Now John Wosileski wondered, how was he going to get Valentine Kessler out of his apartment, and especially out of his bedroom? Moreover, did he want to get Valentine Kessler out of his apartment, and especially his bedroom? Valentine Kessler in
his
bedroom! Talk about your pie in the sky, but this was also, in a Brooklyn colloquialism, pissing on the third rail. John Wosileski, dream as he did, was also a realist. If Valentine was discovered here, he’d be out of a job before the next heartbeat. Or worse, this could be some kind of prank, a practical joke at his expense. It was impossible for him to think that Valentine would deliberately do something cruel, but the others could. It wasn’t so long ago that John Wosileski was a teenager himself and the butt of many practical jokes. One in particular which still stung when he thought of it, and he couldn’t help but think of it now: Donna Monforte, the prettiest girl in school, left him a note. Often John had received notes at school, loose-leaf paper folded four times over and then wedged in the grating of his locker for him to find at the end of the day. Mostly they were crude drawing of pigs with the words
Oink! Oink!
scrawled across the page. Other notes read:
I’m going to kick your fat ass,
and variations on that theme. One time, the two subjects merged into a rather well-done sketch of a boot kicking a pig high in the air as if it were a football, although the play on pig and pigskin was not known to the artist, thereby rendering the sketch
less clever than one might think. But this other note, the one from Donna Monforte, John Wosileski had never before received anything of its kind.
Dear John,
she wrote in red ink,
I really like you. Do you really like me? If you do like me then meet me on Saturday at the Greenpoint Movie House at 2:00
P.M
. Need the rest of this tale of woe and humiliation be detailed? Nine years later and still John burned from the shame of it, from standing there in front of the Greenpoint Movie House gripping, in sweaty hands, the box of Russell Stover candies he’d bought for her, while Donna Monforte and her horde of cohorts—how many were there? five? six? well over a thousand? all of Brooklyn?—surrounded him, laughing themselves sick, at the Oinker falling for it, as if dishy Donna Monforte could ever really like
him. Dream on, Oinker
.
From the bedroom window, John peered out onto the street to see if there was a pack of kids standing around howling, laughing all over themselves, rollicking at the prospect of a joke as much as at the joke itself. But the street was deserted save for one man carrying away his dry cleaning, a freshly pressed powder-blue suit with Bozo-sized lapels slung over his back. Late in the afternoon, on the afternoon of a holiday, most everyone was done with their errands, and now they were getting ready for the big night.
With her father cleaned up, Joanne Clarke set about preparing herself for the evening ahead. With one foot in the bathroom sink, she balanced herself on the other foot like a stork or an egret—some odd-looking bird most often depicted standing on one leg, the other leg retracted, folded up like a music stand—Joanne shaved that leg, nicking herself twice, once on the shin and once on the knee. After pressing bits of toilet paper to the cuts, which bled profusely, she
switched sides and shaved the other leg, taking greater care to avoid cutting herself. She shaved her armpits, and then, with tweezers, plucked a few stray hairs from between her brows.
Not in possession of anything as luxurious as Calgon bath salts or bubblebath, Joanne Clarke made do adding a capful of shampoo—Alberto VO5—into the tub as it filled, producing not a fun-filled wellspring of sweet-smelling froth, but a layer of white soapy bubbles, kind of like soap scum. First testing the water with her big toe and finding the temperature to her liking, Joanne stepped into the tub, taking her washcloth with her. She scrubbed herself clean. All over. Everywhere. Especially there.
Wrapped in a terrycloth bathrobe which was, after years of wearing and washing, bald in patches and not at all fluffy, rather closer in texture to burlap, Joanne put a few curlers in her hair to give it some body. Next, she would do her nails.
“Can I use your bathroom?” Valentine Kessler asked John Wosileski.
“Yes, of course.” John pointed to the bathroom door, which was on the far left side of the bedroom. “There,” he said, and he thought he should take this opportunity to step back into the living room, out of the bedroom—the
bed
room and all that it implied—and nearer to getting her the hell out of his apartment. Plus, from this vantage point he would hear her tinkle, but it was as if he were riveted to the floor. He did not, could not, budge. Although loath to admit it, he wanted, desperately he wanted, to hear her tinkle and he wondered how he would confess this one to Father Palachuk.
On those occasions when Joanne Clarke got up from his bed, the top sheet wrapped around her like a toga, to use the bathroom,
she always ran the faucet while she tinkled, to drown out the sound, but for naught. Even though on those occasions he tried not to listen, John Wosileski could hear the two distinct flows of water. Now, however, he heard nothing. Was it possible that even her tinkle was like gossamer?
A
ll that remained for Joanne Clarke to do was slip on her dress, step into her shoes, and apply the new makeup. We’re talking twenty minutes of preparation tops, and here it was only a few minutes after five. Oh yeah, and make dinner for her father. She’d make him a sandwich and so wouldn’t have to worry about him with the utensils.
Without bothering to put on her robe—what difference would it make now if her father saw her in her bra and panty hose, the man was so far out in gaga-ville—Joanne went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator to see what was there when an egg tumbled out and onto the floor, breaking the shell into ten pieces. “Goddammit,” Joanne said out loud. “Who the…” Her words trailed off. Who else but her father would’ve left an egg on the edge of the shelf?
She reached for the paper towels, but then changed her mind. Let it be. She’d clean it up tomorrow rather than risk mussing herself now mopping up the glop of an egg.
Eggs, cottage cheese, half or almost half of a Sara Lee marble loaf, a Hebrew National salami, two liters of Diet Pepsi, English muffins, a jar of kosher dill pickles, an apple, Miriam considered the contents of her refrigerator. If Valentine wasn’t coming home for dinner, who could be bothered to make a big meal? Miriam would have a
nosh
instead. Maybe fry up the salami with some eggs.
The fact that it was Valentine’s Day, the other part of Valentine’s Day that wasn’t her daughter’s birthday, was not lost on Miriam. She tried to think of it the way she thought of Christmas. You can’t ignore it, the reminders are everywhere in your face, but you have to accept that it’s not for you. In this regard, her heart weighed as heavy as the rest of her. How does a woman, a woman who still has needs, go on with life, all the while knowing that there will never be a lid to her pot?
Every pot has a lid,
her mother, may she rest in peace, used to tell her. There are men who go for fatties. Miriam had read about them somewhere. She wondered how she might go about meeting such a man. Maybe there were clubs she could join or maybe matchmakers made the introduction. Miriam imagined such a man, a man who went for fatties, as being extremely thin. A string bean. And bald. With glasses. A low level accountant and a pervert, an assumption which discouraged further consideration of the subject.
Valentine emerged from the bathroom, and she walked to where John stood, which was exactly where she’d left him. One of her smooth and slender hands reached out and took one of his hands, and John’s heart and stomach both flipped like a pair of Mexican
jumping beans, which don’t, in fact, jump but rather tumble head over heels. And then Valentine said, “Kiss me. Please.” Please. It was that, the
please,
which eased away any residue of restraint.
And they kissed and he groaned and she led his hands to the buttons of her blouse. One by one the buttons opened and John Wosileski’s heart stopped. Or at least it felt as if his heart stopped, and that was okay. If he were to die right then and there, it would have been worth it, to have seen heavenly beauty and to die for it was a square deal.
But God is good. God is so good that He let John Wosileski live, to live and to further feast his eyes upon further splendiferousness.
As simply a point of information, John Wosileski had a handsome manhood. Thick, with a pink hue to the flesh, and nicely proportioned, with no peculiarities like a crick or a mole with hair growing from it. His erection hid the fact that he wasn’t circumcised. John did not know that his manhood was good-looking. He’d never showered with the guys after gym class, and Valentine had no basis for comparison. Consequently, his one handsome feature went unappreciated.
Apparently Mrs. Sandler, Beth’s mother, knew of what she spoke when she’d told the girls that instinct would prevail. Valentine spread her legs apart as if about to make an angel in the snow, if one could imagine that unappetizing bed as anything crisp and freshly driven. She then brought up her knees and her hips arched to meet his.
John Wosileski had no idea he could get as hard as all that, as hard as wood, and it seemed as if you flicked it, it would ping like crystal or hum like a piano wire.
Hard as he was, he should have slipped right inside her, but noth
ing bigger than a slender tampon or her index finger, which were more or less the same size, had ever been in there. John guided himself to where the opening ought to have been, but there was no give. He pushed, but she did not open. John worried, what if he was at the wrong door? But no, he was where he was supposed to be. He could sense the sweetness, as if from between her legs a moist whisper coaxed him,
come in, come in,
and John was nearly out of his mind with want and need. He trembled and pushed again, the tip of him neared against her pink flesh, and John’s world exploded. A flash of light and he emitted a noise, a grunt or a sob, and then he felt as if he were melting, quick and thick and warm like wax beneath a flame.
Having already flushed once, he then flushed again, but this second time was from the shame, the humiliation, the desolation of the premature ejaculation.
He rolled off her, and at her side, he said, “I’m sorry.” His throat was tight as if it wouldn’t take much to get him to cry. And no wonder. Given the circumstances, who wouldn’t have cried, or better yet, killed himself?
“Something went wrong,” Valentine said. Said or asked. A question or a statement of fact, John couldn’t tell.
“Not exactly wrong,” he said. He tried to put this in the best light possible. “It happens sometimes.”
“I never heard of it,” Valentine said.
“It was because you’re so beautiful,” he dared to tell her, he had to tell her. “I dreamed of this, of you, but I never thought it would happen. I got too excited.”
“So I’m still a virgin.” Again, it was impossible to determine if the statement was interrogatory or declarative.
“Well, yes,” he conceded. “But we can do it again in twenty
minutes. An hour at most. We’ll have something to eat. We can talk for a while. I’ll order up a pizza. Do you like pizza?”
But Valentine was rising from the bed, like Venus from the clamshell. “No,” she said. That was all she said. No. No to pizza, no to talking, no to trying it again. No to all of it. No.
While she was unable to achieve quite the same effect that the saleswoman at the Estée Lauder counter got, Joanne Clarke was nonetheless pleased. The miracle in the tube did mask the red of the pockmarks, and the lipstick, a soft pink, was a becoming color for her. Joanne Clarke smiled, really smiled, at her reflection in the mirror.
Her father was in his armchair, the television tuned to
The Flint-stones
. Joanne had fed him a sedative with his sandwich, so he would fall asleep within minutes in front of the TV and sleep through the night. He would not get up to go to the bathroom, but would piss on himself, and she’d have to clean him in the morning. So be it. She wasn’t going to aggravate herself with that now. Not when Fred Flintstone was going “yaba-daba-do,” and her father was happy and she was happy.
“Dad,” she said as she took her coat from the rack. “Dad. I’m going out now.”
Only then did he look at her, and his eyes went wide, as if she were a gift-wrapped package. “Oh Theresa,” he said, “you look beautiful.”
Who the hell was Theresa?
Valentine dressed quickly before John could stop her. Not that John would have dared to try stopping her. His head was in his hands as if he were a broken man, broken like an egg.
Despite walking at a snail’s pace in her attempt to be a few minutes late, Joanne Clarke arrived early at the subway station, the point of rendezvous. John was not yet at the token booth, and because the stench of urine there was overpowering, Joanne opted to wait on the street at the entrance to the station, where, yes it was cold, but at least you could breathe without gagging. Under the glow of a streetlight, Joanne checked her watch again. It was six twenty-four. With any luck, John would be early too.
If Valentine had gone directly from John’s apartment to home, surely her mother would have asked questions:
Why are you back so early? Where did you go? What happened?
And what could Valentine have said?
I went to my teacher’s
schmutzy
apartment to have sex with him and it didn’t happen the way I imagined it would?
Wisely, Valentine went to Enzio’s Pizzeria and ordered two slices plain and a Diet Pepsi.
As if the winter night air wasn’t cold enough, the wind was picking up. Joanne made an attempt to hold her hair in place, but it was futile; her carefully coiffed do was turning into a rat’s nest. Six twenty-nine and Joanne’s eyes maintained the search for John up and down the avenue. Passersby hunched over and held their coats
tight at their necks to keep the cold from slicing through as they hurried to wherever they were headed: home to the family, to the store for a quart of milk, to a bar to meet a friend for a drink, or to a romantic Valentine’s Day dinner.
At six thirty-three, Joanne was beginning to get, not worried, but irritated. It was highly inconsiderate of John to keep her waiting on a darkened street corner in the freezing cold.
I’ll give him five minutes more,
she thought,
and then I’m leaving,
but any residue of ultimatum, along with the irritation, vanished,
poof,
in the instant she spotted him halfway down the block. She brightened, stood up straight, and patted at her hair, hoping it wasn’t as much of a fright as all that.
In the dark and in the flurry of passengers filing out from the station, Joanne realized that John didn’t see her, so she waved her hand high in the air, and called out, “Yoo-hoo. John. Over here.”
John, at a distance, was revealed close up to be an elderly Chinese man. Joanne’s disappointment was disproportionate to the circumstance. John was a little bit late, that was all. No big deal. Maybe she would even tell him how, from a distance, she mistook the elderly Chinese man for him, her date. She would tell him if she could manage to say it in a lighthearted way.
Joanne opened her pocketbook, and from her change purse, she took out a dime. A tricky maneuver because she was wearing gloves, and then she crossed the street to the phone booth on the opposite corner.
The ringing of the phone was not enough to snap John out of his blank despondency. Although Valentine had been gone for well over an hour—gone, Valentine, gone, gone forever—John stayed
where he was on the edge of the bed, naked, his head in his hands. Oh, he heard the phone ringing, but he lacked the will to answer it.
Joanne let the phone ring four, five, six times before hanging up, satisfied that John must be on his way. Well, it was highly inconsiderate of him to be late, but he probably couldn’t help it. No matter. From his apartment to the appointed corner was a ten-minute walk, tops. So even if he left just a minute before Joanne called, she’d have to wait nine more minutes at most. Such was her reasoning.
The clock on the wall at Enzio’s Pizzeria was mounted onto a cutout of a hen silhouetted in gold tone, and it read eleven minutes past seven. Enzio was starting to give Valentine the fish eye because she’d been taking up that table now since what, five, six o’clock. Not that anyone was lining up in wait for it, but Enzio didn’t like the kids loitering in his pizzeria.
At seven-thirty on the dot, Valentine got up and started for home.
It was seven-thirty on the dot, and Joanne Clarke was still waiting at the entrance to the Glenwood Road subway when her nose began to twitch. Her chin quivered, and that was that. Her new makeup was not waterproof, and it went all streaky and striated, and brushing away her tears, she only made matters worse.
At ten minutes to ten o’clock on the night of her sixteenth birthday, Valentine Kessler was in bed along with a package of cookies and a book. Licking the vanilla frosting from an Oreo opened like a jar, Valentine read from
Lives of the Saints
about Cecilia placed naked in a scalding bath, and about Agatha burned with red-hot irons, torn with sharp hooks, laid naked on live coals, and about Eulalia, whose breasts were burned “in a most horrific manner,” and then about Irene, who was sent naked into the streets to be shamed and then burned alive. Valentine read herself into a state, and when she let the book fall in order to put her hands between her thighs as if to calm herself down there, just the opposite happened. The groan, the spasm, the release left no room for interpretation. The trumpets had sounded and Valentine Kessler, on the close of her sixteenth birthday, was, by all indications, visited by the angels.
Oh hallelujah.