A Matter of Conviction

BOTCH: Sure. He knows. (Botch is seventeen years old and enjoys a reputation as a ladies’ man. He is a good-looking boy with a magnificent profile and a thick-lipped mouth from which the name Botch — short for “Bacia mi,” Kiss me — was derived. His father works in a restaurant in the Wall Street area. His mother is dead. His older sister takes care of the house. He also has a younger brother, and he is determined to “break both his arms” if the kid ever gets involved in gang-busting. His reputation as a lover is based on the fact that he went to bed with a young married girl on the block. The gang beat up the girl’s husband when he came around looking for Botch afterward. Botch has visited the girl regularly ever since. He thinks she is afraid to refuse him, but he has never told this to the gang. The gang considers him a man of the world, and he would not shatter this illusion for anything.)

DIABLO: You ever had a Spanish girl, Botch?

CONCHO: Look who he’s asking. The master!

BOTCH (with dignity): I don’t like to talk about what I had or didn’t have.

CONCHO: Anything that walks with a skirt on, this guy has had. He’s modest. He’s a gentleman.

BOTCH (with the same dignity): If you was a girl, would you like some guy telling what he done or didn’t do with you?

CONCHO: I wouldn’t, but thank God I ain’t a girl. Besides, everybody knows about you and Alice. Even that banana she’s got for a husband.

BOTCH: Little man, there are some things we don’t talk about. Inform him, Diablo.

BUD: Hey, talkin’ about bananas.

(He gestures toward the door with his head. Danny Di Pace has just entered the candy store. Bud surveys him with unconcealed and immediate malice. There is a marked difference in the appearance of the two boys, and perhaps this is responsible for the instantaneous antagonism Bud feels. For he is truly ugly, a boy who — at the age of sixteen — is already beginning to lose his hair. His face festers with acne. His nose is gross, the bones having healed crookedly after being shattered in a street fight when he was fourteen. He is short and squat, and at one time he was called Ape by the boys. He discouraged this by beating up three members of the gang. He is now called Bud, which he considers more dashing than Charles, his given name, or Charlie, his childhood nickname. He does not like to talk about sex. He has never kissed a girl in his life. He knows this is because girls consider him ugly. Looking at Danny Di Pace, who, at the age of fourteen, stands erect and tall in the doorway of the candy store, his red hair neatly combed, surveying the place with the secure knowledge of his good looks, Bud is glad the sex talk is ending, glad this smug intruder has come into their hangout looking for trouble.)

DIABLO (whispering): Who’s that?

BUD: Beats me. He looks like a banana.

BOTCH: That’s the new kid moved in at 327. Up the block.