The Hour of the Innocents Read online

  “Turn on the headlights.”

  I did.

  A few seconds later, we saw the naked body by the roadside. I stopped.

  “Keep going,” Matty said. “Stop just past him. We don’t want to be in the headlights.”

  I drove another ten yards and pulled over.

  “Flashlight?”

  “Under the dash.”

  “Keep the engine running. Crank up the heater.”

  Matty leapt out, tearing off his coat.

  I looked back. The body was in my blind spot.

  Matty came up on the driver’s side. I rolled down my window as fast as I could.

  “You have a blanket in the trunk? Or anything else?”

  “No.” Then I thought. “There’s my dirty clothes. In my suitcase.”

  “They wouldn’t fit. Get out and help me. It’s all right. They’re gone.”

  Frankie lay on Matty’s jacket, eyes closed, clutching himself between the legs, quivering. There was no blood. His face was unmarked.

  Matty pulled off his shoes, took off his jeans, and knelt, bare-legged, to put the jeans on Frankie.

  Frankie wouldn’t let us pry his legs apart. He was conscious in some form, although he kept his eyes shut tight. Moaning and weeping, he didn’t form any words.

  “They went for his kidneys and his nuts,” Matty told me as he bullied the jeans up Frankie’s legs. “Help me. Turn him over the other way. I don’t think any bones are broken. Maybe some cracked ribs, I don’t know. There may be internal bleeding, though.”

  “I thought they were going to kill him.”

  “He wasn’t worth killing.” Pushing Frankie’s hands away and zipping up the fly of the jeans, Matty added, “She isn’t worth killing anybody over. Everybody has their value. She was worth a beating, not a murder. The local VC were like that. They knew just how far to go. We never figured it out.” He shook his head. “He won’t have a mark on him, once the bruises heal. I don’t know how bad his balls or kidneys will be. The medics will have to figure that out. Help me get him into the jacket.”

  At the wrong touch, Frankie howled.

  As Matty pulled his shoes back on over wet socks, he couldn’t resist telling Frankie, “You’re lucky.”

  We got him into the passenger’s side of the Corvair. The rest of the car was crammed with my guitars and luggage.

  “He’ll make it to Hazleton. You can get there in a little over an hour. We need to get him away from here. You know where the Hazleton hospital is?”

  “Yeah. Yes.”

  “Tell them he was in a fight and you found him afterwards. Nothing else. Get going. And beep the horn three times.”

  I hit the horn. “What about you?”

  Bare-legged between his boxer shorts and shoes, holding a pistol in one hand and my flashlight in the other, Matty looked ridiculous and dangerous.

  “Joey’ll be down in a couple of minutes. Or Stosh. Hit the horn again as you’re leaving. Don’t speed and don’t stop. Even if Frankie asks you to. If he pukes, clean it up later. If you see their Lincoln, keep going.”

  “What about Angela? Should I call her?”

  “I’ll take care of Angela,” he said.

  THIRTEEN

  I made it back to the hospital on Sunday evening, just in time to see Angela march out. Wearing a murderous look, she abandoned Frankie’s room and clacked past without seeing me. A nurse stepped out of her way.

  Stosh and his girlfriend, Red O’Malley, had come upstairs with me. Red followed Angela back toward the elevator.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Stosh said, “if Angela gives it to him worse than his Mob buddies.”

  “She’s got a right to be pissed.”

  Stosh shrugged as we approached the nurses’ station. “I didn’t say she didn’t. I’d just never want to be on Angela’s bad side.”

  I had delivered Frankie to the emergency room just after three in the morning but had not gotten out of the hospital until almost seven. The local cops wanted to talk to me. I told them they’d have to talk to Frankie, that I hadn’t seen anything that happened.

  “Probably drug business,” one cop, a sergeant, said to his subordinate. “He probably got what he had coming.”

  By the time I reached home, it was daylight. I showered, set the alarm, and crashed. I was due at my mother’s house at two for Sunday dinner. Without Laura. She had gone home for all of Thanksgiving break.

  After the meal and a civil conversation, I stopped back at the apartment to scribble down notes for a song idea the Rocktop gig had given me: “Working as a dancer in a bar … watched her half-lit body through a beer glass that reflected both our lives … dusky barroom lights … wonder where she’ll rest her head tonight.” Then I filled up with gas and drove back to Hazleton. “Hey Jude” was still on the radio, after almost two months. I hoped that one day we’d have a hit that big.

  I expected to find Frankie dozing, with tubes needled into his veins. Instead, he was wide awake and unconstrained. He grinned when Stosh and I walked in.

  “I’m okay,” he declared. “I’m going to be okay. I woke up with a hard-on you wouldn’t believe.”

  “What about your kidneys?”

  Frankie moved his shoulders, then winced. “Who cares? The parts that matter are going to pass state inspection.”

  “What did the doctors say?”

  “They’re running tests. I’m pissing some blood. But at least I’m pissing.”

  “Listen, Frankie,” Stosh said. “You want me to cancel the gigs for this week?”

  We had four scheduled, beginning on Thanksgiving night: two at clubs, one at a college, and another at a no-booze, kiddie disco right there in Hazleton.

  “Don’t cancel anything. I’m okay.”

  “Hey, we’re not going to roll you onstage in a wheelchair,” I put in. “We can cancel a job or two.”

  He grew irritated. “I said I don’t want you to cancel anything. I’ll be out of here in a couple days. Guaranteed. We’ll just miss a couple rehearsals.”

  “You going to be at your best?” I asked.

  He smiled. “When haven’t I been? Aw, go on. You’re all worried about nothing.”

  I wished that I had a photograph of him laying naked in the slush and quivering in agony. To give him another view of himself.

  “They got you on painkillers?”

  “Darvons whenever I want them. Just ring for the nurse with the ass wider than the door. I could get used to this treatment.” His expression shifted. “Either of you see Matty? You talk to him?”

  We shook our heads, almost in unison.

  “He didn’t come up.”

  “He’s probably tired,” I said.

  “You’re tired. And you’re here.”

  “Frankie, you sound like a kid. You’re not the only creature on God’s green earth, man.”

  “It’s the Darvon. Gotta love ’em.”

  Footsteps stopped at the door: Frankie’s parents. His father did not look happy. His mother just seemed worried. The change in the atmosphere made it clear that Stosh and I were unwelcome.

  “Hey, you come up tomorrow, bring me a chocolate malt, all right?” Frankie told me.

  Red sat waiting on one of the vinyl chairs by the nurses’ station. “I thought you might want some time for boy-talk,” she said.

  “His old man and old lady showed up,” Stosh told her. “That was them went down the hall.”

  Red nodded. “The nurse was on them about the Blue Cross paperwork.”

  I had grown allergic to the new stretch of interstate between Hazleton and Frackville, so I said I was driving home the old way, down through Tamaqua. Stosh and Red followed me and we stopped for greaseburgers at the Five Points Diner by the Tamaqua railroad crossing.

  Pouring a cascade of sugar into his coffee, Stosh asked his girl, “So … what was Angela so mad about? You find out?”

  “Everything,” Red told him.

  * * *

  The front doo
r of my apartment was unlocked. I knew I had secured it when I left. Given the neighborhood, I felt a constant concern for my guitars and the stereo. I had my departure routine down.

  I switched on the light in the main room. Nothing. Both guitars were there. The stereo slept.

  But the quiet wasn’t right. I had the uncanny feeling that some other living thing was present. Beyond a mouse or two. And I smelled a cigarette’s ghost.

  Matty’s uncle, the Statie, crossed my mind. Was he lurking to bust me for a crime he’d set up, some drug thing? He could’ve done that more easily up on the highway.

  I clicked on the kitchenette light. Nothing had been touched.

  Were Frankie’s tormentors of the night before waiting for me? That made no sense, either.

  I strode toward my bedroom, determined not to be afraid of spooks.

  When I turned on the light, I found Angela, propped up on my pillows, with the sheet and blanket pulled up above her breasts. Her golden hair spread over bare skin.

  She smiled at me.

  “How’d you get in here?” I demanded.

  She lifted her slender shoulders and dropped them again. “Your landlady. I told her it was your birthday and I had a surprise for you. She’s seen me around enough.”

  “It’s not my birthday.”

  She refreshed her smile. “Maybe you should celebrate, anyway?”

  Before I could tell her to get out, she kicked the covers down around her ankles and cocked a bare leg.

  * * *

  “I’ll bet she never let you do that to her,” Angela said.

  * * *

  Chastened by black coffee, I sat at the kitchenette table in gray light, practicing scales on the Les Paul. The gulf between my mind and my fingers widened as I waited for Angela to wake up. After we had exhausted every possibility between us, she had taken a couple of barbs to come down and sleep.

  A naked ghost crossed the hall, disappearing into the bathroom. I had been surprised at her thinness, the feeling of fragile bones. It wasn’t the way I thought of her or remembered her from our summer encounter.

  The toilet flushed and the shower came on.

  I felt sick. First it had been Joan. Now it was Angela, an immeasurably worse betrayal. And not just of Laura. Didn’t I have any self-control, any discipline, at all? Didn’t I mean a single word I said, one promise I made? Suddenly, forcing myself to practice three hours each day no longer sufficed as a badge of moral rigor.

  Was I just a weakling? And a coward? Like my father?

  Angela came out with her hair still wet. It lay heavily on the yoke of my father’s monogrammed robe. The hem dragged on the floor. When she kicked it aside, red toenails flashed.

  “You look like you didn’t get much sleep,” she said playfully. Putting on her Angela smile like makeup. Her complexion had roughened over the months, I had felt it under my lips. I blamed that on the speed and whatever else she was shoving down her throat. Angela had always had perfect skin, even under the paint she wore when I first joined the Destroyerz.

  I felt sullen. But I didn’t have it in me to be rude. Maybe that was yet another weakness. I carried the guitar to its stand by the stereo and returned to the kitchenette.

  “Coffee?”

  “With milk, if you got any. No sugar.” She took a seat sat the table, facing the chair I had occupied.

  I served her and sat down again.

  She compressed her smile. “You’re not as good as Frankie, you know that? Just like you’re not as good as Matty on the guitar.”

  “I didn’t know I was being graded.”

  “I bet you were grading me. How did I do?”

  “A-plus,” I told her. Honestly. Bitterly.

  “You’d be better if you didn’t get so ashamed of what you want. Everybody wants stuff they’re not supposed to.” She looked at me, seeking my eyes. “I knew. Didn’t I?”

  “I’m sorry I was a disappointment.”

  “I didn’t say you were disappointing,” she told me. “Just that you’re not as good as Frankie. So tell me something. What really happened to that sonofabitch? It was all about some woman, wasn’t it? Some cunt?”

  “I didn’t see him getting beat up.”

  She smirked. “Nobody saw anything. Nobody ever does. Fucking Frankie. Why do you all cover for him all the time? He’d screw any of you over for a ham sandwich. He’d fuck your precious Laura on a street corner in broad daylight, don’t think he wouldn’t.”

  “She wouldn’t, though.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Her smile broadened. “Yeah. I think you’re right. I really do. I guess that’s the least of your problems with Her Highness.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Can I have some more coffee? No, that’s wrong, ain’t? May I have more coffee?” She shifted her butt on the wooden chair. “Are you as sore as I am?”

  I poured what remained in the pot. “Leave Laura out of this, okay?”

  “I can’t,” Angela said. “I care about you too much. Somebody needs to protect you.” She took a long sip of the coffee. It must have been scalding. “Couple weeks ago? When I didn’t come home that night? When Frankie was shitting his pants? Want to know where I was?”

  “It sounds like you’re going to tell me.”

  “I am. Because I care about you. And I want to protect you. Before she really hurts you.”

  “Where were you?”

  “I drove down to Doylestown. Where she told me she’s from.”

  “And?” I tried to maintain an appearance of cool. But the atmosphere had turned ominous.

  “How old do you think she is? Your little sweetheart?”

  I shrugged. “Eighteen, probably. She’s just out of high school. So … probably eighteen. She’s an Aquarius, so she’ll turn nineteen in a couple of months.”

  Angela grinned in triumph. “She’s eighteen, all right. Try almost twenty-one. She got nearly two years on you.”

  “How do you know that? How would you know anything?”

  “Like I’m stupid? You always think everybody else is dumber than you. Jeez, you and Frankie are two peas in a pod. Like I told you. I took a ride down to Doylestown. And I went to the library and checked the high school yearbooks. Your precious angel didn’t just graduate, Will.” Angela reached her hand across the table and laid it over mine, comforting me in advance. “She’s class of ’66, not ’68. And you know where she’s been all this time? You have any idea?”

  I withdrew my hand and sat up straight. I felt the sort of fascination that keeps you in a reptile house when all of your instincts want you to move on.

  “You got the least idea where she was?”

  “No.”

  Angela sat back, enclosing her coffee mug in slender hands. She drank again and held on to the mug.

  “The funny farm. The loony bin. The nuthouse. Your Laura. They had her locked up in some fancy place down by Philly.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Ask her yourself.”

  “You couldn’t know that. How could you know that?”

  She lit the room, coldly, with another conquering smile. “You want to know anything goes on in a town, you go to a hair salon. Josette from up the Hair Affair went to beauty school in Allentown with this girl from Doylestown. She put me in touch.” Her smile tightened. She enjoyed playing with me. A Siamese cat of a girl. “Want to know why she had to be locked up in the booby hatch?”

  “No.”

  “Yes, you do. I know you do. I’m telling you all this for your own good, Will. To protect you.”

  “I don’t want to know.”

  “Her father tried to screw her. The night before her high school graduation. He didn’t get it in her, though. He’s a drunk, you know that? She got away and locked herself in the bathroom. Your little angel swallowed everything in the medicine cabinet. They say she was weird before that, but I guess that was the last straw. Gives you the creeps to think abo
ut it. Ain’t?”

  “You’re the lowest bitch on the face of the earth,” I said.

  The charge didn’t faze her. “Go ahead. Call me names. You’ll get over it. Then you’ll see I did all this for you. To protect you.” As she leaned toward me, I smelled coffee breath and more. “She took advantage of you. She lied to you, your little Laura. Look what she’s done to you, Will. You look like a fool.”

  “You’re fucked up. You and your meth. No, that’s not right. You were fucked up before you got into speed.”

  She looked at me, her smile a crooked line. “And you think you want me to go now. Ain’t?”

  She stood up and opened my father’s robe.

  * * *

  That morning, I learned that Angela loved to be hurt.

  FOURTEEN

  I believed her. My father’s death and its aftermath had taught me that while cruel people lie, brilliantly cruel people wield the truth. And Angela’s story made sense. After she left my apartment, I thought, wryly, of one of the last exchanges Laura and I had before I left for the Rocktop gig and she went home for Thanksgiving. I asked her if I couldn’t sneak down to see her for at least one afternoon. She told me: “I don’t want to chance it. Really, my mother’s been a bit odd ever since her divorce.”

  The unmasking of Laura’s recent past didn’t make me angry at her. I understood the desperate urge to lie. It made me mad at Angela, though. Is there anything crueler than spoiling the dream two lovers agree to share? Is our happiness so unbearable to others? I seethed at my mother as well, for being right when I saw nothing amiss. Her bull’s-eye hit reduced me to childhood status, just when I was struggling to be a man. As for Laura, I only loved her more. I tacked to the other extreme, seeing her as a tragic figure now, not a superior being who might escape me. Pity amplified my love: A romantic imagination is insidious. I longed to hold her, to clutch her and protect her, but would not see her until a gig the following Sunday, when she had promised to meet me at Franklin & Marshall.

  A mirror in a woman’s guise, Angela left me shattered. My appetites were stronger than my heart. A rock guitarist was supposed to be a sexual buccaneer, if not an outright pirate, reveling in flesh taken captive and then thrown overboard with a laugh. I had relished the role in my fantasies but found I lacked the ferocity required. I could not resist temptation, but I could not revel in it, either. Betrayals have consequences, and I feared them. I hurled myself into sex, then felt remorse at my lack of loyalty. Twice, I had betrayed Laura without hesitation. Even if mad and dishonest, she deserved better. There was nothing to me, no rigor. I had no character.