My eyes were wide open; I was speechless. “Yes! How the hell did you pull it off? I had no idea!”
“Good, that’s the point of a surprise,” he replied, very pleased with himself.
The answers Charlie gave me to my questions were even more surprising than my party. “From the beginning. No one told me,” he said, then paused and continued, “Well I suspected you were young when you came in the bar that first day asking for a job, but I didn’t know for sure until a few weeks later, after I ran a background check.”
“You ran a background check? If you’ve known all this time, why did you let me keep working here?”
“That’s easy, you’re the best cocktail waitress I’ve ever hired. I made up my mind to keep you when I saw how much the customers liked you, and besides, you’ve never broken my rules,” he retorted as he gave me a quick pat on the back.
“But couldn’t you’ve gotten into trouble for having an underage waitress?”
“Why do you think I always paid you in cash? No proof you work here,” he laughed, and shook his head in what seemed like amazement. “Damn Jackie… Fifteen months working in this joint, and you’re still as naïve as you were on day one. Haven’t you ever noticed that we don’t get any cops around here?” He started to walk away then hesitated and said, “Oh, and by the way, you’re done working for the night – go hang out with your friends, get them to buy lots of drinks.” He winked, grabbed another piece of cake, and made his way across the room to greet a group of people who had just come in.
Michael and Jeff were busy moving tables around to accommodate everyone, making introductions, and buying the first round of drinks. “It’s perfect, thank you,” I said putting my arm around Michael as I pulled up a bar stool to join them, “Charlie gave me the rest of the night off provided you guys buy a bunch of drinks,” I announced looking around the table.
“I’ll get the next round,” Bernie called out. It was a wonderful evening.
~~~~~~~~
I was fucked up when we left The Canteen, but not a falling down, throwing up, sloppy kind of fucked up; it was the euphoric, happy, body-tingling kind, the kind that allowed me to let go of any inhibitions, but not cross over into making a fool of myself. As we walked by the Mustang parked on the street, Michael stopped, and pulled a blanket out of the trunk. “What’s that for,” I asked, “don’t I keep you warm enough at night?”
“Hmph, yeah you do. I just thought we might head on over to the park and find a secluded place…” he replied with the sexiest look on his face, his eyes melting me on the spot. In my world people didn’t show affection, let alone make love in public! Being with Michael for a year now, some of my shyness had dissolved – I wouldn’t have thought twice about sitting in the park making out with him or grabbing his butt in front of his mother, but the blanket suggested a whole new level of exposure, so to speak.
“What if a cop finds us?” I asked. I was tempted, excited by the thought even, but still scared of the possible consequences.
He shrugged, “Then we get arrested for indecent exposure – but that won’t happen, come on.” He grabbed my hand, our laughs echoing through the night air as we half ran towards a secluded section of Lincoln Park, not far from the zoo.
Finding exactly the right place under the trees, well blocked from the path by a number of bushes, Michael spread out the blanket, and pulled me down on top of him as he lifted my sweater up over my breasts, kissing, and playfully biting my nipples. “I love the fact that you don’t wear a bra,” he sighed smiling up at me, “God bless feminists!”
“Ha,” I snorted back, “feminists and me being so small that I don’t need one.”
“Small – no, you’re perfect, at least to me,” he murmured, rolling us over, propping himself up on his arms and flicking his hair out of his eyes.
We were both overcome with excitement, our breathing fast and deep. He was wearing the cowboy shirt I had given him for Christmas, and I pulled the snaps apart with one quick move. I heard the snapping of twigs under our weight and felt a cool breeze come off the lake… He lowered himself down on me. Leaves crinkled as we moved, his lips felt softer than usual, more powerful as he kissed my neck and ears… The park, and the mere chance of being discovered heightened all of my senses.
One of my hands was entwined in his hair, the other was making its way down his ribs, finally resting below his belt buckle, enjoying the swell of his cock through his jeans. His moans sounded deeper than usual, his touch more extraordinary. Both of us were on a razor’s edge, overcome with wanting, wiggling our jeans down – when a gust of wind brought the sound of voices heading in our direction. He pushed inside me, then fell still, putting his finger across my lips and whispering “Shhh, be still.”
We laid there, my heart pounding in my chest as the voices – one male, one female – came closer. I could feel his cock throbbing inside me with almost the same beat as my own heart; my head swirled with the anticipation of being discovered at any moment. My eyes were clamped closed, the excitement causing my toes and fingertips to prickle. As the voices passed by on the path, Michael pulled himself back, thrusting several times deeply inside me. I gasped, my eyes opening to see his face, smiling.
The couple on the path had stopped. I could hear the woman ask, “What was that?”
After a momentary pause, the man answered, “nothing, it’s just the wind – let’s go home.”
When the strangers were out of ear shot, both of us laughed, exhaling, “Oh my God!” I exclaimed, “That was more of a head rush than a popper – adrenalin and sex - Holy Shit!”
He just laughed, “I don’t think it was our heads that rushed on that one!”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Homeward Bound
The next couple weeks flowed without any issues – I found myself enjoying the monotony of life instead of dreading it, each day giving way to the next without incident or me thinking about brain fragments stuck to the ceiling. Then one day at the beginning of July, the phone rang – it was Michael.
“My mother wants me to invite you to dinner tonight, babe,” he said. “She’s all excited about something – whatever it is, it must be good news. Can you come over?”
“Sure, tell her I’d love to come,” I said.
Michael’s mother, Shirley, was an absolute joy – she actually liked me, and seemed quite pleased that I was seeing her son. I liked her too. And since finding out what she lived through with his father, I had a newfound respect for her strength as a woman – we got along very well. She depended a lot on Michael to help her take care of the house and bills. Although she was a full time hairdresser at one of the local beauty shops, and then worked as a waitress three nights a week, she didn’t make much money so, she looked the other way about a lot of things, including Michael’s drug business. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but I knew she was doing the best she could. She had dropped out of high school when she got pregnant with Keith, then the other three kids followed in rapid succession. When the beatings started she did her best to shield the kids, until Michael’s father split from the family for good when he was 11 years old. In my opinion, she drank too much, but then, who the hell was I to judge her behavior? Look at all the drugs and booze I did, and I hadn’t been through anything compared to her, let alone have four kids to worry about. I could only imagine the bullshit I’d be feeling if Stephen and I had had a kid. Shirley didn’t take any crap from anyone nowadays; she pretty much told you whatever she was thinking, a trait I found rather irritating, and oddly comforting at the same time. It was also a trait, as Michael pointed out whenever we had a disagreement, which I shared with her.
My fondest memory of her so far happened after a family dinner back in February. She and Michael got into an argument about the water heater, and whether it could be repaired again or had to be replaced. Shirley had been drinking, Michael was stoned. Both of them were frustrated that the “fuckin’ water heater wasn’t heating.” She got fed up with
his ‘back talk, know-it-all attitude’, so turned to me, and without a hint of humor blurted out, “Jackie, would you please take my dear son back to your place and fuck some sense into him? I don’t want him back here until he’s totally pussy whipped and listening to reason.” I was in shock and I’m sure my mouth was hanging open, but Michael told me in reality, I was grinning and nodding in agreement.
Since then, whenever I played that scene over in my mind I tried to imagine my own mother saying something like that, and could not, not even under the wildest of circumstances. And here I was worried about both my parents recovering from seeing Michael kiss me at dinner when they visited, let alone telling me to take him home, and fuck some sense into him. Every time I thought about it, I smiled to myself – I hoped I’d have the chance to use that line myself with my own son someday, if I ever had one.
Shirley was so excited when she opened the door. “Oh sweetie, I’m so glad you could come – everyone’s in the kitchen. Come on, come on, I’m not sure I can wait much longer!” Her voice was bursting with joy.
“Well then just tell us for Christ’s sake,” Candy hissed at her mother while coming over to give me a quick hug.
Tom piped up, “We’re having lasagna, Jackie. Mom hasn’t made that for us since Keith was drafted.”
At the mention of Keith’s name, Shirley stopped, looked at her kids, and the three of them said almost in unison, “Keith?”
“Yes, yes, yes… you’re right… it’s Keith! I mean we all knew he was getting out of that miserable Army this summer, but now I’ve got a date!” She was jumping up and down in excitement. “He’ll be home on July 19th!”
I watched as they all hugged, Candy and Shirley had tears rolling down their cheeks – wow, this is a real family, sharing their joy, I thought, my own heart filling with happiness for them as I felt Michael pull me into the fray. My mind raced round and round. Shirley and the others squeezed me, and I responded in kind, feeling warm and fuzzy that she wanted me to hear the news too. Then out of the corner of my eye I spotted my pixie staring at me – she was perched on the window ledge in the kitchen with a puzzled look on her face, happy but detached. What the hell is she doing here? I thought as I observed the scene through her eyes. Shit! It hit me like a brick, July 19th is Stephen’s birthday – why the hell couldn’t Keith be coming home on the 18th or 20th… Goddamn it I hate coincidences!
~~~~~~~~
The homecoming preparations were fantastic! The whole neighborhood got in on it. I spent much of the preceding week helping Shirley and Candy clean, decorate and put up signs – WELCOME HOME KEITH… WE LOVE YOU KEITH… WELCOME BACK – in the windows of all the homes on the block. We hung multicolored streamers around all the doorways in the house, and I made a huge collage type poster to go over the fireplace using snapshots of the whole Nowak family over the years that everyone signed. Shirley cooked and then cooked some more – all of Keith’s favorite foods, especially lasagna; between her and the other women on the block, I didn’t think I’d seen this much lasagna at one time in my life, and these people weren’t even Italian. The country as a whole may have been spitting on returning Vietnam vets or at best, giving them a mediocre homecoming reception, but at least on this block of this neighborhood, July 19th might as well have been July 4th.
In the late morning of the 19th, the family headed to O’Hare to greet the flight Keith would arrive on. Michael wanted me to come along, but I refused. I was not part of this family, no matter how much his mother insisted that I was. I was an outsider, at least in my own mind, still married to someone else who was celebrating his birthday somewhere in New York with some guy. I needed time to slay my own demons today before being introduced to Keith. I stayed home, slept late, sang Happy Birthday to Stephen silently in my head while I took a shower, then worked hard to push all thoughts of him away, clearing the daily shit out of my mind. I would join the party later with the rest of the neighbors.
Besides, I wasn’t sure how I felt about Keith. I had heard all kinds of stories about him over the last year from Michael, and the rest of his family, and Rick, Jeff and various other neighborhood friends. Some tales painted him as a warm, friendly, caring, happy-go-lucky guy who took care of his family, and went out of his way to help people. Others, like the one I heard about how Michael got his scar, gave me a completely opposite impression, while still others led me to believe he was a street hustler always ready for a fight, and always looking for ways to make a quick buck. Keith had definitely been the leader of their crew before he was drafted. He and Rick were the harder-core Harley guys, and Keith was the one who started them dealing, just to help make ends meet. It was one of his drug deals gone bad that got Michael stabbed, almost killed, when he was 18, leaving the scar on his left side.
One night, sometime before Christmas as we laid in bed talking, me tracing my fingertip over and over the shape of the scar, Michael told me how it happened. They had been pushing for about a year at that point – nothing big, just nickel or dime bags here and there, maybe a few Quaaludes, to safe Northside hippies. Keith wanted to expand, make some bigger bucks, add to the product line with a wider variety of pills, and a little coke. Michael said he wasn’t against the expansion, but the coke they got from their regular source for pills and grass, had been stepped on so much that it was pure shit and not worth the breath it took to snort. So Keith connected with a black gang he had crossed paths with sometime before. Four guys from the neighborhood that I had never met – a couple of which were in jail at the moment – plus Keith and Michael met the other crew in an alley not far from the Cabrini Green housing projects to make the buy. Everyone was nervous. One of the guys, Clay, who had spent time in juvy, brought a gun along, just in case. As they feared, the whole thing went sour when the black gang jumped them, trying to steal the cash. Everything went down in a mere heartbeat: one second, Michael said, he was throwing a punch at the thug in front of him, the next second, another one jumped him from behind grabbing him around the neck. He was struggling to get free when the first asshole lunged forward with a knife. Michael twisted to the side, enough to keep the wound from being worse than it was – it could have been fatal – then he managed to get one of his legs back tripping the scumbag that was holding him. Michael escaped when they both fell to the ground, but collapsed a few feet away, blood everywhere. The thugs had pulled a gun by this point, but so had Clay. Michael said the black guys shot first, and Clay shot back, giving Keith time to pull Michael out of the way behind a dumpster. Luckily for the two of them, the thugs split when they heard the police sirens. Cabrini Green was a crime riddled ghetto so the cops were never far off. Clay and the others split too. Michael was transported to the hospital where they operated, and stitched him up while Keith gave the cops a line of bullshit about being mugged. Michael said Keith saved his life. Although I didn’t express my opinion to him at the time, to me it sounded more like Keith had almost gotten him killed.
We had talked about it many times since I first heard that story: he assured me he wanted nothing to do with ever being in that kind of situation again, that his drug sources now were people he had known forever, that I would never have to worry about anything like that touching me. He said it scared the shit out of Keith too. What Michael didn’t seem to understand was that my real fear, what caused my gut to quiver, was that this kind of violence would someday touch him again? I knew Michael – I believed him, but I didn’t know Keith. Somewhere in a corner of my brain I worried that Keith would drag Michael deeper into dealing – after all there was that whole scheme I had heard about for smuggling stuff in from Vietnam. I hoped it wouldn’t go anywhere. I didn’t know if Michael and I had a future together, but I sure didn’t want to lose him – not to dealing, not to Keith.
~~~~~~~~
The party was well under way when I arrived. “Jackie – there you are. Where have you been?” Michael called out as he saw me walking down the street.
Someone had put saw horses at both ends of th
e block to make sure there was no through traffic today. “Wow! That’s cool; I didn’t know the city would let you block the street like this?” I responded as he picked me up off my feet, twirled me around and gave me a kiss.
“Ha! Well they didn’t, but what they don’t know won’t hurt them. It’s just a good old fashioned block party, beautiful, and no one on this block is gonna complain.” He was stoned, his face filled with happiness – I could see I had some catching up to do.
The next thing I knew, I was being lifted off my feet and hugged again, this time by someone who looked a lot like Michael, but wasn’t. “This must be the wonderful Jackie I’ve been hearin’ ’bout for the last year. You’re right bro, she is beautiful – you lucky dog you!” Keith said slapping Michael on the back. With that he was off to join some people who were calling him from across the street – glancing over his shoulder as he walked, he yelled out, cocking his head the same way Michael did, “Come on Mike, bring your old lady, I want ya by my side.”
We trailed after him, but I was uneasy, there was something in his voice, and my instincts were flaring, I’m not sure about this guy – shit! Michael had his arm draped around me as usual; I must have tensed some because Michael cocked his head and asked, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, sure I am, I…” started to reply, but he cut me off.
Love's Illusions: A Novel Page 19
