“We’re going to do more than make out up there,” she said, giggling back at her friend, tugging me closer. My face turned tomato-red. I’d never heard Maria talk that way to a friend before. True, I hadn’t realized how much she really admired and loved me. But I also had never heard Maria talk to anyone that way before.
Sensing my discomfort, Maria quickly changed the subject. The girl left five minutes later. As if to say, Relax, A.J., Maria pinched my butt and smiled up at me. “Sorry you had to hear all that,” she said. “But you see, you don’t have to worry, because I talk about you with my friends all the time.”
I ignored her compliment. “Who was that?” I asked.
“That was Cindy. She’s in my history class.” Wide-eyed, Maria cupped her hands over her mouth in embarrassment. “Oh my God, I didn’t introduce you, I’m so sorry.” She said it strangely, as if she was muffling a chuckling, but not a humorous chuckle, more of a nervous one, a reaction to fear. She seemed afraid of me.
Looking back on it now, it’s pretty obvious that I should’ve put my arm around Maria, smelled her luxuriant hair, and not said a thing. But in that mall on that day for whatever reason I chose manipulation. It was business as usual. I hadn’t realized that she didn’t introduce me to her friend. So now I had two things to be pissed about.
“You seem pretty chummy with Cindy, don’t you?”
“What—well, she’s my frie—.”
“I’ve never heard you mention her before. When did you meet her?”
“What difference—?”
“And you didn’t even introduce me to her.”
“But I already apolo—”
I stared at her intently.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, “but I swear I talk about you all the time.
“When did you meet her?” I repeated, blandly.
“At a school dance, during my freshman year.”
“You danced with her?”
“No. I mean I was there with friends and they introduced me to her, and we became friendly.” Maria was perplexed. I wasn’t sure where I was going with my questions. But then the lightning struck: “Did you dance with any boys at the dance?”
“God, A.J., please don’t do this.”
“Answer the question, please. Did you dance with any boys at the dance?”
“A.J., this was like two years ago. Who remembers?”
“Please stop bullshitting me, Maria.”
“Okay, all right, I danced with a boy that night. Just a few times. Happy?”
“Who was he?” I could tell that Maria was exasperated with my line of questioning. I could also tell that she’d already given up, and was willing to toss any answers out there, hoping to shut me up with one of them at random.
“I don’t know. Some kid. He was in my eighth grade class.”
That she’d met this boy in elementary school, not even in high school, meant nothing to me. “Was he cute?”
She looked suddenly as if she’d found the answer she was looking for: Just praise him and he’ll stop. “I don’t know. Not as cute as you, baby,” she said, gently placing her fingertips on my cheek.
“But he was cute, right?”
“Can we please stop talking about him? Jesus Christ! I don’t even remember his name!”
“I bet you do. What was it?”
“I told you, I don’t remember!” she shouted, nervously. Passers-by, shopping bags in hand, slowed down to stare at us. At me.
“Think hard.”
Tapping her foot on the floor, she thought for a while, in desperation, and then said: “Donald.”
“So you do remember his name. You were lying before, weren’t you? Why did you lie to me?”
By this point in the argument, one watching from afar might have assumed that I was an attorney and Maria my hostile witness. The issue at hand was trivial, and yet I pursued it doggedly. The end justified the means. She could have been arguing her preference for catsup over mustard, or her passion for Shakespeare over Austin. But invariably, in the dark corners of my mind, I felt she was lying about whatever topic was at hand. And catsup v. mustard might seem like a silly comparison, but my distrust was just that juvenile. It was an eerie and bizarre suspicion of even the tiniest details.
Occasionally, I’d catch her in a lie. In all probability, she didn’t intend to lie in the first place, just like that day in the mall. But I guess sometimes she was so nervous when I questioned her that she forgot her own goddamn name. I was a pretty tough inquisitor. I could have been a great lawyer, I’m sure.
“Well!” I shouted. “Looks like we have a liar here, folks!” People looked at me.
Maria ran.
Through the mall’s tall revolving glass doors she dashed, out on to bustling Queens Boulevard. I gave chase in hot pursuit, my arms and legs chugging like a locomotive. Shoppers became spectators as I pushed the door open and searched for Maria outside. I quickly spotted her little puffy winter coat bouncing down the street in a whirlwind. Three blocks and one thousand pants later I finally caught up with her, clasped her shoulder, and whipped her around to face me.
“Let’s just end this, A.J.,” she said, with a hint of a tear in her eye. “I just can’t take you anymore.”
I yelled and yelled for a while, telling her that if she’d just have simply answered the questions, none of this shit would’ve happened. Eyeing a cop across the street, I quickly settled down. This isn’t worth going to jail for, I thought. A dire look blanketed her face, as though she didn’t have a friend in the world to run to.
I tried to console her. “Maria, we’re best friends, and whatever is bothering you is okay. You can tell me anything.” It was a bullshit tactic, as if she was responsible for this fiasco, not me. She didn’t say a word in response. Instead, she turned away and boarded the Q58 bus and went home. She didn’t even bother to ask me for a ride.
Thinking back on that period in my life, it’s hard to believe that such bullshit didn’t break us up much earlier. Things remained tumultuous between us for a while, then they settled down. That was our rut. Just like Mike’s parents, only they liked theirs. Just when I thought the wounds were beginning to heal, the suffering would start all over again.
In late March, Easter break rolled around. On Good Friday, the first day off for more than a week, Kyle, Mike, and Rick invited me out to a bar. I balked at first, wondering how I could possibly explain my choice to Maria. But a morbid sort of divine intervention extended its ugly hand and pulled me toward my fate that evening. “Yes,” I said. “I’ll go.”
Tears explode from my eyes as I recall this critical decision in my life. I remember the details because they’re here before me in living color.
Kyle brought us to Kearney’s Pub, an old Irish pub that hadn’t seen an Irishman in years. A real dive-bar I’d passed a million times on Queens Boulevard. Every Monday in class, The Family overheard hoods and Guidos bullshitting about their weekend at Kearney’s. Stormin’ Forman, Christian Matzelle… all those guys used to high-five each other, talking about all the shots they’d done and girls they’d hooked up with. Kyle and the rest were hardly offended by such conversations, but I was. Even though I’d gotten drunk at Rick’s over the summer, and several times since then, I swore I would never disrespect myself by going to a shitty bar frequented by hoods.
Nevertheless, I found myself inside. When I first walked inside, I remember smelling an odd combination of oak, beer, and cigarette smoke. Our sneakers went squick, squick, squick, and got stuck to the floor like it was a movie theater. There were no seats in the bar, save a few bar stools with red, torn-up cushions. And there were mirrors across from them, behind the bottles of liquor, so you could watch yourself slowly get buzzed, and then drunk.