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Brood of a New Age

19.

The day before yesterday the new season Beverly Hills 90210 had started and Bunny and her colorful court sat spellbound in front of the TV. Since they met only every other day but this series was one of their all-time favorites, Bunny always recorded all the episodes with her first-class video recorder so that they could watch old episodes and the new one together during their "cocktail days". Afterwards - as in the previous season - the wives would talk for hours about the series and dream themselves away to Los Angeles. To a land without cold, on a blue ocean with sparkling streets where everyone was rich and/ or a star.

So the new child and her credit card were out of the picture for the time being. Strangely enough, none of the women had the idea of taking the girl into their midst, so that she now sat outside alone under the parasol - stiff as a board in her probably uncomfortable and too warm dress as always - and watched the other children being children. Like everyone else, Sonny had heard about the incident last week. And although even now the children kept a respectful or suspicious distance - perhaps waiting for the strange girl from Italy to approach them herself - they called her Pukerella among themselves. Clearly an idea of Alessio's - that little asshole.

Sonny could stand it when he made fun of him - boy to boy - but not when it came to a girl who perhaps barely understood or spoke English well enough to defend herself verbally. He had always been able to avoid beating up one of the other kids, which he could have easily done - but he didn't want to give his father any more excuses to beat HIM up again. Besides, he took no pleasure in hurting the weaker ones - even if they were assholes. Probably not only his preferences disqualified him for a life as a gangster like his father. Where before none of the others like the twins or one of the girls had dared to approach her because she had been besieged by the adults, now no one dared to approach her because they had all realized that this was Anthony Dracon's daughter. The younger kids didn't know what his "job" was and even when little bastards like Alessio told them that this was the meanest and coolest gangster boss in New York and he could make them disappear with a snap of his fingers - with an arrogance and so much pride in his voice as if he already belonged to his most loyal employees - they didn't understand what that meant. They only knew - instilled by their mothers - that no one had to brag about which "family" they all belonged to.

After Sonny had supplied the wives with their favorite liquors, he went outside to the terrace with a glass of ice water with a slice of cucumber floating in it. Not for him, but for the girl. What was her name? The adults called her either Dolly or Sweetie or something else, and he couldn't help but notice that every time someone called her that, some muscle in her beautiful face twitched, indicating that she hated those pet names. Beautiful she was - he recognized that although he had never been interested in a girl in a romantic or physical way. He was interested in boys - unfortunately. His dad, since that day when his mother found those magazines, regularly made it clear what he thought of fags. It was like he was trying to beat the perversion out of him like dust out of an old carpet. But Sonny feared the feelings he had when he saw the men in those magazines - their lustrous bodies, their defined but not outlandishly muscular hairless chests, their tight butts, and those faces with the inviting smiles and eyes that kept asking him to touch himself, even over the paper - would not go away with any amount of spanking and bullying and disrespect from those around him. These feelings were not dust - they were the fibers from which he was woven.

Still, he recognized the girl on the seating area as beautiful, delicate and lovely. Yes - lovely, what a strange word in the world he came from.

And now he approached her not because she was so lovely, or because there were no adults around to show him with looks and gestures what they thought of him, or because he felt sorry for her that there was no one around to treat her like a princess. Not even because she was Tony Dracon's daughter and could probably, if she fluttered her eyelashes, have his gay ass kicked into the Hudson - perhaps a power she herself didn't yet know she had. He set the glass down in front of her and sat next to her - at a respectful distance - because she was as much of a freak in this house as he was. For opposite reasons as him but she was similar to him.

Besides, the terrace, three steps higher, was a good vantage point to keep an eye on the little ones. Since everyone had heard what he was, they had little respect for him as an older or stronger person- but the mere fact that he threatened to pull them apart if they scuffled too much or tried to drown each other was usually enough for temporary order. Nobody wanted to get "AIDS" because a fag touched him or her. Aids - very few adults knew what to do with it and the children had only picked up the word. How could he get AIDS? He had never even kissed another boy (although Julian from his school sometimes looked at him like that... he had to go back to the library and read how to get AIDS and if the books said that kissing was relatively safe he could-).

"You're Sonny, aren't you?" the girl asked, and he wondered why she asked him. He'd assumed the first thing she'd say (aside from the shy "thank you" for the water, which she'd immediately drunk because she must have been incredibly thirsty) would be to ask him to go away. That was how most reacted when he approached. The story of the magazines had spread like wildfire throughout the family and although most adults dismissed it as a "phase" and curiosity, the dirt stuck with him. Would stick with him forever.

"Yes. Bunny's son," he said and the girl smiled at him.

"I'm Graziella," she said, saving him from admitting that he hadn't known her name until now.

Together they were silent for the next few minutes, perhaps still unsure of what to talk about. Instead, they watched as the twins (by far the worst brats in the group, who were always inciting everyone else to get into mischief) blew up the water polo to play boys against girls, with their younger brother playing on the girls' side to even the odds because his sister and Marnie's six-year-old with their water wings were hardly full-fledged players. In a moment there would be another huge brawl. He puffed out his breath and that seemed to lead Graziella next to him to make a wrong assumption.

"Why are you never in the pool even though you're hot?"

Was he hot? He was sweating - but he couldn't remember ever being really hot or cold. But that wasn't why he never went to the pool. As if casually, he pulled his feet, which were in size 14 Air Jordans, out of her sight. Yes, his feet were big. But that wasn't the problem. However, he didn't need ANOTHER thing that made him a freak to everyone. The problem was basically that he was too comfortable in the water. Just like his mom. And whoever felt too comfortable started to behave strangely. Although being too comfortable as long as there were other people around would not occur with him.

"The others wouldn't be comfortable with me in the pool" he said and the girl next to him nodded. "Because of the thing with the magazines? The others are just jerks."

His astonished gaze found hers, sober but not disgusted. Inquisitive and awake, at most. And this after a saying that didn't want to match the little doll in the little dress with the patent leather shoes. He nodded slowly and her eyes just seemed much older than her body. If he could have gone for girls, he would have fallen in love with her that second. But this way, a hitherto too seldom tuned string in his inner self was set in vibration that spoke of connection, consonance and platonic comradeship although he did not know this child - and moreover a girl.

"Do you feel comfortable in America yet? Have you made friends yet?" he asked more hoarsly, currently feeling much younger than he was.

She picked up her glass and batted down her long lashes. "I don't feel very comfortable here. But I've already made a friend," she added softly, and her previously sad look was broken by a tender smile that was somehow very secretive.

In that second Sonny's head jerked to the side as the wet ball of water hit him on the temple, bounced off it at an oblique angle and knocked the half-full glass out of Graziella's hand. Water, ice cubes and the slice of cucumber pelted her skirt and even though the glass didn't break at all because she seemed to catch it by reflex, she looked completely horrified. Sonny jumped up, bent his arms so that the muscles he already had were visible and shouted:

"Alessio, you little asshole. You did that on purpose!"

"I didn't!" shouted the more vicious of the twins, but his cheeky grin and the exclamations of mischief from the other little hyenas spoke a different language.

"Besides, he only wanted to hit you," giggled his little sister Lakisha (a name that fitted at the latest since the thing with the porn magazines). Alessio shrieked and threw himself on her because she had betrayed him and all the children joined the hunt for the rat. Because although there was constant gossip in the whole family, nothing was worse than telling secrets to an outsider. And he was an outsider. Sonny swallowed his anger and frustration, wiped the drops of water from his face and his frizzy, bright yellow hair with the back of his hand, then turned to Graziella, who was staring at the stains on her skirt. She held the glass so tightly in her hand that her little knuckles stood out white and he wondered why the glass didn't shatter under the pressure. He took the glass from her.

"I'm sorry. They're unbearable sometimes." he murmured as he timidly plucked ice cubes and cucumber slice from the fabric, hoping she wouldn't take offense at him touching her dress (after all, he was "full of AIDS."). He wanted to move away so as not to cause another "accident", but the girl grabbed his hand and looked up with tears in her eyes.

"My dress," she said, strangely affected, pointing to the bright green cucumber stain. Sonny's first impulse was to tell her not to make such a fuss and that it was only a cucumber stain. Maria (who even now was good and kind to him when he came to Manhattan to help her hang, one by one, the freshly laundered, very heavy curtains) would easily get any kind of stain out of any fabric. But Graziella's little fingers around his wrist tempted him to be mild. When was the last time someone had touched him without him feeling condescension and rejection - or without him being thrashed for the way he was? He dared to pat her hand.

"Come on inside. We can work this out," he said, and the child let him lead her into the house.

.

A short time later Graziella was sitting on a chair in the washroom and he was kneeling in front of her, dabbing at the stain with a clean rag, on the tip of which he had put some benzine.

Graziella was given a chocolate chip cookie but only after her was handed a napkin to wrap the cookie in so she wouldn't get her fingers dirty and after he gave her a plate (for a single cookie!) she was eating. Sweets made any child forgiving and she watched wordlessly munching as he tampered with her dress.

"There, you see? All out. Five minutes in the sun and the water stains are out too" he assured her, smiling up at her.

"I hate these stupid dresses" she muttered almost pouting.

"Then why do you always have one on?"

"Because the adults always say I'm so cute in them."

"Ah. And you want to be cute," he stated and to his amazement Graziella Dracon shook her head.

"I'd much rather have clothes on like you."

"Like me?" He looked down at himself for a moment. Denim shorts and a black muscle shirt. He could hardly imagine the elfin creature in front of him in something like that. It was downright funny. But ... he understood her.

"You think if you keep wearing your little dresses others would like you better," he realized and Graziella nodded because he had said it out loud. He nodded as well and licked his lips.

"All kids want the big ones to like them and be nice to them. But ... at some point ... you have to decide if you're what they want you to be - or if you're trying to become yourself. Do you understand?" he asked gently because he was not sure if his pep talk was understandable for a child and for a foreigner. He knew what he was talking about. If he had made up any lies about the magazines (that he had only been curious ONCE, that they were from a friend, that he had found them, that he wanted to train to get such a body) then he would have avoided a lot of beatings and maybe slander. But he hadn't done that. Because he could not have kept up this lie.

He literally jumped up when he heard his mother calling for him. And that although he had done nothing improper. He didn't know how the adults would react to the fact that he was alone here with Graziella. Would they interpret it as a good sign that he was with a GIRL? Or would they be horrified that he was sitting with a kid maybe half his age - worse, Anthony Dracon's daughter. Being gay as a daisy was one thing- messing with a little girl (the head honcho's daughter) would be a death sentence. That one thing somehow precluded the other and it wouldn't be true wouldn't matter if no one believed him. That's why he shooed Graziella, who had finished her cookie and was carefully inspecting her hands for stains, out the back door into the garden.

"Sit in the sun for a while, we'll talk another time," he promised when she wanted to say something else. Then he went to the wives.

Thanks for reading Q.T.