We went buzzing along in this big Buick that was like riding on the damn air, it took the bumps in the crummy street so easy, and Marsha said, “Sorry I was so long picking you up, Skimmer, but Dad always has to go through this deadly routine of giving me simply hours of instructions when I take the car out, and it’s just too sickening for words.” and I said, “I was just fooling around killing time anyhow. Would you like to go over to Tompkins’ for something?” and she said, “No, I don’t think I’d better go to Tompkins’, because I’m supposed to be over at Marion’s, and if I went to Tompkins’, Dad would be sure to hear of it. Honestly, I think that man has paid spies or something, and besides I only have the car for an hour, instead of two hours like I thought, and I know we can find something better to do than sit around in Tompkins’ with a lot of juveniles. Honestly, Skimmer, don’t you sometimes find them just too juvenile?”
I said I sure as hell did, and by that time we’d got out to the edge of town, not on a highway but on a little farm-to-market road, and she said, “What are you sitting way over on that side of the seat for, Skimmer?” Well, I may be a little slow on the uptake sometimes, but I don’t have to be kicked in the teeth before I get the God-damn point, so I eased across the seat until I was right up against her, and she said, “You wouldn’t bother me if you put your arm around me,” so I did.
We kept on going out the gravel road until we got to the river, and we kept talking about how she’d missed me, and I’d missed her, and how the past week had been longer than a damn year, and how strange it was how something had just gone bang like a God-damn bomb the minute we first looked at each other, and when we got to the river she turned off at the end of the bridge onto another little road that went along the bank down past some cabins. Pretty soon we came to one that was bigger than the rest, set in under some trees, and she stopped the Buick beside the cabin and said, “This is the old man’s shack, in case you’re interested. He comes out here fishing in the summers, and sometimes he brings his friends out here when they want to have a brawl that might corrupt their dear children if they had it at home. Isn’t it just too disgusting how transparent fathers are?” I said sure, fathers were for the book, and I could have backed that up with some stories about my old man that would probably have made her think hers was practically a plaster saint or something, but I didn’t and she slipped out of the seat on her side and said, “Let’s walk down and look at the river.”
We walked down to the bank and looked at the river going past, and she said, “There’s something about a river that makes you feel kind of sad, isn’t there?” and I said it made me feel that way too, which was a lie, and to tell the truth, it wasn’t much of a river, and just a lot of God-damn muddy water as far as I could see. We kissed once while we were standing there, but it was too damn cold with the wind blowing at us across the river, and so we went back to the Buick and really got started. Man, we really wallowed all over the lousy seat, and I won’t tell you what all we did, any details or anything like that, but it’ll give you an idea when you hear what she finally said. She laughed this little laugh and said, “Tough luck, Skimmer. I’m in the saddle.”
To tell the truth, it sort of got me for a minute, hearing her come right out with it like that, just as cool as a Goddamn cucumber, because girls usually act like it was a stinking crime or something and will go all out to keep a guy from finding out anything like that ever happens, and once I razzed old Mopsy about it a little, and she got all colors and began to bawl like I’d accused her of being queer at least. Anyhow, that put a ceiling on us, but we kept fooling around a long time under the ceiling, and she kept whispering things to me like how cute I was, and rugged, and sort of tough-like and different from all the other guys she knew, and then she sat up all of a sudden and looked at her wrist watch and said, “Oh, my God, my hour’s up, and we haven’t even started home. My father will simply be livid.”
Well, she took the Buick back up that gravel road like a bat out of hell, and I thought more than once that she was going to smash the damn thing up and kill us both, but to tell the truth, I didn’t much give a damn. When we got back to town, she asked me where I wanted her to drop me, and I remembered that I still had old Bugs’s dollar to spend, so I said, “Oh, just drop me off uptown somewhere. I think I’ll loaf around a little.” She let me off right in front of her old man’s bank, which seemed sort of ironic or some damn thing like that, and just before she pulled away she turned and said as if it was just something she happened to remember at the last second, “Oh, by the way, Skimmer, a bunch of us are having a little party at the Club after the game Saturday night, and I wondered if you’d like to go with me.”
“What club?” I said, not that it made any difference, because I intended to go, whatever damn club it was, and she looked surprised and said, “Why, the Country Club, of course,” like what the hell other club is there?
“Oh, sure, the Country Club,” I said. “I thought maybe you meant some kind of special club or something. Anyhow, I’d be glad to go.”
She said swell, and she’d meet me outside the locker room after the game, and then she drove away, and I wanted some cigarettes, so I walked down to Dummke’s to get them. Old Gravy was sitting on a high stool behind the counter reading the Sunday funny papers, and he looked up at me when I came in and said, “Well, well, if it isn’t the God-damn hero. Getting his name on the sports page and everything.”
I said, “Just cut the crap and give me a pack of gaspers,” and he looked shocked as hell and made a big red O with his stinking mouth and said, “Don’t tell me a big athlete like you smokes cigarettes,” and I said, “Ha, ha, you think you’re pretty God-damn funny, don’t you?”
Usually you could needle the greasy bastard into blowing his lid right away, but this time he didn’t get mad at all, but just laughed and tossed the gaspers across the counter and said, “You know, that basketball racket’s got possibilities. You get good enough, you might be able to make a big thing out of it for yourself.”
I thought about old Marsha and me in the front seat of the Buick, and I said, “Maybe I’ve already made a big thing out of it,” and his little eyes got all narrow and still all of a sudden, and he said, “What the hell you mean?” and I said, “That’s none of your damn business.”
Then he laughed again and gave me the change from Bugs’s dollar and said, “Well, I read in the sports page how you made thirty points your first game and twenty-six your second game, so you must be pretty good. After you get a little sharper, you come around and see me, and maybe I can do a good thing for you, and you can do a good thing for me at the same time,” and I said, “I wouldn’t put you out if you were on fire,” and went out.
I still had seventy-seven cents to spend, and I thought about going around to Beegie’s again, but I decided not to go because there was a chance of running into old Bugs there, and besides, to tell the truth, I didn’t get much of a bang out of Beegie’s any more, so what I did was go to a diner for a hamburger and bottle of coke and then to a movie. It was a corny movie, and this doll who was supposed to be such hot stuff wasn’t half as good as Marsha, and Marsha had got more done in the front seat of the Buick for free than this one did in a dozen fancy joints with rich guys all over the place offering her diamonds and fur coats and all kinds of stuff for it. After the movie I went home and started thinking about how I could get hold of some dough for the party Saturday night, because you’d sure as hell have to have a pocketful to go to the damn County Club, and I had exactly seven cents left out of Bugs’s crummy dollar.