I Sailed with Magellan Read Online Free PDF

could smell the feather ticking. Mick was still laughing; it sounded as if he was being strangled.
    â€œCool it,” I said, “or Sir’ll hear us.”
    â€œDon’t get a hard-on,” Mick said.
    We pushed our faces against the screen, trying to peer into Kashka’s house. Her window was a little below ours and off to the right so that we couldn’t see much beyond the torn bedspread half-draped across it. Even where we could see, the windowpane was the color of soot. A bare lightbulb gleamed through blackened
glass. There were crickets in the gangway among the ragweed, trilling louder than the distant sirens rushing to some calamity.
    Mick climbed onto the inside windowsill, squatting to get a better look. We were sleeping in our underwear because it was hot, though despite the heat we both resolutely wore homemade nightcaps cut from one of Mom’s old nylons. They fit tightly over our heads to hold our Brylcreemed d.a.’s in place. I reached up and pinched his ass.
    â€œOw!” he yelled, and banged his head on the sash.
    â€œShut up, you want Sir to hear? Get down, ya lubber.”
    â€œWhere’s the goddamn food?” Jano demanded, his voice getting louder, moving toward us.
    â€œDon’t get a hard-on.”
    â€œHow can I without you?”
    We tried very hard to stifle our laughter because we wanted to hear what would happen next.
    â€œDon’t tear my goddamn dress … for crissakes take it easy, Janush.” Kashka’s rough voice sounded different than I’d ever heard it when she called him Janush. We heard a heavy thunk and then a clank like a pot falling from a table.
    â€œYou’re hurtin my titties.” She moaned. “Suck ‘em, don’t bite ’em, Janush.”
    Then, except for an occasional groan, they got quiet, and we lay straining to hear, the word titties still hanging in the gangway like an echo that refused to fade. I’d always figured women, even Kashka, referred to them as their bosom or breasts, words more dignified than titties. Titties were for girls, something blossoming, maybe the size of tangerines. Kashka was built like a squat sumo wrestler. She had the heaviest upper arms I’d ever seen, rolls of flab wider than most people’s thighs, folding like sleeves over her elbows. She didn’t have titties, she had watermelons, and Jano, missing half his teeth, was sucking them. I listened for
the slurping but heard nothing. I wondered what Mick was making of it all. I wasn’t sure how much he really understood about sex yet. The creaking of their house became audible, as if a galleon was anchored beside our window, and the moans resumed, louder and more frequent, though no sexier than those that came from behind the frosted glass of Dr. Garcia’s office, sounds we always regretted overhearing as we waited our turns in the dental chair. Then, mercifully, they fell silent.
    â€œWhat do you think they’re doing?” Mick asked.
    I thought of different possibilities but said nothing.
    â€œHey,” he asked, “you going to sleep?”
    I lay listening to him tossing in his bed, flapping his sheets.
    â€œI know you’re up, ya swab. You’re just fakin,” he said.
    My eyes were closed, though he couldn’t see me in the dark.
    â€œIf you’re sleeping, then you won’t hear me calling you Toes. I won’t lose any points. Ha-ha, Toes! Hey, Toes? Toesush?”
    I totaled up his lost points, grinning in the dark. Minus five for each time he called me Toes. Those were the rules according to the Point System. Mick wasn’t old enough yet to go alone to the movie theater on Marshall Boulevard, and if he wanted to tag along with me on Saturdays, he had to lose less than a hundred points during the week. He could gain points for doing things for me, too, like folding my papers before I delivered them. Or sometimes he’d get something on me and blackmail me