Look At Me_ A Novel Part 20

"Whatever you wanna call it." Paul sounded easy, but underneath that ease Ricky felt something edgy, fluttery, a CD skipping-not nerves (Paul didn't have nerves), but a kind of excitement, now that they were close. And as often happened when Ricky abandoned himself to the scrutiny of Paul's state of mind, he briefly forgot his own existence.

He was startled when the lady turned to him. "Eager beaver. How come your brother does all the talking?"

"He's my spokesman." A swipe of laughter from Paul made him grin.

"One-oh-oh. Take it or leave it." Paul.

"With you watching, is that the grand scheme?" The lady, and Ricky turned on Paul, not liking the sound of this one bit. It was a test-a test for sure!

"At ease, bro." Paul, shrugging him off. "She's the perv." Smiling. But underneath it, Ricky felt the neon vibration of Paul's anger.

The lady watched them. She was going to say no, Ricky thought eagerly, and a.s.sembled his pose of stoic disappointment.

"Okay, Mr. One-oh-oh. Let's see what you got."

Paul hesitated, then produced an impressive wad of bills from his back pocket. He peeled off tens and dropped them onto the white countertop.

"Tacky." She raised her thin eyebrows at Paul, then slowly smoothed each bill flat before counting it, making him wait. Ricky felt the struggle between them the way he felt it between Charlotte and his father, himself in the middle. His heartbeat clicked in his ears.

"Say bye-bye to little brother." The lady buzzed open the door so Paul had no choice but to exit. Which he did, oddly docile now, flas.h.i.+ng Ricky a salute as the door swung shut.

She pressed a b.u.t.ton with one long red fingernail and spoke into an intercom. The place was so small that Ricky faintly heard her voice arriving in another room. "Anita," she began, then spoke rapidly in another language that he soon determined was not Chinese but Spanish. "This way, sweetheart." She beckoned him with a finger up a narrow flight of stairs to a second floor: several doors along a snug, dim hallway. She led the way into a small room lit duskily in pink, containing a bed, a closet, a sink. She shut the door and pushed in the lock. "Have a seat, dear."

Ricky looked around, saw one place to sit-the bed-and sat. "Uh ... excuse me," he said, but the lady didn't hear; she had opened the closet and what sounded like a drawer within it.

"Ma'am?" Oh, s.h.i.+t, don't call her that Oh, s.h.i.+t, don't call her that!

"Maria." She was still inside the closet. "For Mary, mother of G.o.d. What kind of music you like?"

"Don't care."

She emerged from the closet to peer at him. "Eleven years old, you don't care about music?"

"Thirteen." Then he realized it was a trap; she'd only been guessing.

"So. What kind?"

"Smas.h.i.+ng Pumpkins." A miserable mumble.

"Don't have."

"It doesn't matter."

"Aerosmith?"

She put on some horrible CD-Ricky despised Aerosmith, Steve Tyler's voice made his skin itch-but even now, with the music sawing away at his eardrums, Maria was still rummaging in that closet. For what? Some kind of ... equipment? equipment? Ricky counted slowly (a hospital trick) to relieve the tension mounting within him-then, unable to contain it, he leapt from the bed, flung open the door (which unlocked when he twisted the handle) and bolted into the hallway. Ricky counted slowly (a hospital trick) to relieve the tension mounting within him-then, unable to contain it, he leapt from the bed, flung open the door (which unlocked when he twisted the handle) and bolted into the hallway.

"Hey!" Maria, startled, but already Ricky was scrambling down the hall, wrenching the handles of other doors and finding them locked (hearing-or did he imagine it?-m.u.f.fled sounds of surprise from inside). At the end of the hallway there was another flight of stairs, up, up, Ricky gobbled them two at a time using hands for speed, Maria behind him now, cursing in Spanish but trying to keep her voice down. At the top of the stairs Ricky stood wondering where the h.e.l.l to go next when he spotted a weight room, door open, just a few machines hunched in dim blue light, and he threw himself underneath a small freeweight bench and curled there, panting, stoned, freaked. And then he thought of Charlotte. She filled his mind: her face, her eyes. Calming him down. "You won't die," he heard her say. "You're well."

The lady was in the room now, breathing. "Listen to me. I see you under there and I'm not gonna do nothing, okay? Let's just mellow out, here, okay?"

Ricky rolled from under the freeweight bench, already sheepish. He sat on the floor and looked up at Maria, who gingerly took a seat on the bench as if he were a feral cat. "Look, your brother hired me to babysit you, and that's all that's gonna happen here, okay?"

"Babysit." He was offended.

"Sure. We're a health club, but we do babysitting on the side."

Ricky gazed into her face, trying to decode the array of messages he sensed issuing from it. "I'm not a baby."

"Joy to the world." Maria exhaled a long, rickety breath, and he knew he'd scared her. "I got a boy your age, he doesn't like babysitters either."

He thought she was kidding. "My age "My age?"

"Yessir."

"Does he ... like Aerosmith?"

"He's more into metal. Nine Inch Nails, that kind of thing? Breaks my ears."

Ricky pursed his lips to keep from grinning. "Cool."

He followed Maria back downstairs. Somewhere he heard a toilet flush, and was aware of people around him, at close quarters, people he couldn't see.

Back in the little room, Maria pointed to a deck of cards on the bed. "That's what I was looking for. You know gin rummy?"

"Sure." A hospital game.

They sat on the bed at right angles from each other and began to play, using the mattress as a table.

"Your brother, he's begging for a smack across the head." Maria.

"He's not really my brother."

"Then for the love of G.o.d, avoid him. Gin." She threw down her hand, swept up Ricky's and began shuffling again.

"He was acting weird tonight." Embarra.s.sed for Paul.

"So, be your own man! Don't let him play you. Don't be his pet."

Ricky bridled. His pet pet?

"Oh. Wait." Maria set down her cards and fished in the pocket of her skirt. Looking at her downturned face, the little roll of flesh caught above her waistband, Ricky felt something move in his belly, a warmth that seemed alive, like an animal prowling his insides on clawed, tiny feet. He had a blurred vision of lying down beside Maria, surrounded by her arms and her smell. When she tried to hand him fifty dollars, carefully folded, he gazed at her and made no move to take it.

"Yes, yes, one half for you!" Urging the money on him briskly. "Fifty-fifty, that's it. No debates."

Ricky took the bills and stuffed them in his pocket. He and Maria resumed their play. As the animal subsided its motions, Ricky began to worry. "What should I say to them?"

"My advice, you say nothing. Not one blessed peep."

"Yeah, but I mean. They're gonna want, like. Details."

"The less you say, all the more excitement. This is human nature, my friend."

"Huh." Human nature was deeper than he normally went.

They played two more hands, which Ricky won. He wondered, though, if Maria might have let him. She was probably used to letting her son win.

Abruptly she put down her hand, as if some internal timer had sounded. She led the way back downstairs. "Study hard, grow up to be a good man and treat women with respect." This over her shoulder. "You promise?"

"Okay."

"Between us, remember? This business adventure."

Maria buzzed the door and Ricky pushed it open. She flicked her eyes somewhere beyond him, then leaned over and kissed his cheek, ostentatiously. "Smile for the cameras."

Ricky scrambled into the darkness. It was seven-thirty, forty-five minutes past dinnertime. He flung open the truck door and a half-hour's worth of pot smoke and four people's collective breath accosted him like a solid. "R. You did the deed?" Paul, sleepy.

"Look, I gotta get home. I'll go in the back, but Paul, can you get me there fast? Or I'm gonna-"

"At ease. Forget the back."

"I'll go in back-I don't don't want to hear." Prezioso. Smallwood went with him, accommodating as ever. want to hear." Prezioso. Smallwood went with him, accommodating as ever.

"In the middle." Paul to Ricky, who climbed over Catalani and retracted inside his parka, resenting the boys' weight on either side of him.

"Paul, go, or I'm gonna be in grievous s.h.i.+t!"

Paul glanced at Ricky, then started the truck with an air of painstaking leisure, letting the engine run a few minutes before pulling away. "With her? Or someone else?"

"Her." The lump of money was jammed against his thigh. There was bad luck in this arrangement, Ricky felt it physically, a creeping sensation of the heavens lining up in his disfavor. At last Paul was driving.

"You did it?" Catalani, incredulous. "You, like, put it in her?"

"Whoa!" Paul. "I want it in order. So I walked out the door. And."

Ricky peeped at his watch. They were maybe ten minutes from his house. "Well, she pressed this b.u.t.ton and talked to someone in Spanish I think."

"And."

Ricky told the story in atomic detail: ascending the staircase, the hallway, room, bed, sink. To his surprise, this dodge was entirely effective; the boys listened, rapt. In the middle of it all Paul suddenly erupted, turning to Chris. "This is real. This is totally real. He f.u.c.king did it. Thirteen years old, how egregious is that!"

"Lus.h.!.+" Catalani. They were eight blocks from Ricky's house.

"And."

"Well, I lay down on the bed and she opened this, like closet, and went in there and started opening drawers and stuff."

"Getting undressed!" Catalani, crowing.

"What about you? Did you get undressed?" Paul.

"For a hundred bucks, I thought that should be her job." Hilarity flocked to this retort, and Ricky experienced a swell of bravura followed by a contraction of guilt followed by relief that he was almost home.

Paul eased to the curb and killed the engine. It was a dare. They were a block from Ricky's house.

"And."

Ricky leaned against Paul with his brain. He imagined it, their brains clenched together like two sweaty wrestlers. Paul wanted something from him-Ricky still didn't know what it was. He was beginning to doubt he had it.

Ricky leaned across Catalani and jerked open the truck door, then rappelled over him and flung himself into the crackling winter air. It smelled like destiny. He looked back into the truck, every instant slow, weighted.

Paul watched him from the sides of his eyes, not even turning his head. Ricky heaved up his shoulders. "Paul, whaddya want me to do?" he begged, then heard the whine in his voice and stopped, let his face fall blank. Without another word, he turned and walked toward his house. Casually, at a normal walking pace. The truck sat there spookily; no one even shut the door. Ricky felt the eyes of all four boys fingering him from behind. Only when he was halfway up his own long driveway did the truck finally jerk away with a screech.

Ricky sprinted over the crusted lawn to the back door. In the kitchen, light bounced off his eyeb.a.l.l.s and a faint buzz took up residence inside his head. His family was sitting at the table.

"Where've you been, son?" Dad.

He felt the hash again, warping his thoughts. They all sat there, watching him. His mother looked like she'd been crying.

"With Paul and them." Ricky slid into his chair, eyes down. Why should he say he was sorry? His father's being p.i.s.sed was not high on his Richter scale of worries, which included cheating Paul of money, being possibly abnormal, and something else, too, some bad thing he couldn't fully see. His mother went to the stove and returned with a plate of beef stew and mashed potatoes, his least favorite foods on planet earth. Ricky nudged at the stew with a fork while paranoia tightened around him-Maria, Paul's hash, the fifty bucks in his pocket felt like information too unstable to contain within the confines of his head-it would pop out, strafe from the top of his skull. He avoided looking at Charlotte, certain she would know.

"You're thirteen, Richard," Harris said. "Why the rush to hang around with these older kids?"

But Harris was bluffing, a.s.suming the posture of indignant fatherhood to camouflage his real worry, which was Ellen. Something was wrong with his wife.

"Dunno." Ricky kept his eyes averted. And now the other worry gained in size and ma.s.s until a clammy trickle issued from the base of his skull and edged down his spine toward his a.s.s: Tony Hawk. Tony Hawk. In the back of Paul's truck! His magical Tony Hawk. His s.h.i.+mmering, miraculous Tony Hawk. In the back of Paul's truck! His magical Tony Hawk. His s.h.i.+mmering, miraculous Tony Hawk.

"After all you've been through, Richard, 'dunno' doesn't seem like much of an answer." Harris glanced at Ellen, enlisting her solidarity, but she seemed beyond reach.

"What do you mean, all I've been through?" Ricky said.

Harris leaned helplessly into the argument, frantic to reclaim his wife's attention, pinion her to this kitchen the way you tried to keep a person at risk for coma from falling asleep. "I mean," "I mean," he said, "you're lucky to be as well as you are. And you show your grat.i.tude by hanging around a bunch of hoodlums in souped-up pickup trucks I can hear all the way from this-" he said, "you're lucky to be as well as you are. And you show your grat.i.tude by hanging around a bunch of hoodlums in souped-up pickup trucks I can hear all the way from this-"

"Grat.i.tude," Ricky objected. "To who?"

"You really need to ask?"

"You mean ... Charlotte?"

At the sound of her name she looked up.

"No, Richard," Harris said witheringly. "I don't mean Charlotte."

"Oh, like G.o.d? Hey, thanks, Bro." Ricky lifted a hand and swerved his eyes heavenward.

"Are you hearing this?" Harris turned to Ellen, incredulous, but her face was empty. She didn't care. Or not about this.

Charlotte felt the argument edge inexorably toward herself, as conflicts involving her father had a tendency to do. Silently she recited the essay she'd read to Uncle Moose that afternoon.