“You ought to see the stuff across the street, down at the Whitney Museum,” John Joel said. “I was in there with a friend of my father’s last week. All these plaster people sitting around on subway cars or sprawled in bed. Some of them are naked. Some of them are painted colors.”
“Let’s go there,” Parker said.
“I was just there.”
“So? It’s right down the street.”
“It costs money.”
“Listen: I tell my mother we went to the Whitney and show her the stubs, she’ll give you back the money you paid for both of us to get in, I promise.”
“What do you want to go to an art show for?”
“Why’d you go?”
“I told you. My father’s friend took me there. We were killing some time between the orthodontist and my father meeting us for lunch. My father gets on this thing that I should be escorted around New York.”
“We going or not?” Parker said.
“If your mother’s paying me back, we can go. It’s no big deal. It’s just a pretty weird art show.”
“I want to see the naked plaster people,” Parker said. “Are they real thin?”
“They’re average.”
“Are they fucking?”
“They’re just lying in bed. They’re asleep.”
“But they’re naked, right?”
“What?” John Joel said. “Didn’t you ever see anybody naked in bed?”
“I just think that’s a pretty weird art show,” Parker said.
“No smoking,” the man behind the counter said.
“What?” Parker said. “I’m tapping out a song that’s going through my head, that’s all. We want a couple of hamburgers.”
“What with them?”
“French fries. Two orders,” Parker said. “Coke for me.”
“Cow juice,” John Joel said. There was a sign on the wall that advertised milk as cow juice.
“What song’s going through your head?” the counterman said. He turned and began filling a glass with ice.
“ ‘Stayin’ Alive,’ ” Parker said. “You see Saturday Night Fever?”
“That show where they do the gag routines,” the counterman said. “Sure I’ve seen it.”
“Uh-uh,” Parker said. “The movie with John Travolta in it.”
“What am I talking about?” the counterman said.
“You’re thinking of Saturday Night Live.”
“Yeah,” the counterman said. “The blonde’s pretty. The one who gives the news. Not any prettier than the one who gives the news for real, though. Some of the stuff’s funny.”
“You know that song?” Parker said. He took out a book of matches and put it on the counter and flipped open the cover with his thumb.
“Nah,” the counterman said. “I don’t go to movies with actors in ’em. I go to see actresses.”
“There were girls in it.” Parker tore out a match.
“What I read,” the counterman said, “it was about John Travolta.”
“Hey,” the other counterman said, turning away from the grill and wiping his forehead on his arm. “You going discoing this weekend, Sal? That what you’re talking about?”
“That’ll be the day,” Sal said.
“ ‘Disco, Disco duck,’ ” the other counterman sang, turning hamburgers on the grill.
“He goes discoing,” Sal said. “Sure. Look at him. Look at him shake. During the day he stands in front of the grill and shakes. Nights, it’s his ass. Show the boys,” he said, and laughed. His laugh turned into a cough.
“I don’t show boys,” the other man said.
“Saturday Night Fever, Saturday Night Live, who keeps it straight?” Sal said. “Two fries, right?”
“You ought to see that movie,” Parker said. “I saw it when it was R-rated. It’s changed now, but there wasn’t that much good stuff to begin with, so it’s pretty much the same.” He had lit the match. He watched the flame burn toward his finger, then blew it out.
“Day I pay to see John Travolta dance,” Sal said.
“Day you do anything you don’t do every other day, I’ll stand up on this grill and do a slow fry. Flatten myself down on this grill like a hamburger and sputter. You going to a disco. I’d like to see that.”
“A priest goes to the disco in the movie,” Parker said.
“A real priest?” Sal said.
“Well — he’s thinking about not being one anymore.”
“He goes back to the church, I bet,” Sal said.
“Nope,” Parker said.
“So what does he do?”
“He drives off. I don’t know what he does. I don’t think they say.”
“So everybody’s still riding off into the sunset. When I went to pictures and I was a kid that’s what they did. Still doing it, huh? Priest doesn’t know what he’s doing. Shit. Quit one thing for another. Day I do that, you better get up on that griddle and melt yourself, Robby. You’ll know the world is in sorry shape the day I do that.”
“He loves to work. Sal loves to work,” Robby said.
“Make fun of me,” Sal said. “I like to work. I like heat. That’s it. I thought this was where I’d end up. Sure. What started this, anyway?” Sal said. “Are you cooking today or not?”
“What does it look like I’m doing? Discoing?”
Robby turned back to the grill. Sal wiped his hands on a towel under the counter.
“Maybe there’s something better to do than go across the street,” Parker said.
“It was your idea. I don’t even want to go.”
“Let’s go,” Parker said. “It’s right across the street, I guess.” He squirted a blob of ketchup on the side of the plate. The plate was shiny with grease. He ran the French fry through the grease and salt to the ketchup, pushed it around, and picked it up in his fingers.
“My one grandmother doesn’t send me money because she’s dead,” Parker said. “The one that’s alive sends me stuff, but not money.”
“When did she die?”
“Last summer. Swimming in the Adirondacks. She had a stroke or something.”
“I never thought about a grandmother swimming,” John Joel said.
“What’s yours do?”
“She doesn’t do anything. She takes my brother and the dog to the park sometimes, I think. She reads books.”
“My grandmother had the Kinsey Report on her bookshelf in the kitchen with her cookbooks. It was boring. Just a lot of crap.”
“What’d she keep it there for?”
“Adults don’t think they have to hide anything,” Parker said. “No. I take it back. My father hides things. But nothing as stupid as the Kinsey Report.”
“What does he hide?”
“He’s got pictures hidden. He’s got a dirty deck of cards. I opened what I thought was his fishing box, and it was full of stuff like that. Maybe it isn’t even his. When my grandmother died and my grandfather went into a nursing home he hauled home all kinds of crap. I don’t even think the stuff is his, come to think of it.”
“What did you think when you found it?”
“You sound like my shrink,” Parker said. “Would I have to beg for a milkshake?”
“They’re a dollar ten.”
“Will it do me any good to beg for a milkshake?” Parker had torn two matches out of the book. He pushed them toward each other, head to head.
“Okay. Tell the guy we want two.”
“Garçon,” Parker said to Sal. “Two chocolate milkshakes, please.”
“I was in Paris in World War II,” Sal said. “Give me a sentence in French and I can answer you. Go ahead.”