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When I got back to my apartment, it was a quarter after six. Candy was sitting on the big white couch in her nightgown, watching Walter Cronkite. Her dappled legs rested on the coffee table.

“Man am I glad to see you.” She jumped up and turned off the television set.

“How are you doing?” I asked, sheepishly.

“Cassius Clay is trying to get a deferment as a Conscientious Objector. The World Heavyweight Champion. I can’t believe it. Man, Walter Cronkite’s on a bummer.”

“I wish Clay would have a match with LBJ.”

She said, “They had a big riot at Winterland last night.”

“How bad?”

“I don’t know. A bunch of people got arrested. I hope no one got hurt that I know.”

The swelling in her face was almost completely gone.

I said, “I got you some stuff that’s supposed to get rid of black-and-blue marks.” I took the white, plastic bottle out of the bag. “From Kraske’s Health Food Store, on Mission. It’s called DMSO.”

She took the bottle and held it up to the sunlight so that she could read the small print on the label, then she pressed it tightly into her cleavage with her cast and unscrewed the top with her free hand. She put her nose close to the opened top and sniffed. “Blech. It smells horrible.”

“He said it burns when you put it on but not to worry because the burning is just the blood coming to the surface of the skin. It’s a kind of healthy flush and it doesn’t last. It goes away after about ten minutes.”

“That reminds me, I almost forgot to take my pill.” She walked to the telephone stand, where she had put her purse, to get the little bottle of ampicillin pills. “Oh yeah, a guy named McClenden called. Three times. He said it was important. He left his number. I wrote it on a piece of paper, here, by the phone.” She nodded in the direction of the telephone, put a large, white pill in her mouth and swallowed it without water.

McClenden knew that I knew his telephone number. I said, “It must be important.” I dialed the number and he picked up the receiver before I heard a ring. I said, “Bradford.”

“Gramps. Where’ve you been? I’ve been trying to get hold of you all day.”

“I’ve been out of town.”

“The coach wants to know why you haven’t shown up for practice for three days.”

“I’ve got reasons.”

“He says if you don’t get your booty onto the field tomorrow, or have a goddammed good excuse, you’re off the team. He doesn’t care how good your knuckleball is.”

“Shit. Ahhhhhh. Ieeeee.” Candy was running around the living room on the balls of her feet. She stopped in the middle of the room and jumped up and down

“Just a minute.” I put my hand over the mouthpiece. Her leg was fire engine red. “It’s just blood rushing to the surface of your skin. He said it goes away in a few minutes.”

McClenden said, “Brad. Are you OK?”

“Yeah, it’s nothing. What’s up?”

“I’ve got some bad news. Worse than getting thrown off the team.”

“What is it?”

Candy was rubbing her leg and looking into my eyes with the expression of a faithful dog that has just been kicked.

I said, “Can it wait?”

“No.”

“All right. Let me have it.”

“Not over the telephone.”

I said, “I’ll come over to your place.”

“There’s too much noise around here. How about Mel’s?”

“Do you know where the Bird Cage is?”

“Yeah. I’ll bring my false ID.”

I looked at Candy again. “I’ll meet you there in 15 minutes.”

She whispered loudly, “Brad. It hurts bad.”

I hung up and got down on my knees and probed her calf. “Does that hurt?”

“No. But it stings, like nettles. Like I walked into a field of nettles.”

“He said it would go away.”

She started to cry. “You're always leaving.”

“Hey, don’t cry.” I stood up and put my arms around her. She pushed me away. “Mac says it’s important, and it must be, because nothing is important to him. Believe me.”

“It stings.” Tears rolled down her cheeks.

“I’ll bring a pizza back and we can go to the show afterwards.”

She whisked a tear away with her elegant finger and a smile flickered across her lips.

“The show?”

“Yeah. I want to see that new movie, A Man and a Woman. It’s supposed to be really great. Would you like to see it?”

Her eyes dropped, “I can’t go outside looking like this.”

“You’re beautiful. Just wear a pair of pants and a long sleeved shirt and snuggle up against my shoulder when we go into the theater. Nobody will notice. It’s playing in San Francisco. We can drive around afterwards and see the sights. North Beach, Coit Tower...”

She flung herself onto the couch and kicked her legs in the air, yelling “Yea!” Her nightgown fell around her waist and she and looked up at me encouragingly.

I said, “After the show.”

She sat up and crossed her legs, primly.

I said, “Let me look at your face.”

“NO!”

“The swelling is gone! It’s you again.”

“Yea, the girl with the railroad tracks across her face.”

I got down on my knees in front of the couch. “Put your foot on the couch.” I examined the instep and kissed her big toe. Her eyes glowed. Then I kissed her perfectly shaped thigh. “I’ll be back in an hour.” I got to my feet. “With a pizza.”

She said, “And then we’ll go to the movies.”

I turned to go. Her small voice said, “It was a real bummer sitting around here alone all day.”

“I’m sorry.” I stared at her from the door. “Candy.”

“Yes.”

“Come here.”

She jumped up and we came together in the center of the room in a flying hug. She wrapped her legs around me and we spun around.

I kissed her cheek. “I love you baby.” I set her down. “I’ve got to go.”

“Don’t forget the pizza.”

I stepped through the door. I said, “Would you call in the order? You know. The big place on Hesperian Boulevard?”

“Yeah. OK”

I went out the door. “I want Pepperoni and mushrooms.”

She called after me, “I'll get an Extra Large.”

 

When I entered the bar, I saw the back of McClenden’s straw blond hair shining in the darkness. His massive shoulders were hunched over and his head was bent towards a half-full glass of black liquid. I walked past him, slid into the booth and sat down facing him. An empty glass stood next to the half-full one. He raised the half-full glass to his mouth, threw back his head and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he gulped down the dark liquid.

I said, “What are we drinking?”

He put the empty glass back on the mahogany counter top. “Double Scotches.” Norwegian Wood played softly in the background.

“I’m sorry I missed practice.” I showed him the back of my hands. “I had an accident.”

“Somebody’s face ran into your hands?”

“I won’t be throwing a knuckleball for awhile.”

He stared into the empty glass.

“I’m quitting the team, Mac. “I dropped my classes at Hayward State.” I knew that, for McClenden, quitting the baseball team would be equivalent to giving a million dollars to a bum on the sidewalk.

He put the empty glass to his lips and threw his head back again, letting the last few drops roll onto his tongue. The glass made a loud crack when he put it down. He stared at me.

I said, “Baseball isn’t everything.”

“I’ve been sitting on this all weekend Brad. It’s too big for me.” His face was flushed and his thick, straight blond hair fell over the right side of his forehead, partially covering one eye. There was a small mark on the left side of his forehead, near the hairline, where the ball had struck.

I stared back at him.

He said, “Wells thought she was a whore. He thought she was Candy. He said he picked her up hitch hiking once before and he thought it was her.”

He looked at the empty glass. “He thought she was doing the team.”

I colored down to my neck.

“Take it easy Brad.” He reached his hand across the table and put it on my shoulder. He was 19 and respected my 22 years but he was as strong as an ox and he didn’t want me to forget it. He said, “Wells spent the night with Candy once man and he thought Marlo was Candy.”

My head exploded and I stood up. He got up with me and put his hands on my shoulders. He stood a little over 6 feet and weighed 210 pounds and not much of it was fat. But there was a hint of something like fear in his face and it wasn’t because I could bench-press 275 pounds. In fact, he could bench-press 350 pounds and had placed third in the state high school heavyweight wrestling championship. He said, and his voice was almost tender, “Are you OK Gramps?”

I sat down. “Yeah. I’m all right.” I looked around. A couple of very big, working class guys, in their thirties, were staring at us. I said, staring at them grimly, “Let’s have some fun Mac.”

He followed my eyes and turned around to look at them. When his back was turned to me, I mouthed the words, “Fuck you,” in their direction. They looked at each other and smiled. The big one almost looked embarrassed. They got up slowly and walked unsteadily to our table.

“Brad,” McClenden said gruffly, “I’ll handle this.” We stood up together.

They moved slowly, bumping against each other like a couple of besotted alligators. McClenden said, “Look, we don’t want no trouble.”

“He don’t want no trouble Curly. Sonny boy don’t want no trouble.” He was about six four and had a very large beer belly. His sidekick, Curly, who was almost bald, was about six feet tall. A wall of fat surrounded Curly’s body and I couldn’t tell if there were any muscles under the fat or not. He leered at me.

I forced myself to say, “Look, I’m sorry,” and then I looked at McClenden.

“He just had some really bad news.”

The expression on Curly’s face changed and the tall guy looked down at me, disappointed.

McClenden said, “His mother...” and paused for dramatic effect. He put his arm around my shoulder. “I had to tell him. His mother was killed in a car crash. Just this afternoon. On the Nimitz freeway. She died at Kaiser hospital, an hour ago.”

I looked into the tall guy’s eyes.

He stared at me for a long time. Finally, he said, “Sorry to hear about that kid.”

Curly leaned towards me and flexed his forearm, bathing me in a fetid cloud of beer breath. The fat on his forearm jiggled, causing a heart with the single word “Mother” to jump and roll.

They slapped me on the shoulders, turned their backs and carefully navigated the short distance back to their booth. McClenden and I exchanged smiles, turned and went to the parking lot to my car.

 

“It was an honest mistake Brad.”

“Tell me who they were Mac.”

“I’m not going to keep it from you.” He looked around instinctively, to make sure no one was near the car. “Jim Wells tried to make them stop. He was driving. But he’s a little guy anyway and there was no way he could have stopped them. He swore he didn’t do anything to her. He said it was like a dream. He swears to God he didn’t do anything.” We stared into each other’s eyes for a long time. Finally he said, “It was Luis Salas, Red Parr and John Alice.”

“Football players!”

He shook his head and a smile came to his face, as if he were happy that they were football players and not baseball players.

I yelled, “Those fucking baboons.”

He said, sharply, “Brad! Get hold of yourself,” but looked at me with sympathy. After a long silence he asked, “Can I tell you something else?”

I stared at him.

He said, “It isn’t going to be easy.” His fingers dug into my shoulder. He said, in a soft voice, “They swear she really got into it.”

My cheeks burned again. His grip tightened and then, all at once, he let go.

I sat there in silence while he related the details that Wells had told him. He said when they were finished, they stuffed a twenty-dollar bill into her jeans and let her out on Claremont Avenue at Tunnel Road. “If it hadn’t been for Lyle, they probably never would have known she wasn’t Candy.”

Luis Salas was the Hayward State football team’s right offensive tackle and he was an acquaintance of Lyle’s. Parr and Alice were part of the starting offensive line also.

“All three of them are worried. They’re all on football scholarships. Alice is from West Oakland and Salas’ father is in San Quentin for armed robbery. Parr has an IQ of about 70 and doesn’t know who his father is. He shouldn’t even be in college, but he weighs 285 pounds and is 6’ 5” ”

I stared out of the windshield at the brick wall.

He said, “And they thought they were fucking a whore. And they’re all sorry as hell. Alice wants to go to the DA’s office and confess but Salas says no and Parr is so stupid, I don’t think he knows what they’re talking about.”

“They look almost exactly alike.”

“Who?”

I said, “Candy and Marlo. They look like sisters. You wouldn’t be able to tell them apart unless you saw them standing together in front of you.”

He was silent.

I said, “Candy must have picked them up once, hitch hiking.” I stared at him.

“I think Wells is telling the truth, Gramps.”

I shrugged my shoulders.

He said, “So you don’t think we should go to the DA?”

“I could talk to Marlo about it but I think she just want’s to forget about it.”

He said, softly, “They raped her man. Even if she was a whore... I mean even if they thought she was a whore, they raped her.”

“Three baboons raped a woman they thought was a whore.” I looked at my watch. It had been almost an hour and Candy was waiting for me. “It’ll be the end of their lives.”

“Hey man. It’s Save the Baboons month.”

“I don’t see what good it will do.”

He didn’t say anything.

I said, “Let’s sit on it for awhile.”

A heavy silence grew between us.

I said, “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

He reached out his hand and I took it.

 

I arrived at the apartment 15 minutes late. She had changed into her miniskirt and she was wearing the blouse with riderless horses on it. I noticed that her left leg was not as black-and-blue as her right leg. I said, “It worked!”

“What?”

“The DMSO.”

“Huh?”

“Your leg looks better.”

“It looks the same to me.”

I knelt down and ran my fingers over it. “It’s better.”

“I put the DMSO on the other leg, Einstein.” She giggled. “I thought you had a photographic memory?”

I reddened, “Who told you I had a photographic memory?”

“Lyle. But then he said you were a great chess player too.” She sat down on the couch.

“My grandfather said if he caught me playing chess with anyone but him, he would move out and let my mother raise me.”

Her face was very close to mine. I said, “What’s that smell? What have you been eating?”

She said, dryly, “I ate the whole Giant Pepperoni and Mushroom pizza myself. I couldn’t wait.”

“Very funny.” I looked at the label on the DMSO bottle. “It must be the DMSO.” I unscrewed the cap and smelled. “That’s it. It’s coming from your pores.”

“Oh great. Now I stink too.”

The buzzer sounded loudly and she shrieked, “This apartment is the pits. The telephone, the doorbell…”

I went to the door. The reel to reel tape deck was playing in the background. Mick Jagger was singing She’s a Rainbow.

Candy ran after me. “Wait.” She grabbed my arm. “Let’s give him a thrill.”

“Give him a thrill?”

She pulled her skirt up slightly, walked in front of me and opened the door.

I stood behind her. A pimply faced young man stood there holding the box.

“Is this 2323 Melody Lane, apt 32?”

She leaned forward to take the pizza. His eyes moved from the cast on her arm to her cleavage and then back to the cast.

She drawled, “It show is.” She grabbed the box with her left hand and raised the cast into the air over our heads. They stared into each other’s eyes, each with a hand on the box.

He broke the silence. “That’ll be $1.85.”

Clyde McFadden began to sing Only You. I placed two dollars in the open hand that hovered over my head. She let go of the box and reached around to scratch her back, causing a breast to pop out of her blouse. The box dropped on the floor. The delivery boy bent down to pick it up and she put the two bills on his head and said, “Keep the change.”

He grabbed the money from his head, turned and ran down the long, raised corridor, causing it to shake. We heard someone yell, from inside an apartment, “Can’t you read the goddammed sign? No Running.” He careened down the stairs at the far end of the landing, and we heard him start his car and drive away.

 

After the movie, we drove around the City and she talked about The Grateful Dead and The Jefferson Airplane and George Duval’s band the Playboys. She said she was the lead guitar player and one of few female guitar players in San Francisco.

We got home at three thirty in the morning and began making love almost immediately. Suddenly she jumped out of bed and ran into the living room. When she returned she said that there were only four pills left and she didn’t want to miss taking one.

We made love until it was light outside and when I awoke, at two o’clock in the afternoon, my cock was bright red.

We dressed quickly and went straight to Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Oakland. I was afraid she might have a penicillin resistant infection and we would need another antibiotic.

The doctor took a urine sample from me and studied it under the microscope, in the visiting room. After a few seconds, he said, “It’s as clear as spring water.” He asked, in a stern voice, “What have you been doing?”

“Nothing. What do you mean?”

“Was that your girlfriend in the lobby? The one with the cast?”

“Yes.”

He leered. “Well?”

“Well,.. I’ve...”

“Give it a rest man. When it turns red like that and there’s no discharge or bacteria in the urine, it’s always overuse.”

I had to wait in the lobby for about a half an hour before Candy came out, smiling. She said that they had done three quick tests, and found nothing. The doctor said not to worry but he sent a culture to the lab just to be sure.

On the way back to the apartment, she began shaking. The sun was shining and it was warm inside the Volkswagen but her teeth chattered and I reached across to feel her forehead. It was cool. She snuggled up to me and I put my arm around her shoulder but the shaking didn’t stop. She told me not to worry that it happened sometimes and it went away by itself. When we got to the apartment, she lay on the waterbed and it vibrated with her shaking.

I knelt at her side. “Is there anything I can do?”

“No. It goes away.”

“Are you sure?”

Mute and very serious, I watched her shake. The shaking got so strong I thought I could hear ribs rattling inside her. She moaned, “Brad. I’m scared.”

I put my hands on her head in her thick blonde hair.

“Yes, that’s it. Like that.”

I held her head in my fingers like a phrenologist.

“My father kneels and asks God to send the devils through his hands into his body.” Her words came out in high-pitched, staccato jerks.

I said, “My mother cast out devils too, but never from me. I wouldn’t allow it.” I held her head tightly, feeling the vibrations in my arms and shoulders and even into my torso.

Her voice sang out, “Keep talking. It’s leaving. Don’t stop.”

“God damn.” I said. “I’ll take all the energy you’ve got. Let it rip.”

The vibrations moved down, like a cataract, into her pelvis, which undulated while her thighs trembled down to the knees. She moaned voluptuously. The shaking went on for several minutes. When it was over, she lay back, covered with sweat, with her eyes closed. After a few moments, she opened her eyes and smiled.

I swung my body onto the waterbed and put my arm around her shoulder. We lay there quietly, neither one of us saying a word. In a few minutes, she was snoring gently.

I fell asleep too and the phone woke us with a horrible, shrieking sound. I got up and disconnected it from the wall and we went back to sleep. That night, while I was making dinner, it rang again.

“This joint is unbearable.” Candy said. “The phone. The doorbell. The curtains. I mean, you’ve got a lot of great furniture and stuff in here Brad but… ”

I picked up the receiver. A male voice with a Mexican accent said, “Is that you Brad?”

“Yeah. Who’s this?”

“Congratulations. Lyle tells me you’re a father.” Silence. “You weren’t thinking about going to the DA’s office. Were you?” There was another silence and then a click.

She asked, “Who was that?”

“Fuck. Just another crank call.”

Chapter 14

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