“What about the kid?” Bud asked. He glanced to the other side of the room where Andy stood, carefully cleaning his horn.
“What about him?” Frank said.
“Should we ask him to come along to the dance?”
“He’s a kid,” Frank said, outraged by the suggestion. “What is he, fifteen?”
“You’d better hang onto that kid,” Reen said. “He’s the best damn thing that ever happened to you.”
“I know it,” Bud said.
“I’ll tell you something else,” Reen said. “He knows it, too.”
Bud looked at Reen steadily. “What do you mean? That business with Vic?”
“That business with Vic,” Reen said. “It won’t be a bad idea at all to ask him to come with us.”
“Yeah,” Bud said thoughtfully. He lighted a fresh cigarette, took a few drags, and then walked over to Andy.
“Hi,” he said.
Andy looked up, surprised. “Oh, hello, Bud.”
“You sounded good tonight,” Bud said.
“Thanks,” Andy said.
Bud had expected more, but perhaps he hadn’t delivered his speech just right. He tried again. “You sounded real good.”
“Well, thanks,” Andy said.
Bud nodded and smiled and watched Andy cleaning his trumpet until he began to feel a little foolish just standing there and smiling like an idiot. Didn’t the kid know how to keep a conversation alive? He toyed with several fresh approaches in his mind, gave them all up, and finally said conversationally, “Say, would you like to come along to the dance at Merciful Father?”
Andy looked up briefly. “I don’t know how to dance,” he said.
“Oh.”
He dropped his eyes again. The chamois cloth ran over the bright brass of the horn. The lights in the wall of the club reflected from the curling hairs on the backs of Andy’s hands. Bud digested the information and tried to think of something further to say.
“Well, you don’t know how to dance, you don’t know how,” he said lamely. “Hell, no crime in that.”
“No,” Andy said.
The silence closed in again like a mailed fist. Why was the kid so goddamn hard to talk to? Jesus, didn’t he ever crack a smile?
“You feel like coming along anyway, you can do that,” Bud said. “I mean, you can hang around, you know, and watch the chicks, or whatever. Lots of guys just... uh... hang around. If you want to come along, I mean.”
Andy did not look up from his trumpet. “I’m not dressed up,” he said. His response surprised Bud because Bud hadn’t thought the kid was aware of clothes. But the response inspired him into continuing with his persuasion. He had a wedge now.
“Well, that’s nothing,” he said. “Frank’ll drop you off, if you want to come, and you can throw on a sports jacket quick.”
Still not looking up, Andy tucked his horn into the case. “I haven’t got a sports jacket,” he said, and then matter-of-factly, “My father says sports jackets are very expensive.”
“Oh.”
“Thanks, anyway.”
“Sure.” Bud paused. He had tried, and he’d lost, and he should have let it go at that. But there had been something exceedingly exasperating about the run of conversation thus far, and it rankled him. He wanted to convince Andy now, dammit. Doggedly, he pressed on.
“How about a suit?”
“I’ve only got my confirmation suit.”
“Oh.” Bud scratched his eyebrow. “One of those blue serge things, you mean?”
“Yes. My father says that’s all a boy my age needs.”
“Oh.”
“I’m not even wearing a tie,” Andy said.
“Yeah. Yeah, I see that.”
“But thanks, anyway. Maybe next time.”
They lifted their eyes simultaneously, as if to end the conversation with a final direct meeting of glances. Bud started to say, “Well, sure, there’s always next ti—” and then the sentence died on his lips because he was seeing Andy’s face for the first time during the conversation, and embarrassment and sadness were mingled on that face. He hadn’t realized until then that the kid might actually want to go to the dance, and that all the talk about sports jackets and suits he didn’t own was probably painful to him. The realization struck home, and he felt like apologizing, but he felt that an apology would be inadequate, and he suddenly became embarrassed himself. And in his own embarrassment he really wanted to... to help the kid now because of something in those sad brown eyes, and because of something inside him which suddenly assumed responsibility for the kid’s sadness and embarrassment. He balked for a moment, unwilling to accept the responsibility. Wavering he thought, What the hell am I about to do? Take a kid under my wing, be a mother hen, what the hell am I letting myself in for?
No, he thought. No, the hell with it.
And then he heard himself saying, “If you just need a jacket and tie... I mean, that’s no problem. Hell, why that’s no problem at all. I can lend you those, if you like. I mean, if you want to come along with us.”
Andy’s face brightened imperceptibly. Cautiously he said, “Well, that’s awfully nice of you.”
“I’ve got a jacket that’s a little small for me, and you’d probably get into it. What do you say? Do you want to come?”
“If it’s all right with you, I guess...”
“Yeah, it’s fine,” Bud said, sighing, relieved. “Come on.”
He had never been to a dance before.
He stood on the side of the large room now, in a group with the other boys, but not feeling exactly a part of them, listening to them and hearing their voices, and hearing the muted hum of conversation in the high echoing room, and hearing the music that came from the record player, and seeing the girls in their sweaters and in their dresses, seeing lip-sticked lips and pointed breasts, seeing the priest on the other side of the room standing near where they were selling beer, smelling the heated warmth of the room, and the perfumed air of the room, and the wet-tweed smell of the room, and the resined-floor smell of the room, hearing, and seeing, and smelling, and trying to record it all on his brain, trigger-fast.
“When a band plays soft, that’s pianissimo,” Frank said.
“Yeah?” Reen said.
“And when a band plays loud, that’s fortissimo.”
“So?”
“But when a band doesn’t play at all, that’s Petrillo,” Frank said, smiling and waiting for his laugh.