Thrill Kids

by Packer, Vin

  “He’s all right, mister,” Raleigh said. He kept on humming the march.

  At the corner of Ninety-fourth Street, Bardo shook Manny’s hand.

  “I’d like to see this remarkable snake of yours sometime, Pollack.”

  “No kidding?” Manny said.

  “No kidding, mister. Bring him around sometime.” Bardo saluted Manny. “Good night Mister.”

  Manny started to go, and then he stopped. He said, “Bardo?”

  Turning, Bardo looked back at him.

  “Thanks,” Manny said. “Thanks for the party.”

  “You’ve got manners, Pollack. That’s what Bardo Raleigh likes about you. You’re a gentleman!”

  Manny beamed. The two boys waved then, and went off in opposite directions.

  • • •

  “They were a strange assortment, all right,” Claude McCoy told Ivy Raleigh over brandy at Maria’s.

  “I know,” she said. “I was surprised. Bar never fails to amaze me.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Oh, you know. He’s sort of chameleon-like, the way he adapts himself to any environment.”

  “He doesn’t really change, though. I think the environment adapts itself to Bar.”

  Ivy laughed. “If he has anything to say about it, I guess. That poor boy with that awful shirt. I was mortified for him!”

  “The hipster. Yes.”

  “And then that terribly sullen youngster — the one with the mustache. He gave me an eerie feeling.”

  “He had the weight of the world on his shoulders.”

  “The other one — Emanuel, I think his name was. He was pleasant.”

  “I wonder what they’re doing now. What do four completely opposite kids do when they get together?”

  “Oh, they drink Cokes and tell naughty stories, I suppose.”

  Claude imitated Bardo’s voice. “Cokes rot your teeth, mister.”

  They laughed together then.

  Ivy said, “Poor Bar. I hope he has enough to occupy his mind this summer.”

  “They were a strange assortment, all right,” McCoy repeated. He took a swallow of his brandy. “Hey,” he said, reaching across for Ivy Raleigh’s hand. “Let’s forget the younger generation for a while, huh, and talk about something serious?”

  “Let’s,” Ivy said.

  9

  He looked, more than any of the other three, like the kind of boy who was perfectly adjusted to his teens….

  — Syndicated columnist Sheila Gage again describing Emanuel Pollack

  REMEMBER ONCE,” Manny said, “couple years ago. Mom and me and Irv were playing Monopoly. Mom had hotels set up on both the Boardwalk and Park, and Irv controlled the whole row after ‘Go.’ When I shook the dice I didn’t throw them right away. I guess I just knew when they landed I’d probably be out of the game. So I held them in my hand. Mom said, ‘You’re so slow, Emanuel! It isn’t any fun to play with a poke!’ You know what Irv said?” He looked up at Dr. Mannerheim, a faint smile at the corners of his lips.

  “What did he say?” she asked.

  “Irv said, ‘Some people move fast, and some move slow. Not everyone’s like everyone else, Mom.’ That was what he said.” Manny looked down at his hands. He said, “He was a swell guy. He could do and say anything just right.”

  It was Tuesday, the fifth of August, and Manny was having his second session with the psychologist. He would go twice a week now, Tuesdays and Saturdays. Because the clinic down on Eighteenth Street was undergoing remodeling, Dr. Mannerheim saw him in her spacious apartment on Central Park West. They sat in the large gray-walled front room, where the low row of windows looked out over the trees of the park, and beyond, in the distance, at the boxed-in buildings of the East side in the Eighties. Manny sat on the edge of the blue studio couch. Dr. Mannerheim faced him across a small square coffee table, her black woven-tape chair pulled to one side.

  There was a pause while Manny cleaned the dirt from under his nails with the nail of his thumb. Dr. Mannerheim lit a cigarette, crossed her legs, and said, “Tell me about Sincere, Emanuel.”

  She was an averaged-sized, attractive woman in her early forties. Her short brown hair, curling loosely, framed a pleasant oval-shaped face dominated by keen, alert light-blue eyes. As she smoked she watched Manny, leaning forward occasionally to drop an ash into a round piece of gray pottery that lay on the table between them. Once Manny pushed the ash tray closer to her, then pulled it back to its original position, saying, “I guess it belongs in the center. I don’t smoke. I know guys my age who do, though.”

  Now he said, “Sincere has a black tongue. Some snakes have red tongues, or green ones, or even black-and-red ones, or yellow. Depends.” He frowned and picked at a hangnail. “I think that’s what scares my mother about him. He flicks it in and out all the time.” Manny imitated the motion with his own tongue. Then he blushed and sank back into the cushions of the couch. Apologetically he added, “All snakes do it.”

  “Do you know why?” Dr. Mannerheim asked. Her voice was interested.

  “Sure.” His face brightened and he sat up again. “For touching things some,” he said, “but mostly to tell what’s going on. If I move, and I’m around Sinny’s cage, he can tell because he can feel the breeze I make with his tongue. If he was on his own, see, he’d use his tongue to find food, or to get out of the way of trouble.”

  “You know quite a bit about snakes, don’t you, Emanuel?”

  “Sure. I mean, yes, I do. Maybe I ought to be a herpetologist when I grow up.” “Maybe so.”

  “Do you think that’s what I ought to be? A herpetologist?”

  “What do you think?”

  Manny shrugged. He said, “Do you know what one is? It’s someone who’s an authority on snakes.” “Yes, I know.”

  “Snakes don’t hurt people. Most of them don’t,” Manny said after a moment. “But people think they do. I mean, some people don’t even give a snake a chance to prove himself. What’s he supposed to do? He’s not like people. I mean, he doesn’t eat with a knife and fork.” Manny licked the place on his thumb where he had ripped off the hangnail. He said, “My mother thinks Sincere is mean the way he eats. All snakes swallow their food whole. Did you know that?”

  “No,” Dr. Mannerheim admitted, “I didn’t.”

  Manny said, “It’s funny.” He snickered and sat on his hands. “I’m telling you things.”

  “Why is that funny?”

  “You’re supposed to tell me.”

  “Tell you what, Emanuel?”

  “What to do,” he said. “Aren’t you?”

  “No.” She smiled.

  “Bardo, this friend of mine,” Manny said, “thinks I’d be a swell herpetologist. He wants to see my snake.”

  “He’s the one whose party you attended last week, isn’t he?”

  “It was just a get-together,” Manny answered. “And how was it?”

  “We went for a walk up by the reservoir. Do you know that path?” “I think so.”

  “It’s dark, and the cabs just whiz by without paying any attention. Anything could happen.” “And did anything happen?”

  “We saw some sweethearts up there on a bench. They shouldn’t have been there.”

  “And what did you do when you saw them?”

  “Nothing.” Manny shrugged. “We just warned them they ought not to be up there in the dark.”

  “And what did they say?”

  “They went home, I guess. This girl’s mother was sick. Her mother had asthma.” “Did she tell you that?”

  “Yeah.” Manny nodded. “And Bardo said if her mother was sick, she should have been home. That was right, wasn’t it?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Of course!” Manny said emphatically. “Her mother had asthma!” He brought a hand out from under him and scratched his ear. “Once,” he said, “my mother was sick. She had some bug that was going around. Irv got up early and fixed her breakfast — scrambled eggs an
d everything — and he put it all on a tray and served it to her right in bed. I mean, he put Worcestershire sauce and everything in them. He used to know things like that. He was a swell guy.”

  “He must have been.”

  “Worcestershire sauce is good in scrambled eggs,” Manny said. “Did you ever try it?”

  Dr. Mannerheim agreed, “Yes, it’s very good.” She waited some seconds to see if Pollack would add anything to this, and then, glancing at her watch, she said, “Well, Emanuel, I guess that’s all for now.”

  “We just talk, don’t we?” Manny said, getting up from the couch.

  The doctor rose too, walking with him down the hallway toward the door. “Did you think we’d do something else?”

  “You’re supposed to tutor me or something, I thought,” Manny said. “I don’t know.”

  “It’s more fun just to talk, isn’t it, Emanuel?” She smiled as she opened the door.

  “Sure,” Manny said. “I mean yes, it is. I don’t need a boss.”

  Outside, the noon sun was boiling. Manny decided to cut through the park on his way home. That afternoon his mother was taking him to see The Las Vegas Story, which was playing over at the Grande on Eighty-sixth Street. Whenever a movie with Victor Mature was showing, his mother went to see it. She said he reminded her, in a way, of Irving. “Around the eyes,” she said, “but your brother wasn’t conceited. I can tell that Victor Mature is. Irving was always nice to everyone.”

  “How do you know Victor Mature is conceited?” Manny’s father had asked.

  “Oh, God, Nat — there you go! Picking on everything I say.”

  “You shouldn’t say things unless you know for sure they’re true,” his father had answered. “People have enough trouble in this world.”

  That noon the world to Manny seemed remarkably without trouble. The sky was blue and cloudless, and though it was sweltering, the park gave the illusion of coolness and calm. Solitary figures sat on the benches in the shade, reading, eating their lunches, watching the small children run up and down the grassy knolls, and dozing. A young man sitting on a rock atop one of the knolls pounded the keys of a portable typewriter that was balanced on his knees.

  Manny walked along humming to himself and thinking vaguely of Dr. Mannerheim. He decided that perhaps his father had been right after all about psychologists. She had not told him anything important or wise; in fact, she had not said very much the whole hour. Manny had had to keep the conversation going. Maybe she was bashful, he speculated; maybe it was hard for her to warm up to people. Manny knew what that was like. Three years ago, at his bar mizvah, when his mother and father had held that party for him in the apartment, Manny had sat off in a corner playing with the new gold pen and pencil set he had received, while everyone around him laughed and talked. “Come on, Manski,” his brother had teased him playfully. “Circulate, fellow. Today you are a man!”

  “I don’t know anyone here very well,” Manny had said.

  “Well, get to know them. They won’t bite, Manski.”

  “I know they won’t,” Manny had answered solemnly, but still he remained apart. His best friends — his only real friends, Flip and Wylie, had not been present. He could have talked to them because he knew them so well. He knew them better than anyone else.

  Manny stopped when he passed a rock, and bent over to look under it. Wherever he went he carried a glass tube with a cork top, for catching bugs. He kept it in his pants pocket, and that noon he already had two prisoners: a cockroach he had spotted on the stairway of his apartment building and a grasshopper he had picked off a bush. There was nothing under the rock but an angleworm and some red ants. Sincere didn’t eat either worms or ants, so Manny kicked the rock back with his foot and kept on going.

  The sun had a slow, insidious, fatiguing effect, so that Manny did not realize he was tired until he reached the top of a hill overlooking a pond. He sat down in a clump of grass, mopped his brow with a handkerchief, and peered under two more rocks he could reach from where he sat. He thought of strolling down toward the park zoo to see the snakes, and he thought of how cool it would be that afternoon in the air-conditioned theater, and he thought of how he had not told Dr. Mannerheim everything that had happened in the park the other night. Why should he? She hadn’t asked. He leaned back as he thought these things, until his head rested there in the dry grass, and he watched the sky and the birds sailing in it, and he wondered if Victor Mature really was conceited, and he fell asleep.

  When he awakened there was someone sitting beside him. It startled him at first, but when he saw the pleasant expression on the man’s face, he sat up and said, “I was sleeping.”

  “I know you were,” the man said. He was middle-aged and very thin; his face was sunburned, and he wore rimless glasses and a light-gray suit, the jacket of which he carried over his arm. His tie was loosened at the collar of his white shirt, and in his short, square hands he carried a straw hat.

  Manny said, “I just fell asleep.”

  “It’s quiet here,” the man said. “It’s a good place to sleep.”

  His eyes were steady on Manny. He smiled with his lips closed. “Do you come here often?” he asked. “I was on my way home,” Manny said. “Do you live far?”

  “Just across the park. Ninety-fourth Street.”

  “That’s a coincidence,” the man said. “I’m going that way myself. I have a car. I just got out for a breath of air and to stretch my legs. My car’s right down there.” He pointed to an area behind him where there was a space for parking.

  “Do you live near me?” Manny asked.

  “I’m a salesman. I travel a lot. I’m just going your way.”

  “That must be nice. Be a salesman.”

  “It’s hard work,” the man said. He touched Manny’s trousers. “I sell suits,” he said.

  “This is a suit, only I’m just wearing the pants. I lost the button off my coat. It was my brother’s suit.”

  “You should have a suit of your own,” the man said, gravely.

  “I don’t mind. My brother’s dead. He got killed in Korea.”

  “I’m sorry about that, son.”

  “Thanks. He didn’t wear this much at all. It was practically bran’-new.”

  “Say,” the man said, “as long as we’re heading in the same direction, why don’t I drop you? My car’s right down there.”

  “You don’t have to. I mean, it’s a lot of trouble.” “No, no — I want to. It’s no trouble.” “I don’t know,” Manny said.

  “Come on. It’s too hot to walk. You’ll get sunstroke.”

  The man stood up, and Manny did too. “I always walk in the sun,” Manny said. “I don’t even wear a cap. It doesn’t bother me.”

  “Come on.” The man smiled. “My car’s right down there.”

  They jogged down the hill and walked slowly across the field to the parking spot. The man said Manny ought to wear brown because his eyes were brown, and Manny told him the first suit he had ever had was a brown gabardine, and he had fallen off his bike and ripped the knees almost the second day he wore it. That was too bad, the man said, because brown was his color, all right. Manny said his father had taken it to a tailor and you could hardly see the patch, but he didn’t wear it for good any more, because the pants were too short now.

  The door of the car was open, and inside it, was hot. It was parked away from the other cars, off under a tree, in the shade. The back seat was filled with boxes, and there was a melted candy bar on the front seat. When the man slid into the driver’s seat, he did not lean forward to turn the key in the ignition. He put one arm over the back of the seat and sat sideways, facing Manny.

  “You look like a nice kid,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  “Do you have a lot of girl friends?” “Uh-uh.” Manny grinned, embarrassed. “I mean, no. I’m just a kid.”

  “How old are you?” “Sixteen.”

  “That’s old enough.”

  “I’ve been t
o dances,” Manny said, “but I don’t know how to dance.”

  The man laughed. “Too young to tango, hmm?”

  “I just never learned,” Manny said.

  “You know, son, I might just have a suit back there that would fit you.”

  “I’m still growing,” Manny said. “My mother says there’s no sense spending money on a whole new suit until I have my growth.”

  “These are samples. They don’t cost anything.”

  “How come?”

  “They’re mine. They’re samples.” The man leaned over and fingered Manny’s belt. “Let’s see — you’d be about a twelve, hmmm?” His hand rested on Manny’s hip. “How would you like a new suit?” he said, smiling. And suddenly Manny knew what the man wanted.

  • • •

  When the man stopped the car at Ninety-fourth Street and Madison Avenue, Manny sat like a dummy before he saw where he was.

  The man said, “I couldn’t help it, kid. Do you believe that? I feel like hell. I didn’t know it would throw you for such a loop, kid,” the man said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  Manny put his hand on the chromium handle of the car door. He pressed it down. He remembered that someone a long time ago had said, “Homosexuals can’t help the way they are. They’re born that way, mister.”

  The man reached over and closed the door after Manny had got out of the car. He said, “Be careful crossing the street, kid.” For a moment he leaned against the open window of the automobile, watching the boy, his eyes behind his rimless glasses pained and fatuous.

  Manny stood on the corner waiting for the light. He didn’t look back to where the car was parked, with its motor running, at the curb. From his pocket he took out the glass tube, fondled it in his hand as he waited for the green light, and tried to remember something else he had once heard: “Contempt breeds familiarity.” Was that it? What did it mean?

  “It’s dark, and the cabs just whiz by without paying any attention. Anything could happen.”

  “And did anything happen?”

  No! Manny wanted to scream.

  “How would you like a new suit?”