“Neither do I.”
“So if you don’t want to, just say so.” Her teeth attacked her lower lip. “Whatever you say.”
“I live upstairs of Bruno’s Barbershop. On the next block.”
“I know where it is.”
“There’s no door to my room. It got broken and I had to take it off, but there’s nobody else in the place at night so it doesn’t matter if there’s a door or not.”
“How did the door get broken?”
“A guy kicked it in. If you don’t mind about there not being a door—”
“Well, it wouldn’t matter if we’re the only ones in the building, would it?”
“No.”
“So,” she said.
I took hold of her hand. It felt much smaller in mine than you would have expected. We walked to the corner, turned, went to my place, and climbed the stairs. I put a light on and apologized for the mess. She said it didn’t matter. She said it looked romantic, with the slanting roof and the exposed rafters. “Like a garret,” she said. “You’ll be a great but unknown artist dying of tuberculosis and I’ll be your mistress and model, and you’ll get drunk and cough and spit blood and beat me.”
I kissed her. She kissed in the same fresh open way she talked, holding nothing back. We stood there kissing for a long time.
Then she took her sweatshirt off and turned around so that I could unhook her bra for her. She kicked off her sandals and stepped out of her dungarees and threw all her clothes in the corner. She stood watching eagerly as I got my clothes off and tossed them after hers. She put out her hand and touched me, and we floated down onto the bed like falling leaves.
“Oh, wow,” she said. She burrowed close to me, her head tucked under my arm. “That was—”
“Uh-huh.”
“Like unbelievable.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s never been this good for me before.” She rolled over on her back and folded her hands together just below her breasts. I looked at her. She said, “I wish they were bigger.”
“They’re beautiful.”
“Tiny.”
“So?”
“So I can never be an actress in Italian movies.”
“I can’t play basketball.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing important.”
She sat up, looked down at me. “That’s the cutest thing,” she said.
“I’m sort of attached to it.”
“So am I, but in another way. It’s so beautiful. Do you think it would get all embarrassed if I gave it a kiss?”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
She curled into a ball and nestled her head in my lap. Her hair was clean and silky all over my legs.
“Close your eyes,” she said.
I closed them, but then I cheated and opened them again. It was so beautiful to watch her. She had her eyes shut and her face glowed with contentment. She looked like a baby nursing.
She stopped to say, “What a funny taste!”
“That’s you.”
“It is? I guess it must be. Funny.”
She came up for air again to say, “It must like me. Look how big it got.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I really groove on sucking you. Is that terribly perverted of me?”
“Only of you don’t do anything else.”
“What else should I do?”
I stretched her out on her back and showed her.
Later on she was dozing lightly. I put my hand on her arm and her eyes opened.
“I don’t want to scare you or anything, Hallie, but did I hurt you before?”
“I don’t think so. Why?”
“Well, look.” I pointed to the stain. “That must have come from one of us, and I wouldn’t say anything, but if I did hurt you or anything—”
“Oh,” she said.
“I just thought—”
“I guess I bled a little. I didn’t realize.”
“Is that common? I mean, oh, do you usually?”
She turned away. “Well, see—”
“What?”
“I should have told you, I guess. But we had such a good thing going and I didn’t want anything to get in the way.” Her eyes met mine. “I’m a virgin. I mean I was. Until just now. Chip? What’s so funny?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why are you laughing?”
“It’s not important.” I put my hands on her. “Look, when do you have to get up in the morning? What I’m getting at is how much longer can you stay?”
“I should have been asleep hours ago.”
“Oh.”
“But there’s time, Chip, if that’s what you meant. In fact, you don’t even have to hurry. There’s plenty of time, actually.”
Epilogue
I already told you that i like epilogues, and knowing what happened to the characters after the story ended. Actually there isn’t too much I can put in this particular epilogue because not that much time has passed since then. And the only character I know what happened to is me, and I’m still in the same room over the same barbershop. I’ve got a new door, but otherwise things are about the same.
But I figured this is probably the only book I’ll ever write, so when else am I ever going to get a chance to write an epilogue?
Hallie went home, and the next morning she left for college. She said she would drop a card with her address on it, and if I was ever in Wisconsin I could look her up. I haven’t gotten the card yet.
Mr. Bruno replaced my door. I guess I already told you about that, though. And he didn’t exactly ask about the bullet hole in his ceiling. “You a gooda boy,” he said at one point, as if willing himself to believe it. “You donta shoot anybody, and anybody donta shoota you.” He seemed vaguely frightened of me after that.
The car wash closed for the winter. This happened almost immediately, and when they told me, I had the crazy feeling that they were closing the car wash because Hallie had gone to college. In a way it was sort of like that. More people get their cars washed in the summer than in the winter anyway, and this is especially true in this particular city, where there are all sorts of people up for the summer from New York City. So when the summer is over and college kids go back to school and summer people go back to the city, there’s not enough business to support the car wash. I was out of a job, but since it wasn’t one with an Outstanding Opportunity For Advancement, I wasn’t what you might call shattered.
Then I happened to get to talking with Mr. Burger. I was lying around my room, reading a book and wondering where I would go next, and what would I do when I got there, when old Bruno came tearing up the stairs to tell me that one of his customers had a flat tire. “You change it, he givea you money,” he said.
I changed it and he gavea me a dollar. The car was a Lincoln Continental Mark HI. Not that it’s any more work changing the tire on an expensive car, but if it had been, say, a beatup ’51 Ford, then I might not have been exactly staggered by getting a lousy dollar for changing it. I still don’t think I would have been overwhelmed, though.
“Gee,” I said, “thanks very much. Now I can go get a hamburger and maybe some french fries. Man, I can hardly wait.”
“Sounds as though you haven’t eaten in a long time,” Mr. Burger said.
He missed the point, but I went along with it. “I’m out of work,” I said, “but through no fault of my own. The position was temporary and the work seasonal.”
“The car wash,” he said, snapping his fingers. “You were the kid who wiped the windows on the passenger’s side.”
“I remember your car now. You brought it in every Friday night.”
“As soon as I got up from the city. That’s right.” He offered me a cigarette. I took it even though I don’t smoke, and told him that if it was all right with him I would save it and smoke it later, after my meal. He gave me a funny look, then said sure, he didn’t care, and lit his own cigarette. “So you’re out of work,” he said. “Tough break, all right. I wish I could help you out, but I’m afraid I’m not in the car wash business myself.”