“You make out with Bernadette?” Tom wanted to know.

“So?”

“She’s cute, huh?” He draped an arm around Peter’s neck, and slapped him on the belly. Peter nearly stumbled as they tramped across the fallen metal fence making their way out of the park.

“She’s okay.” Peter shrugged, trying to play down his conquest, but smiling despite himself.

“She’s part Spic,” Mick spat. He stopped to light a cigarette. “Case you couldn’t tell.”

Tom scanned Peter’s face for a reaction. “That’s bullshit. She’s French or something.” Tom jerked a shoulder forward, ushering Peter closer. “She’s Ria’s friend.”

“Ria’s half Guinea,” Mick coughed. “She ain’t too choosy.” Mick leaned back against a parked car, flicking ashes from his cigarette. His thumb twitched against the filter. Tom’s big hands dug into his hips. The two boys stared like wingless, concrete birds from their separate perches.

“Doesn’t matter,” Peter said finally. “They’re just something to do.” He looked down the narrow side street to the brightly lit boulevard. “C’mon, we gotta get home.”

The boys walked along not talking. Tom plowed ahead, and Peter felt no desire to match his stride. He also didn’t want to fall back with Mick and breath smoke while he walked. As they passed Julies’ Pizza, they were cut off by a bicycle that hopped the curb and wobbled to an awkward stop against a pile of plastic garbage bags.

“Yo, Sully, Sully!” the rider yelled. He hopped and jerked his bike out of the garbage pile, lurching around to face them. Peter recognized Shane Murphy, now a head taller than he’d been when they were in eighth grade together.

“You ridin’ stoned?” Tom laughed.

“Always!”

“Some jig’s gonna jump you for that bike,” Mick said.

“They can jump this.” Shane pulled a lead pipe from the frame and swung it over his head. “Come on, jigaboos! Come on!”

The boys jumped back, as Shane tottered and spilled, sprawling himself on the sidewalk. Peter righted the bike and Tom gave him a hand up.

“Sully, been lookin’ for you,” Shane laughed, grabbing Tom by the shoulders. “Want my job?”

“You shittin’?”

“I got full time over the Pathmark. Days, too. I’m a be out every night, getin’ fuckin’ loaded.”

“Shit.”

“So I’m a give up the delivery job. You want?”

Tom nodded. Speechless. Shane’s job was delivering for a liquor store over Sip Avenue. He worked four nights a week for four hours, riding a bike with cases of beer loaded in the front basket. It was only a couple of bucks an hour, but he got tips and had a few neighborhood kids who paid him to cop.

“You come in tomorrow, I’ll fix you up.”

“Shit, yeah.”

“You gotta be cool, though. Don’t go coppin’ for every punk around. An’ fuck those Jewett guys. Do it once, they think they own you.”

“One thing though,” Tom laughed. “We won’t need fuckin’ Slats.”

“That’s a sad case fuckin’ junkie,” Shane groaned. “Comes in the store. Cryin’ for a bone. Fuckin’ sad. Know who you should cop for? Some those Highland girls.”

“We were there tonight,” Peter said.

“No shit?”

“Jewett crowd showed up.”

“Fuck them.” Shane pounded his back tire with the lead pipe. He flipped the pipe in the air, flailing to catch it, but knocking it toward the street. Mick stuck out a foot and trapped it. He picked it up.

“You go with any?” Shane asked. Mick dropped the pipe into Shane’s hand.

“You know Bernadette, right?” Mick asked.

“Bernadette’s nice.”

“She’s PR, right?”

“I don’t know. Maybe some. Heard she’s French, German, Irish, and…fuckin’ Portuguese.”

“Fuckin’ Portuguese. That’s Spic enough,” Mick laughed.

“Why don’t you get off that?” Tom barked.

“Let him yap,” Peter said.

“Tell you what,” Shane said, “She might be PR, but them are sweet tits she got. Good for the squeezin’.”

“Pete’s goin’ with her,” Tom announced.

“Professor? No shit.” Shane nodded with approval.“You get tit?”

“We made out.”

“’Cause I heard she’s tight,” Shane said. “But I seen her in that tube top an’ she don’t look tight.”

“Well, I don’t know.” Peter said. “I didn’t try.”

“First time,” Tom said.

Shane nodded smiling. “Yeah, don’t go grabbin’ for her tits the first time you make out with her. Big mistake.”

“That’s why fuckin’ Pro can’t get no girl!” Tom laughed.

Mick dropped his cigarette and crushed it out with his toe as the boys laughed.

“Pro’s got all that porn his old man brings home! Been goin’ for tit since sixth grade!”

“Ah, man, chicks ain’t like that,” Shane sighed. “I mean, they’ll do it, but it takes time. Fuckin’ ball-bustin’ eternity!”

“Yeah, well, fuck them,” Mick spat. He exhaled a gray stream. “I’m dyin’ young.”

***

Peter sat on the porch steps waiting for Mick, and squinting into the glare of the sun, which jabbed and poked through the Sullivan’s sycamore. It still shone a cautionary yellow, but the shadows were lengthening across the breadth of the cobblestone street, and with them Peter’s longing expanded, reaching a mass he feared would crush his chest and pierce his heart. It had been three days since they’d been over to Highland Avenue, since he’d kissed Bernadette and held her in the moist dark of the park night. Three days of yearning had followed, until the girl Peter had claimed was just something to do, was crowding out every other thought and subsuming every other desire.

Tom had taken Shane Murphy’s job at the Sip Avenue liquor store, and had worked five to nine the last two nights. Tom nixed any idea going to Highland during the day. It would look too desperate. It was pointless for Peter to go by himself, since he had no idea where Bernadette lived, and if anyone caught him wandering those streets aimlessly, he’d be absolutely mortified. Peter refused to admit any fear of the Jewett gang. But it was on his mind that he wouldn’t be safe going over there alone. Or with only Mick. And it wasn’t worth facing that hassle for a girl. Peter refused to make a big deal out of wanting to be with her. He didn’t want to give her that hold over him. And he didn’t want anyone to know he had these feelings. So he was left with an aching memory of Bernadette, not only of their night together, but of a whole summer of nights he had imagined which now might never come true.

But Tom had promised tonight would be the night. He’d cop some beer for the three of them and after getting their buzz, they’d head over to Highland. So Peter sat, agonizing at the slow pace of darkness.

Peter’s mother opened the front door and stuck her head out. She blew a plume of smoke over his head. “You’re not going out, are you?”

“What?” he groaned, as in “What now?” Peter had recently adopted his father’s attitude in dealing with his mother. She sat on a ledge, the smoke spidering around her. Peter turned his back on the sight and the stench.

“Michael’s working tonight. What are you going to do with your friend working?”

Peter hopped down three stairs, and leaned against the banister. “I got other friends.” His mother didn’t like Mick. Thought he was creepy. “Anyway, Tom only works ‘til nine.”

“How late are you planning on staying out?”

“It’s summer, right?”

“Must be. Lazy days of summer. For some.” She burrowed her eyes into him. “S’posed to rain later.”

“Shower maybe.”

“You gonna be indoors somewhere?”

“I know enough to come outta the rain.”

“I wonder.”

Peter’s father stepped through the door, open shirt blousing in the breeze. A huge belly jutted forward. “Hail, Seaver!” he saluted. “Two strikeouts in the first.”

Peter cringed as his father’s heavy bass reverberated throughout the neighborhood. Peter couldn’t say what he hated more, the old man’s pretension of being neighborhood Ringmaster or the obscene, protruding gut.

“Kingman’s coming up against Carlton,” he boomed.

“Alright,” Peter groaned, climbing the stairs. “But he’s just gonna whiff.” As he reached the front door, Peter felt his mother’s eyes burning into his back.

“Going in?”

Peter didn’t answer; he just made his way to the living room where the game was playing loud and grey-toned figures took practice swings at sheets of white static dashes. Peter adjusted the rabbit ears, banishing ghosts, which returned again as soon as he turned his back to sit.

“That’s the best you’ll get it,” his father groaned as he lowered his girth into his recliner. Peter flopped on the couch in time to see Sky King overswing on a nasty slider and nearly spin his six and a half foot frame to the ground.

“Ooh,” his dad winced.

The next pitch was a high hard one that Kingman laid off. It caught the corner for strike two. Peter was distracted by his mother, entering and standing behind the couch. He made the mistake of glancing back at her and got the nothing to do, I’ll give you something to do glare. Peter snapped his head back to the TV screen. She crushed out her cigarette and walked to the dining room.

Stupid, Peter thought, why the hell did I come back in? What, am I nine years old, that I need to see a baseball game, not even a game but one at bat? Was Kingman so great? He’d hit twenty-nine homers with the Giants a couple of years ago and had gone downhill from there, so far that the Mets had been able to pick him off the scrap heap for a hundred thousand dollars. Then this spring he’d looked like a world-beater and the answer to an anemic offense that consistently wasted the best pitching in the league. His dad swore this would be “bigger than the Clendennon trade in ’69, and we all how that worked out!” The Mets had gone on to win the World Series and Donn Clendennon had been the Series MVP. But as Kingman got back into the batter’s box, leaned over the plate and stared Steve Carlton down, all Peter could think was I should leave now. Run. Get down to Mick’s apartment and drag him out. Get the hell over to Highland.

Carlton stepped off, rubbed up the ball.

“Garbage is full,” his mother barked.

“In a minute.”

Carlton toed the rubber.

“It’s always in a minute with you,” she shrieked. “But if dinner is ever one minute late…”

“It’s one at bat!”

“‘I’m starving’, you say! ‘I’m staaaarving!’”

Carlton broke off another slider and Kingman swung awkwardly, scraping his bat in the dirt for strike three.

“Three pitches!’ Peter groaned. He got off the couch and headed toward the dining room.

“Game ain’t over,” his father said.

“Guy’s a fraud. He’ll never break .250.”

“He’ll hit fifty homers!” his dad proclaimed.

“Yeah, sure.” Peter bent over the garbage and pulled the plastic bag up over the lip of the can. His mother hovered over him. “Got a twist tie?” he asked her.

“No.”

Peter sighed and twisted the top folds of the bag. His mother grabbed him by the hair and pulled. “You want me to do everything, do you?” Peter lurched forward, bumping his knees on the can and almost toppling it. His mother held his head down by the hair and with her free hand grabbed at his head, scratching his ear and smacking him in the face. “Lazy son of a bitch!”

Peter grabbed at her fingers and tried to get his hair free.

“Don’t you touch me! Animal!” she screamed.

“Peg! What the hell do you want?” his father bellowed. “He’s takin’ out the damn garbage, what more do you want?”

She let go. She turned and walked into the kitchen. Peter smoothed his hair back over his head.

“C’mon, get it out,” his father barked.

“I need…” Peter hesitated. He was tearing up and didn’t want his voice to crack. “I need a tie.”

“Goddamn it, just knot the damn bag and put it outside. Geesh.” His father lowered himself back into his recliner.

Peter pulled the plastic bag out of the can and spun it so the neck of the bag twisted. His mother came out from the kitchen and handed him a twist tie.

“Here.”

Peter took the tie and carried the bag out through the living room, down the porch steps and into the alley. He dropped the bag into the plastic can and stared into the dust that rose out of it. The front door clicked and Peter froze, until he saw from the corner of his eye that it was only Caroline, his sister, done with her chores and making her escape.

“She go nuts on you?”

“So?”

“Sorry.”

“What do you care?”

Caroline stepped down the stairs gingerly. “I said something to Tara. Tara told her.”

“What?”

“You got a girl.”

Peter’s stomach dropped. “I got nothin’.”

“Yeah. Me neither.” She fumbled through her purse for the car keys. “Word gets around, okay? Beer, girls, whatever.”

“Yeah.”

“Just handle yourself, okay? And stay away from assholes.” She clumped down the stairs with her heavy platform shoes clacking. Where was Mick? Peter needed to get off the block, at least walk down the Boulevard, maybe cut through the park down to the water, or just hang at the fenced-off vacant lot on upper Sip where Sully had said he’d bring the beer at eight thirty. As Caroline eased the family car out from the curb, Peter looked down the block and saw Mick round the corner. He trotted out of the alley, shoulders slumped and hands in pockets, over to cut him off.

“Where you been?”

“Fuckin’ had to work.”

“What work? You’re a half-hour late.”

“Work, okay? Had to scrub the kitchen floor.” He took out a pack of cigarettes and started slapping the top against the back of his hand.

“Seven thirty, you gotta scrub the fuckin’ kitchen?”

Mick shook the soft pack like the I Ching until a single butt wormed its way out. He pulled a butt from the pack with tight lips. “I’m fuckin’ here, okay, what’s your prob?”

“I got a problem hanging out with a pussy’s got housework to do. Tell ‘em you’ll do it later, you dickless queer.”

“Hey, when the fucker comes home fuckin’ drunk off his ass…”

“Yeah, right.”

“Fuck you. You don’t get it.”

“What? How you gotta be the fairy queen housewife? What, you ain’t a faggot ‘cause you got all daddy’s porn? Your still a fuckin’ fag.”

Mick took the unlit cigarette from his mouth and was ready to bark something, but Peter popped him in the face. His head snapped back, his eyes squeezed shut, sharp crows in the corners. Peter flexed his fist, the sensation of striking still fresh on the ridge of knuckles. Mick dropped his head and passed a hand under his nose.

“What, are you gonna cry?”

Mick coughed. Shook his head.

“What the fuck…” Peter mumbled.

Mick dropped his hands. “You’re an asshole, Peter.” His midsection was open and Peter hit him with a straight left. Mick went down to one knee.

“Why are you such a pussy?” Peter whispered. He stepped past Mick and kept walking, where he wasn’t sure. He just needed to get off the block. Part of him wanted to go back, help Mick up off the sidewalk. Tell him somethin’. But it was complicated. There’s just a way of dealing with things and either you dealt or you didn’t. And if you can’t deal, then don’t mess everyone else up with your fuckin’ problems. Mick wouldn’t understand.