Hearts In Atlantis

I hesitated. It’s a question most boys find difficult, I imagine, and one most lie about. I didn’t want to lie to Carol. “No,” I said.

She slipped daintily out of her panties, tossed them over into the back seat, and laced her fingers together behind my neck. “I have. Twice. With Sully. I don’t think he was very good at it . . . but he’d never been to college. You have.”

My mouth felt very dry, but that must have been an illusion, because when I kissed her our mouths were wet; they slipped all around, tongues and lips and nipping teeth. When I could talk I said, “I’ll do my best to share my college education.”

“Put on the radio,” she said, unbuckling my belt and unsnapping my jeans. “Put on the radio, Pete, I like the oldies.”

So I put on the radio and I kissed her and there was a spot, a cer-tain spot, her fingers guided me to it and there was a moment when I was the same old same old and then there was a new place to be. She was very warm in there. Very warm and very tight. She whis-pered in my ear, her lips tickling against the skin: “Slow. Eat every one of your vegetables and maybe you’ll get dessert.”

Jackie Wilson sang “Lonely Teardrops” and I went slow. Roy Orbi-son sang “Only the Lonely” and I went slow. Wanda Jackson sang “Let’s Have a Party” and I went slow. Mighty John did an ad for Brannigan’s, Derry’s hottest bottle club, and I went slow. Then she began to moan and it wasn’t her fingers on my neck but her nails digging into it, and when she began to move her hips up against me in short hard thrusts I couldn’t go slow and then The Platters were on the radio, The Platters were singing “Twilight Time” and she began to moan that she hadn’t known, hadn’t had a clue, oh gee, oh Pete, oh gee, oh Jesus, Jesus Christ, Pete, and her lips were all over my mouth and my chin and my jaw, she was frantic with kisses. I could hear the seat creaking, I could smell cigarette smoke and the pine air-freshener hanging from the rearview mirror, and by then I was moaning, too, I don’t know what, The Platters were singing “Each day I pray for evening just to be with you,” and then it started to happen. The pump turns on in ecstasy. I closed my eyes, I held her with my eyes closed and went into her that way, that way you do, shaking all over, hearing the heel of my shoe drumming against the driver’s-side door in a spastic tattoo, thinking that I could do this even if I was dying, even if I was dying, even if I was dying; thinking also that it was information. The pump turns on in ecstasy, the cards fall where they fall, the world never misses a beat, the queen hides, the queen is found, and it was all information.

25

The next morning I had a brief meeting with my Geology instructor, who told me I was “edging into a grave situation.” That is not exactly new information, Number Six, I thought of telling him, but didn’t. The world looked different this morning —both better and worse.

When I got back to Chamberlain I found Nate getting ready to leave for home. He had his suitcase in one hand. There was a sticker on it that said I CLIMBED MT. WASHINGTON. Slung over his shoulder was a duffel full of dirty clothes. Like everything else, Nate looked different now.

“Have a good Thanksgiving, Nate,” I said, opening my closet and starting to yank out pants and shirts at random. “Eat lots of stuffing. You’re too fuckin skinny.”

“I will. Cranberry dressing, too. When I was at my most homesick that first week, my mom’s dressing was practically all I could think about.”

I filled my own suitcase, thinking that I could take Carol to the bus depot in Derry and then just keep on going. If the traffic on Route 136 wasn’t too heavy, I could be home before dark. Maybe even stop in Frank’s Fountain for a mug of rootbeer before heading up Sabbatus Road to the house. Suddenly being out of this place— away from Chamberlain Hall and Holyoke Commons, away from the whole damned University—was my number-one priority. You’re confused, Pete, Carol had said in the car last night. You don’t know what you want or what you think, and you won’t as long as you keep running those cards.

Well, this was my chance to get away from the cards. It hurt to know Carol was leaving, but I’d be lying if I said that was foremost in my mind right then. At that moment, getting away from the third-floor lounge was. Getting away from The Bitch. If you flunk out this December, you’re apt to be in the jungle next December. Be in touch, baby, seeya, as Skip Kirk usually put it.

When I latched the suitcase shut and looked around, Nate was still standing in the doorway. I jumped and let out a little squeak of surprise. It was like being visited by Banquo’s fucking ghost.

“Hey, go on, bug out,” I said. “Time and tide wait for no man, not even one in pre-dent.”

Nate only stood there, looking at me. “You’re going to flunk out,” he said.

Again I thought of how weirdly alike Nate and Carol were, almost male and female sides of the same coin. I tried to smile, but Nate didn’t smile back. His face was small and white and pinched. The perfect Yankee face. You see a skinny guy who always burns instead of tanning, whose idea of dressing up includes a string tie and a lib-eral application of Vitalis, a guy who looks like he hasn’t had a decent shit in three years, and that guy was most likely born and raised north of White River, New Hampshire. And on his deathbed his last words are apt to be “Cranberry dressing.”

“Nah,” I said. “Don’t sweat it, Natie. All’s cool.”

“You’re going to flunk out,” he repeated. Dull, bricky color was rising in his cheeks. “You and Skip are the best guys I know, there wasn’t anybody in high school like you guys, not in my high school at least, and you’re going to flunk out and it’s so stupid.”

“I’m not going to flunk out,” I said . . . but since last night I had found myself accepting the idea that I could. I wasn’t just edging into a grave situation; man, I was there. “Skip, either. It’s under control.”

“The world’s falling down and you two are flunking out of school over Hearts! Over a stupid fuckin card-game!”

Before I could say anything else he was gone, headed back up the county for turkey and his mom’s stuffing. Maybe even a through-the-pants handjob from Cindy. Hey, why not? It was Thanksgiving.

26

I don’t read my horoscope, have rarely watched The X-Files, have never called the Psychic Friends Hotline, but I nevertheless believe that we all get glimpses of the future from time to time. I got one that afternoon, when I pulled up in front of Franklin Hall in my brother’s old station wagon: she was already gone.

I went inside. The lobby, where there were usually eight or nine gentlemen callers sitting in the plastic chairs, looked oddly empty. A housekeeper in a blue uniform was vacuuming the industrial-strength rug. The girl behind the counter was reading a copy of McCall’s and listening to the radio. ? and The Mysterians, as a mat-ter of fact. Cry cry cry, baby, 96 tears.