About Adele: shades of letters and syllables, Peter Jalesh [great book club books .TXT] 📗

deserted and the warehouses were silent. One of those jobs was with the warehouse that held musical instruments. The weather outside was cruel. We felt so safe when we got inside, that we began banging like crazy on drums and cymbals. I got from there two violins and three piccolos and also small stuff like 2 bows and strings for violin. We found that it was difficult to sell them at a good price. Except for violins...
After that job the warehouse hired a guard, and covered the lower windows with barbed wire.
We failed one job when we heard police approaching the warehouse and we realized that the building had cameras installed on top of the lower windows. We barely escaped from being caught. “I am not God”, Dorval would excuse himself. We ran like rabbits that night.
My mom that always thought that I was doing my homework those nights saw me running into hiding. Mom got some idea that something strange was happening but said nothing. Dad was drunk that night and sleeping like a log.
I continued to be part of the “Cats” group until that day when Spike fell into a pit and broke both of his legs.
That’s exactly how it happened: Spike discovered a warehouse full of Christmas decorations and Christmas bags and wrapping paper. The building was surrounded by a wire fence. We got in the courtyard during evening hours and hid behind the building. There were still people and trucks coming in and out. We never knew if somebody wasn’t going to discover us there. We would play cards all the time to have an explanation for anybody that would discover us there and question what we were doing. Then the night fell and we felt safe.
When the doors of the warehouse got locked, we felt like we owned the whole place. Dorval discovered an air shaft next to the building. We used a flashlight to see how deep the whole was: it was about five feet deep. If Spike was right that the hole communicates underground with the building storage it would save us lots of work to break into it. I heard Spike saying: ”What’s the fuck, let’s try it”.
Spike offered immediately to jump in and check. He jumped and he fell twenty feet down, between cubes of cement and steel “spikes”. There was a grill of a vent there that tricked us to believe that the pit was not deep.
We had to call the ambulance and police. They came accompanied by a fire truck. The fire fighters used ropes and a flat chair to bring Spike up.
We told the police that we were playing cards and that Spike looked for a place to pee. Spike had his both legs broken under the knee and his right shoulder displaced. The police treated us in a friendly manner. Nobody had the faintest idea that we came there to burglarize the warehouse.
That was the end of our adventures. Spike’s shattered legs shattered also our group.
What I learned from that happening was that life goes on at a normal pace and seems that would never change until an accident breaks the routine and change it forever.
Dorval philosophical conclusion sounded even better: “A bit of chaos gets injected into the habitual order of things and interrupts its monotonous flow. You never know if such change is for the better of things or for the worse…”
That school year seemed to never end. Day after day, it was drizzling with no interruption or foreseeable end.
For a long time after the group breakup I felt useless. Then I had to adjust to the school discipline and prepare for college.
After I decided to prepare my SAT to go to college I didn’t see any of the “Cats” too much.
The doctor that treated Spike told us that he was going to have pain in his legs for life. Somehow we all felt guilty of what happened. His house was on the same street with mine. I couldn’t move his house further to diminish your feeling of guilt.
Whenever I have time to be melancholic I think in simple terms that in life we do bad things sometimes, though other times we do good things.
I never felt that I was part of reality, like 100% part of it. I was just moved by some need to socialize, to be part of it. I cannot summarize that part of my life and say that it was bad. It was that during those times I found myself, I mean “I found myself like”, I was belonging to the world.
Dorval would tell us how brave we were, how a manly “job” we were doing was. I never complained to him about anything. I was afraid that if I complained I would be thrown out. Whenever I “like” cursed Dorval he was very pleased. He didn’t curse though. I guess he was religious. He also liked jazz which I thought was peculiar for somebody that wouldn’t curse, especially since he was listening to Armstrong.
With each job we finished he looked like he got “high” though we never used drugs. At one point he wondered why we never got caught. He said that it was the sign that our future is safeguarded by some spiritual being, like a creature animated by God that protects good people.
That made-up connection that tied up our talk and feelings and acting together will never fade away.
“We just earned $120 bucks”, Dorval would say. “I’ll get $20 as the lieder. You’ll have to split $100 between you five”. We’d laugh. Ken, that wasn’t good at math, would ask for as much dough as Dorval got.
I could hardly wait for the next “action”. My inner voice told me to stop. Dorval would tell us that bad thieves (he called them chickens) could have seizures because of an emotional outburst; also that a thief with high blood pressure could die of a heart attack.
After Spike’s accident, Dorval would say that he warned him not to be impatient, that the art of stealing means reason and calculation.
How many times we have been successful? Maybe a dozen times... I learned what discipline, nerve control, patience and moderation was. One day when a teacher lectured us about responsibility and morals and honesty and gave us a thief as an example of lawless life I blushed so horribly. I thought that the blood was going to flow out of my ears.
Then I heard Dorval laughing. My shame immediately vanished. The teacher asked Dorval what was so funny. Dorval said that stealing is as honorable as making goods. “What a bank does if not stealing? What about a pawn shop? Maybe a flea market is the only place where one doesn’t get ripped-off. In a two ways transaction a side steals the other side” Dorval said.
“What don’t you come to teach in my place?” the teacher asked. In that argument I thought Dorval won.
I remember when the fire fighters brought Spike up with his legs swinging inertly from his knees down and screaming and shouting profanities and calling his mom and rotating his flashlight around like searching for something: “God, fucking pain…” I thought at that time that he wouldn’t want to be a Catholic anymore.
I had to tell mom what happened. When she heard that I used to burglarize warehouses she said that what I did was against “God dictums” and cried. She cried even more when she heard what happened to Spike. Then as if she momentarily forgot that she cried that I used to be a thief she told me that she understand why I was confused and that the only good effect of the experience would be that I got stronger out of it. She said that if I still want to gain strength I should try do some work outs or be part of the high school soccer team. “I was a devoted Catholic girl” she continued.” I never tripped over Bible principles until I met your dad”, she said.
Dad was very harsh when mom informed him of what I have done. He wanted an explanation. I couldn’t figure out what kind of explanation he wanted. “Perhaps you are kleptomaniac” he insisted.
Dad was humorless like any other accountant would be. He warned me that if such behavior would somehow reappear he’d be the first one to report me to the authorities. Then he went to my bedroom, searched my closets, gathered in a garbage bag what he thought was stolen goods, including my new shirt that mom bought from Conway, and threw the bag out, on the sidewalk. Then he went to the living room, emptied a half bottle of booze in his glass and began drinking hastily. I knew that once he got drunk anything would get back to normal and tomorrow everything would be forgotten.
That was the strange and beautiful way in which my folks handled any issue: once the issue got resolved in any manner neither mom or dad would ever mention it again.
After those days of pain and worries I had to withdraw from “that naughty kind of life” as mom would put it. Also I tried to build my life around “cultural establishments” in my neighborhood. There was a public library on 23rd street and a Pet store that housed aquariums with red and golden fishes. For some reason I would always stop to watch fishes before going to the library. Then I would stop to have a sneaky look at the Playboy new issue cover. Those girls looked unreal. One of the Playboy issues I bought one day had a centerfold with a woman totally naked. I used to peruse it in the bathroom. I felt my heart thumping. All of the naked women were blond. Their breasts were firm and the below of their bodies was heavenly shown and beautiful.
Mom found one day the magazine hidden in the laundry basket and showed it to my dad. When I came home dad was examining the copy. He winked at me laughing. I never saw that magazine again. Through the rest of the high school I tried to make new friends. Adele had a boyfriend. His name was Robert Mapplethorpe.
I made a friend from a lower class. His name was Thomas Winter, a Protestant boy that lived four blocks down the street. He was wealthy. His dad owned the house and had a BMW car with a registration plate that read “PRIVILEGE”. Thomas had a leather bag “Member Only” and gold framed glasses. I thought that it was nice that he had astigmatism and retinitis.
Through the summer we hanged out together in his place and play Scramble. He was better than I was. The friendship lasted until one day when he said that I was boring to him and that he cannot learn anything new from me. Mom said that he was a sick boy and that she saw his mom using coupons in the supermarket, a way of telling that they were not privileged people after all… Mom hated coupons…To save my hurt pride dad intervened: “Their car would end up in a junkyard like the penny stocks they owe would. His dad is risking his skin in speculations and his mom is a horny bitch”, he said.
There was nothing else to do but read and do homework. My English teacher took interest in my “English compositions” and encouraged me to write a short story every week and handle it to him. I got so much immersed into this