“Don’t you want to kiss me?” she asked.
“What?” I mumbled, like I hadn’t been thinking about it all along.
“Don’t you want to kiss me? I mean, I think you woulda walked away if you didn’t wanna kiss me now.”
We kissed. The kiss tasted like summer and spring. It was by far a beautiful kiss because we didn’t stop kissing for a long time. She reached her hand against the back of my sweaty neck, the smell of her hair swimming all around my head, her lips soft against mine, my eyes closed because that’s the way I like to kiss, our noses kind of rubbing against one another. I touched her pink-blue dress, feeling her tongue in my mouth, I touched her side as she bit my bottom lip and pulled away, disappearing back into the diner before I could say another sweet word.
I ran home to the hotel smiling and jumping like a loon, because I could still smell her hair and her mouth had felt good and there was nothing to make a fool feel better than something beautiful like lust. I went home and showered and changed and ate what Old Lady St. Francis had left on the stove for me, chipped beef and some ungodly vegetables that stunk of earthly decay. Then I ran back down the streets toward the dim white lights of the Starlite Diner, trying to keep myself from sweating, trying to keep myself from smiling like some sort of madman. I peeked in the diner through a side window and smiled. Charlene was bent over a cooler of some kind, pulling out a cold cherry pie. Her skirt kind of crept up her legs to her rear, and I saw where her nude nylons ended and her real skin began. Nice all right. There was a thin, peach-colored line of flesh that moved beneath her dress, just above her nylons. I smiled, shaking my head, and then rubbed my eyes. I waited outside by some parked cars. I laid my head down on the curb between a big gray Ford and a little red Chevy and stared up at the cool blue night sky until Charlene finally came out in her little pink-blue dress. I had been looking right up at the Big Dipper or Little Dipper or maybe not even a dipper at all, and when I looked up and saw her standing over me smiling, her face was all lit with the stars.
“Cute.” She grinned, pulling me to my feet. “Let’s go.”
This was the first time I noticed it, but she was taller than me. I felt myself sink. This girl was goddamn taller than me. She must have been thinking the same thing, because she kind of smiled and squinted her eyes and looked at me, then backed away.
“I didn’t think you were short.” She smiled.
“What?”
“I didn’t know hoods were so short.”
“That’s nice. Maybe you’re just a tall kinda goonie,” I murmured like my feelings were hurt. They weren’t hurt, but that’s something you have to do when you’re really thinking about kissing a tall pretty girl.
“Maybe you’re just a hog boy.” She smiled, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “A hoodlum with a hog’s face.”
“Listen, maybe this was a mistake …” I mumbled. My mouth began to form another word, but she kissed me before I could say it “Let’s go.” Charlene smiled. She dug into the wide white pocket of her dress and pulled out her car keys, then dangled them from her long white finger.
“Where we going?”
“You’ll see,” she giggled. This was nice. This was all I wanted. Something nice like this. She unlocked the door to a big blue Ford and hopped in the driver’s seat, then leaned over and pulled up the tiny silver lock, and started the car.
“My mom said she came in and got gas from you and you didn’t say hello.” Charlene smiled, pulling the car away. I thought about Mrs. Dulaire. She had come in to get gas, but I had pretended not to remember her in any way.
This Mrs. Dulaire was definitely a crazy. She always carried this poodle under her arm wherever she went. It was this little gray yipping thing that would snarl and hiss and bark from the folds of Mrs. Dulaire’s weighty arms, like a kind of animate little detached head.
“Did your mother say something to me?” I asked.
“No.” She smiled. I liked the way Charlene drove. Her eyes were real wide. Her hands were tight at ten and two on the steering wheel, like she had just learned how to drive. Real attentive.
“How come she didn’t say hello to me then?” I asked, with a big dumb smile. “What type of woman wouldn’t say hello to the poor gas attendant on duty?”
“She thinks you’re a hood, too.” Charlene flashed me her smile. “That’s what they call you. A hood.”
“Do you think I give a shit what your crazy mother thinks of me?” I blurted out. That was the problem with me. Something might sure sound funny in my head, but then after I said it, I realized it really sounded bad. Charlene kind of shrunk up, shaking her head a little, her eyes got a little dull then shiny, then she acted like I wasn’t even there.
“Do you think that’s funny or something?” she shot out suddenly. “Because it isn’t. I remember your family. Your family isn’t great or anything.”
I kind of smiled because I was the first one to admit that, but it sounded like a kid thing to say. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, staring out the side window.
I had no idea where we were going. We were going somewhere, though, I could tell, Charlene was definitely driving somewhere. Then I thought maybe the whole thing was a bad idea, about her mother the crazy poodle lady and all. If anything did happen between us, I’d have to say hello to her mother every time she came in, not just say hello, but be a real polite bastard, like it didn’t hurt me to sit there and talk to her and know she knows I’m making her daughter. The whole thing suddenly looked like a bad idea.
“I heard you ran into Earl.” Charlene frowned. Her eyes flashed all silver and brown.
“How’s that?”
“He came in and told me. Said he was the one that busted up your face. I’m awful sorry about that. I thought he’d be a little more mature about the whole thing. You can see why I decided to break it off.” Charlene nodded to herself, biting her bottom lip. “Well, I’m sorry about it anyway.”
“Not as sorry as me.” I smiled. Charlene smiled back. I felt like we had been dating all our lives.
“Where we headed anyway?” I asked.
“Here,” she whispered, pulling the car over to the curb. She switched off the lights and lifted her finger to her mouth. “Be quiet, though,” she sighed. I shrugged my shoulders and opened the car door. There was the Boneyard River, stretched out all dark and blue and mumbling quietly to itself. There were some weeping willows and tall green grass wavering like words in the river’s breath.
“What are we doing here?” I asked.
“Shh.” She smiled and grabbed my hand. There was something I liked about that, her grabbing my hand all the time. Charlene led me down the side of the bank to where the cold dark water rose against the muddy earth. There were cattails and sticker-bushes and tiger lilies growing there, moving gently in time to the movement the river made as it muttered along.
“Take off your clothes,” she whispered.
I froze where I was. Charlene unzipped her blue-pink dress. I didn’t know what to think. I began to unbuckle my pants. She slipped off her shoes and dropped the dress at her feet. Her bare white skin shone and glimmered, moving under a dull white bra and panties that cut across the top of her legs. She slipped into the dark river, shivering, then covered her chest, bobbing up and down, giggling to herself.
I had no idea what the hell to think. I was afraid my goddamn erection was about to burst from my drawers, but I tore off my pants anyway, dropped them down around my ankles, but then remembered I had forgotten to take off my shoes. I jerked my pants back up and tore them off. I stepped out of my pants and yanked my shirt off and jumped into the river, making a big splash.
“Shh!!” She smiled, splashing some water at me. The water was freezing, but it smelled nice, nice and clean and pungent like dirt. There was no sound. Nothing. There were tiny white bugs that fluttered all over the place, tiny white and yellow gnats and bugs that flew in wide white circles. I moved in front of Charlene. Her dark brown hair hung all wet over her smooth white shoulders, as all the white bugs circled like thin halos over her head. I stared into her eyes and couldn’t think a single thing except how perfect they were. I felt like I might just suddenly drift straight downstream. I felt light and weak and hollow as a twig. I moved right up to her and started kissing her and held her close right in the water, and she kissed me back, holding me around the neck. Her lips were broad and flat and broad and soft and broad. Her mouth never stopped moving. I felt my teeth chattering, but I didn’t care. She kissed me hard on the mouth once more, then pulled herself out of the water and walked up the bank quietly. I liked the way she moved. Real slow and careful, like she always knew I was looking at her.
“This way.” She wrung her curly brown hair out over the water, squeezed it and a thousand tiny drops of water flashed back down. She picked up her dress and purse and shoes, then turned and walked along the dark green bank to an old gray boathouse that rose like an assembly of fallen trees a few yards away. She motioned to me. I pulled myself out of the water. My heart was pounding like a madman. I stumbled over a soft gray log. Charlene shook her head and opened the sliding door. She walked inside and then sat down in an old gray rowboat, rocking it a little as she moved. There were thousands of shiny silver cobwebs stretching out overhead, trembling with tiny beads of water in their threads. There was a wave of humidity that covered everything, pulling us close. I shut the sliding door.
Charlene threw her arms around my head, pulling me on top, kissing me some more. Her hair was warm against my face. The old rowboat rocked as I ran my hand along her side, down her back. I touched her bare legs and slipped my hand along the back of thighs. Her lips moved all over my face and neck, her hand slipped over my shoulder, up my chest, then down. She slipped her fingers under my drawers, then slowly, slowly, she slid my boxers down a little. I wasn’t even breathing.
My hand climbed up to her behind, then her breast. My other hand moved down and over her wet white panties, down, then over and up, between her thighs.
“OK, wait,” she murmured.
I felt my chest become hard.
She sat up and slipped open her black purse and pulled out a condom wrapped in silver foil, and placed it in my hand.
My god.
We did it, right there, in that old boathouse, as if we had done it all the time together before. We laid on top of each other, together in this old rowboat, moving slowly, then fast, then not at all. This girl was as sweaty as me, and I liked that. Her face and forehead, her hands, her mouth was hot against mine and a little stale. I could make out a tiny red mark along her hairline and a tiny blemish beside her lip, but none of that … mattered to me. We laid there staring at each other, not saying a word, lit up by the low moonlight through the slots in the roof, holding each other tight against the old soft wood. The stars moved gently overhead, slipping past quietly, shining down in her eyes. It was the closest I had felt to anything in a long time. I felt like I wasn’t drifting downstream.
Charlene made me feel full of fire and life. But most other things made me feel like a man who was grave as hell. Like Monte Slates. He walked into the Gas-N-Go all beaten up one Saturday afternoon. The boy who bought the rubbers to use as water balloons to drop off the overpass on La Harpie Road. His eye was all swelled up and black-and-blue. He nodded at me as I handed him the bathroom key and stared hard at his sore little face.
“What happened there, kid, drop a balloon on the sheriff’s squad car?”
“Nope. My old man gave it to me.”
“Your old man? What for?” I asked.
“Stealing quarters from his coffee can.”
“Well, how many did you take?”
“Eight or nine, I guess.” He frowned.
“Eight or nine?” Jesus. The thought of this kid’s old man beating on him like that made me sick.
“Two bucks ain’t worth no black eye,” Junior whispered. He was keeping me company during my shift. “Daddy that beats on his kid like that ain’t right.”
“Pal, where is it you live?” I asked. I was about to do something. Maybe something that wasn’t so much for the kid, but for me.
“My daddy don’t have any feet.”
“How’s that?” Junior frowned.
“My daddy don’t have any feet. He don’t like to talk to anybody because of his feet.”
Monte’s old man had lost both his feet to gangrene during the Vietnam War. They got amputated right off and buried in a shallow grave like old lovers. Now he had plastic feet: hard and pink and without any real shape. He had to have been in the same bad mood since they cut his poor toes and heels off.
“Get off my porch!” I heard the old man shout through the dull white front door as soon as my feet touched the steps.
I had walked a few blocks over to Monte’s house. He had told me where he lived as soon as I promised not to start any trouble. The house was a big and gray, with a wire fence and brown-black lawn. The gate had been left open. There was a carburetor and some other auto parts lying on a blue tarp on the front porch. I went up the walk to the front door and held my breath. I had no idea what I was going to say. I knocked just once. My shoulders tightened. A cool, dull light beamed from under the front door. I knocked again, then I stepped back from the door. It was completely silent. I knocked on the door once more and this time I heard the cheap locks undoing themselves and the cold clatter of it all. Monte’s old man swung the door open as far as the tiny gold security chain would give.
His face was ugly. Not interesting ugly, not out of the ordinary, I mean. His face was plain and rotten from the inside. An ugliness that grew from the heart and weak blood. He jammed his face between the door. His black hair was greasy and graying.
“Where’s the goddamn fire?” Monte’s old man asked. “And who the hell are you?”
“Name’s Luce Lemay. I came to talk about your boy.”
“Christ Jesus, what’s that kid done now?” He squinted his eyes, then nodded, and closed the door, unlocking the security chain. He opened the door again and I stepped inside. I dug my fists into my pants pockets, trying not to stare at his plastic feet. I looked around. The inside of the house was warm and awful-smelling. I could see an open bottle of sour mash from across the room and a rotten old sandwich, decomposing on a coffee table with only three working legs. I looked at Mr. Slates’s face again. He looked like hell. He patted me on the shoulder and turned, without saying a word, and wobbled toward the bathroom with his canes, shifting his weight from side to side. He made it inside and closed the door behind.