Second You Sin (18 page)

Then, from somewhere to the left, I heard someone slapping something, then the same sound to my right, then from everywhere, the noise swel ing and rising until I realized it wasn’t slapping but
clapping.

“Way to go, Sophie!” someone cal ed.

“You got her!”

“That bald bitch better not show her face around here again!” That was from Mrs. P., the doughnut lady.

My mother brought her hands to her bosom.

“You’re not al mad at me?”

“Mad at you?” a gray-haired woman with one of my mother’s signature beehives asked. “Why would we be mad at you? That stuck-up Hol ywood cooze thinks she can come here to Hauppauge and insult one of our own? You gave her what she deserved!”

“You could hear us?” my mother asked.

“We didn’t have to,” Mrs. P. said, coming over to put an arm around my mother. “We could see everything through the window. We know you, Sophie. For you to do a thing like that, that woman must have . . .” She finished her sentence in a long string of Yiddish that meant nothing to me but got half the crowd laughing.

“You’re good people,” another woman offered.

“We love you, Sophie,” one of the young girls with the “We Love You, Yvonne” sign shouted, proving just how fickle a teenage girl’s affection can be.

My mother was choking up. “You’re al so kind to me,” she croaked. Mrs. P. wrapped her up in a comforting hug.

“You know what I’m going to do?” Mrs. P. asked.

“Tonight, when I close the store, I’m going to stop by your house with a chocolate layer cake. You know, that one you love with the red and pink roses on top?

I make those by hand, you know, not from a mold. It’s an art.”

My mother nodded into Mrs. P.’s fleshy shoulder.

“You deserve a treat tonight, after what that woman did to you,” Mrs. P. told her.

I had to say the whole thing made me see my old neighborhood in a new light. Everyone there had seen what my mother had done to Yvonne. None of them had the slightest idea what, if anything, Yvonne did to deserve such a fate. But they al stood behind my mother and supported her, for no other reason than she was one of their own.

It was pretty cool.

Soon, almost everyone in the crowd was lined up behind Mrs. P., waiting to give my mother a hug, a handshake, or just their best wishes.

My mother, who spent her entire life believing she was a star even when no one else was paying attention, lapped up the attention like a kitten devouring a saucer of milk.

It was kind of touching to see my mother final y enjoying in real life the applause she previously only heard in her head.

Mrs. P. came over to give me a hug, too. “You’re a good boy, Kevin.”

“Thanks.”

She pressed her cheek against mine and her lips to my ear. “That’l be twenty-two fifty for the cake. I’l take it now if you don’t mind, sweetheart.”
17

All I Ask of You

“Bald?” Tony asked me for the thirty-third time.

“Completely bald?”

It was almost midnight. After a day spent with my mother deforesting one of America’s most beloved personalities and a dinner in which she alternately compared herself with Golda Meir and Martin Luther King Jr. (“Someone had to take a stand for those who have no voice,” my mother congratulated herself, to which my father responded, “Why couldn’t it be your mother who has no voice?”), I was glad that Tony came over as promised.

“Total cue bal ,” I said. “Professor X with fake boobs and overinflated lips.”

We were lying in bed, which was pretty much our favorite place. Truth to tel , it was pretty much the
only
place we spent any time together. Being with a guy in the closet made it easy to plan your dates.

“Wow.” Tony whistled. “Remind me not to piss off your mother anytime soon.” He ran his fingers through his own thick locks. “I’ve kind of gotten attached to this.”

I put my hand between his legs. “She’s not the one you need to worry about,” I said. I squeezed his bal s.

“Screw with me and you’l lose a lot worse than your hair.”

“Oh, a tough guy, huh?”

I squeezed him again. “Scared yet?”

“Mmmm,” Tony moaned. “Terrified.”

A stirring tower under the sheet made it clear fear wasn’t the only thing he was feeling. “You like it rough, Rinaldi?” I pul ed his bal s tighter. He moaned again. I pul ed harder.

“Fuck,” he hissed.

I took my other hand and wrapped it around his cock, tugging in the other direction.
Like a taffy pull,
I thought.

Precome leaked onto my hand and I used it to slick my palm’s slide to the base of his cock, getting it slippery and wet. I worked my hands in synchronicity, sliding up his shaft with one while pul ing his bal s with the other. The sweet slithery sensation on his dick competed with the aching pressure from his overstretched sac. I tormented him, up and down, back and forth, pain and pleasure, teasing and torture. He arched his back and threw back his head.

“What are you doing to me?” he rasped.

“Everything,” I said, throwing a leg over his pelvis and straddling his waist. I bent over and took a nipple into my mouth. Bit it with a bit more vigor than usual. “I’m going to do everything to you.” I sucked his nipple hard, and when it was at its most distended, bit down again.

Tony grabbed my head and groaned. “I don’t like pain,” he croaked. His achingly hard cock told me he didn’t mind a little discomfort, though.

“It’s not pain,” I said. “It’s love.”

Tony bucked into my hands. “How do I know the difference?”

I looked at this man who was always so wil ing to

join me in bed but so unready to be anywhere else with me. He looked so hot like this, his eyes rol ed back in pleasure, the wel -defined muscles of his chest and arms straining with the pressure of holding back and letting me run the show. He was so perfect in so many ways.

But was he perfect for
me?

“I don’t know,” I said. There was a catch in my voice that probably sounded like passion to him.

“Maybe there is none.” Then I bent over to kiss him and tried not to think so much.

“Come on,” I said, “please?”

“No,” Tony said, his tone resolute.

“Pretty please,” I pleaded.

“No way.”

“Pretty please with sugar on top and the dessert topping of your choice spread over your body and licked off by yours truly.”

Tony tilted his head. “Tempting. But no.” We were sitting on the leather couch in my living room. Unusual y, our lovemaking left us restless rather than wiped out, and we were eating leftover ordered-in Chinese food out of its paper cartons.

I’m not exactly the domestic type.

I was trying to talk him into seeing
Super Rangers,
the new movie based on a superhero cartoon popular when I was eight years old. I always loved the Super Rangers, a team of five intrepid teenage boys who, one day, came across a mysterious glowing meteor in the woods. They touched it to see what it was made of, and were enveloped in a cocoon of brightly shining green energy. Even as an eight-year-old, I thought they were pretty stupid to be eight-year-old, I thought they were pretty stupid to be touching a strangely luminescent space rock. Had they never heard of radioactivity?

Luckily, instead of radiation poisoning, the light gave them the powers of the Super Rangers. Each of the boys received different powers and abilities, as wel as his own total y styling costume. In what must have been a bit of foreshadowing, my favorite Ranger was Rainbow Lad, whose colored beams each had a different effect: red for heat rays, blue for cold, yel ow for concussive shots, and amazingly, pink for healing.

Rainbow Lad was the gayest hero ever, and I loved him with al my prepubescent heart.

While Rainbow Lad might have been my favorite, I worshipped al the Super Rangers. I watched the show every day and amassed a ridiculously large col ection of their action figures, comic books, and lunch boxes.

To this day, I can’t walk in the woods, not even Central Park, without keeping an eye out for brightly glowing meteors. You never know.

Now, after a year of leaked photos and teaser a d s ,
Super Rangers: The Motion Picture
was playing at a screen near me, and I’d be damned if I was going to miss it. It had already been out for three weeks, and I was desperate to go.

“Al right,” I said, “what do I have to do to get you to see this movie with me?”

“Try getting a time machine and sending me back twenty years,” Tony mumbled through a mouthful of moo shu pork. “It’s a kid’s movie. I’m a little old for it.”

“Come on,” I said. “It’l be fun.”

Tony looked unmoved.

“Tel you what,” I pleaded. “You see
Super
Rangers
with me and I’l . . . watch footbal or something.”

Tony kissed my forehead. “I wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself. Get Freddy to see it with you.”

“Freddy’s already seen it. Twice.”

“I’m sure you could find someone. Maybe you could take your mom. She could fantasize about shaving their heads.”

“Did I mention dessert toppings?” I asked.

“Because that includes syrups, and those can take forever to lick off.”

“Forget it.” Tony finished off his beer.

I wished I could change his mind, but I could see it was a lost cause.

“Why did I have to fal for an old man like you?” Tony looked over at my bedroom, where the disheveled, stained sheets provided evidence of the most obvious reason. “For my sparkling personality, clearly.”

“Uh, that would be no.”

“Wel , if it’s my fortune you’re after, I have bad news for you.”

“That story you told me about being Donald Trump’s secret love child isn’t true?”

“Sorry.”

I climbed into his lap. “I’m sure there’s something I like about you, but I just can’t put my finger on it.” Instead, I rested my whole hand there.

Tony put his hand on my head. “Maybe there’s something else you can put on it.”

I felt him coming to life beneath me. Tony had recuperative powers Wolverine would envy.

“Hmmm, any ideas?”

The pressure on my head increased. “That depends. Have you had enough to eat?”

“I could probably go for a little something more.”

“A
little
something? I’m insulted.”

“Tel you what,” I said. “You swal ow your pride . . .”

“And you’l swal ow something else?”

“Deal.”

He pushed a little more and my head wound up where it would do him the most good.

“OK,” I admitted, mouthing him through his sweatpants, “maybe not
that
little.”

“That’s my boy,” Tony said. “You like that, huh?” I would have answered him, but it’s rude to talk with your mouth ful .

Later, back in bed, I asked Tony if he’d do me a favor. “What’s that?” he asked.

“I got a dinner invitation and I’d like you to come with me.”

“It’s not at your parents’, is it? Because I may be a tough-guy cop, but you know your mother scares the shit out of me, right?”

“No, it’s at some friends’ house.”

“‘Some friends’?” Tony asked. “What kind of friends?”

“What do you mean, ‘what kind of friends?’

Friendly friends.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Another couple.”

“What kind of couple?”

He was real y pissing me off. “A nice couple, Tony.

Good people. I think you’d like them. Does it real y make a difference?”

Tony stroked my hair. “Kevvy, you know how I feel about you. But I’m not signing up to a join a movement, here. I just want to be with you.”

“It isn’t a recruitment session, Tony. It’s just dinner.

If you don’t want to go, fine. I’l go alone.” I rol ed over onto my side, as far from him as I could get without fal ing off. Under my breath, I muttered, “I guess I better get used to going places alone, huh?” Tony rol ed over and wrapped me in his arms. “If I wanted you to be alone, Kevvy, I wouldn’t be here.”

“Right,” I said.

“I just . . . I’m just not as used to al this as you are.” I pushed his arms away. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Kevvy,” he began. He scooted closer. I edged farther away.

Unfortunately, I ran out of mattress before I ran out of hurt feelings.

“Ouch,” I said, fal ing onto the floor. A sharp pain ran from my hip to my shoulder. “Fuck.”

“Hey,” Tony said, throwing his legs over the bed and crouching next to me. “Are you OK?”

“Fine,” I snapped. “Just dandy.”

“ ‘Dandy’?”