Bad Haircut by Tom Perrotta Read Free Book Online

grinned. I could see the rubber bands inside his mouth, white with spittle. “What'd you hear about Margie Waldman?”
    “You know. That she did it with the whole starting team after the Thanksgiving game.”
    “Not the whole team,” he said. “Just the defense.”
    We stopped at a red light in front of the perforating company. Two huge fans blew factory exhaust straight into the car. Outside, swing shiftersin rumpled green clothes sat against the red brick building and ate their lunches. They chewed slowly and gazed at us without interest.
    “Stupid assholes,” Caravello said. When the light turned green, he laid a patch.
    Just before we reached downtown Elizabeth, Caravello pulled a U-turn and headed home. Beyond the smokestacks and water towers, the last streaks of color were dissolving in the sky. Instead of continuing straight into town, we turned left at Jim's Tavern and made the quick right onto Washington Avenue.
    “What are we doing here?” I asked.
    “If the niggers won't come to us, we'll have to go to them.”
    We drove slowly down the street. The houses we passed were no different from those on my own block, but the idea of black people living in them made them seem unfamiliar. Five minutes from home, and I felt like I'd crossed the border into another country. Caravello cut the headlights and pulled over behind the Cherry Street school. He left the engine running.
    “There they are,” he said.
    A bunch of black guys—you could tell from the speed and grace of their game that they were in high school—were running full court on the lot behind the school. It was a weird spectacle at that time of night. Only the two baskets were lit up, one by a spotlight attached to the school, theother, more dimly, by a nearby streetlight. Center court was a patch of darkness.
    It was a game of fast breaks. The players would be visible for an instant around one basket, and then they'd scatter abruptly into the shadows, only to emerge seconds later at the other end of the court, already off the ground, arms stretching for a ball we couldn't see.
    I was so caught up in the main game that I didn't notice the kid at first. He was about my own age, and he was playing a game of his own. When the real game exploded into light at one end of the court, he'd suddenly appear at the other, driving to the hoop past imaginary opponents, pulling down his own rebounds, always vanishing just before the stampede caught him from behind.
    Caravello pummeled the steering wheel and started pressing on the horn, shouting curses into the night. For a second, I thought the car itself was screaming.
    “Fuckin’ assholes! Chickenshit niggers! Bun-cha pussies!”
    The game stopped. The players near the school and the kid at the far basket turned in our direction. A couple of the bigger guys started toward us, but their movements were confused, hesitant. I yanked Caravello's hand off the steering wheel. The silence came as a jolt.
    “Come on,” I said. “Let's get outta here.”
    * * *
     
    The car climbed into the rich hills of West Plains, past stone mansions and big white houses with four or five cars in the double driveways. The air smelled sweet and green.
    “Let's get some pussy,” Caravello said.
    “I have to be home by nine-thirty.”
    He frowned. “Can't get pussy until ten or so.”
    “I know. I can't believe my parents still pull this curfew shit on me.”
    “You think that's bad? My sister's sixteen and my old man still won't let her out of the house on weekends. She just locks herself in her room and cries all the time.”
    “Jeez.”
    Caravello took his hand off the wheel and delivered a sharp backhand to my chest. “Ever get any?”
    “Any what?”
    “Pussy, asshole.” He mimicked me. “Duh, any what?”
    “Not yet,” I said.
    “You went with Tina the other night, right?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Are you telling me you didn't get in her pants?”
    “Nope.”
    “Why the fuck not?”
    “She wouldn't let