Summertime
(Castor, Pollux and Helen—not yet of Troy)
It was almost the end of school though school existed for the Burden twins only as an interruption of their days of sport—polo, wrestling, tennis, sailing, skiing, and then the sports that frightened their mother and father.
The brothers, just back from a beach weekend with a flush on their milky pallor, were in a dressing room at Dolce and Gabanna trying on blouses.
Both tall and extremely slight, they liked the way women’s shirts fit in the shoulders, they liked the colors and prints and the silkiness of the fabrics. It did not bother them at all that the shirts buttoned on the wrong side.
“No,” said Sage, already unbuttoning and flinging the shirt, which fluttered onto the large pile on Gray’s lap. Gray rose and stood next to his brother, both of them bare-chested.
“I think you have more chest hair now,” Gray said.
“Yeah, and I’m an inch taller.”
The boys stood back to back studying themselves and then began shoving at each other until they crashed out through the dressing room door into a pair of matrons who recognized them for the pretty young fools they were and smiled.
Sage returned to the dressing room for their leather jackets, which they put on over their bare chests.
“No shirts? It’s May,” said one of the women. “You will catch cold.”
Already the boys were leaving, heading down Madison Avenue to Brunello Cucinelli’s where they treated themselves to $900 navy sweaters of cashmere thin as a tissue.
“Nello’s?”
“Sure.”
They walked up a block and, removing the Reserved sign, sank in to chairs at one of Nello’s outdoor tables. Thus, they had completed what for them was their local golden triangle, the two boutiques and the restaurant. If one added the parental pied-a- terre on Fifth Avenue, they had made a square.
They looked around at the few empty tables seeing how early they were.
“Starving,” Gray said, “let’s not wait.”
“No games today?” said the waiter who was used to the boys bringing sports bags and sacks of equipment to clutter the sidewalk and endanger those who were passing by.
“It’s a holiday. We’ll have the usual- two tagliata, blue–I guess, unless you have the soft shell crabs. And some vino.”
Their phones were out.
“They both called.”
“Mine says URGENT,”
“You call back.”
“No, you.”
“Where are they?”
“Don’t know.”
“Do you think it’s about the sweaters, already?”
“He never looks at charges. Whatever. Let’s eat first.”
With their phones jiggling and jumping on the table the boys finished their blue-rare steaks until the waiter appeared with a message just as they were about to order dessert.
It was their mother on the restaurant phone inside and Nello himself was talking to her as Gray approached.
“Your beautiful mother needs you,” said Nello, who was no fan of the twins, but liked the crowd they brought him to decorate the outdoor tables and distract from the noise and street fumes. “You must rescue your sister.”
Clarissa, their mother, was sobbing.
“What is it?”
“Your sister went to LaToya’s house and her brother and a bunch of boys began chasing her and she has locked herself in the bathroom. They were going to rape her maybe.” Through her choking and sobs, his mother’s voice sounded slurred, which was not unusual.
“Can’t you go there? Our friends are coming any minute now.”
“We’re in Paris? Did you forget already. Go over there right now. This is an emergency. It’s either you or the police. The address is…I’ll text it.”
Gray saw Sage approaching and yet again admired his brother’s beauty, which, after all, was his own. It was a glorious thing to look the way they did, and he supposed the way his sister did or she would not have had to trap herself in some lowrent bathroom at age 13.
For a minute, he wondered how old La Toya’s brother, was and why they would be going after some kids. The whole situation sounded peculiar more than dire.
“Helen’s locked herself in the bathroom at a friend’s house. We have to go get her.”
“Where’s Mom?”
“Drunk in Paris. Didn’t even know they were there, did you?”
“Not really.”
“Let’s have a cappuccino first.”
“Jesus, they’re all the way uptown,” Sage said looking at his phone. We have to get an Uber. Couldn’t we just call her and talk her out, talk to the friend or something. Or let’s get Peter to drive us up.”
“No answer.”
“We better move. Maybe we need Peter if there’s like a gang after her. He’s got his gun. Try again and try her again.”
“We could ride up through the park. The bikes are still in the room off the lobby. That’s quicker.”
Both boys were thinking it was like El Barrio up where they were going and wishing they had their father’s driver Peter with them. Gray always liked a good fight and wondered what the odds were and thought about his face and the new sweater and how much he could count on Sage, who looked just the same, but was weaker.
They ran out of the restaurant. Nello, still picturing the boys’ mother tearing the petals from his flowers as she waited at one of his front tables, knew where to send the bills and always added a 35% tip just because.
Still unable to reach their sister, they got their bikes from the store room and entered the park at 69th street. Riding hard and fast, they headed north on the loop, still in jolly moods, taking the rescue as another escapade in lives of constant indulgence and adventure.
They began racing each other, passing left and right, veering too close to the pedestrians, the runners and dog walkers who appeared to them as impediments.
“Beep beep!”
“Out of the way.”
“Move.”
A man in a suit gave them the finger and shouted something they did not hear.
“I’m following you, Sage. Have no idea where we are.”
“Watch out! You almost hit her.”
“Don’t turn around.”
“There’s the reservoir. Okay, I know where we are.”
“Have you ever seen such ugly people.”
“Look at her. I’m stopping.”
Gray screeched to a halt in front of a girl running on the path.
“Hey, can I maybe like get your number? We’re going to rescue our sister,” he said as he shoved back his hair in a manner not unpracticed.
The girl pointed to her earbuds, shook her head and ran on with a little smile on her face.
They left the park at 110th Street already in unfamiliar territory, uncertain of anything up around Columbia where their father had given part of a stadium and where they would not be enrolling anytime soon. They realized they had forgotten their helmets as they looked around and slowed way down. All around them were students and faculty, then people without a lot of money who lived uptown and did the best they could and often had bad luck over generations. Their daddies weren’t rich nor their mammas good looking up here or at least not like the parents of the Burden twins.
“We’re lost, admit it,” said Gray.
“Try Helen again, maybe La Toya will pick up.”
“Poor kid, she must be panicking.”
“Why did she go without Helga?” Helga was the nanny who never went below 57th street or anyplace above the official boundaries of what she deemed to be the Upper East Side. Once, long ago, she had taken them all to the Planetarium, which was as far west as she had ever ventured. That was the day Helen had walked into a railing and bumped her nose and Helga had never crossed Central Park after that.
“Google map again?”
“It gets so confusing up here.”
“Faggots!” said a man from a doorway.
Sage whirled around.
“Don’t. I think it’s three more blocks.”
Nobody was looking at them now, everybody was looking at their bikes, which were Pinarellos and as sleek as their riders. The boys were oblivious to the stares, assuming it was about the way they looked, a given.
Inside the Perez bathroom, Helen wandered among all the hanging things feeling the damp around her. She was examining her shirt which was torn by one of the boys and trying to calm herself. Every surface was covered by products, hair things and skin things in unfamiliar brands. She sat on the closed seat of the toilet feeling lonely, feeling she had lost La Toya as her friend, waiting to hear a voice she knew on the other side of the door, even Helga’s. She began looking at herself in the mirror, pushing back her long hair behind one ear and studying the effect. Better with that stuff in the jar, Suavecito. She tried it, then got nervous that it might do something bad.
Helen looked like no one else on earth.
Was that a good thing? Was that why the boys had pulled at her and ripped her shirt?
Gray and Sage were outside looking up at the building that they thought was the right building though it had no number that they could see. Six stories, fire escapes all over the place, a group from the corner already coming their way.
“Ciao,” said Gray.
“Hey guys, you know LaToya?”
There was no answer.
“She live here? We are picking up our sister who’s with her.”
“’Ciao?’ What the fuck’s the matter with you?’ Sage whispered.
“You twins? Nice bikes. Jackets, too. You always dress alike?”
“We just want to get our sister upstairs.”
The group offered to watch the bikes for the boys when they went up to La Toya’s on the fourth floor.
“No problem. We can bring them up.”
Helen heard her brothers out on the street. She wondered where her friend was and why she had been left alone. She was glad they were there and hoped she would not be the cause of any more trouble. All she wanted was to be at home, even with Helga there to scold and annoy her.
Sage and Gray, hoisting the light bikes and looking at every doorway, climbed the stairs, their black hair making dark commas on their damp foreheads. They were feeling the steaks and the vino and the ride and the tension from the sidewalk.
La Toya was there, sitting in a corner scowling and she rose to let the boys in. She looked at the boys as though they were nothing to her and said she never wanted to see their bitch of a sister again. She went back to being all folded into herself on the sofa which was covered in plastic for the better days that might be coming.
The brothers did not want to hear the story of what happened then and maybe never. They wanted Helen out of there. Hearing them, she unlocked the bathroom door.
“Ooo. You OK? You look really bad!”
Helen and La Toya did not look at each other.
“You rode here? How are we getting home?”
Sage took off his jacket and put it on his sister who did not look bad at all, torn and crumpled as she was with the funny hair gel and some of the other cosmetics she had tried all over her face, a face which they now could see would cause trouble to all men.
They were thinking what waited for them on the street, the threat to the Pinarellos and their leather jackets. Gray, who had taken boxing lessons, felt he could take most of the guys in the group, they weren’t really a gang or anything, but they would never make it to the end of the street.
“You need a green car, ”La Toya said “They are all over here.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen them round the city. I always wondered why they never stop.”
“I’m sorry,” La Toya said to Helen and all of them.
‘It’s OK, Toy.” The girls hugged at the door.
“Hey, they got the chica. Chica! Chica!”
The Burdens stood downstairs at the door in a circle of desirableness—their height and beauty, their soft leathers, their fancy bikes—a combination of things to want and a challenge.
One of the group, who was known as Toot, a good looking Latin guy and kind of a leader of them all, shrugged and waved down his hand for a no, let’s forget it, just as a green taxi cruised around the corner.
Castor and Pollux, are athletes, twins and half-brothers. Pollux is the son of Leda and Zeus in his guise as an amorous swan. Their sister Helen was abducted for the first time by the hero Theseus and rescued by her brothers.