"Can't
you just go like this"---Louis extended his forefinger straight out and held his thumb bolt-upright---"bang! bang! bang!"
Spider shook his head. "I need a gun," he declared flatly. "If we're going to play guns, then I need a real gun".
"You shoulda brought one then."
"Well I didn’t."
"Stupid."
"
The game of ‘guns’ came to a standstill.
“I’m not the moron" Louis insisted. "If you need a gun so bad, why don’t you run home and get one?"
Both boys looked up. A downpour of rain darkened the skylight over their heads. Some great Saturday morning, Spider thought. Out loud he said: "Why don’t you just give me one of your guns? What do you need two guns for? You don’t need to have two guns."
"Yes I do" Louis insisted. "They’re a set. If I give you one I’ll have one empty holster. I’ll look stupid."
"You are stupid, so what does it matter if you look stupid? No one’s gonna see you except me. And I already know you’re stupid so it don’t matter."
"Yeah? Well, you’re a retard for not bringing a gun in the first place."
The door of Louis’s apartment opened slightly and Louis’s sister, Francesca, slipped out into the hallway. She took a few steps toward the boys and stopped, staring at some point in the distance.
"What do you want?" Louis snapped at her.
"Nothing."
"Then go back inside," he ordered.
"I don’t have to," Francesca told him.
"We’re playing out here."
"Who’s stopping you?"
Francesca turned to Spider for the first time and smiled.
"Hello, Matthew," she said.
Spider felt the rims of his ears start to burn. No one ever called him Matthew. His mother and father called him either Matt or Matty. The nuns at Holy Cross called him Mr. Gladwaller, which was just one more thing about the nuns that he hated. Everyone else called him Spider.
Louis thought the name hilarious.
"Hello Matthh…yooou" he mimicked. "Oh, Matthh-YOOOU…Matthh…YOOOU…"
"What’s so funny?" Francesca wanted to know. "Matthew is his name."
"Oh, get lost, will ya?" Louis told his sister. "We’re playing out here."
"I can play too if I want."
"We’re not playing some dumb girl game. Go back inside."
"Why don’t you just shut up and leave her alone?" Spider heard himself say.
Louis’ head snapped back as if he’d been slapped. Spider himself seemed to recoil at his own words. The boys were silent for a time. Francesca took it as an opening.
"Would you like to come inside for a while, Matthew?" she asked.
"Inside?"
"I can show you my tank, if you’d like."
"Ah, go away" Louis told her. He’d recovered from his shock, but his words didn’t carry much force.
"You can look at my tank" Francesca said. "I got some new guppies this week."
"No one cares about your dumb fish" Louis informed her.
"Come on" Francesca insisted.
Spider felt he had no choice in the matter but to follow her inside the apartment.
"You’re morons, the both of ya’s" Louis called after them.
Like everyone else Spider knew, Louis’ family lived in a ‘railroad’ apartment. The rooms were laid out one after the other, from the kitchen to the front room. Spider followed Francesca across the living room and through a doorway, into what he knew was Louis’ room.
"You better not touch anything in there" Louis shouted behind them. He was standing in the kitchen now. Francesca opened another door and Spider passed into a section of the apartment he had never seen before.
This was Francesca’s room. It was a girl’s room, but not quite like Spider’s sisters’ room. Spider’s two older sisters shared a bedroom, and it was usually messy with stockings and hair rollers and jars of creams with their caps off. Franceca’s room wasn’t like that at all. The bed was neatly made with a fluffy pink spread. There were shelves on the walls, lined with a collection of dolls and teddy bears of different sizes. A pink-and-white dresser, and next to that a writing table. There was a door beyond which was surely a grown-up room, where Louis and Francesca’s parents slept.
Francesca snapped on a lamp that stood on her dresser. "Over here" she told Spider.
In front of the window there was a low table that held a large, rectangular fish tank. The tank was packed with small fish of different colors that swam its length, back and forth. Spider and Francesca sat down on the edge of her bed and watched the fish. They were red and black and silvery-yellow, with large fan-like tails that shimmered in the clear water.
"Aren’t they pretty" Francesca asked.
Spider shrugged. "I guess" he said.
"Guppies are my favorite fish" Francesca told him.
Time began moving very slowly for Spider. He felt he was supposed to say something. He couldn't imagine what it might be. They were both quiet for what seemed a very long time.
Francesca extended her arms out in front of her and examined her fingernails for some reason.
"I’m already nine," she told Spider. "I’ll be ten in eight months."
"Oh." Spider said.
Francesca turned and smiled at him "Do you think I’m pretty?" she asked.
"Huh?"
"Do you think I’m pretty?"
In all his eight years of life, only his mother had ever asked him that question. Spider had responded then by throwing his arms around her neck and assuring his mother that she was beautiful and promising that he would marry her when he grew up. This did not now seem like the appropriate thing to do with Francesca.
But if he could have formulated the thought, he would have said that Francesca was prettier even than pretty Deborah Montello, who sat behind him in third grade and, excepting Francesca, was the prettiest girl he had ever seen. And if he’d thought some more about it he might have said that Francesca was prettier than the electric red fire truck he’d owned when he was four, or the porcelain face of his mother’s Victorian doll, though they were pretty in a different way than girls were pretty, so maybe they didn't count.
For no particular reason, Spider stood up. Francesca stood up too. She leaned in close to Spider and kissed him on the mouth. Spider responded by plunging his hands into his pockets and looking up at the ceiling.
Time, it seemed to Spider, had pretty much stopped for good. He know that now he had to say something, *anything*, or else they might remain stuck here in this room for all eternity. He forced his gaze down from the ceiling and focused it on Francesca's forehead.
"I have the new Superman and Green Lantern" he told her. "But I haven't read them yet."
Francesca looked at Spider very solemnly for a moment, then suddenly burst out laughing. It was a loud laugh, the way kids sometimes laughed at you if you tripped and fell in the schoolyard or dropped your lunch. The kind of laugh that made your face burn, as if you’d been slapped on both cheeks. Francesca laughed in that way, and it filled the small room.
"Ah, why don’t ya shut up, ya moron" Louis said. He was standing in the doorway of Francesca’s room now. "Told ya she was a real moron, " he said to Spider.
"Oh, go outside and play your dumb games" Francesca said. She sat down at her writing desk and picked up a book that was lying there and started to read. "Stupid little boys," she added.
"Shut up, you jerk," Louis told his sister. She ignored him. To Spider he said, "Here, you can take one of my guns. Let’s go outside"
Spider looked at the gun in Louis’ hand.
"Here—take it. You can play with it," Louis insisted.
Spider took the gun, and followed Louis without looking back.
They went out into the hall and played ‘guns’ for the rest of the morning, but the game had lost its flavor. Spider went home early and told his mother he felt hot, feverish. She felt his head and gave him half an aspirin just to be on the safe side. She had him lie down and take a nap. Spider dreamed he was trapped in the bedroom of a burning building holding a tank of brightly colored fish as the floor collapsed under his feet and plunged him down into the flames below.
