Little Little (12 page)

He picked up the phone and said, “Room 829 here. I have bags to go and I’ll need a taxi.”

Then he turned back to me. “I keep my car here in the lot to throw them off. Come with me? All the dwarfs in town are over at the Lakeside, and, Sydney, there are a lot of us in town!”

“I heard,” I said.

“So come with me while I settle in. We’ll have a drink. You’re old enough to drink now, aren’t you?” He didn’t wait for my answer. “What are you
doing
here in La Belle?” he said. “Where the hell have you been keeping yourself? Tell me all about it! You’ve heard about me, I guess. Hey, Sydney, I’ve got a lot to tell you! Praise the Lord, it’s like old times!”

On the way to The Lakeside Motel, in the back of the taxi, he told me he had a white Mercedes convertible, a ten-room house on the Palisades overlooking the George Washington Bridge and the Hudson River, and a fiancée shorter than he was and prettier than a picture—in that order.

“And she’s from a good family, too,” he said, lighting up a little brown Schimmelpenninck cigar. “Her granddaddy’s a
legitimate
preacher and her daddy owns this whole damn town!”

I didn’t tell him I knew Little Little.

I walked around to the back of The Lakeside Motel with him, and waited for him while he left a note in her car which read:
“Don’t go. I’m here. Little Lion.”

“They’re all in watching a movie right now,” he told me as we went through the back door of the motel. “We’ll have some time to catch up—I want to hear
all
about you, boy!”—pounding me on my hump. “She doesn’t expect me until tomorrow, so she’s in there with the TADpoles being a proper hostess, and she’s proper, Sydney, not like the ones I used to chase after when you and me were roommates. This gal’s got class!”

As soon as his bags were in the room, he ordered up drinks, a double screwdriver for himself, he said, and what about me? I said I’d have orange juice, too, but I wanted the vodka on the side. I was doing some fast thinking … and I wasn’t a drinker.

He scrambled up on the bed and settled himself against a pillow and said, “God, am I anxious to hear about you! And don’t get
me
wrong, Sydney. I may not have all the degrees (I don’t have
any
of them) but I am the little lion fighting in the arena for the Lord, for sure, Sydney! My heart’s in it, A to Z! Sydney, remember that Saturday night in Leprechaun Village we put on the show and I was David in the loincloth fighting that stupid dishwasher supposed to be the giant, and that dame from the audience kept pulling at my loincloth till it slipped down and I was bare-assed? OhmyGod, I’d forgotten that one!”

While he paid the waiter for our drinks, I dropped my double jigger of vodka into his screwdriver, pretending as he turned around that I’d swallowed it.

“I like it better straight,” I said.

He held up his screwdriver. “Sydney, here’s to you, as good as you are, and here’s to me, as bad as I am. But as good as you are, and as bad as I am, I am as good as you are, as bad as I am.”

We drank to that.

Then he said, “Now that I’m doing the Lord’s work, I’ve put all those days at places like Leprechaun Village behind me. You understand that. People don’t like to think their favorite preacher spent his younger years popping out of pies at stag dinners or fishing full ashtrays off dinner tables in a Leprechaun suit, so I’ve wiped away those days, golden as they are in my memory and yours.”

“They aren’t particularly golden in mine,” I said.

“Well, I’m not looking down on anything we ever had to do to make a buck in this life, God knows, Sydney, and I want to hear how you’ve been doing, but you have to understand the Lord’s work is big business. I’m talking about dollars, Sydney, big bucks, and you can’t get out on the wider seas of industry in the same old canoes you used for little lakes and streams.”

“Does she love you?” I asked him. “Does she tell you she loves you?”

“Does who tell me she loves me? My fiancée?”

“Little Little La Belle,” I said.

“She hasn’t had the chance to say yes, thank you, praise God, or hallelujah, which is why I’m here and turning down the big bucks at a tent meeting my organization had scheduled in the hills of Tennessee. It’s her birthday tomorrow, and we’ll finalize it all tomorrow.”

Then he hopped off the bed and said on his way to the telephone, “I’ll have one more double order sent up for us, Sydney. I’m not a lush, believe me, but I drove the whole damn day to get here, straight from a taping of
The Powerful Hour
—I was in the testimony segment, and I’m beat, my boy, and I want nothing more than to sit back and hear about you.”

His four shots combined with mine finally did him in, and near ten-thirty I helped him from the bathroom to the bed. As we waddled across the room together side by side, I saw us in the full-length mirror and thought of the Siamese twins in Vladimir Nabokov’s short story “Scenes from the Life of a Double Monster,” which he’d described as walking like drunken dwarfs supporting each other.

He had passed out cold on the rug before I got him up on the bed, and I put a pillow under his head, admired his soft bright red hair and freckled cherub’s face, and threw a blanket over him.

A motel employee told me
Star Wars
was coming to an end, which gave me time to slip out into the parking lot and get Little Lion’s note from the blue Volvo.

I was breathless from all this exertion as I posted myself just outside the door of the ballroom.

“How
did you
get here?” she said when she came out with all the others.

I was still panting like a dog. “I ran all the way.”

“L
ITTLE LITTLE,” MY MOTHER
said, “where are you? We’ve been worried out of our minds. Larry, pick up the den phone, it’s Little Little!”

“I’m at The Palace,” I said. “I’m going to see the Midnight Monster Double Header.”

“It’s midnight!” my mother said.

“That’s when it starts,” I said.

“Little Little”—my father’s voice—“where are you?”

“She’s at The Palace Theater,” said my mother.

“It’s midnight!” my father said.

“And I’m eighteen,” I said.

“Happy birthday, sweetheart,” my mother said, “but you know what we think of The Palace.”

“What are you doing at The Palace Theater?” my father said.

“She says she’s going to see the Midnight Monster Double Header,” said my mother.

“I’ll be home when it’s over,” I said. “I’m all right.”

“Now just a minute,” said my father. “Who are you with?”

“Are there other TADpoles with you?” said my mother.

“I’m with one,” I said.

“Who?” my mother said.

“Who are you there with?” my father said.

“You promised me you’d come right home after
Star Wars,”
said my mother. “How many movies can you see in one night?”

“Three,” I said.

“Who are you
there
with?” my father said.

“His name is Sydney Cinnamon.”

“You’re there with a boy?” my father said.

“I don’t know any boy named Sydney Cinnamon,” said my mother.

“Is he a TADpole?” said my father.

“He’s not on our list,” my mother said. “I know every name on that list.”

“Who is he, Little Little?” said my father.

“Is he little?” my mother said. “Is he a diminutive?”

“He’s little,” I said.

“Who
is he?”
said my father.

The operator broke in at that point and demanded more money for the next three minutes.

“What’s the number there?” my father said.

“The show is going to start any minute, so don’t call me back,” I said. “I just want you to know I’m okay.”

“Where did you meet him? He’s not on our list,” my mother said.

“Little Little,” my father said, “you’re not with The Roach?”

“The
Roach?”
my mother said.

There was the operator’s click and the dial tone.

I thanked Mr. Gruberg, the manager, for the chair I’d used to make the call. He knew me from all the times Cowboy and I had sneaked to the theater last summer, while my parents went to dances at Cayuta Lake Yacht Club. We only had time to see one feature without their knowing we were there. My parents didn’t object to the movies The Palace showed as much as they feared the rats that were supposed to live in The Palace, and “the element” that went to the late night shows—a lot of kids who smoked pot and made out in the back rows, and some of the town drunks who dropped in to nap.

While Sydney bought us a huge container of popcorn, I lit a cigarette for a few fast puffs before we got inside.

A red-faced fellow with blurry eyes asked me where my mamma was and if she knew I was smoking cigarettes.

“This little pixie is older than you think,” Mr. Gruberg told him.

“Come on,” Sydney said, and we went inside, and all the way down to the front row.

The feature was beginning,
The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant,
starring Bruce Dern.

Sydney passed me some popcorn. “Did you ever see
Ghidra, the Three-Headed Monster?
He was two hundred feet tall besides.”

“I saw
The Thing with Two Heads
here, last summer.”

“That was boring,” he said. “Ray Milland had his head grafted onto Rosie Grier’s and they spent the whole time talking about racial issues.”

“I know it,” I said, “but it was on with
Curse of the Werewolf,
which was what we’d really gone to see, and never got to see because we could only see one and it was last.”

“It was good,” Sydney said. “It was about a feral creature. There’s a science fiction writer called—”

People behind us went,
“Shhhhh!”

“Philip José Farmer,” Sydney whispered. “He wrote a whole anthology about feral men called
Mother Was a Lovely Beast.
”

“You read a lot of weird stuff,” I whispered back.

“Shut up!”
a man yelled.

“You read Sara Lee,” Sydney whispered back.

We ate all the popcorn and tossed the empty container under the seat. Just as Bruce Dern began to stitch two heads onto one body, I grabbed Sydney Cinnamon’s hand and said, “Operations give me the creeps.”

He looked over at me and smiled, and then he said something I couldn’t hear.

“What?” I whispered.

“I said I’m planning on having dental work done,” he said.

He had his free hand across his mouth so I could hardly hear him.

“What did you say about the dentist?”

“I’m hoingtoonehoon.”

“Take your hand away from your mouth I can’t hear you.”

“Skip it,” he said.

I watched the two heads being stitched on the body as I thought about what he could mean and then I got it. “Oh,” I said. “Your front tooth bothers you.”

“I’m going to have my fang capped,” he said.

“How very Sara Lee,” I said.

He gave me a shove in my ribs with his elbow.

We sat there staring up at the huge screen, holding hands tightly, when what sounded like a herd of elephants charging down the aisle produced my father.

“Little Little, I’d like to talk to you!”

“This man is my father, Sydney.”

“How do you do,” said Sydney.

The people behind us began shouting at us to shut up.

“Little Little, come out into the lobby!” my father demanded.

“Daddy, we’re in the middle of the movie.”

“You heard me,” he said, and Sydney let go of my hand.

I said to Sydney, “You don’t have to come.”

“I’ll come,” he said.

My father waited for us to get out of our seats and then followed behind us. I could see that he had on his pajama top under his overcoat, he had left our house in such a hurry.

The three of us stood in the lobby, my father crouched over with his knees bent and his hands on his knees. “It is now one in the morning. You have a big day ahead of you tomorrow, Little Little.”

He didn’t look in Sydney Cinnamon’s direction at all.

I said, “Daddy, this is Sydney Cinnamon.”

“I know who it is.”

“How do you do, sir,” Sydney said.

“Howdoyoudo,” my father said so fast it sounded like one word, still not looking at Sydney. “Did you hear what I said, Little Little? You have a big day tomorrow, beginning very early in the morning.”

“We’ll only stay through the first feature,” I said.

“I’ve come to take you home.”

“Thanks, but I have my car.”

“We’ll pick up your car tomorrow.” He finally gave Sydney Cinnamon a fast glance. “You can get a cab—there’s a cab stand across the street.”

“This is what I call really humiliating!” I said.

“Call it anything you want,” my father said. “I’m taking you home!”

Then my father straightened up and barked out, “Lit-toe, Lit-toe, right now!”

“But—” said Sydney Cinnamon.

“Right NOW!”

“On my eighteenth birthday?” I said.

“Hey,” Sydney smiled at me, covering his tooth with his hand. “Happy Birthday!”

He had barely finished the sentence when my father picked me up bodily and carried me out of the lobby, into the street.

“That is the last you’ll see of The Roach!” he said.

W
HEN I WAKE UP
in my room in Wilton, the first thing I see is myself reflected in the full-length mirror across the room. I am in my little bed, made especially for me by a Wilton carpenter, and next to it is the bureau he built to my size, and the desk and chair. I know the real world begins just outside my door and down the hall, where the bathroom confronts me with the toilet and sink, which take great effort to reach, and I am again like a mushroom growing in a forest inhabited by giants. But for that space between waking up and getting up, I am myself. I wiggle my toes and see them reflected at the foot of my bed, pulling the covers away from the mattress. I sit up and put a pillow behind me, and my feet stretch out a quarter of the way down my mattress.

When I am traveling and lonely, I miss my own room, and I woke up in The Stardust Inn to find my body lost in the enormous double bed, as the events of the night before came back to my consciousness. I put the huge pillow behind me and sat up, my feet coming just to the part of the sheet turned over at the top of the mattress.