Henry stuck his head out the drugstore door and said, “Come on in.”
I waited while Troo propped her bike up on the side of the building and then I pulled open the drugstore door and it was so cool inside, just like the “Icy Cold Refrigeration” sticker on the door promised. Henry was sitting at the countertop and sipping on a chocolate phosphate.
“You want one?” Henry asked, pointing down at his glass.
“That’d be swell,” I said.
“How were the fireworks?” Henry got up off his stool and went behind the countertop. He took two glasses from a stack, wiped ’em off with a towel and set them on the counter.
“Better than last year,” Troo said. I think she must’ve known that Henry hadn’t gone and was too afraid it might have something to do with his bleeding disease, so she didn’t ask why because Troo wasn’t all that good with sick people. Except for Mrs. Galecki, who was stiff with oldness and got me and Troo mixed up sometimes, but did not look sick.
Henry squirted some chocolate into the tall glasses. I could see his face in the big mirror above the stack. Henry was darn good-looking. A little ghosty, but darn good-looking. If Troo and Willie were going to be girlfriend and boyfriend, then maybe Henry and I could do the same. No smooching allowed, though.
Henry used a long, skinny spoon to stir up the bubble water and chocolate. “Are you going to Sara’s funeral tomorrow?”
It felt funny to be sitting in Fitzpatrick’s Drugstore like this at night, the lights down so low and that witch hazel smell and the air conditioning making my arms bumpy in a good way. I wished I could’ve slept right there on that freezing cold counter instead of going home.
I took a sip of my phosphate and was impressed with what a good job Henry had done and was pleased that he had handed mine to me before he handed Troo hers. “Are you?”
“Yeah. I have to,” he barely said. “Sara Marie was my cousin.”
“Oh,” I said. “We’re definitely going to the funeral then, right, Troo?” Not paying attention to me, she’d slipped her hand into the Dubble Bubble bowl next to the soda fountain and was helping herself.
“The funeral is at nine o’clock,” Henry said. I looked over to where Mr. Fitzpatrick usually sat handing people their medicine. I thought I saw him just for a second, or maybe that was just a shadow from the big glowing red Coke clock that hung on the wall.
And then all of a sudden Henry’s thin homofeelya shoulders started bouncing up and down like one of my fishing bobbers. I got up off my stool and walked around the end of the counter and got up next to him. I just stood there for a minute trying to think of something to say. “Don’t cry, Henry. Just remember what Sister Imelda always tells us in catechism class. How when people die it’s okay because they go back home with God. That’s probably how Sara feels right this minute, like she just got home after a hard day. Her and God are probably just laying around on clouds watching I Love Lucy.”
That only made him cry harder. Might be that Henry Fitzpatrick was sensitive just like me.
In the mirror above the soda fountain, I could see Troo stuffing her pockets with things she was taking off the shelves.
“We gotta get goin’. So we’ll see ya tomorrow morning, okay?” I patted Henry on the back and went back to my stool because it’d felt so awful to be behind the counter. Like when you do or say something you’re not supposed to and you get that dumb feeling in your stomach. I had that dumb feeling about what I’d said to Daddy the day of the crash.
“Yeah, see ya tomorrow, Henry,” Troo called, waiting at the door for me, her pockets bulging with stolen goods. I bet Troo never got that dumb feeling in her stomach.
We left him there like that, his head still on the counter. He didn’t really say good-bye, because he was probably thinking of his cousin in her small coffin, the same kind Junie Piaskowski had. That worried me at her funeral because I’d thought coffins only came in one size, grown-up. But somebody knew that kids died all the time and that was their job, to make little coffins for dead kids that were lined inside with pink and had a pillow of stiff lace.
I looked back at Henry through the drugstore window. He hadn’t moved his head off the counter. It must feel great on his hot eyes. I bet by now he probably felt real bad about crying like a girl because everyone knew that if boys cried it meant they could be what Willie O’Hara called “light in their loafers,” which was another way to say homo, and maybe that’s why the other kids called him Homo Henry after all, which would certainly put the kibosh on us being boyfriend and girlfriend. Willie said he’d seen light-in-their-loafers men in New York City. He’d even taken a taxicab ride once with one of them who was dressed up like a woman and called him kitten! I knew that being a homo meant you loved other homos. But why would a man do that? Get all dressed up like that? Willie had to be wrong.
The man in the taxi had probably gotten all dressed up like that for a play. Like with Father Jim. One night Mary Lane went up to church to pray for her mother to make fried chicken, and when she was done she decided to do a little peeping. So she creeped over to the rectory and peeked in the window and there was Father Jim dressed up in a fluffy white dress with petticoats and high heels, dancing around the living room to “Some Enchanted Evening.”
When Father Jim saw Mary Lane, he invited her in and made her a big ham and cheddar cheese sandwich on rye bread, even though it was Friday. He told her that the church’s Men’s Club was putting on a play and made her promise not to tell anybody that she had seen him dressed up like that because the play was a surprise and she would wreck it if she told. Mary Lane promised by crossing her heart and hoping to die, but the next day she came over to our house and told me and Troo the whole story. And she’s still alive. So that whole “Some Enchanted Evening” story was probably just another one of Mary Lane’s big fat lies.
“So,” said Troo, balancing her bike against her leg and lighting up an L &M from a new pack she had taken from behind Fitzpatrick’s cash register, “Henry and Sally sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g.” Her face grew bright in the match flame. I knew she’d bring up Henry giving me my phosphate first. Troo was famous for never lettin’ go of something. “First comes love, then comes marriage…” I stopped walking and lifted my CHAMPION ribbon over my head and slipped it over Troo’s because it was more important to her than to me and I also knew she’d stop singing that stupid song if I did. But most of all I did it because Daddy was right this minute looking down from Heaven and giving me a double thumbs-up.
Troo ran her finger down the ribbon and had another puff of her cigarette and said, “You know what, Sal? You are the best big sister in the whole world and don’t you forget…” And then something jumped out of the bushes and Troo was knocked flat onto the sidewalk and a big black shape stinking of pepperoni was all over her, grunting and pinching at her, the muscles in his arms tight like a tug-of-war rope.
Greasy Al was sitting on top of Troo and holding her hands to the sidewalk. I jumped on his back and he flipped me off like a bucking bronco. I landed face-first in the bushes that he’d been hiding in next to the drugstore. Troo tossed and turned and yelled, her legs marching up and down. “You fucking dago, let me go.”
“You want me to let you go, you little mick? Your wish is my command.” Greasy Al let go of Troo’s hands and hauled off and socked her. And then he got up off her. Troo had dropped her bike on the ground and he was limping his way toward it, but then like he wanted to beat on Troo some more, he limped back. He was laughing his greasy laugh. I ran at him, and then Troo, who had gone quiet, moaned, so I stopped, not sure who to go to. Then a voice in the darkness said real softly, “Leave her alone.”