sometimes India gets nervous and down when I’m gone for more than a few days at a shot. You know what I mean? It doesn’t always happen, but once in a while she gets, well, skittery …” His voice trailed back down into the phone, and there was no sound for several seconds.
“Paul, it’s no problem. We’ll hang around a lot together. Don’t even think about it. What did you think I was going to do, abandon her?”
He sighed, and his voice leaped back up to full strength again — tough and sturdy. “Joey, that’s great. You’re the kid. I don’t even know why I was worried in the first place. I knew you’d take care of her for me.”
“Hey, vuoi un pugno ?”
“What?”
“That’s Italian for ‘Do you want a punch in the nose?’ What kind of friend did you think I was?”
“I know, I know, I’m a dope. But take really good care of her, Joey. She’s my jewel.”
When I hung up, I kept my hand on the back of the receiver. He was off that afternoon, and suddenly I had me a dinner date. I wondered what I should wear. My brand spanking new, hideously expensive Gianni Versace pants. Only the best for India Tate.
The thought crossed my mind while I was dressing that wherever we went for the next two weeks people would think we were a couple. India and Joe. She wore a wedding ring, and if someone saw it they would naturally assume I had given it to her. India and Joseph Lennox. I smiled and looked at myself in the mirror. I began to warble an old James Taylor tune.
India wore cavalry tweed slacks the color of golden fall leaves and a maroon turtleneck sweater. She held my arm wherever we went, and was funny and elegant and better than ever. From the beginning she almost never mentioned Paul, and after a while neither did I.
We ended the first night in a snack bar near Grinzing, where a bunch of punky motorcyle riders kept shooting us murderous looks because we were laughing and having a great time. We made no attempt to conceal our delight. One boy with a shaved head and a dark safety pin through his earlobe looked at me with a thousand pounds of either disgust or envy — I couldn’t decipher which. How could anyone as square as me be having so much fun? It was wrong, unfair. After a while the gang strutted out. On the way, the girls all combed their hair and the boys slid gigantic fish-tank helmets over their heads with careful, loving slowness.
Later we stood on a street corner across from the café and waited in the fall cold for a tram to take us back downtown. I was freezing in no time at all. Bad circulation. Seeing me shake, India rubbed my arms through my coat. It was a familiar, intimate gesture, and I wondered if she would have done it if Paul had been there. What a ridiculous, small thing to think. It was insulting both to India and to Paul. I was ashamed.
Luckily she started singing, and after a while I got over my guilt and cautiously joined her. We sang “Love Is a Simple Thing” and “Summertime” and “Penny Candy.” Feeling pretty sure of myself, I piped up with “Under the Boardwalk,” but she said she didn’t know that one. Didn’t know “Under the Boardwalk”? She looked at me, smiled, and shrugged. I told her it was one of the all-time greats, but she only shrugged again and tried to blow a smoke ring with her warm breath. I told her she had to have it in her repertoire, and that tomorrow night I would cook us dinner and play all my old Drifters records for her. She said that sounded good. In my enthusiasm I didn’t realize what I’d done. I had invited her to my apartment alone. Alone. As soon as it hit me, the night suddenly seemed ten degrees colder. When she looked down the track for the tram, I let my teeth chatter. Alone . I stuck my hands deep into my pockets and felt as stretched as a rubber band wrapped around a thousand fat playing cards.
Why was I so scared to have her over alone? Nothing happened the next night. We ate spaghetti carbonara and drank
W. Michael Gear, Kathleen O’Neal Gear
Joseph Lance Tonlet, Louis Stevens