Night Kites (17 page)

I sighed. “Don’t make things up. You told me yourself you didn’t start noticing me until we talked at Pete’s apartment that morning.”

“That’s what I told you,” she said, “but that wasn’t how it really was. Why would I have planned that whole New York weekend?”

“To see Bruce Springsteen,” I said.

“No. Way before then I knew. I knew that day in the stadium when I tried out for pom-poms? You were a challenge to me because I knew you didn’t like me.”

“Nicki, I feel bad enough,” I said. “I think my nose is broken. I might have a brain concussion. Don’t tell me you had some Machiavellian scheme going to get me away from Dill way back in early September.”

“What’s a Machiavellian scheme?”

“Something characterized by craft and deceit,” I said.

“That describes it perfectly!” She laughed while we went over the drawbridge. “How do you spell that? I want to remember that.”

When we got out of the SAAB, I said, “Where’d all the cars come from?”

“You mean all six cars?” she said. “Holidays we always get a few guests. I remember Thanksgivings we’d be full up. … Are you going to have turkey tomorrow?”

“If they strain some for me, I might get it down,” I said.

She laughed and grabbed my hand. “Anyway, it’s still early. It’s not even midnight, so we can go to Dream Within A Dream, and I’ll make you feel better.”

“Promises, promises.”

“Want to bet I can?” she said, as we headed toward the entrance to Kingdom By The Sea. “We’re going to have turkey tomorrow, too, if our cook is sober. Our new cook looks like Ozzy Osborne.”

She was launched on some story about Ozzy Osborne checking himself into the Betty Ford Clinic to get off drugs and alcohol. She’d read an interview with Ozzy Osborne in
Circus
magazine.

When we got inside, Toledo was out from behind the front desk facing down some short fellow with glasses and black curly hair.

“… that’s when I found out Ozzy was married,” Nicki was saying.

The short fellow was asking Toledo if it was customary to listen to other people’s conversations at the bar.

Nicki whispered to me, “Not only customary, but its Toledo’s only recreation. He’s got radar ears, Daddy says.”

“Nicki?” Toledo said. “Take the desk a minute, will you?”

“Shall I take it upstairs with me?” she said. “We’re going upstairs, Toledo.”

“Just stand here a minute until Cap gets back. This party’s checking out.”

Then Toledo said, “You can wait out in your car,” and the short fellow was all red in the face, staring up at Toledo, but backing away, too.

“Out in your car,” Toledo said, and he got him all the way to the door.

Nicki was standing by the desk in her jacket with the traffic accident on the back, putting out a cigarette in the ashtray.

Toledo went outside with the fellow.

Nicki just said, “Shall we get some Cokes from the bar to take up with us, Eri?” as though that sort of thing went on all the time.

So I shrugged and said I’d rather have some ice, for an ice pack.

Nicki reached up and played with the little crocodile I had around my neck, looked all over my eyes, and said, “The ice would only melt? You know, Eri?” and the way she looked at me, and the way she said it, proved she could make me feel a lot better.

I could hear Billy Ocean’s “Loverboy” playing in the bar. Nicki was smiling at me. I was thinking of how I’d like to spend all night up in Dream Within A Dream.

Then Toledo lumbered back inside and came over to us, wiping his mouth first with the back of his hand, then with the front, as though he was getting rid of any awful remnants left of something gross.

Toledo said, “These two guys register, go to the bar, have an argument in there about going someplace tomorrow where some guy has that AIDS disease. Four-eyes there”—pointing his thumb over his shoulder at the door—“doesn’t want to go. His friend tells him to stay here, and he’ll come back after dinner and get him.”

Nicki was shrugging off the information when I heard the familiar Oklahoma twang, and saw Cap starting down the spiral stairs, with Marty Olivetti following him, carrying suitcases.

“… doesn’t matter if we overheard it,” Cap was saying. “We’re asking you to go peacefully. I don’t want to fight. The bar bill’s on us. Okay? We can’t have anything to do with anyone visiting someplace where there’s that disease.”

That was the point when Marty looked down and saw me.

That was when he said, “Erick?”

“Hi, Marty!”

“I didn’t think I was going to see you until tomorrow!” he said. “What the hell are you doing here?”

He pronounced it “hail.”

As he got closer, he did a double take when he saw my swollen face. “Did someone beat up on
you?
Who got you involved in this thing?”

He pronounced it “thang.”

I took a very deep breath and then, slowly, began letting it all out.

I
TOOK MARTY HOME
with me that night, and he stayed in Pete’s old room.

Shawn drove their Buick back to Connecticut.

“I shouldn’t have sprung it on Shawn at the last minute,” Marty said. “I kept putting off telling him about Pete. Shawn’s a hypochondriac, anyway. AIDS scares the shit out of him. I don’t want Pete to know anything about this, Erick.”

I told Marty I didn’t want my family to know about Nicki, or my fight with Jack.

Together we concocted a story to explain how I got beat up, and how I’d connected with Marty.

I said there was a fight at the Ring Dance, caused by some drunken kids from Holy Family High, who’d crashed it. I said I’d chased them all the way out to Kingdom By The Sea in the SAAB. Then I’d found Marty, who’d come in by train and taxied out there without a reservation, only to find them all booked.

“I didn’t even know that tacky place was still in business!” Mom said.

Marty said, “Well, it was its name that attracted me to it. I wrote my masters on symbolism in Poe. When I saw the place, it looked like it was right out of Poe, too!”

Then Marty went up to see Pete and Jim, in Pete’s apartment, and Mom insisted on cleaning up my face with a warm, wet washcloth.

Dad was in his study, on the telephone with Dr. Kerin. Pete had reacted badly to his last round of chemotherapy.

“What happened to Dill?” Mom wanted to know.

“She’s sort of mad at me, Mom.”

“I can hardly blame her. Since when do you go looking for a fight?”

“It’s a long story, Mom. I’ll tell you someday, okay?”

“Why didn’t Jack help you? Oh, I forgot. He doesn’t like dances.”

“Ow!” I complained. “That hurts!”

“Sorry…. Do you really think Shawn went to his family’s?”

“Why wouldn’t he?”

“I’m just oversensitive, I guess. Something about the way Marty’s eyes blinked fast when he said Shawn couldn’t come. When I talked to him on the phone, he said they wouldn’t miss it for anything. He said Shawn and he had just finished discussing what they’d do for Thanksgiving, and they hadn’t made any plans.”

“It doesn’t matter, Mom.”

“It matters—but I’m going to try to put all that out of my mind. Something happened tonight that’s upset us all.”

“I know. Grandpa Rudd said he’s not coming for Christmas.”

“Not that, honey. I hired two women from All Jobs to help me tomorrow. The manager called tonight to say Mrs. Tompkins had applied there, saying she quit here after twenty years because there was someone living here with AIDS. Mrs. Tompkins wanted it kept confidential, but the manager felt he couldn’t send anyone out to us…. Pete took the call.”

“I thought Mrs. Tompkins was going to Ohio to live?”

“Apparently she decided against it…. Poor Pete took the call.”

“You said that. Well? What did Pete say?”

“He looked crushed. Then Jim arrived. We haven’t had time to discuss it…. Your right eye looks just awful, Erick!”

“I’ll be fine.”

“So I suppose word is out now. It was bound to happen eventually. I’d hoped we’d have more time before it all came down on us. You should have seen Pete’s
face
.”

“I’m glad I didn’t.” I kept seeing the look on Nicki’s face when I told Cap that yes, Marty was visiting us—it was my brother who had AIDS.

It was a strange look, almost like the expression that would come on her face when you were telling her something and she was trying to listen to a song at the same time, eyes sort of glazed over, not responding to what you were saying. I kept watching her while Cap said how sorry he was to hear about my brother, but I could understand his position, couldn’t I?

I don’t know what I answered. Marty said something in an angry tone, but it didn’t register with me. I kept trying for eye contact with Nicki. She wouldn’t look at me until I started toward the door, turned around, and said I’d call her when I got home.

“Yes,” she said. She sounded dazed, distant.

After Mom finished going over my face with the wet washcloth, I went up to my room and dialed Nicki’s number.

She was crying.

“Daddy doesn’t want you here,” she said. “He says you never should have gone in the pool with something like that in your family.”

“It’s not in my family,” I said. “Just my brother has it.”

“Why didn’t you tell me, Eri?”

I couldn’t think of an answer.

“Daddy says if anyone ever found out you went swimming in City By The Sea, we’d be ruined!”

“
I
don’t have it!” I said. “Nicki?”

“What?”

“
I
don’t have it, for God’s sake!”

“You could have it without knowing it, and give it to someone else. Daddy read that in a newspaper.”

“That’s not true, Nicki. I can show you that in black and white!”

“Maybe
I
could get it now.”

“
I
don’t have it, Nicki! Pete has it, and I can’t catch it from Pete! Do you think I’d do that to you?” I asked her. “I love you. Do you think if I could give it to you I’d—”

She didn’t let me finish. “You should have told me, Eri.”

“I didn’t tell you anything about my family. You don’t like all that family-around-the-table crap. You told me that yourself.”

“This isn’t family-around-the-table. This is something in your family I have a right to know about, Eri. Eri? Do you know what I think?”

I didn’t want to hear what she thought. I had a dread of what she’d say next.

She said, “I think you chose me so you could hide out from all of them.”

“I did what?” I’d heard her.

“You chose me so you didn’t have to ever talk to Jack again, or tell Jack and Dill about your brother. They don’t know, do they?”

I pressed the mouthpiece of the phone to my chin without saying anything into it. I started a cut by my mouth bleeding again, I did it so hard.

Nicki said, “None of them know, do they? That’s why you chose me.”

“I thought you chose me,” I said. There were tears rolling down my cheeks.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” she said. “Once.”

“Nicki?” I tried to keep my voice level. “I’d like to bring out a pamphlet about this thing. It explains that you can’t get it from casual contact.”

“Casual contact,” she said sarcastically.

“
I
don’t have it!”

“Does that, pamphlet explain why you didn’t tell someone you supposedly loved that it’s in your family?”

“No,” I said, “it doesn’t explain that…. I’ll try to explain that.”

“I don’t see how you can,” she said. “I want to hang up, Eri.”

I knew she was crying, too.

“Can I come out later tomorrow?” I asked her.

“Daddy doesn’t want you here.”

“Can we meet somewhere?”

“Not tomorrow, Eri.”

Then she said, “I loved you.”

Love in the past tense. Then the click, and the dial tone.

I don’t remember much about that Thanksgiving dinner.

I do remember Jim Stanley hitting the side of his wine glass with his knife, at the start. “I want to propose a toast!”

He stood up. “Let’s be thankful for all the good times—they were the best of times! Let’s be thankful for all the good friends—they are the best of friends! I drink to sweet memories and to today! I drink to the Rudds! I drink to Pete’s friends: Marty and Stan and Tina … and I drink to Pete! … Oh, and let’s be thankful that Pete’s kid brother isn’t in top form this Thanksgiving dinner, because I’ve seen him eat, and
forget
second helpings for the rest of us if Erick was himself today!”

Everyone laughed and raised their glasses to clink them together.

And I remember the point when Dad spoke up. “Erick’s little run-in last night reminds me of an Irish joke your friend, Shawn, would have appreciated, Marty.”

Dad must have gotten his Irish jokes out of mothballs the moment he’d heard someone named Shawn was invited to dinner.

I said, “Oh, he’s not going to tell a joke, Pete! Oh, it’s going to hurt more than my poor bones do!” I was forcing myself to get into the spirit of things, remembering Mom’s saying earlier that it could be Pete’s last Thanksgiving.

“How does a newspaper story about an Irish social event begin?” Dad persisted.

“How
does
a newspaper story about an Irish social event begin?” Marty said.

“It begins, ‘Among the injured were …’”

Dad followed that with a joke about how tough Malone’s wife was (she could knit barbed wire with two crowbars!) and another about an Irish psychiatrist who used a Murphy bed instead of a couch.

I looked down at the end of the table where Pete was sitting. Our eyes met, and he rolled his to the ceiling. I wondered if he was remembering the night on the beach long ago, when we talked together about why Dad always told jokes in social situations—the same night Pete made that kite that took off in the darkness, blinking out over the ocean, its phosphorescent tail glowing under the stars.

My last memory of that Thanksgiving meal is Pete standing to make a toast at the end.

It came after the dessert course, for which Mom had opened another bottle of champagne.

Pete wasn’t drinking, but he stood up with a full glass, thin and pale in his navy-blue suit, white shirt, and blue-and-white-striped tie. He held the glass up, and the light from the chandelier and the candles sparkled against the crystal.