She was the one. He knew her casually, from school, and two days before he was due to graduate, he asked her for a date. She’d accepted, as he knew she would, and that first date he’d been as sexless as a spayed cat. They’d gone to the movies, and they’d talked, and they’d had hamburgers, and they’d driven around for a while, and then he’d taken her home, being sure to get her home fifteen minutes before the one o’clock deadline her parents had set. Get along with the parents and you’ll get the girl.
The second date had run pretty much like the first, except that they’d parked for a while up at High Point, and necked. He’d kissed her, but he’d kept his hands to himself, and he got her home ahead of schedule again, with a chaste goodnight kiss on her front porch.
The third date, they’d necked at the movies, and she’d responded nicely. By now, he knew a lot about Betty’s Dream Man. He was polite and gentlemanly, but he was also the outdoorsy type, the kind who goes off to the woods and lives in a tent, hunting and fishing, every once in a while. And he was frank, outspoken, and sincere
So that’s the way Vince played it. He necked with her in the theater, and then they went back to High Point again and necked some more, and he could feel her getting excited, and at just the right moment he’d pulled away from her and said, “I think we ought to go for a walk and cool off, Betty. I’m having trouble keeping my hands to myself.” And he’d gotten out of the car before she could answer and walked around to open the door on her side.
Theirs was the only car at High Point that night, and so they had strolled around for a while, hand in hand, looking down at the scattered lights of the town below them. Vince had talked about the cabin his family owned at a lake in the mountains, upstate, and he had played it as outdoorsy as he possibly could. He had also talked about the trouble he was having keeping his hands off her, and he was very honest and sincere — and flattering — about it. By the time they got back into the car, she knew he was her Dream Man, and she knew he wanted her.
He didn’t even have to make the first move. When he kissed her, she reached out and took his hand and laid it against her breast, and whispered, “It’s all right, Vince, it really is.”
Maybe he could have had her that night. He didn’t know. He wasn’t sure, and he hadn’t tried. He had the program set up, and he was following it. That night, he had gotten her blouse open and her bra off. He had touched her breasts — lovely full breasts for a sixteen-year-old, pink-tipped and firm — and kissed them. He had slid his hand up the inside of her leg and touched her with slow, lingering fingers, and she had closed her eyes and sighed, and her hands had been taut on his back.
But he’d stopped. He’d played it sincere and gentlemanly, he’d been the original Square Shooter, and he had shot not. And he even got her home by curfew time. The goodnight kiss on the front porch that night had been combined with two busy hands, and he had left her to go to bed with the hot memory of his left hand on her breast and his right hand up under her skirt.
And tonight was the night the program culminated. Tonight, Vince was going to get himself a certified virgin. Already he had gone farther with her than anyone he knew — and the guys he knew weren’t reticent about their conquests or near-conquests — and tonight he would finish the job. He was leaving for the cabin by the lake soon, and this would be just about the last chance.
Betty had told him that her parents were going to be out tonight, and he’d planned on coming back to the house early. He’d checked the TV listings and found out what movie was going to be on the Midnight Show, and he would have told her how much he had been looking forward to seeing this movie. It was some old World War Two movie about counterspies and Gestapo agents and all that jazz, which he wanted to see like he wanted to fall down a manhole, but he didn’t plan on watching much of it.
Now, there was Mister Baxter out on the front porch, in his undershirt, and there was Mrs. Baxter, sitting across the living room in her flower-print dress and faded apron, and it seemed pretty clear that neither of them was intending to go anywhere at all. Which meant it was going to have to be the backseat of the car, or maybe on a blanket if he could find someplace secluded enough. And he had been looking forward to making his first virgin in her own bed.
And here came the virgin now, down the stairs, her blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, her full breasts jutting out against an electric blue sweater, the center of interest wrapped in a hip-tight gray skirt. Vince got up, smiling at her, and she smiled back, saying something about being sorry for her lateness.
The goodbyes were over with quickly. Mrs. Baxter had said, “Have a good time,” and Betty had answered, “You have a good time, too,” and they had gone out to the porch, where Betty had the exact same exchange with her father, and then they went down to the car, a ’57 Dodge, cream and green, with beige fins. Vince, the perfect gentleman, held the right-hand door open while Betty slid into the seat, clutching her skirt down at her knees. He closed the door once she was settled, and went around to his own side. He glanced back at the house just before getting into the car. Mister Baxter was still sitting on the porch in his undershirt, and Mrs. Baxter was standing in the doorway, her nose not quite touching the screen, her round shape framed by the living room lights behind her. Simultaneously, as though some director off in the bushes on the next-door lawn had given them a signal, they both raised their right hands and waved. Vince waved back, and got into the car.
In that quick glance, he had also noticed again the wooden fire-escape on the side of the house. This was a residential district, all two-story one-family houses, but after a trio of bad fires in houses of this type, a town ordinance had been passed making it compulsory to have an outside stairway in any house where people lived on more than one floor. The wooden fire-escape, Vince had learned after gentle questioning, led to Betty’s bedroom. Since learning that, he had entertained idle daydreams about crawling up that fire escape and spending a few quiet hours in Betty’s bedroom and in Betty’s bed. But that was strictly daydreaming. That wasn’t the way to get her, sneaking through windows at three o’clock in the morning. The way to get her was to make her want to be gotten.
Vince started the car and drove down to the corner, then turned left toward downtown. “I thought your parents were going out tonight,” he said, as casually as he could.
“They are,” she answered.
“Wearing undershirt and apron?”
“Oh, they don’t have to leave the house till nine o’clock. And it’s only a little after seven-thirty now. They’ve got ages.”
“Where they going?”
“A surprise party for my Uncle George up in Votzburg. The party doesn’t start till eleven. My Aunt Edna is keeping him out of the house till then.”
“Votzburg is forty miles away from here,” he said, surprised that Betty’s parents would be going, of their own free will, more than ten feet from the house.
“I know,” she said disinterestedly. She couldn’t care less what her parents did.
Vince calculated rapidly. The party was going to start at eleven o’clock. It would have to run a couple of hours anyway, until around one, maybe two. Betty’s old man would have half a bag on by the time he left the party, and the road from Votzburg was narrow, winding, hilly and two lanes wide. Forty miles of that road, at two or three o’clock in the morning, with half a bag on. They wouldn’t be home before four a.m. at the earliest.
He smiled. “You know,” he said, “I was looking at the paper tonight, at the TV listings.” He forced enthusiasm into his voice. “And do you know what’s playing—?”
They got back to the house at a quarter to twelve. In the movie, he had spent the first half of the double feature with his arm around Betty’s shoulders, occasionally leaning over to kiss her, his free hand clasping hers. The second half, he’d progressed. The arm around her shoulder had drawn in tighter, so the hand dangled down over her breast, just barely brushing the tip of it at first and then gradually touching it more insistently, holding it and stroking it and squeezing it. Their kisses had become longer and fiercer, his tongue searching and probing deeply within her mouth, and her breathing was faster, her eyes bright in the dimness of the movie theater. His other hand had touched her knee, slid under the hem of her skirt, stroked slowly up the inside of her thigh, and she squirmed in the seat, whispering, “Oh. Oh.”