Good Graces - Lesley Kagen [37]
“I didn’t think so,” Fast Susie says, unclenching her fists, feeling better now that she’s finally got a scoop. “Charlie Fitch took off from St. Jude’s in the middle of the night.”
“No kiddin’,” I say, doing my best to act amazed. “Do you know why? I mean, did ya hear if it was something that Artie Latour did that caused him to run away?”
“Naw,” she says. “Fartie didn’t have nothin’ to do with it.” After Artie Latour eats certain kinds of foods . . . he toots. A ton. That’s why Fast Susie and some of the other kids have started calling him that nickname, which may not be charitable, but is unfortunately correct. “Fitch ran off ’cause he got caught stealin’ money outta the poor box at church.”
“He did?” I say, dumbfounded. Even though I didn’t know Charlie all that well, I was positive he was a good kid. Even after Mary Lane told me that no-tripper story about how he might be the kind of orphan that kills people and strings them up in his living room to drip-dry. Now here’s Fast Susie telling us Charlie’s a thief. How am I ever going to protect Troo when I can’t tell the good guys from the bad ones?
I ask, “How . . . who caught him stealin’?”
Fast Susie picks her suit out of her crotch and says with a smile, “Father Mickey.”
I say, “Oh,” and look over at Troo to see what she thinks about all this because she’s always interested in any news about our pastor, but she’s still staring at those Italian cantaloupe bosoms.
“Hey . . . I just thoughta something. You two . . . wanna stay over one a these nights?” Fast Susie says, all of a sudden like we’re her best friends. (That’s the other thing you have to watch out for in Italians. They can turn on a dime.)
“Ah . . . thanks. I can’t. I’m . . . ah, busy,” I tell her.
Troo, finally breaking free of the spell Fast Susie’s chest has put on her, says, “I want to!”
I knew she’d say that because Fast Susie is her idol, but I despise staying overnight at the Fazios’. We have to sleep in her spooky attic, which is bad enough, but then Fast Susie will tell us a bedtime story she knows will scare the underpants offa me. Like the one she told us the last time we stayed over, the one about Count Dracula. How after he sucked everybody dry in his Transylvania neighborhood, he’d turn into a bat and fly off to somebody else’s neighborhood to quench his blood thirstiness. A neighborhood just like ours. All I could picture was Henry sleeping in his bed on 49th Street with the window open. He would be like finding a pot at the end of the rainbow for the Count. That vampire would lick his bat lips and open up my boyfriend’s hemofeelya neck like he was the drink spigot at the soda fountain. The time we stayed over and Fast Susie told us about Frankenstein stealing body parts was bad, too. I had to go home in the middle of the night because I couldn’t stand hearing that story for a minute longer. I should’ve waited until the sun came up because that was the first time Bobby came after me. I didn’t know it was him. I couldn’t see his face in the dark, only his pink-and-green argyle socks from under the Kenfields’ bushes where I hid.
“Aw, c’mon, ya gotta stay over, Sally,” Fast Susie says. “I wanna tell you all about this movie Tommy took me to see last week.” She’s going steady with Tommy Molinari, who is one of Greasy Al’s brothers, but is mostly known as The Mangling Meatball. “You’d love Psycho. It’s all about this square who takes extra good care of his mother!”
Troo, really keyed up now, says, “Can we eat over, too?” She adores all of Nana Fazio’s cooking, but especially her cannolis, which are these creamy little rolled-up sandwiches.
I check Daddy’s watch on my wrist for the third time. “Troo, I’m goin’.” I nudge her with my foot. “Did you hear me?”
She nudges me back