A Visit From the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan [15]
“‘Kissing Mother Superior’ is my favorite,” Sasha said. “We’ve gotta find a way to use that one.”
They’d pulled up outside her building on Forsyth. The street felt desolate and underlit. Bennie wished she could live in a better place. Sasha gathered up her ubiquitous black bag, a shapeless wishing well from which she’d managed to wrest whatever file or number or slip of paper he’d needed for the past twelve years. Bennie seized her thin white hand. “Listen,” he said. “Listen, Sasha.”
She looked up. Bennie felt no lust at all—he wasn’t even hard. What he felt for Sasha was love, a safety and closeness like what he’d had with Stephanie before he’d let her down so many times that she couldn’t stop being mad. “I’m crazy for you, Sasha,” he said. “Crazy.”
“Come on, Bennie,” Sasha chided lightly. “None of that.”
He held her hand between both of his. Sasha’s fingers were trembly and cold. Her other hand was on the door.
“Wait,” Bennie said. “Please.”
She turned to him, somber now. “There’s no way, Bennie,” she said. “We need each other.”
They looked at one another in the failing light. The delicate bones of Sasha’s face were lightly freckled—it was a girl’s face, but she’d stopped being a girl when he wasn’t watching.
Sasha leaned over and kissed Bennie’s cheek: a chaste kiss, a kiss between brother and sister, mother and son, but Bennie felt the softness of her skin, the warm movement of her breath. Then she was out of the car. She waved to him through the window and said something he didn’t catch. Bennie lunged across the empty seat, his face near the glass, staring fixedly as she said it again. Still, he missed it. As he struggled to open the door, Sasha said it once more, mouthing the words extra slowly:
“See. You. Tomorrow.”
3
Ask Me If I Care
Late at night, when there’s nowhere left to go, we go to Alice’s house. Scotty drives his pickup, two of us squeezed in front with him, blasting bootleg tapes of the Stranglers, the Nuns, Negative Trend, the other two stuck in back where you freeze all year long, getting tossed in the actual air when Scotty tops the hills. Still, if it’s Bennie and me I hope for the back, so I can push against his shoulder in the cold, and hold him for a second when we hit a bump.
The first time we went to Sea Cliff, where Alice lives, she pointed up a hill at fog sneaking through the eucalyptus trees and said her old school was up there: an all-girls school where her little sisters go now. K through six you wear a green plaid jumper and brown shoes, after that a blue skirt and white sailor top, and you can pick your own shoes. Scotty goes, Can we see them? and Alice goes, My uniforms? but Scotty goes, No, your alleged sisters.
She leads the way upstairs, Scotty and Bennie right behind her. They’re both fascinated by Alice, but it’s Bennie who entirely loves her. And Alice loves Scotty, of course.
Bennie’s shoes are off, and I watch his brown heels sink into the white cotton-candy carpet, so thick it muffles every trace of us. Jocelyn and I come last. She leans close to me, and inside her whisper I smell cherry gum covering up the five hundred cigarettes we’ve smoked. I can’t smell the gin we drank from my dad’s hidden supply at the beginning of the night, pouring it into Coke cans so we can drink it on the street.
Jocelyn goes, Watch, Rhea. They’ll be blond, her sisters.
I go, According to?
Rich children are always blond, Jocelyn goes. It has to do with vitamins.
Believe me, I don’t mistake that for information. I know everyone Jocelyn knows.
The room is dark except for a pink night-light. I stop in the doorway and Bennie hangs back too, but the other three go crowding into the space between the beds. Alice’s little sisters are sleeping on their sides, covers tucked around their shoulders. One looks like Alice, with pale wavy hair, the other is dark, like Jocelyn. I’m afraid they’ll wake up and be scared of us in our dog collars and safety pins and shredded T-shirts. I think: We shouldn’t be here, Scotty shouldn’t have asked to come in, Alice shouldn’t have said