Hard Candy

on what she wanted.

She didn't have what she wanted then. None of us did. So we fought young animals just like us- fighting over what we'd never own. We called things ours. Our turf. Our women. The street forked at the end. Where we found what was really ours. Mine was prison.

Girls like Candy were always around. We didn't have pistols or shotguns then. Just half-ass zip guns that would blow up in your hand when you pulled the trigger. But you could break a glass bottle into a pile of flesh-ripping shards. Squeeze a thick glob of white Elmer's Glue into your palm. Twirl a rope through it until it was coated end to end. Then twirl it again, through the glass. Wait for it to dry and you had a glass rope. When you got real close, you could use half a raw potato, its face studded with double-edged razor blades. Car antennas. Lead pipes. Cut-down baseball bats with nails poking through them. Sit around in some abandoned apartment, drink some cheap wine, pour a few of the red drops on the ground in tribute to your brothers who got to the jailhouse or the graveyard before you did. Toke on throat-searing marijuana. Wait for the buzz. Then you meet the other losers. In a playground if they knew you were coming. In an alley if they didn't. The newspapers called it gang wars. If you made it back to the club, the girls were there. If you got too broken to run, you got busted. And if you stayed on the concrete, maybe you got your name in the papers.

When I went to reform school, she wrote me a letter. A poem, just for me. Signed it that way. 'Love, Candy. Just for you.' Nobody had ever done anything like that for me. The feeling lasted until I found out it was the words from some song she'd heard on the radio.

Little Candy. A whore in her heart even then. Just what I needed to cheer me up.

28

HER BUILDING was a co-op in the Thirties, near the river. We watched it for a couple of days, seeing how it worked. The doorman handled both ends of the building. No problem. On Friday, the Prof rang the service bell at the rear. When the doorman left his post, Max and I stepped inside, past the sign that said 'All Visitors Must Be Announced.' I took the elevator to the sixteenth floor, Max took the stairs. He was there before I was. We walked up five more flights to the top floor. He stood off to the side as I knocked. I heard the peephole slide back. The door opened. 'It is you,' she said.

I didn't know the woman. Candy had been a slim, dark-haired child. Her body hadn't caught up to her hormones then. But I'd never forget her eyes: yellow, like a cat's, tipped at the corners, glowing under heavy dark lashes. This woman looked about thirty- ten years younger than she should have been. Her black hair was as short as a man's, soft and fine, framing her face. Barefoot, she stood as tall as my jaw. Her eyes were a bright, china-doll blue. The woman had an hourglass figure- the kind where the sand takes forever to get to the bottom but has plenty of room to spread out once it arrives. She was wearing a pair of ragged blue-jean shorts and one of those little T-shirts that stop around the diaphragm. Pale flesh covered her stomach, muscle rippled just below the skin when she spoke.

'It's me, for real.'

I shook my head. 'Who gave you my name?'

'Burke! It's me. You don't recognize me?'

I let my eyes travel over her. 'Not a line.'

She fluffed her hair, ran her hands quickly over her face, across her breasts, down past her hips, patted the front of her thighs. 'It's all new.'

'Some things you can't change,' I told her, reaching behind me for the doorknob.

'You don't remember me at all,' she said, sadness in her voice.

I closed one eye, watching her with the other. Tapped the closed lid. It was the only chance she'd get.

'Oh! Damn! I forgot. Wait a minute.'

I didn't move. She put a hand on my arm. Nails cut short, no polish. 'Please.'

I watched her walk over to the window, tilt her head back, reach into her eyes. Pull something away from each one. 'Come here, Burke. Just for a minute… okay?'

I went to the window, the carpet soft under my feet. The late afternoon sunlight came through the window. 'Take a better look,' she said, her voice soft.

The yellow cat's eyes watched me.

'Contact lenses.' A little girl's whisper, giggling at soft conspiracies.

Candy.

29

THERE WAS a white phone on a glass table near the couch. One of those Swedish designer jobs, big round numbers in four grids of three. I left her standing by the window, picked up the receiver, and dialed the number of the pay phone on the corner. I scanned the joint while the phone rang- it looked like the waiting room in an expensive clinic. The Prof answered. 'Call you back in fifteen minutes,' I said, and hung up.

I sat down on the couch. Lit a cigarette, watching her. Thinking how I should look through the place first. But it didn't feel like a trap. And a woman who could change herself into something new could hide a microphone anyplace.

'What do you want?' I asked her.

She came to the couch, sat at the opposite end, curling her legs under her like a teenager.

'Maybe I just wanted to see you.'

'Write me a letter.'

She shook her head slightly, a fighter shaking off a punch. 'I was just a kid.'

I shrugged.

'You're still angry with me?'

'I'm not angry with anyone. I don't know you.'

'But…'

'I remember you. It's not the same as knowing you, okay?'

'Okay.'

'What do you want, Irene?'

'I haven't been Irene for a long time. That's one of the things I changed.'

'What do I call you?'

'Whatever you want. That's me- I can be whatever you want. There's all kinds of candy.'

'That's what you do now?'

'That's what I do.'

I looked her over again, seeing it. 'You got a closet full of wigs too?'

Her smile flashed. She scissored her legs off the couch, held out her hand to me. I grabbed her wrist instead, my thumb hard against the nerve junction. She didn't seem to notice. I left my cigarette burning in the ashtray. She led me down a carpeted hall, stepped into a room nearly as big as the living room. One wall was floor-to-ceiling mirrors. 'My closet,' she said.

One shelf was wigs, carefully positioned on Styrofoam heads. Blondes, brunettes, redheads from soft rose to flame. Every style from flower child to Dolly Parton. A wall of cosmetics: lipstick with all new, gleaming, fresh tips, standing in rows like large-caliber bullets…blusher, body powders, eyeliner, prefitted fingernails, polish, false eyelashes. Makeup table with a round padded stool, tiny row of frosted light bulbs surrounding another mirror, this one three-paneled.

The far wall looked flat. She slid back a panel. Fur coats. Fox, ermine, sable, mink, leopard. Others I didn't recognize.

Another panel. Cocktail dresses, formal gowns, yuppie go-to-business outfits. Leather miniskirts. Dresses from silk to cotton. Jumpers and pinafores.