Brief Encounters with the Enemy (11 page)

Then, to lighten the mood, I grabbed him by the shoulders. “Kick some ass, Private!”

On Sunday, when I pulled up in front of the shop, Zlottie didn’t look as if she thought she was going on a date. She was dressed in that same black blouse with that same black skirt and those same black shoes. She looked like a witch. Or a mortician. It was going to be seventy degrees and sunny, the first day that year we were going to hit seventy degrees, and I couldn’t imagine she’d be able to stand the heat for long, especially considering we were spending the day at the amusement park. “I’ve never been to the amusement park,” she’d told me, clapping her hands in delight. I couldn’t believe it—twenty-six years old and never been to the amusement park.

Still, she had dressed like this.

I got out of the car and opened the door for her like a gentleman. Her father was nowhere to be seen, so I thought I’d start the day off right by giving her a kiss on the cheek, but she giggled and moved past me and sat down and slammed the door closed herself.

I took the bridge. I drove slowly. I wasn’t in a hurry. I’d been up early again, trying on different outfits: dressy, sporty, casual. In the end, I decided on jeans and a tank top. I wanted her to see my arms and shoulders, just like I wanted to see her legs and ass.

“Down there,” I said, indicating the river, “is where I used
to go fishing.” I’d only gone fishing once, the time we caught Zero the turtle.

“Fishing!” Zlottie said. “I’ve never been fishing.”

It sounded like an invitation for an invitation. “I’ll take you sometime,” I said. I glanced at her to see if the promise of a future engagement had made an impact. She was staring down at the river. “I’ve never been fishing,” she repeated. “I’ve never been to the amusement park. I’ve never been to a ball game.”

All her life in this city and she’d never been anywhere except
BILDMAN
’
S SH P
.

The entrance to Adventure Playland was clogged with strollers and soldiers. The park had become all the rage again because they’d built a new roller coaster called Kingdom Coming and everyone wanted to see if it lived up to the hype. Up and down in sixty seconds, the commercial said. The commercial ran every fifteen minutes. It had been ten years since I’d been on a roller coaster, any roller coaster, and I couldn’t wait.

At the ticket booth, I bought two all-you-can-ride passes for thirty dollars.

“All you can ride?” Zlottie said with apprehension.

I bought a hot dog for myself but nothing for her because: “I can’t eat anything here, Nick, you know that.”

“Aren’t you going to be hungry?”

“No.”

“Aren’t you going to be hot?”

“No.”

The line to Kingdom Coming was long and it wrapped
around the fence twice. You could hear the coaster before you saw it, a big whoosh of air, and then a few moments later a long train of red cars coming past the fence in a blur, one hundred miles per hour, jammed with people screaming their heads off.

“Wow!” I turned to her in excitement.

“I’m not going!” Zlottie said. Her face was filled with terror.

I took her hand in a comforting fashion. She let me hold it for a moment and then she took it away. “We’ll come back a little later,” I said.

At the far end of the park was a minor wooden roller coaster from the old days; it had a couple of hills and a few turns and there wasn’t much to it. It was the first roller coaster I’d ever gone on, but I’d outgrown it and moved on to bigger and better thrills. Apparently everyone else had outgrown it as well, because no one was in line.

“I’m scared,” Zlottie said.

We took our seat in the car. The car was wooden, and it looked like it couldn’t go faster than a bumper car. “Don’t be scared,” I whispered, and I imagined putting my arm around her shoulder and holding her close. Onto my palm I briefly mapped the course that the ride would take. “See?” This seemed to settle her, but as soon as the attendant came by to push the rubber restraining bar in front of our waist, Zlottie repeated, “I’m scared!”

It was too late now, the train was starting up, clanking and groaning as it climbed that first little hill. “See?” I kept saying. “See?”

We crested tranquilly, and for a moment I could see the
whole wide city. Over there was Winchester Parks, and in the other direction was where I lived, and in the middle was Walmart with its big blue roof, where I’d be back tomorrow morning at seven-thirty. And then we dropped.

I hadn’t remembered the drop to be so sharp. It seemed as if the wheels had lifted from the tracks and we were pointing straight down, hurtling toward the ground below. The momentum pulled me from my seat and I was sure I was about to be thrown from the car. I grasped the restraining bar. “Hold on, Zlottie!” I screamed in anguish. The car hit the bottom of the hill headfirst, a jarring landing that snapped me back into my seat and banged me against the wooden backrest, giving me only a second to catch my bearings before we went tearing around the bend. Now it felt as if I would be hurled out sideways against the railing that was inches from my face. “Whatever you do,” I screamed, “hold on!” Around another bend we went, nearly perpendicular to the ground, with the terrible roar of the wind in my ears, the terrible screeching of the fragile dilapidated fifty-year-old wheels on the track. And just beneath the roaring and the screeching, just beneath the screaming and the pleading, I was surprised to hear the familiar sound of Zlottie’s laughter. It was long and loud and without pause. Up the hills and down the hills she laughed,
wheeeeeeeeee
, through the tunnel and around the curve, and when we pulled into the finish line and the restraining bar released us mercifully into the world, she said, “Let’s do it again!”

Her face was flushed and healthy. Her black hair was blown across her forehead and mouth. If her hair was fake, it didn’t act fake.

I stumbled from the car. I wobbled. I belched. I was reminded of the hot dog I’d eaten.

No, I could not do it again.

“Come on,” she said, “Kingdom Coming!”

“Let’s sit on the bench for a minute,” I implored.

We sat in the shade and I leaned forward on my elbows, fearing I might puke.

“I thought you liked roller coasters,” she said.

After a while I felt her hand rest on my bare shoulder. It was a very light touch, almost incidental, but it had a reviving quality. “Come on,” she said, “we’ll come back later.”

We meandered through the park as I tried to gather my bearings. The park was getting crowded. Every once in a while, I would hear someone calling “Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiick!” And I wondered what they thought of me walking around with a Jewish girl.

“You know everyone,” Zlottie said.

I knew everyone and she knew no one. All her life in this city and no one called her name.

As we passed by the arcade, an old guy in the booth said, “Why don’t you try to win something for your girlfriend?”

I appreciated the word “girlfriend,” so I gave him five dollars for three chances to make one basket. I missed all three because the ball was rubbery and the basket was steel. I gave him five more dollars, and this time I won a small stuffed purple bird with plastic eyes.

I gave it to Zlottie.

“That’s ugly,” she said.

“That’s not the point,” I said.

“Give it to a little girl,” Zlottie told the guy in the booth.

He took it from her. “She’s a tough lady to please,” he said.

I walked on, disheartened. When we turned the corner, there was Kingdom Coming again, looming above us with its six loops and its mile-long course.

“Are you ready, Nick?” she said. “All you can ride!”

“Sure,” I said, “I’m ready,” but I wasn’t ready. “How about we go in here first?” And I pulled her into the entrance of one of those old-time rowboat rides that goes down a dark tunnel populated by plastic gnomes who gaze out at you from nooks and crannies. It had scared me as a boy, then it had bored me, and now it revealed itself to be what it was intended for: a place of romantic possibility.

This was the destination everything had been leading toward. This was the place and the moment.

“It looks dumb,” Zlottie said.

“It’s not dumb,” I said, “it’s sexy.”

Zlottie got in and grabbed the oars, but they were nailed to the sides. “I can’t paddle?” she said.

“That’s not the point,” I said.

Through the tunnel we floated. It wasn’t very dark, and it smelled like mildew and urine. The gnomes looked at me in their overalls and cowboy hats.

“I feel
so
sexy,” Zlottie said sarcastically. She laughed. In the tunnel, it sounded like fifteen Zlotties laughing.

I sighed. I brooded. I said finally, “I’d like to be more than just friends, Zlottie.”

“More than just friends?” She repeated. She peered at me curiously in the dim light.

“Can we be more than just friends?” I asked.

“Sure,” she said, “I have lots of people who are
more
than
just friends.” She started naming names, a long list of names, men and women, all Jewish-sounding. I got the sense that she didn’t understand what I meant by the word “friend.” She probably didn’t understand what I meant by the word “more.” Or “just” or “want.”

“Do you know what I mean?” I interrupted. “Do you know what I’m asking you?”

She squinted her black eyes at me.

It was so daunting. Everything was daunting, everything was a task. Even defining the word “friend” was a task. Even that took effort. Never mind a kiss. Never mind the first time I tried to put my hand up her long black blanket of a skirt. It was exhausting to think about. It made me want to fall asleep in the rowboat. In ten years, I’d lost my zest for roller coasters. In ten more years, who knew what other changes I’d undergo, what other passions I’d lose. I’d be thirty-six years old, still trying to fit into jeans and tank tops. But I’d be the district manager.

We floated on. The gnomes grinned at me. If the paddles had worked, I would have used them to smash the gnomes one by one. I shifted in my seat with aggravation, and as I did, the rowboat rocked hard, side to side, as if it might upend and toss me into the putrid water. I put my hand out to steady myself, but instead I accidentally caught Zlottie’s wrist, and suddenly I was pulling her close to me, not thinking just doing, putting my naked arms around her shoulders, and kissing her on her lips. And damn if she didn’t respond by putting her tongue right in my mouth as if she’d been waiting all along to do just that. She put her tongue in my mouth and one hand on my leg, so high up my leg that if she went one more inch
higher, it wouldn’t be my leg anymore. She might never have been outside Bildman’s shop, but she knew what to do.

We held each other close, body against body, no counter-top between us, and I ran my fingers through her hair. It was fake hair all right, no doubt about it, stiff and synthetic in my fingers like the bristles of a brush, and it smelled faintly chemical.

“I’ve always loved your hair,” I whispered. And we floated in our little rowboat out into the sunshine.

The line to Kingdom Coming wrapped three times around the fence. We held hands and stood close and waited. Every ten minutes we’d hear the sound of the wheels rumbling, and then the train would come flying past our faces like it was shooting up to the moon. Each time Zlottie would gasp with glee and I would tremble with horror.

We moved a few steps. We waited. We held hands. We moved a few more steps.

Eventually she had to pee, though she hadn’t drunk a thing. I watched her ass swish away in that black skirt.

The second she was out of sight, I heard someone calling my name. “Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiick!”

Who could it be but Pink again, pushing that same stroller with that same baby, still sound asleep and its face smeared with jelly. He was wearing another enormous watch, this one with diamonds, and he shook my hand hard, with deep feeling, as if he hadn’t just seen me. He looked at me with half-sad, half-high eyes. “Did you hear what happened to Joey Joey?” he said.

“That’s old news, Pink,” I said.

“He’s dead,” he said. “He got killed.”

He said something else I think, a couple other things, but I couldn’t hear too well because the roller coaster was coming over my head with everyone screaming, and it drowned out the sound. All I could make out were Pink’s lips moving inside his face, thin lips and bad teeth, jelly in the corners of his mouth. When the roller coaster was past us, he held out his hand again and we shook. He did all the shaking.

“See you around sometime, Nick,” he said, and he wheeled his little baby away.

I stood there for a while. Not thinking anything, just standing there. And then I took out my BlackBerry and I checked my email. I don’t like checking my email on my day off. My inbox was empty anyway.

“The line moved up, mister,” someone said behind me, and I saw that the line had moved up.

I turned off my BlackBerry and put it in my pocket, but once it was in my pocket, I took it right back out and turned it on and started typing. “I regret to inform,” I wrote in the subject line.

I wrote about how I had just received the tragic news that Joey Joey had been killed in the line of duty. I wrote in business-speak because that’s the way you have to do this when you’re an assistant manager. I wrote some nice things about Joey Joey, about how he was a good worker, about how he was going to be missed. I ended it by saying, “Condolences to all the associates.”

When I was done, I didn’t read it over, I just sent it out. I sent it to every one of my contacts. Five hundred people I sent
it to, including the district manager. Sure enough, half a minute later it came right back to me. “Fwd: I regret to inform.”

“It’s our turn, Nick!” Zlottie was saying. She was standing next to me, looping her arm through my arm, and guiding me up the stairs to where Kingdom Coming sat waiting.

We took our seat in a shiny new soft black car. All the kids were chattering in anticipation, and all the grown-ups were chattering too. An attendant came by to secure us with the thickest restraining bar I’d ever seen and which clicked into place with a mechanical precision.