Hard Love (4 page)

“No kidding. What a shock.” She kept reading, though.

“Take it home, why don’t you? It’s free.”

“Such a deal.” She flipped back to the cover. “So, Giovanni. Is that your nom de plume?”

She was like a grenade that was about to go off in my hand. How the hell could I tell her my name was John? Nobody was named John anymore—it was a 1950s name. A name for your annoying uncle.

“My family’s Italian,” I said, skirting the issue. Not a
total
lie. Galardi is Italian, after all, even though we’re about six generations removed from the hills of Tuscany.

“Yeah? Well, I’m a Puerto Rican Cuban Yankee lesbian, so that puts me a lot higher on the exotic scale than you, Giovanni Italian.” She gave me a wallop on the arm with my own zine. “So, I’ll take this home and look it over.”

This time she did turn and leave, quickly, slipping through the revolving doors without even touching them.

I grabbed a copy of
Escape Velocity
#2 in the hand that still held
No Regrets
and raced out the door. She was already half a block down Newbury Street.

“Wait a minute!” I called out, jogging after her. “How about—do you want to go get an ice cream or something? And talk?”

Marisol turned around. “
Ice cream?
It’s freezing out here! What are you, trying to pick me up? I told you I’m a lesbian.”

“Absolutely not,” I told her, just a little offended. “I’m not interested in that. I mean, it’s better that you’re a lesbian. I don’t really like girls much.” I knew I’d screwed myself the minute it came out. Her arms plowed into her waistline.

“For your information, dickhead, lesbians
are
girls. Don’t they teach sex ed in your school system?”

“That’s not … I said it wrong because you’re making me nervous. I feel like I have to say everything fast or you’ll run away.”

She glared at me another few seconds and then her lip twisted up a little, like it might be considering smiling. “Okay. I’m not running. Slow down and say it right.”

I started over, slowly. “I mean, I’m not looking for a girlfriend. I just want to talk to you. About writing. About your zine. We could get coffee if you don’t want ice cream.” I hated coffee, but it seemed like the kind of thing a Puerto Rican Cuban Yankee lesbian writer would order at eleven o’clock in the morning.

Marisol shrugged again. “Well, I got a little time, I guess. As long as you’re not some crazy person who thinks he could turn me straight.”

“No, really,” I assured her. “I’m not crazy. I’m not a rapist. I’m not anything really.”

Then she gave me this sort of half smile, one side of her mouth working only, and pointed her finger at my chest. “Actually, I suspect you are pretty damn crazy, Gio, but probably not dangerous crazy. Come on, I know a place.”

I felt as if I’d been released from a trap, a little shaky and kind of scraped up, but really thankful. I wasn’t John
anymore. I was Gio. And I was probably pretty damn crazy.

“You spent half the morning in Tower Records and you didn’t get a copy of
Factsheet 5
?” Marisol said, banging her coffee cup down onto its saucer. She was almost through with her refill while I played with my original cup, now stone cold and way too milky. It was a cool place she’d taken me to, a bookstore café where you could read the shelves from your tiny table. We’d spent an hour discussing the technical aspects of zine production. She knew so much I started writing things down.

“I never heard of
Factsheet 5
,” I said. “It’s a zine?”

“No, no. It’s not a freebie. You get it inside on the magazine racks. You actually have to spend a few bucks, but let me tell you, if you plan to keep making zines, you
have
to get a
Factsheet 5
.”

“How come?”

Marisol leaned back in her chair and laid one heavy-booted foot on top of the other knee. It seemed so amazing to me that I was sitting in the Trident Bookstore Café on Newbury Street talking to this unusual person—at least I’d never met anybody like her—and having this great, weird time. I even liked the people at the other tables. There were two women with long gray hair, older than my mother probably, wearing long Indian skirts and hiking boots, discussing their acupuncturists. And at another table a group of college students, their clothes spattered with paint, argued about which galleries showed the most innovative work and which brand of veggie-burgers was the tastiest. (Toto, we’re not in Darlington anymore.)

“It’s a damn good thing you met me, Giovanni Italian. You don’t know squat about the zine business,” Marisol continued.

I took another sip of my chilly brew. God, you can feel the stuff eating away at your stomach. “I don’t really think of it as a business. I just like writing, and I thought it would be fun to make a zine. I’m not trying to get rich on it or anything.”

“Well, that’s good, because you won’t. None of us will. On the other hand, the closer you can come to breaking even on it, the more zines you’ll be able to produce, right?”

“It didn’t cost me that much. Just the copying and the cover stock.”

“It adds up. Listen,
Factsheet 5
tells you how to do stuff cheaply, how to get a subscription list started, and the best thing is they review all the zines that are sent to them, which means people will write to you from all over the country and ask you to send them a copy of
Bananafish
. You wouldn’t like that? Go back to Tower and get an
F5
and send a copy of your zine there right away.” She was so serious about the whole thing.

“Well, okay, but really it’s not that big a deal for me. I mean, it’s not like what I have to say is going to change the world.”

Marisol sat up straight and her face got tight. “So why bother then, if it’s just some half-assed way to waste your time? If you’re not committed to having people read what you’ve written? What have we been talking about all morning?”

“It’s not half-assed …”

“Because I really hate that … people who don’t take things seriously, who think everything is a big joke.”

“It’s not a joke. I worked hard on it.”

But she wasn’t even listening anymore. She was on a crusade or something. “It’s a lie, you know, to pretend that nothing is important to you. It’s hiding. Believe me, I know, because I hid for a long time. But now I won’t do it anymore. The truth is bioluminescent. I don’t lie, and I don’t waste time on people who do.” She pulled her backpack off the floor and started rummaging around in it for money to pay the bill.

“Wait a minute. Who says I tell lies?”

She looked me straight in the eye. “Tell me you don’t.”

Jesus. “Well, I can’t say I
never
lie. I mean I don’t always tell my parents the whole truth, but nobody does that. I don’t lie to my
friends
.” As I said it I was actually picturing this large group of people to whom I am forever honest and loyal, instead of lonely old Brian, to whom I’ll say almost anything. Even my imagination lies.

She was counting out dollar bills now, so I reached in my pocket for a few of my own. “Do you know what ‘coming out’ really means?” she asked, looking me square in the face again. “It means you stop lying. You tell the truth even if it’s painful, especially if it’s painful. To everybody, your parents included.”

“I’m not gay,” I told her, though I really had no strong evidence for saying so. “At least I don’t think I am.”

“There are other closets.”

“Actually, I suppose I
could
be gay.” I was getting into the spirit of this truth-telling.

“Let me know when you decide.”

“Anyway, I’m not lying in my zine, and I’m not lying to you.” Much.

“You better not lie to me, Gio.”

Gio.
Well, that wasn’t really fair. I mean, it was an innocent lie, and I’d told it before I knew she was such a truth zealot. It didn’t seem like a good time to fess up, though.

“I’m not. I wouldn’t,” I said. I scanned the nearby shelves quickly and lucked out. The perfect thing. I grabbed a copy of
Nine Stories
, by J.D. Salinger, and slapped it down on the table, put my left hand on top of it and raised my right palm in the air. “I swear on my bible,” I said as seriously as possible.

I guess Marisol appreciated luck too. She laughed. Not a big belly laugh, of course. Just a small explosion of air, but a definite yielding to mirth.

“You think you’re pretty smart, Mr. Bananafish,” she said.

“You know the book?” I asked.

“Of course I know the book. The best story is “Just Before …”

“Just Before the War with the Eskimos!” I yelled. “I knew you were going to say that!”

“You did not,” she said, and slapped her money on the table. “You’re funny, though. I appreciate that.”

She stood up and tried to disappear into thin air again, but I followed her out the door. “I’m here every week. At
my dad’s place on Marlborough Street. I never have anything to do, so maybe we could—”

“As long as you’re alive, there’s always plenty to do. You know John Berryman, the poet? He says people who are bored have no inner resources. Check it out: “Dream Song #14.” Meet me here at eleven next Saturday morning. With a copy of
Factsheet 5.
”

I watched her walk away down Newbury Street for just a minute (wondering what the hell a dream song was), but I had the feeling she wouldn’t want me watching her, so I turned around and headed back to Tower Records. I was alive; there was plenty to do.

Chapter Three

It just wasn’t funny. The idea was good:
Memoirs from Hell.
Things like where you slept (in dormitories where everybody else snored), who you had to sit next to at meals (people with runny noses and hacking coughs), what you had for breakfast every morning (liverwurst with aerosol cheese sprayed on top), where you shopped (only in warehouse superstores), the only recreational
item you were allowed to own (a Barbie doll), the only book you were allowed to read (
Paradise Lost
). Stuff like that. Only it wasn’t really working. They were giggles, but they weren’t hitting home. They weren’t deeply, evilly funny. I was just about to give up and peruse the book of John Berryman poems I got from the school library when Mom called upstairs.

“Johnny. Guess who I picked up on my way home from school?”

Damn it. Your best friend in hell (a dork nobody else notices who depends on you for the entirety of his social interaction).

“Come down and have a snack with Brian. He’s hungry.”

That was code for: Come down here and fix Brian something to eat because after teaching fifth graders all day I’m too tired to wait on your friends.

“Just a sec,” I called back. I stuck
Memoirs from Hell
into the computer’s memory, the better to remove it from mine. Maybe later it would work.

“Where’d you disappear after school?” Brian demanded to know as I came down the stairs.

“I wanted to get home. I didn’t see you. I’m working on something.”

“I told you to meet me at the Drama Club bulletin board. They put the cast list up!”

“Oh, right. Sorry. I forgot.” He wasn’t too offended to follow me into the kitchen. Mom was in there washing out her coffee thermos.

“I’m afraid there isn’t lots to eat. Some cheese and crackers, maybe. A few bananas. I need to go to the store.” Mom was never very big on “Hi, how are you? Did you have a good day?”

“That’s okay, we’ll find something, Mrs. Galardi. I mean, Mrs. … Ms. Van Esterhower … howsen … Van Esterhausen.” Mom’s taking her maiden name back had really thrown old Brian for a loop. I couldn’t say I was too thrilled by it either. It was weird to have to go to the high school office and change her name on all my records, like saying somebody else was my mother now, somebody whose name I barely knew how to spell.

“I know it’s a mouthful. Why don’t you just call me Anne, Brian? After all, you boys aren’t children anymore.” For some reason, I didn’t like her announcing that to us; I mean, it seemed like the kind of thing I ought to tell
her. We’re not children anymore, Mother!
She stuck the thermos in the dish drainer and gave us a little smile, but you could tell it was really costing her. “I’m going to disappear upstairs and take a little rest before I fix dinner. Would you answer the phone if it rings, Johnny?”

“Sure.” She had to pass close to where I was standing to get through the doorway, but I knew she wouldn’t touch me, and she didn’t. I hadn’t thought about it much lately, but for a while when I first noticed that Mom didn’t touch me anymore, back around the time of the divorce I guess, it really bothered me. I thought about it all the time. True, she was never one of those kissy-type mothers, but as a little kid I’d curl up next to her on the couch in the evenings. Or,
you know, sit on her lap. And she was always pretty free with her hugs, so when it stopped all of a sudden—I was probably nine or ten—you can be sure I noticed it.

I’d go out of my way to stand where she’d be almost forced to bump into me, but she never did. She’d go out of
her
way to avoid it, or she’d wait me out, or she’d just plain ask me to get out of her way. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything about it, so I’d just move. What were you supposed to say anyway?
Hey, Mom, am I disgusting? Am I diseased? How come all of a sudden you can’t stand to touch me?
Anyway, it’s something I’ve gotten used to. Now when I see Brian’s mother kiss him or even pat his arm or something, it kind of gives me chills.

I pulled a hunk of Swiss cheese out of the refrigerator.

“Aren’t you even going to ask me whether I got a part?”

“A part of what?”

“God,” Brian exploded, “you are about the worst friend!”

He was probably right about that. “Oh, yeah, I forgot. The play. So, did you?”

Brian grabbed the cheese out of my hand and dumped it on the table. It was obvious he was dying to tell me, but now I’d kind of ruined it for him. I forced myself. “Well, did you or not? I’m asking you.”

“Of course I did. They were desperate for boys,” he said gloomily. “And I’m not Nazi Soldier Number Six. I’m the butler.”