“...Okay. And then what?”
“What do you mean? And then what?”
“We come back from New York and then what?”
“Well that would be up to you.”
“Hey! This was your idea. What’s the rest of it?”
“The rest of it is, it would be up to you, to keep me or ship me home, and whichever way you want, I won’t be inny pest. Of course, I’d feel I owed you something, nice as you’ve been to me, and maybe you wouldn’t mind. But, if you didn’t feel that way, you could get a divorce, or ’nullment I think its called, on account of me not being consummated. Of course, I own up, I would try being nice to you, so nice you might want to keep me, without shipping me back. At least, you don’t think me repulsive.”
“How do you know what I think?”
“By how you look at my legs.”
“Well who wouldn’t, the way you throw them around?”
“Now you talk like a husband.”
“Well, it makes more sense than I realized, and I confess the guardian angle hadn’t occurred to me. But—”
“It would fix everything up — Burl, Father, Mother, honor, the whole stinking mess. We could apply for a license today, pick it up, be married Monday, go to New York Monday night, and have the surgery done on Tuesday — it takes a minute and a half. And then Tuesday night with me in your lap, helping you make up your mind, you could say what you want to do.”
“The answer has to be no.”
“Want to bet?”
“...Bet? Bet what?”
“What do you think? Money.”
She fished under one heel and came up with a dime she put on the table. “I always keep it in my shoe,” she said, “for luck — but sometimes it comes in handy. You covering it?”
I put down a dime, saying, “Taking candy from a child.”
“Okay, twenty cents in the pot.”
With that she unbuttoned the shirt, took it off, and draped it on the sofa. She was naked as when she was born. “Goddam it,” I snapped, “put that shirt back on!”
“Goddam it, I won’t.”
She walked a few steps toward the hall, switching her bottom at me. Then she stopped and began turning around. “I model myself for you,” she explained, “so you see what the rest of me looks like. So you see what you’re getting.”
As she turned she talked: “Leftside — backside. Is it pretty?”
“You know damned well it is.”
“Yeah, but I like to be told. Right side—”
“Very nice.”
“Front?”
“That’ll do! I’m not looking.”
“Oh yes you are, you’re peeping!”
“If so, it was a slip.”
“We all can yield to temptation.”
“Sonya, you’re beautiful, I’m so excited I can’t talk, and yet — we’re barely acquainted—”
“I’m not done yet, I’ve barely started.”
She gave a hop, skip, and jump, and landed beside me on the sofa. I stiffened, so as not to fold her in, or respond if she tried to kiss me. But kissing me wasn’t the idea. She started unbuttoning my shirt, first pulling my necktie aside, until it was open down to my belt, and then pushing her face inside, and nuzzling into my armpit. Then she began to inhale, but slowly, as though concentrating. After some moments of that she seemed to wilt, crumpled in my arms, and lay with her eyes closed, her head against my chest. I wouldn’t have been human if I didn’t hold her close, or notice how soft she was, and warm, and how silky her skin. Pretty soon she opened her eyes, and began whispering to me, “Okay, Mr. Kirby, I’ll say it, why I could like Burl Stuart, across the drugstore table, and couldn’t stand him that other way, or possibly marry him. Mr. Kirby, he stinks. Maybe he’s your brother, maybe he smells nice to others, but to me he smells like feet. He makes me sick to my stomach. But you don’t, you have a heavenly smell!” I said I smelled like Russian Leather, the face lotion I use, but she said: “It’s not that, it’s you. You smell like grass, grass that’s just been cut. I noticed it that first day, when I sat down beside you in school — maybe that’s why my dress slipped up, and you first peeped at my legs. And then you caught me again today, sniffing you in the car. I had to know if you still smelled the same way — and you did. And do. It’s why I took that shirt out of the laundry basket, instead of finding a clean one. I knew it would smell like you. How do I smell, to you?”
She lifted a swatch of her hair and dusted it over my nose. “Beautiful,” I whispered. “Just beautiful.”
“Hold me close.”
“I am holding you close.”
“Pat me.”
I patted her on the bottom, both sides.
“Paddywhack me.”
“I couldn’t make myself.”
“Mr. Kirby, I could give myself to you, now.”
“Sonya, it must not, it cannot be!”
“I said could — not that I’m going to. I can’t, I know it, not with this thing inside — it would be messy, it wouldn’t be decent. Till Tuesday we have to hold off. My that’s a long time, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday — I’m going to suffer. Are you?”
“Yes, it’s going to be hell.”
“But then, Tuesday night, I promise you—”
“Shut up, stop tempting me!”
“Can I pick up the money?”
“...You win. Pick it up.”
Chapter 7
She gave me a long, hot kiss and I thought about God. Then she looked at my watch and jumped up. “It’s going on for three,” she whispered, “I have to get dressed.” She grabbed the shirt and scampered upstairs, I following after, for what reason I have no idea, unless for the ancient intimacy of watching a woman dress. Her clothes were on my bed, such few clothes as she had, and she got them on pretty quick, first taking off her shoes and putting a dime in each heel. “Now I have two dimes,” she said. “Should bring me all kinds of luck.” She got into her panty hose, then into her shoes, and then picked up her dress.
“Hold it!” I interrupted. Aren’t you forgetting something? Like, for instance, your bra? Where is it, by the way?”
But that drew a blank stare. “I don’t wear inny bra,” she informed me. “I don’t need inny bra — here, I’ll show you.”
She caught hold of my hand and guided it, so it covered one of this beautiful protuberances, and I felt a touch of vertigo, from how warm it was, how soft, and how firm. “Well?” she asked. “Does that need a bra.”
“No,” I gasped. “Come on, hurry up.”
She pulled the dress over her head, zipped it, and put on her hat, after combing her hair at the mirror. “Okay,” she said. “Now we better call home. They’ll have to come with us, you know, Mother and Father both, so they can sign the consent, parental consent, it’s called. On account of me being so young.”
“Yes,” I said, “you’d better call.”
She sat on the bed, picked up the phone on the night table and punched the buttons. But then I took the receiver. “Better I talk,” I said.
It was Mr. Lang who answered. I said who I was and went on: “Sir, I think now we’re all straightened out on this little problem of ours. I neglected to tell you before, but Sonya and I are old friends — we met at a school assembly, at Northwestern High, when she played the march at assembly, and I made the Christmas address. We got along famously then, and talking it over today, in a thorough frank way, we’ve decided we are going to be married — which of course will pretty well take care of everything. But, on account of her age, we must have your consent, yours and Mrs. Lang’s, which is what I’m calling about.”