henry: Once she took me to her parents' country club. The place had its own nine-hole golf course and tennis courts and swimming pool, and all those rich people walking around and diving off boards, smashing tennis balls, and swimming lap after lap with rubber caps and goggles. I never saw so many rich people jumping around so much for nothing. And then, as I looked around, I realized that there wasn't one thing these people were doing that I knew how to do. Nothing. I couldn't dive. I couldn't swim. I couldn't play tennis. I couldn't play golf. I couldn't do shit.
karen: I started going out to places with Henry I had never been before. I'm eighteen. I'm really dazzled. We went to the Empire Room to hear Shirley Bassey. We went to the Copa. The kids I knew went there once, maybe, on their prom night. Henry went there all the time. He was known there. He knew everybody. We always sat up close to the stage, and one night Sammy Davis Jr. sent us champagne. On crowded nights, when people were lined up outside and couldn't get in, the doormen used to let Henry and our party in through the kitchen, which was filled with Chinese cooks, and we'd go upstairs and sit down immediately. There was nothing like it. I didn't think that there was anything strange in any of this- you know, a twenty-two-year-old with such connections. I didn't know from anything. I just thought he knew these people.
henry: We were going out every night. Karen had a job working as a dental assistant during the day, but every night we were together. I mean we were really close. I was having a great time with her. I think I loved the idea that she was not from the neighborhood. That she was used to fine things. That she was a very classy girl. We started going to weddings. Some of the Vario kids were getting married at the tune, and that sort of threw us together even more closely. In my upbringing, if you took a girl to a wedding it was important. Soon we started to sneak away for weekends on our own. Karen used to tell her parents she was going to Fire Island with some girl friends, and her parents would drop her at the Valley Stream station. Then I'd pick her up.
karen: As soon as I started going steady with Henry, this guy across the street named Steve started coming around. I had known him for years and I never thought anything about him. Then late one afternoon, right after I had come home from work, the guy was near my house and asked if I'd help him pick up something nearby. I don't remember what it was or where we were supposed to go. It was like he needed help on an errand. It wasn't important. He was the guy across the street. I told my mother where we were going. Mostly I wanted to go with him because I liked his car. He had a Corvette. He was very nice, as usual, until we got near Belmont racetrack, about three miles from home. Then he pulled the car over. He started putting his arm around me. I was amazed. I also got angry. I told him to stop. He refused. He said I had grown up. The usual garbage. I got the heel of my hand and I smacked it hard across his face. He was surprised. I hit him again. He got really angry. He started the car up and pulled out onto Hempstead Turnpike. Then he jammed on the brakes, and I almost went through the windshield. He leaned over and opened the door and shoved me out and drove away. I got hit with a spray of gravel and dirt. It was terrible. It must have been about six-thirty, seven o'clock at night. I was terrified. It was the guy who had been bad, but I was ashamed. I was afraid to call home. I knew my mother would be upset. She would start the third degree right there on the phone while I'm still pulling gravel out of my hair. I couldn't stand being yelled at. So instead I called Henry. I told him what had happened and where I was. He came and got me in minutes and he drove me home.
henry: I went crazy. I wanted to kill the guy. All the way driving her home Karen is telling me what happened, and I'm getting hotter and hotter. The minute we got to her house she ran inside. I looked across the street. I see the Corvette parked out front. The house was full of miserable rich fucks. There were three brothers. All three of them had Corvettes. I had a hot.22 caliber short-eye automatic. I got a box of shells out of the glove compartment. Looking at the fuck's car, I started to load. I was so mad I was ready to shoot the guy and worry about it later. I walked across the street and rang the bell. No answer. I rang again. Nothing. I had the gun in my pants pocket. Now I walked around the driveway toward the backyard. Steve and his brothers were sitting there. Steve started to come toward me. He must have thought we were going to talk. Man-to-man bullshit. The minute he was in my reach I grabbed him by the hair with my right hand and pulled his face down nice and low. At the same time I took the gun out of my left pocket and I started to smack him across the face. He screamed, 'He's got a gun! He's got a gun!' I can feel his face go. I shoved the gun inside his mouth and moved it around like a dinner gong. The brothers are so scared they can't move. Fucks. I swear I would have shot them if they came toward me. Somebody from inside the house said they called the cops. Before the cops arrived I gave Steve a few more belts. I think that when he yelled about the gun it stopped me from killing him. I gave him another couple of smacks in the head and left him crying in the driveway. He had pissed all over himself.
I went back across the street to Karen. She was standing at the side door. I gave her the gun and told her to hide it. She put it in the milk box. Then I pulled my car around the block and tossed the box of shells underneath. When I walked back to Karen's house there were fourteen Nassau County police cars outside. The cops were looking for a gun. I said I didn't have a gun. I said the guy was crazy. The cops searched me and my car from top to bottom. No gun. Then they escorted me out of Nassau County to the Brooklyn line. When we pulled away from the curb, I was afraid they would spot the shells, but they didn't.
karen: He came over to the side door. I could see he was hurrying. He said, 'Hide it.' He had something cupped in the palm of his hand. I took it and looked down. It was a gun. It was small, heavy, and gray. I couldn't believe it. It felt so cold. It was a thrill just to hold it. Everything was so wild I began to feel high. I didn't want to bring the gun into my house, because my mother had eyes all over. She would have found it. So I put it in the milk box right outside the door. In a few minutes Henry comes walking back. The police were waiting. They had spoken to Steve and other people across the street first. It was the biggest thing anyone had ever seen on our block. I was really excited. I loved that Henry had done all this for me. I made me feel important. And then, when the cops asked him if he had a gun, he was so calm. He just said that the guy across the street was crazy. The cops had already heard about what the guy did to me, and Henry was so insistent that he didn't have a gun that when they went back to the guy he began to say that maybe it was a 'metallic object.' Finally the cops said they would escort Henry out of the neighborhood to make sure there was no more trouble.
henry: By this time I'm getting tired of all this sneaking around. Three months I'm going out with Karen every day, and I can't go to her house when her grandmother's there, and her mother keeps telling us we're not meant for each other. My parents are doing the same kind of stuff. It was like we were alone against everybody. Then that business with the guy across the street happened, and I decided we ought to elope. If we were married, then everybody would have to deal with us. Finally, after a couple of false starts, we decided to drive down to Maryland and get married. Just do it. We needed a witness, so I got Lenny to come along. When we got to Maryland we started talking to some kids in a car next to ours waiting at a traffic light. They said there was a three-day wait in Maryland but that you could get married right away in North Carolina. So we went to Walden, North Carolina, instead. We got our physicals and blood tests and then we went right to the justice of the peace. By now our witness, Lenny, has passed out, sleeping in the backseat of the car, so the wife of the justice of the peace was our witness.
karen: Henry and I got back and told my parents. First they were stunned, but within half an hour they seemed to come around. We had done it; there was nothing they could do. They were not the kind of people to kick their children out of the house. And I wasn't the kind of young bride who knew what to do. I couldn't boil an egg. We were both kids. They suggested that we stay with them. My parents fixed the upstairs part of the house for us, and we started living at home. It would never have dawned on Henry to get a place of our own. In fact, he liked living in my house. He enjoyed my family. He liked my mother's cooking. He joked with her. He was very warm to her. I could see that he really enjoyed being a part of the family. And slowly my mother and father got to like him. They had three daughters, and now, in a funny way, they had finally gotten their son. He was very sincere about the religious problem and said that he would convert. He began taking religious instructions. He went to work every day. We all thought he was a bricklayer. He had a union card and everything. What did we know? It never occurred to me that it was strange that he had such nice smooth hands for a construction worker. By August,
