“Who’s Walsh?” she said.
“The guy you were necking with on the couch.”
“No connection,” she said, and shrugged, and sipped some more beer.
“Did he bring you?”
“No.”
“Who did?”
“I came alone. Michael invited me, so I came.”
“How old are you?”
“How old do I look?” she asked.
“Fifteen.”
“Oh, come on, I’ll be eighteen in April.”
“Marge what? Did you say Marge?”
“Yes.”
“Marge what?”
“Marge Penner.”
“Wanna buy a duck?”
“No relation.”
“I’ll bet you hear that a lot, though.”
“No, this is only the ten thousandth time,” she said.
“I get the same thing,” I said. “My last name’s Tyler. Everybody always wants to know if I‘m related to the President.”
“To Roosevelt? I don’t get it.”
“No, to Tyler. John Tyler. He was the tenth president. Of the United States.”
“Oh,” she said. “Are you?”
“No, no. You want to dance?”
“Sure.”
“What about Walsh?”
“What about him?”
“Won’t he mind?”
“Who cares what he minds?”
“Not me, that’s for sure,” I said, and we went into the other room. Walsh was still on the couch. I gave him my John Wayne look, and then took the girl into my arms.
“Where do you live?” I whispered in her ear.
“On Halsted.”
“Halsted and where?”
“Halsted and Sixty-first.”
“Near the university?”
“Yes.”
“That’s very nice there.”
“Yes, it’s beautiful. You dance awfully close, do you know that?”
“So do you.”
“That’s only because you’re holding me so tight.”
“Do you mind?”
“Well... no. But don’t get the wrong idea.”
“What’s the wrong idea?”
“You know,” she whispered.
“No, I don’t.”
“Well, you just figure it out.”
“I’ll try.”
“Yes, do try,” she said.
Walsh was still watching us. There was only one other couple in the room and they were standing near the record player. Walsh glanced at them as though seeking their sympathy, but they were chattering about the poster hanging over the phonograph, a huge cartoon showing Hitler saying, “It is goot to hear Americans are now pudding 10 % of der pay into Bunds!” and Goebbels whispering to a glum Goering, “Hermann, you tell him it iss BONDS — not BUNDS!” Neither of them even noticed Walsh’s imploring look, and he seemed to take their indifference as a personal affront.
“How old are you?” the girl asked me.
“I’ll be eighteen in June. I may join the Air Force,” I said. “I want to fly. I want to be a fighter pilot.”
“Seems like everybody interesting is either already drafted or about to be,” the girl said.
“Oh? You think I’m interesting?”
“You’re okay,” she said indifferently.
Walsh came up off the couch in that moment, apparently having made his big decision. He walked directly to where we were dancing, and politely tapped me on the shoulder. I looked at his hand, and I said, “Sorry, no cutting in.”
“Who says so?” Walsh asked.
“Me.”
“Look, Tyler...”
“Yes, Walsh?”
“What’s the idea?”
“What’s the big idea,” I said. “You’re supposed to say ‘What’s the big idea?”’
“All right, what’s the big idea?” Walsh said.
“The idea is no cutting in,” I said. “That’s also the big idea.”
“Look, Tyler...”
“Yes, Walsh?”
“You know, Tyler...”
“Yes, Walsh?”
Walsh stood looking into my face, pained. I figured he didn’t know whether to press the issue or to retreat gracefully. He knew I could take him, but he also knew there were several close friends of his at the party, and yet he further knew I could take them, too. Besides, he knew I’d had a few beers, and he knew I could be terribly dangerous when I was John Wayne, but at the same time he wanted this girl, probably because he’d had such a promising beginning with her, his hand only having been removed from the hem of her skirt some sixty-four times in the length of a half-hour. So he stood in the center of the room, not wanting to walk away from a light, and yet hoping he would not have to fight. Realizing all this, I refused to make things easier for him. Instead of dancing the girl away and allowing Walsh to save face, I kept circling in the same spot, waiting for him to make his move.
“Aw, go fuck yourself,” he finally said cleverly, and went out into the kitchen.
“Nice fellow,” I said, and smiled.
“Charming.”
“You still want to dance?”
“What else is there to do?”
“I thought we’d explore the house a little.”
“What’s there to explore?”
“Well, the thing about exploration is you never know what you’ll be exploring until you start.”
“I’ve got a pretty good idea what we’ll be exploring,” the girl said. “Well, don’t be too sure.”
“Maybe we ought to keep dancing.”
“Sure, whatever you say.”
“Anyway, it seems as if too many people are already out exploring.”
“Oh, there’re always new worlds,” I said.
“What time is it?”
“Eleven-thirty.”
“At midnight, you know...”
“Sure, we’ll be back. What do you say?”
“Why not?”
I took her hand. I deliberately avoided going through the kitchen to the bedrooms at the back of the house, not wanting an encounter with Walsh, not now. Instead, I led her through the entryway and up a flight of steps to the second floor. A boy and a girl were necking in the hallway. They broke apart as we went by, and then began kissing again almost immediately. I had practically grown up with Michael Mallory, could in fact remember the time he had wet his pants in the first grade of the Norwood Park elementary school on West Pratt Avenue, and I knew of course that his bedroom was around the turn at the far end of the hall, out of sight, heh heh, unbeknownst except to people like myself who had been in and out of this house for the better part of ten years. I tiptoed down the hall and hoped that Michael himself wasn’t using the bedroom, because that would have been possibly the most depressing thing that could happen on this otherwise totally depressing night.
“Where are we going?” the girl whispered.
“Exploring,” I whispered back.
I tried the doorknob, and gently eased the door open. Wherever Michael was, he was not in his own bedroom. I led the girl inside, and locked the door behind me. When I turned, she was walking toward the bed, and I watched the black dress tighten across her ass as she moved in the semi-darkness, something about her deliberate walk as suddenly provocative as the whisper of a streetwalker on West Madison. The outside porch light was on, and it threw enough illumination into the room so that I could make out a framed picture of Michael on the table near the bed. He was smiling, his cherubic face retouched free of acne, his curly hair sitting on his head like a pile of wood shavings. The girl sat on the edge of the bed and crossed her legs. My heart was suddenly pounding. I looked at my watch. It was twenty minutes to twelve. I didn’t want to forget to call my father. “Western Union calling,” I would say.