A pint of gas, a pint of motor oil, that was all.? The boys could siphon.? The boys could steal.? They had it in an hour.? Then they gathered some rags together and two empty Coke bottles.? O'Malley showed them how to make firebombs, two to be exact, with the gas and oil mixed together, the gas-soaked rags stuffed into the bottles, a long piece of rag blocking the neck and poking out as the wick for each bomb.
"Why the oil?" Artie said.
O'Malley smiled.? "It makes the gas sticky."
He wasn't there when they bombed the clubhouse.? He couldn't run away if it came to that, so he waited at home for the news.? He sat on the Murphy bed in the tiny railroad apartment, watching a cockroach move along the wall.? From where he sat the pungent odor of burning tires came through the open window and reached his nose.
"Yeah," he said.? "We showed 'em."
Artie Mulligan would be pleased.?
A few days later, O'Malley was on the roof of the building.? Up here, there was light and space.? Up here, he could escape from the dark and cramped apartment, from the narrow hallways and stairs, from the crush of people on the street.? The roof was his sanctuary.? He moved across the gravel and gazed out at the endless vista of clotheslines and TV antennas.? Three buildings away, a one minute walk stepping over air shafts, old Mr. Principato stood waving a white flag on a long pole, putting a flock of pigeons through their paces.?
O'Malley sat along the low wall and gazed down at 49th Street, five stories below.? The street was a hive of activity, the people moving to and fro, and he watched it all as if he were stationed on some far away planet.?
A shadow moved behind him.?
He turned and four teenaged boys stood there.? They were slim and tall and well-muscled in their tight white T-shirts.? True to form, one of the boys had a pack of cigarettes rolled up in his sleeve, showing off one bulging and tattooed bicep.? Greaseballs.? They loomed over him like dinosaurs above a scrap of hamburger.? He became aware of how small he was - and not small like Artie.? Small small.? Small in his mind.? Small in his presence.? Small in his very being somehow.? He became conscious most of all of his right leg and of how useless it was.
He knew a few of their names.? Ace McCoy was right out in front with the cigarettes and the tattoo.? O'Malley had seen Ace and his crew around, and what was bad about the situation was they had evidently seen him as well.
"Hey there, Gimp," Ace said.
"Hi," O'Malley said.
"Hi, that's rich," Ace said.? He put a big fake smile on and waved like an idiot.? "Hi!"
The other three laughed - a merciless sort of laugh.? A tall blonde one said, "You know why we're here, right?"
O'Malley tried to give them nothing, but already he could feel his body shaking.? Already he could feel his heart pumping in his chest.? "N-no."
"Nuh-nuh-no.? I knew you were a gimp.? I didn't know you were also a stutter."
"I'm n-n-not."
All of them laughed now.
Ace squatted down to Smoke's level where he sat on the wall.? "Our clubhouse got burned up the other day, Mr. Gimp.? You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?? You wouldn't know any smart guys who like to make firebombs, right?"
Smoke shook his head, moved to say something, if only he could get his lips unstuck one from the other.
"Now wait a minute, before you say anything you need to know something about us.? What you need to know is we like stand-up guys who tell the truth.? Guys who lie, we don't like them.? Bad things happen to guys who lie."
O'Malley found his voice.? "I don't know anything about it."? Once it was out there, he found he had surprised himself with the statement.? It came out strong and firm, like he meant it.? "The bombs, I mean.? I don't know anything about that at all."
"You don't, huh?"
"Nope."
"Then how did you know there was more than one bomb?"
"You just said it yourself.? You said it was bombs."
"Did I say that boys?"
"I didn't hear you say bombs, Ace.? I heard you say bomb."
"No, you didn't," O'Malley said.? "You said bombs."
Ace stood up.? "Okay, if that's what you say, I guess we gotta deal with that.? You say I said bombs.? You say you don't know about it."?
"That's exactly right."
Ace took a long drag on his cigarette, regarded the short butt remaining, then flicked it into O'Malley's face.?
"Fuckin' liar."
Three of them grabbed him.? He tried to kick and punch them, but they were too strong.? Within a couple of seconds, they had him under control.?
Ace gestured at the open air on the other side of the wall, the five-story drop to the pavement below.?
"Liars take the dive.? Okay boys, let's see what he says to that."
O'Malley fought them, but it did no good.? They lifted him into the air and turned him upside down.? Then they held him out over the edge by the legs.? O'Malley's arms dangled down helplessly.? His hair dangled down.? His shirt came un-tucked and fell down almost to his nipples.? He felt the pressure of the blood rushing to his head.? He saw the activity down below, all of it oblivious to his plight up here.?
It went on for a long time.? They were saying things to him now, and he could hear their voices, but the sounds had melted together into a slow-motion, unintelligible mush.? All there was out there was that upside-down view of the street, so far away.? He felt their hands slipping on his legs.? They grabbed him harder and higher, the split second as they abandoned their old grip for a new one stretching out sickeningly.? They laughed because they had almost dropped him.? The world spun.
He felt his bladder go.?
The piss went with gravity as all things will do.? Instead of running down his legs, it soaked through the fabric of his pants, it cascaded between his belt and his waist, and streamed down his torso and chest.? Droplets made the journey past his shirt and rolled down his neck to his chin.? His tasted urine on his lips.? And still more came.? He had never pissed so much in his life.
"Look!? He's pissing on his own face!"
He heard that much clearly.?
He didn't care that he was pissing on his own face.? He didn't care if he ended up shitting on his own face, if that was even possible.? What he cared about was these kids were going to drop him, either because they would lose their grip on him, or because they were sadistic bastards and they didn't care if they killed him.? They were going to drop him and he was going to take an incredible dive to the pavement, one that would seem long but would be too short.? One that would end with him splattered on concrete like an overripe gourd.
"I didn't do it!" he screamed.? "I didn't do it!"
The car behind him honked its horn, really leaning on it.? Smoke looked up and noticed for the first time that the drawbridge was down and he was free to go.? He'd been free to go for a while, by the looks of things.? Traffic was streaming by him on the left.? To the right, that drop to the water still beckoned.? The driver behind him honked again.
Glad as ever to be getting down from there, Smoke put the car in gear and cruised toward the end of the bridge.?
?
* * *
?
"Are you going to tell him?" said Pamela Gray.?
Pamela was Lola's roommate of two years - and in many ways Lola's opposite.? She was pretty in an understated way, and dressed conservatively compared to Lola's sometimes sexy, sometimes outrageous sense of style.? She had grown up in a quiet New Hampshire suburb with a typical nuclear family.? She was bookish - she devoured romance novels, for instance.? At the same time, she had an edgy side to her - Lola had picked up one or two of Pamela's romance novels.? The books she read were the steamy kind - adventure tales of pirates on the high seas, of wild untamed women and dark men with powerful thighs and raging, uncircumsized members.? Bodice rippers, she sometimes called them, historical rape novels.?
Pamela was shy about men, okay, but there was more to her than met the eye.? When you got her going, she
had a tongue that was plenty sharp.? And she was not afraid to speak her mind.?
"Am I going to tell what to whom?" Lola said.?
Lola and Pamela were cooking dinner.? As they talked, they bustled about the kitchen.? Tonight was smoked salmon with cream cheese, lightly sauteed Digby scallops and shrimps, and garden salad made from Lorena's bounty.? Pamela had made a chocolate mousse for dessert.? They had already opened up the first bottle of wine.? Smoke was coming, and the two women sometimes cooked together for him as though he belonged to both of them.? They would share him, his conversation, his sense of humor, the warm smell of his cigar, right up until the time came for Smoke and Lola to go to bed.?
"Are you going to tell Smoke about what happened?"
"Why?? So I can upset him?? So he can decide to be chivalrous and go off looking for them and maybe get himself killed?? There's nothing anybody can do, and besides, no harm done.? I fought them off.? I won."
Pamela didn't smile.? "But what about the next one?? Will she win?? What if it was me?? Would I have won?"
Lola was silent.
"I'll have to think about it."
"I think you should tell Smoke and then you should go to the police."
Lola began to think she should have gone to Smoke's for dinner.? If Pamela was going to be so adamant about this, what slip of her tongue might be loosed during conversation after a few glasses of wine??
But then, going to Smoke's would be too strange.? Lola rarely went to Smoke's apartment at all, and never went there to stay the night.? She liked many things about Smoke.? She liked that he worked with his hands, and that his hands were the thick, rough and strong hands of a working man.? She liked the smell of his evening cigar, especially when they were on the deck together, looking out over the water and the sweet smoke would pass for a second before the breeze lifted it and took it away on the air.? She liked his smile, and the fact that he chose to do his work for children.? She liked that he was so smart.? It seemed he could make anything.
But she didn't like his apartment.? He lived in a dingy basement efficiency with bad light.? He kept books and papers piled up on the kitchen table at all times.? He kept six cats which had the run of the place, with all the unpleasantness that suggested.? Their litter boxes were in the bathroom, and Smoke wasn't the most fastidious man on earth about cleaning the boxes.? Smoke often brought greasy and dirty pieces of machinery into the apartment from his shed out in the garden, and left these either on the kitchen table or on the floor.? Finally, the place smelled like smoke.? It wasn't the wisp of cigar smoke blowing on the wind, but the built-up smell of dozens of cigars trapped in the apartment during the three-year period he had lived there.
No sir.? Lola did not want to spend the night in such a place.? She had done it a few times, waking up each time with a cat nestled on her head and the smell of cigars in her clothes.? They had come to an agreement.? If Smoke wanted to spend the night with her, then he had to spend it at her place.?
They lived on the top floor of a three story brick building at the top of Munjoy Hill.? It was a large two-bedroom apartment.? The back deck gave out on a view across the back yard to the Eastern Promenade, and a splendid view of the harbor and sailboats out there.
The apartment below them was empty.? When the previous tenants had moved out, the landlord had decided to renovate, and so workmen were there during the day on weekdays, and in the evenings no one was down there.? On the very bottom was an old man who had come to Portland to play with the Portland Symphony Orchestra.? Pamela had a crush on him.?
Which brought Lola to the crux of the Pamela conundrum - she was attractive, smart, and well-read.? She kept herself fit by jogging and working out with weights, and made good money as a librarian at the Portland Public Library.? Yet in two years together, Lola hadn't seen Pamela go out on a single date with a man.?
Oh Pamela.
"I just think," she would say, "you know, you've got an old man and it seems to be working out, so maybe I should go for one myself."
"Pamela," Lola said, "Smoke is almost 60.? Okay, he's a lot older than I am.? But Mr. Scheiskopf must be 75 at least.? That's old.? I mean, who can say if he even gets it up anymore, or even wants to?"
"Is that all that matters?"
Lola shook her head.? "Obviously, that's not all that matters.? But it's one of the things that matters, at least to me.? Men are good for some things.? Other things, they're not so good for.? That happens to be one of the things they are good for."
Pamela smiled.? "Oh, I bet he does get it up.? He's fit for his age.? He's a musician.? He's vital and creative.? I bet he does everything, wants everything.? He wants to experience everything right up to that last moment.? He wants to be fully alive."?
Lola held her tongue.? She wasn't sure, but she guessed the library might not be the greatest place to meet men.
Not that it mattered.? Lola thought a woman could go about her business and have a full life without a man in it.? She had spent plenty of time without a man in her own life.? But for Pamela, men seemed an obsession.? She wanted to be with a man, but then seemed to repel them as though they were invaders.? If any young attractive man approached her, she went stone cold.? Then she developed elaborate fantasies about people like Mr. Scheiskopf, a man she had hardly ever spoken to.? She didn't know anything about him except he was a musician and played for the Symphony.? Sometimes the two of them heard the strains coming from his violin as they entered the building.? Scheiskopf was practically a hermit, yet Pamela had given him this rich life as a vital genius musician.? Who really knew what he was doing in there?
Lola, on the other hand, had never suffered a lack of male attention.? In fact, she had always received too much of it.? She knew she was sexually attractive from the time she was twelve.? She was long and leggy.? She had wild curly hair and deep brown eyes.? She was high-yellow black, with a taste of American Indian blood in her that gave her an exotic look.? The family legend had it that her great-great-grandfather was a Sioux who had fought at Little Big Horn alongside Crazy Horse.? Lola often felt she had the blood of that long-lost Indian brave singing in her soul.? It was like she could feel him there, approving when she took the bold and courageous road in life, quietly disapproving when she was not brave.?
What would be the brave thing to do here?? To go to the police?? To tell Smoke?
She thought warmly of Smoke - her old man.? He had a way about him, a quiet confidence, that made her want to be with him.? He was handsome, for sure, and the best lover she had ever had.? She remembered the first day she had seen him at the school where she had started working as a teacher's assistant.? All the women there were enthralled with him.? He came to the school because he made toys for the special children, especially the ones who came from poor families.? They were wonderful toys with lights and sounds and big colorful buttons.? The children would laugh and laugh, delighted each time they pressed a button.? And Smoke made the toys for free - the story went that he was a retired engineer and inventor who had made a lot of money and who was now giving of himself.? His eyes had a glint to them as he played with the children, a sparkle that made her think of a slim and wiry Santa Claus.? When her eyes met his, it was there between them the very first time.???
"Young lady," he said.? "If we've met before, and I don't recall the exact day and time, then I must be growing old indeed."
But he was no fighter.? He had a bum leg that he had broken as a child and that had never healed properly.? He could barely walk without his cane.? And there was nothing in his personality that was violent or even aggressive.? In fact, despite his strong hands, and the forearms of a sailor, Smoke was about the gentlest man she had ever met.?
No, she wouldn't tell Smoke about what had happened.? She didn't want to drag him into some kind of showdown he wasn't built for.? If there was any more to what had happened, she could and would handle it herself.
They were just about done putting the dinner together.? Pamela poured a little more
wine in both their glasses.
"So what are you going to do?" she said.?
"I'm going to wait and see," Lola said.? "Okay?"
Lola stared at Pamela, waiting for an answer.? At last, Pamela raised her hands as if she were under arrest.? "Okay.? I'm not going to say anything."
Just then, a key turned in the lock, the door to the apartment opened, and the object of their attention walked in.? Smoke Dugan appeared in the flesh, a dapper grin on his face, his cane in one hand, a paper bag with a loaf of long French bread cradled in the other.
Again Lola realized how happy she was to have him.? Some would say that Lola could have any man she wanted - and that was probably true, as far as it went.? She could have any man for a night or two, any muscle bound young man who wanted her for only one thing.? Smoke wanted that thing, too.? And that was great.? But he wanted more, and he wanted to give more.? The past year, she reflected, had been the fullest, and the happiest year of her life.??
"Ladies," he said.? "Fantasize no more.? The man of your dreams has arrived."?
?
* * *
?
Night in the French Quarter.
The crowds swirled down the narrow streets.? Above them, the lacy ironwork of the Spanish-style balconies were like tropical gardens teeming with ivy, begonias, ferns and young women flashing their breasts to passers-by.? Shouts and laughter, and strings of Mardi Gras beads came from the streets below.? Camera flashbulbs popped.??
Disneyland for drunks, Cruz had heard it called.
He leaned against an ornate light post on Decatur Street, watching the people move along.? He wore khaki pants and a large colorful Hawaiian shirt that hung down below his waistband.? He slowly sipped from a plastic bottle of lime seltzer.
A young guy in gym shorts and a t-shirt peeled off from a group of college kids, boys and girls, all-Americans.? The guy wore a baseball cap backwards.? His shirt - pulled tight to a chest inflated by many hours in the gym - said DON'T MESS WITH TEXAS.? He had a big plastic tumbler of a fruity drink.? He came toward Cruz, stumbling just a bit and grinning.? He was four or five inches taller than Cruz, and probably outweighed him by seventy pounds.? It looked like a lifetime of mild success at sports had convinced the kid he was immortal.? He reminded Cruz of one of those kids he had seen on TV, the ones that threw the cheerleaders in the air at college basketball games.??
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