“I’m not kissing a wad of gum.”
“I’m sorry I came with you. You don’t give a whit about my feelings.” Which was true.
And to make it a whole lot worse, down the end of our row, against the wall, Maurey and Dothan weren’t watching Gidget at all. He had his greasy pinhead right in her face. I could see her hand on the back of his neck.
All the way from GroVont Maurey sat in the middle of the front seat up against Dothan. He drove with only his left hand on the wheel, which made me think he was touching her. Chuckette and I sat up against opposite doors in the backseat. I refused to speak more than a grunt. With no explanation, Maurey hadn’t come over for practice that afternoon. Left me sitting home like a goofball. I’d been looking forward to it. A boy needs some sex to relax him before a date.
“You win,” Chuckette said, “but it’ll cost you another Black Whip.”
“Win what?”
She made a big deal out of taking out the Chicklet mess and finding a candy wrapper to stick it in. Then she kind of sighed, put both hands in her lap, and turned to me with her flat face tilted up like she was an Episcopalian taking communion against her will.
On the other side of Chuckette, both Maurey’s hands showed on Dothan’s hair. What could she see in that Southern turd? He had no redeeming qualities at all—just a mean oily rural kid whose teeth would be bad before he turned nineteen.
He would hit her someday. I could feel it.
I leaned sideways and kissed Chuckette, but I didn’t touch her with my hands.
“You forget how the French kiss?” she asked.
“I thought you didn’t like it that way.”
“Once you get used to the spit, it’s okay. Besides, it proves you love me.”
I thought about denying I loved her, but what was the use. She wouldn’t believe me. Gidget and the happy, well-adjusted kids were dancing around a bonfire on the beach. We’d done that once on Ocracoke Island down on the Outer Banks. Lydia had been with a captain or something from the Coast Guard. The jerk patted me on the head and gave me pinball money. There’d been a girl with red braids named Ursula that I watched for hours but never got up the gall to talk to. She’d had on a yellow two-piece bathing suit and if you stared at the fire awhile, then looked quickly at her, she seemed naked. Sort of. I decided to pretend Chuckette was really Ursula. Maybe she’d had a disfiguring accident or something and had plastic surgery only down inside she was still Ursula just as Gidget was still Sandra Dee.
The fantasy worked me up enough to do the tongue deal and even to touch Chuckette’s one shoulder. But midway through the kiss I went into a short story and lost track.
Chuckette slapped me. “That’s my knee.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t ever touch my knee.”
“Is something wrong with it?”
“My body is a temple.”
“Doesn’t look like a temple.”
She sat up stiff. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Your body looks like a body. Sort of. A temple is a building, some kind of a church.”
She thought about this awhile, but couldn’t seem to get around the logic. “Time for you to buy me a Black Whip.”
Trading kisses for Black Whips didn’t seem the way to treat your body like a temple. “But the movie is almost over. We’ll get to see which guy she really likes.”
“I want my Black Whip.”
Gidget was going to really like Moondoggie anyway. He was the tallest.
While I was standing at the candy counter in the lobby, Maurey came out of the theater, her lips swollen from all the necking.
“You didn’t come this afternoon,” I said.
“You be home tomorrow?”
I hadn’t considered tomorrow one way or the other, so I hesitated long enough to keep her off balance, then I said yes.
“I want you and your mom both there.”
“Lydia? We don’t need her anymore.”
“I do. I’ll be there after church.” Maurey headed across the lobby toward the ladies’ room. About halfway across, she turned back to me and said, “He doesn’t kiss near as good as you do.”
Sunday, Hank decided to show us the valley. “If you’re going to live here you might as well see the place,” he said.
Lydia blew cigarette smoke in my face. “We live in North Carolina. We’re only here for a lost weekend.”
Hank grinned and drank coffee. He’d been in a fine mood since Lydia let him come back. I guess he thought he’d won a point because she called him instead of him calling her. I knew better.
Outside had warmed up, if that’s the word you use for zero. At least, ear wax no longer froze. Maurey showed up while we were loading the truck with a picnic and enough blankets to avoid death should the Dodge collapse miles from a heat source. She looked at the pile of cardboard boxes in the back of Hank’s truck and said, “You’re not getting me in one of those.”
“What’s she mean by that?” Lydia asked. Her breath put out more fog when she talked than the rest of us. I couldn’t figure out why.
Hank said, “The boxes are for moving goods.”
Maurey reached over the tailgate and scraped a box with her thumbnail. “Why are they waxed, then?”
Hank shrugged and opened the passenger door for us. “Get in.”
Lydia was suspicious. “Since when do you open a door for a lady?”
“Since it won’t shut from the inside anymore.”
Lydia rode next to Hank and Maurey sat on my lap by the door that not only wouldn’t shut from the inside but wouldn’t open that way either. On account of the truck having electrical tape instead of a passenger window, I felt somewhat trapped, though in a pleasant way. I hadn’t been this close to Maurey in several days and I missed it. A person can get used to touching someone.
My head was jammed up against the gun rack, so I kept my nose in the little dent on the back of her neck for most of the ride. Her hair smelled way clean, not a shampoo smell exactly, more like fresh-snow clean. She didn’t have hair spray or any of the other gunk that Chuckette used to make her hair into a helmet. Touching Chuckette’s hair was like reaching into a hole not knowing what lives under the surface.
“There’s no excuse for civilized people living here,” Lydia said. “Not that any do. But look. There’s no trees, there’s no country lanes lined with two-story colonial homes and pickaninny shanties. There’s no pickaninnies. Man should not live without ethnic diversity.”
Hank grunted. “What do you think I am?”
“You’re just a white guy with a nice tan and too long hair.”
Maurey popped me with an elbow. “Stop that.”
“Stop what?”
“You’re coming over after dinner tonight. Ed Sullivan said this week would be a really big show.”
“He always says that.”
