John Sayles - The Anarchist's Convention and Other Stories

"She's a little old for it. Pettit's thinking of getting a new brood bitch."

"And what will happen to her?"

Pettit and Lovell were always making fun of people who were sentimental about the animals. Brian looked around, shrugged.

"Maybe somebody will want her for a pet."

The puppies were like fat sausages, ears uncropped, flopping.

"They don't look like Dobermans at all," said Serena. "It's a shame they'll be taught to be mean."

"Oh they aren't mean. High-strung, you know, but not — well, a few of them." Brian pointed to the cage where Wotan sat, neck stiff, ears erect, staring out through the mesh. "Him."

Serena gave a little shiver.

"Pettit uses him for the downtown merchants. The guys who keep a twelve-gauge under the counter."

use yipped and pushed a little one away from her.

"They're such nice puppies."

"Yeah," said Lovell, appearing to stare at Serena's chest and wink to Brian, "they sure is." He gave her his big, dim. ply smile.

"Lovell Keyes," said Brian. "This is Serena."

"You're real pretty, Serena."

Wham! He could just do that, Lovell, come right out with those and not sound ridiculous. Black guys could get away with it. Serena blushed.

"You Brian's old lady, huh?"

Serena uhmmed for a moment, not knowing what Brian wanted her to say -

"Yeah," said Brian.

Lovell shook his head, smiled. "What a waste."

Serena watched the puppies for a little while longer, then Brian showed her the guard dogs, showed her Loki and Siegfried and Gunther and Hagen, showed her the different cages and the exercise chute and the quarters where Thor lay sleeping after his second meal. As soon as she left, Lovell was next to him.

"Not bad, McNeil."

Brian shrugged.

"You gettin any?"

"No."

"Why not?"

Brian shrugged.

"Fine little bitch like that," Lovell shook his head sadly, "what a waste."

Brian had looked through Serena DiLallo for the first month of school. Looked through her and two other kids in the row to Mrs. Peletier at the board going over their vocabu- laire. She would have stayed that way, the back of a head, out of focus, if Brian hadn't heard Russ Palumbo talking about her in study hall.

Palumbo was a fat kid who played football — tackle or guard or something dull like that — who was always flipping his wallet open to flash the foil-wrapped Trojan at you and saying he was from the FBI.

"Federal Bureau of Intercourse," he would say, and then try to goose you. A major asshole.

In junior high Palumbo had a vague but widespread reputation, having to do with an incident Brian had only heard the punch line of. "But it's stuck, Russ, it's stuck!" That one line, squeaked from the back of a classroom, had done in more substitute teachers than any combination of pen dropping, barnyard noises and pretended coughing fits.

Palumbo sat behind Brian in study hall, where Brian usually put his head in his arms and tried to sleep. Sometimes he actually could, but usually Palumbo kept him awake, telling dumb jokes to the kid across the aisle. Brian didn't know the name of the kid across the aisle, the kid didn't play any sport. Brian never saw him anywhere else in school, not in the halls or in gym or in wood shop or even at assemblies where everybody had to go. Brian sometimes wondered if they just kept him in study hall all day, sitting by the window laughing soundlessly at a new dumb-joker each period. He never had a gym bag or a book or even a pencil with him, he just traced the sayings and pictures scratched on his desk over and over with his finger, as if practicing for the time when he'd be given something to write with.

And when Mr. Crozier was deep in reading or out of the room, the kid across the aisle would pull the old heavy curtain away from the window and blow his nose in it.

"Debbie Moffat," Palumbo would say to the kid across the aisle.

"Really?"

"Really," Palumbo would nod solemnly. "I know the guy. „

"Just one?"

"Hey, she's not a pig. She's been had, but she's not hooked on it. Not like some of them. Jo-Ann Testa."

"Really?"

(I Yup. 9)

"But she's a cheerleader."

Palumbo would sigh patiently. "Don't make no never mind. You know those flying splits they do?"

"Yeah?"

"Well that breaks it. Once it's broken, they figure no guy's gonna believe em anyway, so why not?"

"Jeez. Who else?"

"Serena DiLallo."

"You're kidding."

Brian shifted his head in his arms. It was a rotten way to sleep, always with your nose in your armpits. Palumbo must be bullshitting, she wasn't the type at all.

"I'm not saying she has, I'm just saying she would. It wouldn't be hard."

"It would be hard," said the kid across the aisle, "but she would be easy."

Palumbo didn't laugh. He didn't like it when the kid across the aisle tried to make jokes.

"This is true," Palumbo would say and nod solemnly again. "I'd say her pants could be gotten into without much effort at all."

"How can you tell?"

Yeah, thought Brian, how can you tell? With his eyes closed Palumbo and the kid across the aisle were like a radio show, one of those insomniac call-in things he'd got when reception was bad for the Knicks' game.

"You just watch her, watch the way she acts. I wouldn't mind gettin into those pants myself." Palumbo would lean back and smack his belly. "Mmmm-mmmmmnh!" he'd say. "Finger-lickin good."

Serena DiLallo and her pants stayed in Brian's mind. He had never thought of her. Every year at the beginning of school there seemed to be dozens of girls he liked in his classes, but after the first week all the good ones were snapped up. It was like that Oklahoma land rush thing in History class, he suspected the guys who got girls of some kind of cheating, some gun-jumping or secret knowledge. He'd never even considered Serena DiLallo and now it was probably already too late. He'd see her tomorrow in the halls with some jerkoff and word would circulate that her pants had been gotten into.

He had never thought of that expression before. It made him think of actually being in them with her, two legs through each leg, bellies touching, the nylon stretched to bust -

When the bell rang Brian had to do a Groucho Marx walk to get out the door without looking like a hat rack.

In French the next day he could no longer look through her to the board. He watched her hair brushing against her bare arms. When she bent to look in her book he could see how thin her neck was. He wondered about what Palumbo had said — she seemed awful quiet. She seemed like she probably took books home from the library and read them, books that weren't assigned. She didn't have a bunch of girlfriends she hung with or turn and laugh too hard when somebody made a crack like a lot of them did.

But once she had smiled at Brian in the hall and asked if he was getting ready for basketball season. Girls didn't come up and ask you questions for no reason.

Brian sat half listening to the class rdpeter, moving his lips, and imagined that he was reaching forward and stroking Serena's thin neck, rubbing his hand softly against the down on her cheek. Or kissing the backs of her legs. He did that sometimes, imagined with different girls. It alternated with his other favorite daydream, the execution. Sitting at the very back of Humanities class he'd give himself ten shots. He'd figure out what order to get them in — who might try to rush him, who was close to the door and might run, Mr. Wojicki, and always three or four left for the prettiest, most stuck-up girls in the class. He would stare at the backs of their heads and think, "You first, then you, then you, and then you just as you turn around-" Serena had never figured in either daydream before.

If he was Lovell Keyes he could just come out with it, straight on and sugary — "Hey, sweet thang," Lovell would say, "I gots my eye on you."