George Pelecanos: The Turnaround

They drove around some more and drank beer. They thought about going to the Silver Slipper, but the club had a drink minimum and enforced it, and anyway, the Slipper featured burlesque dancers, and burlesque to them meant the ladies didn’t show snatch and took their time about showing bare tit. They ended up buying tickets to a movie called The Teachers, down at 9th and F, at a theater called the Art, which was the wrong name for the place because it was just a stroke house. In the auditorium, which smelled of tobacco, perspiration, and damp newspapers, they sat apart from one another so no one would think they were like that and watched the movie and the older guys in the audience who moaned while they jacked off. Alex got an erection but nothing like the strong one he got while making out with Karen, and thinking of her made him lonely and sad to be where he was. The other guys must have been feeling something like that, too, since they mutually decided to leave before the end of the film. On the way to the car they joked about the fact that all the girl characters were named Uta.

They drove over to Shaw. The beer was warm now, but they continued to drink it. At 14th and S they talked about the time they had bought a whore on that corner for Pete’s sixteenth birthday, a rite of passage for boys in the D.C. area, and joked with Pete about how he had shot off the second he got inside her. In fact, he had blown his load on the dirty sheets of the bed in a tiny third-floor row house room before he had the opportunity to insert his pecker, but he hadn’t related this to his friends. It was bad enough that he had lost his cherry to a black hooker named Shyleen. These guys were the only ones who knew that he had done this thing, and the story would die with their friendship. He would be gone in a year, off to college and a new life. It couldn’t come fast enough.

“Remember when we gave her the fifteen dollars?” said Billy. “Right out on the street? She said, ‘Put that money away; you tryin to get me ’rested?’ ”

Alex had been there. The girl had said “arrested,” not “ ’rested.”

“What do you expect from a boofer?” said Billy.

“Don’t talk about your mama like that,” said Pete.

At U Street, they started up the long hill, going north. From U up to Park Road, the commercial and residential district had been burned and virtually destroyed in the riots. What was left was boarded and charred. Many businesses that had managed to remain standing had closed and moved on.

“Man, did they fuck this up,” said Pete.

“Wonder where the people who lived here went,” said Alex.

“They all out in Nee-grow Heights,” said Billy.

“How do you know, you been out there?” said Pete.

“Your daddy has,” said Billy.

“’Cause you’re always talking about it,” said Pete. “When you gonna stop talking and do it?”

Billy, Pete, and Alex lived a few miles from Heathrow Heights, but they knew of it only by reputation and had not come into contact with its residents. The black kids who lived there were bused to a high school in the wealthier section of Montgomery County whose white students were bound for college, while the boys who went to the high school in down-county Silver Spring were known to be an unpolished mixture of stoners, greasers, and jocks, with a few closet academics in the mix.

“What, you think I’m afraid to go there?” said Billy. “ I’m not afraid.”

Billy was afraid. Of this Alex was certain. Like Billy’s old man, who told nigger jokes on the steps of their church, where everyone gathered after the liturgy. Mr. Cachoris was afraid of black people, too. That’s all it was: fear turned into hate. Billy wasn’t a bad guy, not really. His father had taught him to be ignorant. With Pete it was something different. He always had to look down on someone. Alex wasn’t very book smart, but these were things he knew.

“I just wanna go home.”

“Alex got himself a nig girlfriend down at his father’s coffee shop,” said Billy. “He doesn’t like it when I talk bad about his peoples.”

Billy and Pete gave each other skin and laughed. Alex got small in his seat. Wondering, as he often did when he was coming down at the end of the night, why he hung with these guys.

“I’m tired,” said Alex.

“Pappas wanna go night-night,” said Pete.

Pete Whitten tipped his head back to kill his beer, his long blond hair catching the wind.

The boys grew quiet on the ride home.

Raymond was in his bed, listening to the crickets making their sounds out in the yard. He and James kept the windows open in their room three seasons of the year. Their father had made wood-frame screens that slid apart like wings to fit the space and hold up the sash windows, which no longer stayed up on their own, as their tracked ropes had long since torn. Ernest Monroe could fix most anything with his hands.

Raymond, wearing only briefs, lay atop the sheets, wide awake. He was excited by what he’d found and also feeling a bit guilty for going through his brother’s dresser drawers. James had come in a while ago, said he was tired, and flopped down on his bed. That would have been the time to talk about the gun, but Raymond had been hesitant. He had been wrong to do what he’d done. He’d have to admit that his interest had been stirred by Charles and Larry, and Raymond knew that James didn’t think much of them. It was complicated, trying to find the best way to start the conversation. By the time he’d gotten up the courage to do it, a stillness had fallen in the room that told Raymond he had waited too long.

“Hey, James,” said Raymond.

The crickets rubbed their legs together. A little dog barked from the backyard of the tiny house down the street where Miss Anna lived.

Softly, Raymond said, “James.”

Three teenage boys cruised the streets in a Gran Torino, drinking beer, smoking weed, and listening to the radio. Three Dog Night’s “Black and White” came from the dash speaker. The vocalist sang, “The world is black, the world is white / Together we learn to read and write.” Billy sang along but changed the words to “Your daddy’s black, your mama’s white / Your daddy likes his poontang tight.” They had heard Billy sing this one many times, but they were laughing as if it were new to them. The three of them had just blown a fat bone. Though the temperature was in the upper eighties, they had rolled up the windows to keep the high in the car.

Billy sat under the wheel of the Torino, a green-over-green two-door with a 351 Cleveland under the hood, his dad’s latest loaner. He wore a red bandanna over his thick black hair. He looked like a heavy pirate.

“Pin this piece,” said Alex from the backseat.

Billy gave the Ford gas. Beneath them, dual pipes rumbled pleasantly as they headed up a long rise on an east-west residential thruway. They were nearing the small commercial district not far from their neighborhood.

“Mach One,” said Billy, reverently. “Hear it roar.”

“It’s a Torino,” said Pete, riding shotgun.

“Same engine as the Mach,” said Billy. “That’s all I’m sayin.”

“To ree no,” said Pete.

“Least I’m drivin a car,” said Billy.

“It’s off your dad’s lot,” said Pete. “It’s like a rental.”

“Still, I’m drivin it. Wasn’t for me, you’d be walkin.”

“To your mother’s house,” said Pete.

Billy’s wide shoulders shook. He laughed easily, the way big guys did, even when a friend was cracking on his mother.

“Your baby sister, too,” said Pete, holding his hand palm up so that Alex could slap him five. Alex did it sharply, and the action made Pete’s straight shoulder-length hair move about his face.