Imagine Catch 22’s Captain Yossarian in high school. Imagine Prep written by a guy. Imagine the heroes of Superbad as seniors at St. Anselm’s Preparatory School for Boys. Imagine the narrator of Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus as a Catholic. Imagine J.P. Donleavy’s The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B. set in New Jersey in 1970.
Seventeen-year-old Frank Grimaldi wants one thing more than anything else--to have sex before he graduates. Too bad his crazy teachers, his insane parents, the Catholic Church, and the Mafia are all standing in the way.
The Temptations of St. Frank...a Catholic School coming-of-age novel.
Chapter 1
April 10, 1970
The warm breeze coming in through the open passenger-side window hit seventeen-year-old Frank Grimaldi in the face, whipping the hair off his forehead and fluttering his tie over his shoulder. He looked at his reflection in the side mirror—dark eyes behind black Clark Kent glasses, big head because he was a big guy, too-big nose, grim mouth over a strong chin—and he could see the feelings of devastation in his expression. He couldn’t fucking believe it. He wasn’t totally surprised—it was a long time coming—but he still couldn’t believe it. It was official now. The Beatles had broken up.
Frank’s best friend since grammar school, Dom Nunziato, a Guido who actually thought the Four Seasons were better than the Beatles, drove his father’s Cadillac along Ferry Street in Newark, New Jersey. The radio was on loud, Paul and John singing “Hey Jude,” the endless “nah-nah-nah-nah-hey-Jude” part at the end. WABC had been playing Beatles songs all day.
Dom drove with his elbow out the window, just like his old man, flicking the ash off a Marlborough with his thumb. Mr. Nunziato’s Caddy was two-tone green—a light dusty green body with a dark spruce vinyl top—same colors as a Gretsch 6118 archtop. George Harrison used to play a Gretsch when the Beatles first came to America but not that color. Frank just couldn’t stop thinking about them, about them breaking up. He felt heavy, like he was made of lead. He couldn’t believe it. He didn’t want to believe it. Christ, if the Beatles could break up, anything could happen. Or not happen. That’s what frightened Frank.
The big car sailed past the red-brick Rheingold brewery and the city park with the big pool where all the black kids swam in the summer. The yellow forsythia bushes that grew along the wrought-iron fence around the park were in full bloom. This part of Ferry Street was a jumble of factories, warehouses, and sad-looking residential houses. Dom’s father had grown up in this neighborhood, but Frank couldn’t imagine living in Newark now, not after the race riots three years ago. The riots that kept him from seeing Jimi Hendrix at the Mosque Theater the night they started. Frank still had the unused ticket stuck in the mirror over his bureau in his room.
Dom steered the Caddy onto the truck-route bridge that crossed Newark Bay, tons of ancient black steel girders, like Godzilla’s charred skeleton, the tail in Newark, the nose in Jersey City. It was so ugly it was beautiful.
“Hey Jude” ended, and Dan Ingram, the afternoon deejay, came back on. “There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. The end of an era. If you haven’t already heard, a spokesman at Apple Corp made it official today. The Beatles have broken up…”
Frank tuned him out and reached down into his navy-blue book bag, which looked like an oversized bowling-ball case. He pulled out a thick spiral notebook with the St. Anselm’s Preparatory School crest printed on the cover and turned to the last page, which looked like the tattooed lady’s back. It was full of doodles and caricatures of teachers and students from St. A’s—including Michael “Vaseline Boy” Vasily, the smartest kid in school, as a greasy-haired groundhog with glasses; Larry Vitale, the class clown, as a mosquito; Mr. Whalley, the disciplinarian, as a fat-ass, harpoon-wielding walrus with a pipe in his mouth and a crown cocked on his head; and Monsignor Fitzgerald, the headmaster, as the Grand Inquisitor with a Satanic goatee and a pointy tail dangling over his shoulder. There was also an assortment of naked and semi-naked girls with big tits and great hair. Interspersed with his artwork were abbreviated lists—guitars he’d like to own, rock stars he’d like to be, movie and TV stars he’d like to fuck.
But in a box at the top of the page was the crucial list, The List.
1.Dart.
2.Syr.
3.BU ?
4.Am. ?
5.Mont. St. *
6.Rut. *
This was the list of colleges he had applied to. Dartmouth had rejected him early, back when there was still snow on the ground. He knew he didn’t have a snowball’s chance to get into Dartmouth, but his Uncle Rick, his mother’s brother who lived in New Hampshire, had insisted that he at least try and even offered to pay the application fee. Frank went along with it, but Frank really didn’t want to go there. Dartmouth wasn’t coed, and it was in the middle of nowhere. Bad enough that St. A’s was all boys. Frank had come to the conclusion that four years of hanging out with just guys was unnatural and unhealthy, and with all the religious indoctrination and having to wear a blazer and a tie everyday, Frank was ready for some freedom. Still, the Dartmouth rejection letter had stung when he read it. He didn’t want to go there, but he secretly wanted to get in. Just to prove that he could.
But Syracuse has rejected him, too. He had never been there, but the catalogue looked good and they had a journalism school. Frank wanted to be a writer. It was the one thing he did well—his English teachers all praised him for it, and he liked doing it. After he got the Syracuse rejection letter, someone told him it was just as well because the winters in upstate New York are brutal—discovering the North Pole brutal—and all the freshmen get so depressed they end up seeing shrinks. Frank convinced himself that Syracuse probably wasn’t the place for him. But it was still a rejection, and a rejection is a rejection.
He’d been accepted to Rutgers and Montclair State, his “safety schools.” Montclair State was nothing to get excited about, everybody got in there. All you had to do was apply, and the application was only two pages long. It was supposed to be the best community college in New Jersey, but it was still a community college. Worse than that, it was too close to home. If he went there, he’d have to commute and live with his parents. A slow painful death would be better.
Same problem with Rutgers. It was in the middle of the state, and his father—who wasn’t all that keen on him going to college anyway—had already made it clear that Frank could commute to New Brunswick. It wasn’t that far, he kept saying. Living at home with a long commute to school—a slow painful death with traffic.
So his hopes were riding on American University and Boston University, still waiting to hear. American was in D.C., and B.U. was in Boston, both far enough away that he would have to live there. He’d be praying ‘round the clock If he really believed in all that Catholic bullshit. The way he saw it, anything could happen. Or not happen. He was standing on the diving board of life, and he could either dive in or not dive in. Either he went away to school and started living his life, or he stayed home and lived like a prisoner. Or like some oppressed person behind the Berlin Wall, constantly under surveillance, repressed, put down, and discouraged from having a thought of his own.
He looked out the window at the sunlight shimmering off the dirty bay. There was always the third option. He could just run off and seek his fortune the way characters in novels did. Huck Finn, Gulliver, Sal Paradise, Ishmael. Call me fucking Frank.
But at the bottom of the page Frank had another list, a tiny one in small distended psychedelic print that hardly looked like writing at all. The list was camouflaged inside a series of three-dimensional, infinitely joined cubes, a doodle he drew all the time. It was a very important list, a personal to-do list, so personal he didn’t want anyone else to discover it. He stared at it from time to time just so he could savor the joyous possibility of completing it.
1.Col.
2.Band
3.G.L.
The first item was obvious—college. He had to get into college, an away college.
The second was something he’d been wanting to do since he was in sixth grade when the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show for the first time. He wanted to start a band. He and Dom had been talking about it seriously since Christmas. Dom had gotten some decent equipment, and they’d been shitting around on their guitars together, but this summer they were really gonna do it. Dom said he knew a kid from his school who was getting a drum kit for graduation, so all they needed was a bass player and they’d have a band.
Which lead to the third item on the list—G.L., get laid. Frank had made out with girls, felt one up, and even fingered another one, but he hadn’t gotten a hole in one yet, and he felt like a pussy. Meeting girls wasn’t easy when you went to an all-boys school, but he was determined, and he had a plan. He and Dom would start a band, they’d play at parties, and Frank would meet girls. Girls who dug guys in bands. The band was the key.
Unless, of course, he got lucky and made it with some girl without having a band. It could happen. It could actually happen with Yolanda. It was possible. That’s why they were driving to Jersey City. Frank was hoping for a miracle.
Dom took the last drag off his cigarette and flicked it out the window. “I don’t know why you Catholic school kids have to travel so goddamn far just to go to school. This girlfriend of yours must have to get up at the fuckin’ crack of dawn to get to Mother of Peace every day.”
Frank didn’t say anything. Dom kept referring to Yolanda as his “girlfriend,” and Frank didn’t like it. If it ever got to the point where she was his girlfriend, he wouldn’t mind Dom saying that, but saying it now could just jinx things.
Frank stared out at the chalky gray water below the bridge as the Caddy slid through Godzilla’s ribcage, moving with the flow of gear-grinding trailer trucks. The Empire State Building and the World Trade Center were up ahead in the distance, left and right. Frank spotted the golden onion-dome of an Eastern Orthodox Church near a cemetery just on the other side of the bridge. He wondered if that was Yolanda’s church.
“That must be the Ukrainian section over there,” he said.
“I know where that fuckin’ neighborhood is,” Dom said, acting like the boss as usual. “I’ve been there before.”
Frank had a pretty good idea why Dom knew where the Ukrainian neighborhood was. Probably had something to do with his father’s “work.”
Dom took the first exit off the bridge and cloverleafed down to Routes 1&9, heading north toward the Pulaski Skyway, another charred steel skeleton but more like a giant python. Dom gunned the engine to pass an Esso tanker truck and a little beat-up red Toyota crammed with Hispanic guys. He swerved in front of the Toyota and took the next right without signaling, tires squealing. The Hispanic guys honked their nasally little horn at him.
“Go fuck your mothers,” Dom shouted.
Frank just looked at him, and Dom caught him looking. “Oh, excuse me,” Dom said. “You think spics and niggers are okay. I forgot.”
“What if that was Santana?” Frank said.
“Oh, you mean what if they were, like, ‘good’ spics? Because they play in a cool band?”
“Yeah… maybe.”
Dom shook his head and smirked. “You’re so fucking dumb, I can’t believe it. You just don’t get it.”
“No, I get it,” Frank said. “You—“
The Rascals came on the radio, and they both stopped to listen. “Everybody’s Got to Be Free.” Great song. Frank glanced at Dom, waiting for him to say something nasty about what a fucking shame it was that a bunch of straight-up Italian guys from Garfield—well, three of them at least because the guitar player didn’t have an Italian last name—ended up getting into “that hippie shit,” singing about “peace and love and all that crap.” Dom loved rock’n’roll as much as Frank did, but he hated the psychedelic stuff. Frank waited for Dom to make some crack about the Rascals, but he didn’t say a word, which made Frank happy. That band was too good to badmouth.
Dom slowed down as they drove into a residential neighborhood. The houses here were all old and kind of haphazard, no two alike, but they looked cared for. The cars parked along the street were mostly dark-colored American sedans and cheap-o compacts. No Camaros, no Firebirds, no Barracudas, no muscle cars at all. You could tell Italians didn’t live here.
As Dom drove farther into the neighborhood, they passed more of the same kind of houses. Frank was a little disappointed that Yolanda came from a place that was so plain and worn around the edges.
“So where’s she live?” Dom said, an unlit cigarette bobbing between his lips as he pressed the Caddy’s cigarette lighter.
“How the fuck am I supposed to know where she lives?”
“She’s your fuckin’ girlfriend.”
“She’s not my girlfriend. I keep telling you that.”
“Yeah, right.” The lighter popped, and Dom pulled it out, holding it to the tip of his cigarette. “So what’re we supposed to do now?”
“What’re you asking me for? Coming down here was your idea. Not mine.”
“Well, you gotta talk to her if you want something to happen, numbnuts. You said you can’t do it at school because her girlfriends are always around. Okay, fine. So you just happen to run into her down here. Neutral territory. No interference.”
Dom’s confidence irritated Frank. He had a plan for everything, no problem. Frank, on the other hand, saw problems everywhere.
As Dom braked for a stop sign, Frank spotted a gang of people standing by a cyclone fence a block away. “I wonder what’s going on over there.”
Dom looked. “I dunno. Let’s go find out.” He hit the gas and hung a left, driving toward the gathering.
“Maybe they’re protesting the war,” Frank said.
“Here? Not fuckin’ likely. These people love America. Apple pie, baseball, all that shit. They came here to get away from the Commies.”
Like I don’t know that, Frank thought.
Up ahead he could see about thirty people facing the landfill on the other side of the fence, a huge field of uneven soil dotted with mounds bigger than houses for as far as he could see. Dump trucks rolled over the terrain like prehistoric wooly mammoths. Thin trails of smoke drifted across the forbidding landscape, but Frank couldn’t see anything burning.
Dom pulled over to the curb and turned off the engine. They got out and walked toward the group.
“What the hell’s goin’ on?” Dom said.
“Like I’m supposed to know?” Frank said, a little annoyed with his friend’s cocky walk—chest out, long strides. They were in someone else’s neighborhood for chrissake.
An old guy with thick yellow-white hair and a face as lumpy as a potato turned around and scowled in disgust. “Hell!” he said, pointing to the landfill. “Vee leeve in hell.” He had a thick accent, and he was really pissed off.
Dom went up to the man. “What do you mean, you live in hell?”
“In hell!” Potato Man snapped. “You do not know hell? There is hell!” He pointed with a crooked, wicked-witch finger. “Burning, burning, all the time, burning!”
Frank sniffed the air, but it didn’t smell all that bad. No different from the rest of north Jersey.
Potato Man shook his fist. “Everybody sick! Everybody die!”
Frank remembered a film clip he’d seen of Lenin standing at a podium, shaking his fist the same way. Or was it Trotsky? He couldn’t remember.
Potato Man scowled at them when they didn’t react properly to his outrage. He dug into his shirt pocket and pulled out a worn newspaper clipping. He unfolded it with shaky hands and thrust it at Dom. “Here. You read.”
Dom looked at it and passed it on to Frank. The headline said, EXPERTS CLAIM BURNING LANDFILL IS A HEALTH HAZARD.
“You read!” the old man said, smashing his finger into the clipping in Frank’s hand. He scowled deeper. “Read!” He took the clipping back, folded it, and put it in Frank’s shirt pocket. “You read!” He abruptly turned around and stomped off toward a group of potato-faced old people just like himself.
“What the fuck’s with him?” Dom said.
“Huh?” Frank was distracted. He was staring at the pleated gray skirts of the Mother of Peace Academy for Girls uniform and the two girls who were wearing them. Frank focused on their bare legs, hems hiked well above the knee, skirts belling out around their asses. Frank’s heart was doing a Ginger Baker tom-tom beat. It was Yolanda and her friend Tina.
Tina turned around and spotted him as if she had sensed him staring. She flashed her ironic—or was the word sardonic? he wasn’t sure—half-smile at him. Tina was tall and on the skinny side. Her hair was dirty blond, and she wore it short with short bangs—too short in Frank’s opinion. She had big eyes, but they had dark rims under them as if she needed a good night’s sleep, even though she never seemed sleepy. Just the opposite. She had a quick wit and a sharp tongue. She wasn’t bad looking really—she just wasn’t Yolanda.
Yolanda was as tall as Tina but better built with shapelier legs and actual tits. She had long light-brown hair that hung below her shoulders and small but penetrating eyes. She was a little shy—but not retarded shy like some kids—just quiet, which made her kind of mysterious. She was a closed door that Frank wanted to open.
Both girls were very smart. Honors students. He regretted for the millionth time that he wasn’t in 4H, the senior honors class at St. A’s, because if he was, he would’ve been able to take the special coed honors physics class. It was the only coed class either school offered, and it was held first period at St. A’s. He would have seen Yolanda in class every day, and they would’ve been dating by now because, face it, the geeks in that class all had slide rules for dicks. No competition whatsoever.
If only...
Yolanda turned around and started walking toward him, and his stomach clenched. This was what he’d wanted, to run into her, but he didn’t expect it to happen this quickly. He wished to hell Dom wasn’t there, dreading what embarrassing thing his friend might say. She had her books in her arms, carrying them close to her chest the way girls do. But she wasn’t looking at him. In fact she hadn’t even noticed him. She veered off toward Potato Man and put her hand on his shoulder, rubbing it affectionately. Frank could see that she was talking to Potato Man, and he wondered if they were speaking Ukrainian. Even though he’d been lusting after her for months, he’d only heard her voice a few times. He wasn’t sure, but he thought she had the tiniest trace of an accent. Of course he might have just imagined it because he wanted her to be exotic.
She glanced over her shoulder and looked at Frank. At least he thought she was looking at him. He tried to read her expression, but she turned away and he couldn’t tell if she had recognized him or not. If she had, her lack of reaction wasn’t a good sign. Maybe she disapproved of him because he wasn’t in the honors class. Maybe she hated him. But why would she hate him? She didn’t know him. Was it because he was here in her neighborhood, on her turf? What the fuck? This wasn’t West Side Story.
Or worse, maybe she just didn’t give a shit about him. Maybe he was nothing in her book, not even worthy of a reaction one way or the other. Maybe she preferred nerdy boys. Maybe that’s what got her hot—guys with high GPAs and early acceptances into top-shelf colleges with scholarships. Maybe she didn’t care that the Beatles had broken up. Maybe she liked classical music, opera, highbrow stuff. Maybe she thought guys who liked rock’n’roll were low class and beneath her. Fuck, he thought, they would never get together. It was doomed from the start.
“Yo,” Dom said. “Who’s the chick?”
“What?” Frank had been so involved in the rise and fall of his yet-to-be-but-never-will-be relationship with Yolanda, he hadn’t noticed Tina walking toward them, looking right at him with her little sly-cat smile, hugging her books and covering up the bust she didn’t have.
“What’re you doing here?” she said to Frank. They kind of knew each other from school. He always hung out in the yearbook office in the morning, which was next to the physics lab. They’d said hi a few times, but he didn’t think she knew his name. “Do you live near here?”
Frank tried to think up a plausible excuse for being there, but he couldn’t come up with anything. He shrugged. “Just hanging out.”
“Here?” She gave him a skeptical look. “Why?”
“I dunno. Just checking out the…” He nodded toward the landfill. “You know.”
“Yeah, it’s really bad.” She frowned at the smoldering landscape. It was the first time Frank had ever seen her with a serious face.
Dom said, “So what’re all these people doing here?”
The breeze blew wisps of hair across her cheek, and for a moment Frank thought she was pretty cute. She looked down and moved the hair off her face with a graceful sweep of her fingertips. When she looked up again, she was looking at Dom. “Who’re you?” she said.
“This is my friend Dom,” Frank said.
But she didn’t pay any attention to him. She only had eyes for Dom. She pointed to the cigarette in his hand. “Can I have one of those?”
“Sure.” Dom took a pack of Marlboroughs out of his shirt pocket, tapped one out halfway, and held it out to her.
She took it and held it to her lips, waiting for a light.
Dom struck a match, but the wind blew it out. He moved closer to her and struck another match, cupping his hand around it and the cigarette in her mouth. It took a second to get it lighted.
“Thanks,” she said, exhaling smoke as she moved the hair out of her eyes again, this time with the cigarette in her hand. She was incredibly sexy, sexier than Frank ever imagined she could be.
“So what’re all these people doing here?” Dom asked again.
“Complaining. They come here all the time. They think the stuff burning underground is toxic and that it’s gonna kill everybody.” She brought the cigarette to her lips.
“Is it true?” Dom asked.
She shrugged. “Some of the old people have a hard time breathing. Like Yolanda’s grandfather.” She nodded toward Potato Man. “But they’re, you know, old.”
Frank focused on the trails of smoke blowing across the landfill. It could be toxic, he thought. It didn’t smell terrible, not like burning tires and shit, but he’d read somewhere that sometimes the most toxic stuff doesn’t smell at all. And truckers dump all kinds of chemical crap around here, any place they can get away with it. Everybody knew that.
“Tina!”
Frank recognized Yolanda’s voice as soon as he heard it, high and sweet. She waved to Tina, calling her over. Yolanda was at least three car-lengths away, but Frank could see the sapphire-blue of her tiny eyes. She had a concerned expression on her face, but she didn’t seem to know that he was there. She was focused on Tina.
“I gotta go,” Tina said, and hurried off toward Yolanda, taking one last drag off her cigarette before she flicked it into the gutter. She looked back and flashed a flirty little cat grin, blowing smoke out the side of her mouth. But who was she looking at? Dom or him? Frank couldn’t tell.
She walked over to Yolanda and Potato Man, who was holding onto Yolanda’s arm, and took his other elbow. The three of them started walking away, slowly because Potato Man couldn’t go that fast. When he started to cough, they all stopped. It was a harsh dry cough that rattled his whole body. He coughed for nearly a minute. Frank felt bad for him, but he couldn’t help staring at the girls’ legs from behind as they stood on either side of the old man. Yolanda’s legs were definitely the winners, but Tina’s skirt was hiked up higher, showing more thigh.
“Is that her?” Dom asked. “Yvonne?”
“Yolanda. The one with the long hair.”
“You’re backing the wrong horse, pal. Go for the other one.”
“Tina?”
“Definitely.”
“Really? Why?”
“Your girl’s a prude.”
“How can you tell?”
Dom shrugged. “You can just tell. Look at her.”
Frank looked. He kinda saw what Dom meant… maybe. But maybe not.
“Trust me. Tina’s the one. Definitely. The other one? She’ll just jerk you around.”
“You really think so?”
“I know so.”
Yolanda, Tina, and Potato Man started walking again. Frank stared at them, studying the girls. Compare and contrast. He knew what Dom meant, but he still liked Yolanda better.
“Look,” Dom said, “if you don’t want Tina, maybe I’ll ask her out.” He took a slow drag off his cigarette, staring at Tina with squinty John Wayne eyes, the Marlborough Man on the toxic plains.
Frank had a sudden urge to punch him in the face. He didn’t want Dom going after Tina.
But he didn’t say anything.
Chapter 2
Frank squeezed the purple rubber gorilla as he flipped through the latest Ramparts magazine. The gorilla had a gummy consistency that clung to Frank’s skin. He wasn’t at all in the mood for school, and the fact that it was only Tuesday bummed him out. He sat behind the big wooden desk in the yearbook office on the top floor of Mulvaney Hall, St. Anselm’s main building. He was the Summit’s literary editor, which meant he was in charge of all the copy in the book. He’d come up here to finish his math homework before school, but instead he’d started reading an article about guys who had fled to Canada to avoid the draft, guys not much older than himself.
Assholes in the government were talking about getting rid of the student deferment for college kids because too many people were complaining that it was only poor kids who were getting their asses blown off in Vietnam. There were rumors that the government was going to start some kind of lottery system, putting the 366 days of the year in a big hat and picking them out one by one. You get a low number, you got a pretty good chance of getting a rifle, a buzz cut, and an all-expenses-paid trip to the Mekong Delta. Get a number in the middle of the pack, you get an ulcer worrying that you’re gonna get called up. Get a high number, you pray that the goddamn war ends before they get to you. Goddamn fucking Nixon.
Frank had no intention of going to Vietnam. The war was fucked, and he knew for a fact that it really messed up the guys who went there. He had a cousin who had actually enlisted. The guy wasn’t even on the front lines—he was a fucking garbage collector in Saigon. But one day, out of the blue, a sniper took a shot at him. The bullet hit the garbage can he was carrying and saved his life, but the experience spooked him for good. He got jittery and paranoid and was never the same afterward. Well, fuck that. Better Canada than Vietnam, Frank figured. He just wondered what the hell it was like up there. How cold did it get in the winter? Did they have any good FM radio stations? He had a feeling it was probably pretty boring up in Canada. Everybody wearing snorkel parkas and using maple syrup on everything.
“No one in the building before eight o’clock, gentleman!”
Frank’s head shot up. He looked toward the voice, thinking it might be Mr. Whalley, the school disciplinarian, even though it didn’t sound like him. But it was just Tina standing in the open doorway, scowling the way Whalley always did. She’d gotten Whalley’s words right, but her imitation of his pissed-off walrus voice was girly and pathetic. She grinned her little cat grin at him, hugging her books to her chest. His eye went directly to her thighs and the hem of her skirt, remembering what Dom had said about her.
“What’re you doing?” she said, stepping into the small, jam-packed office. It was cluttered with chairs, a couch, a table, and the big desk, which was wedged into the corner farthest from the door with a tall beige file cabinet right next to it. To get behind the desk, a person had to step onto the desktop and drop into the chair as if it were a fighter cockpit. Frank liked that seat. It was cozy and commanding.
“What if Mr. Whalley catches you here?” Tina said.
Frank shrugged. He didn’t worry about Whalley. The fat-ass bastard was never subtle—you could hear him coming a mile away. Whenever he patrolled the hallways before school hours, trawling for guys violating the eight o’clock rule, he would always bellow, “No one in the building before eight, gentlemen! Walking jug for anyone I catch in the building!” Mulvaney Hall was four-stories tall with high ceilings, and Whalley’s booming voice carried loud and clear all the way from the first floor. Whenever Frank was in the yearbook office, which was most mornings, and he heard Whalley coming, he’d just close the door, lock it, and turn off the lights until the man was gone. Frank had done this dozens of times since school had started in September, and the only reason he risked getting caught was because of Yolanda. Every morning she was out in the hallway with the other honors girls from Mother of Peace, waiting for first-period physics. For some reason, the girls could be in the building before eight but not the boys.
The first time he saw her, she was sitting on the floor, with her legs stretched out, ankles crossed, writing in a loose-leaf binder on her lap. It was lust at first sight. He prayed that she would look up and notice him, but she didn’t. And here it was April and she still hadn’t noticed him, not the way he wanted to be noticed. That’s why he came up here every morning, to get her to notice him through the open door of the yearbook office, him in the cockpit behind the desk with his take-out cup of coffee and a copy of Ramparts or Crawdaddy or the newspaper in front of him, his tie loosened, top button undone, cuffs rolled up, trying to look cool, hoping she would look at him and give him an opening. Unfortunately they hadn’t gotten much farther than hi, how ya doin’, mainly because she was shy and her ever-present friend Tina was always around, and bigmouth Tina did all the talking. All year he’d been waiting for Tina to be out sick so that Yolanda would be alone, but Tina was healthy as a horse and was never absent. He wished the landfill smoke would get to her, just for one day, so that he could talk to Yolanda by himself.
“You’re gonna get caught one of these days,” Tina said.
But Frank wasn’t listening. He was looking past her, looking for Yolanda. He saw the other three nerd girls from Mother of Peace (all of them skanks) but not Yolanda.
“She’s not here yet,” Tina smirking, reading his mind.
Frank didn’t respond. He didn’t want to acknowledge that he liked Yolanda even though Tina had obviously figured it out. He also thought it was kind of rude and insensitive to show that he liked Yolanda because it might hurt Tina’s feelings. And besides, who he liked was none of Tina’s business.
Tina dropped her books on the couch and plopped down on the end that touched the desk. “Can I have a sip?” She pointed to his cup of coffee.
He stared at her. Drinking from his cup was kind of a boyfriend-girlfriend thing. What if Yolanda saw her drinking from his cup? And why was Tina asking anyway? Was this a come-on? He looked at her Olive-Oyl legs. She did have a cute face, he thought.
She reached for the cup and helped herself. “So what were you doing in my neighborhood yesterday?” She took a sip, looking at him over the rim. “You working for the Mafia?”
“What?”
How did she know? he thought. Well, not him or Dom, but Dom’s father.
“The goddamn landfill,” she said. “That’s who owns it. The mob.” She took another sip. “And the church.”
“Are you tripping or what?”
“No. It’s the truth.”
“You’re telling me the mob and the Catholic Church own that dump? Together? You’re high.”
“I swear. The Mafia owns most of the land, and the church owns the part that borders on the cemetery.”
It was Frank’s turn to smirk. She was crazy. “Who told you that?”
“You know those old people you saw yesterday? They hired a lawyer, and he did the research. The owners are the Diocese of Newark and some company that’s a front for some Mafia guy.”
Frank saw mug shots of Dom’s father in his head. “So why doesn’t this lawyer sue their asses off?”
Tina shrugged, her bottom lip on the rim of his cup. “The owners say the smoke isn’t toxic. They say they did tests that prove it. But our lawyer had his own tests done and they say different. So the court says they have to do more tests before anyone can sue. But the Mafia guy must be paying off the judge. They’re all crooked. That fire has been burning underground for over ten years. They tried to put it out a few times, but they can’t.” She took another sip, then held the cup out to him.
He glanced through the doorway, looking for Yolanda. “You can finish it,” he said. He didn’t want Yolanda to see them sharing spit. “So how do you feel? Are you sick from the smoke?”
She put her wrist to her forehead and went into a dramatic coughing fit, throwing her head back against the couch. God, she was weird.
“I’m okay,” she said. “I guess.”
“What do you mean, you guess?”
“The toxins get into your body and poison you slowly. You don’t know it’s happening till it’s too late. That’s what the lawyer says.”
“What about Yolanda’s grandfather? He was coughing his lungs out yesterday.”
“Yeah, but that’s from three packs of Camels a day.”
“Oh…” Frank thought about this invisible toxic crap getting into Yolanda’s body, killing her slowly.
“So who’s that guy you were with yesterday?” Tina said.
“You mean Dom?”
“Your friend. With the big car.”
“Yeah, Dom. We went to grammar school together.”
“Where does he go to school now?”
“West Orange High.”
“He got a girlfriend?”
Frank didn’t like where this was going. Why was she so interested in Dom? He was too rough around the edges for her. She needed someone more like Frank. And he was kind of thinking about it now, looking at the wet spot on his cup where she’d sipped his coffee. After all, Dom had given Tina his seal of approval. Sure, she was kind of nuts, but she wasn’t that bad. In fact she wasn’t bad at all. She was easy to talk to, easier than Yolanda. And she had that cute little cat face.
“So does he have a girlfriend?”
“Who?”
“Your friend Dom. Is he going out with anybody?”
Frank shrugged and thought about lying, telling her that Dom was engaged, that he was getting married next week, that he’d gotten some girl pregnant, that he got drafted and was going to Vietnam soon.
“I dunno,” he said. “Dom’s always with a different girl.” Which wasn’t a lie. Dom dated a lot of girls but no one in particular.
“He’s kind of cute.” Tina stared at him, her little cat grin getting slyer and slyer as she watched for a reaction. Did she think he was jealous? Hell no!
Frank didn’t say anything and neither did she, but she kept grinning at him, waiting for him to say something. Frank felt that she was putting him on the spot. It was a put-up-or-shut-up moment. He felt he could maybe make something happen with her right here and now if he really wanted to, make her forget about Dom just like that. But the door was open, and Yolanda was going to be out there in hallway any minute now if she wasn’t out there already.
She uncrossed and re-crossed her skinny legs and licked the rim of his cup, waiting for him to say something.
Do it, he thought. Yeah, maybe just do it. Dom says she’s the better bet. Just--
“NO ONE IN THE BUILDING BEFORE EIGHT O’CLOCK!” Mr. Whalley’s voice thundered up the stairwell. He sounded close, maybe as close as the floor below. Fuck!
“IT IS NOW SEVEN-FIFTY, GENTLEMEN! WALKING JUG FOR ANYONE I CATCH INSIDE MULVANEY HALL. NO EXCUSES, NO EXCEPTIONS!”
Fucking asshole! Frank thought. He hated Whalley’s guts. Everybody at St. A’s hated Whalley.
He whispered to Tina. “Close the door, lock it, and turn off the light. So he doesn’t catch us.”
She grinned at him as if she were a deaf mute and had no idea what he was talking about. She sipped his coffee and didn’t move.
“Just close the door and turn off the light.” He pointed to the light switch on the wall. He’d do it himself, but he was stuck behind the desk, afraid he’d make a racket if he climbed over it.
Whalley’s voice boomed up the stairwell. “IT IS NOW SEVEN FIFTY-ONE, GENTLEMEN! WALKING JUG FOR ALL OFFENDERS, SENIORS INCLUDED. NO EXCEPTIONS!”
Jesus! Frank thought. It sounded like Whalley was climbing the steps to the fourth floor. The sneaky prick must have kept his mouth shut until he got to the third floor.
“IF YOU ARE HERE, I WILL FIND YOU, GENTLEMEN!”
Frank pointed to the door, pleading with his eyes. Books, newspapers, and magazines were piled high all over the desk. If he climbed over, some of them would fall and Whalley would hear.
“Close the door,” he mouthed to her, clasping his hands together and begging.
“WALKING JUG! GUARANTEED!”
But instead of just doing what he’d asked, Tina unbuttoned the top two buttons of her blouse and threw her legs up onto the couch, her skirt almost up to her crotch. She lounged on her elbow and gave him a creamy-dreamy look as if they’d just done something.
Tina! What the fuck’re you doing?!?
She lay back and closed her eyes as if she’d just had the biggest fucking orgasm in the world. He couldn’t take his eyes off her thighs.
Tina! You bitch!
Her legs really weren’t that bad.
“AH, MR. GRIMALDI!” Whalley’s voice attacked the room like a flash flood, overwhelming it, taking up all the space and all the air. In the dripping wake of his voice, Whalley stood in the open doorway, the evil fat-ass Walrus King. He had a face like Popeye’s—right down to the pipe clenched in his teeth—but he was fat. His beady walrus eyes swept across Tina who was stretched out like a raped Sabine woman. The Walrus King sharpened his gaze to lethal pinpoints, took the pipe from his lipless mouth, and aimed the stem at Frank. “I’ll see you in my office after school, Mr. Grimaldi. Two-forty-five. Sharp!”
He scowled at Tina. “Button up, young lady, and get to your class. I’ll be talking to your Sister Superior about this. Go!”
Tina sat up, buttoned her blouse, and headed for the doorway. She glanced back at Frank and arched an eyebrow, giving him the sly little cat grin. Whalley stepped aside so she could pass, and Frank saw the Mother of Peace nerd girls gawking from the hallway. Yolanda was at the front of the pack.
Fuck! Frank thought. He tried to read her expression, but she turned away as soon as Tina joined them and scurried into the physics lab with the others.
Whalley aimed the pipe stem of doom at Frank’s face and glared at him, not saying a word.
What the fuck does he want me to do? Frank thought. Say something? Not say something? Defend myself? Beg for mercy? What?
The walrus finally spoke, slow and ominous. “Two… forty… five, Mr. Grimaldi. Do not… be… late.” He turned and waddled out the door.
The 8:00 bell rang like a drill going through Frank’s head.
“Fuck,” he said under his breath as he reached across the desk for his coffee cup. It was light in his hand. He shook it. Nothing. Tina had drunk it all.
It was gonna be a bad day.
Chapter 3
A warm breeze blew the smell of fresh-cut grass into the classroom. Frank sat slumped in a student desk, thinking evil thoughts about Whalley the fucking walrus. He stared out the open window at the spring-green lawn and the statue of St. Anselm in his bishop’s outfit and seriously thought about jumping out. Not to kill himself—Christ, it was only a ten-foot drop into the rhododendron bushes that surrounded Mulvaney Hall. No, he wanted to escape. Frank figured he could vault out the window the same way they vaulted on the horse in gym class. The windows were big enough in this old building. He’d be gone in a second. But where would he go? Whalley would hunt him down. With dogs. Like a runaway slave. Cocksucker.
Frank’s French book was open on the graffiti-carved desktop, but he was in no mood for fucking French. Yolanda was upstairs in her physics class, convinced that he’d ravished Tina in the yearbook office, and now he had fucking walking jug for something he hadn’t even done. Something he’d only thought about doing. And he mostly thought about doing it with Yolanda, not Tina… though the thought had crossed his mind a few times. It wasn’t fair. Shit, it was only first period, and he was already fed up with everything.
“Watch the door.” Larry Vitale, the weasely little wiseass, pointed to dumbo Gdowski, his “tell-me-about-the-rabbits-George” sidekick. Gdowski jumped out of his seat, opened the classroom door a crack, and peeked out into the hallway.
The eight other guys who took French III this period watched Vitale with shit-eating grins on their faces. Vitale was a real joker, and Mr. Kinney, their French teacher, was so out of it he was a perennial easy target.
Now what? Frank thought. He wasn’t in the mood for Vitale’s antics.
Vitale tiptoed to the front of the classroom like a mime imitating a cat burglar and pulled something out of his blazer pocket. He held up a little red transistor radio for everyone to see. He did a Bugs Bunny he-he-he, bouncing his shoulders as he dragged the teacher’s chair over to the intercom speaker hanging on the wall over the blackboard, an old varnished wooden box with stained brown fabric covering the speaker inside. Frank guessed it had been there since the building had been built. Students in the 1940s had probably heard about Pearl Harbor through that thing.
Vitale stepped up on the chair and turned on the transistor radio loud enough for everyone to hear. Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs doing “Little Red Riding Hood.” The radio had good reception, and Frank guessed it was tuned to 77-WABC-AM. Frank always listened to that station in the car, but at home he only listened to FM. Those were the only stations that played Hendrix, Cream, Canned Heat, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, the good hippie groups. Vitale lifted the intercom box away from the wall and slipped the radio inside so that it sounded like Sam the Sham was coming from the intercom, which was actually pretty funny. Intercom announcements came from a microphone that sat on Mr. Whalley’s desk in the front office. Whalley listening to WABC? Very unlikely. Sousa marches, that’s what the Walrus King would listen to.
“Here he comes,” Gdowski stage-whispered and ran back to his seat.
Vitale jumped off the chair, dragged it back to the desk, and rushed back to his seat.
Mr. Kinney poked his head through the door and peered in. He did this every day. It was as if he didn’t want to disturb anyone. He flashed a quick apologetic smile and stepped inside. He looked normal—for a teacher—average in everyway except for the trim little Inspector Clouseau moustache he wore. He referred to it as his “cookie duster,” always with a discreet little chortle into his fist—one of his lame attempts at humor.
He went over to his desk and set down the three books he carried, arranging them so that they sat evenly one on top of the other. The bell rang for the start of first period, and the moment it stopped, Whalley’s obnoxious, marbles-in-his-mouth voice came over the intercom.
“Good morning, gentlemen. Today there will be a freshman assembly with Monsignor Fitzgerald in the theater during fourth period. All freshmen are to go directly to the theater at the end of third period. Those gentlemen who are late or absent will automatically receive jug…”
Fuck you, Frank thought and stopped paying attention.
But Mr. Kinney, who was loading a fresh stick of chalk into his chalk holder, perked up, and even though Whalley wasn’t saying anything different from any other day, Mr. Kinney furrowed his brow and tilted his head like Nipper, the RCA dog sitting in front the old-fashioned record player. Mr. Kinney was hearing Vitale’s transistor radio playing inside the intercom. The sound was faint compared to Whalley’s booming voice, but it was unmistakably there. “Little Red Riding Hood” had ended, and Harry Harrison, WABC’s morning deejay, was talking a mile a minute, giving the sports scores.
Larry Vitale turned around in his seat and mugged to the class, cuing them that this was the funny stuff in case they didn’t catch it. Mr. Kinney started walking around the room, circling back toward the intercom, frowning at it. Frank had to admit, this was pretty funny, and he had to bite the insides of his cheeks to keep from smiling. Mr. Kinney wrinkled his nose the way he always did when he didn’t understand something, making his glasses rise. Frank imagined him getting down on all fours and sniffing around for clues.
“…And finally, gentlemen,” Whalley said, “as always, walking jug will commence this afternoon at 2:55 sharp. Those of you who have earned jug know who you are. Be there. No excuses.”
Gdowski gave the intercom box the finger. He got jug so often he was practically a permanent member of the walking-jug precision team. At St. A’s, jug was the word for detention. No one seemed to know where the term came from or how old it was, but it was a St. A’s tradition. Walking jug was for the repeat offenders—one hour of walking around the quadrangle behind Mulvaney Hall on hard asphalt, in rain, snow, blistering heat, hurricanes, cyclones, tornadoes, monsoons, it didn’t matter. And there was never a break. Another St. A’s tradition—probably from the Inquisition. Walking jug sessions were usually held twice a week, sometimes three when “business was brisk,” as Whalley liked to say with his evil little walrus laugh. With all the time Gdowski had spent walking around the quad, he should have been in good shape, but surprisingly he was still the pudgy butterball he’d been when he was a freshman.
“Have a blessed day, gentlemen, ” Whalley said, signing off, but the radio inside the intercom box kept playing just loud enough to be annoying. Mr. Kinney opened his copy of Vol de Nuit, turning to the page where they had left off translating yesterday, but it was obvious from the sour expression on his face that the radio was bugging him.
Vitale and Gdowski were on the verge of exploding, doing everything they could to keep from breaking up, and Frank couldn’t understand why Mr. Kinney couldn’t figure out that they were the culprits. It was obvious to everyone else in class. But Kinney was the kind of teacher who always tried to be a Mr. Nice Guy with the students and never called anybody on anything.
Richard Bauerman, the brownest of the brown-nosers at St. A’s, was sweating bullets. He was obviously dying to tell Mr. Kinney about the radio prank, but Gdowski was giving him the evil eye, balling his fists so that Bauerman could see. Gdowski was Vitale’s muscle, and he never needed a whole lot of provocation before he started swinging. That’s why he got jug so much.
Bauerman looked like the skinny missionary heating up in the cannibals’ cauldron. He desperately wanted to be the good boy and squeal to Mr. Kinney, but he knew his ass was grass if he did. He was the smartest kid in their section, 4A, but not the smartest kid in the senior class because 4A was the Avis rent-a-car class—number 2 but trying harder—the so-called “divinity class,” which was a joke because no one in 4A had the slightest intention of ever becoming a priest, not even Bauerman.
Once upon a time, back before World War II, St. A’s actually did have a divinity class for guys who wanted to go on to the seminary and become priests and brothers and monks. But that was way back when. Still, St. A’s kept the term—St. A’s was big on tradition—and made 4A the dumping ground for boys who were kind of smart but not smart enough for 4H, the honors class. Frank had been in the A class all four years at St. A’s—1A, 2A, 3A, and now 4A. Sort of smart but not the smartest. It pissed him off, even though the last thing he wanted was to be stuck all day with the geeks, nerds, and social rejects in 4H. Even though he did hang out with a few of them.
A new song came out of the intercom box. Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman.” Larry turned around in his seat and lipsinked along with it. Stealthy snickers rose from the back of the room. Bauerman bit his bottom lip.
“Okay, settle down,” Mr. Kinney said. “Turn to page fourteen in your Saint-Exupery.”
Larry played an imaginary guitar along with the “Pretty Woman” riff—dah-dah-dah-dah-DUM. Frank knew how to play that riff. Unconsciously he played it on the inseam of his pants with an imaginary pick between his fingers.
Gdowski buried his face in his arms on top of his desk to muffle his belly laughs.
“All right,” Mr. Kinney said with a frown. He was mad—well, as mad as he ever got— but not at Vitale or Gdowski or the snickerers. His glare was aimed at the intercom box.
“O’Keefe,” he said, pointing to Brian O’Keefe, St. A’s star long-distance runner. “Go down to Mr. Whalley’s office and tell him he left the intercom on.”
O’Keefe, who was short and wiry, kept a poker face as he nodded and headed for the door.
“And come right back,” Mr. Kinney added before O’Keefe left.
Roy Orbison kept singing, and Frank strummed along with his phantom pick. It was a great song. Pretty woman… He thought of Yolanda as he stroked the chords on his gray wool slacks and started to get hard.
“Okay, gentlemen. First paragraph on page fourteen. Who would like to translate? Qui?”
On the radio Harry Harrison announced the next song. “Make It With You” by Bread. It was one of those horny ballads, a slow-dance song, the kind of song girls like. Frank often thought about slow dancing with Yolanda. Not at a Mother of Peace school dance where the lights in the gym were so bright you could do surgery and the nuns patrolled the dance floor, measuring the distance between the couples with wooden rulers. No, he wanted to dance with her at a St. A’s dance where— amazingly—the lights were low and the monitors weren’t as strict.
The last line of the song’s chorus seeped into Frank’s head like tear gas. I want to make it with… Yolanda.
“Mr. Long,” Mr. Kinney called out, his voice uncharacteristically testy.
Tommy Long stood up next to his seat and flipped his long blond surfer bangs out of his eyes with a snap of his head. It was his signature move. Frank knew next to nothing about Long except that he lived in Short Hills, which meant his family had money, and he was a “2:45-er,” which was Mr. Whalley’s sarcastic term for guys who went home right after the last-period bell rang at 2:45 P.M. and didn’t play any sports or participate in any extracurricular activities.
Mr. Kinney gave Long the same assignment he’d given O’Keefe. “Go down to Mr. Whalley’s office and tell him the intercom is on and his radio is disturbing us.”
Long nodded and snapped his head back to get his bangs out of his eyes.
“And if you see O’Keefe out there, tell him to get back here immediately.”
“Okay,” Long said. He needed one more head snap to take care of his bangs before he left the room.
Mr. Kinney tried to ignore the radio. “Okay, who wants to translate? Qui--?”
Roaring hot-rod engines blasted out of the intercom. “Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!” the guy on the commercial shouted. “Sunday at Raceway Park! Englishtown, New Jersey!”
Guys cracked up all over the room. They just couldn’t hold it in any more. Only Bauerman didn’t laugh.
“All right, settle down,” Kinney said, raising his voice but just a little. He rarely raised his voice. “Mr. Vitale, start translating the first paragraph on page fourteen.”
The laughter spiked. Everybody knew that Vitale would make mincemeat out of it because his French sucked.
“Yes, Mr. Kinney, oui,” Vitale sounding like Eddie Haskell. “Page fourteen? Is that where we’re starting?“
”Yes, that’s what I said.”
But before Vitale could get started, the piano intro to “Let It Be” poured out of the intercom. The Beatles. Paul’s voice. Paul, the one all the girls loved. When Frank was in eighth grade, he used to practice keeping his eyelids half-closed the way Paul’s were naturally, hoping girls would like him. Now the Beatles didn’t exist anymore. Frank still couldn’t believe it. Everything he knew, he’d learned from the Beatles. Everything that really mattered. So what was he supposed to do now? Who was gonna teach him about love stuff? The Stones? He could barely make out their lyrics. The Temptations? The Four Tops? They were black guys, and they were older, and what they sang about seemed older, not applicable to a white Catholic-school kid. The Jackson 5? Christ, that kid Michael was five-years-old. What the hell did he know about anything? Why the fuck did the Beatles have to break up just when he really needed them? He imagined Mulvaney Hall the way it would look if it were in the Yellow Submarine cartoon and the roof magically peeled off and Yolanda floated out of the physics lab up into the sky like a helium balloon, floating higher and higher, waving goodbye as she eventually became a tiny dot and then disappeared into the clouds. Forever.
“Mr. Grimaldi! Are you with us, Mr. Grimaldi?”
“Huh?”
Mr. Kinney was frowning at him. “Please pay attention, Mr. Grimaldi.”
“Sorry.”
Mr. Kinney’s face was red, his mouth turned down like a pissed-off fish. “I want you to go to Mr. Whalley’s office and tell him about the intercom. And tell O’Keefe and Long to get back here on the double. Now go. Hurry up.”
“Mr. Whalley’s office?” Frank was still coming out of his candy-colored daydream.
“Yes. And hurry up. This is getting ridiculous.” Mr. Kinney scowled at the intercom box. The song had ended and the news had just come on, the announcer saying something about Henry Kissinger negotiating something about Vietnam.
“Allez-y, allez-y, Monsieur Grimaldi!” Mr. Kinney fluttered his hand in a very French way as if he were trying to sweep Frank out of the room.
Frank stood up slowly. He didn’t want any part of this radio prank because he was already in trouble with Whalley. If the walrus caught him wandering around out in the halls for no good reason, Frank would get jug for the rest of the year. Maybe for the rest of his life! Whalley was the fucking walrus, after all. Koo koo k’choob!
“Plus vite. Monsieur Grimaldi!”
Frank glanced around the room. Guys were straining to keep from cracking up. Gdowski clamped a hand over his mouth, tears spurting from his eyes. Larry Vitale turned around and mugged at Frank, rolling his eyes like a Blue Meanie.
Frank started toward the door and glared at Bauerman, warning him with his eyes to keep his mouth shut.
“Don’t tell,” Vitale whispered as Frank passed.
“Get going, Mister Grimaldi!” Mr. Kinney said.
Frank reached for the doorknob and glanced up at the crucifix hanging over the blackboard. The little brass Jesus was looking right at him, looking very disappointed.
As Frank pulled the door open, treacherous thoughts ignited in his brain like a trail of burning gunpowder heading for a crate of dynamite.
He imagined John Lennon chasing pigs with a gun as he stepped out into the hallway.
