IN THE STILL OF THE NIGHT
short story
by
Patrick Breheny
She was a girl on a swing in a small park, barely a park, a patch of urban green off a busy Bronx street, with five wooden benches around it that faced a view of traffic and the curtains and shades and window frames and red bricks of the apartment buildings across the street. The benches, on the perimeter of the patch, enclosed the swing set, three swings together hanging from a steel pole, all held up by inverted V poles at each end of the structure. .The only other edifice on the lot was the parkie’s -- park attendant’s--- office, a small brick building at one end of the lot, which was closed now at night. Tires scuffed on tar, and from several blocks away he heard the arhythmic clacking of metal on metal as train wheels met the rails of the Jerome Avenue El.
He lived on Decatur, a few blocks away, and he was over here because Vincy lived there now, only a block from where he’d lived before, but in a six story elevator. building where mostly dentists and accountants and other such professionals lived. Everybody else lived in five story walk-ups. It was a good blue collar Bronx neighborhood., kept up, and the affluent enough lived in the elevator buildings or few remaining private houses. Vincy’s father got a promotion on the docks from longshoreman to supervisor, so the family moved, and Denny went to see their new lay-out.
He saw them before he cut through the patch. He wasn’t going to short cut through diagonally until he saw her, and then he did .She was about his age, about 16, a small “dirty blonde” with a pretty face, and he went directly from the corner of the patch where the parkie’s shack was toward the swings in the center, toward her, though he was terrified. She wore a jacket that was in vogue now, just started seeing them this year, 1956, and he thought it would feel slick and smooth, like leather, and all the girls wore them, they were shocking colors. Hers was purple, reached past her waist, and she wore dungarees. Before so many girls started wearing guys’ denim pants, he thought the ones who did were huers. Not the formal word, somebody who sold it, just easy---huers..
He could tell she was afraid of him too, not afraid of him because he might hurt her, just afraid of him because he was a boy. So maybe not a huer. A bit disappointing. He’d had hopes. He never really knew any huers, just some girl a guy had given that reputation to, then every guy thought she should give it to all of them, but in his experience, none of them ever did that, seemed unaware of that rumor and expectation of them.
They didn’t need those jackets. The May evening was warm, in the fifties. He was wearing a white T-shirt and black chinos with black dress shoes, was actually a little cold. He had a D.A.with sideburns, his hair brownish blond like hers, his sheened back with Brylcreem. “A little dab will do you.” What if you used two? He was skinny, didn’t look good in a T-shirt, but it was what all his friends wore at Gillespie Park, three blocks from Swing Patch, Gillespie Park really a playground with a circular entrance and red flagstones on the ground, benches forming the circle, trees behind them, behind the trees wrought iron walls, though no gate to the circle, always open, only the playground itself was locked at night, though that kept nobody out.
In the center of the circle was a flagpole and a commemorative plaque to Donald Gillespie, who’d lived in the neighborhood and perished in World War II. Denny hung around the circle with his friends, all wearing white T-shirts and black chinos, shoe type---sneakers, dress shoes---optional Some of them held up the chinos with thick, wide leather garrison belts with mean buckles, weapons for street combat if needed, and he knew a few of them sharpened those buckles .Somebody from far away might think what they wore was a kind of uniform, the consistency of the clothes giving a suggestion of organization or security, or speaking at least to a conformity, a belonging.
Being a blond, he figured she’d probably be Irish like himself, and the other girl, who had dark hair, she could be Italian, good looking too, a bit taller, longer hair and more build, a young Gina Lollabrigida with a bosom pushing against her jacket. Hers was tangerine. He thought the small blond was more sensitive and sensual. She faced toward her friend and he realized they had a portable radio playing under the conversation, talking about school, not about education, but about school, Sister Armada it sounded like as far as he could tell blended with Clyde Mcfadder singing “The Treasure Of Love.” They were a couple of Catholic school girls, BICs his friends called them, Bronx Irish Catholics, even though most of his friends were precisely that. By BIC, they meant they didn’t. Didn’t…you know. It was an inside joke. Even Italian girls in the neighborhood were BICs, though he couldn’t say he’d ever heard the term “Bronx Italian Catholics.” Honorary BIC’s. Hang around with a BIC, you are a BIC. Didn’t matter if you were Polish, French-Canadian. Italian, Lithuanian. Show me your company and I’ll tell you who you are, as the nuns liked to say.
He found the courage even though they were ignoring his existence, still talking to each other and listening to the radio, to say, too loud and cheerfully, ”Hi!”
She stopped talking, the little blond haired one did, and looked at him, and he saw for just a moment all her dread of boys, the mystery of them, their roughness with each other, their aggression, her fear at the prospect and possibility of rejection---confronted in her face in that blink of an instant all the fear he knew was on his own. They were, for an unmeasurably short twinkling of time, and for all infinity, mirrors reflecting the other gender.
With all that betrayed in her expression, she still managed “Hi”, and smiled for no longer than half a second, then sat rigid, almost catatonic, and gazed straight ahead, no more looking at him or her friend. Her eyes were fixed, but if focused on anything, it could only be a garbage can at the curb or the cars passing indifferently beyond. it.
He sat in the third swing, the empty one to her left, and that put him close enough to touch her. It required an awkward movement. He had to stand again, forcing the swing to the right, bending the steel seat diagonally across his backside, then let go of the chain he’d been gripping with his right hand. He reached across and put his arm around her, hand on her right shoulder socket, half expecting she’d jump up and run or slap his hand off..
Instead she sat rigid, and…waited…anticipating…something. What? She didn’t know what. He didn’t know. That part he hadn’t thought through to---what to say or do after this. And something else. The jacket wasn’t slick. It felt funny, had an uncomfortable cheesy texture. It was vinyl. And her shoulder, under his hand? It was bony. She was skinny. She wasn’t what he expected. She’d summoned him with the color, the purple. That was what he wanted.
He had touched breasts twice in his life, both times by accident, both times with red faced apologies. The first time, it felt like foam, and he fantasized about that encounter, imagined breasts felt like that, melting in your hand .The second time, he
brushed an actual breast, a small one that was soft but firm, the flesh resilient, not
yielding like the foam he’d remembered and imagined was the real tactility of a breast.
The other one, with the tangerine jacket---her long hair hung over the jacket. Her jacket would feel the same, but she probably didn’t have a bony shoulder. It was too late for that, though. He’d chosen. Anyway, the dark haired one was scowling. He’d interrupted their conversation. (And he hadn’t shown any interest in her.)
Their was no indication from the blond girl that his arm wouldn’t be allowed to stay where it was, just the What’s next…?, but he didn’t know what was next, and not knowing what to say or do, he moved his arm away without being asked to.
As he did, he mumbled, “Sorry.” Why did he say that? Sorry? For what? There was nothing to be sorry…Ah, YES. Yes, there was. What she had been most terrified of was what he’d been most terrified of. She’d accepted him and he was rejecting her.
Anybody who’d want him didn’t entirely understand the situation, or couldn’t have very good taste. Sorry was indeed a sorry word.
Gina Lollabrigida, who couldn’t be any older than either of them, suddenly spoke, and authoritatively, as if she was two years older, or a teacher.
She said, “Hey, you crazy mixed up kid.” She said that sarcastically, imitating how “understanding” older people sometimes referred to teenagers. “When you get married, on your wedding night, if you see your wife for the first time then, you’re going to think you got cheated. Tricked.”
He somehow knew she was right, but how could she know all that?
She continued, “You’ll wish you married Franny Fanny, who married Bobby Baloney, and Bobby Baloney will want someone else, and so will Franny. You put your arm around her, now talk to her. Her name’s Annie. She goes to St. Agnes, like me, and you’re never going to do better in your life than with a girl like her.”
He was dumbstruck. He said, reversing the St. Francis prayer from “Better to understand”… to …”: “I’m just..shy…okay?”
“What do you think she is? Imogine Cocoa?. I’ll help you. You and Annie trade swings.”
That would put him between the two girls. “I’m okay here.”
“Then say something to her.”
“What’s your name?”
“Rita, but so what?
“I asked her.”
“You were looking at me. And you already know her name. I told you. Ask her something you don’t know.”
“I… don’t know… what to say.”
“Do you want me to change seats with her? Then I’ll be between you.”
“You already are.”
Annie wasn’t tense anymore. She was laughing good at all of this.
Rita said, “If I hadn’t a butted in, you’d be all the way over on the street and halfway to the next block now.”
“Okay, okay., look, my name is Denny.”
“Tell HER. I don’t care.”
Rita got up for the musical swings, but Annie asked, “Can you push me, Denny?”
Like a little kid, he thought.
“You can’t…?” Sure she could.
“She wants you to get her going,” Rita said. “I guess she’s satisfied with the seating arrangements.”
Swinging her meant---well, it meant pushing the steel swing seat, but then pushing the person too to get any momentum, first putting hands on her back, and when that wasn’t getting enough motion, on hips, and hips meant touching that area near where the buttocks start. As he did, he realized a bony shoulder didn’t necessarily mean all of her was bony.
She did know how to swing, and once moving, put her legs straight out to ride forward, then pushed her weight back on the return .He was beginning to understand the dungarees. Maybe she wouldn’t want to do that wearing a dress. When she was arcing pretty good, getting even more confidence and enthusiasm, knowing she didn’t have to be afraid of him because Rita has shown her that, she said,
“You too, Denny. We can talk while we ride.”
Rita said, “Jerome Avenue.”
“What?”
“You’d be all the way over at Jerome Avenue”
“I live this side of the Concourse.”
“Turning the TV on.”
He managed, “Thanks.”
“What are friends for?”
When he was swinging too, but at a different pace it worked out---as he was going up, Annie was coming back---they shouted question and answers as the passed each other. Rita sat quietly on her swing, showing by her silence a kind of chaperonal approval.
Annie asked, “Do you know Mary Marino from St. Agnes?”
He did.
“Do you know Vincy Quigley?”
“Yeah. Do you know Denise Schumaker?”
He nodded. She knew Vincy. Good. His best friend. A plan was formulating: He and Annie, Vincy and Rita.
By playing the Bronx game Do you know…? They were establishing how well they already knew each other by proxy. Yet another version of Show my your friends and I’ll tell you who you are.
The idea of bringing Vincy Quigley as a surprise blind date was, If somebody could distract Rita, maybe Annie would let him kiss her. If he tried now with the swings moving, one of them might lose a tooth.
Rita was playing her radio louder. “Story Untold” by the Nutmegs: ”Here in my heart, Is a story untold…” He related to that part. The rest of it was about a girl who left him (them) standing, standing in the cold. He didn’t care for that. All popular songs were either about being in love or having a broken heart, mostly the latter. Rock and roll or Sinatra.”It’s a quarter to three, There’s no one in the place except you and me…” So stick ‘em up, Joe. Johnny Ace was at least supposed to be with the girl he sang “Pledging My Love” to, though in the real world Johnny Ace had shot himself in the heard, some said accidentally, fooling with a gun, not knowing there was still a round in the chamber, the bigger rumor was he died playing Russian roulette. However it had happened, he was now and forever The Late Great Johnny Ace. The Penguins “Earth Angel” was another ode to love, theirs at least to someone they were petitioning to be with, not someone who’d ditched them, but those were the exceptions to the broken heart songs. A lot of masochism in the American Top 40.
They rode and established who they knew mutually for ten more minutes, then Rita said, “She has to go now.” It was like she was a nanny.
Annie explained, “I have to study. A history test Wednesday.”
“Its Monday.”
“If I study tonight, I won’t have to worry tomorrow.”
They let the swings slow down and got off. He asked, “You come to the Patch much?”
“Most nights. Sometimes there are other people on the swings, and we sit on the benches.”
“Looking at the cars?”
“You can turn them around.”
“Why don’t you leave then like that?”
“We do .The parkie puts them back so the daytime pensioners don’t have to look across at the daytime winos.”
“Where do the winos go at night?”
“They’re here.”
“I didn’t notice them.”
Rita said, “They prefer reclining with a bottle in reach, so you can’t see them through the backs of the benches.”
He asked Annie, “Will you be here tomorrow?”
“Probably.”
“I’ll look for you. Same time?”
“Sounds right.”
Allen Freid was pitching his introduction for Chuck Berry’s “Maybeline” as they left. Denny stood and watched their departure. When they reached the benches, they were giggling, their conversation animated, sounding bawdy, and he just knew it was all about him.
He caught up with Quigley at lunch in the Rendezvous Luncheonette. .No chinos and T-shirts at school. They wore slacks, dress shirt and tie, sports jackets (jacket unbuttoned) walked with a strut, and had a cool way of carrying their books in one hand, just above the hip. The girls had uniforms. He told Vincy about his adventure, the two girls, and how the one he was fixing him up with looked like Gina Lollabrigida, to which Quigley said, “Fuck you, Scanlon. She has to be a dog.” That was cover. Vincy Quigley would have intercourse with a snake if it didn’t use its only noticable opening to bite. ”If this girl looks like I’m imagining, like King Kong, you’re gonna be in trouble.”
“Okay, you know what? Never mind.”
On the other side of Denny at the counter was Freddie Lester, who couldn’t get his hair to do anything but stick up like tufts of yellow weed, and had such a case of adolescent acne he should apply for a Guiness record before he outgrew it, and never again did anything notable. Denny turned to him.
“Freddie, you have anything planned for tonight?”
“The novena.”
“”Shit!” It was Quigley, poking an index finger into Denny’s back. ”What time?”
“Meet me at Gillespie Park at eight o’clock. We want to arrive at Swing Patch together.”
“I know this is bullshit.”
“You’re just a beneficiary because I can’t concentrate on one of them with two of them there. I need you to distract the other one.”
“These girls huers?”
“I wouldn’t count on it. BICs from St. Agnes.”
“Shit.”
“Can I have your phone number, Freddy, in case he doesn’t show.”
“The novena.”
“I forgot. Who’s the novena to, St. Teresa?”
“ Jude.”
Jude, the patron of lost causes. “Better keep that date, Freddy.”
Because Vincy was late of course, they met at 8:10 and got to the Patch at 8:20. There were no girls Several winos were visible, their scraggly heads lolled against the bench backs, and some little kids were on the swings.
Denny said, “Maybe they left already.”
“They stood you up, Scanlon. If they exist. May is a little late for an April Fool joke.”
Denny was truly let down, suddenly realized his attachment to this skinny girl he didn’t even know, and Quigley’s carping wasn’t helping at all.
Quigley said. “Wasted my whole fuckin’ evening.”
“What would you be doing instead, jerking off?”
“Hey!”
He needed to release that grief he was feeling that Annie hadn’t met him.
“Just shut the fuck up.”
“Come on.”
Quigley put his dukes up and asked, “Boxing or wrestling?”
Wrestle with Vincy Quigley. He was thirty five pounds heavier, and five inches taller. The only reason he didn’t play football was that the school didn’t have a team. He did play basketball.
“Boxing.”
Quigley started jumping up and down like he was in a corner before a fight, not in the fight. Denny had had another fight with Vincy one night in front of Keller’s bar on Valentine Avenue. The drinking age in New York was 18, but you could get in the bars underage with Selective Service draft cards, obtainable on the streets, and there was always a second during the night when he made contact with his self, when he could be hypnotized by his reflection behind the amber bottles in the magic mirror, and feel--- so cool, so handsome--- that he belonged and all was right with the world, and that was not a moment that could easily be interrupted by any pragmatic "Tomorrow is another day"
.
Tomorrow would be, of course, and sonetimes it came faster than others.They had left the bar and its illusions about 1:00 AM on a Friday night, though it would still be open another three hours, because Denny worked Saturday delivering groceries, Vincy had run out of money, and Denny couldn't lend him any more. In front, for no other reason than that he felt like it, unless perhaps for the declined extended credit, Vincy took a swing at Denny. Denny ducked, and the punch went over his head. He popped up and hit Vincy under the chin, then retreated by actually turning around, his back to Vincy, and running out of range.
Vincy came after him, two fist swinging, and Denny ducked again. His jack-in-the-box punch, turn and flee, strategy worked again. He wasn’t going to win, unless on points, but Vincy hadn’t touched him. They did it a third time.
Faces were pressed to the plate glass window inside Keller’s bar. This was one strange fight. There were rules of honor from when they were in grade school. Box or wrestle. No dirty fighting. Denny knew the bigger guys had made those rules up to keep their advantage. Once they were losing, they always got dirty.
Vincy, frustrated, was planning to kick him in the balls. He knew because it was in slow motion, he was so tall. Here’s the wind-up, he’s bending his knee, now he’s extending his leg, wait to react, don’t let him know what you’ve planned, and here’s the pitch, or kick. Denny caught his foot in his hands, and twisted it the way a foot doesn’t want to go. As Vincy tipped forward, trying to balance on one foot, he got civil again and wanted to talk. He agreed to desist, and Denny let the foot go. He hadn’t wanted to fight in the first place. The next time he went to Keller’s, the bartender asked him “What were you fighting with Vincy about?”. Blaming him.
Teddy the bartender, a big guy himself, siding with the other big guy, Vincy. A conspiracy. It’s the little guy’s fault. Safer that way. Denny had said, “You’d have to ask Vincy about that.”
So now he wanted to “box” again. While has still doing his jumping up and down psych, Denny faked a kick at his nuts. As expected, Quigley tried to block it, leaning forward, his long torso placing his face at height with Denny’s shoulder .Denny nailed him with a right on the nose.
“You’re a dirty fighter,” Quigley said, sounding like he had a bad cold.
“I didn’t kick you. It was just a fake.”
“Same thing.”
“You tried to do that to me last time.”
As Denny anticipated, Quigley now tried to kick him, and as like last encounter, with more slow motion leg bending and extending, and again Denny he had to hold back, waiting to block the kick. Then, while Quigley’s leg was in the air and his crotch unprotected, Denny kicked and made some kind of contact.. Quigley kicked once more, Denny blocked again. Quigely’s face was back exposed at Denny’s shoulder as he prepared to block another kick from Denny. Instead, Denny threw another right a bit awkwardly, but punched him on the jaw.
Quigley said, “I can’t box with a dirty fighter. Let’s wrestle.”
The blood from his nose was trickling like catsup onto his white T-shirt, and suddenly he focused behind Denny. Denny was sure it was a ruse, get him to look behind him so he could attack, so he kept his eyes on him, but then he heard a familiar sultry voice say “Hey.”
It was Rita, now standing beside Denny, saying, as if nothing unusual was going on, “Now she has to study for an Algebra test tomorrow. She told me to tell you she’ll meet you tomorrow night.”
“Let’s WRESTLE,” Quigley roared, his hands bloody too from trying to stop the flow from his nose.
Rita said, “Wasn’t this boxing? I didn’t hear anybody say ‘I give’ yet. Its over? You surrender?”
Sounding like he was speaking while having an orgasm, whether from congestion in his nose or pain in the genitals, Quigley told Rita,
“He’s a dirty fighter.”
“I saw you try to kick him.”
“He tried to kick me first.”
“Faked it.”
He tried to ignore her. “Let’s wrestle, Scanlon.”
She said, “You want to wrestle with me?”
“I don’t fight with girls.”
“Hey, Vincy, this is your date.”
“His DATE”
“I just thought, you know, I’d bring a friend.”
“He told me you looked like Gina Lollabrigida.”
“Well, I do, don’t I? Come on, you want to wrestle with somebody, wrestle with me.”
“It might be cuddly, Vincy.”
“I can’t wrestle with a girl.”
“You bet you can’t. I get you in my headlock, I’ll break your neck.”
Denny thought, Vincy Quigley is not looking good. I, Skinny Dinny, just punched him out (yeah, and kicked him), and he can’t fight with a girl because he can’t win. Beat her up and lose, get beaten by her and lose worse.
Vincy pleaded, ”My nose is bleeding.”
Rita said, “No shit?”
Denny said, trying to sound like he cared a little, “Yeah, you should go home and take care of that, Vincy. You’re losing a lot of blood.”
Rita said, “At least an ounce.”
Vincy growled, “I’ll see you at school tomorrow.”
“I’ll be there. Here now.”
Quigley suddenly lunged at Denny. Denny saw it coming, stepped aside as he stumbled by, and Rita stuck her foot out and tripped him He fell into the scrabbly, untended dogshit tufts of Swing Patch grass.
Quigley lived in one direction, and Denny the other, the same way Rita had just come from. As if by unspoken signal, he and Rita began walking their way, leaving Quigley in the company of the little kids on the swings and the winos on the benches Behind them, they could hear him gargling and mumbling in rage, as one of the little kids asked “Are you okay, Mister?”
As they walked on the street, Rita asked him, “Do you have a portable radio?”
He did. His mother had given it to him for his birthday. Mostly he listened to the Yankees games, and of course to rock and roll.
”Yeah,” he said.
“Bring it tomorrow. She likes radios. You have good batteries?”
“I think so.”
“Make sure. Mine are getting low. I don’t know if I’ll bring it tomorrow.”
“Okay, I’ll bring mine.”
He saw Quigley the next day at the Rendezvous Luncheonette on the Concourse. Quigley was waiting outside for him, so he didn’t know how this was going to go. He was lucky last night. Quigley was big, and he knew Denny’s moves now.
But Quigley was surprisingly conciliatory. He said, “I took care of my nose. Just laid back for a few minutes. You pack a light punch.”
Denny wondered if his laying back had done been on the nasty turf of the Patch.
“The cahungas are okay too. You just got my thigh.”
Maybe he did kick his thigh. Vincy wasn’t hitting the high notes. Didn’t miss his jaw, though.
Unbelievably, so soon, Vincy said, “Hey, I hope we’re still friends.”
Were they ever? Was a friend somebody you hung around with who might turn on you in a second, try to kick you in the balls?
“As always.” That was probably true.
“Rita, you know…we were…maybe under better circumstances…” Getting now to motivation? “We just got off to a bad start, right? She does remind me of Gina.. If we talked it over…”
It occurred to Denny that Quigley had never had a date (any more than Denny had.)
“I’ll inquire for you, but…you know…I don’t think you’re her type.”
“What if I go with you tonight?”
“That probably wouldn’t be a good idea yet until I talk to her first.”
“But you’ll ask?”
“I’ll try. Why didn’t you wrestle her?”
The fury was back in Quigley’s scarlet face. Denny knew he’d like to mutilate him. It was only desperation and the remotest of possibilities that he might salvage something with a girl who looked like Gina Lollabrigida and had threatened to break his neck that kept him from becoming belligerent now.
Denny tried to get it back like it used to be, rag him a little bit, but for fun.
“I’ll tell her about the time you sang ‘The Irish Soldier Boy’ in front of the dance at St. Brendan’s, then threw up the gallon and a half of beer you’d just ingested all over your Flagg Brothers’ shoes.”
“Fuck you, Scanlon.” But now he was giving the Fuck you, Scanlon when he knew Scanlon was joking, getting back to where they’d been before, which as Denny now saw it, had always been nowhere.
“It was a great rendition of that song, if you just hadn’t puked for an encore.”
The people outside that night for a smoke ---couldn’t do that inside a Catholic school auditorium---had actually begun applauding for him, though the heaving kind of transformed that into laughter.
“I’ll tell her about your singing voice.”
“Isn’t she Italian?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, I’m sure she doesn’t want to hear ‘The Irish Soldier Boy.’”
“Sing something else. Do you know ‘Volare’?”
“I never know what the words mean, so I can’t remember it.”
“How’s your moondog?”
“I can do Fats Domino.”
“She might like that. I’ll tell her you want to sing to her. Like Romeo.”
“Come on, Scanlon. Just see if she’ll meet me again.”
Denny had no intention whatsoever of alienating his matchmaker by mentioning Vincy Quigley to her ever again, but he also wanted to go into the luncheonette and eat without getting into another fight.
“Okay, but don’t get your hopes up too much.”
So, he had a date, or at least an appointment, with Annie. Thinking that, he realized he didn’t even know her last name. Tonight he could find that out. Do you know…Harry Hagel? Do you know… Suzie McDermott? Do you know ME?
That evening, he showed up with his Motorola portable radio..Annie, Rita and another girl, Carolyn were there. Three really were a crowd. The swings were occupied by older boys that couldn’t be told their time was up, so they found an unoccupied bench, wine bottles left as litter on the street side. As they began together to drag it around, one of the older guys shouted over to them, “Ah no. We’re going. The park is for you kids. We were just talking.”
Denny thought, that’s tolerant of you, but we’re no more kids than you, I drink in bars…but they were letting them have the swings. Except, three girls. Three swings.
On the way to the swings they passed by the boys leaving, and one asked Denny, “What’s your secret?”
He wanted to say Brylcreem, but older guys didn’t like anything from younger ones that could be interpreted as a smart remark
Rita answered, “He’s not a phony.”
Implying they were? Another nunism came to mind, from the 8th Grade nun who’d told a class, after hearing students saying others were phonies, ”Don’t worry about the phonies. Phonies grow up to be the real thing.”
“And we are?” the same guy asked.
Rita was a bit provoking, and Denny was the only guy in the group. Maybe comprehending his dilemma, she said, “I don’t know you. I’m just speaking for him. He’s not a phony.”
“Yeah, okay. He’s doing something right.”
Another said, “Must be good with the tongue.”
And another, “Talking?”
And the one who’d said that: “Yeah, right.”
The guy who first inquired if she meant they were phonies said, “He’s suave,” and then they left, to the accompaniment of their own laughter.
Carolyn's only comment was something she'd probably heard from guys, maybe her brothers, in another context, yet a refrain he thought could be heard on those streets a century later: "This neighborhod is unbelievable."
The seating arrangements: Carolyn, whose jacket was pink, on one end, then Rita on the middle swing, with a swing at the other end, which he and Annie tried awkwardly to share. It just wasn’t wide enough. Neither of them could sit. He’d like her on his lap, but it seemed too soon for that, not to mention that even her slim weight would squash his thighs against the edge of the swing .They half sat, but couldn’t move enough to even gesture, so he got off the swing and stood beside her.
She said, “Maybe we should go back to one of the benches.”
She glanced at Rita for---confirmation? Permission?
Rita said, “We can get by here.” She did have her radio with her, and the batteries sounded just fine.
Denny and Annie together. Alone. What was he going to say without Coach?
The bench was already halfway turned from their first effort, but stuck in a crack, and they soon found they couldn’t drag it any further to face the swings without picking it up. Annie didn’t have the weight to lift it, and he soon realized he could only drag it so it would face the street again.
OR: “Any reason we can’t sit on it like this?”
She said, “Half and half? Why not?”
Half privacy from the street, half from the swings. Couldn’t get real privacy anyway. Not in a Bronx grass patch.
The way they sat, he was on the side toward the cars and the buildings across the street, and she was on the swing side. It meant, looking at him, she couldn’t see Rita and Carolyn, but he could. Her view, behind him, was da Bronx.
As soon as they sat, she asked, “Can I hold your radio?”
He remembered now, the night he met her, she was holding a radio. Rita’s radio. He handed it to her, and she held it like a sacred object, caressing its plastic frame.
They sat there then and said nothing to each other, she focused on touching and looking at the radio.
He needed a primer on How To Talk To A Girl. Why didn’t his school have a class on that?
He asked, “How did you do on that Algebra test you studied for?”
“What? History. I did okay.”
“Didn’t you have an Algebra test today?”
“We have an Algebra quiz every day”
“Didn’t you study for it last night?”
“A little bit before I went out.” (CONT. STORY 7 PART 2)