KAREN: He took me to a Chinese restaurant in the Greenacres shopping mall on Long Island. This time he was really nice. He was an exciting guy. He seemed a lot older than his age, and he seemed to know more than the other boys I'd been out with. When I asked what he did, he said he was a bricklayer, and he even showed me his union card. He said he'd had a job as a manager at the Azores, which I already knew was a very good place in Lido Beach. We had a nice leisurely dinner. Then we got into his car, which was brand new, and we went to some Long Island nightclubs and listened to music. We danced. Everybody knew him. When I walked into these places with Henry everyone came over. He introduced me to everyone. Everybody wanted to be nice to him. And he knew how to handle it all. It was so different from the other boys I went out with. They all seemed like kids. They used to take me to movies, bowling, the kinds of things you do when you're eighteen and your boyfriend is twenty-two.

    HENRY: Karen turned out to be a lot of fun. She was very lively. She liked going to the places, and she was great-looking. She had violet eyes, just like Elizabeth Taylor—or that's what everybody said. We started going out to some of the clubs I knew. We'd go to the 52/52 Club, in Long Beach, near Philly Basile's Rumors Disco. We went to piano bars I knew. Places I had been to with Paulie. Places where I knew the owners and bartenders and managers and they knew me. The first time I went to pick her up at her parents' house for a night at the Palm Shore Club, I got all dressed up. I wanted to make a good impression. I felt great, but as soon as she opened the door, instead of being happy to see me, she screamed. Her eyes bulged out of her head like a monster movie. I looked around. I couldn't figure out what was going on. Then she pointed at my neck. "Turn it around! Turn it around!" she says, really scared. When I looked down I saw that she was pointing at my medal. I had a gold chain my mother gave me and on it was a tiny gold cross.

    KAREN: He was going to meet my parents. They knew I had been seeing him, and they didn't like it that he wasn't Jewish. I told them that he was half Jewish. I told them that his mother was Jewish. They still weren't happy, but what could they do? So here he comes to meet them for the first time. The bell rings. I'm so excited. My grandmother is there. She was really Orthodox. When she died they brought the Torah to her house. I was already a little nervous. I go to the door and there he is wearing black silk slacks, a white shirt opened down to his belly, and a powder blue sport jacket. But what I see first is this huge gold cross. I mean it was hanging around his neck. It went from his neck to his rib cage. I closed the door to a crack so nobody could see him and told him to turn the cross around so my family wouldn't see it. When he did, we walked inside, but by then I was in a cold sweat. I mean, they weren't even crazy about him being just half Jewish. And his family wasn't too happy either. He had a sister, Elizabeth, who was studying to be a nun, who really didn't like me. One day when I went to call at his house, she opened the door. Her hair was in curlers. She was kind of stuck-up, and she hadn't expected me. I never saw anybody so angry.

    HENRY: Once she took me to her parents' country club. The place had its own nine-hole golf course and tennis courts and swimming pool, and all those rich people walking around and diving off boards, smashing tennis balls, and swimming lap after lap with rubber caps and goggles. I never saw so many rich people jumping around so much for nothing. And then, as I looked around, I realized that there wasn't one thing these people were doing that I knew how to do. Nothing. I couldn't dive. I couldn't swim. I couldn't play tennis. I couldn't play golf. I couldn't do shit.

    KAREN: I started going out to places with Henry I had never been before. I'm eighteen. I'm really dazzled. We went to the Empire Room to hear Shirley Bassey. We went to the Copa. The kids I knew went there once, maybe, on their prom night. Henry went there all the time. He was known there. He knew everybody. We always sat up close to the stage, and one night Sammy Davis Jr. sent us champagne. On crowded nights, when people were lined up outside and couldn't get in, the doormen used to let Henry and our party in through the kitchen, which was filled with Chinese cooks, and we'd go upstairs and sit down immediately. There was nothing like it. I didn't think that there was anything strange in any of this— you know, a twenty-two-year-old with such connections. I didn't know from anything. I just thought he knew these people.

    HENRY: We were going out every night. Karen had a job working as a dental assistant during the day, but every night we were together. I mean we were really close. I was having a great time with her. I think I loved the idea that she was not from the neighborhood. That she was used to fine things. That she was a very classy girl. We started going to weddings. Some of the Vario kids were getting married at the tune, and that sort of threw us together even more closely. In my upbringing, if you took a girl to a wedding it was important. Soon we started to sneak away for weekends on our own. Karen used to tell her parents she was going to Fire Island with some girl friends, and her parents would drop her at the Valley Stream station. Then I'd pick her up.

    KAREN: As soon as I started going steady with Henry, this guy across the street named Steve started coming around. I had known him for years and I never thought anything about him. Then late one afternoon, right after I had come home from work, the guy was near my house and asked if I'd help him pick up something nearby. I don't remember what it was or where we were supposed to go. It was like he needed help on an errand. It wasn't important. He was the guy across the street. I told my mother where we were going. Mostly I wanted to go with him because I liked his car. He had a Corvette. He was very nice, as usual, until we got near Belmont racetrack, about three miles from home. Then he pulled the car over. He started putting his arm around me. I was amazed. I also got angry. I told him to stop. He refused. He said I had grown up. The usual garbage. I got the heel of my hand and I smacked it hard across his face. He was surprised. I hit him again. He got really angry. He started the car up and pulled out onto Hempstead Turnpike. Then he jammed on the brakes, and I almost went through the windshield. He leaned over and opened the door and shoved me out and drove away. I got hit with a spray of gravel and dirt. It was terrible. It must have been about six-thirty, seven o'clock at night. I was terrified. It was the guy who had been bad, but I was ashamed. I was afraid to call home. I knew my mother would be upset. She would start the third degree right there on the phone while I'm still pulling gravel out of my hair. I couldn't stand being yelled at. So instead I called Henry. I told him what had happened and where I was. He came and got me in minutes and he drove me home.

    HENRY: I went crazy. I wanted to kill the guy. All the way driving her home Karen is telling me what happened, and I'm getting hotter and hotter. The minute we got to her house she ran inside. I looked across the street. I see the Corvette parked out front. The house was full of miserable rich fucks. There were three brothers. All three of them had Corvettes. I had a hot .22 caliber short-eye automatic. I got a box of shells out of the glove compartment. Looking at the fuck's car, I started to load. I was so mad I was ready to shoot the guy and worry about it later. I walked across the street and rang the bell. No answer. I rang again. Nothing. I had the gun in my pants pocket. Now I walked around the driveway toward the backyard. Steve and his brothers were sitting there. Steve started to come toward me. He must have thought we were going to talk. Man-to-man bullshit. The minute he was in my reach I grabbed him by the hair with my right hand and pulled his face down nice and low. At the same time I took the gun out of my left pocket and I started to smack him across the face. He screamed, "He's got a gun! He's got a gun!" I can feel his face go. I shoved the gun inside his mouth and moved it around like a dinner gong. The brothers are so scared they can't move. Fucks. I swear I would have shot them if they came toward me. Somebody from inside the house said they called the cops. Before the cops arrived I gave Steve a few more belts. I think that when he yelled about the gun it stopped me from killing him. I gave him another couple of smacks in the head and left him crying in the driveway. He had pissed all over himself.