H. Lovecraft - Brooklyn Noir 2

“Saturday night’s a lousy time to call a girl. The only reason I’m here’s the guy got a flat. But I was going out anyway,” said Sylvia, her lipstick chewed off and her hair in a mess, and Frankie guessed she wasn’t going anywhere like that.

“This thing’s been on my mind,” he said.

“So what is it?” she said.

“You think we could sit down?”

“Look, Frankie, just because we had an ice cream a couple of times and you held my hand once, don’t mean we can hang out. You’re seventeen, for Pete’s sake. Everybody’ll say Sylvia’s hard up. And I ain’t. So I hope you ain’t planning on asking me on no date.”

She eyed him as if he was a crook, but one who wanted to steal only a fresh baked pie, and she thought she might spare a slice if he was nice and polite.

“I was just wanting to talk. You always give me a big smile,” said Frankie, now worried that he wouldn’t get her interested, since she thought he was a kid even though he had a heavyweight’s build. Besides, she was too beautiful, with her buttery hair and stripper’s figure, to give it all away easily.

“I’m thirsty. You thirsty? C’mon in the parlor. I’ll get something.” She didn’t leave, but instead, they stood on the parlor rug, wondering what they were doing there together.

“You have iced tea?” said Frankie.

“Last night this guy was feeding me brandy alexanders. Which I loved. And he thought he was going to get somewhere. He’s an accountant. So he thinks each day’s a sheet in his ledger. He’s so boring. His voice comes out a word at a time. You could die waiting. Almost I could’ve screamed. Then I had another brandy. So, actually, I’m glad to talk to you. You’re not boring, but I sure wish you was older.”

“I’m sorry I’m not,” said Frankie. “But then I’d be drafted.”

“Sit down,” said Sylvia. “I’ll be right back.”

“I’ll be quiet so I won’t wake anybody.”

“Yeah. Be real, real quiet. But even if you was loud, they wouldn’t hear you. My folks went to Miami Beach,” said Sylvia, walking away swinging her hips.

“No kidding?” said Frankie, dropping to the sofa and crossing his feet on the coffee table. Chinese-pagoda lamps and cupid lamps were on the tables, and porcelain poodles, cats, teacups, dishes, vases, World’s Fair trylons and perispheres were on shelves in the corner.

The artificial flowers and artificial fruits on two tables saddened Frankie, although he didn’t know why, since they were beautiful in their own right. Before Sylvia came back, he hid the flowers behind one stuffed chair, and then hid the fruit too. He helped himself to a cigarette from the brass box on the coffee table, but when Sylvia was coming back he took his feet off the table.

“I do it myself. Except I take my shoes off,” she said, slipping out of hers.

They both put their feet up on the coffee table and slouched back in the plush sofa and sipped tea. Frankie was crazy about Sylvia because she always acted herself. There was no bullshit to work through. And to find out if she would be anxious to be rid of him in a few minutes, or whether she was lonely and would talk for hours, Frankie tested her by saying, “I won’t stay long. Since you’re going out someplace?”

“You know what they do in Miami?” she said, ignoring his question and asking one of her own, which she was prepared to answer herself. “My mother and father? They go sit on the sand. The men talk business. Jewish men always do. The women play Mah-Jongg. They go for Christmas. And now they go in the water. I went once. Almost died for something, anything , to happen.”

“Didn’t guys on the beach come over?”

“They were old enough to be my father. I just turned twenty-two. Last Saturday. May 21.”

“I didn’t even know you had a birthday,” said Frankie. “You suppose a birthday kiss a week late is okay to give?”

“Here on the cheek,” she said.

He kissed both gardenia-smelling checks, and then she steered him back to his place on the sofa and took his hand to keep him in check.

“You smell good,” he said.

“Holding hands is one of the nicest things,” said Sylvia. “It has to be somebody you like. Then it feels right. So what’s on your mind, Frankie?”

He had wanted her opinion of his dilemma, since she lived on 18th Avenue and wasn’t connected to any Sicilian family on 79th Street, and wouldn’t have their same ideas, and wouldn’t gossip. But they were having a good time now and no one else was home, and no telling what miracle might happen. Still, he had to prove that he wasn’t just making it up that he wanted to talk to her, so he told her.

“I’ll be eighteen in three months,” he said. “Then I get drafted. But I don’t want to kill nobody. So I don’t know what to do.” He was surprised that Sylvia looked interested.

“Somebody has to kill the Nazis,” she said.

“They should be killed,” he said. “But I can’t be the guy pulls the trigger.”

“Are you afraid?”

“No more than anybody else.”

“It ain’t against your religion?” she said.

“No. What’s worse, guys from the neighborhood can’t wait to get in. Their mothers cry, but they want their sons to go. It’s patriotic. We have to show we don’t side with Italy.”

“What does your father say?”

“I asked him. He said it’s up to me. That it’s bad either way. It’s which trouble I can handle. My father ran away from Sicily so he wouldn’t go in. He took care of my mother three years. In bed, in the parlor, where there’s more light and people passing by. I watched her dying but couldn’t do anything.”

“Maybe you’re a weak guy,” said Sylvia.

“Maybe that’s true,” said Frankie, but he knew he really wasn’t a scared rabbit, and seeing his mother dying, he wasn’t even scared of dying himself.

“Can’t you go work in a hospital? Instead of the infantry?”

“I asked that,” said Frankie. “The draft board said my beliefs need proof. Which I don’t have. They can’t accept my word. And, besides, even if they did, a Sicilian guy who won’t put up his hands, or won’t kill Nazis, everybody figures is a fairy.”

“Are you, Frankie? I heard some fairies ride Harleys. Tony says cops on them are. Personally, I wouldn’t know. I met one once in Miami. He did my hair. And he wasn’t so bad. My motto is, Live and let live. So I wouldn’t care if you was.”

“I don’t know if I am,” said Frankie, sensing the door of opportunity swinging open. “I hang around with guys. And we like each other. And I’m a little shy with dames.”

“You called me,” said Sylvia. “And when I said to come over, you did. You ain’t shy.”

Frankie thought his guardian angel might have followed him into the house to stand behind the sofa to protect him from sin, but when he looked around he didn’t see her. He thought she looked like the nun he had for catechism when he was seven. The angel had been trailing him since his mother died. He tried burning candles and saying rosaries for years, to send her away, but she kept whispering in his ear, but at least she wasn’t behind the sofa.

“I don’t think of you as just a dame,” he said.

“Then what as?” said Sylvia, her femininity never before challenged by any male. And while a catty friend couldn’t hurt her, it was much harder to shrug off Frankie’s sting. “I ain’t a dame?”

“You’re a person a guy can talk to,” said Frankie.

“I appreciate that,” said Sylvia. “But if you don’t see me as a dame, you have a problem.”

“It could be.”

“There’s nothing I can do. And it’s getting late. So why don’t you go to a burlesque? See how it makes you feel?”