Seventh Heaven

  “Yeah, sure,” he said to the cop. “I’ll keep an eye on him.”

  That night, at dinner, no one said a word about the Cadillac. The Saint ate quickly, then went out to spread salt on their sidewalk, so children walking to school the next morning wouldn’t slip and fall. He always took care of the sidewalk all the way to the corner, past the Olivera house. After an hour, the Saint hadn’t yet gone home. He was out there, standing on the curb, still holding the bag of rock salt.

  ACE DIDN’T HEAR ABOUT THE CADILLAC UNTIL the next morning, but he knew who the thief was as soon as Danny walked up beside him and said, “You’re not going to fucking believe this. My dad’s car was stolen right out of your dad’s garage.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Ace said. Not one word more; not a cough, not a shrug. Nothing.

  “My father is fit to be tied,” Danny said. “Mild-mannered Phil has gone insane.”

  Ace’s bad blood pumped out of his heart; there was no way he’d betray his brother to Danny.

  “He’ll get another Caddy and cool off,” Ace said.

  “Yeah, well, I’m not supposed to enter your house,” Danny said.

  “Come on,” Ace said. “Seriously?”

  “He’s ripshit,” Danny said. “To tell you the truth, he’s been going insane for a while. He’s been leaving for work at six in the morning and coming home at nine, and nobody even sees him anymore. But this Cadillac pushed him right over the edge.”

  Ace lit a cigarette and thought about the way his brother had leaned back in his chair at the dinner table the night before, grinning like a millionaire when he asked for more potatoes. Ace wished he could cut school and go back to bed. He saw Rickie Shapiro up the street, walking with her friend Joan. Rickie was wearing leather boots with high heels, and every now and then she slipped on the ice and grabbed Joan’s arm. Something was different about her; her hair wasn’t straight anymore, it was thicker and somehow wild, as if she had given up trying to control it. When she breathed, a plume of white smoke escaped and circled around her.

  “You do the report on the Continental Congress?” Danny asked.

  “Oh, shit,” Ace said.

  Danny reached into his books and took out his report. “Here,” he said to Ace.

  Ace stopped and looked at the paper.

  “Just rip off the title page,” Danny said.

  “What are you going to use?” Ace asked.

  “I already have an A average,” Danny said. “He’ll bring me down to a B if I don’t have a paper. He’ll flunk you.”

  Ace knew you weren’t supposed to let some guy do this for you unless you were like brothers. He felt completely cold, mesmerized by Rickie’s red hair; a victim of his own bad blood.

  “Thanks,” Ace said. He wedged the report on top of the books he carried home from school but never read. “I owe you one.”

  “Yeah,” Danny said. “Just read it before you hand it in, so you can mouth off to Miller if he quizzes you on it.”

  Once they were inside the school, Ace went up to his locker on the second floor. He was following Rickie and her friend and thinking about his father putting salt on the sidewalk. At his locker, he quickly turned the combination, threw his jacket inside, then slammed the door shut. He went around the corner and stopped at Rickie’s locker. She had hung a mirror on the inside of the door and had just taken her brush out of her purse.

  “I like your hair this way,” Ace said.

  Rickie looked up at him, made a face, then turned back to the mirror and brushed her hair.

  “Your father’s really mad, huh?” Ace said.

  “Oh, no,” Rickie said. “He loves getting his brand-new car stolen two weeks after he bought it. He’s just thrilled.”

  She put her brush in her pocketbook, then closed her locker. As she turned to go past Ace, she glanced down at his books.

  “What’s this?” she asked. She looked closer and recognized the report Danny had been working on the night before. “You’re going to let him go to class without a report?”

  “Big deal,” Ace said. “He’ll still get a B.”

  “You really make me sick,” Rickie said.

  She’d been just as nasty to him before, but this time Ace felt himself getting angrier than he should. When Rickie tried to pass by him, he didn’t move.

  “Oh, yeah?” he said.

  “Do you mind?” Rickie said.

  Ace didn’t budge. Her hair was blinding; it could knock you off your feet. Rickie looked at him, disgusted. She moved to the left and so did Ace. She moved forward and Ace immediately blocked her way.

  “Cut it out,” Rickie said, panicky.

  Ace walked toward her and backed her up against the lockers. Rickie could feel the cold metal through her sweater and her shirt and her bra. There were hot red spots on her cheeks.

  “‘Cut it out,’” Ace repeated, with so much menace he surprised himself.

  The hallways were less crowded now. Larry Reinhart came by and slapped Ace’s back in greeting, but Ace didn’t turn. He moved in even closer. He could smell something lemony, like soap or shampoo. Rickie was looking past him, down the hallway, as if something could save her. Ace felt his bad blood get hotter; he could feel himself growing hard. He would have liked to take her right there, on the linoleum floor or up against the lockers. Rickie tilted her face and stared back at him, and when she did Ace saw what he had seen many other times, when other girls looked at him. He realized that he had her.

  “I make you sick, huh?” he said, real low, but he knew she could hear him.

  Rickie looked so terrified that Ace finally backed off. But there was another reason he had to pull back. He realized that she had him, too. The bell rang, and Rickie still didn’t move. Ace turned away and got out of there as fast as he could. He was late, so he slipped into his homeroom while the teacher’s back was to the class.

  Ace put his boots up on the desk in front of him. The air was heavy with chalk dust and sweat; if you took too deep a breath you might faint. In the seat in front of him, Cathy Corrigan shifted when he pressed his boots against her back. Her hair was teased up and lacquered into place; she was wearing a straight black skirt and a white blouse with ruffles at the wrists and throat. Cathy worked in the A&P after school and was well known as a slut, but she never complained when Ace put his feet up. She didn’t say a word. Cathy’s neck was perfectly white, and every time she tilted her head her red hoop earrings swung back and forth. Last spring two guys Ace knew had sworn that they had personally been there when Larry Reinhart’s older brother had talked her into fucking his dog down in the basement, near the Ping-Pong table and the small refrigerator where Larry’s father kept extra soda and beer. Ace stared at Cathy’s neck while the homeroom teacher took attendance. He should have been reading Danny’s report on the Continental Congress, but instead he was thinking about Rickie, and he felt himself get hot all over again. Cathy Corrigan looked over her shoulder at him; she had a soft, crumpled face and blue eyes. Ace was afraid she had read his mind and caught him wanting Rickie, but then he realized Cathy was trying to move her pocketbook, which she’d hung over her seat. Ace had put one of his boots up against the white leatherette, and now there was a black footprint on one side of the bag.

  “Hey, Cathy, I’m sorry,” Ace said.

  “That’s okay,” Cathy said. She took a Kleenex out of her bag and tried to wipe away the footprint.

  “Try Pine-Sol,” Ace suggested. “My mother uses that all the time.”

  “Yeah,” Cathy said. “Pine-Sol.”

  “Or ammonia,” Ace said. “That might do it.”

  “McCarthy,” the homeroom teacher shouted.

  Ace shut up. Danny Shapiro shifted in his seat and grinned at him, and Ace realized it wasn’t because the homeroom teacher had called out his name but because Danny thought he was trying to score with Cathy.

  Ace leaned forward in his seat. “It’s a real nice pocketbook,” he whispered. “Real pretty.”

  Cathy
turned around and gave him a big smile, as if he’d just paid her the biggest compliment in the world, as if no one had ever said two nice words to her before. That just made Ace feel worse; he wished his bad blood would take him over completely, he wished he didn’t need to apologize. He sat waiting for the bell to ring, trying not to look at his own black footprint. When homeroom was finally over he waited for Danny in the hallway, then shoved the report back at him before Danny could say a word. Why not? That bastard Miller would never fail him for missing one report. If he did he’d get Ace in his class for another damned year.

  All day Ace felt himself falling harder for Rickie Shapiro, and by the afternoon he was at her mercy. People couldn’t go around feeling like this and exist. He couldn’t stand to think of what the Saint would say if he knew what Ace had wanted to do to Rickie in the hallway. He wanted to pull up her skirt and slide his hand into her underpants; he wanted to make her gasp, to feel how wet she was, how ready she was for him, how she wanted him in spite of herself. The Saint, he knew, wouldn’t say a word, it would be the disappointment in his eyes, that would tell it all, how fucking impure he would think Ace was. Jackie would have plenty to say. You jerk, that’s what he’d say, not for Ace’s wanting her, but because he was actually foolish enough to care. She thinks she’s too good for you. All you’ve got to do is take her, take her and then just walk away. Walk away, man, and it would be even better if you made her crazy for you before you left. Yeah, have her call out your name as you’re walking away. Have there be tears in her eyes.

  JACKIE ONCE HAD A STEADY GIRLFRIEND, Jeanette, and when they were together they used to lock themselves in her bedroom, even when her parents were home. Jeanette never cared about that. But Jackie never talked to her; he made her sit in the backseat alone when they went riding around with his friends. She wound up dropping out of high school and marrying a cop over in Oceanside, and now she sent a Christmas card every year, addressed to the whole family. If Jackie was the one to bring in the mail, he always threw her card away; he didn’t even remember what she looked like anymore, and when he came across her picture in friends’ photographs he’d always say, “Who the hell is that?”

  Jackie knew Cathy Corrigan, so did his friends Pete and Dominick, but so did plenty of other guys, and knowing her wasn’t something you necessarily bragged about or even admitted. You went to Cathy Corrigan when you were desperate, or when you wanted a girl to do things no one in her right mind would do. Actually, she was pretty, even though her eyes crossed a little. The pathetic thing was she actually went for Jackie, after all the rotten things he’d done to her. She lived at the far end of Hemlock Street, and Jackie knew she came looking for him sometimes; she’d just happen to pass by when he was working on his car, she’d just happen to be wearing something she thought he’d like, a new sweater or a skirt shorter than any other girl would dare be seen in. He told her once he thought hoop earrings were sexy, and she’d worn them ever since, just because he liked them, and that only made it easier for Jackie to be cruel.

  Two nights after they’d stolen the Cadillac, Jackie and his friends were still feeling like bigshots. It was a Friday night and the streets were still frozen; up on Harvey’s Turnpike there were cold halos around every streetlight. The mimosas and the willow trees had limbs of ice, the chain-link fences that ran along the backyards were encased in silvery pods. Up at Louie’s Candy Store sawdust had been sprinkled on the linoleum floor so that customers wouldn’t slip when they came in for cigarettes or gum. It was black as midnight by seven when Jackie and his friends pulled into the parking lot. They didn’t have any particular plans—pick up some smokes at Louie’s, then maybe head over to the bowling alley. All three wore polished black boots, their hair was combed back and so wet that ice crystals formed by the time they had walked into the candy store.

  “Take a look at that,” Pete said, while Louie was getting their cigarettes.

  Jackie took a pack of Juicy Fruit gum and stuck it in his pocket without paying. He saw Cathy Corrigan sitting on the last stool at the counter. She was wearing a fleecy coat that looked like a skunk and she had a smudgy white pocketbook slung over her shoulder.

  “What a piece of trash,” Jackie said.

  “Yeah,” Dominick agreed.

  “You want her?” Jackie asked, and he grinned.

  Dominick and Pete grinned back at him. Jackie put some change down on the counter, picked up his pack of Marlboros, and went over to the soda fountain. Cathy was still wearing her white checker’s smock from the A&P under her coat. She had a hamburger special in front of her; her pack of Salems and a gold lighter were right next to the bottle of ketchup. Jackie leaned up against the stool next to her.

  “Meet me outside,” he said without looking at her. He lit a cigarette, and when he could feel her staring at him, he walked to the front of the store. Outside, Pete and Dominick were waiting.

  “So?” Pete said.

  “She’ll be right out,” Jackie assured him.

  They stood in the cold, smoking cigarettes. Somewhere far down Harvey’s Turnpike a siren sounded. The wind shook the pink neon lights of Louie’s sign and rattled the letters against the bricks. Cathy Corrigan walked outside, then stopped and pushed the strap of her pocketbook over her shoulder.

  “You didn’t say there’d be anyone else,” she said to Jackie.

  “What do you care?” Jackie said.

  Jackie turned and started to walk toward his parked car. Dominick and Pete grinned at each other and followed, and soon they could hear Cathy behind them, walking gingerly on the ice. They got in the car and drove over to the bowling alley, parked in the rear of the lot where it was dark, and took turns with her in the backseat. Jackie went first, and then Pete, who had had her before, and then they had some trouble with her and actually had to talk her into taking on Dominick.

  “What am I, a mercy case?” Dominick said.

  They told him to shut up and swore to Cathy that Dominick had never gone all the way before and that she’d be doing him a psychological favor, and when that didn’t work, Jackie made it clear that he wouldn’t drive her home until she said yes. Pete and Jackie stood outside and watched through the window as Dominick took his turn with her. It was freezing cold and they could hear the music from the jukebox in the bowling alley. They could see Dominick’s white ass and the moons of Cathy’s breasts. Neither of them had thought to undress her when it was their turn.

  “Let me bring her home to meet my mother,” Pete drawled.

  “Yeah.” Jackie laughed. “I’ll chip in for the engagement ring.”

  Pete clapped his hands together, then blew on his fingers. “What a dog,” he said.

  Jackie was scanning the parking lot for Cadillacs. He had never had a smoother ride—better than his Chevy, better than a Corvette. Pete nudged him hard with his elbow.

  “A dog,” he said. “Get it?”

  Dominick got out of the car and tucked in his shirt. Inside the car, Cathy Corrigan was folding up her checker’s smock; she fumbled through her pocketbook in the dark till she found her rat-tail comb.

  “You know what they’re saying,” Pete told Jackie. “She fucked a dog and then had its pup.”

  “Get out of here,” Jackie said. He took a cigarette and tried to light it against the wind.

  “Swear to God,” Pete said. “She’s got the goddamned puppy at home. I’m telling you, man, it’s hers. She probably lets it suck her tits.”

  “You’re a moron,” Jackie said to him. “Anybody ever tell you that before?”

  “Sure,” Pete said. “Like it really bothers me.”

  The three friends sat up front as they drove back toward home. Dominick looked over his shoulder as they passed the only patch of woods left beside Harvey’s Turnpike. “Christ,” he said. “She’s crying.”

  “I’m getting out of here,” Pete said. “Drop me off at the corner.”

  When Jackie pulled over, Dominick and Pete both got out. “Thanks a lot,” Jacki
e called after them. He looked into the rearview mirror. Cathy Corrigan wasn’t making a sound, but in the moonlight Jackie could see tears falling down her cheeks. “For Christ’s sake,” he said, “don’t worry. I’ll drive you home.” He reached for his cigarettes. When he looked in the rearview mirror again, she was still crying. “Oh, Jesus,” he said. He pushed the car lighter in. “All right. You can sit up front.”

  Cathy got out and came around to the passenger seat. She had a circle of mascara around each eye. She looked like something you’d run over in the road.

  “You could have told me about them,” she said.

  “So sue me,” Jackie said. He ripped the car into gear; it was his game completely. Cathy looked at him, but she didn’t say a word when he drove down Hemlock and went past her house. Jackie drove to the teachers’ parking lot behind the school and parked. He had hated high school the whole time he was there, but now he kept coming back to it, and he didn’t even wonder why.

  “Take off all your clothes,” he told Cathy.

  “What do you mean?” Cathy said.

  He knew that when her voice went up like that she was frightened. He left the car running so the heater would still work, and he turned the radio up. “I mean I’m not done,” he said.

  Cathy stared at him, suspicious, as if he meant to take all her clothes, kick her out, and just leave her there. That had happened to her before, in another car, with another guy.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Cathy,” Jackie said. “Trust me.”

  Cathy Corrigan laughed. It was a small, dry sound, as if there were something wrong with her throat. She took off her coat, started to unbutton her blouse, and gathered her nerve.

  “You’ve never kissed me,” she said.

  “So?” Jackie said.

  “I don’t know,” Cathy said. “I was just thinking about it.”

  If he didn’t do it, she’d give him a harder time, and anyway no one would ever know. He grabbed Cathy and pulled her toward him. He kissed her lightly and was surprised to find she tasted like strawberries. She wasn’t so bad. He kept kissing her and finished unbuttoning her blouse. If he hadn’t been kissing her, if he hadn’t had the radio turned up so loud, he might have noticed that another car had pulled into the parking lot. When Pete drove his father’s Oldsmobile up and shone his headlights onto Jackie’s Chevy, Jackie felt something cold go through him. He wrenched away from Cathy. Through the foggy windshield he could see Pete, and Dominick, and Jerry Tyler, but he couldn’t make out any of the other guys’ faces.