Wow girls
Alcestes is sad and crying. His father hit him for crossing Ocean Avenue by himself. He scampered between the moving cars, daring them to run him over. He stood right in the middle on the white line. Cabs and convertibles whizzed by in both directions. The stares and harsh shouts of drivers all directed at him. One punky smartass with a gleam in his wicked eye seemed to aim his big finned machine right at Alcestes, but just before impact swerved, tauntingly. A funeral procession drove by, cars with lights on although it was day, and inside you could see sad faces and dark clothes. There was a succession of honks as though that might alleviate the somber mood. But Alcestes’ dare turned to fearfulness as he lost his nerve and wanted out. But now he was stuck! I watched from the sidewalk, my heart beating as fast as Alcestes was because I felt his terror.
Alcestes is crying now because his father, standing outside the doorway, wiggled his forefinger, summoning him with that simple gesture, and without a word from either man or boy, Alcestes obeyed. Like a condemned prisoner, he accompanied his father inside, the man’s hand on his collar. When Alcestes came back out, crying and noticing my staring, he bowed his head in embarrassment because he knew I could picture the beating in my mid. His head hung low and he didn’t dare even step one inch into the street.
“What happened?” I ask.
“He said he had to teach me a lesson.” We fell silent after that. So Alcestes sulked and sat down on a stoop. I snuggled beside him. Both of us stared out at the traffic. I could sense his need for vengeance, maybe more than he himself could. Whatever thrashing he endured reverberated in his body, and we both knew if nothing was done, there they would remain and consume him. They would follow him to school or the playground, resonate as he lay on his bed, and infiltrate his dreams. There would be no peace while these phantom hurts hurled through his body, and Alcestes could not be my friend so long as his anguish raised a wall between us.
We felt isolated in our grief until two big girls strolled by, stared and stopped in front of us, looked us over, and giggled loudly.
“Forsaken an forlorn,” the tall blonde girl said in a magnificent voice that seduced the sky. She laughed, and shook her head as though a hair was in her eye. Her pony tail swept the air like a paintbrush, and for a moment Brooklyn was dabbed with a mosaic of color sustained by her enchanting smile. The seductive gesture took me away from the core of Alcestes’ distress, and made me feel afloat, the stone beneath losing its heartless hardness. Her companion, short, dark-haired in cutoff shorts tugged at her arm. I could see she wanted to move along. I stared at the place between blonde girl’s thighs--where the fabric bunched--and envied her friend’s intimate contact. Everything seemed to fade but for the divine curvature of her hips and the contours of her legs. I breathed deeply and smelled her essence. It was like fine earth. Then light-headed, queasy, I began to keel over like the time when the doctor gave me a needle and drew blood. The girls looked distressed and the brown haired one with the cute pug nose stretched her palms outward and supported my chest as I began to faint and fall, and caught me with her outstretched fingers. In my hazy vision, I could see Alcestes shocked. Too much to take in after his beating.
“Are you O.K?” I heard a sweet voice say. I looked up in the haze and slowly focused and was brought back to the concreteness of the moment, like when grandfather manipulated the rabbit-ears antenna and the TV got better reception. I could see the lips that uttered those words and now became entranced by the silk-smooth beguiling skin of their faces. But before I would allow myself to be seduced again, I smacked my own cheek like when they did to revive a drunk. I shook away their hypnotic power, widened my eyes and made myself all right. I stared from one female face to the other, smiling like a dolt and felt Alcestes’ poke his elbow in my side.
“Yea, he’s okay,” the shortest one said. Her eyes were green like grass. Then it seemed the neighborhood sighed as the girls went on. Alcestes got up and paced.
“I’m dying.”
“You are not,” I said.
“Right,” Alcestes said. “Dead more like it.” He leaned back down, and closed his eyes like he never wanted to move again.
“Not dead,” I said. But he didn’t respond. “Not dead,” I said and wondered how to save my friend, then thought of Alcestes’ mom hanging wash that morning on the roof, and it all came clear.
“What do you do,” I said. “What do you do against a monster opponent?
Alcestes opened his eyes and looked. I waited till our gazes locked.
“Like David and Goliath. You find the weak spot,” I said. Alcestes looked at me in bafflement.
“Come on,” I said inspired.
Images sprung to my mind that gave me power. No more helpless boy that girls could vanquish, but an unstoppable force, for in my brain an arrow had been shot out of its bow and my body could not help but follow.
I ran into the building with Alcestes in pursuit. We grabbed two steps at a time with our legs and feet and like escaping birds who found an open door to a cage erupted onto the roof and daylight. Down below the cars whizzed by. But instead of seeing them as predatory mechanisms as they did when we were in the street, I gazed upon them as pathetic mechanical souls whose drivers would end up arriving at a destination until it was time for another and on and on, purposeless. I saw the madness of it all, like when late at night I turned on the light in the kitchen and roaches scattered: No one staying still; no one with a place to be, forever doomed to wander like lost and empty souls. And then I turned inward to my own soul and swore I wouldn’t be that way, never stuck in a bubble, removed from life whatever that was, that thing, life. But though I couldn’t know quite yet what it was, knew it was somewhere, but not where I saw.
I turned to Alcestes whose eyes were roving the rooftops like a sentry, ears perked up. We honed in on the fluttering behind us and Alcestes, taking my lead, followed the flapping sound. There they were. Rows of drying sheets, bloomers, towels, bathrobes—like stuck ghosts--held on clotheslines with wooden duckbilled pins, all snapping in the wind from gusts that crossed the roofs, squalls coming from distant lands we had seen on Randy’s globe, carrying with them strange voices, foreign tongues, traces of sea and distant cities, now reaching Brooklyn after a journey of a million miles.
“There,” I said with pointed clarity, my finger aiming my mind’s arrow. “Revenge awaits us.”
Alcestes and I rushed to the lines, then pulled them off, like expert thieves, the clothes pins, and bunching in our arms the garments, coverings, fabrics until they were big white balls we barely could contain in our arms. Possessed, we rushed to the roof edge, scoured our surroundings for signs of enemies, saw none. Then standing together, we took deep breaths, waiting for the swiftest breeze. Waited. Waited. Then it arrived. And turning to one another, nodded in knowingness and let the bundles go. Uncurled and unfurled, all were swept up in the air and began to float like drifting sails unanchored by ships or any other grounding thing. The winds were waves, and through the air the white shades escaped. Our deed now done, we took off quick across the buildings, knowing sirens would soon follow as we delighted in the imagined anger on the neighborhood’s face.
