booze-scrape in his voice, like someone had shoved a shoehorn down his throat).
The windows were down. The air smelled of gardenias and cut grass. Another person might have felt glad to be alive, given the circumstances, but those false mustaches were eating at Leo. The boys wouldn’t speak until he told them to knock it off, clean up their act, get those goddamn things off their upper lips, and it felt like his whole life was in their sticky little hands, his entire existence funneled into the moment when he finally gave in and started yelling.
And now here came the Ferris boy: out of uniform, bounding down his driveway as Leo made the turn.
Julian ran right up to the driver’s door as Leo was coming to a stop and announced that he wasn’t going to the meeting tonight.
What forces, Leo wondered, had aligned to take such a colossal crap on his day? But he had no one to pose such a question to—no one wanted to hear it. “Are you Jewish?”
“No,” Julian said, “I’m Catholic. But it’s my birthday.”
One of the mustached devils snorted from the backseat.
“What’s that got to do with anything?” Leo asked.
“I guess there might be a cake and presents,” Julian said, scrunching the back of his skull against his neck. “My aunt and uncle are coming over. My parents want me to stay home.”
“We’re voting tonight,” Leo said. “Halloween’s in two weeks, and it’s on Scout night. We’re voting on whether or not we’ll meet.”
Julian glanced into the backseat at Mitch and Howie. He didn’t wave at them, didn’t say hi, didn’t even seem to notice their mustaches. “I guess I’d vote not to meet, if it’s going to be Halloween.”
“No proxies,” Leo said and put the station wagon into reverse.
—
J ulian’s birthday haul included a new pair of roller skates (from his parents), a Daredevil T-shirt and a baseball cap with the Apollo-Soyuz logo (from his aunt and uncle), and a nickel-clad bicentennial dollar (from the old man who lived next door and who’d spent so much time talking about the coin as he showed it to Julian that Julian had wondered if he was ever going to give it up).
For several days following his birthday, it rained in the late afternoon—flat and heavy, knocking against the driveway and the sidewalk. On the third day, when he got home from school, he asked his mother if she would move her car out of the carport. She did and then dashed back into the house under the cover of an umbrella. For an hour or so, Julian skated in a circle around the empty carport, avoiding the oil stain in the middle and the curtain of water that fell on all three sides, listening to the rain batter the roof. But it wasn’t much fun. There was barely enough room, and he wasn’t that good of a skater yet.
Finally, almost a week after his birthday, the rain let up. He got home from school and changed out of his Divine Mercy uniform, pulling on a pair of shorts and his new T-shirt. He put the bicentennial coin into one of his pockets, adjusted the strap of his new baseball cap, and tugged it down onto his head. Then he carried his skates outside and laced them around his feet.
He stuck to the sidewalk. He watched for cracks and avoided palm kernels. It was sort of like swimming, in that he got a little braver each time, ventured further away from his house before turning around and wobbling back to the driveway. He fell twice, but his only damage was a bruised elbow and a bloodied knee. He imagined himself as an explorer on the banks of a river no one had ever traveled. Around the bend, where Letty Drive met Compton Street, were winged beasts with fangs secreting poison. He’d capture one, he decided, wrap it in a titanium net and keep it hidden from society until he’d trained it to recite the entire
Encyclopedia Britannica.
At which point he’d call together all the scientists of the world and make their jaws drop.
Then, suddenly, there
were
beasts coming toward him. He should
The windows were down. The air smelled of gardenias and cut grass. Another person might have felt glad to be alive, given the circumstances, but those false mustaches were eating at Leo. The boys wouldn’t speak until he told them to knock it off, clean up their act, get those goddamn things off their upper lips, and it felt like his whole life was in their sticky little hands, his entire existence funneled into the moment when he finally gave in and started yelling.
And now here came the Ferris boy: out of uniform, bounding down his driveway as Leo made the turn.
Julian ran right up to the driver’s door as Leo was coming to a stop and announced that he wasn’t going to the meeting tonight.
What forces, Leo wondered, had aligned to take such a colossal crap on his day? But he had no one to pose such a question to—no one wanted to hear it. “Are you Jewish?”
“No,” Julian said, “I’m Catholic. But it’s my birthday.”
One of the mustached devils snorted from the backseat.
“What’s that got to do with anything?” Leo asked.
“I guess there might be a cake and presents,” Julian said, scrunching the back of his skull against his neck. “My aunt and uncle are coming over. My parents want me to stay home.”
“We’re voting tonight,” Leo said. “Halloween’s in two weeks, and it’s on Scout night. We’re voting on whether or not we’ll meet.”
Julian glanced into the backseat at Mitch and Howie. He didn’t wave at them, didn’t say hi, didn’t even seem to notice their mustaches. “I guess I’d vote not to meet, if it’s going to be Halloween.”
“No proxies,” Leo said and put the station wagon into reverse.
—
J ulian’s birthday haul included a new pair of roller skates (from his parents), a Daredevil T-shirt and a baseball cap with the Apollo-Soyuz logo (from his aunt and uncle), and a nickel-clad bicentennial dollar (from the old man who lived next door and who’d spent so much time talking about the coin as he showed it to Julian that Julian had wondered if he was ever going to give it up).
For several days following his birthday, it rained in the late afternoon—flat and heavy, knocking against the driveway and the sidewalk. On the third day, when he got home from school, he asked his mother if she would move her car out of the carport. She did and then dashed back into the house under the cover of an umbrella. For an hour or so, Julian skated in a circle around the empty carport, avoiding the oil stain in the middle and the curtain of water that fell on all three sides, listening to the rain batter the roof. But it wasn’t much fun. There was barely enough room, and he wasn’t that good of a skater yet.
Finally, almost a week after his birthday, the rain let up. He got home from school and changed out of his Divine Mercy uniform, pulling on a pair of shorts and his new T-shirt. He put the bicentennial coin into one of his pockets, adjusted the strap of his new baseball cap, and tugged it down onto his head. Then he carried his skates outside and laced them around his feet.
He stuck to the sidewalk. He watched for cracks and avoided palm kernels. It was sort of like swimming, in that he got a little braver each time, ventured further away from his house before turning around and wobbling back to the driveway. He fell twice, but his only damage was a bruised elbow and a bloodied knee. He imagined himself as an explorer on the banks of a river no one had ever traveled. Around the bend, where Letty Drive met Compton Street, were winged beasts with fangs secreting poison. He’d capture one, he decided, wrap it in a titanium net and keep it hidden from society until he’d trained it to recite the entire
Encyclopedia Britannica.
At which point he’d call together all the scientists of the world and make their jaws drop.
Then, suddenly, there
were
beasts coming toward him. He should
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