I squeezed past everyone who was standing at the door, watching. I took a raw wrinkly carrot and broke off the tip, so it wasn’t too pointy. Jose was doing her doggy, and Angelo was in her mouth. Jose is half Mexican and Angelo is Filipino. I made Jose slow down; he was doing it real hard. I put the carrot in her butt. Everyone in the door was laughing like it was the best thing in the world. She let me keep it in there for a while. I moved it in and out. Then Jose and Angelo stopped, and we turned her over onto her back. I put a cucumber inside her. She didn’t really want it, but I shoved it up there. I kept it up there for a while.
After, when she left, we burned the sheets in Jason’s barbecue. There was a lot of smoke.
Part III
Caffe Buon
My dad’s apartment building is near University Avenue. He owns the whole building. That’s where I live. There is a restaurant down the street called Caffe Buon. It’s Italian. I know the waiters, and the bartender, Al. Al said if I got him laid, I could have a free dinner.
I called Pam and I picked her up. I told her I was going to introduce her to someone. She knew what I meant. We went to Caffe Buon. It was five o’clock and Monday, so there were no customers.
Al was standing in the small circular bar in the corner. I introduced Pam to Al; they shook hands over the bar. Al was laughing, he asked her about school. The cooks peeked out of the kitchen to look at her. They’re all Mexican. Al is Italian, and knows my dad. Al nodded to one of the waiters, Esteban. Then Al and Pam went to the back. Pam didn’t look at me. She held Al’s hand and they walked through a door next to the men’s bathroom.
I sat at one of the tables. The place was empty. I had it all to myself. The waiter, Esteban, brought me a chicken dinner with farfalle. The chicken and the farfalle were under tinfoil. He brought a salad on the side. Farfalle is bow tie pasta, but it means “butterfly” in Italian. I ate and he brought me some red wine.
When I was almost done with dinner, Al walked out with Pam. She sat down at my table. The restaurant was still empty. I finished the rest of the chicken. Pam had a glass of water with ice. Al went into the kitchen and didn’t come out. Customers started coming in for dinner and we left. I drove her home.
The rest of that summer, when I would walk over to University Avenue for coffee or cigarettes, I would see the Buon cooks and waiters outside smoking. They would always be sitting and leaning on this bus bench next to the restaurant. They told me to bring Pam by for them too. They said they would make me the best dinners if I did.
I did it one more time, for Juan the cook. He was short, and chubby, and had a baby’s face and little baby hands.
I went over with Pam again. This time it was later in the evening than the first time, and there were customers inside eating, so we went around the side of the building to the kitchen door. It was a warm night.
As we walked up there was an orange glow spilling out of the side door where the kitchen was. Inside, through the screen door, I saw the two cooks were busy, but joking around too. It was Juan and a young one.
Esteban, the headwaiter, came into the kitchen to say something to Juan the cook. Esteban saw me and Pam looking in through the screen. He smiled and said something in Spanish. Then they all looked at us. The young cook said something to Juan in Spanish and they all laughed and made teasing noises. The young cook opened the door for us. I brought Pam in and introduced her to Juan. Juan didn’t say much. He was looking at the ground. He had been in the middle of cooking something, but he went with Pam. They walked to the door next to the men’s bathroom, where Al had taken her the other time.
I sat at a little table that was in the corner kitchen. It was where the cooks ate their dinners. The younger cook finished what Juan had been making and he made me some angel hair pasta with shrimp. It was good and had lots of garlic. I drank two glasses of wine with it. He was making me a steak cooked in butter when Juan came back with Pam. It hadn’t been very long. Juan didn’t say anything; he just walked back to his place at the stove. He took the steak that was cooking for me off the stove. Juan didn’t look at me.
Pam was standing next to me. She didn’t look at me, and she didn’t say anything. Then the young cook came over and said that we should leave.
School started in September and Pam was there. She didn’t have any friends. The only person she knew was me.
I tried out for soccer, and I made it on the team. At practice, I told the guys about Chinatown. That’s what we started calling her. We’d all go down to Chinatown.
After I made the team, I had to go to soccer practice every day. It was boring. I stopped going and they kicked me off the team.
One day at lunch we parked Seth Klein’s BMW in the far corner of the parking lot, behind the Palo Alto High School sign. I got Chinatown. I hadn’t seen her in weeks. Ramone Washington came with us. He is a huge black football player. China got in the backseat. She was on her hands and knees on the seat. Seth got in behind her and put on a condom. He pushed her skirt up and took off her panties. Ramone stood at the open back door, in front of her face, and undid his pants. His dick is huge and disgusting. I was standing guard at the back of the car, looking at the school. Every once in a while I looked back. Seth was doing it really hard, and the car was shaking. Pam was choking. A bunch of cars left the parking lot at the beginning of lunch, and after a while they came back.
A month later, Seth’s grandmother sent him away. He had been coming home drunk. His eyebrows would be shaved off, or he’d have felt marker beards and human shit on his face.
His grandfather had invented some sort of special part for microwaves. Seth’s grandfather and parents are dead, but his grandmother is very rich. She sent him away to an expensive boarding school in Connecticut.
The night before Seth left, he spray painted TAKE ME DOWN TO CHINATOWN on the wall outside the cafeteria, where they put all the rally posters. The next morning everyone at school saw it. Everyone started asking about Chinatown. Then everyone started hearing the stories. People thought I did the spray paint.
After that, Pam was different. She didn’t talk to me anymore. She wore white dresses and did her hair differently. She made some friends: nerdy girls who worked on the school paper. People still called her Chinatown behind her back. And people like Jose and Angelo called her Chinatown to her face. “What’s up, China?” they would say.
In March I got arrested. I hadn’t talked to Pam in four months. Two police officers came into my typing class, fifth period. They told me to stand up; when I did they bent me over and pressed the side of my face down on the desk, next to my computer. They put handcuffs on me. One of the police officers was this Mexican lady cop. Her name was Maria Gonzalez.
They took me to the main office and questioned me in Dean Forest’s office. Forest left so the cops could question me. They asked about all the times at the bowling green, and at Jason King’s house, and at Simon Kats’s, and about Caffe Buon, and the parking lot. And they asked about the vegetables. They told me they were arresting me for rape, and that they had arrested Seth in Connecticut. Maria Gonzalez said she was personally going to take me down.
But they couldn’t do anything. Nobody had forced Pam to do anything. Later Seth and me laughed about it. They had called his grandmother and told her that her grandson was a sodomizer. His grandmother had to go to the hospital for a little while because of the shock.
They tried to shut down Caffe Buon. The cops accused them of running a prostitution ring in the back. But they couldn’t do anything. They couldn’t prove that Al had done anything with her. And Juan was gone by that time. He left the day after I took Pam over there.
After that, I left Pam alone. I’d see her in the halls, but she was someone different. It was like I didn’t know her.