Hooligans

LITTLE TONY LUKATIS

It‟s hard to be casual when every muscle in your body has turned to ice. I tried playing for time.

“Who?” I asked, in a voice that seemed to me to be at least an octave above normal.

“Doe Findley,” Babs said impatiently, pointing over my shoulder. “Turn around!”

I turned in slow motion, still playing the charade, still acting like the whole thing was a bore. Doe was

coming out of a small meeting room with a dozen other well-dressed women. She was wearing tan

silk slacks and a dark green silk blouse and her golden hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail and

tied with a red ribbon.

“That‟s the horsey set,” Babs said. “Thoroughbred breeders.”

But I wasn‟t paying any attention. I was remembering the first time I ever saw Doe. Her hair was tied

back just like that, except she was only fifteen at the time. Teddy brought her into the dorm, where we

shared a room. She was wearing tight white jeans and a red pullover and she didn‟t look any more like

a fifteen-year-old than I look like Muhammad Ali I had seen her pictures, of course; Teddy was big

on family pictures. But she didn‟t look like that in pictures. No way. All I clearly remember was that

she had an absolutely sensational rear end. I couldn‟t take my eyes off it. I was embarrassed, but my

eyes kept straying. It was like a magnet, I tried, I tried really hard, but it didn‟t d any good. I kept

sneaking peeks. Then Teddy suddenly buried an elbow in my side.

She‟s fifteen,” he hissed under his breath.

“What‟s the matter with you?” I whispered back.

“Clicking eyeballs, Junior,” he said. “Lay a finger on that behind before she‟s eighteen and I‟ll

disengage your fucking clutch.” Then he broke down and started laughing.

That was the fall of 1960, a couple of weeks after Teddy Findley and I met, became roommates, and

began a friendship that would last far beyond college. He started calling me Junior the day we met. I

don‟t know why, and he never explained it. I finally figured it was because he was taller than me.

Two, three inches. Nobody else, not even Doe, shared that privilege.

Anyway, I waited until she was eighteen. Two and a half years; that‟s a lot of waiting. And during

those two and a half years she kept getting better and better, blossoming from little sister to big sister

to woman, while I watched it happen. Teddy didn‟t help. He became a verbal calendar, taunting uric

every week of the way.

„How about it, Junior,” he‟d say, “only four months to go.” It never occurred to me until later that I

was being sized up all that time: that waiting until she was eighteen had as much to do with me as it

did with her.

“Jake! Jake Kilmer. Is that really you?”

She was standing a foot away. I could feel the fire starting in the small of my back arid coursing up to

my neck, like the fuse on a stick of dynamite.

Time seemed to have evaded her. No lines, no wrinkles. Just pale gray eyes staring straight at me and

the warmth of her hand as she squeezed mine.

I stood up and said something totally inadequate like “Hi, Doe.”

Then she put her arms around me arid I was smothered by the warmth of her body pressing against

mine, by the hard muscles in her back and the softness of the rest of her. I was consumed with

wanting her.

Then she stepped back and looked up at my face, cocking her head to one side.

“Hardly a gray hair,” she said. “And every line in the right place.”

“Is that your way of saying I‟m growing old gracefully?” I tried to joke.

“Oh, no,” she said softly, “not that. „You look beautiful.” She stared hard at me for another second or

two, and just as quickly turned her attention to Babs.

“I see you‟ve cornered him already,” she said playfully, and then back at me: “Call me . . please. I

have a private line. It‟s listed under D. F. Raines. Chief would love to see you.”

1 didn‟t buy that. To Chief I would just be bad news, a vague face from the past, a painful reminder

that his son was dead. What she was really asking was, Are you coming to Windsong tonight?

“Sure,” I said.

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

She didn‟t just leave, she turned and fled.

I sat back down and looked across the table at Babs, whose mouth was dangling open. She reached up

slowly and pushed it closed with a finger.

“You sly son of a bitch,” she said.

“What‟re you talking about?”

“You know Doe Findley that well?” she said.

“What do you mean, that well?”

“1 mean that well.”

“We knew each other in college. Twenty years ago.”

„Uh-huh, honey. That wasn‟t a „gee it‟s nice to see you again after all these years‟ look. That was a

„where the hell have you been for the last twenty years‟ look.”

“It was probably a shock seeing me again. 1 knew her brother.”

“I don‟t care who you knew. These old eyes are not that bad yet. Twenty years, huh?”

“What are you raving about?” I said to her.

“So where did she fall in love with you? She didn‟t go to Georgia, she went to. . . oh, let‟s see, one of

those snotty colleges up north.”

Now she was doing the coaxing.

“Vassar,” I said. “Real hard to remember.”

“So you have kept track?”

“Through Teddy.”

“Oh, right. And you just sat there, letting me jabber on about the Findleys and Harry Raines. .

“Trash it,” I said.

“Trash it?”

“Trash it. There‟s nothing there.”

She wasn‟t about to back off. She leaned back in her chair and appraised me through narrowed eyes.

“Jake Kilmer. That name ought to mean something to me,” she said.

She sat there struggling with her memories, trying to sort me out of the hundreds of names and faces

from her past. Then recognition slowly brightened her eyes.

“Of course,” she said. “You played football for the Dogs.”

“You have some memory,” I said, wondering how often that interlude was going to keep haunting mc.

I doubt that it had been mentioned once in the last ten years, and now it seemed to pop up every time I

said hello, or maybe it was just popping up in my mind.

“You and Teddy played on the same team, didn‟t you?”

“For a while.”

“She‟s not a real happy woman, Khmer,”

“1-low would you know that?”

“1 know everything, darling, it‟s what I do, remember? I‟m the town snoop.”

“I thought you said Raines had a wonderful family.”

“I didn‟t say he had a happy one. Raines is married to politics and Doe doesn‟t play second fiddle

well at all.”

“People seem to think she married well.”

“Tom Findley couldn‟t have picked a better man for the job.”

“Christ, you are bitchy.”

“I like Doe,” she said, ignoring the slur. “She‟s very honest. Not too bright, though, do you think?”

“I don‟t remember. When I was in college I thought everybody was brilliant but me.”

“She had an affair, you know.”

I leaned over toward her. “1 haven‟t heard a word about her since Teddy died, okay? I am not hooked

into the Dunetown hot line.”

“You‟re really not going to ask who she had the affair with?”

“Nope.”

“It was Tony Lukatis.”

“No kidding. Little old Tony, huh?”

“You‟re much too blasé to really be blasé, I know it. I know all the tricks. Listen, we have name

entertainers coming out to the beach hotels now. I get some big-time gossip. They all try to act blasé,

too, but it doesn‟t work—and they‟ve been at it forever. Tony Lukatis was the guy. The golf pro at the

country club. His father was the manager.”

My memory jumped back to that summer like the ball bouncing over the lyrics of a song at an oldtime movie matinee.

“Nick?”

“Ah, you do remember.”

“I remember Nick. I don‟t remember Tony.”

But then suddenly I did remember him, a little kid with incredibly curly hair who spent most of his

time on the putting green when he wasn‟t caddying. He must have been fifteen or sixteen that

summer.

“Aha, I see recognition in those green eyes.”

“Yeah, he‟s younger than she is.”

“The best kind, darling.”

“He had a sister.”

“Dierdre.. . DeeDee?” Babs pressed on.

“Skinny little kid, used to hang around the club?” I asked. “Skinny little kid? I can tell you haven‟t see

her in a while.” “What‟s she doing these days?” I asked, trying to seem interested.

“She‟s Charlie Seaborn‟s secretary—Seacoast National Bank.”

“Did Raines know about the affair?” I tried not to sound too interested.

“Not so you could tell.”

“What happened?”

“Poor little „Tony. Rumour has it he decided to get rich quick arid got mixed up in some pot

smuggling. He went to prison for five years. I‟ve lost track of him since. It almost killed DeeDee.”

The conversation was cutting close to the bone. I decided it was time to ease on out.

“You‟ve been a lot of help,” I said. “I‟ve got to get moving but I owe you a drink.”

“You better believe you do, dearie,” she said. “You know how to get in touch. And if you don‟t, I

will.”

I headed out of the restaurant, feeling like I had barely averted disaster.

No such luck.

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