"I'm off to the grocery store, Ricky. Anything special you want?"
"Hey, give me a couple of minutes to get out of this file and I'll go with you, Mom."
"No, that's OK. You need to finish your homework. I'm gonna stop and get my hair cut too, and there'd be nothing for you to do but kick around the mall. And you know they're cracking down on teenage loiters over there. I don't want you to get into any more trouble—and I want you to stay away from that Rumblers gang, you hear?"
"Yes, Mom, I haven't been near any of those guys since that night. And I'm not a teenager anymore—or at least won't be in another year."
"You don't look nineteen, so you'll still be hassled. And you know what the judge said," Maxine said, moving to the open doorway to Rick's bedroom so that she could see him and he could see her. Her voice had taken on a sudden note of caution and concern. "He said he was reluctant to let you take auto mechanics at the trade school—that running with those guys from the Rumblers came out of your interest in auto mechanics."
"Geez, Mom. I didn't know they were running a chop shop. They knew their way around cars. I was learning a lot."
"Not all something you needed to learn. Anyway, it's not going to be just the auto mechanics. The judge made that clear. It's good to include the landscaping class—you can help Pete in his business then. That's what the judge thought would be the best for you to do—and Pete is happy with the idea and needs the help—and I think it's quite generous he's willing to pay you as you learn. Don't you think that's good of Pete?"
Rick mumbled something, looking hard into his computer screen while he did so.
"I said, isn't that quite generous of Pete?" Maxine repeated, this time a little louder, and with a touch of irritation in her voice.
"Yeah, Mom, that's great. Pete's a real brick." He made sure it didn't come out "prick," although that's what he'd liked to have said.
"I don't know why you act that way about Pete," Maxine shot back, her voice almost a whisper now. "He's been nothing but good to us. And he's gone out of his way to be nice and friendly to you."
"Yeah, Mom, right." Friendly certainly hit the nail on the head.
"You don't know how it is, Ricky. And you aren't the only one around here, young man, with needs and wanting to have a life. I work hard—and so does Pete—you're just lucky the judge let you off from doing any time as long as you had a home to go to. And Pete's offered to let you work with him on the landscaping . . . you know as long as you're on probation, it would be difficult for you to—"
"I said yes, Mom. That it's good of Pete—good of both of you to let me stay here rather than the center. And for Pete to let me work with him."
"So, you'll work to do well in the landscaping class? You won't give all your attention and energy to the auto mechanics? If you'd graduated from high school with your class we wouldn't even be going through this now."
"Yes, Mom."
"And the photography class. That's a possible good hobby for you?"
"Yeah, it's OK, Mom. The instructor's a bit creepy. But the class is OK."
"So, is there anything you need at the grocery store then?"
"Yeah, but it has to be a particular brand. It would be better if I went with you."
"I told you it would take you away from your studies too long, Ricky—and I don't want you wandering around in the mall."
"But—"
"You heard your mother, Rick," a gruff voice piped up as a large-framed, big-muscled black guy in tight, weathered jeans and an athletic T loomed into view next to Maxine in the door. Pete instinctively encircled Maxine with an arm and palmed a hand possessively on her belly, and Maxine equally instinctively moved into the contours of his body and laid a hand on top of his. Although Pete's voice was gruff, he was smiling—and Maxine smiled too, her free hand going to wisps of bottle blonde hair around her ears, primping for him as if by habit.
Rick looked at the two of them but then had to look away, burying his eyes once more in the computer screen. Pete was half way between Rick's and Maxine's ages, and Rick could barely stomach how she had worked to make herself seem younger, prettier, sexier even, since Pete had come into her life. Before that she'd been Mom and had acted like one. Now, she was trying so hard to be a sexy lover that in made Rick sick. He wanted a mother, not some slut lusting after a black hunk a good ten years younger than her. Rick knew she'd had it rough since his dad died, but this was pretty ridiculous.
And couldn't she see that was where it had started with him—when his grades had started going downhill so he almost didn't graduate high school and what started him staying out late at night and hooking up with the Rumblers? How could he have stayed at home at night? Her bed—their bed—was just on the other side of the thin wall from his. The sounds, the thumping of the headboard against his wall, knowing what Pete was doing to her, and listening to the sounds she made as he did it.
And knowing what else there was. The hell of that. That was the worst of all. No, the worst was that now Rick wanted it—hated himself for wanting it, but wanted it anyway.
"You heard her," Pete repeated. "It isn't convenient for you to go with her. She's going to be gone for a long time—and you have other things to do. We've got a lawn to do tomorrow. I'll drive you by the grocery store then and you can get what you want."
Rick didn't say anything; he just kept on staring into his computer.
"There, isn't that nice of Pete, Ricky? He'll take the time and effort to stop by the grocery store for you tomorrow."
"When you get back, I could—"
"You've got class tonight, and it'll be close to dark and supper time when I get back. And you know the judge said you couldn't drive after dark—without one of us going with you."
Rick said nothing.
"Ricky. I said that's really nice of Pete to offer to do. Tell him thank you, please."
"Thank you, Pete," Rick said, but the voice was low, begrudging, and he didn't look up.
He could hear them kiss. It was quite noisy and sloppy—and, to him, stomach churning.
He didn't look up until he heard the motor start up on his mother's Camaro. And then when he did look up, he was sorry he had. Pete was still in the doorway, filling up the frame with his muscleman body. And he was smiling. And he was unbuckling his belt and pulling down the zipper of his jeans.
* * * *
"Last time we concentrated on landscapes, with black and white photography—mainly Ansel Adams. Tonight, still with black and white, we work on shadows and curves, using the human form," Douglas Groton told the students as they stood around him in the photography studio of the local vocational school in Baltimore's Coppin Heights working-class district. He'd turned off the overhead fluorescents and had spotlights located about the room, all trained on a black-cloth-draped dais, with a bench painted in a black matt finish atop that.
Rick had found Groton to be almost fanatical about his art—or what he called his art. He was teaching this session of the school's photography class because the regular teacher was out on maternity leave, and, although he was full of good and helpful ideas, he acted as if the subject was below him. He minced no words in saying why. This was a class on still photography and he fancied himself a cinematographer. He kept telling the students that this was just a temporary class for him, that he was on his way to a national-level arts film festival and was concentrating his creative efforts on preparing a film entry for that.
Rick thought the guy was a little fanatical in being dismissive of the black and white photography. The Ansel Adams stuff had been really neat. Still, the guy knew a heck of a lot about still photography and had a lot to say about it—and some fantastical ideas about subject matter and the use of light and angles. Rick thought that if he was saying he was much more into another aspect of the subject than this, he must be a real whirlwind at that.
Rick decided it was the man's eyes. He must have been in his forties and, although not fat, he was definitely on the meaty side. And a hippy type. He dressed minimally, in a T and short shorts and loafers with no socks. And he was dark and hirsute and had a ponytail. Completely out of Rick's concept of a middle-aged white guy. But his eyes. They were a milky blue and, when they turned on a person, they commanded attention. They telegraphed that he was serious and knew what he was doing—and would get his way in doing it.
"And tonight we need a model. I called for some, but it was such short notice. And the human form is what I want to do tonight. So, I guess it will have to be one of us."
Groton's eyes swept the motley group of students hovering around him—but not hovering quite so closely now that he had declared what was needed next. And a motley group it was—mainly middle-aged men and women—clerks and small business accountants and housewives—the type of people taking a kicky hobby night class to forget what they had to face during the workday—and a few late high school-years guys and girls, already bored to tears with life in middle-class Baltimore. None of them looking all that modelish, though.
Except for Rick. He was definitely modelish. His mother wasn't a prize now, but she had been once, and his Hispanic dad had been a real looker. He'd come up from Cuba to play for the Baltimore Orioles and lasted for just a few seasons on the playing field. But his looks and charm—and connection with professional baseball, albeit tertiary and transitory—had landed him various jobs in small-potato bars and clubs a couple of blocks off the Inner Harbor. This had worked OK for him and his wife and boy until he'd gotten gunned down in a bar robbery.
But he'd been quite a looker—and Rick had taken after him. Not so dusky, thanks to his mother's Scandinavian genes, but permanently tanned and sultry. And he had the natural good physique bestowed honestly by his father's gene pool.
So, Rick looked around in embarrassment with everyone else, but even he noticed that, one after the other, the eyes of each of the other students were coming to rest on him.
"Perhaps you'd do the honors, Mr. Hernandez?"
"Me? Umm, I'm not a model."
"Nor do we have one of those. But what we do have is limited time to get in tonight's class. There's a fee, of course. A model's fee?"
"And what would I have to do?"
"Strip, pose interestingly on the bench on the dais there, and hold the pose regardless of the camera clicks and flashes."
"Strip? I don't—"
"Oh, you can cover any dangly parts with your hands, as you like—as long as it doesn't ruin the pose," Groton said in a throw-away voice that indicated that nothing at all peculiar was being discussed. "And it would be $20 for a half hour's work. Here, if you'll undress I'll help you take a good pose and it will be over almost before it begins. And," the clincher, "since you couldn't be taking photographs at the same time and so couldn't do this assignment, it would be a guaranteed A for this exercise."
Rick needed the A—if only to keep his mother and the judge off his back.
