by Jonah Black
“Don’t.”
“You’re not committing yourself now,” he assured me.
“No, I’m not committing myself now,” I insisted. “I’m saying no.”
“You have an open mind,” he said.
“I don’t,” I said.
“Good. Well, at least that’s all settled. Now let me ask you something else. What are you going to do about Sophie?” Thorne said. “You gonna do her, or what? Posie says you guys have broken up for good.”
I felt kind of mad at Posie for talking to Thorne about us. I guess I forget sometimes that Posie is as close to Thorne as she is to me, since the three of us have known each other practically since the womb. But I wasn’t sure I wanted Posie’s breakup with me to be something that she talked to Thorne about behind my back. I was still kind of sad about it.
“Yeah,” was all I said.
“So are you going to see her? Sophie, I mean?” Thorne asked me.
“I don’t know,” I said. “We’ve been talking on the phone. She wants to get together over Christmas break, at Disney World.”
“Disney World! You and Sophie! Awesome!” He was smiling like he was the one who was going to see her. “This is the best news I’ve heard all week.”
“Please don’t tell anyone. Okay? It’s a secret.”
“Hey, Jonah,” Thorne said, flicking his fingers through his goatee. “If you can’t trust me, who can you trust?”
I was about to laugh right in Thorne’s face, but at that moment along came this incredible-looking girl I’d never seen before. She was like, six feet tall, skinny but not too skinny, with blond hair that fell below her waist. I’d never seen hair that long.
“Hey, Elanor! What’s up!” Thorne wrapped his arms around her waist and tried to kiss her on the lips. She turned her head so his kiss landed on her cheek.
“This is Jonah Black,” Thorne said.
She looked at me like she was looking at something through the wrong end of a telescope. I felt like I was shrinking.
“Jonah’s in eleventh grade.”
Thanks, Thorne.
“Hello,” Elanor said, in a voice that suggested it might be nice if I fell through a trapdoor into a pit of flames.
“Elanor goes to St. Winnifred’s,” Thorne said.
St. Winnifred’s is this unbelievably snooty girls’ prep school in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea. It costs more to go there than it does to go to most colleges.
“Shall we?” Elanor said, and nodded toward the Beetle.
“We shall,” said Thorne.
The two of them got into the car.
“Later, dude,” Thorne called out the window to me.
“Later,” I said, and went and got my bike. As I was undoing the chain I watched Thorne and Elanor drive away. Watching them take off made me feel sort of lonely. And stupid for not having my driver’s license.
I went home and lay on my bed and listened to music for a while. Radiohead again. But that got way too depressing, so I went into the kitchen for some food. There was my sister, Honey, drinking Jolt cola. She looked up at me and blinked. There was another set of eyes on top of her eyelids. Temporary tattoos. I don’t think anyone except Honey would have put them on their eyelids.
“That looks awesome, Honey,” I said. “No wonder you’re in the genius section at school.”
“Hey,” Honey said, and she blinked at me again. She was wearing a black T-shirt that had so many holes in it, it looked like it had been run over with a lawnmower. “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful,” she said.
“That’s not why I hate you,” I said back.
I got a bag of Fritos and came back to my room and turned on my mother’s radio show and wrote this.
Dec. 10, 6:15 P.M.
Miss von Esse’s class. Today we’re reviewing the “subjunctive mood” in German class, which we did last month but apparently no one got it, because Miss von Esse is basically starting it all over from scratch. The subjunctive is this messed-up verb tense you use when you’re discussing something that “might be.” As opposed to something that “is.” The story she’s using to explain this is this bizarre thing called “Wenn die Haifische Menschen wären,” which means, “If Sharks Were People.” It’s this whole description of what the world would be like if sharks could walk around and bite you.
Miss von Esse is wearing an off-white shirt without any sleeves and you can see her bra through it, which definitely makes class more interesting. The top of the armholes are a little dark where she’s been sweating. I wonder what Miss von Esse is sweating about. I wonder if she has a boyfriend or what her story is. Maybe she’s just hot.
I delivered a video to her house once. I would love to sit around and watch movies with Miss von Esse. We could make some popcorn in the microwave, and while it’s microwaving we melt butter in a little pot on the stove and she puts the popcorn in an orange bowl and pours the butter on top and then shakes garlic salt onto it and we watch Return of the Jedi and our fingers are touching in the popcorn bowl and then she puts her palm on top of mine and pushes it down into the bowl so our two hands are covered in greasy, steaming hot popcorn. Sophie turns to me with her big sad eyes and says, “Jonah Black, can you think of a good use of the subjunctive mood?”
And I say, “Uh . . .”
She frowns and scolds me. “Maybe you weren’t paying attention,” she says. Sophie is standing at the front of the classroom holding her chalk, and the sweat stains under her arms are bigger now. She turns and writes, “Wenn Jonah Black hören werde,” which means, “if Jonah Black were listening.”
I just stare at the words blankly, and everybody is looking at me like I’m some sort of freak.
Miss von Esse raised her arm to write on the board. Her armpit was shaved, not like last Friday when she had pretty bad armpit stubble. I guess she shaved her pits over the weekend. I can picture her standing in the shower with a pink disposable razor and her arm raised over her head. Now she wants to do her legs, but there’s no comfortable way to prop her foot up so she can reach, so she sits down in the bath. And now that she’s in there she decides to run a nice warm bubble bath with this violet bath gel that smells of grapes and fresh-cut grass. Sophie lies back in the bubble bath and closes her eyes. Her hair is piled on top of her head, and the bubbles come right up to her neck. She’s listening to country-western music on the radio and it makes her laugh it’s so hokey.
“Well?” she says.
I looked up to see Miss von Esse staring at me expectantly.
And Miss von Esse said, “If Jonah Black were paying attention . . . Please finish the sentence, Jonah.”
I thought about it. “If I’d been paying attention,” I said. “Um. We . . . we wouldn’t be having this conversation?”
Fortunately, Miss von Esse laughed. And then she made me translate it into German.
(Still Dec. 11, 5:30 P.M.)
After school today I was walking along the beach, just thinking about the situation I’ve gotten myself into. I knew where I was headed. The lifeguard tower. And right after I got to the top of it, Pops Berman climbed up after me.
“Hey, Chipper,” he said. He was out of breath.
“Hiya, Pops,” I said. “How are you?”
“Not good,” he wheezed.
“No? You been sick?”
“I’m always sick, Chipper. I got a liver like a piece a Swiss cheese.” He shook his head. “Time’s runnin’ out.”
“Swiss cheese?” I said.
“You got it, son. Eighty years of pepper vodka and this is how you wind up. You be smart, don’t be like me, okay?”
“Okay,” I laughed. “I won’t drink pepper vodka for eighty years.”
“And the ladies—you’re walkin’ the doggy with the ladies like I told you? While you’re young and you still can?”
I shrugged.
Pops Berman covered his face with his hands. “Oh, no,” he said. “Now what?”
“Well, you know my friend Posie? The girl I wa
s seeing?”
“The surfboard mopsytop?” Pops said.
“Yeah, well, I was about to have sex with her the other night, and I did this stupid thing,” I started to explain.
“You called her by the name of the other one. The one up North,” Pops said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
I just stared at him. How could Pops know that? “How did you know?” I demanded.
He shrugged. “I’m psychic, I don’t know. So your Posie hit the roof. Gave you what for. Am I right?”
“Yeah.”
“And now you’re sitting here kicking yourself. Thinking you’re Kid Loser. You wanna plunge into the ocean blue wearin’ lead pajamas,” Pops said.
I didn’t answer him.
“Well, don’t you do it, Chipper,” he told me. “There will be other chances to walk the doggy.”
“Well, that’s the thing. See, Sophie—that’s the girl from Masthead—she’s coming to Orlando in a couple of weeks,” I explained. “She wants me to meet her at a hotel. In Disney World. She says she loves me.”
Pops Berman smiled and slapped me on the back. “Hot dog!” he said. When I didn’t smile back, his face changed. “Now what?” he said.
“I can’t just run off and shack up with Sophie in some hotel!” I told him.
“Sure you can. You can do just about anything,” Pops said.
“I can’t. I don’t have enough money for one thing,” I said.
“How much do you need?” Pops said.
“To spend three days at a hotel? Eat? I don’t know. But it’s more than I have from delivering pizzas, I can tell you that.”
Pops reached into his pocket and got out his wallet. “How’s about three hundred bucks? You think that’ll do it?” he said.
He held the bills out to me—three crisp new one-hundred-dollar bills. I must have looked like I’d been struck by lightning.
“Yeah, you’re right,” he said. “Better make it five.”
He handed me five hundred dollars.
“I can’t take your money, Pops!” I said.
“Why in hell not?”
“Five hundred dollars?”
“Listen Chipper, I got money lying around like moldy cheese,” Pops said. “What am I going to spend five hundred bucks on? Vitamins?”
“I can’t take your money,” I insisted.
“Goddammit,” he said. He held his cane up over one shoulder like he was going to strike me with it. “Now you listen up, Chipper. I been watching you screw things up month after month now. You got this one chance to make things right. You go up to Disney World and shack up with that girl and you take her out to a nice dinner and the two of you ride around on Space Mountain and you walk that little doggy of yours like he’s never been walked before. And when you get done, you come back here and you tell me all about it. And if you don’t do exactly what I just told you to do, so help me God I’m going to pound you so hard with this cane you’re going to look like succotash. Do you understand me, Chipper, or don’t you?”
I looked at him for a second. He looked like a weird statue or something, or the figurehead from a sailing ship. I nodded, and Pops sat down.
“Dammit, now you’ve given me palpitations,” he said, clutching his heart.
“Are you really okay, Pops? You’re not going to croak on me are you?” I joked, although I really was worried.
“Hell, everybody’s going to croak,” he said. “Better me than you.”
“But I mean, you’re not going to croak this second or anything?” I said.
“No, no,” Pops said, and he reached over and patted me on the back. “Not today.”
“I guess I should say thank you,” I said. “For the money and everything.”
“I guess you should shut your clapper,” Pops said, coughing so hard it sounded like his lungs were going to fly out of his mouth.
“Okay.” I guess Pops doesn’t like it when people say thank you.
“Now you listen to me, Chipper. I’ve been around a long time and I’m gonna drop dead one of these days, and between now and then I got just one job to do, and that’s making sure you don’t reach manhood a total idiot. Now you take that money and you find out what it’s really like to love a woman, and to have her love you back. You learn that and maybe your life won’t be completely worthless, and I can say my life wasn’t a total waste.”
Hearing him say that made me really sad. “You really think that? Your life was a waste?” I said.
“No, I didn’t say that. It’s not a waste yet,” Pops said. “I still got you, Chipper. I’m betting it all on you.”
I looked out at the ocean. The waves were choppy. A fierce breeze was blowing in from the Atlantic. I felt kind of strange, knowing that Pops was “betting it all on me.” I don’t know if I can handle the responsibility.
“Hey, Pops, what did you used to do before you retired?” I asked him.
“You mean a million years ago? When Grover Cleveland was President?” He laughed. “Fireman. Staten Island.”
“Wow. You were a fireman? Cool!” I’d never met a real fireman before.
“Yeah, I guess. Half the buildings we saved we should have let burn to the ground. Bunch of eyesores,” Pops said.
“And were you married?” I said. “Is there a Mrs. Pops?”
Pops kept looking out at the ocean. His chest rose up and he heaved this huge, painful sigh.
“No, Chipper. There’s no Mrs. Berman. There was going to be, but there wasn’t.” He looked at me, then dug his hand back into his pocket. He pulled out his wallet again and held it open. Inside was a picture of a beautiful young woman. It looked like it was taken in the 1940s.
“Wow,” I said. “She’s gorgeous.”
“Rosemary Mahoney,” he said. “Army nurse.”
“Wow,” I said again.
“Dead. Heart attack, age twenty-two. Can you believe that? Totally healthy young woman. Walking off the ferry with me one day, she put her hand on her heart and said, ‘Oh, I feel tired.’ Next thing you know, she falls over. Dead on the street. That was 1948.”
“And you never—”
“Nah,” he said. “Oh, lotsa times I thought about other girls. I mean I wanted to and all, Chipper. But it’s kind of like when I was a kid and I had this dog and the dog died and my old man said, let’s get another dog, and I said, no, dammit, I already had a dog.”
Pops stood up. “Now look what you made me do. I’m sitting here thinking about the past!” He climbed down the ladder of the lifeguard tower and shook his cane at me. “You remember what I said. You show that girl a good time, and then you come back here and tell me all about it. Or else I’ll smack ya.”
I watched Pops Berman walk across the sand back toward Niagara Towers. Usually when he walks away from me he sings. But this time he didn’t.
AMERICA ONLINE
INSTANT MESSAGE FROM NORTHGIRL999,
12-14, 7:14 P.M.
NORTHGIRL999: Hi Jonah!
JBLACK94710: Hi Northgirl. It’s been a while since I’ve heard from you.
NORTHGIRL999: I’ve been away, actually.
JBLACK94710: Away? Where?
NORTHGIRL999: Never you mind. Are you okay? People say you’re acting a little strange.
JBLACK94710: People? What people?
NORTHGIRL999: Never you mind.
JBLACK94710: You don’t want me to know anything about you, do you?
NORTHGIRL999: Well, your not knowing who I am is like the only thing I have on you.
JBLACK94710: What do you mean?
NORTHGIRL999: I mean if you knew who I was you wouldn’t talk to me.
JBLACK94710: Why wouldn’t I talk to you?
NORTHGIRL999: You don’t talk to me now. You don’t think I’m important. I’m not even on your radar.
JBLACK94710: So you’re somebody that I see all the time?
NORTHGIRL999: Yes.
JBLACK94710: You’re not Pops Berman are you?
NORTHGIRL
999: Who?
JBLACK94710: And please tell me you’re not my sister Honey.
NORTHGIRL999: Hey, what’s the deal with your sister Honey, anyway? She’s a genius, right?
JBLACK94710: Yeah.
NORTHGIRL999: But how come she hangs out with all those losers? And walks around with her boobs practically falling out of her shirt. What’s up with that?
JBLACK94710: I don’t know. She says it’s her personal style.
NORTHGIRL999: And she’s going to Harvard?
JBLACK94710: Yeah, she got in early.
NORTHGIRL999: Whoa. She must be psyched.
JBLACK94710: I don’t know. She acts all annoyed about it, like she had no choice because she’s a genius and everyone expects her to go there.
NORTHGIRL999: Wait. Isn’t she your little sister? How come she’s going to college?
JBLACK94710: She skipped a grade. And I got held back. I told you that.
NORTHGIRL999: Sorry to rub it in.
JBLACK94710: Hey, you never answered my question.
NORTHGIRL999: Which question?
JBLACK94710: You’re not Honey, are you?
NORTHGIRL999: Your sister? Yuck!
JBLACK94710: Never mind. You are a girl, though, right? You promise me this isn’t like Mr. Davis or someone?
NORTHGIRL999: Hang on a second, let me check. BRB. Yeah, I’m definitely a girl. And I definitely am totally in love with you. You are so hot. And you don’t even know it.
JBLACK94710: Why won’t you tell me who you are?
NORTHGIRL999: I like the fact that you can’t figure it out. It keeps you thinking about me. Which is more than you’d do if you knew who I was.
JBLACK94710: Well I gotta tell you, Northgirl. I like this a lot better than when you were pretending you were in Norway, or Sweden, or whatever it was.
NORTHGIRL999: I had you going then Jonah! : )
JBLACK94710: So who says I’m acting weird?
NORTHGIRL999: Never mind. But you are. You’re all messed up aren’t you?
JBLACK94710: Yeah. I guess. I broke up with Posie Hoff.
NORTHGIRL999: You didn’t!
JBLACK94710: I did.
NORTHGIRL999: Jonah, are you totally stupid? Posie is like the perfect girl. After me, I mean.
