by April Lurie
Little Joe and I looked at each other and laughed. “You know, Matt,” I said, poking the sole of his foot with my big toe. “I'm surprised you, of all people, still like Elton John.”
Little Joe set down his pencil and nudged him. “Yeah, man, I mean, what's the deal?”
Matt opened one eye. “What are you fools talking about? Elton John is solid.”
I raised one eyebrow at Little Joe and tossed a French fry at Matt. “News flash, Matt,” I announced. “Elton John is queer.”
“What?” He sat up, stunned, and turned to Little Joe.
Little Joe nodded. “It's true, man. Everyone knows it.”
My dad had apparently overheard our conversation. Being a history teacher, he was obsessed with getting the facts right. “Actually,” he said, “Elton John is bisexual. I read an article about it in Newsweek.”
Matt's eyes covered half his face. The radio wailed on, Oh but they're weird and they're wonderful, Oh Benny she's really keen….
Sammy scooped sand into his bucket. “What's bi sexual?”
No one answered right away. Finally my dad said, “Well, Sammy, it just means that he likes both girls and boys.”
Sammy shrugged. “So what? I like girls and boys. Well, boys are better.”
Everyone laughed except Matt. He sighed deeply and lay back down. Meanwhile, Elton went into the grand finale, Benny, Benny, Benny and the Jets-ssss …
Turned out the third and final payback was the best one yet.
Matt's extra-strength Coppertone was definitely not doing its job, and after only two chapters of Carrie, I was beginning to look like a lobster. “Hey,” I said, “how about we go in the water and have a chicken fight?” Last summer, Little Joe and I had teamed up against Matt and Brandi at Manhattan Beach. Normally Brandi and I didn't like to be on opposite sides, but chicken fights were the exception.
Brandi, who was knee deep in the moat of Sammy's sand castle, looked up, blew a wisp of hair from her face, and said, “Sounds good to me.”
Little Joe tugged on the fringes of Matt's cutoffs. “Come on, Macho Man. Your sister and I challenge you and Brandi to a chicken fight.”
Matt, who was still mourning Elton John's bisexuality sat up and shrugged. “Oh, all right.” He waved. “Come on, Brandi, you and I are gonna cream Joe and the Monk.”
The water was rough, and it took a while for us to get past the breakers. Sammy ran to the shore to watch, and I heard my dad call, “Be careful, guys! The tide's moving out.”
Finally we entered a patch of calm water. “Okay, hop on,” Little Joe said. He ducked under and I climbed onto his shoulders. Last summer I hadn't thought twice about doing this, but now it felt strange. After all, my crotch was straddling his neck.
“Okay! I'm ready!” Brandi called from atop Matt's shoulders. I wondered if she was having the same problem.
As Brandi and I went at it, Matt spit water from his mouth and announced in his best Howard Cosell voice, “Okay, sports fans, we've got the mad Viking, Helga the Horrible, battling it out with her Sicilian enemy, the amazing Italian Stallion!”
Brandi and I were swatting at each other and laughing hysterically when, out of nowhere, a gigantic wave came and knocked me right off Little Joe's shoulders. Water surged up my nose, and as I tried to swim to the surface, another wave hit. I willed myself not to panic, but when my head hit bottom and scraped along the hard, rough sand, I wondered if this was it: I, April Lundquist, was about to die in a chicken fight.
I was under for a long time, but just as my lungs were about to burst, I felt the water release around me. Like a beached whale, I'd been washed up on shore. Relieved, I filled my lungs with air, pushed back my sand-caked hair, and saw Matt, Brandi, and Little Joe running toward me. “April, oh my gosh, are you okay?” Brandi called.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, a little dazed. “I'm all right.” I noticed a look of surprise on Little Joe's face. When the wind blew, I suddenly knew why. My right polka-dot triangle was no longer where it was supposed to be. Horrified, I yanked it into place.
When Matt saw Little Joe grinning, he tackled him, and the two of them began wrestling in the sand. “That's my sister, you moron!” Matt said. It sounded like he was joking, but I wasn't quite sure.
Meanwhile, Brandi helped me to my feet. She glanced at my lemon yellow bikini, looking guilty for having borrowed it. A minute later my dad and Sammy came running over. I hoped to God they hadn't seen anything. Sammy, bucket in hand, flung his arms around my waist. “April, are you all right? I was so scared.” The poor kid was practically crying.
Besides being completely humiliated, I was a little scraped up, but I was alive and all my body parts were intact. “Yeah, Sam, I'm okay, I guess.”
A few yards away, Matt had pinned Little Joe to the shore. As a wave crashed over him, he sputtered, “Come on, Matt, get off me! Do you know how heavy you are?”
My dad put his arm around my shoulder; he seemed a bit shaken up. “We better get you back on dry land,” he said.
As my dad and I walked toward the beach chairs, Brandi and Sammy joined Matt and began pouring buckets of water over Little Joe. My dad chuckled and patted my head. “So, looks like we could have joined the nudists at Riis Park after all, huh?”
Well, well, look who's here, right on time.” Mr. Luciano greeted Brandi and me at his front door wearing a red velvet smoking jacket with matching slippers. It was Monday morning, the first day of school, and as promised, we'd arrived for Larry at 8:45 sharp. “Come on in, Larry's just about ready.”
Brandi and I exchanged eyebrow messages as we followed Soft Sal into the living room. Entering the Luciano house was like stepping into a sixteenth-century Italian gallery in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, complete with marble columns, cherubic statues, and paintings of plump, half-naked women. Mr. Luciano sat down in a chair that looked like the papal throne, stuck an unlit cigar in his mouth, and motioned for us to make ourselves comfortable on the plastic-covered sofa.
In the kitchen Larry was moaning, “No, Ma, no, please, not my hair, please!” A second later he raced into the living room, curls sticking up in all directions, his mother trailing behind. When he saw Brandi and me he smiled.
“Hi, Larry,” I said, wincing a little. Mrs. Luciano had no idea how cruel kids in P.S. 201 could be if you didn't dress right. Larry didn't stand a chance in his crisp blue khakis, button-down shirt, and polished loafers.
I had to say something. “Um, Mrs. Luciano?” She stood there, comb in hand, shaking her head at Larry. “You probably don't know this, but most of the kids in school, they just wear jeans, T-shirts, and sneakers. It's pretty casual.”
“Oh?” Mrs. Luciano didn't look too good. There were bags under her eyes, and her perfectly coiffed Barbra Streisand hairdo was flattened on one side.
Larry, who didn't normally speak much, blurted out, “See, Ma! See! I told you!” Pleadingly, he looked at his father.
Mr. Luciano chuckled. “Well, Larry, looks like you need to go upstairs and change your clothes. But hurry, we can't keep these lovely young ladies waiting.”
Larry let out a happy groan, hugged his father, and ran upstairs while Mrs. Luciano walked over to the sofa and gently pinched Brandi's and my cheeks. “You girls are angels, you know that? Looking after my Larry. Angels.” Then she patted her husband's shoulder and shuffled back into the kitchen.
Next came a period of awkward silence while Mr. Luciano sat there chewing his cigar. Finally he said, “So, sweetheart, how's your mother?”
The “sweetheart” he was addressing was me, of course. I swallowed hard and felt the backs of my legs sticking to the plastic-covered sofa. “She's fine. You know, working hard.”
He smiled. “Yeah, she's a real career woman, isn't she? And it's nice, you know, the way she helps other people, being a nurse and all.” He tapped his fingers on the arms of the chair. Soft Sal wasn't exactly what you'd call skilled in small talk. “How about your brother?”
Discreetly, B
randi pinched my leg. “Oh,” I said, my heart beginning to pound, “Sammy's starting kindergarten today. He's pretty excited.” I shot a little prayer toward the crucifix hanging on the wall. I didn't want this conversation to veer toward you-know-who.
Mr. Luciano nodded. “Nice, nice. How about the other one?”
I blinked. “Other one?”
“Yeah, you know. Romeo.”
Brandi coughed and pinched me harder.
“Oh, do you mean … Matt?”
“Yeah, Matt. Is he staying out of trouble, keeping his nose clean?”
Brandi gulped.
“Um … yes, I think so.”
He nodded again. “Good, good. Your brother's a nice kid. A very nice kid. But sometimes nice isn't enough. You gotta be smart, too, if you know what I mean.” He tapped one finger against his forehead a few times and winked at me.
I wasn't about to break the news to Mr. Luciano, but on a scale from one to ten, I'd give Matt an eight and a half for brains and a minus two for nice. And that was being generous.
Brandi reached behind me and dug her thumb into my back while Mr. Luciano plucked a lighter from the table and ignited his cigar. As he blew a smoke ring, Larry came barreling down the stairs. Now he had on a pair of faded jeans, a Pink Floyd T-shirt, and black Pumas. He spread out his arms in a ta-da.
Mr. Luciano shook his head. “Oh, boy, better not let your mother see you now.”
After our little conversation with Soft Sal, I was feeling a bit shaky. I peeled myself off the sofa and helped Brandi to her feet. “Well, goodbye, Mr. Luciano,” I said. “We'd better get going.”
He puffed on his cigar. “Goodbye, girls. Take good care of Larry.”
“We will,” I said. Brandi and I quickly gathered our books from the table, and when the kitchen door swung open and Mrs. Luciano appeared, Larry took off like a shot.
Mr. Luciano stood up and called from his chair, “Remember what we talked about, Larry! Listen to your teachers, and no monkey business!”
* * *
When we finally caught up with Larry, he was halfway up the block and panting heavily. I patted his shoulder. “Congratulations, you escaped!”
Nervously he glanced down the street, and when he saw that his mother was nowhere in sight, he let out a huge sigh of relief. He kept up the rapid pace, but when we turned the corner onto Eleventh Avenue he slowed down and began picking clusters of honeysuckle from Mrs. Falcone's garden trellis. Brandi, who had been thoughtfully quiet until now, piped up. “Hey, uh, Larry, what exactly did your father mean when he said, ‘No monkey business?’”
Larry pulled a stamen from one of the flowers and sipped the nectar. “Larry?” Brandi leaned over his shoulder. “Did you hear what I said?”
Larry might have been retarded, but he wasn't deaf, and he certainly wasn't stupid. He purposely ignored Brandi's question and plowed ahead to a patch of dandelions growing near the curb. After pulling a few, he closed his eyes like he was making a wish and blew the fluff into the air. “Leave him alone,” I said. “It's his first day of public school. You don't want to get him all riled up.”
Brandi eyed him suspiciously. “I'm telling you, April, he's got something up his sleeve. I can tell.”
This worried me, but I decided to give Larry the benefit of the doubt. We watched him carefully, and for the next few blocks he innocently plodded along, collecting a variety of leaves, twigs, and pebbles. But when we turned the corner onto Eighty-first Street and P.S. 201 came into view, he stopped dead in his tracks. “Larry?” I said. “Larry, what's wrong?”
He gazed at the chain-link fence surrounding the schoolyard. Next thing I knew, he reached inside the waist of his pants and whipped out his drumsticks. Turned out Brandi was right, only instead of something up his sleeve, it was something down his pants. He raced toward the fence.
“Larry! Oh my gosh, what are you doing?” I called. Up ahead crowds of students were filing through the gates on either side of the yard.
I turned to Brandi. “This isn't good.”
“Yeah, no kidding.”
We raced toward Larry, and I started tugging on his arm. “Larry, you can't do this. Remember what your father said?” At the mention of Soft Sal, Larry seemed to come out of his trance. “Larry? Put the drumsticks away, okay? They don't let you do stuff like this at school.”
But this was the wrong thing to say. Immediately, Larry's eyebrows shot together and he pounded the fence defiantly. I guessed no one was going to tell Larry Luciano what he could or could not do at school. Especially when it came to drumming. Meanwhile, the first bell rang, and now the students began streaming into the building. We had exactly seven minutes to get to class.
“Listen, Larry,” I said, figuring I had to try another tactic since this one obviously wasn't working, “I guess, well, you can drum the fence if you want, but you've got to keep moving. We can't be late.” He thought about this a moment, nodded, and began walking and drumming at the same time.
Brandi whispered in my ear, “How are we going to explain him?”
I stared at the mob ahead. “I have no idea.” We continued along, and pretty soon kids were squinting up the block, wondering what was going on. At one point, Larry had to lift his sticks to avoid a group of eighth graders leaning against the fence. A few of them chuckled as he reached up and batted the air above their heads, but I gave them the evil eye and they quickly stopped.
Finally we reached the gate. I thought Larry might settle down at this point, but no such luck. When we passed a bunch of ninth graders taking last drags on their cigarettes, one of them, a disco lover wearing gold chains and a Farrah Fawcett T-shirt, said, “Who's the retard with the sticks?” The rest of them laughed. Larry kept drumming.
“Shut up and mind your own business,” I said.
“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute.” Mr. Disco took a step toward me and lifted his chin. “You're telling me to shut up?”
I felt Brandi's hand on my shoulder. “April, what are you doing?” I shrugged it off.
“Yes,” I said to him, “I'm telling you to shut up.” I walked over to Larry and took his arm, but he pulled away and started to moan.
This set the morons off laughing again. Mr. Disco narrowed his eyes. “Who is this guy?” he said. “Your demented boyfriend?”
Brandi leaned over and whispered in my ear. “Ignore him, April. He's not worth it.”
But there was something Brandi didn't realize. If I didn't say something now, Larry would become a target for the rest of the year. I marched up to Mr. Disco. “Let me get this straight. You want to know”—I pointed to Larry— “who that is?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I do.”
I gave him a cold, hard stare. “That, my friend, is Larry Luciano. Son of Salvatore Luciano. Aka Soft Sal. Got it?”
The “aka” did it. Now there was fear in his eyes. He glanced at his friends, flicked his cigarette butt to the ground, and said, “Yeah, right, whatever.”
I stood my ground until the group disappeared into the crowd. I figured the news about Larry's ranking Mafioso father would travel quickly, and now that that was settled I had to persuade Larry to put away his sticks and come with us to class. But when I turned around, Dominick was standing beside Larry, watching him in fascination. “This guy's amazing,” he said, to no one in particular. “A natural.”
Slowly, I walked over to Brandi, who was eyeing Dominick with disgust. Ever since the mooning incident at the park, she'd decided Dominick was not only dangerous, but vulgar and obscene as well.
“Hey,” Dominick said, tapping Larry's shoulder, trying to get his attention. “What's your name, man? I've never seen you before.”
Larry turned to Dominick, but before answering he craned his neck and studied the guitar case that was strapped to Dominick's back. “Larry,” he said, in that slow, drawn-out way of his. “My name's Larry.”
Dominick smiled and stuck out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Larry.” The two of them shook. “So, you're a Flo
yd fan, huh?” he asked, pointing to Larry's T-shirt.
Larry touched his chest and nodded slowly.
“Me too. Listen, we definitely need to jam together. Maybe I'll see you at lunch, what do you say?”
Larry nodded again, and that was when the final bell rang. As the latecomers scrambled toward the door, Dominick leaned over and said something into Larry's ear. In response, Larry handed him the sticks and then pointed to me and Brandi. “Uh-oh,” Brandi said, “look who's coming.”
Dominick walked directly up to me. “You're April, right?”
I swallowed. “Yeah.”
He held out the sticks. “I'm Dom. Larry says you should hold on to these for him.”
We locked eyes for a moment, and all I could manage to say was “Oh, okay, thanks.” I took the sticks, and his thumb brushed against mine.
“Bring them with you to lunch, all right?” he said. “Larry and I are gonna jam.”
I wondered how they were going to “jam” without a set of drums, but I decided not to ask. Instead, I nodded like the whole thing made perfect sense. “Oh, sure.”
He smiled, and I noticed that his right eyetooth stuck out just a little. For some reason, it made him look even cuter. I figured this might be my only chance to make an impression, and now that I'd put Mr. Disco in his place I decided I could do this. “Um, Dom, I … really like your music.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Yeah? You've heard me play?”
“Uh-huh, last year at the talent show. And sometimes I hear you at the park, or in front of Moe's. You may not know this, but we like a lot of the same bands.”
He stood there for a moment watching me; my face began to grow warm, but I didn't look away. It was like he was seeing me for the first time, like I wasn't just some brainy girl with braces, but maybe a person he'd like to get to know. Possibly even more. “Thanks,” he said, “for telling me. So, I'll definitely see you later, right?”
“Oh, yeah. I'll be there.”
“Great.”
