Anthropology of an American Girl: A Novel - By Hilary Thayer Hamann Page 0,21

cones like grapes and how Rick Ruddle said that inhaling labdanum tranquilizes the mind. Rick Ruddle was Jack’s hike leader and a sound engineer from Portland.

Brothers Four Pizzeria was crowded. Troy Resnick was there with Min Kessler, the eye doctor’s daughter. Jack and Troy slapped loose hands. “How was the trip, man?” Troy asked.

Jack said, “Outrageous, man.”

Troy examined the watermelon-colored Kryps on Jack’s skateboard, and Jack informed Troy that his haircut was butt ugly. I lifted a copy of Dan’s Papers from a stack on the floor and took the front table. Through the ribbon of mist that divided Newtown Lane, the red neon sign from Sam’s Restaurant seemed milky red and noirish, making me think of detective novels—single-bullet shootings. A pop, a body, some footsteps, a detective.

“Catch you later, man,” I heard Jack say.

Troy slurped back cheese. “Meet us at the beach.”

“Which one, Wiborg’s?” Jack asked.

“Indian Wells.”

“Too far,” Jack said. “I don’t have a car, and I’m not driving with you. You suck.”

Other kids starting calling out to Jack. He transmitted a series of apathetic hellos, then declared with annoyance, “Listen, people, I gotta get some fucking food.”

At the counter he ordered two slices and stared down Dino and Vinny while he waited. They irritated Jack, the way they thought they were masculine. He liked to say that they must have had some very big hairy dicks beneath those oil-stained pizza aprons. For his part, Jack astounded them, the way he was puny and unkempt but had a girl like me. He seemed to personify for them the trouble with America. Dino would just shake his head when he saw us, which pleased Jack infinitely. Jack liked to take me there; we went about three times a week.

Jack deposited two paper plates on the table, each with its own overhanging slice, and the plates swirled a bit from grease coming through. Jack lowered his chin to the plane of the table and bit his folded slice. “Mooks,” he said through his food. He didn’t know what a Mook was, he’d just heard it once in a movie called Mean Streets, which my dad had taken us to see. Ever since then, everybody who pissed him off was a Mook. I tore the crust from my slice and chewed. Jack wanted to know if the pizza guys had given me a hard time while he was gone.

“This is the first time I’ve been here since you left,” I said.

He knocked his head back to suck the soda from his can. His hair fanned out against his shoulders, and I could see his Adam’s apple dip and rise. I don’t like to see them, not ever, Adam’s apples. I turned away; Dino was staring.

“Let’s go, Jack,” I said, standing and pulling my sweater around my shoulders, buttoning one button at the neck. “The movie starts in five minutes. We’re going to miss the oil globs.” Before the beginning of every film, the theater would project wafting oil globs on the screen, kind of like a giant lava lamp.

“Right,” he said, jumping up to grab his skateboard. When I tossed the remainder of my pizza into the garbage, he caught it before it hit the can and crammed it into his mouth.

As we started for the theater, he jumped onto his skateboard and whizzed by me in the street. Jack was handsome, in a seedy and purposeful way, the way a barn in disrepair looks so good in the middle of a lush green field. It was true he had changed over the summer, or maybe it was me who had changed. I said, “I can’t believe we’re finally seniors.”

“I was just thinking that,” he said as he rode up the curb, then popped back off in front of Tony’s Sporting Goods. “Troy’s doing whippets tonight. That’s why he wants to meet later.”

“Isn’t it like breathing into a paper bag?”

“Yeah. It’s so stupid. That’s what makes it fun.” He approached Newtown and Main, and at the corner he twirled smoothly on the rear wheels. His arms were bent at the elbows, his right leg extended, his left leg flexed. His hair windmilled lightly. Then he leapt off, flipping the front end of his board into his ready hand, waiting for me to catch up. We met at the light.

“Your leg ever bother you?” I asked.

“Nah,” he said. “Sometimes.”

Jack was wearing a cast when we met. “The summer of 1978 is a study in bitter irony,” he liked to say. “In the midst