“She owes you what?” a voice said off to the side. It was loud and male and registered as someone I knew, although I was so flustered I couldn’t put a name to it.
“My fare,” the cabby said. “I picked her up over in Logan Heights and she’s short ...” he hesitated, apparently taking the measure of other person “... two bucks.”
I whirled around to face the driver. “Two bucks? No, less than that, fifty cents maximum, if you count in a tip,” I said, “and giving you a tip after the way you went around Robin Hood’s barn to get here ...”
“So he’s the Sheriff of Nottingham trying a little extortion? What does that make you, Annie? Maid Marion? ”The voice was right next to me, and when I turned I saw that it belonged to R.J. He was fishing in his pockets. “Fifty cents? That’s what you want, my man? Here you go.” And he threw a handful of change at the cabby, who immediately began to scrabble on the ground. “Now get out of here,” R.J. said. “This is a private party.”
The driver, red-faced, stood up. “Listen, kid,” he said. “I ought to teach you a few manners.” But he looked around at the others, standing around, beer bottles in hand, and he thought better of it. He got back in the cab and blasted off down the street toward Naragansett.
“Lucky for him there was nobody coming,” R.J. said.
“Lucky for me you were here,” I said. I was shivering now, teeth chattering, arms bumpy with gooseflesh.
R.J. looked at me for just a beat longer than necessary. “If you say so,” he said finally. Then he noticed how I was shaking. “Come on inside. You’ll freeze out here.”
Inside it was too hot from too many folks packed into the Frasers’ little house. Before we bought our house, we’d lived in one like it: a two-bedroom cottage built before World War II. Gus’s folks had bought their home after the war, when his dad went to work for Convair. Over the years Mr. Fraser added on two more bedrooms and a family room to the back of the house so that the lot was nearly filled. But Mrs. Fraser had found room for oranges and grapefruit overgrown with bougainvillea and cup-of-gold vines. Inside, the house was full of heavy-duty over-stuffed chairs and sofas. Everything was nicked and scraped from collisions between boys and wood.
Only the tiny bedroom off the entry hall was different. That’s where Mrs. Fraser had her horoscope paraphernalia: her charts, her books, her worksheets. She also had a teak desk, and a matching black upholstered office chair was set facing Mr. Fraser’s Lazy Boy. They had taken over the room two years before when Gary, Gus’s oldest brother, moved out and got married. Gus said his parents didn’t cry at Gary’s wedding because they were so glad to claim the room.
It was off-limits for the party. The door didn’t have a lock, but Gus had taped “Entrance Prohibited” signs all over it, and Jeff, the oldest of his brothers still at home, stationed himself by the door for the first hour or so to warn off folks in search of a little quiet. “My mother would rather you slept in her bed than you messed with her stuff,” he said again and again. “I mean, don’t go in their bedroom either, but for God’s sake stay out of their den.”
By the time R.J. led me inside, the living room, kitchen, and the two bedrooms the boys shared were full of folks. Music was blasting from the hi-fi set up near the sliding glass doors, which led to the small deck in back. Folks were dancing out there as well as in the living room. Bottles of various sorts covered the table and counters in the kitchen. Cases already refilling with empties stood along the wall, and cigarette smoke had turned the air grey.
The warmth felt good to me. R.J. told me to wait for him in the hall while he got me something to drink, and I leaned against the wall, getting my bearings. Gus saw me standing there and pushed his way through the mass of people: “Hey, Annie-baby, where’s your friend?”
“Which one?” I asked. “Danny couldn’t make it, and R.J. just headed that way.” I pointed toward the kitchen.
“R.J.? R.J., of course, R.J. But I thought you were coming with your boyfriend.”
“If you mean Danny, he decided not to come,” I said.
“And R.J.’s getting you something?” Gus grinned. “Ah yes, I understand.” He leaned over and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Good, good. Be nice to the poor guy, life’s complicated for him these days.”
R.J. came up then, too late to hear what Gus was saying but in time to see the kiss. “Thought you were spreading yourself around,” he said to Gus. “Not going to get involved with anybody, no playing favourites.”
“Hey, man,” Gus said as he stepped backwards. “She has her own stuff going for her, and ...” He took my hand and raised it to his lips like some guy in an old movie. “I’m just one of her many, many admirers.” Then he left us alone.
We didn’t stay very long at the party. R.J. didn’t have a car—he’d walked to the party, he’d always walked to Gus’s house ever since he was old enough for his mother to trust him to cross the street safely—so he walked me home, the long way around.
The next morning when I woke up I felt good. At first I had no idea why. It was as if my room was full of low-level excitement the way it was full of filtered light. “Suffused” was one word I thought of. “Glowing” was another. For a moment I lay on my back with my hands spread flat on the tops of my thighs under the covers and took it all in through wide-open eyes.
The house was quiet. Not surprising for a Saturday morning. My brothers were either at work or not up yet, and my mother would be at the supermarket. Even though she had plenty of time to shop for groceries during the week, she liked to be one of the first to hit DeFalco’s on Saturdays. The produce was always better then, she said. They kept their best meat for Saturday too.
She would have left things for me to do, but I was in no hurry to do them. I stretched my legs under the sheet and brought my hands up along my belly to my breasts. My nightgown had bunched up as I turned in my sleep so that it was around my waist. I tried to remember what I’d been dreaming about, how I might have moved during my dreams, but I could not. All that remained was the feeling of satisfaction.
Which was related to R.J., I knew. To his seriousness, and his kindness, and his grey-green eyes. To the way he had stood with me on the front steps, leaning toward me and then turning away before he kissed me, as if he thought that he should not attempt anything so quickly.
I found myself running my tongue lightly over my lips. I almost had reached up to kiss him, but I hadn’t, out of fear of ... what? Appearing to be more forward, less virtuous than I was? Probably. There was something about him that made me feel out of my depth.
He would not understand parts of me, I was sure. He would not imagine the sorts of things that happened in my dreams—in my daydreams.
I ran my hand down the front of my body, from just above my right breast across my belly to where my legs met in curly hair and secret places whose names I knew but had never said aloud.
Danny had touched me there, as we sat in his car the week before, parked in the driveway at my house. His hand had worked its way slowly up my leg, his fingers had fiddled with the elastic on my underpants. I had shivered and felt ... I don’t know. Slippery and yearning, I’d say now, but then I didn’t have those words either.
But nothing more than that had happened. Nothing more. I had moved and cried out, and suddenly Danny was sitting up, adjusting his shirt and trousers, mumbling angrily to himself. “Stupid to get involved with somebody’s goody-goody sister,” I heard him say.
He’d kissed me after that, and pressed me close to him as we stood on the front porch before going in my house. But once inside, once in the family room, with my father asleep on the couch in front of the television and my mother playing cards with my oldest brother and two of his friends, there was nothing more.
I had not been sure if I’d been glad of that. I had not worked