I actually get a letter back from Tom Ransom. It says: “Thanks for your
letter. The Youth Board got me a room in the Y on Twenty-third Street.
Maybe I’ll come say Hello some day. They’re going to help me get a job
this summer, so I don’t need a lawyer. Thanks anyway. Meow to Cat. Best,
Tom.”
I go over to Nick’s house to show him the letter. I’d told him about Tom
getting Cat out of the cellar and getting arrested, but Nick always acted
like he didn’t really believe it. So when he sees the letter, he has to
admit Cat and I really got into something. Not everyone gets letters from
guys who have been arrested.
One thing about Nick sort of gripes me. He has to think up all the plans.
Anything I’ve done that he doesn’t know about, he downgrades. Also, I
always have to go to _his_ house. He never comes to mine, except once in a
coon’s age when I have a new record I won’t bring to his house because his
machine stinks and he never buys a new needle.
It’s not that I don’t like his house. His mom is pretty nice, and boy, can
she cook! Just an ordinary Saturday for lunch she makes pizza or real good
spaghetti, and she has homemade cookies and nut cake sitting around after
school. She also talks and waves her arms and shouts orders at us kids,
but all good-natured-like, so we just kid her along and go on with what
we’re doing.
She’s about the opposite of my mom. Pop does the shouting in our house,
and except for the one hassle about bike-riding on Twelfth Avenue, Mom
doesn’t even tell me what to do much. She’s quiet, and pretty often she
doesn’t feel good, so maybe I think more than most kids that I ought to do
things her way without being told.
Also, my mom is always home and always ready to listen if you got
something griping you, like when a teacher blames you for something you
didn’t do. Some kids I know, they have to phone a string of places to find
their mother, and then she scolds them for interrupting her.
Mom likes to cook, and she gets up some good meals for holidays, but she
doesn’t go at it all the time, the way Nick’s mother does. So maybe Nick
doesn’t come to my house because we haven’t got all that good stuff
sitting around. I don’t think that’s it, really, though. He just likes to
be boss.
One day, a couple of weeks after we went to Coney, he does come along with
me. We pick up a couple of cokes and pears at his pop’s store.
Cat is sitting on my front stoop, and he jumps down and rubs between my
legs and goes up the stairs ahead of us.
“See? He knows when school gets out then it’s time to eat. That’s why I
like to come home,” I tell Nick.
We say “Hi” to Mom, and I get out the cat food while Nick opens his coke.
“You know those girls we ran into over on Coney Island?” he says.
“Yeah.”
“Well, I got the blonde’s phone number, so Sunday when I was hacking
around with nothing to do, I called her up.”
“Yeah? What for?”
“You stupid or something? To talk. So she yacked away a good while, and
finally I asked her why didn’t she come over next Saturday, we could go to
a movie or something.”
“Yeah.” I was working on my pear, a very juicy one.
“That all you can say? So she says, well, she might, if she can get her
girl friend to come too, but she doesn’t want to come alone, and her
mother wouldn’t let her anyway.”
“Which one?”
“Which one what?”
“Which girl friend?”
“Oh. You remember, the other one we were kidding around with at the beach,
the redhead. So I said, O.K., I’d see if I could get you to come too. I
said I’d call her back.”
“Hmp. I don’t know.”
“What d’you mean, you don’t know?”
“How do I know if I like that girl? I hardly even _talked_ to her. Anyway,
it sounds like a date. I don’t want a date. If they just happen to come
over, I guess it’s all right.”
“So shall I tell them it’s O.K. for Saturday?”
“Hmm.”
“It’s nice you learned a new word.”
“Do I have to pay for the girl at the movies?”
“Cheapskate. Maybe if you just stand around saying ‘Hmm,’ she’ll buy her
own. O.K.?”
“O.K. But this whole thing is your idea, and if it stinks it’s going to be
your fault.”
“Boy, what an enthusiast! Come on, let’s play a record and do the math.”
Nick is better at math than I am, so I agree.
Saturday morning at ten o’clock Nick turns up at my house in a white shirt
and slicked-down hair. Pop whistles. “On Saturday, yet! You got a girl or
something?”
“Yessir!” says Nick, and he gives my T-shirt a dirty look. I go put a
sweater over it and run a comb through my hair, but I’m hanged if I’ll go
out looking like this is a big deal.
“We’re going to a movie down at the Academy,” I tell my family.
“What’s there?” Pop asks.
“A new horror show,” says Nick. “And an old Disney.”
“Is it really a new horror show?” I ask Nick, because I think I’ve seen
every one that’s been in town.
“Yup. Just opened. _The Gold Bug._ Some guy wrote it—I mean in a book
once—but it’s supposed to be great. Make the girls squeal anyway. I love
that.”
“Hmm.” I just like horror shows anyway, whether girls squeal or not.
“You’ll be the life of the party with that ‘Hmm’ routine.”
“It’s _your_ party.” I shrug.
“Well, you could at least _try_.”
We hang around the subway kiosk on Fourteenth Street, where Nick said he’d
meet them. After half an hour they finally show up.
It’s nice and sunny, and we see a crowd bunched up over in Union Square,
so we wander over. A shaggy-haired, bearded character is making a speech
all about “They,” the bad guys. A lot of sleepy bums are sitting around
letting the speech roll off their ears.
“What is he, a nut or something?” the blonde asks.
“A Commie, maybe,” I say. “They’re always giving speeches down here.
Willie Sutton, the bank robber, used to sit down here and listen, too.
That’s where somebody put the finger on him.”
The girls look at each other and laugh like crazy, as if I’d said
something real funny. I catch Nick’s eye and glare. O.K., I _tried_. After
this I’ll stick to “Hmm.”
A beard who is listening to the speech turns and glares at us and says,
“Shush!”
“Aw, go shave yourself!” says Nick, and the girls go off in more hoots.
Nick starts herding them toward Fourteenth Street, and I follow along.
At the Academy Nick goes up to the ticket window, and the girls
immediately fade out to go read the posters and snicker together. I can
see they’re not figuring to pay for any tickets, so I cough up for two.
Nick and I try to saunter up to the balcony the way we always do, but the
girls are giggling and dropping their popcorn, so the matron spots us and
motions. “Down here!” She flashes her light in our eyes, and I feel like a
convict while we get packed in with all the kids in the under-sixteen
section.
Nick goes in first, then the blonde, then the redhead and me. The minute
things start getting scary, she tries to grab me, but I stick my hands in
my pockets and say, “Aw, it’s just a picture.” She looks disgusted.
The next scary bit, she tries to hang onto her girl friend, but the blonde
is already glued onto Nick. Redhead lets out a loud sigh, and I wish I
hadn’t ever got into this deal. I can’t even enjoy the picture.
We suffer through the two pictures. The little kids make such a racket you
can hardly hear, and the matron keeps shining the light in your eyes so
you can’t see. She shines it on the blonde, who is practically sitting in
Nick’s lap, and hisses at her to get back. I’m not going to do this again,
ever.
We go out and Nick says, “Let’s have a coke.” He’s walking along with the
blonde, and instead of walking beside me the redhead tries to catch hold
of his other arm. This sort of burns me up. I mean, I don’t really _like_
her, but I paid for her and everything.
Nick shakes her off and calls over his shoulder to me, “Come on, chicken,
pull your own weight!”
The girls laugh, on cue as usual, and I begin getting really sore. Nick
got me into this. The least he can do is shut up.
We walk into a soda bar, and I slap down thirty cents and say, “Two cokes,
please.”
“Hey, hey! The last of the big spenders!” says Nick. More laughter. I’d
just as soon sock him right now, but I pick up my money and say, “O.K.,
wise guy, treat’s on you.” Nick shrugs and tosses down a buck as if he had
hundreds of them.
The two girls drink their cokes and talk across Nick. I finish mine in two
or three gulps, and finally we can walk them to the subway. Nick is
gabbing away about how he’ll come out to Coney one weekend, and I’m
standing there with my hands in my pockets.
“Goo’bye, Bashful!” coos the redhead to me, and the two of them disappear,
cackling, down the steps. I start across Fourteenth Street as soon as the
light changes, without bothering to look if Nick is coming. He can go rot.
Along Union Square he’s beside me, acting as if everything is peachy fine
dandy. “That was a great show. Pretty good fun, huh?”