The Hour of the Innocents Page 29

  She shook her head. “You can’t do it. You never could sound like us, even when you tried. How’s college going?”

  She couldn’t help herself. Her grin broke open. Revealing the gap in her teeth again. She touched her mouth. “I look like I been in a fight down at the Legion, ain’t?”

  “It suits you. You were always too perfect.”

  “Go on with you. How many of these you want?”

  “How many you got?”

  She was right. I loved pierogies. I ate five. Angela nibbled at one while chain-smoking cigarettes.

  “You have to eat more than that,” I said.

  The remark was too intimate. She shriveled.

  “I’m trying. I got some problems.”

  “You’re okay, though?”

  She made a muscle under her red cotton sleeve. There was nothing to see. “Yeah, I’m Superwoman.”

  I got up to refill my water glass from the tap.

  Angela twisted, wrenchingly hard, in her chair. “Oh, Jesus, I forgot to offer you a beer.” She looked down. “I forget things.”

  “I didn’t want a beer. I would’ve asked.”

  “All we got’s Yuengling, anyway. Chinese beer. Matty ain’t a big drinker.”

  “I’ll pass. But could we sit somewhere else? I don’t have enough padding for this chair.”

  She smirked. “You always had a bony ass. Come on in the living room, I’ll clean this up later.”

  We sat. And talked. When she went to the bathroom, I checked my watch.

  Plopping back down in an old plush chair, she lit another cigarette and said, “I did some stupid things, didn’t I?”

  “We all did stupid things.”

  “But I did the stupidest ones. I’d blame the drugs, but you wouldn’t believe me. You know what a bitch I was. Better than anybody.”

  I didn’t want to talk about Laura, to relive that. I wasn’t sure what might come out of my mouth, my heart.

  “Matty told me you two are getting married.”

  She curled up her mouth, the old Angela. “I guess I got to get the divorce through first. Father Kalashko hit the ceiling when I told him. He don’t really mind me living with Matty so much, but he doesn’t like me divorcing Frankie.” She looked down past the loose fabric of her jeans to the ancient carpet. “It should’ve been me and Matty all along, you know. I screwed it up. I guess I never told you that.”

  “As long as it’s straightened out now.”

  “Matty was always the only one.” She looked up, alarmed. “I didn’t mean that against you.”

  “We all make some detours. I was a detour.”

  “Yeah, well, the truth is you were a pretty nice detour. I never told you that, I didn’t want it to go to your head. I was such a bitch. I guess that’s our secret now. That I liked you a lot.”

  “I liked you.”

  “You still like me, right? As a friend, I mean? Forgive and forget?”

  The phone rang. Angela got up, not without effort. “That’s probably Matty. Making sure you didn’t kill me yet.”

  But it didn’t seem to be Matty. As soon as the caller had been identified, Angela muffled her voice. I couldn’t make out a single distinct word, but it didn’t sound like a happy call. The exchange dragged on. I looked at my watch again.

  She put the receiver down hard but showed a wisp of her old jauntiness as she came back into the room. She always found adversity simpler than happiness.

  “Fucking Frankie,” she said, tearing open a fresh pack of cigarettes.

  “That about the divorce?”

  “Oh, he don’t give two shits about that. He got what he wanted. He wants to talk to Matty now. He says it’s urgent. I wish the hell he’d leave us alone for once. I just need him to sign the goddamn papers and get lost. You want some coffee?”

  “No. Thanks.”

  “Me neither. I was just offering.” She sat back, calming down. Cigarette smoke gauzed the air between us. “We had some times, though. Didn’t we?”

  “Plenty more good times to come.”

  She whisked the future away. As if shooing a housefly. “For you there will be. I could always tell. You’re the kind of person things always work out for. In the end. But look at me, look at what a mess I made of things. Frankie always said I could fuck up a wet dream.”

  She played back a scene or two in her head, then repeated, “We had some really good times, though. Ain’t?” Her expression grew wistful, old. “Sometimes I thought it was all going to turn out different, can you believe that? That everything was going to work out. But I knew all along that Frankie would screw it up. I told you that. Remember?”

  “I remember. You were right.”

  “I only married him because I wanted to hurt them both. I always knew that Frankie was a shit.”

  “Do you remember when you sat down by me last year, at the party at Joey’s old place? You were a little stoned and you wanted to tell me about Matty. I can still remember exactly what you wore.”

  “I’m just glad I had something on. I was already nuts.”

  “You were the belle of the ball.”

  She snorted. “Yeah, that was me. Miss America.”

  We sounded like two geezers reminiscing from wheelchair to wheelchair in a nursing home. I had just turned twenty.

  * * *

  Matty was a little late. I blamed it on the rain, but I was wrong. He had stopped in Frackville to bring home a pizza for dinner.

  I was ready to leave. I wished them well, but I wasn’t up to any more north-of-the-mountain domesticity. And I didn’t feel like eating pizza on top of pierogies.

  Frankie saved me. You could say.

  Before Matty could put down the pizza, Angela told him, “Frankie called. He was all screwed up, he’s got some big problem. He says only you can help him.” Her mouth tightened. “I told him you don’t owe him nothing.”

  “I do, though,” Matty said. “And we need him to sign the papers.”

  “You don’t need to do anything for Frankie. For Christ’s sake. I just told you he called so you don’t think I’m keeping secrets.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Not much. Just that it’s urgent. I thought he was going to start bawling. He wants you to go over the house.”

  I spoke up. “If we left now, you could stop by on the way to Pottsville. Frankie’s got a bunch of my albums I want to get back, anyway. It’d help me out.” I looked at Angela. “I need to get home. College stuff.”

  I no longer concerned her.

  “Don’t you let Frankie talk you into nothing,” she told Matty. “You promise me that.”

  “I can handle Frankie.”

  “Well, it took you a while the last time. Didn’t it? And he’s such a sneak.”

  She gave me a hide-the-missing-tooth smile, but it was perfunctory. “Come back again, okay? Next time, I’ll make sure I got sour cream and I’ll boil the pierogies.”

  A wraith in human clothing, she gave me a quick hug but withheld her fallen-angel kiss. Matty and I trotted through the rain to the car.

  He was silent at first.

  “Angela’s seems pretty good,” I said. I was a dishonest man.

  “It takes time,” he told me. “I appreciate you coming up to see her. It was important to her.” His voice was hollow, though. I assumed he was thinking about Frankie.

  We turned up the highway cut toward Frackville’s rear end. Matty slowed the car but kept on driving.

  “I need to tell you something,” he said. “And I want you to listen to me.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t care if you never want to talk to me again. But you need to listen now.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “You’re not good enough, Will. You don’t have it. You’ll never be good enough.” He took a breath that was audible over the engine noise and the rain on the roof and windshield. “You’re not a musician. You’re good enough to fool some people, the ones who don’t know. But you’ll
never be happy, if you keep doing this. Because you’d know. It’s a gift, and you don’t have it. You could practice for a hundred years and it wouldn’t help.”

  “Thanks, man.”

  “I’m sorry. But it’s the truth. It would’ve been wrong not to tell you.” He nodded to the steering wheel, not to me. “I’ll tell you something. From the first time I saw you, you reminded me of this lieutenant we had. The good one, the one who got shot. I never knew anybody who tried so hard. All the time, he just wouldn’t quit. Everybody else would give up, but he wouldn’t. And it didn’t make any difference in the end, because he couldn’t make things be the way he wanted them to be, no matter how hard he tried.”

  “But you said he was a good lieutenant.”

  “I’m bad at explaining things. I guess that was a dumb example. Just think about what I said. You had your fun, Will. It won’t get any better than it was. Don’t waste any more of your life. Think about it. All right?”

  “Yeah. I’ll think about it, man.” I wanted to weep. But not in front of Matty.

  “I mean, you can write songs okay,” he went on. “But that’s not what you really want. You want to play, to be part of the music. And you’d never be good enough to be happy.”

  “You already said that.”

  “I’ll shut up. I’m sorry.”

  I think he really was sorry. I believe that if he could have cut out his gift, or part of it, he would have passed it to me in that car.

  At the red light, we turned toward Frankie’s place, the house he had shared with Angela. I felt that I had nothing left in the world.

  * * *

  Frankie seemed startled to see me.

  “So what’s going on?” Matty asked.

  Frankie hushed him. “There’s a girl here, she’s in the can. She doesn’t need to hear none of this.” He looked at me. “Him, either. It’s personal.”

  I had never seen him so jumpy. Like he had the meth itch.

  “I don’t give a shit about your problems,” I told him. “I just came to get my albums back.”

  A kid with carrot-colored hair emerged from the powder room down the hall.

  “Mary Anne, go get your stuff together,” Frankie said. “You’re leaving.”

  The girl turned around again. As if she couldn’t care less.

  “The records are all in boxes,” Frankie told me. “In there. Take whatever you want.”

  “I just want my own stuff. And the demo tape. You didn’t pay for it. I want it.”

  “Send the bill to Danny. He accidentally erased it.”

  In that moment, I think I truly could have murdered him. Perhaps I should have. As for the tape, it had been the last memento of all we had done together, of how close we had come.

  I went into the front room. The last time I had been in the house, a toppled Christmas tree had covered the floor.

  Frankie kept his voice down. But I had good ears. And a grown man’s voice gets louder when he cries like a scared kid.

  “You got to help me,” he begged Matty. “There’s no one else can help me. They’re going to fucking kill me, man. I mean, for real.”

  “Who?”

  “Those bikers, man. Joyce’s old man and his pals. They split from the Warlocks, they’re running their own scene. I been fronting for them. There was some trouble, some mistakes.”

  “You owe them money?”

  “No, man. I mean, not much. They just got the wrong idea about some stuff. They want all their shit back. I mean, I got it, it’s all in a suitcase. With as much money as I can give them right now. They told me we’ll be cool if I hand it back. But I don’t believe them. Even if they don’t kill me, they’ll beat the shit out of me. And I just had my teeth done.”

  “So what am I supposed to do?” Matty asked. His voice was emotionless, noncommittal.

  “They’re here. I mean, down in Schuylkill Haven. In the Country Squire Motel, the one by the campus. They got a room. Number eleven. I’m supposed to take the suitcase down and give it back. But I’m afraid, man.”

  “And you want me to take it down?”

  “Yeah. Please. They won’t fuck with you, man. It’s me they’re after. Once they have the shit and the money, they’ll leave me alone. I’m getting out of here, anyway. Please. Just take it down and hand it to them, that’s all you’d have to do. You don’t have to go in the room or nothing. Please, Matty. You’re the only person I can count on, the only one I can turn to.”

  I walked in on them. “Don’t do it,” I said. “Fuck him. He’s full of shit.”

  “Just stay out of this,” Matty told me.

  “Yeah, you stay the fuck out of this,” Frankie said.

  “Just don’t do it,” I said. I turned back to the boxes of albums. The LPs had been packed for storage, with mine intermingled.

  After a stretch of silence bothered only by the sounds from the girl in back, Frankie said, “You took my wife. Just help me this one time and we’ll be even. They won’t mess with you, they know better.”

  “All right,” Matty told him.

  * * *

  “Just drop her off in Haven, on the way to the motel,” Frankie said. “Dump her at the corner of Dock and Sixty-one, that’s close enough. She’s a little bitch.”

  “How old is she, twelve?” I asked.

  Frankie lunged for me. Matty caught him.

  “Go out and get in the car,” Matty ordered. He shifted his attention to the girl. “You get in the car, too.”

  “It’s raining,” she said. “I’ll get wet.”

  “Then stay here, if you want to,” Matty told her.

  She really did look like a kid, like somebody Buzzy Ritter would’ve plucked from a street corner in the old days.

  “Here, wear my jacket,” I told her.

  “Prince Fucking Valiant,” Frankie said.

  The girl and I ran through the rain. The car was unlocked. I put her in the backseat and got in up front, clutching my stack of albums.

  “I don’t remember seeing you around,” I told her.

  “I didn’t see you, neither. What do you care?”

  She just didn’t strike me as a Schuylkill Haven girl. She didn’t have that touch of a Dutchie accent the working-class kids had. And I didn’t think her father was a doctor.

  “You lived in Haven long?”

  “Long enough.”

  “Where? Which street?”

  “I ain’t telling you. You’re probably just another creep. Like that old guy, that Frankie.”

  “He hurt you or anything?”

  “I wouldn’t even let a creep like that touch me.”

  I couldn’t figure out their relationship, how or why she’d ended up at Frankie’s house. She seemed too young to be into drugs. But you never knew anymore.

  “How old are you?”

  “Old enough,” she said. “Are we going to get going soon? He didn’t even have stuff to eat in the house and I’m hungry.”

  Just then, Matty came down from Frankie’s porch. Carrying a green vinyl suitcase. He glanced around, just once, then jogged to the car and stowed the bag in the trunk.

  When he got in behind the steering wheel, I said, “This stinks.”

  “Frankie’s been getting himself into trouble since we were kids.” He shook his head. “I don’t like it, either. But I need him to sign the papers for Angela.”

  He started the car.

  “I’ll go with you,” I told him. “To the motel.”

  “No. You’d just be one more thing I had to worry about. But thanks, anyway.”

  “Can we go now?” the girl asked from the backseat.

  Matty gave me a brief look of utter disgust with the world. He put the Buick in gear.

  It was all rotten from the start. As we passed the new exit ramp they were finishing off 81, a state police cruiser pulled out and tailed us. No sooner were we trapped down in the chute of the Frackville grade than the cop turned on his bubble-gum machine.

  “Sonofabitch,” Mat
ty said. It was the first time I had ever heard him curse. “Sonofabitch, sonofabitch.”

  Down the grade, a second cop car pulled out to block both lanes.

  Matty didn’t do anything rash. He slowed and edged the right wheels off the road, nuzzling up toward the cruiser in front of us.

  For a second or two, I thought he might hit the gas and swing around the Statie’s back end. But he stopped the Buick and turned off the ignition.

  “Sonofabitch,” he said. One last time.

  His uncle wasn’t screwing around this time. He came up behind us with his gun drawn. A younger cop got out of the other car, the one blocking the road. He wore a plastic cover over his Smokey the Bear hat, but Matty’s uncle John strode up bareheaded.

  Emulating Uncle John, the young cop drew his own revolver. Keeping his distance, unsure.

  “Get out of the car,” Uncle John yelled. “Everybody. Now.”

  We got out of the car. He was surprised to see me.

  “You,” he told me. I noted that his nose had acquired more character. “Get around front there and put your hands flat on the hood.”

  I did as I was told. The rain hammered the metal, the roadway, the new leaves on the trees. I wished I hadn’t given the girl my jacket.

  “You piece of shit,” he said to Matty. “Open up the trunk.”

  Matty tossed the keys toward his uncle’s feet. “You open it. You already know what’s in it.”

  “Don’t be a smart-ass. That ain’t going to help you now.”

  Keeping his distance, with his revolver’s muzzle locked on Matty, he squatted to pick up the keys.

  “Don’t take your eyes off him,” Uncle John told the young cop. “He thinks he’s Cassius Clay, or Muhammad Ali, or whatever that nigger calls himself nowadays.”

  He opened the trunk. Theatrically. Then he whistled. It pierced the sound of the rain.

  “Officer Messner,” he called to the rookie, “you’re in for an education. We got a major drug haul here. And money, too. I’d say somebody’s going to prison for a very long time.”

  He shut the trunk and came around to where the girl stood, a half-dozen feet from Matty. She was drenched and crying.

  “I’ll bet you’re not part of all this. Are you, young lady?”

  She shook her head.

  “Where are you from, sweetheart? Would you tell me that?”