“Rosa ees a pretty gorl, sí,” Sandy mimicked.
“A muchas pretty gorl,” David said.
“No,” Aníbal said, “no ‘muchas’ what we say is ‘muy,’ we say ‘muy linda,’ that means ‘very beautiful.’”
“Thank you,” Rhoda said.
“De nada,” Aníbal said.
“Muy linda, that ees you, Rosa,” Sandy said.
“There is a rose in Spanish Harlem...” David sang.
“Ahhh, sí, you know that song?” Aníbal said.
“Ahh, sí, I knew it muy bien,” David said.
“Muy bien, very good,” Aníbal said, and his elbow slipped off the table and he almost hit his chin on the tabletop. He burst out laughing, and I was suddenly frightened.
“Let’s eat,” I said, “I think we should eat now.”
“No, Annabelle wants another drink,” Sandy said.
“Annabelle enjoys el boozo mucho bien,” David said.
“No more whiskey,” Aníbal said, “I may get drunk.”
“He may get drunk!” Sandy said, exploding into laughter.
“Tell us more about Spanish Harlem,” David said. “Tell us about the roses there.”
“Tell us about the rats there,” Sandy said.
“How about the rats here?” Rhoda said, suddenly and sharply.
“Oh-ho!” Sandy said.
“Olé!” David said.
“Ai toro!” Aníbal said, and picked up his napkin and waved it flirtatiously at Rhoda.
“Let’s order,” I said. “I think we ought to order.”
“Another drink, Annabelle?” David said.
“One more, but that is all,” Aníbal said, and smiled at Rhoda, and put the napkin back on his lap.
“Another scotch and water, miss,” David said to the waitress.
Aníbal was ossified by the time we got around to ordering. He told us all about a cousin of his who was a prostitute, and about another cousin who had been war counselor of a gang on 112th Street before he’d been busted by the cops, and who was now serving five years at Sing Sing, and he told us how he himself had once been picked up for carrying a knife, and of how he had got off with a suspended sentence even though he was eighteen at the time and could no longer be considered a juvenile offender. He told us he had seen West Side Story and rooted for the Puerto Ricans, but that his wish was to become a real American (like you, Rosa), which is why he had, when filling out the questionnaire, specifically asked for an American girl, and was somewhat surprised when they had supplied a girl who was of Chinese and Jewish ancestry, though of course Jewish is American, who is the Chinese, he asked, your mother or your father?
“Her grandfather was Chinese,” Sandy said.
My grandfather was a Spaniard, Aníbal said proudly, who owned seventy acres of land and a farm in the Meseta, as well as a town house in Salamanca, a very wealthy man. He had gone to Puerto Rico to visit his brother in April of 1936, only to receive word from home some three months later that the country was fast approaching civil war, and he had best hurry home to protect his interests. Aníbal seemed somewhat vague as to whether or not his grandfather had hurried home (he was, in fact, rather vague about everything along about then), but in any event it seemed the land was seized by the government, along with the town house (which sounded very fishy to me; I didn’t think Franco had behaved that way), and grandfather had emigrated to Puerto Rico with his family, a broken man who was now poor but still honest. (It occurred to me, while Aníbal was telling his story, that I had never met a poor person who did not claim his ancestors had been wealthy and powerful.) Old grandfather apparently did not fare too well in Puerto Rico, and died still poor but honest (not to mention proud) in the shack on the edge of the sea, his legacy to his only son, Luis, who was Aníbal’s father. So now, here in this wonderful land of opportunity, Aníbal was ready to restore honor and wealth to the family name by becoming an accountant and eventually buying his own home in, as he put it, “a nice residential section of the Bronx.”
“That’s very nice up there in the Bronx,” Sandy said.
“Almost like country,” David said, and winked at me.
“Sí, sí, I know,” Aníbal said.
We had begun eating by then, and some of the alcohol effect was beginning to wear off, but he was still slurring his words, and swaying gently in his seat, and smiling beatifically at Rhoda, who was furious at us for what we’d done, and even more furious at Aníbal for having allowed it to happen. When Aníbal ordered a brandy after the meal (Sandra, you will join me now? he asked, and Sandy shook her head demurely and answered, Oh, thank you, Annabelle, I don’t think so) Rhoda became nearly apoplectic. Aníbal finally staggered out into the street with us at about a quarter past ten, having paid the lion’s share of the check, which was only fair since he’d drunk so much.
The town was its usual Saturday-night self, riotously asleep even here in the business district. We crossed the street to avail ourselves of the big weekend entertainment — Woolworth’s lighted window — and then headed down for the bay front and the parking lot where Aníbal had left his car. The lampposts threw spaced circles of light into the blackness. Aníbal reeled along beside us, throwing his arms wide and bursting into song whenever he stepped into one of the circles, like a performer in successive spotlights. We were perhaps three or four-blocks from the parking lot — were, in fact, crossing the street to get on the same side as the lot — when we saw them.
I’m not sure they would have recognized us if our reaction hadn’t been so immediate and so obvious. But the three of us froze at once, stopping stock-still in the middle of the street as Rhoda and Aníbal moved forward to the sidewalk and then turned to see what was delaying us. The three boys were dressed just as they’d been dressed on the night of The Big Rape Scene, almost as though having once been typecast they refused to accept any other roles, levis, tee shirts, wide belts, loafers. They swaggered up the sidewalk, pushing each other and laughing, and then saw us, stopping the moment we did, freezing in an attitude of uncertainty. Then one of them let out a yell that chilled me to the marrow, “It’s Long Legs!” he shouted, his voice rising, the simple exclamation loaded with something more than merely joy of recognition, shrill with discovery, thoroughly malevolent in its promise of revenge for the merry chase we’d led them and the razzing we’d administered from the deck of the ferry.
I was terrified this time.
This time the danger was unmistakable, there was no wondering about illusion this time, there was only panic being pounded into the heart like a splintery wooden stake. What happened next happened in split-second sequence, and yet it all seemed to overlap, the only concession reality made to distortion. I grabbed Sandy’s hand and started to run, and then I head David’s voice shouting, “Run!” and then I remembered Rhoda, and dropped Sandy’s hand, and whirled, and stopped, and Sandy shouted, “Come on, for Christ’s sake!” and I ran to the curb as the three boys raced down the sidewalk, and saw the angry face of one of them, and seized Rhoda’s hand, and heard David yell “Let’s get out of here!” and Rhoda said “What?” and idiotically I thought of the three astronauts who had been trapped inside the Apollo rocket when the flash fire erupted, and the way one of them in his last few seconds alive had shrieked in what the Times described as a shrill voice, “Get us out of here!” I caught another fast glimpse of the boy’s face as he approached, and then saw that Aníbal had his mouth open, and I lunged forward and pulled Rhoda off the sidewalk, and heard Sandy shout, “Stop them, Anna-belle! They’re after Rhoda!”