Aces High

"Why the fuck not?" Joey demanded.

"It's too late," Tom said glumly. " I mean, we've known each other since September, and I haven't asked her out; if I ask her out now, she'll think I was chickenshit or something."

"You are chickenshit," Joey said.

"What's the use? We're going to different colleges. We'll probably never see each other again after June."

Joey crushed a beer can in his fist, and said two words. "Senior prom."

"What about it?"

"Ask her to your senior prom. You want to go to your senior prom, don't you?"

"I du

"Proms are shit," Joey said. "When I go out with a girl, I'd rather drive her out on Route Four-forty and see if I can get bare tittie than hold her fuckin' hand in some gym, you know? But you ain't me, Tuds. Don't shit me. You want to go to that stupid prom and we both know it, and if you walked in with the prettiest date in the place, you'd be in fuckin' heaven."

"It's May," Tom said sullenly. "Barbara's the cutest girl in Bayo

"Tuds, you go to different schools. She's probably got a date to her prom, yeah, but what are the fuckin' odds that she's got one to your prom? Girls love that prom horseshit, dressing up and wearing corsages and dancing. Go for it, Tuds. You got nothing to lose." He gri

In the week that followed, Tom thought about nothing but that conversation. Time was ru

His biggest worry was how in the world he could possibly get her aside, away from all the other kids. He certainly didn't want to have to ask her in front of everybody. The thought gave him goose bumps. The other girls thought he was hilarious enough as is, the presumption of him asking Barbara Casko to the prom would double them up with laughter. He just hoped she wouldn't tell them, after. He didn't think she would.

The problem was solved for him. It was the last meeting, and the advisers were interviewing the presidents of all the different companies. They gave a bond to the kid picked as president of the year. Barbara had been president of their company for the first half-year, Tom for the second; they found themselves waiting outside in a hallway, just the two of them, alone together, while the other kids were in at the meeting and the advisers were off doing interviews.

"I hope you win," Tom said as they waited.

Barbara smiled at him. She was wearing a pale blue sweater and a pleated skirt that fell to just below her knees, and around her neck was a heart-shaped locket on a slender gold chain. Her blond hair looked so soft that he wanted to touch it, but of course he didn't dare. She was standing quite close to him, and he could smell how clean and fresh it was. "You look really nice," he blurted awkwardly.

He felt like an idiot, but Barbara seemed not to notice. She looked at him with those blue, blue eyes. "Thank you," she said. "I wish they'd hurry." And then she did something that startled him-she reached out and touched him, put her hand on his arm, and said, "Tommy, can I ask you a question?"

"A question," he repeated. "Sure."

"About your senior prom," Barbara said.

He stood like a zombie for a long moment, aware of the chill in the hall, of distant laughter from the classroom, of the advisers' voices coming through the frosted-glass door, of the slight pressure of Barbara's hand, and above all, of the nearness of her, those deep blue eyes looking at him, the locket hanging down between the small round bumps of her breasts, the clean, fresh-washed smell of her. For once, she wasn't smiling. The expression on her face might almost have been nervousness. It only made her prettier. He wanted to hug her and kiss her. He was desperately afraid.

"The prom," he finally managed. Weakly. Absurdly, he was suddenly aware of a huge erection pressing against the inside of his pants. He only hoped it didn't show.

"Do you know Steve Bruder?" she asked.

Tom had known Steve Bruder since second grade. He was the class president, and played forward on the basketball team. Back in grammar school, Stevie and his friends used to humiliate Tom with their fists. Now they were sophisticated seniors, and they just used words.

Barbara didn't wait for his answer. "We've been going out together," she told him. "I thought he was going to ask me to his prom, but he hasn't."

You could go with me! Tom thought wildly, but all he said was, "He hasn't?"

"No," she said. "Do you know, I mean, has he asked somebody else? Is he going to ask me, do you think?"

"I don't know," Tom said dully. "We don't talk much."

"Oh," Barbara said. Her hand fell away, and then the door opened and they called his name.

That night Tom won a $50 savings bond as junior Achievement President of the Year. His mother never understood why he seemed so unhappy:

The junkyard was on the Hook, between the sprawl of an abandoned oil refinery and the cold green waters of New York Bay. The ten-foot-high chain-link fence was sagging, and there was rust on the sign to the right of the gate that warned trespassers to keep out. Tom climbed from his car, opened the padlock and undid the heavy chains, and pulled inside.

The shack where Joey and his father Dom had lived was far gone in decay now. The paint on the rooftop sign had faded to illegibility, but Tom could still make out the faint lettering: DI ANGELIS SCRAP METAL amp; AUTO PARTS. Tom had bought and closed the junkyard ten years ago, when Joey got married. Gina hadn't wanted to live in a junkyard, and besides, Tom had been tired of all the people who prowled around for hours looking for a DeSoto transmission or a bumper for a 1957 Edsel. None of them had ever stumbled on his secrets, but there had been close calls, and more than once he'd been forced to spend the night on some dingy rooftop in Jokertown because the coast wasn't clear at home.

Now, after a decade of benign neglect, the junkyard was a sprawling wasteland of rust and desolation, and no one ever bothered driving all the way out there.

Tom parked his Honda behind the shack, and strode off into the junkyard with his hands shoved into his pockets and his cap pulled down against the cold salt wind off the bay. No one had shoveled the snow here, and there had been no traffic to turn it into filthy brown slush. The hills of scrap and trash looked as though they'd been sprinkled with powdered sugar, and he walked past drifts taller than he was, frozen white waves that would come crashing down when the temperatures rose in the spring.

Deep in the interior, between two looming piles of automobiles turned all to razor-edged rust, was a bare place. Tom kicked away snow with the heel of his shoe until he had uncovered the flat metal plate. He knelt, found the ring, and pulled it up. The metal was icy cold, and he was panting before he managed to shift the lid three feet to the side to open the tu