Good Graces - Lesley Kagen [58]
Troo says, “Bone sware, Uncle Paulie.”
That’s a new one on me. Maybe where she’s been sneaking off to is the library to move herself up on the Bookworm ladder and get extra instruction from Mrs. Kambowski in the language of love. I’ve already lost track of her two times this week during the day and once in the middle of the night. (Sorry, Daddy. I’m trying my hardest, but as you know, your Trooper can be so darn slippery.)
“Ooo la la, Leeze,” our uncle says back to Troo and that’s just great, real great. Now I have to say, “Hi,” not because I want to, I just don’t want him to get mad at me.
Even though Uncle Paulie does not seem like the same rancid person he used to be before the accident, somewhere inside of him he still could be. He used to be a bookie. (This is not somebody who works at the Finney Library. This is somebody who gambles for a living and wants as many people as he can get to do it, too.) Ethel told me that in the old days my uncle had the worst temper. He wasn’t a nice brother to Mother, and Granny went meek around him. He hurt other people, too. He broke a man’s leg in half when the guy didn’t vigorously pay what he owed on a gambling bet. Then he took advantage of the man’s wife all the way down to the skin. He was gonna go to jail for doing that, but his brain getting damaged in the crash saved the day. So that’s why, if ya ask me, our uncle owes a big merci beaucoup to Mademoiselle Troo for playing peek-a-boo with Daddy on the way home from the game.
Wendy Latour announces loud in her froggy voice, “You in gutter, Paulie.”
“Wendy!” I’m shocked. I can’t ever remember her saying something mean like that. “That’s not a nice thing to tell somebody when they’re down on their luck,” I say, shaking my finger at her. “Say you’re sorry.”
“Thorry, Thally, thorry, thorry, thorry.”
Artie leans in close to me. “Just so ya know, she wasn’t being rude. My mom’s been takin’ her up to the bowling alley every Monday afternoon. Mom thinks if your uncle can do that job settin’ pins then maybe Wendy can someday, too. He’s been showin’ her the ropes.”
Uncle Paulie grins at Wendy and says, “Balls, balls, gutter balls,” and walks off toward North Avenue to punch his time clock.
He’ll be up at Jerbak’s late. ’Til after three in the morning if business is hopping. I’ve heard him when I’m lying awake in bed waiting for the dawn to come. As a shortcut, Uncle Paulie takes the alley behind our house back to Granny’s. Pop Goes the Weasel sure sounds a lot different when you listen to it in the dead of night. Maybe I was wrong about Greasy Al. It coulda been our uncle who scratched on our bedroom window that night smelling like pepperoni. They serve pizza at the bowling alley and sometimes Uncle Paulie does some really creepy things. (I saw him bury something in Granny’s backyard once. I’m dying to know what, but I’m too much of a coward to go dig it up.)
“So . . . what yous wanna do?” Willie O’Hara asks us.
Troo grumbles, “Put you on a slow boat to China.”
She’s got a bone to pick with him because Mimi Latour is his girlfriend now instead of her. I know this is another not-charitable way to feel, but I would have to agree with Willie’s choice this time around. Mimi is much easier to work with. She reminds me of a piece of Play-Doh. Troo is more like a stone. A boulder. The Rocky Mountains.
O’Hara tries again. “Ya wanna play kick the can?”
Troo throws down a loogie that lands an inch away from Willie’s sneaker. “Red light, green light.”
All of us know that unless she gets her way, she will make sure we have a cruddy game of kick the can, so we all just say, “Red light, green light’s good.”
Willie asks, “My way or yours?”
A coupla summers ago we let him show us how they play this game in Brooklyn, where they call it Ghost in the Graveyard. In his version, instead of us hiding and the ghost looking for us, the ghost hides and we go looking for him. I like Willie’s way more, so I speak up and say, “Vliet Street rules” because I know