Published. The piece wasn’t a review but an overview, a discussion of the equal but contrasting merits of two films Ferguson had been pondering for the past several months. It appeared in the dismal, sloppily printed biweekly school paper called the Riverside Rebel, an eight-page broadsheet that published out-of-date news items about interscholastic athletic events, articles about meaningless school controversies (the declining quality of the cafeteria food, the headmaster’s decision to ban the playing of transistor radios in the halls between classes), and poems, short stories, and occasional drawings by the students who fancied themselves poets, short-story writers, and artists. Mr. Dunbar, Ferguson’s English teacher that year, was the Rebel’s faculty adviser, and he encouraged the fledgling cinephile to contribute as many articles as he cared to write, claiming that the paper was in desperate need of new blood, and regular columns on films, books, art, music, and theater would be a step in the right direction. Intrigued and flattered by Mr. Dunbar’s request, Ferguson set to work on a piece about The 400 Blows and Breathless, his two favorite French films of the past summer, and now that he had been to France himself, it seemed only natural that he should begin his career as a film critic by writing about the French New Wave. Other than the fact that both films were shot in black and white and set in contemporary Paris, Ferguson argued, they had nothing in common. The two works were radically different in tone, sensibility, and narrative technique, so different that it would be useless to compare them and even more useless to waste a single moment questioning which one was the better film. About Truffaut he wrote: heartbreaking realism, tender but tough-minded, deeply human, rigorously honest, lyrical. About Godard he wrote: jagged and disruptive, sexy, disturbingly violent, funny and cruel, constant in-joke references to American films, revolutionary. No, Ferguson wrote in the final paragraph, he would not come down on the side of one film or the other because he loved them both, in the same way he loved both Jimmy Stewart Westerns and Busby Berkeley musicals, loved both Marx Brothers comedies and James Cagney gangster films. Why choose? he asked. Sometimes we want to sink our teeth into a nice fat hamburger, and at other times nothing tastes better than a hard-boiled egg or a dry saltine. Art is a banquet, he concluded, and every dish on the table is calling out to us—asking to be eaten and enjoyed.
Smoked. On Sunday morning, one week after Ferguson’s trip to Cambridge, the two Schneiderman households jammed their six bodies into a rented station wagon and drove north to Dutchess County, where they stopped for lunch at the Beekman Arms in Rhinebeck and then scattered in several directions throughout the town. As usual, Ferguson’s mother disappeared with her camera and was not seen again until it was time to return to New York. Aunt Liz headed off for the main drag to browse in the antique shops, and Gil and Uncle Dan climbed back into the car, saying they wanted to have a look at the autumn foliage when in fact they were planning to discuss what to do with their declining father, who was in his mid-eighties now and suddenly in need of twenty-four-hour palliative care. Neither Ferguson nor Amy had any interest in poking around old furniture stores or looking at the mutating colors of dying leaves, so they turned right when they saw Amy’s mother turn left and kept on walking until they reached the edge of town, where they chanced upon a small hillock that was still covered with green grass, a pleasant little clump of soft ground that seemed to be begging them to sit on it, which they both promptly did, and a few seconds later Amy reached into her pocket, pulled out a pack of unfiltered Camels, and offered Ferguson a cigarette. He didn’t hesitate. It was high time he gave one of those cancer sticks a shot, he said to himself, Mr. He-Man-Athlete-Who-Would-Never-Smoke-Because-It-Was-Bad-For-His-Wind, and of course he coughed after each of the first three puffs, and of course he felt dizzy for a while, and of course Amy laughed because it was funny to see him doing the things all novice smokers inevitably did, but then he settled down and began to get the hang of it, and before long he and Amy were talking, talking in a way that hadn’t been possible for them in over a year, with no wisecracks or insults or accusations, with all the rancor and built-up resentments gone like the smoke that was gusting from their mouths and vanishing into the autumn air, and then they stopped talking and just sat on the grass smiling at each other, happy to be friends again and no longer at odds, never again at odds, at which point Ferguson wrapped his arm around her in a pretend headlock and croaked softly into her ear: Another cigarette, please.
Lost. There was a wicked and exciting boy in the senior class named Terry Mills, a brilliant good-for-nothing who knew more about what teenage boys were not supposed to know than anyone else at the school. He was the supplier of scotch for weekend parties, the purveyor of amphetamine pills for those who wanted to fly fast and stay up all night, the dispenser of marijuana for those who preferred a more subdued approach to intoxication, and the panderer who could help you lose your virginity by taking you to the whorehouse on West Eighty-second Street. One of the richest boys at the Riverside Academy, the plump and sarcastic Terry Mills lived with his divorced and frequently absent mother in a townhouse between Columbus Avenue and Central Park West, and although there was much about his behavior that Ferguson found repugnant, he also found it difficult not to like him. According to Terry, legions of Riverside Academy boys both past and present had left their boyhoods behind them in the rooms of the Eighty-second Street bordello, it was a long-established tradition, he said, one that he himself had embraced two years ago as a sophomore, and now that Ferguson had ascended to the rank of sophomore as well, might he be interested in paying a visit to that enchanted realm of sensual delights? Yes, Ferguson said, of course he would, most certainly he would, when could they go?
That conversation took place on a Monday afternoon over lunch, the Monday following the Sunday that Ferguson had spent in Rhinebeck smoking cigarettes with Amy, and the following morning Terry reported that everything had been arranged for Friday afternoon at around four, which wouldn’t pose a problem for Ferguson because his curfew had been extended that year to six o’clock, and fortunately he had the twenty-five dollars that would be needed to turn him into a man, although Terry was still hoping that Mrs. M., the director of the establishment, could be talked into giving Ferguson a student discount. Not knowing what to expect, since he had no experience of brothels outside of what he had seen in gaudy, Technicolor Hollywood Westerns, Ferguson walked into the apartment on West Eighty-second Street with no images in his head—nothing but a blank of uncertainty, zip plus zero minus null. He found himself in one of those large Upper West Side apartments with crumbled plaster and yellowing walls, a once elegant place that had no doubt housed a prominent New York burgher and his voluminous family, but who would stop to examine plaster and walls when the first room you entered was a broad living room with six young women in it, half a dozen professional love-makers sitting around on chairs and divans in various stages of undress, two of them in fact entirely undressed, which made them the first naked women Ferguson had seen in his life.
He had to choose. That was a problem because he had no idea which one of the six would be the best love-maker for an unpracticed boy-girl virgin whose sexual history so far had been confined to one male partner, and he had to choose quickly because it made him feel uncomfortable to be sizing up those women as if they were packages of fuck-meat without brains or souls, and therefore Ferguson eliminated the four partially dressed ones and narrowed it down to a choice between the two all-naked ones, figuring there would be no surprises that way when the action began, and suddenly it wasn’t difficult at all, since one of the two was a chubby, large-breasted Puerto Rican woman well past thirty and the other was a good-looking black girl who couldn’t have been more than a few years older than Ferguson—a slender, small-breasted sprite with short hair and a long neck and what looked to be remarkably smooth skin, skin that promised to feel better than any skin his hands had ever touched.
Her name was Julie.
He had already paid his twenty-five dollars to the ro
tund, chain-smoking Mrs. M. (no discounts for youthful beginners), and because Terry had loudly and crudely announced that Ferguson’s dick had never seen the inside of a pussy, there was no point in pretending he had been down this road before, the road in this case being a narrow hallway that led to a cramped, windowless room with a bed, a sink, and a chair in it, and as Ferguson walked down that corridor behind the young Julie’s sweet, swaying behind, the bulge in his pants was steadily growing, so much so that when they entered the room and Julie instructed him to take off his clothes, she looked down at his cock and said, You sure get hard fast, don’t you, kid?, which pleased Ferguson immensely, knowing that he was virile enough to produce more rapid hard-ons than most of her adult customers, and suddenly he felt happy, not at all nervous or afraid, even if he didn’t fully understand the ground rules of the encounter, as when he tried to kiss her on the lips and she jerked her head away, saying, We don’t do that, honey—gotta save that stuff for your girlfriend, but she didn’t mind it when he put his hands on her little breasts or kissed her on the shoulder, and how good it felt when she washed his dick with soap and warm water at the sink, and how much better it felt when he agreed to something called half-and-half without knowing what it was (fellatio + copulation) and they lay down on the bed together and the first half of half-and-half proved to be so pleasurable that he was afraid he wouldn’t make it to the second half, but somehow he did, and that was the best part of the whole adventure, the long-hoped-for, long-dreamed-of, long-delayed entrance into another person’s body, the act of coupling, and so powerful were the sensations of being inside her that Ferguson couldn’t hold back anymore and came almost immediately—so fast that he regretted his lack of control, regretted that he hadn’t been able to put off the climax by even a few seconds.
Can we do it again? he asked.
Julie burst out laughing—a great gut yawp of hilarity that bounced around the walls of the tiny room. Then she said: You come, you’re done, funny man—unless you have another twenty-five dollars.
I barely have twenty-five cents, Ferguson said.
Julie laughed again. I like you, Archie, she said. You’re a good-looking boy with a pretty pecker.
And I think you’re the most beautiful girl in New York.
The skinniest, you mean.
No, the most beautiful.
Julie sat up and kissed Ferguson on the forehead. Come back and see me sometime, she said. You know the address, and that loudmouthed friend of yours has the telephone number. Call first to make an appointment. You wouldn’t want to show up when I’m not here, would you?
No, ma’am. Not on your life.
Sat. Making the varsity team as a sophomore was a reflection of how much Ferguson’s game had improved over the summer. The outdoor leagues had been highly competitive, the rosters crammed with poor black kids from Harlem who took their basketball seriously, who knew that being good at basketball meant starting for a high school team, which could mean playing for a college team and a chance to get out of Harlem for good, and Ferguson had worked hard to improve his outside shooting and ball handling, had put in long hours of extra practice with one of the eager kids from Lenox Avenue named Delbert Straughan, a fellow forward on the tougher of the two teams he had played for, and now that he had grown another two inches and stood at a sturdy five-nine and a half, he had advanced from mere proficiency to something close to excellence, with such potent spring in his legs that even at his height he could dunk the ball once in every two or three tries. The problem with making the varsity as a sophomore, however, was that you were automatically relegated to the second team, which doomed you to spend the season picking up splinters as a lowly benchwarmer. Ferguson understood the importance of hierarchies and would have been content with his subordinate role if he hadn’t felt that he was a better player than the first-string small forward, a senior by the name of Duncan Nyles, sometimes referred to as No-Dunk Nyles—for, as it happened, he wasn’t only just a little better than Nyles, he was a lot better. If Ferguson had been the only one who felt that way, it wouldn’t have rankled so much, but nearly all the players shared his opinion, none more vociferously than the other proletarian scrubs, among them his old friends from last year’s freshman team, Alex Nordstrom and Brian Mischevski, who were positively disgusted by the coach’s decision to put Ferguson on the bench and kept reminding him of how unfairly he was being treated, since the evidence was there for everyone to see: Whenever the first team and the second team squared off in practice scrimmages, Ferguson consistently outshot, outhustled, and out-rebounded No-Dunk Nyles.
The coach was a perplexing person—half genius and half idiot—and Ferguson never quite managed to figure out where he stood with him. A former backcourt star for St. Francis College in Brooklyn, one of the smallest schools on the metro region’s Catholic circuit, Horace “Happy” Finnegan knew the game thoroughly and taught it well, but in all other respects his brain seemed to have atrophied into a gummy mass of melted thought wires and burned out language tubes. Pair up in threes, he would say to the boys at practice, or Make a circle, men, three hundred and sixty-five degrees, and beyond the incessant malapropisms there were the questions the boys would ask just for the pleasure of seeing him scratch his head, such as, Hey, Coach, do you walk to school or carry your lunch? or Is it hotter in the city or the summer?, nonsensical beauties that never failed to elicit the desired scratch, the desired shrug, the desired You got me, kid. On the other hand, Happy Finnegan was a perfectionist when it came to the finer points of basketball, and Ferguson marveled at how he seethed with indignation whenever a player missed a free throw (the one gimme in the whole damn game) or saw a player drop a neatly fired pass (Keep your eyes open, fucker, or I’ll yank you off the court). He demanded efficient and intelligent play, and even though everyone laughed at him behind his back, the team won most of its games, consistently performing above and beyond its meager talents. Still, Nordstrom and Mischevski kept urging their friend to go in for a private meeting with the coach, not that it would necessarily change anything, they said, but they wanted to know why he insisted on starting the wrong man at small forward. Yes, the team was winning most of its games, but didn’t Finnegan want to win every game?
A good question, the coach said, when Ferguson finally knocked on his door in early January. A very good question, and I’m glad you asked it. Yes, any idiot can see you’re better than Nyles. You go up against each other one-on-one, and there’d be nothing left of him but an empty jockstrap and a puddle of sweat on the gym floor. Nyles is a lump. You’re a Mexican, Ferguson, a goddamn human jumping bean, and you play as hard as anyone I’ve got, but I need the lump out there on the court. Chemistry, that’s what it is. Five-on-five, not one-on-one—you follow? With those four other guys sprinting around like jazzed-up dots and dashes, the fifth has to be a sack of potatoes, a lump of flesh with sneakers on his feet, a big nobody to fill up space and think about digesting his food. You see what I mean, Ferguson? You’re too good. Everything would change if I put you in there. The pace would get too fast, too revvy-revvy. You’d all have heart attacks and epileptic fits, and we’d start to lose. We’d be a better team, but we’d be worse. Your day will come, kid. I’ve got plans for you—but not until next year. The chemistry will be different after the dots and dashes fly the coop, and then I’ll need you. Be patient, Ferguson. Bust your ass at practice, say your prayers at night, keep your hands off your willy, and everything will work out just so.
He was tempted to quit the team right then and there, for what Finnegan seemed to be offering him was no chance to play no matter what happened for the rest of the season—unless the so-called chemistry began to go wrong and the team stopped winning, but how in good conscience could he root for the team to lose and go on calling himself a loyal member of the team? Still, Finnegan had all but promised him a starting spot for next year, and on the strength of that promise Ferguson reluctantly swallowed his medicine and held on, working hard to impress Finnegan
by busting his ass every day at practice, although he didn’t say his prayers at night and couldn’t keep his hands off his willy.
When the next season began, however, he found himself on the bench again, and the awful thing about it was that there was no one to blame—not even Finnegan, especially not Finnegan. The new boy had turned up out of nowhere, a six-foot-two-inch sophomore whose family had moved to Manhattan from Terre Haute, Indiana, and Hoosier phenom Marty Wilkinson was so damned good, so much better than Ferguson and everyone else on the team, that the coach had no choice but to start him at forward, and with the other starting forward back from last year, the solid and dependable Tom Lerner, who had been voted captain of the team, there was no room for Ferguson to crack the first-string lineup. Finnegan made some efforts to increase his playing time, but five or six minutes a game wasn’t enough, and Ferguson felt himself withering on the bench. He had been turned into an afterthought, a combination hatchetman-noncombatant whose skills quietly seemed to be eroding, and the mounting frustration, as he confessed to his mother and stepfather at dinner one night, was killing his spirit, and so it was that four games into the season, which happened to fall four weeks after Kennedy’s assassination, one month minus two days after that grotesque Friday when even the skeptical, unduped Ferguson had shed tears along with everyone else, allowing himself to succumb to the general mood of the country without understanding that the murder of the president had been a reenactment of his own father’s murder nine years ago, the full horror of his private grief now played out on a grand public scale, and on December 20, 1963, a few minutes after the end of Riverside’s fourth game, Ferguson went into the coach’s office and announced that he was quitting the team. No hard feelings, he said, but he just couldn’t take it anymore. Finnegan said he understood, which was probably true, and then the two of them shook hands, and that was that.