Young and Violent Read Online Free

‘See, what I tell you?’ and Babe look and say, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ That’s all. I thought you want to know.”
    “Thanks!” Gonzalves says.
    “Well, I be seeing you t’morrow, Gobe. I be seeing you round.”
    Gonzalves does not answer. Slowly he climbs the wooden steps to the top, where the War Counselors await him.
    • • •
    Leaning against the pinball machine in the candy store on 100th and Madison, Babe Limon smokes a cigarette, and feigns interest in the June issue of
True Confessions,
which she has grabbed from the magazine rack behind her. As she flicks through the slick-paper pages, her friend Marie Lorenzi talks.
    She says, “He own you or something? He contributing to your support, or something? He married to you or something?”
    She files down her long red nails with angry motions. “Jesus, Babe, you saw him sitting there looking like he was swallowing blood over her! You going to take that?”
    Babe Limon is a small sixteen-year-old with firm, full breasts, a lushly curved young body, soft, golden skin, brown hair piled on top of her head, and a pretty face which is overpainted with pancake, rouge, mascara, and lipstick. She wears a flared bolero jacket of a shiny pink color, a plaid wool skirt, and a bright silk striped blouse. Her ensemble is completed by a pair of worn black patent leather pumps, and a cheap gold charm bracelet is fastened around one ankle of her bare legs.
    “One thing about Flat Head Pontiac,” she says, still looking down at the magazine, “is that he
asked
me, you know what I mean? He comes up to me in the corridor at school, and he says, ‘What’d you say if I said I was going to cut Gober out at the shindig Friday?’ See? He gets my opinion. I says, ‘You think you can? You think you can, Pontiac?’ I just ask him if he thinks he can.”
    “You got to decide, Baby-O. I tell you, break with Gober! Everybody and his brother knows he cruising that Polack up in the ice cream parlor. He just comes to you to cool off!”
    Marie stands arms akimbo as she talks, a tall, skinny, flat-chested girl in tight black slacks and a bright red sweater, a plastic raincoat drawn around her shoulders, a kerchief tied under her chin, and white socks and black toeless heels on her feet. She too wears a great deal of make-up, but her features are harder and more irregular than Babe’s; and she looks more sure, somewhat mean, and slightly coarse in contrast.
    “Last time I’m with Gober,” Babe starts, as she lays the magazine across the pinball machine and folds her arms across her chest thoughtfully, “he tells me, ‘Wash your face!’ in just that kind of voice. Like it was an order. ‘Wash your face!’ We’re down in the clubroom on the couch, all by ourselves, and he comes out with that. I say, ‘What’s eating you?’ and he says, ‘I’m not interested in making the cosmetic counter at Woolworth’s.’ “
    “Gober said that?”
    “Yeah. Three nights ago, after the dance. When I wore my blue.”
    “He doesn’t appreciate you, Baby-O. He never did!” “No, he
did.
He used to. I don’t know what happened.” “It’s that Polack, Baby-O.”
    “Yeah,” Babe Limon agrees, “it’s her, all right. But he don’t get no place with her. That’s what I don’t understand. It’s not like Gober. Geez, Marie, you don’t know Gober! He’s oversexed or something, know what I mean?”
    “That’s what I been trying to tell you, Baby-O. He just uses you. You’d think you were his wife, kid. You’re crazy to torch for Gonzalves! Dime a dozen, Baby-O!”
    Babe tosses her cigarette to the floor and squashes it out. “Flat Head has pimples,” she says.
    “So what! He’s a big man! He’s got a car, hasn’t he?”
    “Another thing Gober says to me last time we’re together. You know how Gober is — always drawing these pictures of things?”
    “Yeah, I know how Gober is — so?”
    “So, he draws these two pictures of cats, see? One was a cat chasing in circles