Well, Chico thinks, // could have been slow, and he thinks of his grandfather. Hospital smells. Pretty young nurses bearing bedpans. A last papery breath. Were there any good
ways?
He shivers and wonders about God. He touches the small silver St Christopher’s medal
that hangs on a chain around his neck. He is not a Catholic and he’s surely not a Mexican:
his real name is Edward May and his friends all call him Chico because his hair is black
and he greases it back with Brylcreem and he wears boots with pointed toes and Cuban
heels. Not Catholic, but he wears this medallion. Maybe if Johnny had been wearing one,
the runaway Mustang would have missed him. You never knew.
He smokes and stares out the window and behind him the girl gets out of bed and
comes to him quickly, almost mincing, maybe afraid he will turn around and look at her.
She puts a warm hand on his back. Her breasts push against his side. Her belly touches
his buttock.
‘Oh. It is cold.’
‘It’s this place.’
‘Do you love me, Chico?’
‘You bet!’ he says offhandedly, and then, more seriously: ‘You were cherry.’
‘What does that-‘
‘You were a virgin.’
The hand reaches higher. One finger traces the skin on the nape of his neck. ‘I said,
didn’t I?’
‘Was it hard? Did it hurt?’
She laughs. ‘No. But I was scared.’
They watch the rain. A new Oldsmobile goes by on 14, spraying up water.
‘Stud City,’ Chico says.
‘What?’
‘That guy. He’s going Stud City. In his new stud car.’
She kisses the place her finger has been touching gently and he brushes at her as if she
were a fly.
‘What’s the matter?’
He turns to her. Her eyes flick down to his penis and then up again hastily. Her arms
twitch to cover herself, and then she remembers that they never do stuff like that in the
movies and she drops them to her sides again. Her hair is black and her skin is winter
white, the colour of cream. He breasts are firm, her belly perhaps a little too soft. One
flaw to remind, Chico thinks, that this isn’t the movies.
‘Jane?’
‘What?’ He can feel himself getting ready. Not beginning, but getting ready.
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘We’re friends.’ He eyes her deliberately, letting himself reach at
her in all sorts of ways. When he looks at her face again, it is flushed. ‘Do you mind me
looking at you?’
‘I…no.No,Chico.’
She steps back, closes her eyes, sits on the bed, and leans back, legs spread. He sees all
of her. The muscles, the little muscles on the inside of her thighs … they’re jumping,
uncontrolled, and this suddenly excites him more than the taut cones of her breasts or the
mild pink pearl of her cunt. Excitement trembles in him, some stupid Bozo on a spring.
Love may be as divine as the poets say, he thinks, but sex is Bozo the clown bouncing
around on a spring. How could a woman look at an erect penis without going off into mad
gales of laughter?
The rain beats against the roof, against the window, against the sodden cardboard patch
blocking the glassless lower pane. He presses his hand against his chest, looking for a
moment like a stage Roman about to orate. His hand is cold. He drops it to his side.
‘Open your eyes. We’re friends, I said.’
Obediently, she opens them. She looks at him. Her eyes appear violet now. The
rainwater running down the window makes rippling patterns on her face, her neck, her
breasts. Stretched across the bed, her belly has been pulled tight. She is perfect in her
moment.
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Oh Chico, it feels so funny,’ A shiver goes through her. She has curled her toes involuntarily. He can see the insteps of her feet. Her insteps are pink. ‘Chico.
Chico.’
He steps towards her. His body is shivering and her eyes widen. She says something,
one word, but he can’t tell what it is. This isn’t the time to ask. He half-kneels before her
for just a second, looking at the floor with frowning concentration, touching her legs just
above the knees. He measures the tide within himself. Its pull is thoughtless, fantastic. He
pauses a little longer.
The only sound is the tinny tick of the alarm clock on the bedtable, standing brassy-
legged atop a pile of Spiderman comic books. Her breathing flutters faster and faster. His muscles slide smoothly as he dives upward and forward. They begin. It’s better this time.
Outside, the rain goes on washing away the snow.
A half-hour later Chico shakes her out of a light doze. ‘We gotta move,’ he says. ‘Dad
and Virginia will be home pretty quick.’
She looks at her wristwatch and sits up. This time she makes no attempt to shield
herself. Her whole tone – her body English – has changed. She has not matured (although
she probably believes she has) nor learned anything more complex than tying a shoe, but
her tone has changed just the same. He nods and she smiles tentatively at him. He reaches
for the cigarettes on the bedtable. As she draws on her panties, he thinks of a line from an
old novelty song: Keep playin’ till I shoot through, Blue … play your didgeridoo. ‘Tie Me Kangaroo Down’, by Rolf Harris. He grins. That was a song Johnny used to sing. It ended,
So we tanned his hide when he died, Clyde, and that’s it hanging on the shed.
She hooks her bra and begins buttoning her blouse. ‘What are you smiling about,
Chico?’
‘Nothing,’ he says.
‘Zip me up?’
He goes to her, still naked, and zips her up. He kisses her cheek. ‘Go on in the
bathroom and do your face if you want,’ he says. ‘Just don’t take too long, okay?’
She goes up the hall gracefully, and Chico watches her, smoking. She is a tall girl –
taller than he – and she has to duck her head a little going through the bathroom door.
Chico finds his underpants under the bed. He puts them in the dirty clothes bag hanging
just inside the closet door, and gets another pair from the bureau. He puts them on, and
then, while walking back to the bed, he slips and almost falls in a patch of wetness the
square of cardboard has let in.
‘Goddam,’ he whispers resentfully.
He looks around at the room, which had been Johnny’s until Johnny died (why did I tell
her he was in the Army, for Christ’s sake! he wonders … a little uneasily). Fibreboard walls, so thin he can hear Dad and Virginia going at it at night, that don’t quite make it all
the way to the ceiling. The floor has a slightly crazy hipshot angle so that the room’s door
will only stay open if you block it open — if you forget, it swings stealthily closed as
soon as your back is turned. On the far wall is a movie poster from Easy Rider – Two Men
Went Looking for America and Couldn’t Find it Anywhere. The room had more life when
Johnny lived here. Chico doesn’t know how or why, only that it’s true. And he knows
something else, as well. He knows that sometimes the room spooks him at night.
Sometimes he thinks that the closet door will swing open and Johnny will be standing
there, his body charred and twisted and blackened, his teeth yellow dentures poking out of
wax that has partially melted and re-hardened; and Johnny will be whispering: Get out of
my room, Chico. And if you lay a hand on my Dodge, I’ll fuckin’ kill you. Got it?
Got it, bro, Chico thinks.
For a moment he stands still, looking at the rumpled sheet spotted with the girl’s blood,
and then he spreads the blankets up in one quick gesture. Here. Right here. How do you
like that, Virginia? How does that grab your snatch? He puts on his pants, his engineer
boots, finds a sweater.
He’s dry-combing his hair in front of the mirror when she comes out of the John. She
looks classy. Her too-soft stomach doesn’t show in the jumper. She looks at the bed, does
a couple of things to it, and it comes out looking made instead of just spread up.
‘Good,’ Chico says.
She laughs a little self-consciously and pushes a lock of hair behind her ear. It is an
evocative, poignant gesture.
‘Let’s go,’ he says.
They go out through the hall and the living room. Jane pauses in front of the tinted
studio photograph on top of the TV. It shows his father and Virginia, a high-school-age
Johnny, a grammar-school-age Chico, and an infant Billy -in the picture, Johnny is
holding Billy. All of them have fixed, stoned grins … all except Virginia, whose face is its