On the surface, she was just another slutty Guidette at the dance. But despite her tight, stylish clothing, she looked somewhat conservative that night. Any clothes covering Maria’s fabulous body at all made her look like a virtuous lady rather than a bimbo, just as a snow-white wedding dress turns a whore into a princess.
After she relaxed a bit, when she finally understood what I was saying about Zachary, Maria gazed up at me with her tremendous eyes like a little girl lost in a big mall who had just located her daddy. She pulled away from me briskly, and, in a frighteningly monotonous voice, said:
“Christ, you’re a maniac.”
I remember the exact thought penetrating my cranium as Maria said that to me: jet airplanes piercing the night sky. When I get excited to the point of bliss I always think about jets. Not commercial airliners like Boeing 747s. I mean real jets, the kind used in war.
I’ve always loved jets, probably because you, Dad, were an awesome pilot in Vietnam. You got me into aircraft when I was very young. I still remember everything you told me about your career. You flew the B-52D Stratofortress. It was used to bomb Communist strongholds in Southeast Asia and enemy supply lines. It had only four small tail guns but could go almost as fast as the speed of sound, about 600 miles-per-hour, and could fly halfway around the world non-stop at an altitude of 30,000 feet. Its ability to avoid the enemy at such speeds and altitudes made it an invaluable weapon in the war.
I used to write away to NASA and the Department of Defense when I was a kid asking for photographs of the B-52D Stratofortress and all the modern jets. I wrote to all the space centers, like Kennedy in Florida, LBJ in Texas, and the Jet Propulsion Lab in California. I also wrote to the Air Force, and they always sent me tons of pictures and aerial maps and other intelligence. Well, okay, “intelligence” is a bit of an exaggeration. But whatever they sent me, it was all so cool. And there were a lot more air bases and space centers I wrote to, a lot that most people haven’t even heard of.
As a kid, every few weeks I received a package in the mail, filled with colorful photos of all these jets. I loved naming them after people I knew. Different people reminded me of different aircraft. Dad, you never reminded me of the B-52 at all. You’re more like the B-1 bomber, which, you told me, replaced the B-52. The B-1 can carry more armament than any other combat aircraft. It has a variable wing, which means it can be pushed forward for subsonic flight and pushed back for supersonic flight. Remember when you told me that?
You don’t look like the B-1; you resemble it in more significant ways. What I mean is that all the B-1’s subsystems are duplicated. If a subsystem has one failure, the mission can be completed by using the back-up. And if the back-up fails, then the mission can still be safely aborted with the bomber returning to base. You’re just like that, only you have an endless back-up system. It’s almost like you have an infinite number, because no matter what happens to you, you always makes it through.
But when I was first alone with Maria, the jet I thought of that night was the Curtiss P-40B, the first American monoplane fighter. It was used by the Flying Tigers, the American volunteer group that helped China defend its Burma Road supply line against the Japanese from 1941 to 1942. Most people have seen the P-40B, even though they probably didn’t know it at the time. It’s a small plane that always has mean-looking shark’s teeth painted on the front. I don’t know why they painted those teeth on there, but it looked really cool. Since I was young, I’ve fallen in love with a lot of jets and planes. But that P-40B is still my favorite.
Maria didn’t exactly growl like a P-40B that night, but she did have a look on her face like she could have chewed me up and spit me out if she wanted to. She appeared both ferocious and cuddly, like an attack bunny. I didn’t want to lose that look. I didn’t want her to walk away. Had she marched away that night, I don’t know what I would have done.
“Hey, Maria,” I called out. “Just chill out! I didn’t mean to scare you or anything.”
“Yeah, right,” she said. “What the hell do you want, anyway?”
The chip on her shoulder was larger than the situation demanded. She’s such a Guidette, I moaned to myself.
“I’m sorry, but like I said…” and then I just trailed off, because I could see she wasn’t getting the point and wasn’t about to either. “Let’s just talk for a while,” I told her. “Okay,” she said.
We sauntered over to the bottom of the stairwell. Nobody was around because the dance still had almost an hour left to go, and most people didn’t start running up the stairs to get their coats until after the last song of the night. We were all alone. It was time to make my move.
“What’s up?” I asked her. How original, I thought. It was a pretty lame thing to say because every hood at the dance greeted every other hood with that phrase. Actually, it sounded more like this: “’Sup?” It seems like no matter where I walked in my high school I heard one greeting ad nauseum: ’Sup? Sup, sup, sup—a thousand times over, all day long. And, of course, if you’re really happy to see someone, you drag it out: “Suuuuuuuuuuuuup?” How fucking stupid. I’m still pissed at myself for beginning my conversation with Maria that way.
Maria gazed at the ceiling, unimpressed. “Nothing,” she said.
She looked at her nails—they were hot pink—and then up at me. “Your name’s A.J. , huh?”
“Yea. A.J. ” I was surprised that she even remembered my name. Then again, I was dating her friend, so she’d probably heard it plenty of times before.
“What do the initials stand for?”
“My first and middle name, Anthony Joel.”
“But you prefer,” she trailed off in confusion, “…A.J. ?”
What kind of question was that? I thought. “Yea, so?” I answered, defensively.
“What’s your last name?”
“L’Enfant. A.J. L’Enfant. Like it?” My voice cracked as I said “like it.” I was so goddamn nervous.
“Cute.” She was being sarcastic.
I thought hard for a few moments. I had no idea what to ask her. “Uh, well, what’s your last name?”
“Della Verita,” she said. It sounded Italian.
“That’s a beautiful last name.” And it was. I was going to ask her what the hell it meant, translated, I mean. But a more important question struck me: “Why aren’t you dancing with all the other hoods?”
“Uh, what do you mean? You mean that everyone here that’s dancing is a hood, you mean that I’m a hood? Didn’t I see you dancing with Lynn earlier? You’re pretty judgmental.”
Shiiiiiiiiiiiit! Now I was in trouble. I had to think quickly. “No, no, no!” I replied, feigning a shameful look. “What I mean is, well, I’m just wondering why you ain’t dancing.”
Curtly: “First of all, you’re wondering why I’m not dancing, not why I ain’t dancing. Second, I’m not a hood. I hate hoods. Third, I just don’t like to dance, okay?”
Okay. So in the five total minutes I’d known Maria she’d already dissed me twice: first my appearance, and then my grammar. All this from a girl whose demeanor and accent could’ve easily cast her in any number of Martin Scorsese films.
I contemplated making fun of Maria in response. No: Her uncle, Joey the Wop, would surely hunt me down and slit my throat after hearing that his little Goddaughter was insulted by some loser named A.J. I thought about asking her to dance. No: Too pathetic and slavish. I imagined replying to her insult with a kiss. No: She’d slap me silly.