Boys of Life (12 page)

Maybe none o\ what I've said here is fair to Netta. Carlo* right that she was the first to leave—by the middle ot that winter she was gone, moved to an apartment m Jersey City, and she never came back the rest of the time I was with The Company. Sammy would i the train out to see her every once in a while, bur he never talked about her, and since I never had more than that one conversation with her, I never asked. There was something about her, though, tfi.it made an impression on me—like she was standing in for all the thin^ I never

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PAUL RUSSELL

could know: about lots of things, but especially about Carlos. She'd starred in four or five of his most important movies, but by the time he was making Ur Carlos had lost interest in her, or used her up, or they were just making each other crazy over stupid little things. I don't know. All I know is that about all she got to do in Ur was dig up some weeds off camera and put them in buckets, and you didn't need to be a genius to do that. Even I could do that.

Ur was Netta's last movie with The Company, and I don't know what ever happened to her after she left, whether she went on to be a star somewhere else or not, because I never heard anything more about her—which at least is something nobody'll ever be able to say about

me.

HA

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"I stayed home," I told him. "Sammy talked to me. I ate a can of mushroom soup."

He looked in my eyes and grinned. "Are you all drunk again.'" I couldn't ever tell when he was kidding me.

"Nope," I told him. "I only had two or three drinks. I had a nightcap waiting for you," I said. "I had two or three."

"Nightcaps—that's fine. It's heavy drinking I'm worried about."

"No heavy drinking," I told him. "Heavy sex."

"Heavy sex," he said. "You working-class boys are all the same."

"At least I'm not the one on welfare," I said. Because Carlos had figured out some way so he'd been getting welfare checks for years and that was what we were living on, at least sort of.

"Yeah," he said, "and I'm not the one who sat on my butt doing caps all day."

"It's work," I told him. "My elbow's sore. Actually, I did go out."

He pretended like he was all surprised. "Oh you did?" he said. "So what's his name? How much did you charge him?"

I didn't like it much when he talked that way. It made me wonder whether he secretly meant what he was saying. Sometimes I wanted him to want me to stay around the apartment waiting tor him, and not to be out there running all over the place.

He grabbed both my wrists and pushed me back on the bed.

"I went to the library," I told him. I don't know whv 1 said it. I hadn't really been to the library that day, though like I've told you, I'd been there a lot before. Rut for some reason I'd never told Carlos about the library, and how it was the library that'd started me going everywhere else. The library was my secret.

lie was straddling me, pinning me down, but he let me i ^o and put both his hands to his head. "Tlu- library?" he said. "The library?" He

thought it was hilarious, which I didn't see am reason he should.

told me you had this other life," he said. He- was still

sitting on top of me so I couldn't j_;et up. "But it's good," he s.ud. "A

I Mild go to the library Read books."

it u out," I told him. "It's not what you think, ["here's this book, this picture book with pictures o( the town where Sammy

u and me, and the things that happened to them

. the church full of pillow (eathers and the shit can k oi

them just little children, and the kid who keeps looking out from the

',c I id with Ins little sistet and them both I • the

, l baked out oi bri< k dust and

BOYSOFLIFE D

potato peels." All that stuff came pouring out of me in one long breath.

Pent-up stuff from Jeep down inside me, which I hadn't realized [*d been thinking about as much as I must've. "There thev were living their lives and thinking nothing could happen to them, ^\nd then all ot a sudden it did happen. And here we are thinking we're safe from all that and everything, hut who are we to he sate.' 1 mean, who do we think we are to he saf<

That outburst pretty much took Carlos off-guard, like when somebody starts telling what you rhink's going to be a joke and rhen it turns dead serious. I don't think he knew just then whether to laugh or be worried about me.

"You've been talking to Sammy," he said.

"Who else am I supposed to talk to.'" I said. "You're never here. And yeah, I've been talking to Sammy. No—change that—Sammy's been talking to me. He's been driving me crazy with his talk, and then those pictures in the book—it could be you or me or anybody they did that to."

He rubbed my shoulders. "Tony," he said, "you're a really exceptional guy and I mean that, but 1 have no idea what you're talking about."

"I'm talking about the Jews," I told him. "I'm talking about Sammy and all that. If we woke up and they decided to do that to us, what would we be able to do.' They'd just do it."

"Who's us?" Carlos asked. I looked up at him where he was >t 111 straddling my chest—it was an odd position to have a conversation in.

"Anybody," I said.

"Not to worry. You'd get your heinie hack to Kentucky." Carlos said it like he was really impatient with all this stuff. "You'd tit right back in like you never went away. You're not a Jew or a nigger or queer or anything you have to worry about. So relax, enjoy. Somebody like you, in America—you're not going have to worry."

It made me think. He was right, I could just go hack to Kentucky and keep on living the way I used to think I'd be living my whole lite.

"I wouldn't leave," I told him. It surprised me to hear myseli sa\ that, but once I said it I knew it was completely true. It was like one more door closing behind me. And I didn't even like Sammy -he w.ts the most self-centered old man I'd ever met, thinking I was always just sitting around waiting to hear .mother story about Jews in the gh< Besides, he had this way ot sucking the saliva in it the edges ot his mouth when he talked that was completely disgusting.

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boy.

"I'd become a Jew," I said. Carlos laughed really loud.

"Yeah right," he said. "Wear a little beanie cap. Tony the yeshiva

"What's a yeshiva boy?"

"Never mind," he said.

"It's something I've been thinking about a lot," I insisted. Actually it wasn't till that minute, but I knew if I had thought about it I'd have come to the exact same conclusions. And Carlos was making me angry, the way he wasn't listening to what I was saying. Like he thought it was something I needed to get out of my system and that was that.

"But why?" Carlos asked. "If they told you you didn't have to. That you could just go back to being normal and you'd escape." He looked at me with this serious look and sort of massaged my arms. I could tell he was trying to figure out if I might be having a nervous breakdown or something classy like that.

I didn't have any kind of answer to his question "Why?" I didn't know why I'd do what I said, but I knew I would. I could see that guy in the picture in the book really clearly.

Carlos sort of ruffled up my hair. "Anyway," he said, "There's nothing safe anywhere. Look at you."

"Look at me what?"

"You're doing your laundry and look what happens."

"Oh that," I told him. "Was that a bad thing?"

"Was it?" He was making me uncomfortable again. "Do you want

to go back to Owen.'"

The trouble was, I did sort of. I wasn't being very happy In New

York, doing nothing all da) except roatu around on my own I he

isn't much company to me 01 like today, lit around

: COmU booka and drink h\ myself, and then teel hun

drink some more.

I asked him, "Arc- you trying to gel rid of me 01 something? frying :ii me h,u k home

rlos Laughed, bui this time It was a quiet laugh. He itarted ing the buttons to my thin One at i time and slowly, and the whole time right In my eyes I looked at Ins face, his < that • at that Instant, and I just la) ba< k

there and let him unbutton my shirt because what could I do! It

a when illy that wintei In

l and my ^km felt * old and my . i >ld hke mine, they ■■■

BOYSOFLIFE D

warm and rough. When he'd start to touch me, laying his palm on my hare chest and stroking my nipples with his thumbs something went all over me. 1 couldn't do anything except let him do whatever he

wanted to with me. It was like I was Acdd and in the grave and here were his hands wanning me Up and hack to life.

"I'm not trying to send von anywhere/ 1 Carlos said. He pulled my shirt off me and rubbed his hands along my belly, right where the waist of my jeans was. "You're right here," he said, slipping his fingers down under the waistline to where, even though I didn't really want it to, my dick was starting to get hard. "You're in for good," he said, "and you're right—there isn't any going hack."

"Then I'm not going anywhere," I told him. He ran a hand along the front of my jeans, and my body arched up to meet him like it had a life all its own. I sort o\ moaned. He unzipped me and pulled out my dick, and rolled it around in his hand, looking at it even though he'd seen it a hundred times before. But he was always interested in what it looked like. Then he bent forward and took it in his mouth. He'd done that to me also about a hundred times and still it made the floor drop out from under me. I loved touching my fingers to the base oi it where his lips were wrapped around.

Now that we were like this, it seemed even more upsetting to think about that kid caught in the picture. Stopped there forever, and us going on, moving around like we were. Alive. Not th.it 1 didn't like us like this, but I just kept seeing that kid in front of my eves, and th.it one expression on his face that was going to he caught like that forever.

Carlos raised up and started pulling my jeans ofl me, lifting ankle and then the other to free me up completely. "Look, don't go getting goofy on me, okay? Sammy's just .1 paranoid leu, s ( » forget it 1 mean, if anybody's earned the right to he paranoid it's Sammy, hut don't let that fuck you up. Okay.' It doesn't have to have anythii do with you."

"Sure," I said. "Why should I listen to some paranoid old |e

"Right," Carlos told me. "How do vou know he's not making all that stuff up just to impress you?" Which was something I never thought of before.

"Besides," he went on, "I need vou." He was taking «-ft his shut, sliding his pants down so we were both completely naked with him straddled on top of me, which is something I really loved when w< down to that point. "I'm counting on vou," he ^.\\d, "for th.it ma\

"Yeah?" I said. "Tell me more." I wanted to hear him talk about

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that movie. It was the reason he'd gotten me here, and now two months had gone by, and nothing. I thought maybe if I gave him a blow job he might keep on talking, so I guided his dick toward my mouth.

"That's nice," he said. "That's great."

It wasn't something I'd ever done with him before. Usually Carlos was the one who wanted to do things, and I just lay back and enjoyed them. But this time felt different. I wanted to ask him more about the movie, but my mouth was full, and then I got to thinking about other things. I got the idea—strange to say, I'd never gotten it before—that since it was something he did to me that I liked, maybe I should do it to him too. So I reached my hand around his butt and squirmed a finger down his crack till I found his hole, and I started to press mv finger up it.

He grabbed my wrist. "Sorry," he said, "off limits."

I pulled off him. "And mine's not?" I said.

He sat up and kind of rocked back—then he spread my legs and started rubbing his finger into my asshole. It sent hot chills right up me.

"Do you want it to be off limits?"

He could have me groaning in no time. "No way," I told him as he pressed his middle finger all the way up. "No way."

It was hard to tell who was winning, but after that it was pretty much whatever he wanted to do with me was fine, he could do it.

Still, all I could think while he was doing u was: the [ew kid in the picture, didn't he die hungry, of bullets, when he lived past the picture they'd got him in? It was what 1 couldn't get out oi mv head.

Later, after we both fell asleep, I could only sleep about halt an

hour before I was wide awake and Staring at the ceiling. Next t0 me

Carlos.wasn't moving, oi even breathing as far as I could tell. But then that was the waj Carlos always slept on his back and completely still.

U went tO sleep with him like that and woke up eight hours later,

might've been in fifty different positions but he hadn't moved an inch. I thinl I the time he wasn't even sleeping, he was just

lying then- thinking. He'd lie completely s ""- and it he couldn't to sleep it was still a wa\ oi rest in rmi folded serosa his chest

me kind m mummy

I I • m\ elbo* I" wan h him. In the Ot

glo* that came in through the plasti< ovei the windows, l could thin hps, and smooth tight skin, and those high cheekb

B O Y S O F L I F E D

that could make him look like a Cherokee Indian. Ir never occuned to me at the time that Carlos might he a Jew.

I thought about some ot the pictures in that hook, people the Nazis killed in some not. After thev took the bodies to a warehouse before carting them off somewhere else—Sammy told me this—Mendel went in there in secret and took pictures of the faces, 10 people could look at those pictures and know tor sure whether their son or wife or whoever was one of the ones that got killed.

Lying there in that orange light, Carlos looked like he could he dead too. His skin could've been ice cold to the touch. I thought about the faces of those dead people in the pictures, how rheir eyes were open with a kind of shocked look like they'd just been going along alive one instant and suddenly the next they were dead. It was sort of the look you might have if death was some invisible wall that you were walking along and just ran smack into without any warning.