The Wanderers by Richard Price

Author:Richard Price [Price, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Young Adult, Thriller
ISBN: 9780747574637
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: 1974-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Cookie and Hang On Sloopy watched Joey and Terror disappear down the hill. It started to snow, and the wind picked up.

"Fuck. What you wanna do, Sloop?"

Cookie took another slug of Tango and belched up some burning bile. Sloopy grabbed the bottle from Cookie, taking a wet gulp.

"Wha' time is it?"

Cookie looked over his shoulder at the big clock atop the Dollar Savings Bank three blocks away. "Half-past nine."

Sloopy took another belt and handed the bottle to Cookie. Cookie wiped the mouth with his sleeve. The idea of drinking from Sloopy's lips made him nauseous. Hang On Sloopy had a mouth that looked like it was put in his face with a can opener. A small bloodless, lipless hole with multicolored teeth going in four directions. Cookie was no stud either, but he thanked God daily that he didn't look like Sloopy. Sloopy's head was a narrow skull wrapped in skin. He had no nose save for two flaring holes and his ears were the size of quarters. His eyes were pale blue—not bad in a normal face, but nice eyes in Hang On Sloopy's face looked awful. Tommy Tatti said that Sloopy looked like somebody went over his face with a jumbo eraser and quit halfway through the job. But what God left out in the way of facial features he substituted with a galaxy of pimples. Not just the overnight breakout type, but permanent dark brown, sunk-in ones that had been nesting for years, the type that could withstand a laser beam. And the final touch was that Hang On Sloopy, like all the Baldies, shaved his head down to the scalp.

The wind whipped the snow sideways. Cookie and Sloopy stood up, turned up the collars of their Fordham Baldies' jackets, and jiggled in place to keep warm. The Fordham Baldies' jackets were better suited to the spring but snow or no, they had class. Black silk with butter yellow piping on the sleeves. The back was a work of art. Across the shoulder blades was "Fordham" in Gothic lettering. Below the letters was the profile of a grinning skull wearing a top hat like some dude ready for a night out on the town. Beneath the skull were two crossed ebony canes with silver tips. Everything lay on a background of orange-and-red flames, and at the bottom was "Baldies" in the same painstakingly beautiful print.

"Whoo, shit! C'mon, let's go somewhere!"

They walked down Fordham toward the Third Avenue el. Sloopy went into a liquor store to buy another quart of Tango.

***

Every year on February 14 Bronx House Community Center had a Valentine's Dance. The gym was decked out in crepe streamers and big cardboard hearts were hung every ten feet along the walls. Girls wearing ankle bracelets could get in for half price providing they were accompanied by their boyfriends who had proof that their name was the name on the ankle bracelet and providing that they both had Bronx House membership cards. Rumor had it that either

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