Christopher Prato - Little Boy or, Enola Gay

“There will be time,” I said to her, nonchalantly.

“Time for what?”

“Oh, nothing. I was just thinking about how I’d like to kiss you.” And I smiled. She didn’t respond, opting to smile back at me.

I didn’t know what else to say, really. We’d been talking for several hours, but I was stuck for a moment. Don’t get me wrong—it was a comfortable silence. But I had to think of something quick. I wanted to know so much about her. Her hopes, her dreams, her fears. Everything. I wanted to be an expert on Maria, earn a doctorate of her mind. And I wanted her to love me for my curiosity.

Desperate for something to break the silence, my mind began wandering. And then a question hit me: I wondered, Does she come her with other guys? Briefly—ever so briefly—I hated even the thought that she may have had a boyfriend besides me. And I wasn’t even her boyfriend!

“So tell me about your boyfriends,” I asked her.

“What boyfriends?” she said with a contempt for the question. But we had talked so much that day, and revealed so much, that I couldn’t help but press on. I needed to know more.

“You know, tell me, have you had a lot of boyfriends?”

“Well, not really,” she said. “I’ve never really had a boyfriend.”

My eyes almost popped out of my head. A beautiful girl like that had never had a boyfriend! I was in heaven.

“What I mean is,” she continued, “I’ve dated guys and stuff, but I’ve never actually had a boyfriend. No one was ever worth my time.”

That sounded arrogant at first, but then I realized that she wasn’t being conceited at all. She genuinely felt that her time was important, and that most of the losers out there, like the hoods at the dances, weren’t good enough for her.

“So, you mean you’ve never kissed a guy?” I couldn’t believe I asked her that.

Squinting her eyes again, and grinning: “Uh, I didn’t say that”—

—that was enough for me to feel my first bit of hatred for Maria—

“ I’ve kissed some guys.”

I saw red. “How many?” I asked.

“What do you care?” I felt the happiness drain from my body. At the time, I had only kissed about six or seven girls. I really wanted to know how many guys she’d been with.

“It’s no big deal!” I insisted.

“Fine.” She finally gave in. Then she started counting the boys on each finger, mouthing their names in a voice just above a whisper.

“You don’t have to say their goddamn names!” I yelled. Bad move, I thought. “What I mean is, just give me an estimate.”

“Ten.”

“Ten! I thought you never had a boyfriend!” I was really pissed off that she even told me. But I didn’t want to start a fight. We weren’t even dating yet.

“I’m just kidding,” I said. “Ten’s not bad at all. I’ve kissed eleven myself.”

“I didn’t ask,” she said.

“Sorry.”

“You ask too many questions,” she said. She then began running her fingers through the grass rather than my hair, like a cat clawing at its litter. Sensing her discomfort, I remained silent for a few minutes. I was angry at myself for questioning her, but equally angry at her answers.

Then Maria started telling me about something that happened to her one day with one of the boys she kissed. She said that she was hanging out in the playground near her house and this guy came up behind her and tried to grab her ass. “Then, I grabbed a stickball bat and threatened to whack him in the balls if he tried that again. I fucking hate it when guys touch me.”

I didn’t know what to make of this. I hadn’t even touched her. In a weird way, I felt relieved, because what I’d said wasn’t nearly as bad as grabbing her ass. But then I thought: Is this a sign that I shouldn’t bother kissing her? I tried not to think about it, and calmed down a bit. Thankfully, we drifted to another topic.

I remember lying there, gazing up at the green and yellow canopy of budding trees above. The sun was poking through, providing a bespeckled spotlight for us. I was happy. Our blanket was close to the pathway that the skaters and joggers were using. As they zipped by my head, I could feel the breeze graze my hair. I didn’t see any of the runners, just their shadows whizzing over me one by one. I started thinking about the hunter, the one that I always felt was chasing me up the staircase in my house. I thought about telling Maria, but I didn’t. This might sound cheesy, but that that day I felt like I didn’t have a shadow. Maria made everything glow around me. She was like the sun at the center of my universe, at high noon. And at high noon, there are no shadows.

After laying in the park for about three hours, we got up, stretched, and walked around for a while. I didn’t put my arm around her, but we did hold hands. We talked about ourselves a lot, about our mutual interests, mostly. And, as usual, I talked about the bridges. Whenever I went to Central Park with someone, I told them about those bridges. There are dozens of pedestrian bridges in Central Park. I read somewhere that the guy who designed the park made sure that no two bridges were exactly alike. So I told Maria this, and she was impressed that I knew something about the park.

She’d been to Central Park only a few times before, once on a class trip in elementary school, and twice with her grandfather years before. No guy she’d ever gone out with had ever thought of taking her to anything more than the playground near her house, never mind Central Park or Manhattan. That’s why I liked showing her the bridges that day, because I knew she’d never seen them before. Next to Rockaway Beach, Central Park was my favorite place in New York. And to be honest, I’d brought other girls there, too, and told them all about the bridges. But I told Maria that I’d never been to Central Park with a girl before. She didn’t even ask me, I just told her. I was so caught up in the excitement of being with her that it just slipped out.

We walked all the way up to the obelisk in the park, somewhere around eighty-second street, right above the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I decided it would be a good time to impress Maria with my vast knowledge of Central Park again, so I told her that the obelisk was called Cleopatra’s Needle, that there was one just like it in London, and then there was the Washington Monument in D. C., and that I’d seen them all in pictures. Her eyes glowed and she looked at me like I’d actually been to these places. “Wow! She said, genuinely. “You’re like a Renassiance Man.” She tugged at my shirt and smiled.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you know a lot about so many things. You’re on the debate team at school. You’re into sports. You know all about New York City.” And you’re cute , she said with her eyes.

I didn’t know what to say. “The one in D. C. is new, but this one and the one in London are originals, dating back to ancient Egypt. Actually, there hundreds of engravings on the two original obelisks,” I said, pointing at Cleopatra’s Needle, hoping what I saw matched what I said. “But a lot of them have been worn away by the weather and the pollution. The one in London is nicer than the one in Central Park, even though I wasn’t really sure if it was. She was so sweet that she thanked me right then and there for bringing her to see a part of the park she’d never seen before. And then the weirdest thing happened. Suddenly, Maria really started to open up to me.

“You know, I’m really having a nice time,” she said.

“That’s great. So am I.” I was so happy to hear her say that.

“But I can’t help but be a little bit suspicious of you.”

“Suspicious? Why suspicious?”

“Well, you’re treating me a lot better than all of the other guys I know treat me. Remember when I told you about the guy that tried to grab me in the playground? Well, that’s the way most guys are. But you’re really not like that at all.”