We sit together and talk of everything that might go wrong.
But let's not talk, let’s not say
We can’t see where we are, we don’t know the way.
Let’s just say we have today.
We have today.
And if that is enough to keep fate from asking us to pay
Then I will stay beside you until the month of May.
I will stay beside you any kind of way.
Boy, this is all I want to say.
Until the month of May.
They sat in silence when she was finished, Bill staring at her. Her heart was no longer pounding. It had sunk into a warm glow of golden light at the beginning of a new creation. Bill smiled and shook his head.
“What’s it called?” he asked.
“‘The Month of May.’”
“It’s still December. It’s a long way to May.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I know.”
He got up and walked over to sit beside her. He leaned over and kissed her on the lips. It was enough for another hundred songs, a thousand lonely nights. It was the first time she had ever been kissed by a boy and she was glad it was this boy. He let go of her and shook his head once more.
“That was beautiful,” he said.
“Thank you.”
“When did you write it?”
She hesitated only a moment. “This morning.”
He understood. “You’re beautiful, Teresa.”
“You really think so?”
He nodded, moving to kiss her again. “I think May’s just round the corner. I’m not going anywhere if you’re not.”
He held on to her half the night. Where was there to go?
Nowhere. Every other road led nowhere.
“He just used me,” Teresa told Freedom Jack and Poppy Corn as she finished telling them about her first date. “He made me think he cared about me when he didn’t.”
“Did you guys do it the first night?” Free asked.
“Jack,” Poppy complained.
“I told you not to call me that,” Free snapped.
“Well, really,” Poppy said. “Show some class.”
“We didn't sleep together that first night,” Teresa said.
“But later, huh?” Free said.
Teresa hesitated. “Sure, yeah. I was happy, I was having a good time.” She gestured weakly. “I was a fool.”
“The bastard,” Free said. “What did he do to you?”
“It's a long story,” Teresa said.
“You have to tell us,” Free said. Then he became still for a moment – rare for him. “But I suppose it’s our turn to talk. What do you say, Poppy?”
“You never stop talking,” Poppy said.
“Shut up.”
“Gladly.”
“You have to tell a story,” Free complained. “It’s part of the deal we made with Teresa.”
Poppy lit another cigarette. “Why don’t you start and I can jump in when you get lost.”
“It’s a deal,” Free said. “Let’s tell her about John Gerhart and Candice Manville.”
“Who are they?” Teresa asked.
“Friends of ours,” Free said. “They led an interesting life. We both knew them. They had a kind of Romeo and Juliet romance.”
Teresa grimaced. “I hope they didn’t commit suicide at the end.”
“They were no Romeo and Juliet,” Poppy muttered.
“Let me tell you how it went,” Free said.
CHAPTER THREE
“John and Candice first met when they were juniors in high school,” Free said. “John had just come to the L.A. area, where a lot of their story takes place. He was originally from Detroit. His mom and his stepdad moved out to L.A. because his stepdad had been laid off at a GM plant. He was looking for work. The family didn’t have much money. John had to get a job right away, on top of going to school. He worked at a gas station doing everything his boss was too lazy to do. John was great with cars – he could fix anything that was broken. But he was kind of wild. Sometimes he broke things that didn’t need to be fixed. He was a cool guy, though, and wasn’t going to be a mechanic all his life. Not with his good grades. He took a lot of maths and hard sciences and knew he’d be an engineer someday.
“John ran into Candice not long after he started at his new school. She was a beauty, and John always had an eye for good women. He called her Candy, although she didn’t let anyone else call her that. They shared a maths class. Candy wasn't the academic type. She liked to read, but mainly she enjoyed sitting and spacing out. She was a dreamer, that Candy. She should have been born on the moon. Anyway, John began to help her with her maths before he even asked her out. He knew right from the start he wanted her. He was just biding his time, being cool, and she really needed his help. She had a C that was looking more and more like a D every day.
“Candy needed more than tutoring. John moved so he was sitting behind her, and during tests he would pass her the answers. John was a whiz at maths. Candy’s grade went from a C to a B in a month. The teacher was out to lunch so they never got caught. Candy would have got an A in the class if she hadn't started so far in the hole. John did get an A. He got As in practically everything.
“Finally John and Candy started dating. He didn’t even ask her out. She asked him out! She was hot for him by then. John was hot for her, but he liked a girl bouncing before he jumped – if you know what I mean. They went to the movies, ate, drank beer – the usual teen scene. They went to the beach a lot, too. Candy looked like sex and sun lying in the warm sand. By then they were heavily involved, physically I mean. They did it just about every day. They got along great. Their junior year ended and, of course, they had more free time, although John still had to work hard at the gas station. If he didn’t bring home the bacon, his stepdad carved it off his ass with a belt. John had a bastard of a stepdad. The guy had lost a few screws welding on so many bolts for so many years on the assembly lines in Detroit. They couldn’t stand the sight of each other.
“But all this time John didn't know that Candy was keeping a secret from him. He didn’t find it out until they were already back in school for their senior year. You see, Candy didn’t take any art classes. Her parents wanted her to be a doctor. I say her parents and not her because Candy didn’t really know what she wanted to do with her life. The one thing she knew was she loved to draw. She was a genius, really, when it came to sketching stuff. But she kept her abilities secret from John because she was afraid he'd make fun of her. That was one thing about John. He couldn’t stop teasing people. He would tease a guy pushing himself up a hill in a wheelchair – not because he wanted to hurt the guy’s feelings, but because he wanted to get a laugh out of him. John was always trying to get a laugh out of everybody.
“Well, one day he stopped by Candy's house when she didn’t expect him. She was up in her room working when he walked in. She had an easel set up by the window with a drawing of John and herself at the beach. She was sketching John then. She was using charcoal – Candy only drew in black. Later she told John it was because she was colour-blind, but he thought she was just kidding. A miniscule number of girls are colour-blind, John knew.
“Anyway, he walked in on her while she was in the middle of her sketch and she just about died of embarrassment And Candy didn't embarrass easily. How could she when her brain was always sitting on the goddamn moon? But she was sensitive when it came to her art. She knew John would razz her no end, which was exactly what he did. But I knew John. I knew how he really felt about Candy’s work. Her talent blew him away, it really did. The second he saw her drawing of him his jaw dropped. He couldn’t believe how much power she had put in it. She caught a side of John not many people knew. The strong John. The one who could make things happen. He could have been great.
“But John didn’t let his jaw stay dropped. He quickly started in on her, saying that she had made his ears too big and his nose too long and that he should be carrying a rifle and looking mach
o. Candy couldn't listen. She pulled the sketch down, tore it in two and threw the pieces in the garbage. She started crying, which just made John hassle her more. There was no point in showing weakness around him. He saw it as an invitation to score more points. John saw all of life that way. That he had to score, to get ahead while the getting was good. Candy was the opposite. She let things happen, and if nothing happened, so much the better. She could bury her head in a book and know the world would keep turning.
“Afterwards, though, John felt bad for giving Candy such a hard time. He wanted to see more of her stuff, but she wouldn’t show it to him. She took all her sketches and hid them at a girlfriend’s house. From then on John never knew what she was drawing. It bugged him. He cared about Candy. He wanted to be involved in all parts of her life. But she wouldn’t let him in and that was too bad for her because John could have helped her get ahead, pushed her in the right direction. John could see already that Candy wasn’t cut out to be a doctor. She didn’t have the discipline. He tried explaining that to her parents, but then they didn’t want him coming over so he backed off. John was pragmatic. He wasn’t about to give up his girl just to save her vocation.
“The year went on. John got great grades and Candy did well, mainly because John passed her the answers on every test they took. They had arranged their schedules so that they spent almost the entire day sitting beside each other. John and Candy mastered the art of cheating with mirrors, flying spit balls, invisible ink, Morse code and even telepathy. Yeah, they were so close it was like John just had to look over at Candy and she would know what he was thinking. If the answer to question twenty was C, he would say, ‘I can always C you Ms C. Wherever you go, my eyes can C you.’
“John was possessive of Candy. If she so much as spoke to another guy, she got chewed out. And the other guy would end up with a bloody nose. John had a temper, there was no arguing that. His temper got the worse of him near the end of the school year. At the beginning of June, Candy and John were just a few days shy of graduating. They had one last test to take – chemistry. It was John’s strongest subject and Candy’s worst. She couldn’t pick up a test-tube without thinking she was taking an early pregnancy test. She thought the periodic table of elements wasn’t square enough. This was the girl who wanted to be a doctor!
“But she was on her way. She had got accepted at Berkeley, the same school as John. They had it all planned. They were going to live together in an inexpensive bungalow, get night jobs at a movie theatre, and make love at least twice a day. The only reason she got accepted at Berkeley, though, was because John had helped her raise her grades so much her junior and senior years. She was going to a school where she probably didn't belong and John knew it. But he figured he’d be able to pull her through.
“Anyway, they had this one last test to take in chemistry. John was prepared. Between lube jobs at the gas station he had studied his brains out. Candy had spent the same amount of time drawing pictures of God knew what. She walked into the test barely knowing that the formula for water was H2O. They planned how John would get her the answers before the test began, but they didn’t plan enough. By this time they were both cocky, and thought that all teachers were fools. They never thought they’d get caught.
“Their teacher’s name was Mr. Sims. He had the habit, during tests, of leaving the classroom to do odd jobs in the storage area. He had done this all year, and John used that time to slip Candy answers. The storage area was directly connected with the classroom, Sims could always pop in at any moment. But John could hear him coming. Near the end of the test, Mr. Sims disappeared into the storage area. Candy was really sweating by then and looking over at John with pleading eyes. She hadn’t got past the third problem – there were twenty on the test. John pulled out a piece of scrap paper and jotted down his answers. He was already done with the test. He was always the first one done.
“John decided to drop the answers on Candy’s desk as he went to the front of the classroom to hand in his test. Mr. Sims was nowhere around, he made sure of that. Of course, there were a lot of other people watching. It was a class of forty students. But John didn't think about them much. He couldn’t imagine that one of his classmates would turn him in. That was one thing about John. He gave people a hard time, but he didn’t mean anybody any harm.
“Maybe it was the stress of the moment. Maybe John had made the girl feel bad earlier in the year and she had just been biding her time to get back at him. It doesn’t matter. John crumpled his scrap paper with the answers on it into a ball. As he got up, he let the paper fall on Candy’s test paper. Candy was ready, waiting for it. But she didn’t have time to get it out of sight before a girl in the back shouted for Mr. Sims to come into the room. Wait, I take that back. Candy did have time to get rid of the evidence. She could have stuffed the ball of paper in her mouth and swallowed it – but she froze. Mr. Sims was back inside in a moment. He wanted to know what was happening. The girl in the back pointed at John and Candy.
“‘John just gave Candice all the answers to the test,’ the girl whined. She had one of those annoying voices that you just knew would make her future husband want to have extra-marital affairs. Mr. Sims hurried over to John and Candy. He was in a sour mood. His wife had recently left him for a filmmaker of animal documentaries. He had been taking it out on his classes by making his tests harder and harder. Still, John didn’t expect Mr. Sims to slap him down. After all, he was his best student, the only one in class who was getting an A. He watched as Mr. Sims stormed towards him. He whispered to Candy to make the crib sheet disappear. Maybe Candy didn't hear him.
“‘Are you two cheating?’ Mr. Sims demanded. He wasn’t big – he was short and round. But he had been trying to act bigger since his wife had left him. His face was beet red, and John misjudged how angry he was.
“‘No, I was just handing in my test,’ John said. ‘I don’t know what Annie's talking about.’ The girl’s name wasn’t Annie. It was Sally. She had a two-ton chip on her shoulder. She jumped out of her seat and hurried to Mr. Sims. All this time, of course, the cheat sheet had been sitting right in the centre of Candy’s desk. Sally triumphantly reached down and picked it up and gave it to Mr. Sims.
“‘I saw John drop this on Candy’s desk a few seconds ago,’ she pronounced in her whiny voice.
‘Is that true?’ Mr. Sims asked Candy.
‘No,’ John said quickly.
‘It’s a complete lie,’ Candy agreed.
“Mr. Sims wasn’t buying it. He would have had to be pretty stupid to do so. ‘Then where did this paper come from?’ he asked as he unwadded it.
“John was feeling cocky. ‘I think it’s Annie’s,’ he said.
‘My name’s Sally and you are a big fat liar!’ Sally shrieked in her nasal twang.
‘This looks like your handwriting,’ Mr. Sims told John when he had the paper open in his hands. ‘I dare you to deny it.’
“John shrugged. ‘I don’t deny it,’ he said. ‘I just don’t think it’s that big a deal. Candy didn't have a chance to study on account of her mother being so sick and all. Ain’t that right, Candy?’
‘My mom has been feeling lousy since she grew her tumour,’ Candy told Mr. Sims. ‘She’s up practically every night throwing up blood.’
‘I saw your mom last month at the grocery store,’ Mr. Sims said, turning redder by the minute. ‘She looked fine to me.’
‘You should have asked her out,’ John said. ‘Her old man's such a pain in the ass – you wouldn’t believe it. I think you and Candy’s mom would make a nice couple.’
“Mr. Sims practically blew a blood vessel right then. Like I said, he was sensitive about his wife leaving him. And he was smart enough to know John was making a reference to that. He shook the cheat sheet in Candy’s face. ‘Did you ask John to give you these answers?’ he demanded.
“Candy didn’t answer right away and only stared at John. Finally John was beginning to see that things were not going to end happily.
But he still had no idea how bad it could get. He figured there was no point in both of them getting in trouble. He said to Mr. Sims, ‘I gave her the answers. She didn’t ask for them. She didn't even know what I was doing when I dropped the paper on her desk.’
“Mr. Sims nodded slowly, staring John hard in the eye. He stuck out his hand. ‘Give me your test,’ he said. John did as he was told. Then Mr. Sims took the exam and methodically began to tear it into tiny pieces.
That freaked John out. He had studied hard for that test. It was a big one – it counted for a quarter of his grade. Taking a zero on it would drop his A down to a C. His own temper began to burn, and good things never followed when that happened. ‘What the hell did you do that for?’ he yelled at Mr. Sims.
“‘Because you are a spoilt little cheat,’ Mr. Sims yelled back. He pointed towards the door. ‘Get out of here and take your filthy mouth with you!’
“‘You can’t kick me out!’ John yelled back.
“Mr. Sims poked an angry finger in John’s chest. ‘I just did. Get out. You just failed your final exam. You are excused.’
“John slapped his finger away. ‘You’re pissed off because I suggested you go out with Candy's mom,’ John said. ‘I was just doing you a favour. God knows you’re going to have trouble finding another woman looking the way you do.’
“Mr. Sims lost it right then. He poked John in the chest again, hard this time so that John had to take a step back to keep his balance. ‘You didn’t just fail this test you two-bit cheat,’ Mr. Sims said. ‘You failed this class. That fancy college you think you’re going to won’t be taking you after I get through talking to them.’
“John didn’t like the sound of that. Mr. Sims was talking about fooling with his future, and John had big plans for his life. He was going far. He was going to do great things and people like Mr. Sims weren’t going to stop him. But John hadn’t learned yet that the smaller the person, the easier it is to trip over him. Mr. Sims had his leg sticking out and John was running by at the wrong time. John blew his top. He pulled his arm back and clenched his fingers and landed a fist on Mr. Sims’ jaw. The teacher hit the floor for a mid-afternoon nap – minus a few teeth.”