Different Seasons(118)

“My brother.”

“Oh. Where is he?”

“In the Army,” Chico says, but Johnny isn’t in the Army. He had been working the summer before at Oxford Plains Speedway and a car went out of control and skidded across the infield toward the pit area, where Johnny had been changing the back tires on a Chevy Charger-class stocker. Some guys shouted at him to look out, but Johnny never heard them. One of the guys who shouted was Johnny’s brother Chico.

“Aren’t you cold?” she asks.

“No. Well, my feet. A little.”

And he thinks suddenly: Well, my God. Nothing happened to Johnny that isn’t going to happen to you, too, sooner or later. He sees it again, though: the skidding, skating Ford Mustang, the knobs of his brother’s spine picked out in a series of dimpled shadows against the white of his Hanes tee-shirt; he had been hunkered down, pulling one of the Chevy’s back tires. There had been time to see rubber flaying off the tires of the runaway Mustang, to see its hanging muffler scraping up sparks from the infield. It had struck Johnny even as Johnny tried to get to his feet. Then the yellow shout of flame.

Well, Chico thinks, it could have been slow, and he thinks of his grandfather. Hospital smells. Pretty young nurses bearing bedpans. A last papery breath. Were there any good ways?

He shivers and wonders about God. He touches the small silver St. Christopher’s medal that hangs on a chain around his neck. He is not a Catholic and he’s surely not a Mexican: his real name is Edward May and his friends all call him Chico because his hair is black and he greases it back with Brylcreem and he wears boots with pointed toes and Cuban heels. Not Catholic, but he wears this medallion. Maybe if Johnny had been wearing one, the runaway Mustang would have missed him. You never knew.

He smokes and stares out the window and behind him the girl gets out of bed and comes to him quickly, almost mincing, maybe afraid he will turn around and look at her. She puts a warm hand on his back. Her br**sts push against his side. Her belly touches his buttock.

“Oh. It is cold.”

“It’s this place.”

“Do you love me, Chico?”

“You bet!” he says off-handedly, and then, more seriously: “You were cherry.”

“What does that—”

“You were a virgin.”

The hand reaches higher. One finger traces the skin on the nape of his neck. “I said, didn’t I?”

“Was it hard? Did it hurt?”

She laughs. “No. But I was scared.”

They watch the rain. A new Oldsmobile goes by on 14, spraying up water.

“Stud City,” Chico says.

“What?”

“That guy. He’s going Stud City. In his new stud car.” She kisses the place her finger has been touching gently and he brushes at her as if she were a fly.

“What’s the matter?”

He turns to her. Her eyes flick down to his penis and then up again hastily. Her arms twitch to cover herself, and then she remembers that they never do stuff like that in the movies and she drops them to her sides again. Her hair is black and her skin is winter white, the color of cream. Her br**sts are firm, her belly perhaps a little too soft. One flaw to remind, Chico thinks, that this isn’t the movies.

“Jane?”

“What?” He can feel himself getting ready. Not beginning, but getting ready.

“It’s all right,” he says. “We’re friends.” He eyes her deliberately, letting himself reach at her in all sorts of ways. When he looks at her face again, it is flushed. “Do you mind me looking at you?”

“I . . . no. No, Chico.”

She steps back, closes her eyes, sits on the bed, and leans back, legs spread. He sees all of her. The muscles, the little muscles on the insides of her thighs ... they’re jumping, uncontrolled, and this suddenly excites him more than the taut cones of her br**sts or the mild pink pearl of her cunt. Excitement trembles in him, some stupid Bozo on a spring. Love may be as divine as the poets say, he thinks, but sex is Bozo the Clown bouncing around on a spring. How could a woman look at an erect penis without going off into mad gales of laughter?

The rain beats against the roof, against the window, against the sodden cardboard patch blocking the glass-less lower pane. He presses his hand against his chest, looking for a moment like a stage Roman about to orate. His hand is cold. He drops it to his side.

“Open your eyes. We’re friends, I said.”

Obediently, she opens them. She looks at him. Her eyes appear violet now. The rainwater running down the window makes rippling patterns on her face, her neck, her br**sts. Stretched across the bed, her belly has been pulled tight. She is perfect in her moment.

“Oh,” she says. “Oh Chico, it feels so funny.” A shiver goes through her. She has curled her toes involuntarily. He can see the insteps of her feet. Her insteps are pink. “Chico. Chico.”

He steps toward her. His body is shivering and her eyes widen. She says something, one word, but he can’t tell what it is. This isn’t the time to ask. He half-kneels before her for just a second, looking at the floor with frowning concentration, touching her legs just above the knees. He measures the tide within himself. Its pull is thoughtless, fantastic. He pauses a little longer.

The only sound is the tinny tick of the alarm clock on the bedtable, standing brassy-legged atop a pile of Spiderman comic books. Her breathing flutters faster and faster. His muscles slide smoothly as he dives upward and forward. They begin. It’s better this time. Outside, the rain goes on washing away the snow.