“I got to get this bike back to this kid in Coney,” I tell him. “Then I’ll
be right home. About seven.”
“What do you mean _this_ bike and _this_ kid? Who? Anyway, I thought you
were already at Coney Island.”
I suppose lawyers just get in the habit of asking questions. I start
explaining. “Well, it was awfully cold over in Coney, and we thought we’d
go over to Staten Island on the ferry and go to the zoo. So now we just
got back to Brooklyn, and I’m downtown and I got to take the bike back.”
“So who’s ‘we’? You got a rat in your pocket?”
I can distract Mom but not Pop. “Well, actually, it’s a girl named Mary.
It’s her brother’s bike. He’s away in college.”
All I can hear now is Pop at the other end of the line, laughing his head
off.
“So what’s so funny about that?”
“Nothing,” he says. “Nothing. Only now I can see what all the shouting was
about at breakfast.”
“Oh.”
“O.K. Now mind you get that girl, as _well_ as the bicycle of the brother
who goes to college, home safe. Hear? I’ll tell your mother you narrowly
escaped drowning, and she’ll probably save you a bone for dinner. O.K.?”
“O.K. Bye.”
Him and his jokes. Ha, ha, ha. Funny, though, him worrying about me
getting Mary home safe, when her own mother doesn’t worry any.
We start along toward her house slowly, as there’s a good deal of traffic
now. I’m wondering how to see Mary again without having to ask for her
number and phoning and making a date. Something about telephoning I don’t
like. Besides, I’d probably go out to a pay phone so the family wouldn’t
listen, and that’d make me feel stupid to begin with.
Just then we start rounding the golf course, and I whack the handle bar of
my bike and say, “Hey, that’s it!”
“What’s it?”
“Golf. Let’s play golf. Not now, I don’t mean. Next holiday. We’ve got
Election Day coming up. I’ll borrow Pop’s clubs and take the subway and
meet you here. How about ten o’clock?”
“Hunh?” Mary looks startled. “Well, I suppose I could try, or anyway I
could walk around.”
“It’s easy. I’ll show you.” The two times I played, I only hit the ball
decently about four or five times. But the times I _did_ hit it, it seemed
easy.
We get to Mary’s house and I put the bikes away and give her back her
brother’s jacket. “I guess I’ll go right along. It’s getting late. See you
Election Day.”
“O.K., bye. Say—thanks for the ferry ride!”
15
[Illustration: Cat eating turkey neck from bowl on floor.]