Lou Dellaguzzo

The heavy sleet that hits the tar roof sounds like corn popping in a hot pan. Half awake, his arm draped around his buddy, the first thing Paul sees in the dark room is the back of Hal’s head. He presses his nose against the boy’s nape, enjoys its warm toasty smell. His left arm’s numb from resting his head on it. He can’t get himself to move. Not yet. Why should he? Only been a few minutes. At most a half hour since they lay down together. But then he notices the fluorescent hands of the clock atop his bureau. An icy feeling coats his gut. He climbs out of bed and listens at his door. He shakes his buddy hard, has to dodge a slow, reflexive swing. 

“What the fuck?” Hal’s eyes are half shut and puffy. 

“Keep your voice down. It’s late. I mean it’s morning. You got to get out before—” Paul hears music. Military music, coming from the front of the apartment. “That’s her set.”

“Her what?” 

“My mom’s TV. It’s going to wake her.” 

Hal fumbles out of bed. Good thing he conked out with most of his clothes on. It seems to take forever just to get his shoes and coat on. 

Paul peeks out his room in time to see Lenora’s door sliding open. He shuts his own. “Get in the closet. No, this one.”

The closet’s not as wide as the other but deeper. Like an animal prowling jungle growth, Hal cuts a path between shoes and boxes and hanging clothes. His commotion tips over the baseball bat Paul grabbed for defense last night when he feared a monster invasion. Before Paul can catch it, the bat lands on linoleum. It bounces a few times. 

“Paulie?” Lenora says from the kitchen. “What was that?”

“What?” 

“What do you mean ‘what’?”

“My baseball bat.” 

“In December?”

“It got in my way last night when I was looking for the Christmas ornaments. Forgot to put it back.”

Finger to lips, he signals Hal to stay quiet. He rearranges the hanging clothes to give the boy cover, shuts him in as Lenora barges in, something she’s done a few times since his shoplifting mess, as if she were a prison guard pulling surprise inspections. She frowns at the bat leaning against the bureau. “Damn TV woke me up.” 

“I heard,” he says. 

“From here? Christ, you’re like a dog.” 

“Was coming out the bathroom.”

“That’s where I’m heading, then back to bed.” She stops at the door. “The tree, by the way, it turned out nice. You did a good job.”

“Yeah, we did.”

She offers a tired smile and pads away. Once she’s in the john he keeps his door ajar so he can hear. He opens the closet where his buddy sits on an old trunk jammed against the back wall. 

“That was close,” Hal says and gets up. 

“Stay put.” 

“Why?”

“You heard her. She’s going back to bed. Be safer then. A sure thing.”

“I’m getting stir-crazy in here.” Hal shrugs off his coat, folds it in his lap. “Don’t like tight places.” 

“Won’t be long.”

“Better not or I’ll split in front of her. What’s she going to do?”

“Help my father kill me.” 

“Okay, okay,” Hal says. 

Paul gives him a quizzical look. 

“What’s the matter now?”

“Sometimes I think part of you wants to get caught.”

“You really do got a screw loose.” But Hal’s blush is obvious even in the closet. 

The bathroom pipes start working. Paul shuts his scowling buddy in again.

Lenora stops for a glass of water. Ankles crossed, she leans against the sink while she sips, her eyes barely open. “You’re father’s coming for dinner tonight.”

“I know.” 

“I’m fixing him something special.”

“Sounds good.” 

“Don’t you want to know what it is?”

“Tripe,” Paul says. “You told me yesterday.” 

“It’s a lot of work. Not sure I feel up to it. There’s so much to do with Christmas coming, and your father moving in next week.” 

“Dad’s moving in? When did you decide that?”

“Last night, before I fell asleep. Maybe it was that TV show. When I woke up I felt the same way. But don’t let on. I want to tell him myself.”

“I won’t say a word.”

“We’ll have Christmas as a family, the way we used to.”

Paul’s tight smile freezes in place. He doesn’t need a mirror to know it looks phony. Why is she telling him now when she’s half asleep? He should say more, show enthusiasm, but he can’t take the risk. What if Hal makes a noise? What if he carries out his dumb threat and saunters out the bedroom in front of bleary-eyed Lenora? “You look real tired,” he says. “We should talk about Dad’s moving in later, after you’ve slept more. I can help with the tripe. I watched Grandma make it.”

“Her tripe’s different. Mine’s spicier.”

“But it’s still tripe.”

“It sure is,” she says like she means something else. She refills her glass and heads out the gloomy kitchen. “Wake me up at nine. And no loud TV before.”

 

Soon as Paul opens the closet door Hal shoves the hanging clothes aside, jumps over the floor clutter as if he were escaping a burning room. He’s flustered. His breathing’s heavy. He sits on the bed huffing. “She took her damn sweet time. What were you two doing in there, going through Santa’s list?”

“You’re out now.” Paul sits beside his buddy and rubs his back.

“My shirttail’s coming loose.”

“Want me to stop?”

“Didn’t say that.”

With a deft hand, Paul tucks in the boy’s shirt, noting again the thin waist. “That guy been feeding you enough?”

“I should get moving.” Hal brushes away the hand.

Paul grabs the black umbrella hanging in his closet and hands it over. “It’s snowing kind of heavy now. Take my galoshes too,” he says recalling the hole in his buddy’s shoe.

“My dogs won’t fit in yours.”

“They’re loose on me. And they can stretch a lot.”

“My head hurts when I bend over.”

“Sit back and I’ll do it.” With some effort, and a long-handled shoehorn, Paul manages to slip the galoshes on. He opens his bedroom door and checks out the flat. He nods an okay and they walk through the kitchen to the back door. Hal makes a sudden U-turn to the sink, uses Lenora’s glass to get himself some water. “Be right back.” He disappears into the john. Paul stands guard, teeth clenched and counting the seconds. His own head aches from the tension.

Hallway stairs creak as the boys wend their way down in the dark. They linger at the bottom in the small, unheated vestibule.

“So this is it,” Hal says.

Paul shuffles his feet on the worn tiles. “Any idea if you might be coming back sometime?”

Hal shrugs, his grim expression barely visible.

“That’s okay.” Paul starts to shiver from the cold.

“Should’ve grabbed yourself a coat.”

“Yeah, I should’ve.”

“This will help.” Hal gives him a rough, long hug that Paul melts into, his mouth against the other boy’s neck, his chin resting on the stolen suede coat that ruined everything. He holds tight, won’t let go. His buddy has to make that move.

“Your address for up in Syracuse. I never got it from you.”

“Don’t have anything to write with.”

“I’ll get something. Be right back.” 

Paul climbs the stairs and sprints to the kitchen wall phone. He grabs a pad and pen Lenora keeps on the nearby cabinet. His descent is more cautious. He rounds the curve and almost trips. There’s daylight at the bottom. The vestibule is empty. He runs down the narrow alley. Out on the street to his left and well into the distance, he sees a thin, lone figure with a black umbrella walking fast in the snow. A figure that never turns around no matter how much he wills it.