Page 17

17

As Rebecca Pays the Check, Bobby Recalls the Evening When She Became an Amigo

In late September, classes at Maple Grove High had been in session for a month, long enough for most of the teachers to decide that imparting knowledge to their students was a more arduous task than any human being ought to be required to undertake. After the inexplicable excitement that possessed the teenagers on their return to school, they had adjusted to the realization this would be another year of tedium, punctuated by more frequent and intense hormonal urges than the previous year, most of which would be relieved with an imaginary partner. Already, teachers had resorted to educational films, periods of assigned research in the library, silent reading sessions, and other scams, giving themselves more time to suck on cigarettes in the faculty lounge before smoking anywhere in the building was at last forbidden; when that tragic day arrived, there would be no relief except through prescription drugs or capitulation to one degree of insanity or another.

That autumn night was cool but not cold, windless but not perfectly still. Thick fog oozed through lamplit streets. In those blinding conditions, most drivers piloted their cars and trucks well below the speed limit, but a few reckless individuals raced into the void with the conviction that excess alcohol provided protection equal to Kevlar body armor or with the belief that God looked after fools.

On Monday evenings, Adorno’s Pizzeria was never super busy because here in the heartland most people who had dining-out money used it Wednesday through Sunday. A few booths were occupied, but the tables in the center of the room were untenanted. Now and then customers came in to pick up the takeout they had ordered.

The big mural offered Italian atmosphere from the Tower of Pisa to what might have been a pissoir. A year earlier, there had been a jukebox, but Mr. Adorno fell out of love with contemporary music. Now some guys with names like Dean Martin and Julius La Rosa and Al Martino were piped in free. The amigos tried not to listen to them because, if they came to like those singers, they might sink deeper into nerddom, so deep they would never get out. On the plus side, when other teenagers wandered into the place, the music was to them what a crucifix was to vampires, and they fled before someone might try to drive stakes through their hearts.

Bobby the Sham and Ernie were sitting on the same banquette in their booth, and Spencer was sitting alone in the facing banquette. On the table between them were three Cokes on coordinated coasters and a large cheese-and-pepperoni pizza that they were sharing.

This was a sanctuary for the amigos because Mr. Adorno refused to endure the worst of adolescent behavior; therefore, if you were kids who qualified for one of the in-crowds and wanted a hangout joint, you went to Pizza Pete’s or Roscoe’s Burger Hut if it came to one of those fates, they would have to win at least $150,000,000 in the lottery, after taxes, and share their winnings. Then they would buy Adorno’s, not with any intention of making a profit, but just so they would always have the ideal place to hang out.

That evening in September, they were arguing over who would win in a matchup between the Terminator and the monster from the movie Aliens , when the pizzeria door opened and chilly fog seethed inside, bringing with it Rebecca Crane. They didn’t know her name then, and in fact they initially paid little attention to her.

They were boys who liked girls, even though girls scared them a little. Actually, girls scared them a lot. They hoped to grow out of that and become confident around the opposite sex. However, they had admitted to one another that they expected to live without a mate, die alone, and be found by strangers weeks after death in a state of horrific decomposition.

Rebecca wasn’t dressed to attract boys. Because of the examples set by her man-crazy mother and her grandparents in their creepy kissy-face war to the death, she’d decided to go through life as asexual as a protozoa, without even the hope of replicating herself by ameboid fission. On this occasion, she wore combat boots, baggy camouflage pants, a black sweatshirt, and a floppy waterproofed canvas hat with a wide brim like the headgear of explorers making their way through jungles in perpetual rain. She was as white-faced as something that lived under a rock, because she had applied stage makeup of the kind required by actors in the role of ghosts in such plays as those based on A Christmas Carol or a work by Poe.

When she came directly to the booth occupied by the three amigos and sat beside Spencer, the boys flinched, and Ernie almost knocked over his Coke, and Spencer raised one hand defensively, as if warding off an attack.

Bobby had seen such a person around school, in this getup as well as in assemblages of roomy antique clothing that made her look like the shambling apparition of some ax murderess who had died in the eighteenth century. There were no dress codes in school anymore; even if there had been, no teachers or counselors remained with the courage to confront a student so strangely costumed. Someone might have expressed concern about her intentions if she had shown up for class with a flaming torch in each hand, but even then the faculty and administration would most likely have decided that the wisest course was to give her whatever space she needed to reveal whatever statement she felt compelled to deliver.

Now, sitting in the booth beside Spencer, she made eye contact with each of the boys. They regarded her in stunned silence, as if Death had sat down among them.

She said, “I’m Rebecca Crane. I’ve been watching you guys for a few weeks.”

Those weren’t words that relieved their tension, especially as they had not been aware of being watched.

In a voice as solemn as if they were seated in a funeral home during a viewing of a deceased family member, she said, “You look like you enjoy being together, even like you’re having fun, not fun like other kids have fun, but some kind of fun anyway.”

Bobby thought—and no doubt so did Spencer and Ernie—that her implication was that “having fun” of their kind was something vermin did, a species of vermin that needed to be exterminated.

As if to stave off the violence that might be impending, Ernie said, “Well, you know, appearances can be deceiving. We don’t have a lot of fun. We don’t even try. It would be fruitless to do so.”

Her eyes narrowed. “What are you trying to tell me? Are you telling me this is a closed club, I should go away?”

“We’re not a club,” Spencer assured her. “Nothing as fun as a club. We don’t have a secret handshake or a club song or anything as fun as that.”

Lips tightly compressed, she regarded Spencer in silence for half a minute, for another half minute, for yet another half minute, until a fine sweat had broken out on his forehead. Then she said, “I want in.”

“In what?” Ernie asked.

“ In, ” she said fiercely.

“She wants in,” Bobby clarified.

“She’s already in,” Spencer said. To Rebecca, he said, “You were outside, and you came inside.”

“Don’t pretend to be idiots so that maybe I’ll just go away. You’re not idiots, and I’m not going anywhere but in.”

“She’s not going anywhere but in,” Bobby said, in case his two amigos still didn’t get it. In fact, he didn’t get it himself. The amigos were such outcasts that it never crossed his mind that she wanted to be one of their group. He was just trying to forestall an unpleasant conflict until they could pry from her what she meant by the word “ in. ”

Into this hair-trigger situation stepped Gia Adorno, who was the daughter of Luca and Apollonia Adorno. She was maybe five feet four with midnight-black hair and dark-brown eyes, so beautiful that the amigos always stuttered through their orders when she was their waitress. As willowy as she appeared, Gia could nevertheless lever an obnoxious drunk out of his chair and manhandle him through the front door into the street regardless of his size. She scanned Rebecca and said, “Great look.”

“Thanks.”

“I especially like the flamingo feather in the rain hat.”

“No flamingos around here, so I plucked a chicken feather and dyed it pink.”

“What can I get for you?”

“What’re they drinking?”

“Vanilla Coke, cherry Coke, chocolate Coke.”

“Pussy drinks. I’ll have mine straight.”

That was when Bobby started to like her.

“And a meatball sub with a lot of red-pepper flakes,” Rebecca said, “and chopped pepperoncini.”

When Gia went away, Bobby the Sham addressed his companions with sudden enlightenment. “I think Rebecca wants to be an amigo.”

Spencer was so astonished that he clamped one hand to the crown of his skull as though to prevent his head from exploding. “I never thought—I can’t imagine—a girl would want to be one of us.”

“Or another guy, for that matter,” Ernie admitted.

“Why?” Bobby wondered. “Why would anyone?”

“Well,” she said, “two reasons. First, I don’t expect I’ll ever have, you know, a romantic relationship. I’ll be old and die alone, and by the time someone finds me, I’ll be a disgusting, decomposed thing. I figure if I make a few friends, one of them will find me before I begin to rot. I know that sounds weird.”

“Not at all,” Bobby averred, and Ernie echoed, “Not at all,” and Spencer declared, “Eminently sensible.”

She said, “The thing is, you don’t have to like much about me, and I don’t have to like much about you. Friends often don’t like everything about one another, but they can be there for one another when it counts.”

“And it really counts,” Spencer said, “when you’re lying dead and about to rot.”

“You said you had two reasons,” Bobby reminded her.

“You guys laugh a lot.”

“We do?” Spencer asked.

“We’re nerds,” Ernie said. “We laugh at stupid stuff that a lot of people wouldn’t laugh at. That doesn’t mean it’s funny.”

Rebecca said, “My mother’s living in San Francisco with a man named Raoul something. I have no idea who my father is. I live with my grandparents, who pretend to be wildly in love but who despise each other and don’t hide it well. They actually enjoy despising each other. I’ve never heard any of them laugh. To be fair, I don’t know if Raoul laughs, because I never met him. I never met Frederico before Raoul, or Juan who came before Frederico. Maybe those guys laugh uproariously all the time. But nobody ever laughs where I live, and I’ve had more grim than I can handle. I’m done with grim.”

Ernie was moved. “I’m so sorry for you. That sucks. I never met my father, either. For your sake, if we become amigos, I’ll try to prevent my mother from meeting you.”

“I was a foster child,” Bobby said. “Taken in by a couple of potatoes. They never laugh, either.”

Spencer said, “I knew my mother, but last year she went away to find herself. I live in my father’s house, though he’s never there. He lives with a stripper in the rectory of a church he set up so that degenerates could have something to believe in.”

One by one, she made eye contact with the amigos. “So am I in?”

Bobby said, “We’ll need to talk about it.”

“So talk.”

“We’ll need to confer in private, overnight.”

“Confer, huh? Why don’t you go to Vegas, rent the convention center, and have a conference regarding the issue?”

Having already delivered the unadulterated Coke, Gia returned with the meatball sub. “Would you like a knife and fork with that?”

“No, thanks,” said Rebecca. “I’m good.”

The submarine sandwich had not been sliced in two because the contents might have spilled out of the cut end. She picked it up and held it in such a manner that Bobby had the impression she was a person of exquisite etiquette holding a canape. She proceeded to eat with the gusto of a lumberjack at the end of a long day of felling trees, and yet there was nothing gross about her manners. Even in her weird outfit and paste-white face, she was so poised that she made hogging down a one-pound hoagie seem like an elegant deed of great refinement.

The three amigos watched her. They sat very still. They said nothing. They were temporarily incapable of speech.

Finished eating, wiping her fingers on a paper napkin, Rebecca looked up and saw the amigos staring. “So am I in?”

“Yes,” Bobby said, and Ernie said, “Yeah, sure,” and Spencer said, “Of course.”

She surveyed them with a gimlet eye—actually, two gimlet eyes. “We need to get one thing settled. You’re not going to treat me like a girl or think of me as a girl. I’m one of the guys. Even if I show up in your dreams, even then, I’ll just be one of the guys. I won’t be an amiga. I’ll be just another amigo. You got that?”

Bobby said, “Naturally, yeah, all right,” and Ernie nodded as he intoned, “One of the guys,” and Spencer confirmed, “I got it, you got it, we all got it.”

Bobby was confident that, considering her appearance, it would be easy enough to think of her as a guy. Months later, when they discovered how she really looked, she had become a brother to them, and not much adjustment was required to think of her as a tomboy sister, though that is for a later chapter, as this one will soon become longer than a modern reader will tolerate.

Now she leaned back in the booth and smiled at her amigos. “So if we’re not a club, what are we—a gang?”

Ernie said, “Gee, I don’t know. ‘Gang’ sounds kind of rough.”

However, Spencer sat up straight, electrified by the idea. “People don’t mess with gangsters.”

Half an hour of vigorous discussion ensued, most of it too juvenile to burden you with here. Eventually they decided to think of themselves as a gang though not to say so publicly.

Now on her second Coke and feeling no pain, Rebecca said, “You are not going to regret this. I’ll be loyal and pull my own weight in whatever we do. Hey, you know what?”

“What?” the boys asked simultaneously.

“Now that we’re a gang, we should knock over a liquor store and find some old man crossing the street so we can beat him up just for the hell of it.”

The boys laughed, though a bit uneasily, still not quite sure what to make of her in her combat boots, camouflage pants, black sweatshirt, and death-white makeup.