I have absolutely got to stop this, he told himself. Why do I do this to myself all the time? Jeez.
He rose slightly from the bicycle seat to gain better leverage and jammed his thin legs down hard on the pedals, determined to stay close to Roy.
His arms had broken out in gooseflesh.
7
From Ranch Road they turned onto a dirt track that was barely visible in the moonlight. Roy led the way. Over the crown of the first hill, the track became a narrow footpath. A quarter of a mile farther on, the footpath turned north, and they continued west, pushing their bicycles through coarse grass and sandy soil.
Less than a minute after they left the path, Roy’s bike light went out.
Colin stopped at once, heart leaping wildly like a startled rabbit in a cage. “Roy? Where are you? What’s wrong? What’s happened, Roy?”
Roy walked out of the darkness, into the pale fan of light that spread in front of Colin’s bicycle. “We’ve got two more hills to cross before we reach the drive-in. No sense struggling with the bikes any further than this. We’ll leave them here and pick them up on the way back.”
“What if somebody steals them?”
“Who?”
“How should I know? But what if somebody does?”
“An international ring of bicycle thieves with undercover operatives in every town?” Roy shook his head, making no effort to conceal his exasperation. “You worry about more goddamned things than anyone I’ve ever known.”
“If somebody stole them, we’d have to walk all the way home-five or six miles, maybe more.”
“For Christ’s sake, Colin, no one even knows the bikes are here! No one’s going to see them, let alone steal them.”
“Well, what if we come back and can’t find them in the dark?” Colin asked.
Roy grimaced, and he looked not just disgusted but demonic. It was a trick of light; the headlamp’s glow illuminated only the sharp edges of his features, leaving most of his face in darkness, so that he looked distorted, less than human.
“I know this place,” Roy said impatiently. “I come here all the time. Trust me. Now will you come on? We’re missing the movie.”
He turned and walked away.
Colin hesitated until he realized that if he didn’t leave the bike, Roy would leave him. He didn’t want to be alone in the middle of nowhere. He put the bike on its side and switched off the lamp.
The darkness enfolded him. He was suddenly acutely aware of a thousand eerie songs: the incessant croaking of toads. just toads? Perhaps something much more dangerous than that. The many strange voices of the night rose in a screeching chorus.
Fear washed through him like bile spreading from a pierced gut. The muscles in his throat grew tight. He had difficulty swallowing. If Roy had spoken to him, he could not have replied. In spite of the cool breeze, he began to sweat.
You’re no longer a child, he told himself. Don’t act like a baby.
He desperately wanted to bend down and switch on the bike light again, but he didn’t want Roy to discover that he was afraid of the dark. He wanted to be like Roy, and Roy wasn’t afraid of anything.
Fortunately Colin was not entirely blind. The bike light was not terribly powerful, and his eyes adapted quickly to a world without it. Milky moonlight spilled across the rolling land. He could see Roy loping swiftly up the hillside ahead.
Colin tried to move; he couldn’t. His legs seemed to weigh a thousand pounds each.
Something hissed.
Colin tilted his head. Listened.
The hissing again. Louder. Closer.
Something rustled through the grass a few inches from his foot, and Colin bolted. It might have been only a harmless toad, but it gave him the motivation he needed to get moving.
He caught up with Roy, and a few minutes later they reached the slope behind and above the Fairmont. They descended halfway down the hill and sat on the ground, side by side in the dark.
Below them, the parked cars in the bowl of the drive-in pointed westward. The movie screen faced them, and beyond lay the main highway to Santa Leona.
On the giant screen a man and a woman were walking on the beach at sunset. Although there was no speaker on the hillside and therefore no sound, Colin could see from the close-ups that the actors were talking animatedly, and he wished he could read lips.
After a while Colin said, “I’m beginning to think this was a dumb idea-coming all the way out here to see a movie we can’t even hear.”
“You don’t need to hear this one,” Roy said.
“If we can’t hear it, how can we follow the plot?”
“People don’t go to the Fairmont for plot. All they want to see here is tits and ass.”
Colin gaped at Roy. “What are you talking about?”
“The Fairmont’s got a good location. No houses nearby. You can’t see the screen from the highway. So they play soft-core porn.”
“They play what?” Colin asked.
“Soft-core pom. Don’t you know what that is?”
“No.”
“You got a lot to learn, good buddy. Fortunately, you have a good teacher. Namely, me. It’s pornography. Dirty movies.”
“Y-you mean we’re going to see people… doing it?”
Roy grinned. His teeth and eyes caught the moonlight. “That’s what we’d see if this was hard-core,” Roy said. “But it’s only soft stuff.”
“Oh,” Colin said. He didn’t have the slightest idea what Roy meant.
“So all we get to see,” Roy explained, “is naked people pretending to do it.”
“They’re… really naked?”
“Sure.”
“Not completely naked.”
“Completely.”
“Not the girls.”
“Especially the girls,” Roy said. “Pay attention to the movie, dummy.”
Colin looked at the screen, afraid of what he might see.
The couple on the beach was kissing. Then the man stepped back, and the woman smiled, and she caressed herself, teasing him, and then she reached behind her back and unhooked the bikini top she was wearing and let it slide slowly down her arms, and suddenly her bare breasts bobbled into view, large and firm and upswept, jiggling deliciously, and the man touched them-
“Yeah, get her. Get her good,” Roy said.
— and the man stroked the breasts, squeezed them, and the woman closed her eyes and seemed to be sighing, and the man gently thumbed the swollen nipples.
Colin had never been so embarrassed in his life.
“What a set she’s got,” Roy said enthusiastically.
Colin wished he were somewhere else. Anywhere else. Even back with the bicycles, in the dark, alone.
“Doesn’t she have a terrific set?”
Colin wanted to crawl into a hole and hide.
“You like that set?”
Colin couldn’t speak.
“Like to suck on those?”
He wished Roy would shut up.
On the screen, the man bent down and sucked on the woman’s breasts.
“Like to smother yourself in those?”
Although the movie both shocked and embarrassed Colin, he couldn’t look away from it.
“Colin? Hey, Colin!”
“Huh?”
“What do you think?”
“Of what?”
“Her set.”
On the screen the man and the woman were running up the beach toward a grassy spot where they could lie down. Her breasts bounced and swung.
“Colin? You forget how to talk?”
“Why do you want to talk about it?”
“It’s more fun if we do. We don’t have any sound up here, so we can’t hear them talking about it.”
The couple had stretched out on the grass, and the man was kissing her breasts again.
“You like her knockers?”
“Jesus, Roy.”