Page 2 of The House on Haven Way

“I hope so, with what they cost. So, you like the job, even after two months? It’s steady. Good pay?”

“Great pay.” I don’t tell him that ninety percent of last month’s wages went down on the beautiful machine in the driveway. “You and Mama would be proud. Got myself a new set of wheels. Not that old Edsel. New Chevy Bel-Air. Red and white. A beaut. You take the bus in from Brooklyn, and I’ll take you for a ride. You can stay the night! Got a second bedroom. Got a third.”

Pop is quiet for a minute. “Well. We’ll do that, Johnny. We’ll do that real soon. Your Mama wants to say hello. She just came in from cleaning Mrs. Foster’s apartment.”

“Mama shouldn’t be doing that.”

“I like to do that, now that all my babies are gone. It keeps me busy. What are you up to, rattling around in those woods up there in Oak Park?”

“Pine Ridge, Mama. Nothing.”

“Got a girl?”

“Not yet, Mama.”

“That sweet girl, Mary Beth Sarcoste, said a rosary for you every Sunday when you were in Japan.”

“Korea, Ma. And she’s a real sweet girl, but she’s cross-eyed as sin.”

“Her figure ain’t nothing to be cross at though,” Pop points out.

“Why would you say such a thing? A married man with a wife of almost thirty years, and you looking at a nineteen-year-old girl, Paulie Sarcoste’s niece no less, a man you’ve played cards with every second Tuesday for the last nineteen years!”

“Honey, I was telling the boy! She’s not my type, not at all, a meek little mouse like that? With those damn pink sweaters and white-on-white saddle shoes?”

“She’s a sweet angel, and she’d be good for Johnny.”

“Johnny will go out and get his own girl, in his own wheels, thank you,” I call into the verbal fray that is spinning out of control. “Pop, this call probably cost you three bucks by now. I’ll send you a dollar in a letter, okay?”

“Send him four, and we can talk longer,” Mama suggests.

I laugh. “I gotta go. It’s Saturday night, and I’m meeting a friend.”

Harry Rogers is a real one, an army medic who works at the hospital in town. But just because he’s all saintly doesn’t mean shit on a Saturday night. Harry is out on the floor at Jack’s Roadhouse Cafe, swinging a mean shoe like he ate an entire family of jitterbugs.

Me?

I don’t dance.

But neither does the little waitress with hair the color of whiskey mixed with honey. She’s shy and quiet, and her eyes don’t cross. And as my pops would say, her figure ain’t nothing to be cross about, either. Soft in all the right places, and after her shift is over, that little figure is nice and snug under my arm as we sip two beers.

Nancy. She’s Nancy Benson, and she wants to look at the summer moon up out past Blue Moon Lake. She wants to see it through the windshield of a shiny new Bel-Air.

I can’t believe that when the Bel-Air’s top goes down—so does Nancy’s.

Her waitress uniform unbuttons, and my quiet little stargazer pivots over and straddles my lap, kissing me like I’m prime rib and she’s starving.

“I don’t... We don’t have to,” I say, even though I sure as hell want to.

Nancy grins. “I know. That’s why I want to. I like you, Johnny. A lot. Awful fast.”

My hands mold right to the curve of her hips, the world slips away in a haze of Nat King Cole and Doris Day on the radio, and sweet, soft little breasts press into my face.

Nice girls don’t do this sort of thing.

Maybe Nancy’s not nice. And she sure as hell ain’t some little girl. She’s a woman that doesn’t need a lot of talk, and her quietness isn’t meek.

My mother would probably like her. I could probably get to like her, too. More than I already do.