Dancer 2

 

           Puck and I  didn’t become instant friends.

            I’m not sure we became friends at all.

            But nodding acquaintances fits since we nodded at each other whenever we happened to be in the same place. And that was often.

            I ran into him almost everywhere and at the oddest moments, he was always in a hurry to go somewhere else as if someone was always chasing him, which I learned was generally the case.
            Then one afternoon, he popped out from under a parked car as I walked by.

            He looked dirtier than usual, his jeans, t-shirt even his hair bearing streaks of grease.

            Smaller than I remember, he looked like some naughty kid half my age, though I learned later, he was as old as I was.

            “What are you doing under there?” I asked.

            “What do you think I’m doing?”

            “Fixing your car.”

            “I ain’t fixing nothing and this ain’t my car. I’m collecting parts to sell to a chop shop downtown on Straight Street.”

            “you mean you’re stealing the parts?”

            “Shush, will you,” Puck said, sliding the rest of the way out from under the car. He took his time climbing to his feet as he glanced this way then that. “You shout like that and I’ll have the cops all over me. – and I’m in no mood for their grief today.”

            “I didn’t mean to shout,” I said. “I just never figured people stole so – well, openly.”

            “How did you figure we did it – at the stroke of midnight?”

            “Sort of.”

            “You’re a pussy.”

            “What?”

            “You heard me.”

            “Are you trying to start a fight?”

            “Maybe,” he said. “You ought to be afraid of me, you know. I’m dangerous.”

            “You don’t look dangerous.”

            “Well, I am. And I think I look it.”

            “You just look dirty to me.”

            “There you go with that shit again. You’re really starting to piss me off.”

            “I don’t mean to.”

            “You don’t mean a lot, do you?” Puck said advancing towards me.

            “Please, I don’t want to fight.”

            “Why not,” Puck said. “Didn’t anybody ever make you fight before?”

            “Sometimes at school.”

            “And what do you do about it?”

            “I made them stop.”

            Puck frowned. “I don’t get you.”

            “Let’s not talk about it,” I said. “I’m more interested in the car.”

            “You like cars?” Puck asked.”

            “Sure.”

            “Ever drive one?”

            “Sometimes.”

            “You’re full of shit – you’re too young.”

            “I’m 16.”

            “In this state you need to be 17 to drive legal.”

            “My uncle lets me drive his GTO.”

            “GTO? Now I know you’re full of it.”

            “No, really. He just bought the car a few months ago.”

            “This I’ve got to see. Go get it.”

            “I can’t,” I said.

            “I knew you were full of shit.”

            :I mean I’m only allowed to drive it when my uncle is around.”

            “And he’s not around? How convenient.”

            “He’ll be back later after he’s done with work. I can drive it passed here then.”

            “Okay, I’ll be here, but if I’m standing her for nothing and you don’t show up. I’ll really be peeved, you hear me?”

 *******************

Some months after that, Puck called me to have me meet him at a malt shop on 21 st Avenue. When I got there I found him hunched down in the rear booth. He looked nervous, but not scared, glancing passed me towards the street as if he thought someone might have followed me.

            “Took long enough for you to get here,” he said, when I slid in the booth across from him.

            “My uncle had me doing chores in the yard,” I said.

            “I thought you told my your uncle was out of town?”

            “Not that uncle, my other uncle, I have five uncles you know.”

            “Which one has the car?”

            “Charlie. He’s the one that’s away.”

            “Did you bring it?”

            “Yes, but I’m not happy about it. Charlie specifically told me he didn’t want me driving it while he was gone.”

            “You’re a pussy.”

            “Why – because I do what I’m told?”

            “Yeah, even when I tell you. So did you park the car out of sight?”

            “Around the block” I said. “Is that too far out of the way?”

            “That’s fine. I just don’t want anybody seeing us with it and then telling the police later.”

            “Why are you worried about the police?”

            “If I tell you, you’ll go running home in a huff.”

            “If you don’t tell me, I’m not moving that care anywhere.”

            “Don’t give me a hard time, Max,” Puck warned me. “Or I’ll break your head.”

            “I’m going home,” I said and started to rise. He grabbed my wrist.

            “I told you to stay.”

            I peeled his fingers off my hand and turned away, “Good bye,” I said.

            “Get your ass back here!” Puck yelled, leaping up, reaching his arm out to grab me again. But he somehow missed, giving me time to grab his wriest and twist.

            This was not a complicated move. Charlie had shown it to me enough for me to get it right, but I often didn’t, and I didn’t this time, and instead of producing a simple howl of pain, I also caused the bone to snap, breaking from my applying too much force.

            Puck wailed, but less in pain than outrage!

            “You broke my fucking arm, you fucking asshole.”

            “I’m sorry\ -- I didn’t mean to…”

            “Don’t’ hand me that shit. Just help me out to thec ar.”

            “I can’t…”

            “You broke my arm, now you’re going to get me to a doctor.”

            “All right, all right, come on,” I said.

 ******************************

 

            “Wait here,” Puck said after making me pull over in front of a liquor store on Straight Street near Broadway.

            “Where are you going?” I asked as Puck struggled to open the door with the arm the hospital had put into a sling. He had refused the cast.

            “Just wait and keep the engine running,” he said and popped out, vanishing through the door to the store before I could shout for him to stop.

            I saw the flash through the window and then heard the boom as Puck rushed out, a still-smoking revolve in his free hand, and loose bills stuffed into the sling with his broken arm.

            “Go! Go!” she screamed as he jumped into the car again.

            “Where?”

            “Anywhere! Just not here. Drive!”

            So I drove, gunning Charlie’s car through the narrow streets, the rumble of its power engine echoing off the stone faces of downtown’s legal and business district. We ran red lights each time Puck shouted for me not to stop, until we rolled into Paterson’s East side, numbered streets and avenues rising as we drove.

            “Let me out along here somewhere,” Puck said, when we reached Madison Avenue.

            “You like it here?”

            “I said pull over,” Puck snapped. “Of course, I don’t like here. This neighborhood is full of whops and Jews. But it’s quiet and the cops won’t think to look for me here.”

            “Then what will you do?”

            “That’s my worry – you take your precious car and go home, and don’t let anybody catch you, and if for some stupid reason you do, don’t tell anybody where I’ve gone.”

            “I don’t know where you’re going so that’s no problem.”

            “I got business downtown,” Puck said.

            “But we just came from downtown.”

            “I know that. Just go,” he said, standing on the sidewalk, leaning down to talk to me through the window. “We’ll meet soon.”

            He was still standing on the sidewalk as I drove away. But I caught sight of him in the rearview mirror as he slipped back into the shadows like a ghost.

 

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