Emperor of the Air (6 page)

“Why?” I asked.

“You don’t have to get to know me,” he said, “because one day you’re going to grow up and then you’re going to
be
me.” He looked at me and then out over the water. “So what I’m going to do is teach you how to hit.” He picked up a long stick and put it in my hand. Then he showed me the back-swing. “You’ve got to know one thing to drive a golf ball,”
he told me, “and that’s that the club is part of you.” He stood behind me and showed me how to keep the left arm still. “The club is your hand,” he said. “It’s your bone. It’s your whole arm and your skeleton and your heart.” Below us on the beach I could see my mother walking the waterline. We took cut after cut, and he taught me to visualize the impact, to sense it. He told me to whittle down the point of energy so that the ball would fly. When I swung he held my head in position. “Don’t just watch,” he said. “
See
.” I looked. The ice plant was watery-looking and fat, and at the edge of my vision I could see the tips of my father’s shoes. I was sixteen years old and waiting for the next thing he would tell me.

W
HAT MY FATHER SAID
was, “You pays your dime, you takes your choice,” which, if you don’t understand it, boils down to him saying one thing to me: Get out. He had a right to say it, though. I had it coming and he’s not a man who says excuse me and pardon me. He’s a man who tells the truth. Some guys my age are kids, but I’m eighteen and getting married and that’s a big difference. It’s a tough thing to get squeezed from your own house, but my father’s done all right because he’s tough. He runs a steam press in Roxbury. When the deodorant commercials come on the set he turns the TV off. That’s the way he is. There’s no second chance with him. Anyway, I’ll do all right. Getting out of the house is what I wanted, so it’s no hair off my head. You can’t get everything you want. This summer two things I wanted were to get out of the house finally and to go up to Fountain Lake with Katy, and I got both. You don’t have that happen to you very often, so I’m not doing so bad.

It’s summer and I’m out of High. That’s a relief. Some guys don’t make it through, but they’re the ones I was talking about—the kids. Part of the reason I made it is that my folks pushed me. Until I was too old to believe it my mother used to tell me the lie that anybody can be what you want to. “Anybody can rise up to be President of the United States,” she used to say. Somewhere along the line you find out that’s not true and that you’re either fixed from the start or fixed by something you do without really thinking about it. I guess I was fixed by both. My mother, though, she doesn’t give up. She got up twenty minutes early to make me provolone on rye for four years solid and cried when I was handed my diploma.

After graduation is when I got the job at Able’s. Able’s is the movie theater—a two-hundred-fifty-seat, one-aisle house on South Huntington.
Able’s, where the service is friendly and the popcorn is fresh
. The bathrooms are cold-water-only though, and Mr. Able spends Monday mornings sewing the ripped seat upholstery himself because he won’t let loose a few grand to re-cover the loges, which for some reason are coming apart faster than the standard seats. I don’t know why that is. I sell maybe one-third loge tickets and that clientele doesn’t carry penknives to go at the fabric with. The ones who carry knives are the ones who hang out in front. They wouldn’t cut anybody but they might take the sidewall off your tire. They’re the ones who stopped at tenth grade, when the law says the state doesn’t care anymore. They hang out in front, drinking usually, only they almost never actually come in to see the movie.

I work inside, half the time selling tickets and the other half as the projectionist. It’s not a bad job. I memorize most movies. But one thing about a movie theater is that it’s always dark inside, even in the lobby because of the tinted glass. (You’ve seen that, the way the light explodes in when someone opens the exit door.) But when you work in the ticket booth you’re looking outside to where it’s bright daylight, and you’re looking through the metal bars, and sometimes that makes you think. On a hot afternoon when I see the wives coming indoors for the matinee, I want to push their money back under the slot. I want to ask them what in the world are they doing that for, trading away the light and the space outside for a seat here.

The projectionist half of the job isn’t so bad, even though most people don’t even know what one is. They don:t realize some clown is sitting up in the room where the projectors are and changing the reels when it’s time. Actually, most of the time the guy’s just smoking, which he’s not supposed to do, or he has a girl in there, which is what I did sometimes with Katy. All there is to do is watch for the yellow dot that comes on in the corner of the screen when it’s time to change the reel. When I see that yellow dot there’s five seconds before I have to have the other projector running. It’s not hard, and after you do it a while you develop a sense. You get good enough so you can walk out to the lobby, maybe have popcorn or a medium drink, then sit on the stairs for a while before you go back to the booth, perfectly timed to catch the yellow spot and get the next reel going.

Anyway, it’s pretty easy. But once I was in the booth with Katy when she told me something that made me forget to change the reel. The movie stopped and the theater was dark, and then everybody starts to boo and I hear Mr. Able’s voice right up next to the wall. “Get on the ball, Jack,” he says, and I have the other projector on before he even has time to open the door. If he knew Katy was in there he’d have canned me. Later he tells me it’s my last warning.

What Katy told me was that she loved me. Nobody ever told me they loved me before except my mother, which is obvious, and I remember it exactly because suddenly I knew how old I was and how old I was getting. After she said that, getting older wasn’t what I wanted so much. It’s the way you feel after you get your first job. I remember exactly what she said. She said, “I love you, Jack. I thought about it and I know what I mean. I’m in love with you.”

At the time the thing to do was kiss her, which I did. I wanted to tell her that I loved her too, but I couldn’t say it. I don’t mind lying, but not about that. Anyway, we’re up there in the booth together, and it’s while we have our tongues in each other’s mouths that the reel runs out.

The first time I met Katy was at the theater. She’s a pretty girl, all eyes, hair that’s not quite blond. It falls a certain way. It was the thing I noticed first, the way it sat there on her shoulders. But it more than just sat; it touched her shoulders like a pair of hands, went in around the collar of her shirt and touched her neck. She was three rows in front. I wasn’t working at the theater yet. It was end of senior year and I was sitting in two seats and had a box of popcorn in my lap. My friend LeFranc was next to me. We both saw Katy when she came in. LeFranc lit a match. “Put me out,” he said, “before we all burn.” LeFranc plays trumpet. He doesn’t know what to say to a girl.

During the bright parts of the movie I keep looking at her neck. She’s with three other girls we don’t recognize. It turns out they go to Catholic school, which is why we don’t know them. Then about halfway through she gets up by herself and heads back up the aisle. LeFranc breathes out and lights another match. I smile and think about following her back to the candy counter, where I might say something, but there’s always the chance that she’s gone out to the ladies’ room instead and then where would I be? Time is on my side, so I decide to wait. The movie is
The Right Stuff
. They’re taking up the supersonic planes when this is happening. They’re talking about the envelope, and I don’t know what that means, and then suddenly Katy’s sitting next to me. I don’t know where she came from. “Can I have some popcorn?” she says.

“You can have the whole box,” I answer. I don’t know where this comes from either, but it’s the perfect thing to say and I feel a little bit of my life happening. On the other side LeFranc is still as an Indian. I push the bucket toward Katy. Her hands are milk.

She takes a few pieces and holds them with her palm flat up. Already I’m thinking, That’s something I would never do—the way she holds the little popped kernels like that. Then she chews them slowly, one by one, while I pretend to watch the movie. Things come into my head.

After the movie I talk to her a little and so we go on a few dates. In the meantime I get the theater job and in August she invites me to her sister’s wedding. Her sister’s marrying a guy twenty years older named Hank. It’s at a big church in Saugus. By this time Katy and I’ve kissed maybe two hours total. She always bites a piece of Juicy Fruit in two when we’re done and gives me half.

Anyway, at the wedding I walk in wearing a coat and tie and have to meet her parents. Her father’s got something wrong with one of his eyes. I’m not sure which one’s the bad one, and I’m worried he’s thinking I’m shifty because I’m not sure which one to look at. We shake hands and he doesn’t say anything. We put our hands down and he still doesn’t say anything.

“I’ve been at work,” I say. It’s a line I’ve thought about.

“I don’t know what the hell you kids want,” he says then. That’s exactly what he says. I look at him. I realize he’s drunk or been drinking, and then in a second Katy’s mother’s all over him. At practically the same time she’s also kissing me on the cheek and telling me I look good in my suit and pulling Katy over from where she’s talking with a couple of her girlfriends.

For the ceremony we sit in the pews. I’m on the aisle, with her mother one row in front and a couple of seats over so that I can see all the pleats and hems and miniature flowers sewn into her dress. I can hear her breathing. The father, who’s paid for the whole bagful, is pacing behind the nave door waiting to give away the bride. Katy’s back there too, with the other maids. They’re wearing these dresses that stay up without straps. The wedding starts and the maids come up the aisle finally, ahead of the bride, in those dresses that remind you all the time. Katy’s at the front, and when they pass me, stepping slowly, she leans over and gives me half a piece of Juicy Fruit.

So anyway, we’ve already been to a wedding together and maybe thanks to that I’m not so scared of our own, which is coming up. It’s going to be in November. A fall wedding. Though actually it’s not going to be a wedding at all but just something done by a justice of the peace. It’s better that way. I had enough the first time, seeing Katy’s father pace. He had loose skin on his face and a tired look and I don’t want that at our wedding.

And besides, things are changing. I’m not sure who I’d want to come to a big wedding. I’m eighteen in two months and so is Katy, and to tell the truth I’m starting to get tired of my friends. It’s another phase I’m coming into, probably. My friends are Hadley and Mike and LeFranc. LeFranc is my best friend. Katy doesn’t like Hadley or Mike and she thinks LeFranc is okay mostly because he was there when we met. But LeFranc plays amazing trumpet, and if there’s a way for him to play at the justice-of-the-peace wedding I’m going to get him to do it. I want him to play because sometimes I think about how this bit with Katy started and how fast it’s gone, and it kind of stuns me that this is what happened, that of all the ways a life can turn out this is the way mine is going to.

We didn’t get up to Fountain Lake until a couple of months after her sister’s wedding. It’s a Sunday and I’m sitting on the red-and-black carpet of Able’s lobby steps eating a medium popcorn and waiting for the reel change to come. Able himself is upstairs in the office, so I’m just sitting there, watching the sun outside through the ticket window, thinking this is the kind of day I’d rather be doing something else. The clowns out front have their shirts off. They’re hanging around out there and I’m sitting in the lobby when a car honks and then honks again. I look over and I’m so surprised I think the sun’s doing something to my eyes. It’s Katy in a red Cadillac. It’s got whitewalls and chrome and she’s honking at me. I don’t even know where she learned to drive. But she honks again and the guys out front start to laugh and point inside the theater. What’s funny is that I know they can’t see inside because of the tint, but they’re pointing right at me anyway.

There’s certain times in your life when you do things and then have to stick to them later, and nobody likes to do that. But this was one of them, and Katy was going to honk again if I didn’t do something. My father has a saying about it being like getting caught between two rocks, but if you knew Mr. Able and you knew Katy, you’d know it wasn’t really like two rocks. It was more like one rock, and then Katy sitting in a Cadillac. So I get up and set the popcorn down on the snack bar, then walk over and look through the door. I stand there maybe half a minute. All the while I’m counting off the time in my head until I’ve got to be back in to change the reel. I think of my father. He’s worked everyday of his life. I think of Mr. Able, sewing on the loge upholstery with fishing line. They’re banking on me, and I know it, and I start to feel kind of bad, but outside there’s Katy in a red Fleetwood. “King of the Cadillac line,” I say to myself. It’s a blazing afternoon, and as soon as I open the door and step outside I know I’m not coming back.