Belmondo Style by Berlin Adam

Author:Berlin, Adam [Berlin, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2012-08-06T16:00:00+00:00

PART TWO

breathe in

XV

WE DROVE OUT OF the city and through New Jersey in no time. My father always said New York to Miami was the easiest drive to take when people questioned him about why he didn’t fly to Florida. It was Route 95 straight south.

I sat in the back like I really was a kid in a two-parent family with my father in the driver’s seat and Anna in the passenger seat. We sang songs that were from another era, my father belting out army tunes like Over There about the enemy over there, which had been across the Atlantic and not along the Atlantic like we were going. Anna quickly picked up the words that I knew from years of repetition. She had a good voice and wasn’t afraid to sing as loud as my father and with them singing that loud I sang loud too. We’d pass cars and the passengers would look in at us, fascinated by the three people with their mouths wide open. When our throats were sore we listened to the radio.

Anna’s car was a 1968 Plymouth Valiant, gold in color, sort of like a shield, and looking very much out of date. The seats were off-white vinyl and the dashboard had nothing digital about it. When we went to Florida on our own, which had been always, we rented cars. My father and I had become experts on the newest midsize, mid-price American vehicles. We’d decided that Chevys drove better than Fords, that Pontiacs made the most noise, or at least the Grand Am we’d rented did, that Dodges felt tinny, especially around the roof, but this was our first Plymouth that I could remember and certainly the oldest car we’d been in. It drove smoothly for an old car. The engine wasn’t too noisy and the heat worked fine. My father said it handled well, especially in his hands. He glanced at Anna, smiled, yelled an exaggerated ouch when she punched his arm. His right hand looked bad. Anna said we should stop at a hospital so a doctor could check it out, but my father wanted to keep driving.

“Even with a broken hand, I’m handling your car better than it’s ever been handled.”

“Keep it up,” she said. “You’ll be in the back seat in no time.”

My father hunched himself over the steering wheel, mock-protecting his place in the car.

The seats were comfortable and I liked the way the front and back seats were flat and had no partition between one side and the other. I stretched my legs out, breathed into the pain that went across my crotch until it went away, leaned back, closed my eyes. I pretended that Michael was with us, next to me, that he was running away from the city too and that his hand was moving along my leg. I pretended that what had happened had never happened. I felt myself start to get hard. It was the first time I’d felt that pull

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