Archives for July 2013

Chapter 56

 

The sun was strong and the air was humid. The sky was a high pale blue. At ten o’clock in the morning the temperature was already at 90 degrees. Ron’s breath was an easy flow as he ran around the cinder path track. He was starting his third mile and his feet were lightly slapping down on the track. His legs felt strong and his arms were swinging in an easy and free motion. As he circled the backstop of the baseball part of the quarter mile oval, two kids who had started playing just after he arrived waved to him. Ron felt that easy smile on his face as he leaned into the curve and started down the sundrenched, longer straightaway of the oval. He could hear birds and he could smell the cut grass. The oval was moving quickly in front of his eyes. His breathing was his speedometer; it told him when he needed to slow his pace or when he could let himself loose.

His longest run had been seven miles, but he wasn’t after that today. He had read that the maximum cardio vascular benefit was reached after a three mile run and made the decision that only once or maybe twice a week he would push himself to run until his legs began to feel wobbly. It pleased him that it was never his breathing that caused him to stop. All those years of smoking cigarettes and pot and now his body was turned on like a smooth running machine with fragile tire rods. It was true that most of the people that ran his kind of daily distance did not use a track, but his knees liked the soft, even surface and the round and round repetition of the oval took him along the bleachers that separated the field from the back yard of his mother’s house. It felt like home.

Now he was at two and half miles and it pleased him that he wasn’t thinking. He felt both totally in and out of his body at the same time. His shadow extended out in front of him and Ron stared at it as he ran. With a lap and a half to go, he picked up the pace and waited to see how much of a kick he had left. His breathing quickened and his arms pumped harder. He churned his legs. The only question now was when he was going to begin his sprint. With a half a lap left, he kicked it up another notch.  Not quite all out yet and he could feel the more rapid intake of his breaths, but his mind was on his legs. He would shut it down if there was any wobble to his strides but he was hoping to be able to push. With 120 yards to go, he let it rip and felt himself flying down the track. He could not feel his feet striking the ground. He pumped and urged himself with the internal chant of “faster.”

When he crossed the finish line, he saw a burly man sitting in the stands watching him. The man smiled and waved. Ron jogged and walked in a two hundred yard loop that brought him back to the stands where the man was sitting.

“If you had been in that kind of shape when you played for me, you would have been an all-state guard,” said Max Kresge.

“I was too stupid to know that I had to be in shape to play football then,” said Ron, grinning with the sublime euphoria of the endorphin rush.

“Yup, it showed.”

Ron laughed and peeled the heavy, wet sweat-stained t-shirt over his head and off of his body. Despite the heat, it had made him feel chilled but now the sun was warming him and he extended one leg up straight onto the lowest bench on the bleachers and began to stretch his hamstrings.

“How are the knees?”

“They feel good, coach, maybe the best they have ever felt. How are you doing?”

“Not bad for an old man that got kicked to the curb,” said Kresge in that gravelly voice. He was a thick man with a gut and a barrel chest. He must be pushing seventy now and was still a formidable presence.

Ron switched legs. “Did I ever tell you that I became a teacher?”

Kresge chortled. “That just convinces me that football players really are dumb shits.” Kresge did not ask what he was teaching. “You ever see any of the guys that you played with?”

“Not since I graduated,” said Ron. “I’m not big on the reunion thing and besides they weren’t the happiest days of my life.”

“I remember that.”

As a kid coming from Newark, Ron had not exactly fit into the Glen Ridge social set. The one place where he had always been able to make friends had been the football field, but the team had already been successful before he got there. They had lost a single game the year that he transferred, when he was still considered ineligible because he had come from a parochial school, and the loss had stuck in the town’s craw. They were supposed to win every game. When Ron got to play as senior, they did go undefeated, but he was a peripheral player who could hit like a truck but had bad knees and no speed.

“This town never knew I was a Jew until they decided that it was time for me to go, then I became the money grubbing kike who didn’t know when it was time to quit.”

“I didn’t know that coach. Do you still come to the games?”

“Screw that,” said Kresge. “I go down to Florida right after the first frost. Plenty of good football down there.”

Ron sat down on the bleachers and pulled on a dry t-shirt. He loved that a medium hung loose over his stomach. “I’m in charge of discipline too,” he exaggerated.

“Ronnie, you got to learn. That’s the worst fucking job in the school. Don’t let them make you believe that it’s an honor.”

Ron nodded and wondered how this man who had been a wall of strength had cracked into such bitter pieces. “I love the kids and the classroom.” He did not mention that it was all girls.

Max Kresge looked at him from behind his sunglasses and baseball cap. He had tried to tell the kid but the dumb son-of –a-bitch had never been fast on the uptake.

 

Ron stashed his wet t-shirt on the front seat of his car and climbed the steps to his mother’s house. He went around back and entered through the unlocked door. Lois and his mother were sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee.

“Ronald, look how you’re sweating!” said Marjorie.

“I was just running, Mom.”

“In this heat? You’ll have a stroke.”

“It feels good.”

“There’s some Crystal Light in the refrigerator. Pour a glass and sit down and cool off. My god, you’re dripping on the floor.”

Ron poured a glass of the stuff and carried the pitcher to the table.

“How are you feeling?” he said.

“It takes me a while to get moving in the morning but then I’m good,” she said. She lit a Virginia Slim. Lois lit a Virginia Slim.

‘You look really healthy,” said Lois. “I make your mother have a nice slow cup of coffee before we go anywhere on days like today.”

“I’m glad that you came, Ronald. There’s something that I want to talk with you about. I want you to come to the ceramics shop on Thursday night.”

“I have a tutoring appointment.”

“At night?”

“I have to go when the parents are at home.” This was technically the truth although Ron didn’t really have an appointment on Thursday.

“There’s a nice girl that I want you to meet. Her name is Denise Delatorre.

“Mom.”

“She’s a very pretty girl with a cute shape and a lovely mother.”

“That’s the first thing that I look for in a girl, Mom. Always have.” Ron nodded in mockery. “Within the first few minutes, I always ask about her mother.”

Lois laughed in spite of the situation but then withered as Marjorie glared at her. “If you aren’t going to help, the least that you can do is not encourage his shitiness.”

Marjorie decided on another tact. “Robin dumped you and the mouse moved away. What are you going to do? You gonna sit around that tenement of an apartment and play music and feel sorry for yourself?”

Ron bit. “That’s not what I do, Mom. You know that’s not what I do. You know how many hours I work.”

Marjorie knew that she had him now. “And who helped you to get that job?”

Ron shoulders sagged. “You did.”

“And you fought me about that but when you trusted me it all worked out, didn’t it?”

He nodded.

“It was me that sent your resume to that school, wasn’t it? You were stuck working in the jail where they slashed your tires and beat you up.”

“No one beat me up.”

“You came home filed with bruises, didn’t you?”

“Do we really have to do this? You want me to come and meet the girl, right? Even though I haven’t dated an Italian girl since I was fifteen years old. Even though there is nothing about a girl who goes to a ceramics shop with her mother that could possibly be of even the slightest bit of interest to me.”

“The mouse was artistic.”

“She’s a painter and a sculptor. Doing ceramics isn’t quite the same thing, Mom.”

Lois raised her eyebrows and thought about interjecting that she loved to paint and loved to do ceramics. She decided that she would rather say that to Marjorie after Ron left. She could make it sound like she was on Marjorie’s side.

“Oh, I forgot. You’re too good for anybody who would come to a ceramics shop, anybody that your mother might possibly like.”

There was just no way out without just refusing. Ron felt locked neatly into a corner. He tried his ace in the hole. “Have you heard from my father?”

“Yes, he called. I guess that now that you don’t need his help anymore that he is also not good enough for you to visit.” She paused strategically. “I see things differently since the heart attack, Ronald. I don’t know how much more time have left and I would like to see you settled before anything else happens to me. Who is going to care enough about what happens to you after I’m not here anymore?”

Ron closed his eyes. She had him. There was no way out. Now if he refused, it would be a much bigger problem than he was ready for. “What time on Thursday?”

Marjorie lit another Virginia Slim.  “Don’t do me any favors, Ronald.”

Ron shrugged. “OK.”

“Find another girl who breaks your heart or throws up on you.”

Ron winced. He should have known better than to have shared that with her, but she was so vulnerable and he had let his guard down. “Do you want me to come to meet her?”

“The class is from seven o’clock until eight-thirty. Do what you want.”

“I’ll be there.”

“She’s a nice girl with a good job in a bank. Who knows if she would even look twice at you, even though she would be a jerk not to.”

Ron stood up. “I said that I would come.”

Marjorie eyed him again. “Have you stopped eating again?”

“No, Mom. I eat.”

Lois said. “A man with a flat stomach like that always looks good, Margie.” Now Lois looked at him trying to make peace. “You’re as flat as a washboard.”

Ron smiled.

 

Chapter 55

As Easter approached Ron felt very hopeful. His mother was home now and Lois was spending more and more time in Glen Ridge. George had moved back in and there seemed to be a silent, if angry truce between Marjorie and him. Ron tried his best to avoid George altogether. On the evenings that he knew George was working late, he would stop by after tutoring, or the other nights he would call.

The days were getting longer and the weather was turning mild. On some days Ron could get away with just wearing his sports jacket and some evening he would get home before it was dark.

The English Department at the school consisted of four teachers. There was Sister Ruth Dolores, the department chairperson, who was a thin brown-haired nun with dark rimmed glasses and a close to the vest voice that never rose much about a whisper. There were two lay teachers, Emily Spinoza and Holly Risotto. The one was a newly married girl from the neighborhood who talked to her kids about how much she wanted to get pregnant as she did about grammar. The other, Holly, was a tall, somewhat overweight woman with reddish blonde hair and tinted glasses. She also taught drama. And then there was Ron.

The department rarely met and Ron saw little of his department colleagues who were all located in the other building. To commemorate the coming of the most sacred day of the year, Sister Donna Maria announced that the meeting would be held in the convent to celebrate the mystery of Christ Risen.

They gathered on the Tuesday before Good Friday and the day before the last day of school prior to the beginning of the holiday. By now, Ron had noticed that his vacations were longer than those of the public school teachers. He had also figured out that it was another way that the school kept the loyalty of its students and faculty. They got more vacations.

Before the meeting, Bernadette, drew Ron aside and said, “Keep an eye on Holly. We had to cover one of her classes this morning. She has been in with Donna Maria praying for most of the morning.”

He gave her a look that said that he did not understand the import of what she was saying. She just put her finger to her lips, gave her head an almost imperceptible shake and used her eyes to direct his attention to Sister Cheesy.

Donna Maria was giving Holly a warm and benevolent smile. The teachers were filing in. Ron had lost his place card soon after the first meeting and had not seen the need to bring it again, but many of the teachers dutifully placed them on their laps and some of the more enterprising had found a way to attach it to their blouse collars.

“Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again,” said Donna Maria as a sign that the gathering was to come to order.

The faculty came to silence. Except for Holly who threw back her head and opening her mouth wide with her glasses askew on her face, screamed, “I see Him.”

Heads turned. Mouths opened. Donna Maria frowned.

Holly turned to the crucifix on the wall and looked up with a radiance of torment on her face. “He’s coming into me. He wants me.”

Sister Donna Maria moved to her and placed both of her hands on the crown of Holly’s head in an effort to soothe her. “He wants all of us,” she said rapturously and lifted her eyes upward and then closed them and began to whisper prayer.

“It hurts!” screamed Holly. “He’s coming into me.”

Bernadette rolled her eyes but her face showed concern and anger. Doris got up and moved next to Holly. This last statement caused Donna Maria to back up a step or two as if she had been repulsed by the unbridled electricity of what she heard.

The next scream was a wordless cry of anguish. It was feral and shrill. Ron was stunned. He waited for someone to escort Holly from the room or to call an ambulance but no one moved. The scream echoed in the room and when Ron looked at the faces of his colleagues he saw that they were swiveling between Holly and the crucifix.

Incredibly, Donna Maria tried to continue the meeting. “As we prepare students for these coming days, remember that our first consideration is…”

“He’s naked and he wants me,” yowled Holly. She began to pull at the collar of her white button down shirt and the top two buttons popped off and bounced across the top of the table that was in front of her.

Now two of the nuns jumped to their feet and Donna Maria said, “Sisters, please help Miss Risotto.”

When they took her by the elbows and tried to help her to stand, she looked at them wild-eyed. “He doesn’t want you. He wants me.” she said in tortured accusation. She stood and faced the faculty. “Can’t you see how he wants me?” She rolled her hips in grotesque invitation at the crucifix.

Ron looked around for Rita Julia, but the Mother Superior was not in the room. And then to his shock, Bernadette stood quietly and left. She must be calling the police or the hospital, thought Ron.

But now Holly was walking towards him, flanked by the two nuns, Ruth Dolores and Alma Mercedes.

Holly stopped in front of Ron. “Can you help me?”

“I don’t know how,” said Ron trying to meet her eyes. He sensed the sincerity of her pain and looked at her with a mixture of compassion, fear and revulsion.

“Please,” she said, lowering her head and crying. “Please take me out of here.”

Ron felt a rush a cold desperation wash through him like ice water. “Holly,” he said gently. “We need to get you some help.”

She cried harder. Her shoulders were shaking like a trembling dead leaf that clung to spring branch that was trying to get rid of its excess baggage to make room for new growth.

Abruptly, Doris stood up. “I’ll go with you,’ she said to Ron.

Ron felt himself go pale. They couldn’t be serious. This woman needed a hospital and a strait jacket and they wanted him to take her home.

“Please,” blubbered Holly and she began to get down onto her knees. The nuns held her up. Ron looked for Donna Maria, but she had shrunken into the corner of the room and was not looking at them.

Then Donna Maria rose out of her corner and walked towards them. “Mr. Tuck, you may be excused from the rest of the meeting so that you can take Miss Risotto home. She needs to rest.” Then she turned to Holly. “Please take tomorrow off, Miss Risotto. I will see that your classes are covered and then you will have the entire vacation to get your strength back.”

Holly’s shoulders trembled and she did not look up to meet Sister Donna Maria’s gaze. Muffled moans worked their way out of her mouth and nostrils along with mucus and drool. Her eyeliner had run in dark streaks down her cheeks and give her the appearance of a crying clown. Doris held her hand and Ron could see that Holly was squeezing it so tightly that her fingers were white. Tears that were blackened from the makeup under her leaking eyes dripped down onto her white shirt and left wet, black trails.

Doris spoke to Sister Donna Maria. “I’ll help him with her and make sure that she is alright.

The three of them made a slow, carefully watched procession from the convent’s meeting room and towards the front door. Holly looked up at a statue of the Blessed Virgin and wailed again. The sound pierced the silence of the convent like a muffled blade.

When they got to the car, Doris helped Holly into the front seat. Ron went and around to the driver’s side and flicked the lever that allowed the seat to move forward so that Doris could access the rear seat, but Doris didn’t get in. She looked at Ron with a defensive glare.

“My husband will be expecting me. I’m having a crowd for dinner on Good Friday.”

“You’ve got to be kidding. You said that you would help.”

“This is as far as I go,” said Doris and without waiting for a reply turned her back to the car and quickly waddled away.

“You’ve been a big help,” said Ron.

He clicked the seat forward and slid in. Holly was holding her head and staring out the side window.

“Where do you live, Holly?”

“Bellville.”

Ron started the car. “Where in Belleville?”

“On Little Street. Upstairs from a family.” She began to cry again.

Ron put the car into gear and began to drive. He knew approximately where Little Street was and so he headed up towards the park thinking that he could save lights and time by winding along a road the rimmed the outskirts of the park.

After a few blocks, Holly said, “I have dreams about you.” Ron didn’t answer. “In the dreams I’m wearing a uniform and you are scolding me.” Ron began to perspire in the cold car. “You tell me that I am a bad girl but it feels good when you say it. Do you know why?”

Ron said, “Holly, do you have a doctor?”

“No.”

“Maybe I should take you to the hospital.”

Immediately, she turned to him and said, “No. no please. No hospital. I’ll do anything that you want me to do. I’ll be anything that you want me to be, but please no hospital.” Her voice was rising in desperation and Ron could see that the only way that he would get her into the hospital would be with the help of the police. He did not want to do that. “The girls are all in love with you,” she said as if she was revealing a dark secret. We talk about you all the time.” This idea was incomprehensible to Ron, but somehow the thought of their minds being entrusted to Holly made him angry. What kind of a role model was she for the nuns to put in front of his students? How could Irene Emanuel have hired this woman?

They came out of the park on Heller Parkway and Ron headed towards Silver Lake. Holly screamed like a siren. “No railroad tracks! No railroad tracks! No, no, I can’t ride over the crosses on the railroad tracks!”

Ron pulled the car to the side of the road. If he just drove ahead and crossed the tracks he could get her to Claara Maas Hospital within a couple of minutes, but then he felt guilty. He would just be dumping her like unwanted furniture on the street. He couldn’t do that. It would make him no better than Doris.

“OK,” he said. “No railroad tracks.” His brain began to run through the possible permutations. There were railroad tracks that separated Bellville from Newark with every route that his mind saw. He clicked in one route after another and the he saw it. Where Broadway became Washington Street there was an overpass. He could drive under the railroad tracks. He turned the car around.

She was silent as the streets passed and then in a very small, little girl voice she asked, “Where are you taking me?”

“I know a place where there is an underpass,” he said.

In the same small voice, she asked coyly, “Do you wear underpants?” Ron didn’t answer. “Sometimes, I don’t,” she said like she was confessing.

The image was not one that Ron chose to picture, but it set off a chain reaction in his brain that asked the question, “Would I be this anxious to drop her off if I thought she was pretty?” The fact that he even asked himself the question filled Ron with self-disgust.

“I could be your geisha and you could tell me to do anything and I would do it for you,” she said.

“Holly, you really need to see a doctor.”

Her voice shifted and became deep and almost menacing. “Why? Is it because I am a woman who is strong enough to say what it is that she really wants? Is that why you are pushing me away?”

“No, “said Ron quickly. He didn’t want to set her off again and they were coming up to the trestle now and he felt that if he just got under the railroad tracks that somehow things would be better.

“The girls told me that you don’t have a girlfriend when I asked them about you.”

Ron wanted to strangle his students. He wondered if they had fueled her fantasies. If they had used her vulnerability to get out of doing work or because they thought that she was amusing. For a moment he was very angry with them. He vowed to not tell them anything else about his life.

Now they were on Washington Avenue and heading north. It was then that she seemed to gather herself and began to calmly provide him with directions. Ron was hopeful. Maybe this episode was passing and he could just drop her off.

When they pulled up in front of her house, she said “Would you like to come in for some tea or a drink?”

“I don’t think so,” said Ron.

She began to cry quietly. “You think I’m disgusting and pathetic, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t,” said Ron. “I think that maybe you have been working too hard and need to get some rest and maybe see a doctor.”

“I don’t need a doctor. I need a man who isn’t afraid.” Then she opened the car door and said, “Thank you for getting me home, Mr. Tuck.”

Ron watched as she walked up to the house, took her keys out of her purse, opened the door and disappeared inside. As he pulled away her felt a twinge of concern but it was overcome by a huge wave of relief. Why did all the crazy women want him?

 

End of part 2

 

 

Chapter 54

 

The anticipation of the test caused the girls to be nervous and to perspire. Ron could smell it in the classroom as he walked back and forth across front of the room passing out the test. They started reading and writing instantly. Their heads were down and their mouths moved as they silently said the words to themselves and then repeated the words again. Some of the girls just began writing furiously from the moment that they got their tests. Some took a moment to read over them. One or two just stared straight ahead like they had been found guilty and were awaiting sentencing, but eventually they were all working. He liked to watch them work. It was like they were emptying their brains for him, telling him everything that they knew. They were talking to him on the tests. They were writing for him. He knew that this was the illusion that he had created and that really they were writing for themselves. Eventually they would make the transfer and be able to write for anyone. What difference did it make if they felt that they were doing it for him right now? It occurred to Ron that school was practice life. Silently he wondered if they would ever get the chance to use these skills after they left school.

He announced the incrementally decreasing amounts of time left in the class. As the end grew closer, the girls began to sweat more and write faster. Ron watched them with pride and fascination. He had been a good standardized test taker in high school and in college but he did not do as well on teacher created tests. Either he had not read or studied the material or he found himself distracted by some tangential path that his brain decided to take. In college, he had been accused of doing this purposefully. He learned that even if he was not aware that he was doing it intentionally, his professors did not accept the notion that unconscious action was something for which he should not be held accountable. Invariably though, he would write a paper of make a presentation or offer a unique perspective on a piece that caused more than one teacher to excuse his test taking distractibility.

When the bell rang, the girls groaned. None of them had turned in their tests. He had made it too long. They looked up at him with a simultaneously accusatory and plaintiff stare.

“I can see that it was too long,” he said. “I’ll work something out.” They were not happy with him when they reluctantly gave up their tests and went on to the next class. He had already decided what he would do. He would give them the tests back the next day. This was a mixed bag solution. It did penalize those who crammed, but at the same time it rewarded those who had truly learned the material or those who were interested enough to go to the book that night and see what it was that they had missed. He would not tell them of his solution. He would spring it on them. He smiled when he pictured the way that they would groan and pout.

 

Chapter 53

“The test on Acts 1 and 2 will consist of twenty significant quotes from the play. You will receive one point for accurately identifying the speaker. One point for explaining any literary devices that are in the quote and you will earn three points for explaining its significance to the story and setting the context in which it was said.”

The groans were loud. Two of the girls flipped their books closed like they were giving up. “How are we supposed to remember every word of the play?” said Barbara. “We aren’t like you. We don’t have it all memorized.”

Ron smiled his best dimpled grin but they weren’t buying it. “Listen,” he said gently, would I ask you to do something that you couldn’t do?”

“Yes,” they responded in a responsorial that Ron thought was too spontaneous to not be heartfelt.

“OK, what impossible things have I asked you do?”

“You want us to memorize this stupid play,” said Connie.

“You make me write until my hand is cramped into a claw, “said Sonia. She accented her compliant by twisting her hand into a claw and holding it up for the class. Everyone, including Ron, laughed.

“Every time I think that I have finally figured out what you want, you announce that you are raising the bar. Sometimes I want to pick up the bar and beat you over the head with it, Mr. Tuck,” said Julie.

There was dead silence. Everyone thought that she had gone over the line. They had never seen Mr. Tuck write a discipline referral but half of them were sure that this was gonna be the first one. The story was that he had never written one and all the girls so wanted that to be the truth.

“Learning is hard,” he said gently. “But you girls are better than you think that you are. Let me show you.” He turned and walked to the book. He seemed to open it at random and said. Who said, “Why do you dress me in borrowed robes?”

“That’s easy,” said Barbara. “Mac said it to the witches when they called him the Thane of Cawdor.”

Ron smiled. He was gonna get them. “And what is the literary device?”

“It’s imagery,” said Rose. “And that other thing.”

Connie said, “Mo’ teef” she said in the funny and exaggerated way that he had taught them to remember it and they all laughed.

“And what is a motif?”

“Repeating something until it gets more important,” said Connie quickly.

Ron closed the book and smiled at them. ”See you know more than you think that you do. This isn’t gonna be hard.”

“Let’s do more,” said Julie, whose plan was to write all of them down.

“Good,” said Ron. “Everyone’s notebook out.”

They sped through the next 10 quotes almost flawlessly. They didn’t really know it but Ron was taking them directly from the test. They knew the stuff cold.

 

Ron was used to the wall of noise and light that slapped him when he entered The French Maid. He made his way to the best available seat and put a $20 on the bar.

“Welcome back, honey,” said the gum cracking bartender.

He grinned. “White wine, please.”

She smiled and gave her hips a little strutting wiggle when she went to get it. He had been there enough times to be clocked by the bartenders. This one wasn’t married and the dancers hadn’t said anything about him trying to tweak a nipple or saying anything really perverse to them when they danced for him.

When he saw Emerald, he felt his heart begin to pound. He had been half looking for her since the day that he had skipped out of The Hitching Post without another word. He was wondering if she would act annoyed with him or whether she would recognize him at all. After all, how many guys had slipped her dollar bills since Ron last saw her? How many guys had come to the next club where she was dancing? How many guys had just left her working without a good-bye or another word?

He didn’t want the answers to any of these questions. He wanted the fantasy of her. He wanted to watch her bend over for him and smile at him from between her legs. He wanted to watch her crawl for him and squint and tell himself that it was Robin crawling and that he was punishing her by making her do this until he was ready to take her back.

She was wearing an outfit that he hadn’t seen before. It was thin and white and he could see the outline of her nipples and the swell of her labial lips and the whisper of the crevice between her cheeks. He sat back and gazed at her. He was pretty sure that she hadn’t noticed or recognized him until she stood right in front of him on the stage and using her hands like blinders on the sides of a horse’s head displayed the entirety of her breasts for him and smiled.

Ron extended his dollar, creased lengthwise and sticking out straight. She grinned and came down from the stage to get it. She opened herself again and pressed the backs of his fingers against her chest as she took it.

“Thank you for coming to see me the other day.”

“I’m sorry that I couldn’t stay longer,” said Ron.

“It’s a crappy place,” she answered. “I don’t think I’ll be dancing there anymore.”

Then still holding the dollar, she climbed back up onto the stage. She turned and spread her legs wide. She took the dollar and scratched it up the back of her left thigh and then the back of her right thigh and then sliding the end of it up and down right along the thinly clad slit of her pussy. Then she stood and turned to face him and folded it in half and slipped it down the front of her sheer G-string. She gave it a pat and moved away. For the rest of the set, Ron could see the outline of it pressed against her. It made him very hard.

When she worked the bar, he gave her another two dollars and said, “That was a very sexy thing that you did before.”

He expected her t say something smart-assed or maybe nothing at all, but instead she said, “I did that just for you.”

When she came out of the dressing room she came over to his chair and said, “I promised a guy over there that I would sit with him, so if you are still here, I’ll see you after my next set.”

Ron’s face registered disappointment and she smiled. He felt a jealous rush and then told himself that he was being ridiculous. He sat back against the bar chair and watched and sipped wine and thought about Zoe. There was something about her that he missed. It was the way that she made him feel handsome.

He had always been told that he was a good-looking guy, but he had never really believed it. Where he had grown up, the standard for “good looking” had been a short thin guy with dark hair and an olive skinned complexion. Ron was none of that. He stood just under six feet tall and was broad shouldered. He had light brown hair that turned shades of blonde in the summertime. He had a round face. Instead of full, sensual lips, his lips were thin. When he wasn’t running he tended to develop a bit of a gut. He didn’t have one now, but that was because he hardly ate two meals a day. He wondered if all self-concepts were formed in childhood.

The girl dancing in front of him was doing pole work. He watched as she held herself upside down on the pole and opened her legs very wide. Ron stared at her pussy. He loved the sight of a woman’s vagina. He loved to touch it, to kiss it, and to fuck it. The way that it closed around him when he entered it was almost indescribable. And then Emerald was standing at his shoulder again.

“I’ve got a few minutes before I have to go back up,” she said.

“Could I see you sometime?” said Ron. “I mean not here, really see just you.”

He felt her stiffen and she looked into his hazel eyes. “Do you really think that would be a good idea?”

“Yes,” said Ron. “I really do. I’ve thought about you a lot. It would be great to be able to sit at a table with you and just talk and eat or drink or something.”

“And then what would you think when you saw me here, bent over for some other guy who was waving money at me?”

“I don’t know.”

“I do. You’d hate it and you’d hate me for doing it even though it’s my job.”

“I don’t think that I would.”

“I know that you would. I do much better as a fantasy than I do as a girlfriend.”

“I’ve had people say that about me too,” said Ron. “That I’m not real and that I can’t be a real person.”

“You’re real. You’re too real.” She slid off the stool that was next to Ron. “I’ve got to dance. “I think that you should just see me here and be nice to me and then I can be nice to you too and nothing will get complicated.”

When she walked away Ron could not help but stare at her ass and way that the bottom parts of her cheeks jiggled. “Maybe I like things complicated,” he said to himself.

 

 

Chapter 52

Ron ate his Chinese food and listened to Joni Mitchell’s music.  He felt himself finally calming down. He stared out the window at the dark street and the blackened snow that was now just dirty ice and slush.

When the phone rang again, he moved to it with the order of spiced eggplant still in his hand.

“Hello.”

“How are you?” drawled Warren Lashly.

Involuntarily Ron felt his heart quicken. Warren never called him. Something must be wrong. He wasn’t sure that he could take too much more pressure today.

“I’m fine Warren, what’s up?”

“You still working at teaching those little girls?”

“Yup, still working at it.”

“I know this is gonna sound a little strange, but April’s been wanting to see you and she asked me if I could give you a call. She’s been sick. She’s been very sick actually and she needs something from you.”

Ron said, “OK,” and paused.

“Well, she’s here right now and what she asked me to do was to call you and see if you had any pot. She’s been very nauseous.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

“I’ll let her tell you that. Is there any way that you can drive some down here tonight?”

“Sure Warren, I can do that for her. Now you aren’t gonna have me busted for bringing any pot to Rahway are you?”

It was a reference to the way that Warren had dissolved the partnership between Chris and him, the partnership that had begun Rahway. It was a move that forever had tagged Warren with the nickname of The Sheriff. Ron, of course, would never have turned Warren down about anything and he knew it.  He would be forever grateful for what Warren had done for him with teaching, with helping him to get well after Robin, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t break his balls a bit.

“There’s no need for that,” said Warren.

The “that” was left ambiguous and Ron decided not to pursue it. “I can be there in about an hour.

“We’ll see you then,” said Warren and then the phone clicked dead.

Ron glanced at the clock. It was 7:30 on a school night but he knew that he was going to do it.

Kelly answered the backdoor and smiled brightly as if Ron was one of her best friends. She bent into him and kissed his cheek. Ron felt her breasts press against her his chest and it caused him to twitch in his pants Sometimes he hated his cock. It left him with absolutely no dignity. His eyes watched Kelly’s ass as she led him through the kitchen and down the one step into the sunken living room.

Laureen, April and Warren were seated by the fire. Ron recognized the Brahms Requiem that was playing softly on the stereo. April smiled when he walked in and stood. Ron almost gasped at the sight of her. She had always been thin, but now she was cadaverous and she wore a red checked bandana on her head that promised that there was not much underneath it. She came to him and put her arms around his neck and kissed him. Her body felt like nothing but bones and there was a stale smell on her breath that Ron recognized from Zoe. April had been vomiting. She took his hand and led him to the group after she whispered. “Thank you so much for coming down like this.”

Ron sat on a pillow, keeping his back to the fire. He opened his jacket and took it off and let it slide down in back of him as he reached into one of the pockets and took out a small bag of pot and some rolling papers. He handed them to April, who blushed without color and said, “I don’t know how to do it.”

Warren cackled. “Well, Ron can sure help you with that if not with a lot of other things too.”

Laureen giggled and said, “Warren, you’d better be nice or Kelly won’t sleep with you tonight.”

Kelly giggled and Warren smirked the smiles of someone very sure of himself.

Ron’s eyes danced at Laureen’s quip. He said, “Guess there’s not much that you can hold over me, huh Laureen?”

“That’s just one of her phone calls to Robin away,” said Warren.

Ron smiled. “I don’t think so.” Then he smiled to himself. He really had not felt anything at the mention of her name.

Laureen said, “Well thank god for that. It was becoming tedious.”

Everyone laughed and Ron found that he could laugh as well. He stood and pulled an album cover from the shelf, opened it and then opened the bag of pot and began to roll a joint.  Looking down at the composer he said, “Richard Wagner, do you think he’ll mind?”

“He’s seen a lot worse,” quipped Laureen.

Ron laughed again and looked into her dark eyes. “I really have missed you, he said.

Laureen stiffened as if his statement had reminded her of something uncomfortable.

“I spent the afternoon in the police station,” said Ron. “One of my students was shot to death by his father.”

Everyone was silent as Ron cleaned the pot and rolled the joint. Laureen said, “Well, that was a real conversation stopper.” She got up and moved into the kitchen to get something to drink.

Sitting with the album cover spread open on his lap, Ron rolled joint after joint until there were 10 in a neatly stacked row and the bag was empty. The talk moved from the college to what was happening in New York’s museums. Ron half- listened. Then he looked up and saw that the group was staring at him.

“What?”

“How did you learn to do that so quickly and so well?” said April.

“Lots of practice,” said Ron.

“Too much for his own good,” said Warren.

“Well it’s a lifesaver for me tonight,” said April and lit the joint. She inhaled deeply and passed it to Ron who shook his head no.

“I’ve got to get going,” he said. “I have to be in early.”

“Ron Tuck refused a joint. Will wonders never cease?” said Laureen.

Ron slid his arms back into his jacket and met Laureen’s eyes. They were dark and dancing. He thought for an instant that they were actually quite beautiful. “I was thinking the other day about whether there was ever a woman that I went to visit and called on the phone who I did not also wish to fuck. Yours was the only name that came to my mind.”

Laureen laughed. “I’m not sure whether that’s a compliment or an insult.”

Ron stood up. “I meant it in the most complimentary way.”

“Why did the kid’s father shoot him?” said Warren.

“I don’t know. I only know that I was the last one to see him alive before he was killed.”

He half turned to April. “Anytime I can help you out just give me a call.”

“Which probably means that he wants to fuck you,” laughed Laureen.