MICHAEL SUMMERLEIGH - THE FIRST CUT

Michael Summerleigh lives in rural Ontario with a cat named Mina.  When he was someone else he published some stuff back in the 80s, but recently there have been stories online with cc&d Magazine, Literary Yard, and a novel excerpt with Lamplit Underground.

THE FIRST CUT 
(Bronxville NY 1967) 

​"Why are you always hanging out around here?"
 
He refused to look up, knowing she had seen him, followed him into the library.  All he could see of her was from the waist down...he didn't dare look up into her face to see her disgust or anger or whatever...
 
"Josh what's going on...what are you doing? It's Saturday..."
 
He stared at her knees, in snug woolen tights under a plain navy skirt darkened in a bunch of places with melted snow he could feel her scorn and she knew his name...he said...
 
"I'm sorry Connie," so softly he could barely hear himself speaking.
 
"For what Josh look at me!"
 
So he did.  Finally.  Connie Devanchuk. Looking down at him slouched behind a table hiding in the library now he could see her...felt his breath leaving him she wasn't angry so much as...puzzled...
 
"Josh...after school...sometimes after supper. I look out my window and you're always here where you think I can't see you but...what are you doing...?
 
He wanted to say the truth.
 
"Nothing Connie. I'm sorry."
 
"So you're just doing it to creep me out? To scare me?"
 
"No," he almost shouted, saw heads turning towards them all across the room in the library you couldn't shout he said, "No" in a whisper.
 
 She sat down in the chair on the other side of the table, leaned towards him he kept real careful to look at her face not where she filled up the top of the heavy cable-knit sweater. There wasn't anything angry in her eyes...just wide and deep deep blue like the glaze on the small small Japanese tea cups he saw in shop windows on 46th Street ...and long honey-coloured waves of hair spilling down over her shoulders... 
 
          "...What a dream I had.. " 
 
"Just tell me Josh okay? My mom said something the other day too...since before Christmas she said..."
 
He was glad there was a table between them...just the sound of her voice...the low husky purring that made words...even when she wasn't around if he thought about her... it made him go so hard inside his jeans. The long fluorescents hummed above them, grey light filtered through the tic-tac-toe lattice across the plate windows...he could hear one of the librarians on the telephone telling someone that all three of the library's copies of To Kill A Mockingbird were out on loan…
 
"You have to tell me Josh," she said.
"Connie..." he said, pleading...and then he could see that she knew, saw the light go on in her china-cup eyes.
"You should just ask then, Josh. It's not a big deal."
"It is for me."
"Why? Because I might say no?"
"Would you?"
"Say no?" 
"Go out with me..."
 
"No way. You're too weird Josh...and your hair is way longer than mine. I can't go on a date with you..." 
 
She stood up...leaning towards him again...closer and closer he felt her breath on his face a non-existent clock somewhere ticking horrible seconds away before she said...
 
"But that doesn't mean we can't try…maybe hanging out together a little bit," she said slowly. "Are you busy now?"
 
His face got red. He could feel his face getting hot with anger or relief or something but now she was standing straight up, one hand on her hip...waiting...he made meaningless sounds and at long last got to tear his eyes away from hers, ducking his head...
 
"It's stopped snowing Josh."  Reaching across the table she took his hand and pulled him after her.  "C'mon, let's go outside..."
 
He followed in her wake, out into a grey morning given way to warm half-sunshine and the sound of snow loosed into gutters and drainpipes rushing towards an empty promise of early spring they both stood breathlessly. Suddenly she was changed into a being of light instead of terror...kept his hand as they came into a patch of sunlight...walked them an arm's-length apart before she turned back to him, her eyes sparkling with a defiance that seemed to surprise her as much she had surprised him a few moments before.      
 
"You know, Josh, you're really cute when you're not hiding behind your hair..."
 
"No."
 
"Yes."
 
"I should be telling you..."
 
"Okay."
 
"Well you are..."
 
"What...?"
 
"Cute…beautiful..."
 
"More than Nancy Troy?"
 
"Yeah. Way more."
 
She untangled her fingers from his… looked at him sadly…something he remembered from a recent memory…a night in Manhattan locked away so deeply in his heart that sometimes he could not find it...
 
"Can we go someplace, Josh...?"
 
"I can't drive us anywhere, Connie."
 
"I know that. I'm not gonna be sixteen until almost the end of the summer..."
 
"Me too. November"
 
"That's not summer."
 
"You're older than me."
 
"So I'm your first older woman?"
 
"No...I didn't mean that…we didn't do anything...but…"
 
Somehow she managed to make no distance between them without him even knowing how. Her fingers rescued a lock of his hair from an aimless breeze and coiled it up to her lips.
 
"Let's walk, Josh, okay...anywhere...I'm hungry..."
 
"Are you gonna be warm enough...?


"If I get cold maybe I can just put my arms around you to get warm again."
 
She looked up at him, brushed his lips with her fingers...woolen mittens materialising with magic she turned away…walked them to the corner before turning off Central Avenue…another quick turn onto Bronxville Road.  His legs were longer and he had to take shorter steps to keep her close to him as they shuffled along past the snow-darkened cobblestone retaining walls…old stone houses…Queen Annes and Tudor cottages caressed by oak and maple skeletons against the patchwork winter sky…the ox-blood brick fortress of Public School #8...light and shadow…clouds and shafts of sunlight…the myriad eyes of God stabbing downwards along their path…
 
"….Your feet are gonna get soaked, Josh…why're you wearing sneakers in the middle of winter anyway…?"
 
He shrugged…tongue-tied again. With a few moments of intimacy gone away as quickly as they had come he was uncomfortable…feeling inadequate to whatever it was he thought might be expected of him now…not even knowing…he put his head down and trudged along in misery with Connie forced into silence beside him until it grew too big for either of them he said:
 
 "I didn’t mean to scare you or anything…or your mom…"
 
The sound of her voice when she laughed was even better than when she made words.
 
"Oh she wasn't scared, Josh. She really can't see very well, even with her glasses, so she just wondered why there was always this badly-dressed girl with real long black hair always watching our windows…"
 
He checked to make sure it was good laughter he heard coming from her direction, and walking was a bit easier after that, even if they didn’t say very much.   By the time they got to the luncheonette on Pondfield Road his jeans were soaked to the knees, but most of the clouds had gone away and he'd mostly stopped feeling bad he wasn't old enough to drive them around on a real date.
 
Inside it was warm and steamy with the lingering smell of breakfast bacon and eggs, 
loud with the clatter of silverware and almost-lunch conversation. In spite of every table being occupied, in almost no time at all they ended up in a booth in front of the big front window with the Coca Cola sign, and Connie with a puzzled expression on her face as someone came for their order seconds later. 
 
"Hey where ya been, handsome?  Not readin' anything today?" said the waitress, grinning at Josh. He blushed, shook his head as she scribbled something into her receipt book before turning to Connie. "And what can I get for you, honey?  I hope you're sharin' because he's gonna fade away to nothing if somebody doesn't look after him. I'll put extra on your plate."  
 
She licked the tip of her pencil and smiled down at her.  There was a small grease stain right under the nametag on her blouse, sitting comfortably over her left breast. Josh unfolded the twenty-dollar bill Grandpa Harry had given him on Thursday as Connie ordered a burger platter with a Coke.
"You pay after you eat your food, Josh," the waitress said, and now she shook her head, leaning conspiratorially down towards Connie. "He usually gets it right.  Must have somethin' on his mind today maybe?"
 
She winked.  Connie blushed.  Josh muttered something that sounded like Thanksalot Trina  and stuffed the twenty back into the pocket of his jeans as she sauntered back to the kitchen.  Connie's face was a question mark.
 
"I used t'come in here a lot—"
 
"Before you started hanging out at the public library."
 
"Yeah."
 
He explained. The neat bookstore around the corner and half a block down…
 
"Womrath's," said Connie.  "I been in there."
 
"…They have their own lending library with a lot of newer stuff they don't get right away at the public and it's only ten cents a day. We could go after if you want."
 
"Sure, Josh, that would be nice. I'd like to do that…"
 
She unwrapped her knife and fork and spoon, nervously flattened the paper napkin before letting her hands fall into her lap she stared out the window and Josh found himself rapt in the three-quarter profile that had prevented him from learning much of anything in biology, English or algebra…usually from two or three rows back to the left or right it didn't matter…her nose turned up just a little at the very end…eyelashes like delicate feathers of pale spun gold…her lips always slightly parted, like she was just about to whisper something breathless and daring.
 
"It's you, isn’t it?" she said suddenly, facing him again.  "You're the one always staring at me in homeroom and in my classes…"
 
"Everybody stares at you Connie," he said, hiding behind his hair her eyes seemed to darken into a midnight blue sky even though her voice had the sound of someone relieved to have solved a mystery.
 
"Not like you. I can tell. Nobody stares at me the way you do, Josh."
 
He heard coins dropping into one of the chrome-plated Seeburg jukeboxes at one of the other tables…the click and whirr of wheels and gears and a round sliver of grooved vinyl settling onto an unseen turntable…   
 
          "Imagine me and you…"
 
  …As Trina thumped a big mug of hot chocolate in front of him she said Take your time, kids and he was grateful for the silence between them now, listening to the music, watching her quietly and mooching French fries off her plate while she ate her cheeseburger slowly…one small bite at a time. The song ended…another one started… she was wearing something that made him think of the way rose bushes smelled after rain…and her cheekbones still were flushed with colour from being outside…she tilted her head and the honey hair rippled…soaked in stray sunlight he was stunned by the notion she was there with him...the two of them… together… Joshua and Connie he wondered what it would be like…      
 
          "…While we have a few minutes to breathe…"    
 
…Ignored the hammering in his chest as he reached across the table to pick up her paper napkin and dab at the tiny drop of Heinz 57 Varieties in the corner of her mouth, his fingers brushing against the smooth warm skin of her cheek she said:
 
"Thank you, Joshua..."
 
…With her eyes riveted to his he could hear the song playing through her heartbeat…saw it in the rhythmic pulse showing faintly at the base of her throat… 
 
"…This is really good you should've had one too. You want a bite?"
 
He shook his head…thought maybe he might have smiled…forgetting himself…she said:
 
"Josh can I ask you something?" cautiously, and he nodded without even thinking, ready to give up any secret she might want from him. 
 
"I don't want to hurt your feelings or anything, and I really don't even care about what I said before…are you sure?"
 
He wasn't, but nodded again anyway.  
 
"How come your hair is so long?  There's almost nobody in school with long hair… except for those hippies…but you don't hang out with any of them.  My father says
they're all perverts and dope addicts and commies…especially the ones that protest against Vietnam…"
 
She sipped her Coke through candy-stripe paper straws, a tiny crease between her eyebrows, watching him, asking because she wanted to know.  He shrugged, wiped chocolate off his lips with the sleeve of his coat.
 
"I guess I just don't like it short," he said. "My mom always was unhappy whenever my father made me get a haircut.  He wanted crew-cuts.  I hated them."
 
"But your mom likes your hair long?"
He nodded.  "When I was small she used t'comb my hair every night and sing to me…if my father wasn't home," he added quickly.   
 
Something in his voice made her stop in mid-sip…her eyes going soft she tilted her head again…honey-hair shivered across her shoulders …
 
"She used to…?
 
"She died a while ago.  She had cancer…in the hospital here…"
 
"I'm so sorry…"  
 
"It's okay.  She never said but I know it hurt a lot. I was glad when she died because I knew it was the only way it would stop hurting her." 
 
She pushed her plate and Coke glass away, no longer hungry or thirsty she looked down at her hands, twisting at a small ring on one finger he didn't want any sympathy but felt it coming off her in awkward waves.
 
"So you live with your dad?" she said at last.
 
He shook his head. "I live with my grandpa Harry. I don't know where my father is.  He's never home."
 
Another song came on the jukebox that Josh recognised right away…one that he had at home…on a red-with-silver-lettering Fraternity label…
 
          "Kiss me each morning for a million years…"
 
They listened in silence until it was over, and Josh watched her wondrous eyes going soft with sadness he didn't understand…wanted so badly to touch her again… 
 
Instead he said "I like that one a lot. They could've made the horns softer, but it's still a good one."
 
And she said, "Me too sort of…it's not so happy though…like he knows they're never gonna to be together."
 
Josh shrugged.  "He loves her anyway." 
 
She frowned. "That's dumb, Josh."
 
"No it's not. He loves her no matter what…it's got nothin' t'do with anything else, as long as he knows she's happy."
 
"But what about him? What's he get if he can't have her?"
"He loves her.  For him it's enough. At least he's alive…she makes him feel, Connie… some people never even get that much…"
 
"It sounds horrible...lonely…" she said ducking her head down…the ring on her finger winked sapphire blue stone and gold…there was a sound of desperation in her voice when she looked up again and said "Josh, what are you gonna do?"  
 
"Huh?"
 
"What're you gonna do when you graduate?  Do you know what colleges you wanna go to?"
 
"Colleges?"
 
"Yeah. Colleges. Whatta you wanna be when you grow up Josh?"
 
He could feel his blank stare…realised he had never once even considered…
 
"I just wanna be happy, Connie…I wanna be with someone who loves me and I wanna be happy…"
 
"That's what everyone wants, Josh! What are you gonna do for a job? 
 
"I can find something--"
 
"Haven't you got any plans at all? 
 
He didn't.  No plans.  Nothing but an unformed dream of something the way it should be.
 
"Josh, you have to get better grades. You're not stupid I know that. I've seen some of the books you bring to class.  I've never even heard of half of them."
 
"My grandpa Harry lets me read his books.  They're interesting…ideas…the way people believe stuff…the way it makes them do the things they do…"
 
"Y'see Josh!"  She leaned forward…excited…no sadness now…   "I  looked up some of the names…Sartre…Camus…Alan Watts…nobody stupid could read books by those people…"
 
She said two of the names wrong…
 
"How d'you know about my grades, Connie?"
 
"I work in the office sometimes, Joshua," she said impatiently. "I've seen your records. You're failing biology…"
 
"Connie I hate cutting up the frogs—"
 
"Stop it Joshua stop it I’m serious."
 
"I like looking at you instead."
 
"Please…?"
 
He stopped.  There was a sound of great frustration in her voice he did not understand… like the sadness and the desperation…he didn't want her to be unhappy…with him…with anything…
 
"What are you going to do, Josh?"
 
"I don't know Connie.  I never thought--"
 
"You kids done?"
 
Trina materialised between them, looking apologetic.  "I gotta chase you out, Josh, I'm sorry.  It's gettin' busy…"
 
"Oh sure Trina it's okay," he said looking at Connie who nodded, put her knife and fork on her plate he reached back into his pocket for the twenty dollar bill but Trina shook her head…
 
"It's on me guys…for shooin' you out like this…you save your money Josh…"
 
"Trina you don't have--"
 
"I can if I want to.  Have a great afternoon."
 
Connie wriggled herself out of the booth quickly and said,  "Thank you Trina thank you very much…", as she grabbed Josh's arm, pulling him up beside her. "The fries were really good. Josh ate eleven…" And hustled him outside…
 
The smell of burgers and bacon followed them out through the door into the cool afternoon…sun again aimlessly wandering through new clouds.  Connie said:
 
"She likes you," and brushed hair out of his face. "She knows you're special."
 
"No I'm not she just puts up with me is all."
 
"That's not true, Josh, not true at all. How can you say that?"
 
He couldn't explain it…didn't have an explanation it was just the way it was and he knew it was true and she had no right…
"Well you don't have to go the bookstore if you don't want to."
 
"Josh what are you talking about?  Of course I wanna go…what's going on?"
 
The world narrowed down into silence, just the two of them, her hands clutching at the front of his coat as he tried to back away from her…the edge in her voice going away…
softening…the look on her face something that terrified him…made him want to run...
 
"Joshua? Are you okay?  Joshua…?"
 
And then the world came rushing back at them.  He could feel people passing by on the sidewalk; hear voices before they were carried away by the wind starting to whistle through the asphalt and slush corridor between them and the train station. He felt like he had fallen down from a very high place and would never know if he had been badly hurt or not.  Connie seemed helpless looking up at him he tried to smile…
 
"Yeah…I’m okay Connie….I think maybe ketchup and French fries don't go so good with hot chocolate…"
 
"D'you still wanna go to Womrath's?" 
 
"Yeah…sure…let's go…"
 
She burrowed into the shelter of his arm…clung to him and he started to feel better, for an instant wondering what had happened before being so close to her again turned it into something vague and elusive in his head…an unease fading away as they tried to keep step with each other and kept bumping hips and knees until they were staggering along laughing at themselves and all the people giving them strange looks…a prom queen and a vagabond child out on the weekend…. Whatever it had been, by the time they got to the bookstore it was gone, lost instantly among the shelves lining the walls, the standing racks ranked on the floor, the flashes of colour from book jackets and covers displayed on tables. 
 
"You can hear them waiting for you," he said, and felt her nodding in agreement, unsurprised that she would know exactly what he meant when he himself had only the faintest glimmer of understanding.  "Conversations in the wings…"
 
"Like birds flying," she whispered back.
 
"Flights of fancy?"
 
"Yours go right off the runway," she giggled.
 
"Thanks a lot Connie…"
 
Inside it was safe for them to be apart, pretending to be just like the five or six other grown-ups browsing under the hum of the fluorescent lights. Josh nodded to the man behind the counter, remembering how there had been a lot of frowning until he had asked him about William Blake's poetry, Jack Kerouac and books on folksingers like Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie …then he wandered off for something he remembered from his last visit…a small slipcased gift volume…tucked it carefully inside his coat…secret-squirreled his way back to the cash register. Mr Grossman peered down at his purchase, looked at Josh quizzically.
 
"I seem to remember you telling me about a lovely old leatherbound edition of this that you found in Manhattan…with all the Tenniel illustrations…?"
 
Josh nodded.  "This is for my friend," he whispered, once again bringing his twenty-dollar bill into the light of day.  "Could I please borrow a pencil, Mister Grossman?
 
The bookseller surveyed the store for moment. "She's in Philosophy," he said with a smile, "And I think the occasion calls for a real writing implement, don't you?"
 
Josh watched uncomfortably as a carved wooden fountain pen inlaid with gold swirls materialised in front of him, paid close attention to a fast instruction in its proper use.
Carefully he scratched on the front endpaper:
 
 to Connie with love from Josh your friend down the Rabbit Hole
 
and tucked it into the paper bag offered along with his change. Then he went looking for her but got sidetracked in the music section by a used copy of The Country Blues by Samuel Charters…a real one in a dust Jacket…New York…Rinehart & Co. 1959…to go with the Folkways record under his bed…with almost four dollars left over for ice cream cones later Josh stood still for a second thinking…Wow! to himself…wondering if too much happiness was bad. When he got to Philosophy Connie was gone, but then he found her curled into a corner close by, legs tucked underneath her, frowning over a copy of Thus Spoke Zarasthustra…stood still again…just looking at her…the way her hair spilled down over her face where he could just see two little frown lines in her forehead and she looked so soft and small and safe and peaceful… 
 
"You shouldn't read that one," he said.
 
Connie looked up and the frown went away. "Oh hi!" she said, smiling up at him.  "I think you’re right.  I'm not sure what any of this is about…"
 
"Nietzsche was a pretty weird guy."
 
"No kidding.  What's this ubermensch thing anyway?"
 
Josh pronounced it properly for her.
 
"It means superman in German," he explained.  "Nietzsche said that each of us could be more than we were…"
 
"Well duh."
 
"Yeah. But he was so tied up in all his hang-ups that any horizon looked good to him, so the Superman thing wasn't so much him leading the world to a better place as it was just trying to get past all his own baggage."
 
"It says here in the introduction that Hitler used his philosophy as a foundation for Nazism…the master race of supermen…"
 
Josh folded himself up beside her.  "I think Nietzsche woulda shit himself--"
 
"Potty mouth!"
 
"No really, Connie.  He had no idea.  When he died in 1900 his poor old tired brain was all eaten up by syphilis.  There's this story about him trying to stop a carter from beating his horse by hugging the horse and crying before they took him off to the hospital."
 
"Syphilis?"
 
Josh nodded and made a face.  "When he was in college he let himself get talked into visiting some prostitutes.  Most people think it was the only time he ever got laid…thirty-six years later it killed him."
 
"You're really different when you talk about stuff you know about."
 
He'd never seen anybody look at him that way before…and because no one had ever told him, the tone of her voice…the way it went slow and wondering with admiration… distracted him from the possibility that maybe she didn't like the way he was when he was talking about stuff he knew about.    
 
"I think they make it too complicated Connie…all of them…trying to figure out how you fit into the universe and all when it's so easy if you're just a good person.  I mean it's cool the way the Existentialist guys have tried to make us comfortable in our skins…to deal with the certainty that there isn't any…but it shouldn't matter…it wouldn't matter…we'd all be so sure of ourselves if we could just treat each other better…
 
"Y'know how we're all supposed to be equal in this country…but it's not like that at all…it's a big lie over so many things.  I read this book about Negro protest in America starting way back in the 1600s and it said that when Jefferson and all those guys wrote the Bill of Rights and the Constitution they didn't know what to do about all the slaves' equality because the colonies couldn't exist without slavery …so they just ignored the whole thing…never even mentioned it…
 
"That's not right at all…"
 
He told her about the one summer when he was friends with Tom Tom before him and his family were forced out of the neighbourhood. Connie just watched him…listened…
 
When he finished she was looking at him so strangely.
 
"You really care, don't you Joshua?" she said in a whisper. "I don't know anyone cares as much as you do."
 
He didn't say anything…put his head down...showed her the book he'd found on blues music but somehow he wasn't anywhere near as excited about having found it as he'd been a little while before. 
 
"You know all about this too," she said.
 
"Not all about it.  I just like finding out how it happened…the stories that went before, that became the music…"
 
"Then maybe that's something you could do, Josh. You could go to school to be someone on the radio and tell everyone the stories that went with the music. You could be a deejay!"
 
"I couldn't –"
 
"Yes you can, Joshua!  Why do you always think you can't?" 
 
She got to her feet suddenly…walked away from him so quickly she was gone in an instant before he could think about what she'd said he followed her in a panic… leaving The Country Blues on the floor…never even looking at Mr Grossman… out into the street where the day had gone grey again…she was standing on the sidewalk hugging herself…staring into space…gnawing on her lower lip he could feel the wind at his back growing stronger…tearing at their hair…
 
"Connie I'm sorry."
 
"Don't apologise, Josh."
 
She refused to look at him, her words slipping away on the wind he had no idea why she was…whatever she was feeling he was separate from her again…could not know…
 
He offered his gift as a peace offering.
 
"I got this for you," he said.  "It's better than Philosophy …one of my favourite books ever. I wrote something in it you can read it when you get home…"
 
He thought she made some wordless sound as she took the plain paper bag from him, looked at it for a moment before slipping it into a pocket in the seam of her skirt.
 
"Thank you, Joshua." she said hoarsely.  "Maybe I should be getting back now…"
 
She started walking without him, back the way they had come.  He caught up…matched his stride to hers saying nothing…aware of Misery come back between them not knowing why he followed a half-step behind her seeing nothing but the wild thrash of her hair in the wind…the way she seemed so wrought up in anguish that each howling gust of it would break her…and then as the sidewalk dipped downward they were out of it… sheltered beneath the train tracks overhead they stopped in the middle of the sidewalk…
 
"What's that noise, Josh?"
 
"It's the train coming, Connie…" he said, reaching out to her...
 
"...It gets really loud."
 
...without thinking...putting his hands into the heavy mass of her hair, covering her ears she looked shocked for a moment before the rumble of the oncoming train overhead began to envelop them he watched the blue in her eyes go glazed and smoky...never dreamt she might have mistaken his concern for something else she pulled herself close to him turning her face upwards...the roses after rain smell of her filling his nostrils and the rumble of the train turning to a storm of thunder as her lips covered his own...soft sweet and wet her tongue licked into his mouth...in breathless surprise he closed his eyes torn loose from the world ...nothing but the sense of her slow searching kiss in his mouth and everything in his body swelling with lust love joy he floated in the sea of her embrace curling his fingers in her hair feeling drunk falling down stupid with happiness...
 
And as the storm rolled away on steel wheels southwards to the city they came apart... their eyes opening together...dazed and speechless he felt her arms around him falling slowly down his back...carefully loosed himself from her hair and stepped backwards... searching her face for a sign of ... something...anything...that would tell him it could go on forever... she turned away almost ran up from the shadows of the underpass breathing hard into the falling down of the day when he caught up to her at the top of Pondfield Road she would not speak to him... strode away again...until he found courage enough to take her arm…looked down into her face and saw tears...she was crying...he said:
 
"Connie?"
 
And she pulled away from him almost angry with her hands clenched into fists.
 
"Connie I'm sorry--"
 
She stopped...turned towards him wild-eyed...
 
"Stop apologising for everything Josh it's not you damn it!" she cried.   "It's not you..."
 
She took deep breaths trying to stop from choking on tears.
 
"I like you, Josh.  I like you a lot today was so nice."
 
"Then what, Connie?  What is it?  I like you too."
 
She sighed, breathing out long shuddering breaths as she slumped against a rock wall behind her.
 
"I'm going steady with somebody..."
 
And then he remembered following her to a football game months ago on another Saturday...she reached into top of her sweater…pulled out a small gold chain…with a ring on it…
 
"...He goes to Gorton he's on the football team."
 
...And as she looked up at him he felt something inside moving slowly back into the dark hidden place where he kept memories he said:
 
"Oh."
 
And he could hear her pleading with her voice...
 
"He's not sweet like you are, Josh....he's good to me...not like you…but my father works for his father that's how we met..."
 
She snuffled through tears and snot, rubbed at her nose and swore...
 
"I lost my mitts shit I'm always losing stuff Josh…damn it…!"
 
He didn't say anything. Couldn't. Admit. How big it seemed his heart was pounding too much to stay in his chest so he reached out and wiped her nose with the sleeve of his coat and...and...put his arms around her so she would not see him and not say anything else they just walked through twilight like that in the silence of winter night closing in around them...back out to Central Avenue together in silence he let her go the last half block by herself waiting until she had gone indoors before he turned away into the dark.
 
                    *                             *                             *
He went to back to Bronxville on Sunday but the stores were all closed...then again first thing Monday missing all his morning classes knowing Grandpa Harry would be getting another phone call and making excuses for him again but he didn't care, beginning to feel a sense of his place in the way things would go for him each day …and for everyone else too but he didn't care...found her outside the cafeteria in the middle of her group of friends...penny-loafers plaid skirts and knee socks...cheerleader thighs...pony-tails and sweaters...excited whispering and knowing smiles...she didn't see him until after they did...spun around in their sudden shocked silence clutching red-and-white paper-covered books to their chests almost fearful but curious stepping backwards leaving her defenseless one of them sneered "Whatta you want?" and he ignored her, instead looked at Connie, held out her mittens in one hand...said:
 
"Hi. Somebody at the bookstore.  On Saturday?  They saw us talking for a couple of minutes.  You forgot these and they asked me if I knew who you were...if I could return them...."
 
          "And as the rain beats down upon my weary eyes…"
 
…He walked away pretending not to hear the whispers meant for him to hear, or feel the casual disdain of mascara-shaded eyes. He would see her every day. Sometimes when there was no one to see them she might brush against him in the hall...gently touch his shoulder or his cheek as she walked an aisle between their desks in biology, English or algebra...but after a while he got to where he could avoid ever having to see her…even when she was there…and he told himself she wasn't anything important to him anyway... that he didn't care...until after a while he believed it was true.