“Jon?”
“Yeah?”
“I like you.”
“You like me. Okay. Sounds good. I like you, too, then. The back of the Caddy’s nice and roomy. Wanna wrestle or something?”
“Tell you the truth, I wouldn’t mind it. My father, however, just might. Could you leave for a while? How long’s your friend going to be inside?”
“I don’t know. He never—”
“—tells you anything.”
“Right.”
“Right. So leave a note. Here, tear a corner off one of the sketch pad pages. I’ll get a pen out of my purse.”
They did all that, and Jon said, “Swell. Now. What do I write?”
“Did you see a sleazy little joint called Chuck’s on the way here? Just outside of town?”
“Weird Mexican or Spanish-type architecture? Yeah. I mentioned it to my friend as we passed by.”
“And what did your friend say?”
“He grunted.”
“Does that mean he did or didn’t notice the place?”
“Where my friend’s concerned, one grunt’s worth a thousand words. He noticed it.” Jon scribbled a note and left it on the dash of the Cadillac.
Chuck’s was a white brick and cement block building with a yellow wooden porchlike affair overhanging from the upper of the two stories. There was black trim on the yellow porch-thing and around windows and doors, and it looked vaguely Spanish as Jon had said. On the door to Chuck’s was the following greeting:
No Shoes No Shirt No Service
“No shit,” Jon said.
Francine laughed, and they went in. The place, which was appropriately dark and clean, provided lots of privacy for Francine and Jon, as they were the only customers in the place right now. They chose a booth.
“I’m glad I didn’t meet you in high school,” Jon said. “I take back what I said before.”
The barman came over and said, “What’ll you have?” and they ordered draw beers. The barman went away, and she said, “Why do you take back what you said?”
“Why do I take back what I said about what?”
“About wishing you’d met me in high school.”
“Oh! Well. If I’d met you in high school, I couldn’t have got near you.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“Silly, huh? Let me remind you about high school. You are president of the student council. I am hall monitor. You are Representative Senior Girl. I am left out of the class will. You are cutest and most popular of all the cheerleaders. I am assistant statistician for the basketball team. You go steady with the captain of the basketball team. I play with myself in the corner and get pimples. You are a vision of loveliness. I am a lowly wretch who... What you laughing at? This is serious stuff I’m layin’ on you. This is the story of our lives. Am I right?”
“I plead guilty to a couple of those charges. But I’m not a high-school kid anymore, Jon. I hope I’m not that shallow anymore.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being shallow. I’m not saying you are, but keep in mind how boring most deep people usually are. Let’s be shallow together, you and me. We can go wading together or something. Wonder where those beers are? Say, uh, I hate to ask this, but are you going with anybody or anything?”
“Broke up. You?”
“Breaking up, I think.”
“Let’s not bore each other with any of the details, Jon, what d’you say?”
“Fine with me.”
The beers came.
“Hey,” she said, sipping. “Why were you so interested in my sketch pad back at the house?”
“I’m an art major myself. Or was ’til I dropped out.”
“Dropped out, or...?”
“No, I didn’t flunk out. One thing I left out of my soliloquy before was ‘You’re rich, I’m poor.’ No money.”
“What about a scholarship?”
“Well, I did have good grades, yes, I did, but I didn’t see eye to eye with the art professors, so recommendations for scholarships were kind of scarce where I was concerned.”
“Why didn’t you and the profs see eye to eye?”
“Because I want to draw comic books when I grow up.”
“You what?”
And he repeated what he’d said and told her in fascinating detail of his aspirations to be a cartoonist, of his massive collection of comic art, of the projects he was currently working on in that field, in trying desperately to break in. Despite what he’d said about the merits of being shallow, he was a very intense and sincere young man, so enthusiastic about his chosen profession that she had no doubt he would eventually make it. To find out she handed him her sketch pad and pencil and told him to draw, and while he continued to talk, and while they put away three beers each (or was it four?) he drew her picture, at her request.
“Make it cartoon style,” she told him, and he nodded and went on talking.
He didn’t let her see the page as he sketched, and he hardly seemed to be looking at her; he seemed to be concentrating on talking to her, telling her of his hopes and dreams and such until she finally began to doubt he was drawing her at all. It certainly had to be a big sketch because he was all over the damn page, and it was a big page at that.
“Here,” he said at last and handed the sketch pad to her.
There was not a single sketch on the page.
There were five.
In one Francine looked remarkably like Daisy Mae of Li’l Abner, though still recognizably Francine. In another she looked like one of those exotic girls Steve Canyon used to run around with before he got married: it was a full-figure pose of Francine in a slinky, low-cut gown, with a flower behind one ear. And in another she had Little Orphan Annie’s big vacant eyes and, as it was another full-figure pose, a couple of things Annie doesn’t have at all. In the fourth sketch Jon had drawn her as underground artist R. Crumb might have, with undersize breasts and exaggerated thighs, truckin’ on down the street. The final sketch was fine-line style, a realistic drawing that showed her how very beautiful the artist must consider her to be.
“Is this your own style, this one here, Jon?”
“I wish it was. That’s in the style of Everett Raymond Kinstler, a portrait painter who worked in the comics in the fifties. He did Zorro. One of the greats, but not as well known as he should be.”
She was sitting, staring at the page. “Jon.”
“Yeah?”
“This is beautiful. It’s wonderful. I mean it. I’m going to frame this, so help me. You’re good, Jon. Terrific.”
“Yeah, well, my problem is all I can do is imitate. I can do everybody’s style, but I don’t have one of my own.”
She leaned across the table and kissed him. On the mouth. It started quick and casual but developed into something slower, longer.
The barman cleared his throat. He was standing by the booth. “Excuse me. I hate to bust up a beautiful romance.”
Jon got a little flushed. “Then don’t.”
“Cool off, kid. Your name Jon?”
“Yes, my name’s Jon. What of it?”
“Jesus, I said cool off. I don’t care if you kiss her, hump her under the table if you want to. Jesus. There’s a phone call for you.”
“Nolan,” Jon said.
“Who?” Francine said.
The barman was gone already.
“My friend,” Jon said.
He got up and came back a minute later.
“He’s got some things to do,” Jon said, “and said if I can hook a ride back to the motel with you, he can go it alone for the time being. What say?”
“Sure.”
“Okay. I’ll go back and tell him.”
Jon did, came back, sat down again.
“Jon?”
“Yeah?”
“Would you like me to take you back to the motel?”
“Yeah. I thought we already agreed to that.”