ESSAYS
Call Me in Ten YearsIOWA CITY, IOWA 08 February 2009 |
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After school we’d play two-hand touch on our front lawns. These were years when the LAPD was cruising around handing out limited edition baseball cards to the neighborhood kids and we were as safe in the streets as we were inside our own houses. We spent every minute we could out there dreading the inevitable fall of darkness, being called to dinner, to our homework, to our beds.
When my parents went out they’d hire one of my father’s students to look after me. She’d cook me dinner and make me go to sleep on time.
One evening I was standing with my babysitter in front of our house in the soft dusk when a car came tearing around the corner and screeched to a stop.
“Oh my God,” the babysitter said smiling.
A tall boy (he seemed as much a man as Magnum PI) got out of the car, grabbed my babysitter and kissed her long and deep.
“Happy birthday, baby,” he said, grinned, got back in and tore away.
I looked up at her.
“Let’s go inside,” she said flushed.
Man, who was that guy? Comes in just like Magnum. Kisses her like that? Burns out of there justlike Magnum, leaving her to die of pleasure. And she takes me inside and what? We make chocolate chip cookies.
A few weeks later I’m out waiting to play some football with Greg Downes. I’m sitting on the curb when a white convertible Rabbit full of girls from the high school pulls up.
“Hey,” the driver says popping up like a pretty periscope. “Hey, come here.” She waves me over.
I get up from the curb and take my time going over. I’m not supposed to talk to strangers. The cop who gives me the baseball cards says it every time.
Their car smells like cigarettes, sweet perfume, french-fries and Bubblicious, hot car pleather, coconut oil and saltwater. Their legs are all lined up shiny like healthy brown sea creatures sunning themselves on the rocks - four in the front, four in the back.
“Oh my God, he’s so cute,” one of them says looking at me like I’m a puppy behind glass. I pretend not to hear.
I’m not cute. I’m handsome.
“Hey, how do we get to Sunset?”
I point the way.
“Just straight up?”
I nod. Yep. That’s right. Straight on up. Cool. Like I got better things to do. Like I was just sitting on the curb waiting for the guy to deliver my Harley.
“Cool,” the driver says.
The brunette riding shotgun flips down the visor mirror and starts working on her hair. The driver lines up her bikini with her tan, shifts things around. Starts to lift and shape like I’m not even there, like I wouldn’t even notice. I look away towards Sunset.
“Bye, cutie,” the driver says putting the car in gear, all of them smiling at me.
It’s the force of God: their faces turned to me, their shiny lips, the hot whirling girl air aroma, the sky above that deep California blue.
I’m wonderstruck.
“Call me in ten years,” the driver says as the car pulls away. They all laugh in unison, their heads falling back, their mouths open to that perfect sky like they expect it to pour down their throats.
“Call me,” she calls out extending her hand up into the air above the windshield. “I’ll be waiting,” she sings, her voice trailing away. “I’ll be waiting.”
Ten years? I’m not waiting ten years. I can catch them. I’ll get my bike. That thing is all ultra light alloy. I can make it slide out like you’ve never seen. Plant my foot and stand hard on the pedal break, draw a wide black tire arc across the pale sidewalk right out into the street and stop them dead.
Ten years? No man waits ten years, I’d say leaping over the door landing between the two in the back. And there I’d be right in the middle of it leaning forward with my arms around the ones in front. Let me help you with that bikini, you’re not quite lined up. Maybe I’d throw one of them a Magnum PI deep tongue. Who knows? Just drive, baby. I’ll show you how to get to Sunset Boulevard. I’ll show you everything you need to see.
Greg Downes comes out his front door with a football and sees me sitting on the curb picking at the grass. He’s got tennis balls under his t-shirt to look like shoulder pads. He looks like a lunatic. He looks like he’s got a case of the symmetrical goiters. He blinks at me.
“You ready?”
He raises his hand to show me the Nerf, reaches way back and goes for it. It flips end over end, hits his mother’s car and rolls to a stop in the gutter.
The girls are long gone.
The author at home waiting for his Harley to be delivered. 1985.
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Brilliant!