It was Marilyn Lefleur.
Chapter 28: Dueling
Friday, February 8, 1974
It had taken me five years, three months, and three days to get to this point. Everything I had done since I had recycled was aimed at being here, at this point in my life. Nothing else was important. Nothing else mattered. No matter what had changed in my life, I knew one thing. I had met Marilyn Lefleur at the first party spring semester our freshmen year at a Kegs party at RPI. That was a constant. Up until that point, we had never had any contact, not even in the slightest. She came to the party, we met, we fell in love, end of story.
Everything I had done in the last five years was done with the sole purpose of maximizing my chances of being at this party and meeting her again. I had come back to RPI to be here. I had joined ROTC, and had hung around the pool hall, all so that the Kegs brothers would notice me and invite me over (I had originally been found playing pool.) I had kissed every ass possible so that they would invite me to join, just so I could be here, tonight, at this party. No matter what the price would be, I had decided to pay it. If that meant leaving my family or joining the Army, so be it. I had to be here, tonight, in the formal room, to meet Marilyn. Nothing else mattered.
I just stared at her. She was so beautiful to me as to take my breath away. Okay, to be absolutely fair about it, Marilyn wasn’t, and had never been the most beautiful girl on the planet, not in any objective sense. Jeana, for instance, was probably the most beautiful girl I had ever seen, and if she had been half a foot taller would have been a shoo-in for any number of fashion or men’s magazines. Marilyn was never quite in that league.
That’s not to say she wasn’t good looking. She was. I remember clearly once when Maggie was looking through some old pictures of us and she said, in the most delightfully tactless way, “Wow, Mom, you used to be hot!” While I tried to keep from laughing, Marilyn looked daggers at Maggie and asked me if she was allowed to kill her. Of course, the best response was when I told Marilyn she was still hot, but now it came in flashes. That got her laughing so hard she snorted milk out her nose!
At 18, Marilyn was definitely hot! She wasn’t all that tall, maybe 5’4", with a nicely curvy build, large B or small C cup, and a wickedly round and interesting rear. She had a round face, with a perky upturned ski lift sort of nose, big brown eyes, and masses of curly chocolate brown hair that fell in ringlets past her shoulders. She was dressed in jeans so tight it made you want to watch her ass and cry, a tight red and white gingham shirt, and really ugly flat shoes.
She was standing there, looking at me, with a shy smile on her face, watching me as I stood there stupidly, my jaw dropping, with a plastic cup of punch in one hand and a ladle in the other. I just stood there and stared at her. I had just spent over five years devoting myself to this moment, and I couldn’t even speak. She was actually here!
She looked at me, and then looked at the cup of punch in my hand, and then glanced over at Marty, before looking back at me. The next thing I knew, Marty slapped me from behind my head. “Wake up, dopey!”
That woke me up. I snapped out of it, and looked at him and then turned back to Marilyn, still standing there. It was time to speak. “Huh?”
Marty muttered under his breath. Marilyn said, “Can I have some of that punch?”
“It’s a mai tai,” I replied.
“Okay, can I have some mai tai?”
Marty smacked me again. “Carl, you are beyond hopeless. Give the lady a drink, and then go around the table and talk to her. You’re acting like you’ve never seen a girl before! Jeesh!”
I must have turned about three shades of purple as I blushed, and Marilyn laughed loudly. I grinned and shook my head. I handed her the cup of mai tai, and said, “You are absolutely right!” I poured myself a drink, and before Marilyn could escape, I was around the table at her side. “I really want to apologize. I’m normally not like that, but you are just so pretty, you took my breath away!” It was Marilyn’s turn to blush. She wasn’t wearing any makeup other than some light lip gloss, but that was always her style. “I have to ask. Who are you?”
She blushed again, and smiled. “I’m Marilyn. Marilyn Lefleur. Who are you?”
I just couldn’t help myself. I gave her a big shit-eating grin and said, “Oh, darling, I am your Daddy’s worst nightmare!”
She started at that, and then burst out laughing. “Oh really!? That’s pretty big talk from a guy who couldn’t even say hello a minute ago!”
I gave her a sheepish smile and shrugged. “It’s like I said, you took my breath away.”
“So who are you really, and what makes you my father’s worst nightmare?” she asked, smiling.
“Well, I’m Carl, Carl Buckman, and as for your father, well, I can guarantee that no father alive wants a boy, any boy, looking at his little girl like I’m looking at you!”
“And just how are you looking at me?” she asked teasingly.
“Not like a little girl!”
“That’s still awfully big talk for a guy who was about to drool into the punch bowl!”
“Speaking of which…” I set my cup down and took hers from her hand, and then refilled it from the punch bowl. Then I grabbed my cup and took her free hand in mine. “Let’s go downstairs. Do you dance?” I didn’t give her a chance to answer, but simply tugged lightly and she followed me, laughing at me the entire way.
Once down in the basement, we drained our mai tais and started dancing together. It was mostly classic Seventies rock and roll, the good stuff, with some Southern rock thrown in, which I always enjoyed. When Jerry Masters, a senior and our DJ, switched to Stairway To Heaven, Marilyn didn’t even hesitate when I took her in my arms and held her against me. She simply sighed and laid her head against my chest as we swayed in time to the music. At the end of the song I held onto her and lowered my face to hers. It was a first kiss, all over again, and went just fine!
38 Special came on next, and we started dancing faster, and then Mike Ghormley, a sophomore, came up and tried to cut in. He was a little guy, maybe a couple inches shorter than me and twenty pounds lighter, and he was already drunk off his ass. “I’m cutting in!” he announced.
I stared at him in amusement, although Marilyn looked nervous. “Ghormley, you’re drunk!”
“But I want to dance!”
It was all I could do not to laugh in his face. I just smiled at Marilyn. “Do you want to dance with him?”
“I want to dance with you!” she laughed back.
“Sorry, Ghormley.” We pulled away from him and finished the dance. By the time the song ended I was sweating and not just because the basement was like a furnace. “I think I need some air.”
“Good idea!” she said with a nod. She led the way, holding my hand, and dragged me up the stairs. By now the front doors to the porch were wide open, letting the cold February air into the house and cooling things off. We went back into the formal room, and I moved to get Marilyn another mai tai.
Who would already be standing at the table but Mike Ghormley? As soon as he saw us, his face lit up. “Now we can dance!” he announced.
I looked over at Marty Adrianopolis, still on duty behind the bar. “How many of these has he had?”
He grinned back. “More than enough.”
“Mike, the lady doesn’t want to dance with you,” I said.
He gave me the drunk-and-puzzled look. Mike was a nice enough guy when he was sober, but he had a major superiority problem. As a sophomore, he was automatically superior to all freshmen, and therefore could order them around. I remembered that this went right on through college; as a junior he would boss around the sophomores and freshmen, as a senior, juniors would be added to the list. We generally ignored him when he was drinking. “But I want to dance with her!”