Hot Pink

  I know she didn’t mean that I was the biggest in size, but it made me sad for a second, because it was true in that way, too. There was this gay guy, Vito, that lived down the street and pretended he wasn’t gay, and he was bigger than me, but if you take into consideration age and proportionate size, I was the biggest heterosexual on the block. I wanted to not eat the steak because of all the calories I had before, but my ma got upset when I didn’t eat her food and it pissed off my dad. So I ate. I probably ate 4,500 calories that day, which is sick.

  “Jenny Wansie. Eh? Eh,” my dad said. My dad always says “Eh” when he’s embarrassing someone. “Look at him blushing. Alright. Sorry. I didn’t think you were gay, Clifford, but I was worried because Lee Anders’s son I didn’t think was gay either, and Lee Anders walked in on him just the other day. Commiserating with a little Asian kid.”

  Lee Anders was one of the copilots my dad flew around the world with.

  “An Asian kid?” my ma said.

  “Gloria, we’re Democrats. It doesn’t matter the kid was Asian.”

  “Then why’d you say it?”

  “For detail. To add texture to the story.”

  “He wasn’t really Asian?”

  “No. He was Asian alright. Till Lee Anders got through with him, and then the kid was just ugly.”

  “Lee hurt the boy?”

  “Boy! He was sixteen years old, for chrissakes. Now, Clifford, I want you to know this: it’s okay for people to be gay because we’re all Democrats here, but just not for you. It’s like saying nigger and being Italian. It’s just not right for you.”

  “How do I know I’m a Democrat?”

  “Here’s the test: do you think our new mayor Richard M. Daley is a funny guy who makes a lot of clever plays on words when he talks, or do you think he’s more like an illiterate, nonsense-speaking midget with a really red face?”

  “What do you think?” I said.

  “I’m asking you, Clifford.”

  “Your dad’s asking you.”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “There! You’re a Democrat. You got an open mind on you. You don’t know, so you withhold judgment.” He stood up, leaving his fork in his steak, and walked to the other side of the table to hug me and kiss me wet on the cheeks. Then he went back to his steak and said, “Hello, son! How’s your summer been?”

  I like my dad. He’s crazy. “It’s been alright.”

  “Just alright? Have you been seeing a lot of this hot little Wansie I’m hearing so much about?”

  My ma was laughing because she likes my dad for being crazy, too. “Clifford doesn’t like to talk about little Jenny.”

  Again with the size. I was the biggest heterosexual and the girl I loved was little. They didn’t know. They couldn’t. I knew they couldn’t, so I didn’t let it get to me.

  “If he doesn’t like to talk about her, it must be serious. Have you gotten to first yet, Cliff?”

  “Carlo.”

  “What? I’m just asking about first. First is just French kissing. Have you been French kissing in the U.S.A., Cliff? Eh? Eh. Eh? Ah, you’re too young to remember that song. Pass the mashed, Gloria,” he said.

  She pushed the bowl of potatoes over to him and everyone was quiet for a minute. I was about to ask my dad to pass me the potatoes when he was through with them, but he started talking, which was good, because one thing I didn’t need to do to myself was those potatoes.

  “Am I square or what? This day and age,” my dad said, shaking his head. “First doesn’t mean French kissing anymore, does it? That’s just being in the batter’s circle, isn’t it? What used to be third is now first base. The times they are a-changing. It’s fine, though. That’s what Democrats stand for.”

  “Don’t be sad, Carlo. You’re no square. First is still Frenching, right?” my ma said to me.

  Like I knew. You could tell they were so sure I kissed all the girls I wanted to.

  “No,” I told them. “First ain’t Frenching.”

  “Really, Cliff? What is it, then?” my ma said.

  My dad lifted up his eyebrows and did the thing with the finger in the fist. My ma smacked him and then they kissed. My dad was a football player in high school and my ma was a dancer. My dad was cool, though. He had an old hotrod. I’ve seen pictures. It was a black ’67 Chevelle with a blower. He was a badass, my dad. My ma was really pretty, too. She was his Jenny Wansie except that she actually liked him, which made it much better, and then I was born and they were happy about it.

  “So?” my dad said. “What’s first then?”

  “Two guys and a girl,” I said.

  “Get out,” my ma said.

  “Are you serious, Cliff? That’s kinda disturbing to your father,” my dad said. “Frankly, I’m shocked. And with so many Republicans in our Congress…”

  “He’s making it up,” my mother said.

  “I’m serious,” I said.

  “Well, so what’s home plate?” my dad said.

  I don’t know how to explain this, but he had this thing in his voice like I was ruining his life, which I didn’t want to do.

  I said, “Home plate is when you fall in love with the girl of your dreams and she loves you too and everything’s alright.”

  My dad slapped the table. He lightened right up. My mother grabbed hold of my cheeks because she thinks I like it, which is my fault because I never told her any different. She said, “You’re gonna get to home plate one day, Cliff. If not with that little Wansie girl, then with someone smarter and prettier.”

  “You’re a nice boy, Clifford,” my father said. “You’re gonna be a kind and decent man.”

  “And you’re so creative.”

  “Creative? This kid’s a friggin genius! You know I told Lee Anders about some of the stuff you’re learning in those math classes and he didn’t believe me? Flat out called me a liar. Said it was bad luck to lie about your own son. Then again, his son’s off taking it where the sun don’t—”

  “Easy, Carlo.”

  “What? Why does he gotta—Cliff, why do you gotta cry every time someone has something nice to say about you at the dinner table?”

  The best thing about huffing was how much you could do. Since it only got you high a couple minutes at a time, the worst that could happen if you did too much—except for death—was you’d get freaked out for a couple of minutes, which wasn’t long at all, and so unless your last huff made you have a bad time, you always tried to out-huff that huff this huff. At least that’s how I huffed. Franco, too. But I always huffed more than him. Master Glow, Dusted That, Shine Cannon, Ronson—the brand didn’t matter. My lungs were deeper cause I wasn’t a smoker, plus I wasn’t afraid. I’d freaked out a few times, and I’m not saying I liked it, but it wasn’t boring either. I never regretted it. Once I thought I was a light getting dimmer in a window. Another time I thought I’d looked up too hard and my eyes were stuck staring inside of my skull. The day after we ripped off all that grilled cheese from Theo’s and my dad suspected me of being a fag, which was the fifty-fourth day in a row I hung out with Franco, I was sure Gino Kim was using ESP against me, like to make me remember things we’d done that I’d forgotten. I remembered this one time we bought a bag of tarragon, thinking it was weed—real drugs were impossible to get at our school—and we smoked it in a pipe Gino made by rolling tin foil. The smoke hurt our throats but tasted kind of good. I thought it did, at least. Gino didn’t like it. But he liked to eat fish patty sandwiches from McDonald’s, so his taste in food smells wasn’t reliable—I remembered that too. And I remembered this other time we threw rocks at the slide of a jungle gym for hours. I can’t even explain why that was fun, but it was.

  I opened my eyes, which I’d forgot were closed, and remembered I’d told Gino I’d pay him back for all the grilled cheese. Thirteen-fifty. And plus the two cookies. Fifteen dollars. But how would I get it? I didn’t know how I’d get it. My summertime allowance was ten bucks a week, and I’d given five to Fran
co for Dirt Gun XL, which is what we were huffing, there on the garage couch in front of the TV. It’s the same thing as Dirt Gun, but the trigger you pull to make the nozzle blast the drugs out is black instead of purple, and the can’s twice as big—that’s why it’s so expensive. Franco said “Wah” and rolled it slow across the couch to me. His TV’s antenna was missing an ear and the only channel he was able to raise that morning was playing Three Stooges, but he hated Moe’s voice—he said it made him feel accused—so he’d turned off the volume, and that was fine with me cause the noises the Stooges make give me a headache, but sitting there looking at them tweak each other’s noses and make pained faces while I came down from Dirt Gun wasn’t any good, so I took a giant huff, not big enough to cause another ESP freakout, but big enough to make me forget about the first one.

  Right in that gap between huffing and feeling it, this knocking started up on the door of the garage—not the one made for cars that faces the alley but the one that you enter from Franco’s backyard—and Franco III started barking her face off. Once the Dirt Gun came on, though, the wahs were so loud that everything else sounded far away and swirly.

  An unhappy-looking fat guy in a suit came in, and the sleaze from the alley from the day before followed him. They stood behind the TV, facing the couch, and the fat guy’s mouth was this straight black line, and the sleaze shook his head and said things to Franco. It might as well have been static, though, whatever he was saying. I could tell it wasn’t good just by looking at his face, but didn’t know what it was cause the wahs drowned the words out. Plus the sleaze’s hair, I’d noticed, was the shiniest thing. It was so clean and shiny that the lamplight behind him made his head look on fire. I wanted Franco to see, so I lifted my arm to point the head out, but my arm was dense and heavy, which slowed me down, and before I could even get my index finger straightened, Franco’d jumped to his feet.

  The whole couch jerked.

  The fat guy’s mouth showed small wet teeth and the sleaze pushed at air like “Hold up, take it easy, just please quiet down.”

  Franco told him, “What!” It was louder than the wahs—the wahs were wearing off fast—and it sounded like his voice cracked when he said it again. “What!” he said. “What!” Then he flicked his lit cigarette, which grazed the sleaze’s face. Orange ashes blew around and the sleaze cupped his ear. “Franco!” the sleaze said. “Come on now! Come on!”

  Now the fat guy pushed air. “Calm down,” he told Franco. “Just sit back down now.”

  “What!” Franco said.

  I’d missed something important. Something big was happening and I didn’t know what. I thought I should have known what.

  I felt a little sick, then remembered to breathe.

  Franco III kept barking her face off.

  Then Franco stepped forward and kicked the TV off the crate that it sat on, right at the sleaze, who it caught on the waist. The sleaze shouted “Fuck!” or made the noise fuh! and bent forward hard and the TV screen shattered all over the floor.

  Franco jumped the crate, tackling the sleaze. The fat guy grabbed Franco’s shoulders and pulled. Franco bucked, sent him back into the wall, smacked the sleaze, and kept saying “What!” I was on my feet. I didn’t know what I should do. The fat guy caught his balance and dove at Franco. I saw a holstered gun when his jacket flapped up, and I was running out the door, into the yard, like a gifted-track fatso pussy, but I wasn’t. I wasn’t a pussy. I was doing what I had to.

  When she saw me, Franco III went crazy, but I stood just outside the range of her chain and I stared into her eyes—they were all pink with blood and dripping with water—and I pointed my finger and yelled at her, “Easy!” and yelled it again, and guess what happened. The chain sloped behind her and she looked at the ground. She sat on the grass.

  I freed her from the fence as fast as I could, and we entered the garage. Cords were straining under Franco’s neck skin. His face was this greasy tomato of pain. He knelt one knee on the chest of the sleaze and his other leg was straightened at a nasty-looking angle while the fat guy, behind him, was twisting the chickenwing he had Franco’s arm in and saying stuff to him too soft to make out.

  I didn’t register the fat guy’s voice’s softness until I’d already said “Nasal spray,” though.

  Franco III had some distance to cover—most of a garage—and she barked the whole way. The fat guy heard her coming and released the chickenwing. He pivoted quick and, right as the dog hurtled over the crate, he raised both his fists and shouted, “Down!” She hit the ground squealing, already bent to turn, and she re-jumped the crate and pushed her head between my shins with so much force I nearly lost my footing. “Scout,” I said, and she laid down flat.

  Franco was sitting on top of the sleaze. His face was in his hands. His shoulders were jumping.

  The fat guy said to me, “Jesus H. Christ, kid.” The walkie-talkie-thing on his belt made that crackle like they do in the movies, and a voice said some numbers.

  Then I did run away like a gifted-track pussy. Tried to, at least.

  Another cop grabbed me just outside the door. He got me by the elbows and I twisted and pulled, but it wasn’t even close. In a million years, with a billion chances, I couldn’t have gotten away from this guy. He was bigger than my dad. I just wasn’t strong enough. And something about that… something really got into me. It was partly the Dirt Gun—that stuff can spin you out—but only partly, I think. I didn’t think it was right that this guy, cause he was bigger, was able to hold on to me. I don’t mean it was wrong or that it didn’t make sense, but… I don’t know what I mean. I just hated how it was, and something got into me. I spit on the guy. I tried for his face and what I got was his tie-knot. That was enough, though. He gave me this shake. He couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t really either. Spitting on a cop.

  And then I heard a woman’s voice, Franco’s ma’s voice, a kind of pretty voice that didn’t sound like she looked. It sounded much younger, almost like a girl’s. She was standing right there, right behind the cop shaking me, and she said to him, “Please, Detective Rizzo, be gentle. This is Clifford Martinucci, Franco’s best friend. I’m sure that he’s just upset on our behalf.”

  The cop stopped shaking me. He even let go of one of my arms. I was surprised to hear Franco’s ma say my name—I’d never really met her and didn’t think she knew me—and more surprised to hear her call me Franco’s best friend, which, now that I thought about it, seemed to make sense since we’d hung out for fifty-four days in a row. What surprised me the most, though, was what the cop said back to her.

  “Martinucci like the pilot, you’re saying?” he said.

  And she told him, “His son.”

  And he let go my other arm.

  I didn’t know why it mattered I was my father’s son any more than I knew what I was supposed to be upset about on whose behalf. I knew enough to keep my mouth shut and wait to find out later, though.

  “Baby,” Franco’s ma said to someone behind me. I figured it was Franco, but nope—it was the sleaze. He limped through the doorway, into the yard, bleeding on the cheek, holding his gut area.

  He said, “Here I am, your killed messenger, returned.” He laughed a thin laugh.

  “Killed?” Franco’s ma said. “That’s how you talk at a time like this?”

  “You know what? Don’t guilt me. I was trying to do right by your piece-of-work son—and for you—and what happens? He pummels me’s what happens. I don’t need to feel worse now.”

  “You what?” Franco’s ma said. “A who?” she said. “Pummeled?”

  “Look at my face, honey. Look at my clothes.”

  “That was Franco did that?”

  “Who else?” said the sleaze.

  “Did you do like I asked?”

  “I did just like you asked.”

  “Did you tell him you were there for him? Did you tell him you’d be there if he needed to talk, or someone to lean on?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I
told him! I told him all of that shit. I told him we could bond about it. I told him we should. And that’s when he came at me! Ask him, you don’t believe me.”

  “Him” meant me. I didn’t know what to say. I squinted at a patch of yellow grass behind the sleaze.

  “Never mind,” he said. “Listen. It’s feeding time. I’m going.”

  “Forget about those parakeets, Alan,” Franco’s ma said.

  “They’re hatchlings,” he said. “It’s important to keep them on a very strict regimen.”

  “We need you here,” she snapped.

  The sleaze stood up straight and stomped on the ground. “He jumped on me, Angela. He knocked me down with a television, and jumped on me and struck me!”

  “Yeah, struck you, I struck you,” Franco muttered—he was being led from the garage, in cuffs, by the fat cop. “He got struck cause I struck him and next thing’s I’ll kill him. Go fuck yourself,” he said to his ma or the sleaze or all the world.

  “Please don’t arrest him,” Franco’s ma said to the fat cop. “He didn’t mean any harm. You’d be upset too, you just found out your father died.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Hey,” I said.

  Nobody waited.

  “I won’t be pressing charges,” the fat cop said, “but we’re gonna hold on to him until he cools down. He attacked Mr. Smucci, I think he’s on drugs, you just heard him making threats, and we’re standing right here. We don’t really have any other choice, Ms. Iafarte.”

  “Hey, wait,” I said.

  “Are you taking drugs, Franco?” Franco’s ma asked.

  “Aw, shut up,” he told her. “Take care of my dog, please, Cliff, please, okay? She’s over by the motorcycle, whining and shaking. I promise she won’t hurt you as long as you’re nice to her. ”

  Before I could answer, the fat cop told Franco, “Your friend’s gonna be in the car right next to you.”

  The other cop, Rizzo, said to the fat cop, “You know, this is the pilot’s son. Maybe we shouldn’t—”

  “I know who he is,” the fat cop said. He waved around the can of Dirt Gun XL. “Believe me, his dad’ll want to know about this. Your dad’s gonna hear about this, Clifford,” he told me.