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at my digital clock, which reads 2:41. “I gotta go, Ter.” He stands up and makes for my door. I haven’t finished my cigarette yet.
    He opens the door and Elys is standing right there. I whip the smoke behind my back, but I’m choking so hard trying to hold in the smoke that I start coughing and it blows out my mouth and my nose at the same time.
    Elys is laughing.
    â€œGotta go, Ter,” Rico mutters and runs past Elys. She’s seen me with the smoke already, not to mention the dirty magazine on my lap.
    â€œWell, well, well,” Elys says. She walks in and takes the magazine from my lap. She lifts it up and lets the centerfold fall loose. “Hello, Miss March. Why, Miss March, what nice tan lines you have.” She turns it toward me and points at the picture. “Get a load of this.” As if I could do anything but stare at Miss March when she’s four inches in front of my face.
    â€œAirbrush city,” says Elys. I take another puff from the cigarette. She takes it out of my hand and walks to the bathroom with it. 1 hear the toilet flush. While she’s in there, I stuff the magazines back in the garbage bag and hustle them under my mattress. She comes back in, scans the room and then sits beside me on the bed.
    â€œYou get away with this once,” she says. “Once, okay? I catch you smoking ever again, I rat to your mom. And I’ll tell her about the girlie magazines.” She pokes the mattress beside her to let me know she’s on to me. She has my number big time. Man, oh, man. She puts her arms around my shoulders. I wish like hell I’d stayed in the park this morning.
    â€œI understand about you wanting to look at naked women, but I wish you would wait until you can see real ones.”
    What is she talking about?
    â€œI can see real ones?” I sputter. Elys guffaws in that smug, know-it-all way of hers.
    â€œYeah. In your future. Those magazine women aren’t real. I mean, they’re real, but…” I’m not getting her. They sure look real to me. Real naked. All smooth, tall and tanned with long hair and big lips. They look like real good women to me.
    â€œI mean,” Elys says more firmly now, “you shouldn’t be able to buy women the way you buy — I don’t know — ketchup. You don’t buy women off the magazine rack. Besides, those magazines are false advertising. You’ll never date a woman who looks like that.”
    Now I’m insulted.
    â€œHow do you know?” I say.
    â€œAny woman good enough to date you is going to be way more beautiful than any of those Playboy bunnies and you’ll know it whether your eyes are open or closed.”
    I roll my eyes. Elys whips her arm off my shoulder, pulls the mattress up and gets the garbage bag. She pulls the magazines out and opens them.
    â€œThey are bottles of ketchup. They are commodities. How would you like to get paid for taking your clothes off? How would that make you feel about yourself? What if you weren’t goodlooking enough to take your clothes off for money? How would you like to be treated like you were only valuable because of what you looked like? Because you were a certain height, or a certainweight, or your eyes were a certain color?”
    I think about Moran’s airborne midgets and the Midget Employment Stabilization Board. Then I think “Naked Women Employment Stabilization Board,” and how there is way more employment for naked women than there is for midgets. I mean, small people.
    â€œIt’s not funny to be funny looking,” I say, remembering Lucy’s words. Elys looks at me like I’m whacko. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so angry She doesn’t seem angry at me. It’s the magazines she is angry about—those naked women and a world full of Morans.

7
    Mom and Farley are supposed to be going away this weekend. I have to play goody-good little good boy for Farley