Bad Boy
Page 15
A.J. tried on six suits, including a charcoal-grey that made him look so tall and so dark, it startled him.
“I think it needs a little shaping,” the clerk said, and with a few pins he nipped in the waist of the jacket so that it followed the boy’s big frame perfectly.
“What do you think?” Decco asked when the clerk had courteously left them alone.
A.J. couldn’t take his eyes off the image of the man in the mirror. Mr. A. Brandiosa. “It’s … it’s really great,” he said. Then he felt a guilty pang.
“It’s too good, just for grad. I could rent a tux or something.”
Decco was leaning against a pillar, his arms folded over his chest. A.J. could just catch him, behind his own image, in the mirror’s reflection.
“I think you should go to this wedding, A.J.,” he said quietly. “It would be good for you. You don’t go out much anymore. I don’t see your friends around the house. Maybe it’s none of my business, but you seem to be working so hard at something. Too hard.”
Decco turned his head, shifted his gaze to another wall, another rack of suits. “Don’t get me wrong. It’s good to fix your sights on something and then run after it. But you can run so far and so long by yourself that the day comes when you realize you don’t know how to be with people anymore. You want somebody and you need somebody but you don’t even know what it’s supposed to be like.”
The heat took A.J. by surprise — a sudden welling in his throat and eyes. It was as unexpected as this store, this day.
He took off the suit carefully in the change room, trying not to pull out the tailor’s pins. He put on his own clothes slowly, giving himself time to settle. And he walked back out into the fluorescent light knowing that he would try to be better, try to be nicer to the woman who was sitting and waiting for his father.
The night of the wedding A.J. felt light and clearheaded. He was still shy walking in alone, but the suit helped a lot. The maid of honour gave him a kiss and a wink.
Then, “Holy mother! You rob a bank or what?”
A.J.’s head jerked up and all the muscles in his back and shoulders curled. Tully. The blond boy was wearing a periwinkle-blue suit jacket, probably the only one in Moose Jaw. The sleeves were pushed up to the elbow, and he had on his dark sunglasses, of course.
He lifted them to get a better look at A.J.’s suit. “Let me guess. You’ve got rich family you never told me about.”
A.J. stepped back, self-conscious. He tried to change the subject. “Speaking of family,” he said, nodding towards the bride and groom, “don’t tell me we’re related.”
“God, no. Unless you can be related through a babysitter. I used to give Georgette nervous breakdowns when I was five.”
A.J. grinned. He believed that somehow. Tully leaned against the wall.
“How’ve you been?” he asked.
“Fine,” A.J. said, but he couldn’t make it sound natural, couldn’t make it sound like the truth. For a moment there was only the music, country crossover, and the general noise of human beings. Then Tully turned and pushed up his sunglasses again.
“Come sit at our table,” he said. “Okay? Please?”
His eyes were naked. A.J. could read them perfectly. They were full of reassurance, full of the promise he’d made in Treejack’s basement. No. Never. Don’t worry.
After all this, A.J. thought, and he still won’t give up. After all this, and he still wants to be my friend.
But he only shrugged. “Sure, what the hell. I don’t have anywhere else to sit.” He followed the buoyant blue jacket to a table near the dance floor.
“You didn’t!” Summer screeched when she saw him. “You didn’t bring Attila the Hun here. The mad slasher, the depraved defense—”
A.J. took a deep breath and pulled up a chair right beside her.
“I know you love it, but try and control yourself, all right?” he said boldly. The half-dozen people at the table burst into laughter. Summer’s jaw dropped, but then she snapped it shut. Her cheeks were pink for a long time.
A.J. could feel the knots in his shoulders uncurling. So he wasn’t being nice. But neither was she. You could only say you were sorry for so long. He’d probably bruised her ego, but didn’t he have feelings, too? How come —
“Well, are you going to leave me sitting here all night?” Summer said suddenly. “Civilized people ask other civilized people to dance, you know.”
As A.J. stood up, Tully caught his eye and winked.
A.J. danced with Summer, and then again later, and then again even later, slow. She didn’t get too close, but close enough. He was afraid his sweaty hand would leave a mark on the waist of her dress. She leaned forward once, to whisper in his ear, and he was so surprised he almost stepped on her.
“That’s a nice suit,” Summer said.
It was, A.J. thought, the warmth easing through him. It was a nice suit, and a nice night. He wondered how his father had known.
A few minutes later, everything changed. As A.J. was walking back from the bar with a glass of beer in each hand, he heard a cry behind him.
“Hey, A.J.!”
Uncle Mike. A.J. cringed. He kept walking, pretending he hadn’t heard.
“You … A.J.!” the old man roared. People looked up. A.J. finally stopped, wishing he could crawl under a table. He managed a grudging smile as Uncle Mike wheezed up alongside him.
The old man hung on his arm, catching his breath.
“Geez … what’s with … you? You think you had the puck or something?”
Uncle Mike walloped him on the back, delighted with his own cleverness. A.J. had to lurch to keep the glasses from spilling.
“So, that team of yours is going to the finals this year?” Mike asked.
“Yeah, it looks like it. The season’s not over yet, though.”
Mike’s eyebrows gathered in disapproval. “You gotta do your part, you know. I don’t see your name in the paper much anymore.”
You mean I haven’t beat anybody up lately, the boy thought.
“Bad time to go losing your spunk,” Mike said ominously. “It’s those gol-darned pansy coaches — hold a kid back.”
A.J. shifted irritably.
Uncle Mike paused to light one of his foul cigars.
“I see your dad’s not here tonight,” he said, shaking out the match.
The back of A.J.’s neck prickled.
“No, he’s not,” he said stiffly.
“I hear he’s kinda busy these days. Got himself a new girl.” Mike’s mouth wrapped around the word. He made it sound unsavoury. “Don’t get me wrong, kid,” he said in a hushed voice. “It’s nothing personal. Hell, every man’s entitled to his own life. But if you ask me …”
Nothing personal. A.J. knew the weight of those words, the shape of them, and how they’d sounded inside his own head.
Oh, God, he thought. Not this. Not this narrow, obnoxious old man. Not me. But the familiarity was choking him. It filled his throat and nose, as odorous as Mike’s cigar.
Mike tried to drape his arm across the boy’s big shoulders. “… and people are going to talk,” he was saying. “Now, I’m all for this freedom thing, and I love your dad —”
A.J. shook him off. “No, you don’t,” he said hoarsely. “You don’t love him at all. Because if you did …”
He didn’t say it. He turned and strode away, leaving Uncle Mike to stare after him, mouth open. A.J. knew he’d get the “respect your elders” lecture tomorrow, but he didn’t care. Some elders didn’t deserve respect.
He was so grateful to get to his table. It was near the dance floor so the music was louder. When he set a glass in front of Summer, she squeezed his arm quickly. Then she turned her attention back to the floor, to where Tully was dancing with a bridesmaid.
It was hard not to watch Tully. The spotlights lit up his wild blue jacket and glanced off the obsidian surface of his glasses. He was air-guitaring, the electric lead for that eternal rock group in his head. The bridesmaid watched
him in adoration. Other people just watched, eyebrows raised. He was a siren.
A.J. leaned forward, resting his arm on the back of Summer’s chair. When his warm hand curled around her bare shoulder, she didn’t pull away.
A.J. knew he would never air-guitar, but he couldn’t help admiring what he saw. To be trapped in this room with people like Uncle Mike — people like me, A.J. thought with a pang — and to dance anyway, dance in joy, took an especially resiliant human being.
Keep on dancing, Tul, A.J. thought, and he gave Summer’s shoulder a squeeze.