“You have to be careful about closed doors, too, don’t you? Don’t people sometimes leave tape or hair or something stretched across the door?”
“They do in books and movies a lot, yeah. And sometimes in real life, but yes, son, you’re right. It doesn’t hurt to check.”
“You said that already.”
“I’ll say it about fifty thousand times.”
They practiced being careful for a couple of hours, leaving marks on doorsills, medicine cabinets, windows, bedspreads, pillows, even flower arrangements. It was exacting work that demanded precision. Neal was bushed when they finished.
“So,” Graham asked, “who’s your date with, tonight?”
“Nice try.”
“You should tell your old Dad these things.”
“You’ll never know.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’d never shut up about it. You’d want to know everything.”
“Is she one of those rich Trinity babes?”
“I dunno.”
“You ‘dunno’? Have you met this girl?”
“I don’t know if she’s rich.”
She was. or her parents were, anyway. Their apartment occupied half a floor on Central Park West.
Neal was nervous. This was the first time he had gone to Carol’s home, the first time he was to meet her parents. She’d been after him to do it for weeks.
“You have to meet them,” she’d said, “if we’re going to go on a real date. You know, at night. Or they won’t let me.”
Going to her home, meeting her parents, Saturday-night date: It was fraught with peril on several levels. It elevated their relationship from the safe status of friends just hanging out on weekend afternoons to boyfriend and girlfriend, and the news would be out all over school before classes started Monday morning. Neal wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Scary stuff on the one hand, but on the other it was great. Then there was the parent thing. Neal didn’t have a lot of experience with parents, his own or anybody else’s. He knew from Leave It to
Beaver that parents tended to ask a bunch of questions, the answers to which would probably propel them to throw him out and lock Carol in her room-with armed guards.
“Carol‘s not quite ready yet,” her father would say, lighting his pipe as he looked Neal over from head to toe. “Have a seat, young man. Take that chair there, the electric one.”
Her mother would hover about nervously, smiling tightly while she contemplated changing the locks on all the doors.
“What does your father do?” Carol’s father would ask, raising thick eyebrows.
“He’s in travel, sir.”
“And does your mother work?” Mrs. Metzger would ask.
“Uh… yes, ma‘am.”
“What does she do?”
“Public relations… sales…”
“We’d like to meet your parents sometime,” Mr. Metzger would say.
“So would I, sir.”
This was going to be a disaster.
“What floor?”
“Huh?”
“What floor do you want?” the doorman asked.
“The Metzgers’?”
“That’s the penthouse.”
“Swell.”
“Are they expecting you?” the doorman asked.
“I’m afraid so.”
The doorman gave him an ugly look and pointed to the elevator. The operator settled for a smirk as he took him up. Neal took a deep breath in the foyer and rang the bell. Here we go.
Carol opened the door right away.
“Hi!” she said. She looked flushed, nervous, and glad to see him. “Meet my parents.”
Her parents were on their hands and knees on the floor.
Mrs. Metzger looked up at him. Neal saw where Carol got her looks. Mrs. M. was wearing a sequined black evening gown and a lot of jewelry. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Neal, but don’t come in any farther, please.”
Mr. Metzger, clad in a dinner jacket, said, “Likewise, Neal.”
“Aren’t you all supposed to be facing East?” Neal asked.
Oh God, why do I say these things?
“Mrs. Metzger’s contact lens,” Carol’s father said.
“And we’re already late,” Mrs. Metzger said.
Carol looked at him and shrugged.
“I can find it,” Neal said.
“How’s that?” Mr. Metzger asked, his hand gently sweeping the thick gray carpet.
“I can find it. If you’ll all stay still.”
Carol looked at him strangely.
Less than two minutes later, Neal held the lens gently on his index finger. He had found it on Mr. Metzger’s pant cuff.
“Neal,” said Mrs. M., “thank you! How did you do that?”
“Practice.”
Carol’s mother looked at her and said, “I like this one.”
“Hope to see you again, Neal. We have to go, Joan.”
“My parents like you,” Carol said much later as they were walking back from a Chinese dinner after the movie. “They have good taste, my parents.”
The elevator ride lasted about eighty thousand years. Her parents weren’t home yet, and Carol and Neal sat down on the sofa next to each other. Her kisses were delicious and kisses were enough, more than enough, for this night. They were sitting at a proper distance when her parents discreetly rattled their keys at the door.
11
“I really don’t want to be doing this,” Neal said to Graham. Neal was seventeen and there were a whole lot of things he really didn’t want to be doing. Lacing on boxing gloves in a stinking old gym off Times Square headed the list at the moment, however.
“I don’t blame you,” Graham answered, “but it’s either this or that kung fooey crap Levine does.”
The gym was on the second floor of a decrepit building off Forty-fourth Street and smelled like the inside of a jockstrap that had been left in the laundry bag about a month. Neal took another look around the room, where a dozen or so honest-to-God boxers banged on speed bags, heavy bags, and each other. Another guy was jumping rope, an activity that looked a little more appealing.
“Why,” Neal asked, “do I have to learn to fight at all?”
“Company rule.”
“It’s stupid.”
The guy lacing up his gloves looked as if he had stepped out of a casting call for Darby O‘Gill and the Little People. He kneeled in front of Neal’s stool and blew cigarette smoke in the kid’s face.
“It’s the manly art,” Mick croaked, pulling the laces a little tighter for emphasis.
“I never been in a fight yet they stopped to put gloves on,” Graham responded.
“You hang around a scummy class of people. Okay, kid, on your feet.”
Neal stood up. He banged his gloves together as he’d seen them do on television. The hollow thwump was reassuring.
“Take a poke,” Mick offered.
“You don’t have gloves on.”
This amused Mick. He snorted and it sounded like an old steam engine going to its last reward. “You ain’t gonna hit me.”
“He’s probably right,” Graham said.
Neal launched a tentative right that looked like it had all the lethal menace of a kitten swatting at a Christmas-tree bulb.
Mick leaned away from the punch and shot a center-right jab that ended a quarter inch from Neal’s nose. “Keep your left up,” he said with a measure of disgust. “Ain’t you never fought nobody?”
“I run away.”
“Yeah, I knew fighters like that. But the old squared circle gets smaller in the late rounds.”
“Squared circle?”
“Can’t stay on the bicycle all night.”
“That’s why I take the subway,” Neal said.
“We’re gonna have to start from scratch.” Mick sighed.
So they started from scratch. Three times a week, after school, Neal reported to the gym to study boxing under the tutelage of Mick, pugilist. He learned to keep his left up, to pop his jab, to counter hooks with straight rights, and to keep his mouth shut and his chin tucked in. He learned to do push-ups, sit-ups, and pull-ups. He hated all of it.
After three months of this, Mick decided he was ready to spar with a live boxer.
The great event took place on a Saturday morning and Joe Graham and Ed Levine came to watch. Levine wanted to check on Neal’s progress. Graham averred that anytime there was a chance of Neal getting punched, he was going to be there to enjoy it.