Hearts In Atlantis

“Yeah. I guess that pretty well sums it up.”

24

It was hot, even with the engine off and the heater off it was hot, we had warmed up the whole inside of the car with our bodies, the win-dows steamed so that the light from the parking lot came in all diffused, like light through a pebbled-glass bathroom window, and the radio was on, Mighty John Marshall making with the oldies, The Humble Yet Nonetheless Mighty playing The Four Seasons and The Dovells and Jack Scott and Little Richard and Freddie “Boom Boom” Cannon, all those oldies, and her sweater was open and her bra was draped over the seat with one strap hanging down, a thick white strap, bra-technology in those days hadn’t yet taken that next great leap forward, and oh man her skin was warm, her nipple rough in my mouth, and she still had her panties on but only sort of, they were all pushed and bunched to one side and I had first one finger in her and then two fingers, Chuck Berry singing “Johnny B. Goode” and The Royal Teens singing “Short Shorts,” and her hand was inside my fly, fingers pulling at the elastic of my own short-shorts, and I could smell her, the perfume on her neck and the sweat on her temples just below where her hair started, and I could hear her, hear the live pulse of her breath, wordless whispers in my mouth as we kissed, all of this with the front seat of my car pushed back as far as it would go, me not thinking of flunked prelims or the war in Vietnam or LBJ wearing a lei or Hearts or anything, only wanting her, wanting her right here and right now, and then suddenly she was straightening up and straightening me up, both hands planted on my chest, splayed fingers pushing me back toward the steering wheel. I moved toward her again, slipping one of my own hands up her thigh, and she said “Pete, no!” in a sharp voice and closed her legs, the knees coming together loud enough so I could hear the sound they made, that locking sound that means you’re done making out, like it or not. I didn’t like it but I stopped.

I leaned my head back against the fogged-up window on the driver’s side, breathing hard. My cock was an iron bar stuffed down the front of my underwear, so hard it hurt. That would go away soon enough— no hardon lasts forever, I think Benjamin Disraeli said that—but even after the erection’s gone, the blue balls linger on. It’s just a fact of guy life.

We had left the movie—some really terrible good-ole-boy thang with Burt Reynolds in it—early and had come back to the Steam Plant parking lot with the same thing on our minds . . . or so I’d hoped. I guess it was the same thing, except I had been hoping for a little more of it than I’d gotten.

Carol had pulled the sides of her sweater together but her bra still hung over the back of the seat and she looked madly desirable with her breasts trying to tumble out through the gap and half an areola visible in the dim light. She had her purse open and was fumbling her cigarettes out with shaky hands.

“Whooo,” she said. Her voice was as shaky as her hands. “I mean holy cow.”

“You look like Brigitte Bardot with your sweater open like that,” I told her.

She looked up, surprised and—I thought—pleased. “Do you really think so? Or is it just the blond hair?”

“The hair? Shit, no. Mostly it’s . . .” I gestured toward her front. She looked down at herself and laughed. She didn’t do the buttons, though, or try to pull the sides any more closely together. I’m not sure she could have, anyway—as I remember, that sweater was a wonderfully tight fit.

“There was a theater up the street from us when I was a kid, the Asher Empire. It’s torn down now, but when we were kids—Bobby and Sully-John and me—it seemed they were always showing her pictures. I think that one of them, And God Created Woman, must have played there for about a thousand years.”

I burst out laughing and took my own cigarettes off the dash-board. “That was always the third feature at the Gates Falls Drive-In on Friday and Saturday nights.”

“Did you ever see it?”

“Are you kidding? I wasn’t even allowed to go to the drive-in unless it was a Disney double feature. I think I must have seen Tonka with Sal Mineo at least seven times. But I remember the previews. Brigitte in her towel.”

“I’m not coming back to school,” she said, and lit her cigarette. She spoke so calmly that at first I thought we were still talking about old movies, or midnight in Calcutta, or whatever it took to persuade our bodies that it was time to go back to sleep, the action was over. Then it clicked in my head.

“You . . . did you say . . . ?”

“I said I’m not coming back after break. And it’s not going to be much of a Thanksgiving at home, as far as that goes, but what the hell.”

“Your father?”

She shook her head, drawing on her cigarette. In the light of its coal her face was all orange highlights and crescents of gray shadow. She looked older. Still beautiful, but older. On the radio Paul Anka was singing “Diana.” I snapped it off.

“My father’s got nothing to do with it. I’m going back to Harwich. Do you remember me mentioning my mother’s friend Rionda?”

I sort of did, so I nodded.

“Rionda took the picture I showed you, the one of me with Bobby and S-J. She says . . .” Carol looked down at her skirt, which was still hiked most of the way to her waist, and began plucking at it. You can never tell what’s going to embarrass people; sometimes it’s toilet functions, sometimes it’s the sexual hijinks of relatives, sometimes it’s show-off behavior. And sometimes, of course, it’s drink.

“Let’s put it this way, my dad’s not the only one in the Gerber fam-ily with a booze problem. He taught my mother how to tip her elbow, and she was a good student. For a long time she laid off—she went to AA meetings, I think—but Rionda says she’s started again. So I’m going home. I don’t know if I can take care of her or not, but I’m going to try. For my brother as much as my mother. Rionda says Ian doesn’t know if he’s coming or going. Of course he never did.” She smiled.

“Carol, that’s maybe not such a good idea. To shoot your educa-tion that way—”

She looked up angrily. “You want to talk about shooting my edu-cation? You know what I’m hearing about that fucking Hearts game on Chamberlain Three these days? That everyone on the floor is going to flunk out by Christmas, including you. Penny Lang says that by the start of spring semester there won’t be anyone left up there but that shithead proctor of yours.”

“Nah,” I said, “that’s an exaggeration. Nate’ll be left. Stokely Jones, too, if he doesn’t break his neck going downstairs some night.”