Brotherly Love

by Pete Dexter

  They leave for the Rosemont at the same time every afternoon. They order the same Danish, sit in the same table by the window, and are back in thirty minutes.

  Michael has followed them, and knows these things down to the number of sugars they put in their coffee.

  Eight.

  On the afternoon Jimmy Measles is going to get them blown, Peter waits by the stairs, his gym bag at his feet, while Michael watches the street from the corner of the window.

  “You ain’t going to train today?” Nick says.

  Peter shakes his head. He says, “We got someplace we got to go.”

  Nick nods, looking at him, then at his cousin. “You waiting for your uncle?” he says.

  Peter looks into his face and says, “No.” He doesn’t lie to Nick.

  “You going to do something stupid?” he says.

  Peter thinks it over; he doesn’t know. It feels stupid, but it’s something you do a lot when you get older. At least he thinks it is. “Naw, we’re just going somewhere.”

  Nick smiles at him as if he knows where they are going, and a moment later Michael leaves the window and hurries toward the stairs.

  “Let’s go,” he says.

  Michael notices Nick watching them, and he smiles. “We got to go back to school,” he says. Nick nods.

  And then Michael is headed down the stairs and Peter is starting down after him. Nick is still at the top, looking at him in a peculiar way.

  “It isn’t too stupid, Nick,” Peter says.

  Nick nods. “Something a little stupid, that’s good for you once in a while.”

  Jimmy Measles is waiting on the sidewalk downstairs. He is wearing new pants and a green jacket and he practices dance steps as they walk to Broad Street to catch the C bus. The toe of one of his black loafers touches the cement behind the heel of the other, his elbows come tight against his sides, and then he spins effortlessly, never losing a step, his eyes closing as he goes around.

  Everything is easy for Jimmy Measles.

  The sidewalk narrows under some scaffolding, and Peter steps behind Jimmy Measles and Michael, and watches them from the back. Michael has combed his hair back over his ears on both sides, the way Jimmy Measles does, the way Fabian does; it meets in the center of the back of his head.

  “Now these chicks, man,” Jimmy Measles is saying, “let them suck you and then get rid of them. They’re a pain in the ass later. Always wanting you to give them something, or saying they want to go with you. Sometimes they say they’re going with you even if they aren’t.”

  “Shit, man,” Michael says.

  Jimmy Measles nods, and looks quickly over his shoulder to include Peter in the conversation. “They feel guilty after they blow somebody, so they try to get you to go with them, it makes them feel better.”

  He laughs suddenly; he and Michael laugh together.

  “Sometimes, you even got to promise to do that before they’ll blow you, but it don’t count. It’s just something they like to hear before they do the deed.…”

  He turns again to Peter, his smile stretches slowly all the way across his handsome face. It is the kind of smile that makes Peter wish he could smile the same way back.

  “Nothing to worry about, my man,” Jimmy Measles says.

  Michael turns and looks at him too. “He ain’t worried,” he says.

  They cross Broad Street and wait on the other side for the bus. Jimmy Measles looks at one of them, then the other, and then suddenly he laughs. “So youse want to get blown,” he says.

  The bus stops in front of them, dripping and filthy, the brakes as loud as the engine. The door opens and they climb up the steps and stop while Jimmy Measles pays all the fares, dropping three quarters into the coin box. The bus jerks forward as they are walking to the back and Peter is thrown ahead, as if he were being pushed someplace he does not want to go.

  They sit down, Jimmy Measles and Michael on one bench, Peter across from them on another.

  Jimmy Measles dances in his seat, his shoulders moving back and forth. He pulls his fingers from imaginary holsters and points them at Peter. “So, my man,” he says, “you ready?”

  Peter looks up and down the empty bus. “So who are these guys who want to beat you up?” he says.

  They take the C bus to Market, and the elevated train out to Forty-sixth. Peter can see the line of dancers waiting outside the Arena door before he gets off the train.

  Some of the girls he recognizes from television; he knows how they dance. They are wearing coats and jackets over their skirts, it looks like they all have new shoes. They are chewing gum, smoking cigarettes, doing little dance steps there in line.

  Some of the girls call to Jimmy Measles while he is still on the stairway leading down from the elevated stop. They leave their places in line when he gets to the sidewalk, half a dozen girls all around him, pressing against him, pressing against Peter to get close to Jimmy Measles.

  Michael is caught in it too. Peter sees his hand touch a tall girl’s knee and then disappear up underneath her skirt.

  “Jimmy, baby,” one of them says, “I got something to show you.” He stops walking to look at the girl, and she turns her head and pulls her shoulders back and moves underneath her skirt exactly the way the woman in the back of the car had moved when Peter was inside her.

  Jimmy Measles watches, smiling, until she stops. “Maureen, you know you can’t do that shit on television,” he says.

  He walks toward the door, Michael hurrying to stay at his shoulder, as if he is afraid to be left behind with the dancers. Peter looks up and down the line for someone who might beat up Jimmy Measles, but no one seems to mind that he’s there, or even that he is going to the front of the line ahead of them.

  Peter walks a few steps behind, thinking they ought to get in the line with everyone else.

  Jimmy Measles smiles at the guard on the door—a man, not a kid—and pats him on the shoulder. Then he and Michael walk past, into the building, and Peter goes in after them.

  They walk beyond the studio entrance into a hallway that says AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY—NO ADMITTANCE. Peter stops to look at the sign, but Jimmy Measles motions him to follow along, dancing as he points the way.

  At the end of the hallway is a door, marked MANAGER. Jimmy Measles knocks twice and then goes in, without waiting for an answer. Peter stops at the entrance and looks inside. A plump, pale-skinned man with curly black hair that has been oiled until it looks wet is sitting behind the desk, a bottle of vodka sitting with him. There is a glass next to the bottle, empty except for the ice. The man’s face is red and his lips are wet.

  “Jimmy,” he says, “how you doing, my man?”

  “Alan, my man …”

  Jimmy Measles steps behind the desk and kisses the man on the cheek. There is something out of place in it, it is somehow too familiar, too easy. Not formal, the way the Italians kiss each other. “So, who’s this?” the man says, looking at Michael.

  Peter stays where he is in the doorway.

  “This is my man Michael and his cousin Peter.”

  The man looks from one to the other and then at Jimmy. “How old are they?”

  “Phillip Flood,” Jimmy Measles says. “That’s Phil the Roofer’s kid, and that’s his nephew.”

  The man gets out of his seat, shorter than he had looked sitting down, swaying slightly, and leans across the desk to shake Michael’s hand. Everything is easy with Jimmy Measles.

  “So,” he says, falling back into his chair, “you guys are dancers, are you?”

  Peter looks at his size 9½ U.S. Keds basketball shoes, the laces knotted where they’ve broken, and tries to imagine them dancing on television.

  Michael is nodding his head.

  “We were wondering,” Jimmy Measles said, “could we use your office a few minutes before the show. A little business …”

  The man smiles and gets to his feet. “It’s yours, my man,” he says. He stands up suddenly, and stumbles as he passes through
the door, smiling at Peter with unfocused eyes.

  Jimmy Measles goes out of the room a moment later, and Michael walks behind the desk and tries out the man’s chair. Behind him, on the wall, are pictures of the man with Fabian, Bobby Vinton, Bobby Rydell, Dion, Frankie Avalon. Most of them are autographed the same way. For my good pal Louie, all the best …

  Peter steps into the office and looks around. There are stains on the floor and the sofa, and a sweet, dirty smell that somehow goes with them. No windows to air the place out. Michael opens a drawer of the desk and looks inside, then another drawer.

  He is still going through the man’s desk when Jimmy Measles comes back through the door towing the girl from outside. Maureen. He closes the door and she sees Peter, and stops dead. They look at each other, and in that moment he is sorry for coming. Sorry for her, sorry for walking to the front of the line, sorry for what he wants.

  “What’s he doing here?” she says. And then she sees Michael too, and starts for the door. Jimmy Measles holds on to her hand, smiling.

  “They’re all right,” he says, pulling her back.

  She looks at them again. “Not him,” she says, meaning Peter. “I’ll do you and him …” and she nods toward Michael, “but not him.” Jimmy Measles looks at Peter and winks.

  “He just wants to watch,” he says.

  She looks at Peter again, deciding. “I ain’t doing this,” she says, and moves again for the door. Jimmy Measles pulls her back. Either he is stronger than he looks or the girl is not trying very hard to get out of the room.

  “I don’t like the way he’s lookin’ at me already,” she says. Peter wonders how he and the girl became enemies. He looks another direction, thinking she is about to start yelling. She is on the edge of that, but the room is quiet.

  Peter walks back toward the door, intending to leave, but when he gets there Jimmy Measles is running his hand up and down the girl’s back and she has closed her eyes, so she can’t see him anyway. Jimmy Measles knows how to touch girls, he sees that.

  He leans closer to her and puts his face in her hair. He whispers to her and she nods, without opening her eyes, and in that same moment Jimmy Measles looks at Peter through the girl’s hair, and smiles.

  “But not with him,” she says suddenly. “I’ll do you and the fat one behind the desk, but not him.”

  “Let him watch.”

  “He can watch, but that’s all,” she says. “I ain’t doing three guys.”

  Jimmy Measles unbuckles his belt and unzips his pants. Peter sees his erect penis at the same time the girl does. She rolls her eyes, as if this were an old problem, and then drops to her knees in front of him.

  “Just a minute,” he says. “Wait a minute, will you?”

  He lifts one foot and then the other, taking off his pants, and then carefully folds them and lays them across the desk. He puts his hands on top of the girl’s head then and she picks a piece of lint off his penis and then, as Peter watches, the penis disappears into her mouth. When it is gone, all the way in, Jimmy Measles winks at Michael, who has come up off his chair to watch.

  “Take two extra seconds,” he says, “and you don’t walk around all day in wrinkled pants.”

  Michael’s lips are open and he is breathing through his mouth. The girl’s head moves back and forth under Jimmy Measles’s hands, her eyes are closed tight, her own hands clenched in fists at her side. She could be sucking a lemon.

  Peter stands still. Her lips roll back into her mouth as she slides into him, until Peter cannot see her lips at all, then bloom as she pulls away. He studies Jimmy Measles’s face—it has changed now, lost its wink, and he is fixed on the girl’s head as if he were angry.

  It comes to him that he doesn’t want to push his penis into somebody’s mouth because she wants to be a dancer on Bandstand anyway. It comes to him that he is sorry for her, and that she sees it. It’s the reason she won’t blow him.

  Jimmy Measles’s hands tighten into fists around her hair and he closes his eyes and slams himself against her face. The veins stand out in his neck.

  A second later, the girl coughs, begins to choke, and semen appears in the corner of her mouth and then runs down off her chin.

  She tries to pull away, making choking noises, but Jimmy Measles holds her by the hair and moves himself in and out of her mouth until he is finished.

  Then, gradually, he relaxes his fist and his face and his neck, and the girl drops back away from him, wiping her chin and mouth with the sleeve of her blouse, and sits on her heels.

  Jimmy Measles carefully retrieves his pants and puts them on, checking for creases. She looks at Michael. “C’mon if you’re comin’,” she says. “We’re going to miss the whole show.”

  The words pass across Michael’s face. He comes around the desk, unbuttoning his pants as Jimmy Measles had done, taking them off, folding them and laying them across the same chair. Taking a long time to fold his pants.

  His penis looks small and scared. She looks at it and then appeals to Jimmy Measles.

  “We ain’t got time for this,” she says.

  “Don’t pay any attention,” he says to Michael, “that’s the first dick she ever saw that wasn’t hard.”

  She frowns and then, giving in, she holds Michael’s penis between her finger and thumb and guides it to her mouth. He puts his hands on top of her head as Jimmy Measles had done, but she pulls away and slaps at his arm.

  “Do you mind?” she says.

  He shakes his head no, and she puts it in her mouth again and begins moving in and out, perhaps half an inch each direction. Jimmy Measles takes the seat behind the desk and smiles.

  “She isn’t bad, is she?” he says.

  Michael shrugs.

  She works on him for what seems like a long time and then pulls away again.

  “C’mon, Jimmy,” she says, “he can’t even get it up.”

  Jimmy Measles leans forward across the desk to see if that is true. Her words cross Michael’s face again; tiny muscles shake.

  “Maybe it’s too many people in the room,” Jimmy Measles says. “Some guys don’t like having nobody watch.”

  He smiles at Michael, but Michael is looking at the girl kneeling in front of him.

  “Shit, they’re starting the music,” she says.

  Peter listens, and hears the faint sound of Bandstand.

  “They’re just warming up,” Jimmy Measles says. “There’s plenty of time.” She takes Michael’s penis in her mouth again and her movements now are more determined.

  Jimmy Measles stands up and heads for the door. “Me and Peter are just gonna wait outside,” he says. Michael watches them leave, looking as if he would like to leave with them.

  Jimmy Measles closes the door and then leans against the wall and lights a cigarette. The sound of the music is louder here and Jimmy Measles begins to dance. Just his body, not his feet. It seems to happen by itself.

  “You go in after Michael,” he says, moving underneath his coat.

  Peter looks at him, not understanding.

  “She don’t care how many guys she blows,” he says. The music is louder now, and Peter imagines her on her knees inside the room, holding Michael’s wilted penis in her mouth, hearing the music. Hearing her chance to dance on television today passing by.

  “She doesn’t want to blow anybody else,” he says.

  Jimmy Measles shrugs. He says, “What’s that got to do with it?”

  Somewhere there is a cry. Peter isn’t sure where it comes from, but it doesn’t seem to be part of the noise that is filling the hallway from the studio.

  Jimmy Measles is moving his feet now, the cigarette hanging on his lip, doing some dance Peter has seen him practice outside the gym.

  “You hear that?” Peter says.

  Jimmy Measles stops dancing and looks at the door.

  “What?”

  Something breaks inside.

  Jimmy Measles takes a last pull off his cigarette, spikes it against the
wall, and opens the door. He stands still a moment and then walks in.

  Peter hears something unnatural in his voice. “Easy, my man,” he says, “take it easy …”

  The girl is lying on her back when Peter steps back into the room, Michael sitting over her, one knee on each side, holding the vodka bottle by its neck, as if he were deciding whether or not to hit her again.

  Her forehead is opened up and her hair is wet and dull with blood. The desk is moved off its spot, the imprint of its legs in the carpet. Jimmy Measles steps behind Michael and, keeping his pants clear, lifts him off the girl.

  She does not move when Michael is pulled off her, but lies still, staring at the ceiling.

  “Easy, man,” Jimmy Measles says. “Calm down.” But Michael is already calm. He stares at the girl, breathing through his mouth, still holding the bottle in his hand.

  “Jesus,” Jimmy Measles says, looking at her.

  Michael steps over her to collect his pants. He watches her while he dresses; he seems fascinated that she doesn’t move. Jimmy Measles bends over her and looks in her eyes.

  “Maureen,” he says, “you there?”

  He slaps her lightly across the cheek, she doesn’t seem to notice. He stands up and turns to Peter. “I think she’s got a concussion,” he says.

  Michael stands up to button his pants and then puts his feet in his sneakers. He looks at her in a disconnected way, as if she were something to step over on the sidewalk.

  The girl moves a little on the floor; her face turns one way and then the other, and then she vomits.

  Jimmy Measles says, “Jesus Christ,” and she vomits again. The smell fills the room, the smell and the music. One of her feet begins to shake spasmodically and the shoe on it—a loafer that has already slipped off her heel—drops onto the floor.

  Michael sets the bottle back on the desk.

  “We got to call somebody,” Jimmy Measles says. His fingers run through his hair, and Peter sees that they are shaking. It is quiet in the room for a moment, then the girl burps and a thin, bubbly film emerges from a corner of her mouth.

  Jimmy Measles looks up at Michael and smiles in a way that looks like maybe he’s going to be sick too.