasing himself down, hand over hand, was consuming, a mental game. Sometimes he needed to focus on his feet, other times, his core. He needed to rely on Mr. Falso, and so they became partners. By the time he reached the bottom, he almost felt relaxed and happy.
Mr. Falso stabbed his finger into the air at Ben. “Look at that smile! You see? You’ve caught the bug! Isn’t it awesome?”
“It is pretty awesome,” Ben admitted.
Ben allowed himself to be tossed around, a dopey smile on his face, as Mr. Falso yanked at his waist, releasing his ropes and buckles and harness. Other climbers milled about them, nodding, like they’d drunk the same Kool-Aid, and acknowledged one another’s high. When Ben was free from his gear he collapsed to the ground. Mr. Falso handed him a canteen of cold water. It was delicious.
Mr. Falso collapsed next to Ben. He was surprised when Mr. Falso pulled out a beer and cracked it. He guzzled it and kicked back, stretching his hairy legs in the sun, saying nothing. Ben leaned on bent elbows and drank more water. He hadn’t given Mr. Falso a chance, he realized. He wasn’t a bad guy to hang with. It was a relief not to have to pose and act cool like he did with his friends. And Mr. Falso was ten times cooler than his own dad.
“This is nice. Thanks for inviting me, Mr. F.”
“I’m glad you came, Ben. You’re a great kid. I like spending time with you.”
“I gotta tell you though: I’m a little surprised.” Ben pointed to the beer. “I thought you were a health nut.”
“This?” Mr. Falso held up his bottle. “I allow myself one. A man’s body is his temple. Once in a while, I despoil the temple. My prerogative, I guess.”