August and then some. David Prete
a half mile south of my dad’s house the river stretches fifty feet wide, and a wooden footbridge connects the banks. Fifteen feet below the bridge is a waterfall—if we can call it a waterfall. The water crashes from about a foot and a half up. And give me a break, this is Yonkers I’m talking about, not Canada or South America, we run a deficit in the claim-to-fame department, so I’m calling the little shittin thing a falls. Thank you.
In the hot season the sun stayed around longer and the clothes came off quicker. I don’t think the girls in the neighborhood knew they’d been helping me mark time by stripping down to their bathing suits. Their bodies differentiated the identical school years. Between sixth and seventh grade Colleen Burke grew boobs and Lanie Raniolo started shaving her legs. Between ninth and tenth grade Katie Ryan’s thighs got big and Julie DiMatteo started lifting weights.
Below the footbridge, just past the base of the falls, rocks scatter like grey turtle shells spaced so that someone with long enough legs, like my sister, could step from bank to bank without getting their feet wet. But Dani didn’t usually cross the river. Mostly she hopped herself to the middle, sat down and hugged her knees to her chest while the rest of us got drunk and loud, while couples sat with their legs dangled over the side of the bridge, backs to chests. The water split apart at the back of Dani’s stone island and came together again at her toes, swirling up a little force field around her.
Dani had been on the swim team since she was small. It was weird looking at her surrounded by all that unswimmable water—like an actor in an empty theater—you’d think she’d have wanted to go in, but she was a quiet kid, you know? And quiet people, it’s hard to know what’s in their head.
We were hanging out on the bridge over the falls—the whole crew of us—we tied our six-packs to the bridge on a rope long enough to reach the river, to keep them cold and out of view. That day on the footbridge, Nokey was scoping Dani’s just-turned-thirteen-year-old chest and body that really did look like a woman’s. Being my younger sister or being someone Nokey’s known since before birth didn’t mean she was out of the game.
(Nokey’s not his real name, by the way. It’s short for Gnocchi, which still isn’t his real name. It’s Eugene Cervella. But since the third grade, people have been calling him Gnocchi Cervella—in English it roughly translates to Potato Head. He hates the name, but he always acts like he’s got something else in his head besides brains, so he can’t shake it.)
He went up to my sister and started with: “Listen, Danielle. I don’t want to be a rock in your shoe …” and followed with a hand on her shoulder.
Whether he’s hitting on girls or not, he’s always working his hands. They’re big and heavy enough to separate at the wrists. His pinky is the only finger thin enough to fit in the neck of a beer bottle, and his nails are too thick to bite through—he has to use a scissor. His hands are smart, and make him a good mechanic. His father only had to show him how a torque wrench worked once like three years ago and it stuck—he never stripped a thread. It’s like his fingers memorize things on contact. When we worked at his father’s garage together, he’d handle customers and in the prints of his fingers record where and how they could be touched. This practice made repeats out of first-time customers and kept the regulars revolving. Some guys he’d give the one-hand shake with a matching slap on the shoulder. Or the classic two-hand shake, grabbing their entire hand—or just tapping the tips of his fingers on the back of theirs. For the ladies it’s a hand on the back when he’d lead her to the office to pay her bill. With the older ladies, he would link his right arm with their left and lay his free hand on their wrist.
He wore his mechanic’s coveralls cut off at the shoulders and below the knees, so all the married rich chicks could get a good look at his arms and cobra-tattooed-calf busting through the ragged edges. He was good for his dad’s garage business and swears that’s why his dad bought him the weight set. And this kid is a great wide receiver; he catches long passes like his palms are made of flypaper. He might even be scholarship worthy if he’d join the friggin football team already, but he has no time for organized anything; he’d rather set records hardly anyone will ever hear about.
Two summers ago he decided to jump in the river from the footbridge, which nobody ever did before because at about fifteen feet high and with no running start it looks like you could never clear the rocks to the water—which is maybe five feet deep on rainy days. Well, he almost cleared the rocks. He fucked up his ankle pretty good, bruised his back and got seven stitches on his ass. You would think that might have been a sign, but he didn’t see it that way. When the cast came off his ankle and the stitches out his ass, he tried again. This time he didn’t do it on a whim. He told people he was gonna do it on a particular day so we could all see him jump off the bridge again and possibly bust his head or slice his butt open. Thankfully, that time, he cleared the rocks. He came out of the river wet wearing only a pair of cut-off denim shorts with not so much as a scratch or a hair out of place. Everyone applauded. See, that’s the tricky thing about Nokey—just when you’re convinced all he’s got in his head are potatoes, he makes you believe he can do anything.
Me, because I’ve known him so long, I look at him do his thing and it’s like watching a third-grader in a teenager’s body. I half expect him to call me from the back seat of his GTI after he’s just finished with a girl and ask me if I want to go put quarters on the railroad tracks like when we were eight.
For as long I’ve hung around the cheeky fuck, it’s been easy for me to love him. Except that day on the bridge when he said, “Listen, Danielle, I don’t want to be a rock in your shoe, but I must say you’re looking very cute these days.” If he had stopped there, with the lame fuckin line, I might have been cool with it. But the goddamn hand on the shoulder bit. Maybe that’s the curse of knowing what someone’s capable of. Knowing how skillfully they can disguise their agenda in charm.
Danielle didn’t look as bent as I was. She deadpanned him right in his face and said, “I’m not wearing shoes.”
Now, from where I was standing, Noke should have backed up—made light out of the rejection. But the fucking guy kept coming.
“Yeah, I can see you’re barefoot. Rock in the shoe is just an expression. It means a pain in the ass. Like I don’t want to be bothering you. Be annoying like, you know, like how having a rock in your shoe would be annoying.”
Dani stayed quiet and let his joke sprawl flat on its back. This was flag number two signifying a dead end. But that didn’t matter to Nokey Cervella.
He said, “I don’t mean a real shoe. I mean a make-believe shoe. A hypothetical shoe.”
“I don’t have any hypothetical shoes.”
That may have given me the first laugh of the whole thing if I wasn’t feeling so ready to pounce.
He said, “You’re not gettin me,” and his smart-ass hand ran down her arm and landed on her wrist that was covered with a dozen silver bangles. Dani flinched, and pulled her wrist away. “No, Nokey, you’re not getting me.”
Finally he was ready to lay off. He held his hand out in front of him like a stop sign and said, “I’m getting another beer now.” He turned around and walked to where I was standing, grabbed the rope and lifted the six-pack from the water. “What the fuck?” he said. “Was I not being nice? I thought I was being nice. JT, what was I being?”
And Dani, who had been standing still watching him the whole time, finally climbed down beneath the bridge, hopped to her favorite rock and sat down.
Noke goes, “That’s a weird chick, man. I mean I know she’s your sister and all, but don’t you think she’s gettin a little weird?”
“Now she’s weird cause she’s not into you?”
“What’s wrong with me?”
“You want the short list?”
“Fuck off.”
“Hey, take a walk with me.”
“I’m good here. You go for a walk.”
I