CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Love Rhymes
False words of love from perspective disabled must snap the wrong way off one’s crooked table.
Dante had no idea what to buy Sunny for Christmas. He spent early December walking the streets of downtown Norwalk with hope in his heart that something—anything—in the lit windows of cotton snow and sparkle frost would catch his eye. No such luck. Main Street commerce was dying a slow, cruel death at the hands of several new department stores which had recently opened in Sandusky. Hair whipping in a stiff breeze, Dante stopped in front of a clothing outlet. The garments on display looked scruffy, outdated. A Santa Claus with crooked eyes leaned drunkenly on the glass. Dante crossed the street and doubled back the way he came. He crossed Benedict Avenue (where a paper bell decoration, flying on the wind, nearly took off his head). The Glass Block Building, site of the famous boiler explosion Donati had once told him about, stood on the corner. Passing it with nary a glance, Dante ducked inside of a flower shop. His fingers were crossed. Perhaps here he would find help. Salvation.
“Get out,” a short, fat woman said from behind the counter. “We don’t allow kids in here.”
Dante took out his wallet and showed her three twenty-dollar bills. “Too bad,” he said. “Guess I’ll go to Henry’s Flowers instead.”
But he didn’t go to Henry’s, which was two blocks away to the northeast. Any flowers he bought for Sunny would likely be dead by Christmas anyway. He needed something else. Something simple and eloquent that defined her.
“Something out of town,” Dante said to himself, fetching a deep sigh.
Later that week he asked his mother for a ride to Sandusky Mall. Doubtless needing to get a little elf work done herself, she agreed. They left Norwalk at nine-thirty and arrived at ten to a mass of other early birds waiting for the main doors to open. Dante’s eyes jumped from face to face. Most were female but not all. No one looked especially drunk on holiday cheer.
“Hey Mom,” he said, “if you were a twelve year-old girl, what would you want for Christmas?”
“I don’t know,” came her uninterested reply. She looked at her watch, then the doors, then her watch again.
“I’m kind of stuck for an idea.”
“Oh. Yeah, okay.”
“Thanks for caring, Mom.”
“Anytime, sweetheart.”
The doors were unlocked at 10:06. Dante and his mother moved forward with the rest of the herd. They passed a video arcade, a restaurant, and a bingo parlor before reaching the mall’s main midway, where the drowned wishes of a three-tiered water fountain dampened his spirits even further. After instructing him to meet her back at the fountain at noon, his mother went left, vanishing behind a Timex kiosk. Dante took a seat on the basin. Wandering about from store to store had already proven a bad idea. He needed to think. Formulate. Perhaps even pray.
Two giggling girls, both about Sunny’s age, approached the fountain and turned right. Slim, stylish bags hung on their shoulders. Dante wondered if there were credit cards in them.
Perhaps you should find out, a reasoning thought told him.
He followed them (casually, keeping a safe distance) to a pink and red cosmetics store that looked nothing at all like a place Sunny would shop. Paper hearts were taped in the window. Teddy bears hung from the ceiling. No, Sunny would never shop here. Maris, definitely, but never Sunny. Sunny would strut right past the entrance without even turning her head.
Dante went inside. He browsed the aisles, which didn’t take long. It was a small, cozy store. A saleslady smiled at him but didn’t quite dare ask if he needed help.
Buy her a Teddy bear, a desperate thought ventured.
Oh yeah, came the reasoning one’s response, good idea. She’ll probably slaughter it with a butcher knife in her basement.
“Shut up, both of you,” Dante muttered.
Then he saw the nail polish rack. It was one of those narrow plastic towers that rotated. Suddenly inspired, he crossed to it and gave its bearings a spin. More bright red appeared. More pink. Then came a small troupe of different, less popular shades. Black, blue, green, silver.
“Black,” he muttered again. “It’s gotta be black for her.”
He reached for one of the bottles, but froze when his eye caught another shade. It was dark red. Dark as blood. Dante picked up the bottle. OPI Transylvania Cocktail, it read.
The name pleased him. Quite relieved to have this difficult treasure hunt finally end, he went to the counter. A plastic register waited to eat his money. No one stood at its keys, however. A box of charm bracelets rested on an otherwise empty counter. Dante looked over his shoulder in time to see the giggling girls leave. The saleslady who’d smiled earlier was nowhere to be seen.
“Hello!” he called. “Anyone here?”
Morrissey answered from speakers hidden in the ceiling. His girlfriend was in coma; he knew, he knew, it was serious.
But aren’t you gay? Dante thought.
Still no saleslady. He went to each aisle and peered down. Female accessories glimmered everywhere—hair scarves, fishnet gloves, bangle bracelets. All were devoid of human occupation.
No matter, the reasoning voice assured. You can wait. You have time.
Dante, Sunny answered, freckles flaring, my personal best is only about thirty seconds, remember?
“I do,” he said aloud. “And this time, girl, I’m going to take care of you.”
There were two CCTV cameras in the store. Minding them, Dante went back to the nail polish rack. The maneuver was a ruse. He pretended to put the Transylvania Cocktail back, then palmed it instead. When both cameras were turned the other way he dropped the bottle into his pocket and walked out. Mission accomplished.
That was stupid, came the reasoning voice’s disgusted response. I’m ashamed of you.
“Get over it,” Dante said. “Or…don’t. See if I care.”
He visited a few other shops before noon. The mall remained sleepy. Things around here never really picked up until after lunch. Dante went to a toy store, a gift store, a candy kiosk. In none of them did he buy—or steal. He had what he wanted.
On his way back to the fountain he passed a music store that sold CDs and cassette singles. It made him realize something about that reasoning voice, the voice which had, over the past couple hours, fallen utterly silent.
It belonged to Donati.
∞
The day seemed one for killing birds. Once home Dante went directly to his room, sat down, and knocked off the phony love letter to Maris. Only it wasn’t a letter. It was a poem instead. This because, at the last moment, Dante decided the project needed structure and romance. A piercing tip to slay the heart of its target. It came out far more easily than he ever would have dreamed. He’d expected it to take days, weeks even. Instead he got the bones of the thing set up in less than an hour. An hour after that, he had it polished as close to perfection as a young man could hope. All that remained was to run it past Sunny.
Next morning before homeroom he did that very thing.
“Missed you in school yesterday,” she said, slamming her locker door a little too hard.
“I had some shopping to do with my mom.”
“You could have called to tell me that. The girls kept asking me where you were. Like an idiot I had to tell them I didn’t know.”
“Sorry. There was something else that kept me busy,” he added with a smirk before showing her the poem.
She asked what it was at first, then froze, raising her hand to halt all replies. And like the memory of a bad dream which fades at dawn, the anger in her face retreated. Her green eyes widened for a moment; a gasp of air filled her chest. Was that what it looked like? she wanted to know. Was that the letter?
“It’s a poem,” Dante said. “Slight change of plans.”
She gave a whoop and leaped into his arms, bending her knees to let him take all of her weight, which he did with great eagerness, twirling her around before the red faces of a dozen other students.
A million thank-yous followed, all between a million kisses on the cheek. These kisses were soft, breathy, and smelled like cinnamon. Dante accepted them with a willingness for a million more.
“I am really sorry I got mad at you just now,” Sunny gushed after he put her down. “I was just worried. I didn’t know what happened.”
“If I miss school again I won’t be so boneheaded. I’ll call you.”
“Yes! Please, Dante, please.” She plucked the paper from his hand. “My gosh! So this is it!”
“That’s it. Don’t get too excited yet, honey. I need you to proofread.”
“I’m excited! I know it’ll be awesome! You didn’t have to do this, Dante. I said I would write the letter.”
“I actually couldn’t remember which one of us had that job. Just keep in mind when you read it that every word is actually how I feel about you. Otherwise I’d have been totally stumped.”
“Ooh,” she purred. “So this is going to get me excited tonight?”
He took a step closer, closing what little space was left between them. “You’re going to discover a few things, little girl.”
“In that case I won’t read it until I’m in my bedroom.”
“Cross your heart?”
She made as if to follow through, raising the sharp-nailed index finger of her right hand. At that moment Mr. Wolfe poked his head into the hallway. It was time for class, he told everyone, all chatter needed to cease, all locker doors needed to be closed. Sunny put the poem into her bag, with a second promise not to touch it until after dinner. She also told him not to worry about how they would engage the school. He’d done enough, she said, or almost enough. There was still the issue of copying the poem in Shaya’s handwriting.
At lunchtime they watched him—Shaya—eat alone again. He sat in his usual spot near the kitchen, hair unkempt, clothes shabby. His glasses were crooked. His torn blue sneakers were stained. No one talked to him, or even seemed to notice he was alive.
“Pathetic,” Sunny said, face shriveled with disgust. “I can’t wait to see the look on Maris’ face when we pull this thing off. I really can’t.” She looked at Dante. Her hands fluttered to the collar of his shirt, straightened it. She gave each of his sleeves a tug and a pat. “Where’s your jacket, honey? The leather one?”
“It’s in my locker,” Dante said.
“You should wear it. It’s cool.”
“Okay.”
She grinned. “Or let me wear it. Would that be okay?”
“Absolutely,” Dante said, liking the idea. “You can even take it home with you later if you want.”
“Oh, I want,” Sunny said, putting a French fry into his mouth. “I really, really want.”
∞
He sat up that night, unfocused on a book report coming due for Mr. Wolfe’s English class. The book he’d chosen was a mistake. The plot was bland, its characters weak. No one in the pages seemed to care about what Mr. Wolfe called The Main Idea. They hardly recognized its existence at all. Instead, the author sketched a colorless, tuneless narrative about family life with a precocious two year-old boy. The boy liked to throw food. He liked to scream and yell. There were no surprises, no twists. Even Dante’s phone, when it rang, couldn’t rouse him from the torpor the pages induced. Rather than answer it he waited for someone downstairs to do so. Then he flipped to the last chapter, frowned, and dumped the book into the wastebasket.
Minutes later his father came to the door. “Isn’t that a library book?” he asked, eyeing the discarded corpse.
At this hour of the night Mr. Torn was scarcely more than a silhouette, dark and lean. Dante could tell he didn’t really care about the book. Something in his posture (hands in pockets, shoulder to the frame) indicated an air of one feinting towards happenstance. If that were true he had missed, and badly. Dante knew his father never did things without a reason.
“Yes,” he told the silhouette, after a garbage pail glance. “You’re right. I forgot.”
“It’s not proper to throw literature away. Even if you think you’re doing the world a favor.”
Dante frowned. Here was a new opinion, and one he never would have expected from the no nonsense yachtsman. “I guess you’re right,” he said.
“I know I’m right,” the other pressed. “Someone else might actually enjoy that book. Someone else might even learn to read from that book.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize to me.”
Wilted, Dante fished the book from the trash, put it on his desk. The cover art no longer looked mischievous, but reproachful. “I’ll return it tomorrow,” he said.
Mr. Torn’s posture continued to lean. What he had actually come here to say couldn’t be far off. “That was the hospital on the phone,” he said, keeping his voice level. “Your friend is sick. The old man who lives down the street.”
This piece of news caused Dante’s mouth to fall open. “What?” he stammered. “Mr. Donati?”
“That’s the one. Don’t worry. The nurse said he’s comfortable and fully alert.”
“What happened?”
“All I could get from the nurse was minor cardiac episode.” Mr. Torn moved off the frame. Message delivered, he could stand on his own again. “She also said that Mr. Donati would like you to visit him tomorrow. It’s Saturday so you won’t miss school.”
“I’ll go in the morning.”
“Good idea. You can return the book on your way.”
On that chiding note, Mr. Torn disappeared, leaving Dante to worry over the opera singer’s condition. Minor cardiac episode? So it was a heart attack then. He’d fallen ill with chest pains during the day. Had he called for an ambulance? Dante tried to remember hearing sirens at school. He couldn’t. But of course that didn’t mean anything.
Stop it. You’re being stupid.
Knowing he’d never get any work done now, Dante pushed the book report aside. He turned out the light and got in bed. It was a cold night. A layer of frost chilled the window, which shook with occasional gusts of northern wind. Between these came muffled chatter from his mom and dad in the next room. By midnight both—breezes and banter—fell silent. Dante continued to blink at the ceiling. He was at last beginning to drowse when the phone rang again.
Instantly his thoughts leaped to Donati. In one swift motion he was off the bed and snatching at the receiver.
“Hello!” he fairly gushed.
Silence from the other end. Then a smooth, soft, female voice said: “Dante. Sweetheart.”
Dante felt the tightness in his chest shift from anxiety to delight. “Sunny! Hi! You’re up late.”
“Oh I’m always up late, dear. And tonight I have some interesting literature on hand.”
Dante glanced at the library book. “Wish I could say the same here.”
“You’ll be okay. Just give a plot outline, then state your opinion. Your civil opinion.”
“How do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Know what I mean before I can even tell you.”
She laughed. “Female intuition, Dante. Once you kiss a girl she can look right through you.”
“So I’m yours?”
“I’m afraid so. That’s okay I hope. It better be,” she added with a mischievous twist.
“It’s more than okay,” Dante said. He carried the phone to the bed, dragging its line. “Have you read my little missive yet?”
“That was the interesting literature I referred to.”
“Remember I wrote it about you, not Maris.”
“I remember,” Sunny purred. “I liked it, Dante. It’s going to work just fine for what we have in mind. Lie down in bed for me,” she told him next, with a gasp of quickened breath. Then: “Are you all alone there?”
“I think so,” Dante replied, stretching out on the mattress. “My mom and dad are quiet. Usually means they’re asleep.”
“Mine too. And my door is locked. I’m under the covers with all my clothes off.”
Dante tried to picture this as best he could. Imagination didn’t normally frustrate him, but tonight it did. He wanted more than just thoughts of the red-headed deviant lying naked before him. He wanted sight. He wanted touch. Scents and sounds. Defeated, he decided to tell her these things, to which she responded that of course she knew of his desires already, and that she wanted nothing more than to be with him, too. It would happen, she promised. They would find time to be together—to be alone together—no matter what the cost. From here Sunny’s voice took on a chiding tone. Had he already forgotten about her parents’ trip to Howling? And if not, why wasn’t he excited about it? The opportunity was perfect. They could have lots of fun. Maybe even too much fun.
“When is that trip?” Dante asked again. She had dodged the question at lunch. Now perhaps, corning her with it again, he could get an answer.
Instead the line clicked and went dead.
Dante pressed the carriage switch. “Sunny? Hello?”
There was another click in his ear, then a dial tone. He was about to call Sunny’s number in Sycamore Hills when a powerful gust of night wind struck the window. Twigs scratched the glass. The light flickered.
“Dante?” a female voice rang from the hall. “Dante?”
Sitting up in bed, Dante studied his bedroom doorway. Was his mother awake? The voice hadn’t sounded like hers. It had sounded higher, younger.
“Yes!” he called back, getting to his feet.
Only the wind answered, howling up State Street and onto Main like a woman fleeing murder. Dante peered into the hall. No one peered back. A single weak light—a night light—glowed from a console his mother had picked up last year at an Amish furniture store. That was it.
Needing to be further convinced, Dante walked to the end of the hall, where a window overlooked Norwalk’s huge Methodist church. This close to midnight it was nothing more than a sleeping giant. Amongst its dark, brooding stones Dante could make out very little. And anyway, the female voice hadn’t come from over there.
He decided to chance knocking on his parents’ door, lightly at first, then with more force when no one answered. Yet still nothing stirred on the other side. Dante took hold of the knob. His next action would be borderline anathema as far as the Torns were concerned. Under no circumstances did either parent allow their son into their bedroom. Undiscovered repercussions awaited. Sticky ends.
Dante turned the knob. Or rather, he tried. The door was locked.
“Dante?”
He jumped, nearly tripping over his own feet. The voice, faint and feminine, now seemed to be calling from his bedroom. Looking in that direction he could see the doorway. Light flooded the hall carpet. Had he turned it back on at some point? It was hard to know for certain.
Slowly he walked to the door. Halfway there the downtown clock tower chimed midnight. Dante got to the pool of light, leaned and peered into his room. There was his bed, his desk. Both were empty. His telephone, which he’d left on the covers, was also there. No sooner did he see it, it began to ring, over and over, stubborn for an answer though Dante hesitated a long time before at last finding courage enough to cross the room and pick up the receiver.
“Hello?” he asked.
“Dante!” Sunny’s voice replied cheerfully. “What happened?”
He looked back at the hall, almost expecting the mystery voice to say his name again. “I’m not sure. The line went dead.”
“Ah. Well for a few minutes there I thought it was you who’d died.”
“I was about to call you back actually, but then the house sort of got weird. I heard a voice call my name.”
“You’re just spooked over the wind.”
“Maybe that’s it,” Dante said, lacking conviction. “But it sure sounded real.”
When Sunny next spoke her voice was that of a Hollywood comedienne. “Maybe it’s haunted,” she moaned, elongating the word for drama.
Her tomfoolery forced a smile to his lips. “Then we have a late ghost. I’ve lived here all my life.”
Sunny didn’t answer, though this time he knew she was still there. Her presence tightened the line. “Sunny?” Dante said.
“BOO!” she screamed, loud as she could into his ear.
At that instant every light in the house went black. Lightning flashed outside; thunder boomed. A hundred public service announcements had taught Dante never to hold a telephone during a storm. He put it on the bed, rose, and tried to feel his way to the desk, where he kept a penlight. Halfway there the lights flickered back on. For an instant Dante thought he saw a reflection in the window—a reflection of something tall and oddly formed that leaped from view once the lights came on. His eyes went back to the door. It was still open, inviting him into the hall for a look.
No way, he thought, crossing the room with an intent to close and lock it.
A second flash of lightning lit the world outside, followed by more thunder. Dante had his hand on the door and was about to shut it when he noticed two deep, curved marks in the hallway carpeting. They were set far apart, with pointed tips turned slightly inward. They resembled, Dante thought, a pair of cloven hooves.
Rain began to pelt the window, lightly at first but soon with the commotion of hailstones. He closed the door, twisted the lock handle. With luck that would do to hinder unwanted visitors. Without luck…
“Who am I kidding?” Dante muttered.
Leaving the light on, he went to the bed and lay down. After five minutes he could resist temptation no more. He dialed Sunny’s number. She answered, giggling, on the second ring.
“What’s so funny?” Dante asked.
“I knew you’d call me once the lights came back on. I got so scared when my room went dark I screamed.”
“You screamed the word boo.”
More laughter, fading from the receiver as if its owner had fallen backward in bed. “I think that was it,” she said, regaining control. “First thing I thought of in the dark was ghosts.”
“Me too,” Dante said. “Are you okay now?”
“Oh I’m good. Everything’s fine here. How about you?”
“Power’s back on for now.”
They talked for another hour, never minding the storm or those public service announcements. Dante had forgotten all about monsters and ghosts when someone knocked on the door. Hesitant but not wishing to show weakness with his girlfriend listening in, Dante answered it.
“Go to bed,” his father commanded. “It’s one o’clock in the morning.”
“Aw,” Sunny pouted into his ear.
“Sure, Dad,” Dante said. “I’m out.”
Mr. Torn looked at the phone. “Who the heck are you talking to?”
“Girlfriend.”
“Is that so? Hooray for you. But please tell her goodnight and go to sleep.”
“Sunny?” Dante said into the phone. He smiled at his dad and made an O with his thumb and index finger.
“Yes, da