by David Klass
He went down with a scream, holding his knee. I couldn’t tell for sure if anything was broken, but from the way he was rolling around and yelling, Jack Hutchings would be limping down the hallways for quite a while.
Antonio bent down and picked up his books, and then he slowly walked around Jack as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. The crowd that was blocking his way seemed, miraculously, to divide to either side so that a path out opened up. Antonio walked away through that path, showing no fear at all, looking neither to the right nor to the left, nor down at Jack Hutchings, who was writhing on the floor, cradling his damaged knee with both hands and making high-pitched gasping noises of pure pain.
Watching Antonio walk calmly away, his eyes straight ahead, his head held high, I couldn’t help being impressed by his coolness. He was one tough customer, this Phenom.
I intercepted him about thirty yards down the hall. “Hey,” I said, “that was pretty intense. It’s Antonio, right? What did you do to him, Antonio?”
He barely gave me a glance. Kept walking.
“Was that karate? Kung fu? I’m Joe Brickman, by the way. Welcome to Lawndale High. Some of us are glad you’re here.” I held out my hand for a shake.
He ignored my hand. Kept walking.
“Whatever it was that you did to him, it wasn’t that smart,” I told him. “You just got here, right? You don’t need to make enemies like that. He’s a water rat.”
Antonio slowed. “A water what?” Kris was right—he spoke very good English, with just a trace of an accent.
“He’s not from Lawndale,” I told Antonio. “He’s bused in from Bankside. That’s a town right on the banks of the Hudson River. A real tough place.”
Antonio had stopped walking. “Tough how?”
“Every way. Lots of people out of work. There are gangs. And then there are all these extended family alliances that are even worse than gangs, because if you mess with the wrong guy from the wrong family, you might end up at the bottom of the river. Like I said, it’s a tough town. They don’t even have their own school. So the hundred or so kids from Bankside are bused in here, and they stick together real tight. We call them the water rats. You don’t want to get on their bad side.”
Antonio shrugged. The Phenom didn’t spook easily.
“Even if you’re a good fighter, you can’t fight a hundred people,” I pointed out. “But what I’m trying to tell you is that you don’t have to fight them. Just show a little respect. If they ask you to say something in Brazilian, then smile and say something in Brazilian. You’re new and different, so they’re just establishing their home turf. Go with it. It’s not such a big deal.”
Antonio Silva looked at me like I was a fool. “There’s no such language as Brazilian,” he finally said. “We speak Portuguese.”
“Fine. Then say something in Portuguese,” I told him. “He wouldn’t know if you made the whole language up. The point is to show a little respect.”
The bright blue eyes fixed on me. “Why do you care so much?”
“I just want you to stay in one piece so that you can play on our soccer team,” I told him.
His lips parted, and I thought he was going to give me a friendly smile, but instead he laughed right in my face, and started down the stairs. That wasn’t exactly the response I had been hoping for, but I don’t give up easily. Stubbornness is one of my core qualities. I followed him down, and caught up to him as he left the West Annex and headed for the main building.
“Hey,” I said. “Wait up a minute. That was no joke. I was serious about you joining our soccer team. I hear you play pretty well. I think we could use you.”
This time Antonio didn’t stop or slow down, or even look at me. “But why could I use you?” he asked.
“We have a real good bunch of guys,” I told him. “I’m the captain. Why don’t you at least come out and kick the ball around with us? We’re practicing this afternoon.”
“No,” he said.
We walked through the big double doors into the main building. The bell rang. We had one minute to get to our homerooms. Antonio Silva effortlessly speeded up. He didn’t appear to be walking all that fast, but I found myself jogging just to keep up. Something told me that on a soccer field, winging toward a goal, the Phenom would be hard to catch. “Why not?” I asked him. “I hear you’re a strong player. We have a team. I’m asking you in a friendly way to join us. Why not at least give it a try?”
Antonio Silva looked at me, and the quality flashed in his face, and maybe there was just a bit of arrogance there after all. “Because you don’t play soccer,” he said.
His answer amazed me. Maybe we weren’t very good, but no one had ever accused us of not playing the game at all. “What do you mean we don’t play soccer?”
“I have seen American high school players,” Antonio Silva said. “It made me sick. Here, in my stomach. It is not soccer. It is a kind of …” His hands circled in the air for a moment as if he was trying to reel in a lost word. “Garbage,” he finally said. “It is a kind of garbage. But thank you for asking. Goodbye.”
He headed away. “You’re welcome,” I called after him. And then I lost my temper. “I said you’re welcome. You arrogant, stupid jerk. You sure know how to make friends.”
“I don’t want friends,” the Phenom called back, and then he turned into a homeroom class and the door closed behind him.
3
The least-fun job at a car wash is the rag work. That’s what I call the hand-drying process. Most of the water from the wash is sucked off in the vacuum hose or wiped clear by the three giant dry scrubs. But when someone pays good money to get their car cleaned, they also expect it to come back to them totally dry. And there isn’t an automated drying system in the entire world that can get every last drop of water out of every little nook and cranny in an automobile. Under the fender. Inside the hood ornament. On the rims of the lights. Not to mention the grille slats. So the only way to do it is with a human crew, armed with rags.
At Brickman Car Wash we use three-man crews. The guys on the crews have been constantly changing ever since I can remember. It’s hard, low-paying work, and people quit without even bothering to notify the boss, who happens to be my father. Rag men wander away on lunch breaks and never come back. Some stay for a week, some for a month, but they all eventually leave. The only one who has been doing the rag work for years is me.
I don’t mean to complain too much. My dad pays me what he pays the other workers, so it’s a good after-school and weekend job. And it keeps my arms in great shape. During wrestling season, when I lock up with opponents from other schools, I can tell how surprised they always are at my upper-body strength. They’re probably thinking, “Wow, he must’ve pumped thousands of pounds of iron.” They don’t know that I’ve actually wiped the water and suds from thousands of Fords and Chevrolets and Toyotas.
The Saturday after the arrival of the Phenom, we had a big soccer game in the afternoon, against one of our archrivals, Carson High. Normally I would rest in the morning before a big game, but weekends are our busiest time and two of our rag men didn’t show up for work that morning, so Dad pressed me into service for the first three-hour shift, from nine to noon. I brought along Ed “the Mouse” McBean, my best friend and the starting right wing on our soccer team.
Ed the Mouse is not a good rag man. In fact, he has the unique ability to wipe a clean, dry white rag over a car’s hood, back and forth, for five minutes, and when he finally steps away, the car hood is still noticeably wet. I don’t mean to pick on my best buddy, but the Mouse is also not a highly gifted right wing. When he gets what should be a breakaway chance, he rarely takes it down the sideline and chips it into the center, or busts past the central defenders for a brilliant solo scoring effort. Instead, he invariably gets his feet tangled up, and if there are no defenders to stop him, he’s perfectly capable of tackling himself in the open field.
If you’ve never seen a soccer player tackle himself
when he’s all alone with the ball in the middle of a soccer field, take it from me, it is not a pretty sight. And if you’re wondering why Ed is our starting right winger, you have to remember that our team has never climbed above five hundred in the four years I’ve been at Lawndale High. And our biggest problem has always been our offense.
Ed’s a small guy with a pointy nose and a voice that gets a bit squeaky and high-pitched when he becomes excited. But the original inspiration for his nickname had nothing to do with his appearance or his voice. He was named after the mouse that moves the cursor on the computers he has devoted himself to since about second grade. It’s strange that we’re such good friends—I barely spend any time on-line at all. Sometimes I think that if Ed could crawl into his computer screen and merge with his hard drive, he would have done so years ago.
You may be wondering why he’s my best buddy. Well, the Mouse is not just very smart but also funny. He does perfect imitations of all our teammates and our coach, right down to their voices and facial expressions. And no one could be more loyal than the Mouse. If you call him up the day of a game and say, “I have to work the morning rag shift and I need company,” Ed will come and dry with you, no questions asked.
So there Ed the Mouse and I were, with a third rag man named Fong who spoke almost no English, working a three-man shift on a Saturday morning at Brickman Car Wash. There were two other rag crews working, so every third car that came out of the rinse machines was our responsibility. Things slowed down a little bit, and Ed went inside for a Coke. When he came back he said, “Your dad’s got a hot one on the line.”
“New?”
“I never saw her before. You should go take a look at her. She’s a real babe.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I’ll take your word for it.”
Dad was tending the register that Saturday morning, and presumably flirting with every attractive female customer. He had popped the Beach Boys CD in and cranked the music up pretty high. “Surfing Safari” was blaring from the twin outside loudspeakers.
I didn’t need to see Dad in action. I could picture him at the register, in his short-sleeve Hawaiian shirt open low to show his hairy chest, with his big smile flashing, and the huge biceps and triceps muscles on his hairy arms coiling and flexing as he worked the register and counted change.
The Mouse thinks it’s very cool and funny that my father is such a pickup artist. I guess I miss the joke. My mom and dad divorced when I was five, and she ended up moving back to France, which is where she was originally from. She didn’t fight my father for custody of me. She just let him have me, and she got the hell out of New Jersey. She visited me twice when I was still young and she was still, I guess, feeling guilty. And up until I was about ten an expensive present would arrive from her, every year, on my birthday. Then the presents stopped. For all I know, she could be in Shanghai now, or Tahiti, or on the moon.
For all I know, she could be dead.
The door to the car wash office opened and Dad came out with a very pretty blond woman in her twenties. She looked familiar to me, although I couldn’t place her. She was wearing a tan miniskirt and showing a lot of leg. Several of the rag men stopped drying and gave her long looks as Dad helped her into her car, which I had just finished drying. “Clean as a whistle,” he said, thumping the hood. “And dry as a bone. You got the best service at Brickman. I got my own son working on your car. Joe, this is Dianne.”
“Hi, Joe,” Dianne said, and she gave me a little smile. There was something peculiar about that smile. It seemed to come from only one side of her mouth. Right away I knew who she was—a Hutchings, from Bankside. Dianne Hutchings. Oldest sister of all the big Hutchings brothers.
“Hi,” I muttered back. I turned away to work on another car, but I could still hear their conversation.
“He looks like you,” she told my father. “Except he’s a little thinner.”
“And he’s got a little more hair on his head,” Dad said with a laugh. “Actually, a lot more. So, you want to meet at the theater, or do you want me to pick you up?”
“Let’s meet there,” she said.
“Eight o’clock sharp,” Dad suggested.
“Ten of. I want good seats. See you there.”
She drove away. Dad looked around at the rag men. “Hey, what are you all gawking at? Haven’t you ever seen a pair of legs before? Get back to work.” You could tell by the tone of his voice that he was pleased to be the center of attention. “I’m not just the owner of this car wash,” he was really saying, “I’m also the one who gets all the pretty girls!” And he sauntered back into the air-conditioned car wash office.
“Wow, that was a lot of blonde,” the Mouse said. “Your dad is really something.”
“Yeah,” I muttered. “I guess.”
“Maybe you could get him to teach you some of his techniques. And then you could show them to me.”
“Keep drying, Ed. Come on, Fong. We’re falling behind.” We dried for about ten minutes in silence. I wondered what a young beauty like Dianne Hutchings saw in my father. Okay, so he was good-looking and youthful for a middle-aged man. And he owned his own business. And he was funny and outgoing. Couldn’t she tell that his jokes had been recycled dozens of times on dozens of dates with dozens of women he cared as little about as he cared about her? Sometimes he would bring them home after a date, and they would disappear into his bedroom and the door would close behind them, and sometimes he would see them again for a week or two, but two weeks was his limit. Couldn’t she tell?
We finished off a Jeep, and a rusty old station wagon, and we were just hitting a good rhythm when the next car came out into the sunlight, and at the same moment its owner stepped out of the office. The car was a classic Mustang convertible, powder blue, in terrific shape. Its owner was the Phenom. He stood there, like a movie star, wearing black pants and a purple polo shirt and reflecting sunglasses that hid his bright blue eyes.
“Hey, isn’t that the Brazilian guy you tried to get onto our soccer team?” Ed asked me.
“That’s him,” I responded. “He’s a real jerk.”
“The jerk has a nice set of wheels,” Ed observed.
“You dry them. I’m gonna go tell him he’s a jerk.”
“Do you really think there’s anything to be gained by that?” Ed asked me.
“No,” I said. “But I’m not trying to gain anything.”
Tossing down my drying rag, I headed for the Phenom. His long blond hair had been blow-dried, and he ran one hand through it and stood there in the doorway like he was posing for a magazine ad or something. “You might want to close the door,” I told him. “You’re letting the cool air out.”
He looked at me. I couldn’t see his eyes through those reflecting glasses, but I was pretty sure from his reaction that he didn’t recognize me. When I dry cars, I dress about as far down as I can go. I had a bandanna around my head, my jeans were more holes than denim, and the T-shirt I was wearing was so stained and ragged we would have thrown it in the bin if it had been a drying rag. “What?” he asked.
“Close the door, idiot,” I said, enunciating clearly. And before he could react, I grabbed the door and pulled it closed.
He must have been surprised that a rag man in a car wash would talk to him this way. “What did you say to me?”
“Close the door, idiot,” I repeated. “You don’t recognize me, do you? I’m the captain of the soccer team that doesn’t play soccer. You might be able to see better if you took off those ridiculous glasses.”
The Phenom took off his reflecting sunglasses and studied me with his cool blue eyes. He really could have been a male model. “Joseph, right?” he said.
“My friends call me Joe. So you can call me Joseph.”
“You’re angry with me because I didn’t want to play on your team?”
“I just got to thinking about if I was visiting Brazil, and some guy came up to me and in a friendly way asked me to join the local basketball team. A
nd maybe that team wasn’t so good. Still, I’d probably go check it out. And I sure wouldn’t be rude to him.”
“Our basketball teams in Brazil are good,” the Phenom said.
“That’s not my point.”
“What is your point?”
“That you acted like a jerk,” I said, looking right at him.
The Phenom shrugged. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“I don’t want to know anything about you,” I told him.
“But I’ll tell you something about myself. I didn’t get to be the captain of our soccer team ’cause everyone likes me. I was Second Team All League last year.”
“I don’t know what ‘Second Team All League’ means,” the Phenom responded.
“It’s an honor,” I told him, “and it’s nearly impossible to get that kind of recognition when your team isn’t so good.” I probably should have walked away at that point, but I found myself speaking more quickly, and my voice got a little louder. “I’ve been playing soccer since I was six, and I fell in love with the game,” I told him. “It didn’t come that easily to me—my father was a football player when he was young, so I pretty much had to teach myself soccer. I may not have the best skills, but let me tell you something: I play good, hard defense. I’m not just the captain of our team, I’m the sweeper—the last guy back. I do what I need to protect my goal. You know what I mean?”
The Phenom replied softly, with a flat voice, but it was clear that on some level he was mocking me. “You think you’re a good soccer player, Joseph.”
“I think I am a soccer player,” I told him. “A good, tough defender. I do what’s necessary to stop the ball. Nobody gets by me without paying a price. Our team doesn’t score many goals, but we also don’t give up very many. I know you think you’re hot stuff, and I haven’t seen you play, but I don’t think you’d get by me either.”
